I do not usually post things that do not directly relate to my research, but after following this story on my twitter feed and on facebook, I have decided that it warrants a full blog posting. This case is sickening and threatens the very heart of academic scholarship, please support Scott in any way you can.

On November 17, 2009, Scott DeMuth was jailed for contempt of court, since
he refused to answer questions posed to him by a federal grand jury in
Davenport, Iowa. They were interested in questioning him about his knowledge
of an unsolved Animal Liberation Front action in 2004 at the University of
Iowa. At the time, Scott was only 17 years old and was a resident of the
Twin Cities (Minnesota). Scott is a University of Minnesota graduate student
and Dakota language student whose research focuses on liberation struggles
and social movements in the U.S. and globally.  In his work, he has
researched and/or interviewed numerous activists from Native American
struggles for sovereignty and land, and environmental and animal liberation
movements in the U.S. The grand jury was interested in asking him to divulge
the names of activists, which would violate the confidentiality agreements
that he made with his research participants.

Scott took a principled stand against the grand jury’s fishing expedition,
and instead decided to go to jail rather than be party to what many
attorneys and the American Bar Association (ABA) view as a dangerous
practice that deprives people of basic constitutional freedoms. But it gets
worse. Two days later (November 19, 2009) Scott was charged with conspiracy
under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) of 2006. This indictment
came just one day before the 5-year statute of limitations was to
expire.  Attorneys have speculated the indictment was rushed through to
freeze the statute of limitations, with the intent of buying them time to issue
a future indictment.   These legal maneuvers are indicative of an investigation that
has gone nowhere, and prosecutors who are desperate to locate members of the
Animal Liberation Front, no matter what legal acrobatics are required.

REGARDING GRAND JURIES:
The federal grand jury is a legal proceeding used to investigate possible
organized criminal activity rather than a specific crime. It is held in
secrecy, and does not grant rights to representation or the right to obtain
transcripts of the proceedings to those subpoenaed: those served with a
subpoena face only a federal prosecutor and 16-23 jurors who are not
screened for bias. Federal grand juries are used not to prove guilt, but to
coercively extract evidence without due process from third parties under
threat of imprisonment. They have a history of being used to intimidate and
suppress movements for social change.

REGARDING SCHOLARLY RIGHTS:
The American Sociological Association’s Code of Ethics states:

Section 11.01:
“Sociologists have an obligation to protect confidential information and not
allow information gained in confidence from being used in ways that would
unfairly compromise research participants, students, employees, clients, or
others.”

Section 11.06:
“Sociologists do not disclose confidential, personally identifiable
information concerning their research participants, other recipients of
their service which is obtained during the course of their work.”

This scholar-research participant confidentiality is the bedrock of academic
research and without it the public would lose trust in scholars seeking
important information (concerning, for example, social histories or
institutional discrimination practices), leading to the incalculable loss of
invaluable data for community preservation, public policy, and university
teaching purposes. Scott is being charged with conspiracy for invoking his
constitutional rights and heeding to professional codes of conduct.

REGARDING THE AETA:
More than 160 non-governmental organizations opposed the passage of the
AETA. The opposition includes such influential groups as the National
Lawyers Guild, American Civil Liberties Union (belatedly), New York City Bar
Association and other bar associations, Natural Resources Defense Council,
Humane Society of the U.S., and American Society for Prevention of Cruelty
to Animals (ASPCA).

The AETA:
– is excessively broad and vague and imposes disproportionately harsh
penalties

– brands animal advocates as “terrorists” and denies them equal protection
under the law

– brands civil disobedience as “terrorism” and imposes severe penalties

– has a chilling effect on all forms of protest by endangering free speech
and assembly

– interferes with investigation of federal law violations by animal
enterprises

– detracts from prosecution of real terrorism against the American people

The AETA is designed to punish actions that instill a reasonable fear in
employees of an animal enterprise, or their families. In its application,
AETA also criminalizes many First Amendment activities, such as picketing,
boycotts and undercover investigations of animal abuse if they interfere
with an animal enterprise by causing a loss of profits. It unnecessarily
expands punishments for crimes that existing federal laws already cover.
This law has created a chilling effect on constitutionally protected
activities and many activists, scholars, attorneys, and elected officials
believe that was the intention.

Our goals are simple and direct: we want the judge, prosecutor, and U.S.
attorney to dismiss all charges against Scott, protect academic freedom and
integrity, and denounce the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act.

The newly formed Scholars for Academic Justice is developing a website and
we plan to roll it by this weekend at the latest. More on that soon.

In the meantime, here’s what you can do:

*write a statement of support for Scott (concerning the issue of academic
justice in relation to research ethics, grand juries, etc.) (in PDF format
please, send to [email protected])

*sign a petition supporting Scott:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/freescottdemuth/

*write letters to the editors of the MN Daily, the Pioneer Press, the
Star-Tribune, the Chicago Tribune, the Quad-City Times, New York Times, and
San Francisco Chronicle.

*write letters to the prosecutor, the U.S. Attorney, the judge, and
Representative Keith Ellison (see info below).

*Record a digital audio statement of support. We can help you do this via
skype, over the phone, or in-person if you are in the Twin Cities area. Just
let us know!

Please contact David Pellow at [email protected] for more information or to

send statements of support.

Please send polite letters to the following individuals requesting that they
work to dismiss all charges against Scott, protect academic freedom and
integrity, and denounce the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act:

U.S. District Judge John A. Jarvey
United States Courthouse
131 East 4th Street
Davenport, Iowa 52801

U.S. Attorney Nicholas Klinefeldt
United States Courthouse
131 East 4th Street
Davenport, Iowa 52801

Assistant U.S. Attorney Cliff Cronk
United States Courthouse
131 East 4th Street
Davenport, Iowa 52801

Representative Keith Ellison
2100 Plymouth Avenue North
Minneapolis, MN 55411

4 explorers, 5 Countries, 2000 miles, 16 abandoned sites, 5000 photographs, 3 hours of video footage, a pocket full of loose change to live on and a car full of $7000 worth of camera gear. It’s these last two bits that I find so amusing, these are the pieces of the puzzle that turn this from a hobo trip to a pro hobo trip I suppose. That and the radical mobility of our opt-in faux homelessness.

After our last trip to Europe, I wrote about urban camping. I felt like that long weekend away was a sort of like a wilderness retreat, a little escape from work and obligations to see something unstraited. Some people choose go to a pine forest for these retreats, we go to abandoned châteaus in Belgium. Seems fair enough.

But this trip was different right from the beginning. Part of it was due to the length of our expedition, part of it due to the dynamics of the crew. We had a crew of 4 – myself, Statler, Winch and Silent Motion, all up for it in a big way. We were long inspired by the perpetual homeless adventures of Dsankt at Sleepy City which seemed to pry open a new level of UrbEx or, at the least, open up new possibilities for adventurous play. So we struck out on a Sunday night from Reading, UK, across the channel on the P&O car ferry, through the sadness of Calais, France, just across the border into Belgium to Kosmos, a hotel with a weird Russian art-deco theme that had closed in 1996 where we planned to stay the night.

Transgressive Mobilities

Tourism?

Rated 1 Star on Travelocity

Strangely enough, given what a pile of crap this place was, it was really hard to get into. Finally, after making our way in, ferrying in bags of clothes, food, whiskey and 8 bottles of Chimay looted from a road side stop, we settled in for the night, with a gorgeous view of a random Belgian valley spread out before us, full P&O shot glasses of cheap drink and a horrible rattling noise from the winds assaulting some loose flap on the roof above us.

Penthouse

Winch taking in the epicness of first night

The Goblinmerchant get naked

We ended up finally dragging tables and chairs from other rooms to board up the windows which were allowing massive gust of wind and rain into our sleeping quarters. Essentially, we started doing home repairs. That night, falling asleep to Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Volume II playing softly on my phone, I had dreams about the property owner showing up weeks later to find that somebody had actually repaired their building, boarded up windows, brought in and cleaned up couches, filled the bookshelves with tea lights. I imagined them being, at first, dismayed and confused and then… amused, a small smile cracking their stoically disappointed Belgian head.

The thing I started thinking was that our move from UrbEx into pro hoboness was actually a move that benefited property owners because, as Silent Motion put it, “our sleeping in the space builds a more intimate connection with it, we become a part of the fabric.” So going pro hobo, in my mind, even the documentation aspect that you are scrolling through right now, is about place hacking, about finding intimacy in a world full of sterile engagement.

This idea was made even more funny when the property owners showed up at 8am the next morning and started putting up more fencing on the site. Between us and them, the place was going to be completely remodelled soon. We waiting 30 minutes or so for them to leave and made our hasty escape.

Although I am tempted to write about all 16 sites we went to, I can’t. The reason for this is, quite simply, that I cannot relay the epic nature of the experience to you in a blog posting, try as I might. With every day that passed, the crew got more raw, more volatile, more energetic, in a weird, confused sort of way. It was a delirious panic that I think would have even made Dionysus proud. I was drunk for most of it, partly because I do better fieldwork after a few beers and partly because the experience was so raw that it had to be shielded, it was like trying to stare into the sun. Now I know why so many homeless people drink.

Staring at the sun

The raw light of experience

Boundaries that existed in our little UK bubble began to break down. We did not speak the language, we did not meet a single person outside of the grocery stores and petrol stations we ravaged, washing our hair in their bathroom sinks and leaving piles of trash in their parking spaces, running under the turnstiles at the restrooms that demanded 50 cents. All that existed, all that mattered was the adventure and the bond between us which grew tighter with every sip of Jupiler in the back seat of Statler’s car, with every step walked over squishy mold/carpet. We could not think about what was happening because as Dostoevsky points out “one must love life before loving it’s meaning.” And this love was on fire. We began infiltrating live sites, barbecuing dinner in wheelbarrows, lighting dozens of candles in random rooms of Nazi extermination camps and free climbing timber into bell towers in crumbling buildings to photograph the holes in the roof veiled in cloudy continental morning mist.

The film here were shit

Dinner cooked over pieces of the gas chamber

Do they know we're in here?

Winch was the primary conspirator of this little frozen-toed expedition. Always up for a challenge and a laugh, he had booked this absurd holiday in December, I think, to break our will. After all, only the broken can be admitted into the ranks of legend. After taking in a few leisure sites over the first few days, he hits us with the news – we are going after heavy industry. Now, given that I am about to give a paper on reanimating industrial spaces through urban exploration at the 2009 Theoretical Archaeology Group conference in Durham at the end of the month, I thought this is a grand idea. Until it actually started going down.

We walked up to Transfo, a power station in Belgium, to find it swarming with people. We waited until dusk. When we thought everybody had gone home, Silent Motion ninja’d his way in to the secure building past the motion sensing lights and infrared alarm system. We got in and snapped some pics for about 10 minutes before some worker ran up and started rattling the doors to the heavy equipment room. Whoops. Turns out they were not all gone, but Silent Motion clearly could give a shit and starting climbing the infrastructure of the building to get a landscape shot.

Raw Metal

Ghosts of industry

On our way to Germany, we stopped to infiltrate Kokerei Zollverein, again swarming with people including professional photographers and men in suits. I swore that this infiltration would end badly. The only bad outcome, in reality, was my nausea from being meters away from workers as we snook past them and hid in the shadows. All my photos from there are shaky save two:

Processing

Pulled

After my moment of existential crisis, we made our way to an abandoned train yard Munster Gare, a glorious moment for me for some odd reason. Something about the intersections of transportation (mobility), dereliction (history, aesthetics) and remote location (opportunity for playfulness) made this my favorite site of the trip.

I'm the captain of this ship!

The passengers

No more goods

Unnecessary

After that locomotive jizfest, we drove into Germany. I had not been since I was 19 years old when I pursued the country on a underage American-in-Europe beer run, and was dismayed to find that it was actually a really beautiful place. Mostly because the further East you go, the more derelict structures begin to dominate to landscape. I always thought of dereliction being about the failures of capitalism, but nowhere was abandonment more apparent that in East Germany, markers to the collapse of communism and the retreat of the Soviet Union. The group entered a fervor as we drove through the country side, everything began to look derelict. At one point I remember Silent Motion saying, “Hey there’s a building over there!” and Winch responding “Nice, does it has trees growing out of it?”

We had resigned ourselves to a week of squatting. It was safe to say, at this point, that we had all left our lives behind. I didn’t care about my research anymore, I just wanted to keep getting high on adrenaline. No one ever talked about their jobs, their families. We talked about girls, 4chan, about what country had the best beer (hint: it’s Belgium), about football. Even our Blackberries and iPhones served only to get us aerial photos and to update our facebook status so everyone knew how much more fun we were having than them being homeless, elite and stacked with fat kit. As we crept into East Germany, we were all broken.

I don’t mean that in a bad way. What had been broken was our expectations, our existential dilemmas, our need for unnecessary daily crisis. These things were overwhelmed by the experience of the present, by what was just around the horizon. I felt, for the first time on this project, like I had actually broken the research barrier. I was not studying UrbEx anymore, I was UrbEx. I sat in the back of the car, delirious and drunk, and saw Winch staring at his fingernails. He says “When you look at my fingernails what do you see?” I told him “Maybe the blood and sweat of old inhabitants.” He considered it and replied “I don’t want to clean them…” This was our arrival, the point at which we had committed to dreaming instead of sleeping. And with that, we moved into Berlin, into post-Soviet Territory. But that, my friends, is a story for another day.

Never done

Is this a game?

Anthropologists have recently been writing about World of Warcraft, Second Life and other Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Games (MMORPGs). Since many of these games have millions of players, with their own economies, cultures etc., it has been suggested that people within virtual worlds have developed their own culture. As an avid World of Warcraft player, I heartily agree. But I also love playing games in real life, and, in a sense, this is what UrbEx is all about.

Yesterday Marc took me to a site which felt very much life a game, a surreal landscape of industrial waste, technological failure and a ninja Ghurka security guard. We explored it, very carefully, and all went well, but when I got home, I re-dreamed the explore, making it the game I knew it was.

I call the result a Real Life Role Playing Game or RLRPG.

In a small forest, in a quiet neighbourhood, there are trails snaking their way through the tress. Different paths straddle the border between the forest and fields, inhabited by Mums with prams on this lazy Sunday, and by pairs of flatmates and friends, jogging, trying to sweat out remnants of last night’s snakebite extravaganza with girls in too-short-skirts. On one of these trails, in a black hooded cloak, walks Marc of the Cata Clan, Lvl 80 Elite Explorer, back again to conquer Pyestock for bonus explorer points before returning to his subterranean home in the Paris Catacombs.

Marc moves to the perimeter of his target, taking note of the Ghurka guard walking along side him, without looking in his direction, noticing that the Ghurka is following his movements. And eyes. He has been spotted. Marc breaks into a run, trees passing by like cars on a busy highway. With a quick glance to the side, he notices the guard is keeping pace. An elite guard. Merde.

Rookinella was right to be scared and stay home today, this guard cannot be defeated with felt or plastic pirate swords. With two glancing kicks off of the leaf cover, Marc is running up a willow tree, rebounding over the 4 meter triple barbed wire fence, his cloak hood flapping in the wind, distracting the Ghurka just long enough to pull the small blade from his leg holster. The Ghurka is cut down before he can get to his weapon, his mouth held from behind to muffle the screams of agony as he bleeds out.

Moving in

Marc shoulders the guard (god he’s heavy for such a little man!) and sneaks stealthily into the entry point, the Stargate chapel, where his next surprise awaits. He stuffs the guard under the mesh catwalk and walks over to a large circular disk on one end of the room. With a deep breath, he grabs the edge of the Stargate and pulls it open to unleash the Goblinmerchant, a daemon; a vendor of all things fantastic and mystical.

But what’s this? The Goblinmerchant smells humans. Turning his comrade, he can see that Marc has heard them long before now. A group of 4, fumbling their way through. No wonder, with security gone now. The perimeter is being breached. If they make their way to the Stargate, all hell could break loose.

They run off, low to the ground, weighted down by field equipment and supplies pulled from the Stargate, supplied for documentation of the Cata Clan invasion. Through the dangling Cat 5 cables, past the air tunnel control room, up the rusty ladder. Four fellow explorers lie in ambush and a battle almost ensues until we realize they also hold a key to the Stargate.

The documentation begins, one room after another, small items and large machines from humanities forgotten industrial past, a legacy of materiality replaced by computer models and office jobs in Slough.

Controlling the minds of workers?

An exploded reactor, lucky we were there to prevent radiation leakage!

Mail delivery system

Heard the seashore in these

Tunnels or cables? Was I in those?

Flying over the site with a temporary upgrade

Don't look down

Dirty row, collected for XP

Goblinmerchant calls control to tell them the mission has been accomplished. He is awarded 3 mana potions and 5000XP points.

Phone home

Documentation complete, Marc enters the energy capacitor, a small proton particle subfield generator, and Goblinmerchant flips the switch, firing him back to Subterranean Paris.

Impossible

I was recently contacted by Emma James, a researcher at Newcastle University studying the recent re-emergence of psychogeography. The following is a short interview I did with her.

SI graffiti in Amsterdam

_________________________________________________________________________________

Emma James: How / where did you first hear about the concept ‘psychogeography’?

Bradley L. Garrett – The first time I heard the term psychogeography was on the cover of a book by Merlin Coverley in the London Review Bookshop, I think I read half of it standing in the store! It was a good introduction and branched me into the work of academics working with the concept like David Pinder and Alastair Bonnett, then deeper into the Lettrist Movement, Raoul Vaneigem, Guy Debord and ‘work’ of the Situationist International (SI).

E.J. – In various articles I have read, people have observed that there has been a recent re-emergence of psychogeography in the last decade.  From your research have you found this to be true?

B.L.G. – I absolutely see a renewed interest in psychogeography. There are numerous clubs on the internet devoted to the practice and the mass-market work of Ian Sinclair and Patrick Keiller in particular really make me feel like psychogeography has ‘gone mainstream’. A quick youtube search of the term reveals that many people are using psychogeographic techniques to navigate city space in new and interesting ways all the time, such as walking the city using algorithms, applying random models to a (supposedly) fixed template, replacing one arbitrary motivation (I am walking to work) with another one (I am walking 4 streets North, 2 streets East and 1 street North until I can’t walk anymore).

E.J. – ‘Who’ do you understand to be modern practicing psychogeographers (e.g. artists, geographers, everyday civilians’ etc)?

B.L.G. – I see geographers are the preeminent drivers behind the modern psychogeographic movement, primarily because their inspiration has come from reading the work of the situationists who pioneered the concept, the problem is that a lot of them write about it without ever practising it, which I see as a failing. But there popular writers such as Ian Sinclair and Will Self who are quite aware of the lineage and practice the techniques also produce work is much more widely read, so they might be considered the primary ‘practitioners’. But, of course, we also find a lot of artists, counter-cartographers and people on the street using these techniques, even if they are not (wholly) aware of the theory behind the practice.

The other thing I find interesting is that this ‘new’ psychogeographic movement appears to be centred primarily in Britain (and especially London), which implies to me that it may be reactionary – perhaps due to the increase in government control and surveillance that has taken place over the last 10 years, making people feel a greater need to defy order, even in small ways such as walking across a piece of grass signposted not to or speaking through a bullhorn for a day. The time and space in which this resurgence is taking place sure feels a lot to me (from my readings) like the governmental regulations and reactions that led to the founding of the SI, and ultimately to the French Wildcat revolts of 1968.

So I would say that although psychogeographers tend to invoke small actions, it would behove both academics and governments to pay attention, as these small resistances may be an indication of a larger social consciousness of boredom, restlessness or downright anger. People using psychogeographic practices are just one of the groups who dare to push back a little sooner than others.

E.J. – I understand that you are studying ‘urban explorers’.  How would you view them in relation to psychogeography (e.g. as a branch of psychogeographers?  Or just another term to use for practicing psychogeographers?)

B.L.G. – In my discussions with urban explorers, most would not want to be labelled as psychogeographers, though there are some clear similarities in their practices; both are instances of what I might call mobilities of transgression or, maybe more specifically, place hacking. Both psychogeographers and urban explorers seek to redefine and/or experience space and place on their own terms, regardless of pre-existing rules, social templates or cultural norms.

E.J. – As part of my dissertation question, I am interested in people’s motivations behind practicing psychogeography.  According to various writers there are a few different ideas, e.g. political motivations/an interest to connect with the past/as a sort of rebellion against modern consumerism e.t.c.  From your research and interaction with urban explorers, what have you found their motivations behind practicing it to be?

B.L.G. – I think that most people would find that they have a range of motivations behind anything they do that requires some effort, there is rarely just one driving force behind action, especially when that action is activistic, dangerous or trangressive. There is an investment/reward ratio at work where you think to yourself “okay, yes, I could climb that crane and get some photographs, but is the experience, or the photograph I bring home, worth the possibility of arrest?”

Most urban explorers would I think contend that they are interested in the historic background these places, though one person did tell me that they “could give a shit about the history, I just like to explore.” I have heard the suggestion that urban exploration is about bearing witness to the failure of capitalism, especially in seeing sites such as industrial ruins folding back into the landscape after their abandonment. I don’t think this is true at all. To be honest, most urban explorers are in these places to get photographs that most people do not have; to see something that no one else has seen. So it is both the experience and the production/acquisition (which is of course part of the capitalist system they are supposedly subverting) that becomes the motivation.

I would say that people who define themselves as psychogeographers are much more likely to have political motivations than people who define themselves as urban explorers, though the practices are intertwined.

E.J. – As a geographer, I have noticed that there is very little writing on psychogeography within the discipline, though I have come across a few lecturers who have tried to introduce it within the course.  Would you say that there is a valid place for psychogeography within the discipline of geography, and should it perhaps be promoted/expanded?

B.L.G. – I think that geography has a lot to learn from psychogeography, both in terms of its historical roots and trajectory and in terms of modern practice. It certainly seems like there is some resistance to the concept, great publications like Alistair Bonnett’s journal Transgressions came and went, snuffed out, I think by academia’s inability to challenge theory with practice, or maybe more fairly, academia’s inability to ground theory in practice. A similar stigma exists against participatory geographies, I think, for the same reason – essentially many academics are afraid of becoming activists, afraid of getting their hands dirty, afraid of testing an armchair theories, afraid of failure. I believe, as I think many psychogeographers would, that we should celebrate failure. We would like to think that academia is a haven for free thinking, but the Ivory Tower also has its social and cultural models.

E.J. – What is your opinion on the argument that psychogeography could be applied as a new way of re-writing and representing the city (e.g. the idea of psychogeography maps alongside ‘mainstream’ mapping)?

B.L.G. – I think that this is a wonderful idea, the thing is that psychogeography, and psychogeographers, tend to not want to be boxed in. This poses difficulties when, for instance, writing grant proposals for projects. If you were to suggest to a funding body that you were going to spend a year following the ‘densest’ flows of people off of the London Tube to try and psychogeographically map nodes of interest at different times of day in the city (as I have done for fun!) you would find this funding body likely feeling that the research has no ‘research question’ or ‘direction’. The fact of the matter is that it does have a direction, it’s just that you have taken that power of direction out of the hands of the ‘elite’ academic and put it into the hands of the anonymous city dweller. I think that there is something profound in that. That is where, I would argue, the real solid tendrils of politic challenge come from in psychogeography, not from the esoteric writing style or wandering corporeal experiences, but from having the openness to resist being the one who defines what those experiences should be.

Just as psychogeographers work to subvert political, social and cultural templates, they also, I think, would be reluctant to create those templates, making playing the dual role of being both an academic and a practising psychogeographer a rare one.  Would we benefit from melding those illusory dichotomous positions? Absolutely.

It’s only been two days since I have returned from Belgium and I am already fiending for my next explore. I know it’s just around the corner, I have a few invites to go places this weekend, but in the meantime, I am stuck here behind my computer writing grant applications and trying to catch up on my field notes, taking short breaks to look at pictures like this one:

Somebody's house, nobody's home

This was a stately home that Vanishing Days took me and Marc to a few weeks ago where we all shared some angsty moments in a beautiful hallway with a spiral staircase, a dome-shaped skylight and some very large mirrors.

Space Invaders

The thing about this house, and the reason, I think, why I keep going back to look at the photo, is that it was clearly not abandoned very long ago (I heard 1998 – so maybe 11 years). Generally, I find that the more recently a place was abandoned, the more interesting it it to explore, because it has some sort of presence. You can feel who was there. At times, you can feel their grief and loss. Sometimes, it seems even more visible, some small piece of crumbling failure, a left behind artefact or scrawled note. Maybe it is the line between UrbEx and Infiltration and my need to get closer to that line is becoming greater as I have to feed that addiction.

Forgotten pet

Vanishing Days, Marc and I saw this bird trapped between door frames and shutters, to panicked to get out, not intelligent enough not to get in in the first place. We saved it, but quickly realized that there were piles of dead ones behind the windows. We were forced to accept that this was their fate, just like the house, now no one’s home, which would die a slow death. But for a day, the house was enjoyed, playful desires were realized, new shoots of life were located, and space became place. As I stare at the picture of this beautiful abode, I like to think that it appreciated our visit.

Spun

Silk