“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out.
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall”
Robert Frost
Insulating or isolating?
Dear Container,
Where you ever empty? Who filled you with me? Somebody claimed your space and filled you with their own content, that’s how I got here. These borders that surround me are your definition and my division from the outside. Why do I let you? You insulate me and protect me against unwanted influences. I worry about, and long for the isolation you promise to give me. But can you really? Nothing ever happens in a vacuum. What is it then we’re shutting in and shutting out – to make something or someone into an island?
I am documented and filed, so I really do exist. But where you ever empty before me?
Always wondering, The Contained
Iron fabric and branch.
Red velvet and branch.
Velvet branches
Isolating is separating something from the whole. Insulating is protecting a content from the effects of the outside.
Islands
We are raised as islands. We learn to see ourselves as separated from the rest of the world, with our own unique map of rivers and mountains, regardless of the fact that mountains are created by tectonic movement involving the whole world, and that rivers are made up of water that evaporated in another island’s forests.
Being an island is both liberating and dangerous. Deciding to be be free of the continent, to stop referring back to it for truths and answers, makes you able to think for yourself, but at the same time it enables logical fallacy to flourish without question.
Metal fabric
Testing materials, finding surfaces.
