My investigation was inspired by the sentence in Invisible Cities (Orlando: Harcourt Brace & Company [1972] 1974): “The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.”
This concept led me to record the traces of humans and non-humans on the staircase.
All along the staircase, I can see signs of human traces: graffiti on the walls, peeling paint, and worn steps are all signs of everyday use, each testifying to the presence of different people over time. These signs often reflect elements of social life, such as expressions of thought and patterns of movement, as well as the different groups that passed through space. Like “waves of memory” gradually integrated into the structure, each worn edge and each layer of faded paint captures the moments when people stayed, moved and interacted, making the staircase a subtle but powerful witness to daily life.
At the same time, non-human traces are left on the stairs, silently recording the natural environment of space. Natural traces such as moss and stains gradually spread, representing a slow transformation. These “silent records” provide a different perspective of time from human traces, marking the natural passage of time and the gradual decay of materials. The contrast between human and non-human traces interprets different timelines and histories, making the stairs a multi-layered historical text.
The importance of recording these traces is reflected in Bruno Latour’s Visualisation and Cognition: Drawing Things Together, where he argues that “the ‘things’ you gathered and displaced have to be presentable all at once to those you want to convince and who did not go there.”
So, I used photography and rubbing to record the traces of human beings and nature. Photography facilitates direct visual inspection, while the wall’s texture, captured through rubbing, offers a tactile experience and enables individuals to directly engage with the surface, as experiencing its history. Then I digitally processed the interweaving of these human and non-human traces, converting them into symbolic graphics through scanning and software editing, revealing the complex relationships of their coexistence in the space.Consequently, these interweaving serve not merely as records but also as strata of “visual information” that are perpetually “moving” through interpretation.
Through this investigation, I realized the staircase serves as a library of memory, facilitating a distinctive interaction between human activity and natural deterioration, so imbuing the staircase with complex depth. Examining these traces yields insights into the passage of time and the complex relationship between human existence and environmental change.
References:
- Calvino, I. (1974). Invisible Cities. Orlando: Harcourt Brace & Company. [Originally published 1972].
- Latour, B. (1986). Visualisation and Cognition: Drawing Things Together. In: Knowledge and Society: Studies in the Sociology of Culture at Present, Vol. 6.