On the way to work this morning I detoured to a nearby construction site. It's a huge brownfield site formerly storing coal and heavy goods. That's all been cleared off now and apart from a few portacabins it's a bare expanse of rough ground... and a 30 metre long heap of debris. Maybe 50-100 tons of earth, brick, concrete, broken piping and whatever else got scraped up and put aside as preparations were made for laying foundations on another part of the site.
The variety of materials contained in this long, low mound was particularly striking as often there's a uniformity of substance, of colour and texture. This appeared more complex. I was being watched by a group of drunks who will may be be more curious about what I'm doing there when I go back tomorrow with a couple of cameras. I want to try and work my way along the length and stitch together a panoramic, poking my camera through the bars of the fence every six feet or so.
At construction sites there is always a sense of masculinity but these omnipresent piles of broken material are also analagous to a process of becoming, they indicate transformation, when one thing is smashed up making way for something else, something new. I identify with that in the sense of gender presenting, being a man who wants to wear a dress sometimes : )
I'm a bit wary of using the concept of 'becoming' as it was used to explain the motivation of the murderous transgender serial killer in 'Silence of the Lambs' (Buffalo Bill?) - and having been so maligned it may be impossible to ever reclaim it. But as an idea it encompasses one or two salient points. Demolition of something that has outlived its uselfulness is applied to an idea of maleness that I've grown up with, adopted, but can grow out of, that in its turn needs to be dismantled. And the difficulty in dealing with that change is comparable in terms of upheaval caused to ground or to one's psyche.
The promise of the 'alternative future' is found in seeing the debris of that first effort - those painful signs of progress.
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The variety of materials contained in this long, low mound was particularly striking as often there's a uniformity of substance, of colour and texture. This appeared more complex. I was being watched by a group of drunks who will may be be more curious about what I'm doing there when I go back tomorrow with a couple of cameras. I want to try and work my way along the length and stitch together a panoramic, poking my camera through the bars of the fence every six feet or so.
At construction sites there is always a sense of masculinity but these omnipresent piles of broken material are also analagous to a process of becoming, they indicate transformation, when one thing is smashed up making way for something else, something new. I identify with that in the sense of gender presenting, being a man who wants to wear a dress sometimes : )
I'm a bit wary of using the concept of 'becoming' as it was used to explain the motivation of the murderous transgender serial killer in 'Silence of the Lambs' (Buffalo Bill?) - and having been so maligned it may be impossible to ever reclaim it. But as an idea it encompasses one or two salient points. Demolition of something that has outlived its uselfulness is applied to an idea of maleness that I've grown up with, adopted, but can grow out of, that in its turn needs to be dismantled. And the difficulty in dealing with that change is comparable in terms of upheaval caused to ground or to one's psyche.
The promise of the 'alternative future' is found in seeing the debris of that first effort - those painful signs of progress.
.