Discovering the ghost of a space within my home in Ireland while in quarentine. 

I began experimenting with different materials and became interested in using Frottage techniques to create imprints of objects in my home. I hope to expand this work while transporting and translating these explorations of charcoal on fabric to other locations.

I began reflecting a lot about where I come from, my turbulent relationship with spaces I have lived in during my 6 years living in Dublin city - all of these were temporary and never felt like home. Someone else's belongings lived under my bed. Someone else’s memories, marks and scuffs sprawled across the walls like constellations. This overlap of histories, being both past and present in a space became interesting to me. Since ireland was colonized by britain there has always been a heightened sensitivity and awareness to land, buildings and ownership. There is a stark repetition of history repeating in Dublin currently and maybe this is why I have become so fascinated by the ‘Ghost’ of these spaces I visit. I want to collect souvenirs, portraits and new ways of looking at these buildings.

Route 2.

Ghost of a space

Why am I interested in this idea of a ghost of a space? How can I figure out the translation of this ghost into a different space? How can I investigate spaces without the presence of humans? Purely experiencing the space as its own. As an actor or subject?

I began my investigation into these questions by first visiting some spaces I have no relationship with. I tried to approach this as analytically as I could as a means of investigation to dissect and X-Ray these spaces as if I were an explorer discovering a new land. The space became the subject instead of my knowledge and relationship with the space.

Ghost Of De Pastoe Fabriek.

I began my investigation into this topic with my surroundings in Pastoe. The following images are from my experimentation over this time. I was interested in the layers of history and finding a relationship between the past and present. 

START

Route 3.

Route 1.

Investigative report on buildings I do not have a relationship with 

Julia Sols Stages of decay 

I became fascinated by the layers of time metaal kathedraal and I wanted to break down and investigate this space further. One element which really stood out to me were the walls and layers of time depicted in the colours and textures  

I began to recreate these layers as a means to understand the space inbetween, thinking of the work of Julia sols her photography on stages of decay a series of abandoned theaters one of the things she wrote really stood out to me:

Layers of time and 'Fossils' 

I became interested in creating 'Fossils' in the form of impressions with various materials. Below is my material exploration of these processes from multiple buildings and locations. 

Skin and Shells

You Are Invited To Become an Archeologist of The Anthropocene. 

Instructions For Navigation:

• Please choose one of the routes numbered 1-3 and stick to it until you are invited to click return to start.
• Follow your curiosity and intuition by using the arrows to guide you.
• My voice will serve as a guide to keep you company. Audio boxes are found in a red box throughout the expedition. 

I became interested in the walls of buildings and textures within them. I began recreating them and in doing so trying to explore them spatially and also with the haptic eye. 

Walls and Wallpaper

Paper Mache cast of section from front door front view and back view with residue from doorframe 

Frottage

The technique was developed by Max Ernst in drawings made from 1925. Frottage is the French word for rubbing. Ernst was inspired by an ancient wooden floor where the grain of the planks had been accentuated by many years of scrubbing. The patterns of the graining suggested strange images to him. From 1925 he captured these by laying sheets of paper on the floor and then rubbing over them with a soft pencil. The results suggest mysterious forests peopled with bird-like creatures and Ernst published a collection of these drawings in 1926 titled Histoire Naturelle (natural history).

He went on to use a wide range of textured surfaces and quickly adapted the technique to oil painting, calling it grattage (scraping). In grattage the canvas is prepared with a layer or more of paint then laid over the textured object which is then scraped over. In Ernst’s Forest and Dove the trees appear to have been created by scraping over the backbone of a fish.

That’s how your house gets inside of you—it’s more than just space, and it’s not even space and time, because I think the notion of space and time as separate is a very Western idea. Time and space are always together, and they are usually collapsed into each other. That’s why the process of rubbing seemed so appropriate. It brings up a lot of memories, and it’s also very physical. As I moved upstairs, I changed the material of the rubbing from colored pencil to pastel, which I had to use my fingertips to apply. I literally had to caress every surface with my fingertips, and I started to wear off my fingerprints. I was actually giving up my own body to the architecture. The project became a spiritual quest. As I spent twenty years of my time in that space, my farewell to the house took two years. It was an extended ritual to commemorate my time in that house and my friendship with the landlord before finally departing. - Do Ho Suh on his work Rubbing/Loving

''These layers aren’t only physical—there’s an emotional connection to a place, an accumulation of memories. I’ve always thought about architecture as clothing, or clothing as architecture. Clothing is the smallest, most intimate inhabitable space that you can actually carry. Architecture is an expansion of that. After living in this apartment for some time, I realized that it gave me a sense of protection that was quite physical. It became a kind of skin, and I felt so comfortable that I was almost not even aware of the space around me any more. Eventually, I even started to experience this space as entering inside of me, as if it had shifted from a skin to something like an internal organ. At that point, I didn’t really see the space at all—the apartment became about the orientation of my things, my movement, and my routine inside.'' - Do Ho Suh on his work Rubbing/Loving