OS 1st Print

OS 1st Print was my second attempt to have a solo exhibition in the Tent Gallery at ECA, Evolution House. This time no buildings collapsed and everything went according to plan. OS 1st Print was a follow-up on the mapping theme from Chicago. For this project I walked Edinburgh waterfront from the river Almond at Cramond to the river Esk. During the walks I was constantly writing down my personal thoughts. These writings I later used to form a 3D map of Edinburgh's waterfront. The whole idea was based on Derrida's sentence: "Just as texts are built, so are buildings written". For me the same can be applied to the landscape. The landscape as we experience it is a product of our reflections.
In this art work I used my personal background and physicality to write the landscape. The map that was created is irreversibly linked to me; this is my perception/reflection on Edinburgh's waterfront. When walking I was exposed to the elements, which influenced my moods and thoughts. The map is a snapshot of time, my thoughts and experiences of the waterfront changed from day to day. I could not complete the whole walk in one day. I did not attempt to get back to frame of mind where I was when I started walking again. Every section of the walk has its own style, and was not edited except for a few spelling mistakes. This does however not interfere with the coherence of the text as it is all written by me and my specific writing style. Also the presentation, wherein the text loses it appearance of text over a distance, helps to create a sense of coherence.
The 3D aspect of the map was for me essential as it allowed people to walk around the art work just like I walked along the waterfront. There is a long line of artist which saw walking as an art form, for example Richard Long. I tried to take this, to me highly reflective action which formed the base for this installation, back into the gallery. To make people wander I wrote the text from left to right, but printed it on 5 sheets of acetate, which where hanged from the ceiling following an abstraction of the landform of Edinburgh's waterfront. The distance, over which the sheets were hanged, and the size of text forced people to walk, if they wanted to read the text. Hopefully it gave them the same reflective state of mind as I got when walking the waterfront. Another aim of this work was to make people think about Edinburgh's often forgotten waterfront and its development.