*if you cannot find us it is because we have fallen off your maps

by Jodi Rose, 19 Mar 2010

Here we are again. Interfacing through the computer.
Brain meld.
We have to stop meeting like this.

One day, you and I, on a bridge…

Don’t you sometimes wish everything would just stop?
Not forever, in some fatal morbid way.
The relentless incessant never-ending having to get things done.
Keep all the plates spinning, the balls in the air, the belief that what you’re doing is worthwhile and somehow maintain the faith that it will all work out?
No?
Yes!

Whatever it is on those plates, we all seem to be enacting the same impulses. Survival, love, annihilation, distraction, control. I need to be outside this for a moment. This flesh, this world, this mind, this skin – you can tell I haven’t been meditating lately. It’s a jumble in there. Thoughts emotions ideas fleeting impressions all cracking up against each other, shattering and dissolving to the winds. Let’s not even start the debate on the value of culture…

That’s what I like about bridges – and art. They give you a moment to be released from whatever it is your day demands of you. To not be whoever you are. Imagine some other worlds. Well, they do when they’re working. Sometimes it’s transcendent.

I have that weird homesickness feeling for a place I’ve never been. I know it, I dream myself there – it just won’t materialise.

This is my motivation for Bridgeland. A space to create the world we can imagine together – not as a utopia, or a dreamstate – but to be inhabitable. Not that I can claim to imagine for anyone else.
Although I would like to imagine on behalf of those who need it.

Seriously, if you can’t start to imagine somewhere different, then how on earth can you ever start to make it real?

I went to visit the Vestiges Park today. It’s under construction, a beginning sculpture park – wonderful, magic. The scaffolding was in place and a sign taking shape. The feminine knotweed has taken over the land, winding roots so deep that the site can’t be developed commercially – a brilliant ploy on the part of nature.

“A Collective Intervention into a Forgotten Landscape

Vestiges Park does not exist, cannot exist, will not exist. The artists involved deny all knowledge of the project and the authorities are mute. In some cases these artists may not actually exist – they split, double, multiply, evaporate, condense, dissolve and merge until truth and fiction, science and magic become indistinguishable. Vestiges Park is a chimera – there and not there – dare to find us, dare to enter and let us take you to the edgelands, the rotting places where nothing is as it seems…

…and if you cannot find us it is because we have fallen off your maps

*Jim Colquhoun

Vestiges Park is inspired by the 1844 anonymous publication of ‘Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation’’. The book, written by Scottish journalist Robert Chambers, exposed a cosmic theory of transmutation which pre-dated Darwin’s ‘Origin of the Species’ by 15 years."

This is the Lowsalt group project happening simultaneously (with Bridgeland), in the wilderness next to glasgow sculpture studios, and I think part of a unique vision. It’s an amazing community to be so warmly absorbed into, with such passionate artists, craftspeople and musicians creating deeply rich synergy. Taking me into their home at Maxwell Palace (ironic in case you’re wondering, although it is bohemian palatial and wonderfully abundant) and opening all kinds of local connections and welcoming spirits…

Today we visited the marvellous wardrobe mistress of the Scottish Opera, and arrange the hire of the most fabulous costumer – sorry my lips are sealed, you’ll just have to be there!

We have no map for Bridgeland, the way to arrive is up to you. I hope you will be here there now and then.