In Robert Smithson’s A Provisional Theory of Non-Sites , he differentiates between a diagram or notational picture and a natural or realistic one — By drawing a diagram, a ground plan of a house, a street plan to the location of a site, or a topographic map one draws a ‘logical two dimensional picture’. A logical picture differs from a natural or realistic picture in that it rarely looks like the thing it stands for. It is a two-dimensional analogy or metaphor – A is Z. 5 So the space between the actual site and Smithson’s non-site (the logical picture) is a space of ‘metaphorical significance’ 6 that invokes the imaginary. A tour of the non-site, or the diagrams of Stop-Motion Migration is a projected tour through an imagined or invented space. The maps of Stop-Motion Migration sacrifice their cartographic legibility and notational function in order to become a different type of project for the city. In contrast to tours that propose the city as both gallery and artwork, this project presents the city as a (partially recognisable) image of itself. Situated within the gallery, or here on the page, it also proposes that in rethinking space we don’t necessarily need to go out in the city. From a fixed location, we are each able to recalibrate our own understanding of the city and engage it by thinking about movement and the absences that movement leaves behind. g
Stop-Motion Migration No.5 (2005), 2010. 22 x 17” digital print on paper
26
5/6 Robert Smithson in Robert Smithson:The Collected Writings, Ed. Jack Flam. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996. p364
Stop-Motion Migration No.6 (2009), 2010. 22 x 17” digital print on paper
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator