Location:
OS Grid Reference: SK 347 870
Date: 20 February 2007
Time: 1pm
Site:A derelict factory and workshops in central Sheffield, just about to be regenerated

Description:

smell: fish and chips, chemicals, metal

touch: flaking paint, dried buddlia heads, cold brick, spder threads, slime, buddlia and willowherb stems

taste: metallic, rusty, sandy, chemicals in my throat

sounds: workmen talking loudly, planes, magpies, radio voices, boots squeeking on plastic piping

sight: water circles, funnel spiders web, mirror fragments, blood, hand prints

other: urge to dig and to excavate and also stamp and bury, sliding across the mold, reminded of the resilience, persistence and flexibility of plants

Present:Jo Salter

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Location:Route 9 on way to Amherst from Plainfield…. Russell Street in Hadley, Western Massachussets
OS Grid Reference:
Date: 20 February 2007
Time: 8am
Site: Montogomery’s Roses…. Derelict florist greenhouses and warehouse

Description:

Smell: dusty, heavy, musty, old, settled, unsettled now

Sight: dark, urban, stonework, old beer cans, trash everywhere, suddenly deserted

Taste: acrid and I lick my fingers and get filthy dust in my mouth and spit it on to the floor

Sound: the cushioned silence that is created by the envelope of snow, the swishing-scratching of my feet along the dusty floor

Feel: cold, clammy air, dirty dusty pores

It’s cold. The ceilings are low. There is so much stimulation here.
I feel excited.
I look over at Anne Marie and I see big shopping plazas, ‘stores’, ‘malls’ and mountains. The snow outside is as high as the bottom of the windows. Its surface is hard and on the way into the building we walked along the surface of it without breaking it.

I get overcome with energy and all I can do is run round and round, in a burst of energy and excitement, as well as a desire to keep warm.

The first thing I find on the floor is a roll of stickers. As I pull the end of them out one by one the stickers fall off onto then floor. This delights me greatly and I run pulling the strip along behind me. The stickers stop falling off. I feel disappointed but I have started to run now and I will continue. The strip begins to wrap itself around me, trapping me in it’s spiral. I fight it. I want it to flow. I am breaking the flow to create some flow.

I remember finding the pallets. Can I balance on them? Can I even stand on them? There is a constant underlying sense of danger in this building, a feeling that at any moment the ceiling could fall in, the walls could crumble, someone could find us and… what?
The floor is covered with dust and grime and large square staples. I find a broom and start to sweep. I create piles of dust and staples and little green single stem rose holders, rusty nails screws and stickers. I feel the broom has become an extended appendage of my own. I use it to explore my balance, I use it to explore my reach, to extend my kinesphere. It begins to feel like a Tai Chi sword form. As I extend the broom it hits the ceiling, and it hits the metal on the ceiling, and it creates sounds that feed off each other, contrasting and complimenting each other. I get into the rhythm of this.
I discover the trolley and I want to wheel around on it. I so want to throw myself about and I crawl through the gap to see what will happen and I reach my hands down to the floor and as I pour my weight into my hands, I feel the opposite pull of the trolley through my hips into my feet. The floor is very very cold, it feels hard with a layer of dust over, and teeny tiny crumbs of broken glass. I want to remove my skin from the floor. I do not want to absorb the cold and the sharpness into my body. I stand and the trolley swings on my lower back and we counterbalance each other and explore that for some time, playing with the wheels’ relationship to the floor, the weight as it falls through different architectural points of strength in my body and the shape in comparison to me. I enjoy the scraping and the scratching sounds.

Then I discover the rectangular metal box, did it used to carry the heating system I wonder. I crawl on it. It also is freezing. It feels smooth and grimey with a lined sharp texture where the vents are. It wobbles. It is not strong in its angles. I stand on it and enjoy wobbling with it, testing our balance together. The sound is hollow and echoey. I hope the video is picking up these sounds. I am looking forward to listening without the corresponding images.

I discover the door. It has a sign on that asks for it to be kept closed. I try the handle. Nothing happens. I try a few more times. And it unlocks. I am surprised. I don’t want to see inside just yet. I want to open it fully and reveal the new space behind me so it is open but I do not know what it holds, as if I am letting a monster out, or a frozen body, an ex-florist, as if I might somehow understand what is in the space without looking into it. Then I enter and it feels cold. I don’t want to enter yet, just stay by the wall, safe. Then I come up face to face with the mould on the wall and the safety it presented is exposed as distorted. There is a ceiling fan on the floor, a ball of string and a hole in the ground. The objects want to be together, the string down the hole. The string snaps and rolls away, so I lay down the length that broke off and, like a golfer with a foot for a club, I kick it behind me, and score a hole in one. I see the light of the larger outside space and want to be back there again. I exit the room.
The floor becomes fascinating to me, as I turn and jump and drag my feet I create patterns in the dust and feel the grittiness through my boots. I feel drawn to look through the window, towards the east, and I wonder what Anne Marie is doing. What her space is like. Is it more courtyard than derelict? More industrial than courtyard? More outdoor that indoor? What is the priority of space we were looking for? I feel she is having fun. I feel she is leaping with more energy, distorting her body in some sunlight. I feel she is in an unusually sunny spot for the time of year. Maybe wearing a skirt. Maybe laughing. Maybe frustrated by people in the space. I look through the window and am interested by the blinds and how they let teeny shafts of light in as I bend them open. I stand under them and feel as though they are like chospticks in my hair, as if I have a bun. As I stand I realise that I am not sure if I am in ‘the zone’. I am so aware of my body and the space around me. I have been in a large playground and I have been exploring it like an excitable child, discovering only the surface elements. I even out my five senses, counting them on my fingers as I do so. I smell the dust, the grime, I taste it in my mouth, along with the old, musty air, I smell the mould, the dust and also the crispness of the snowshell we are housed in. I know I have had a strong sense of sound here and visual is always strong for me. I pull away with the string behind me and taste the grime from off my fingers. I have to spit it out. Why did I do that? How strong is my sense of past, memories and feelings inside this place? What happened in that small room, where I felt unsafe? How did this place close down? What was the last day like? Why is so much left behind?
I am drawn to stand nearer the desk. There is a can of beer left. I throw it to the floor expecting beer to fly everywhere. I think it is frozen. I find an apron and put it on. Replace the drawer, tidy up some. Wearing the apron gives me a feeling of being at work. I feel angular, I feel tired. Surely a florist wouldn’t feel so boxed in as I feel now, so robotic. Maybe that is why they closed down. I feel really apathetic, uninspired. I want to honour that feeling in my dance and remain still. I find a book of labels and enjoy the way they travel over my body and through the air, in dialogue with the molecules it falls through, absorbs and becomes along its journey. It falls apart bit by bit and forms a line along the floor. I stand on it and leave footprints. Somehow there is a poignancy to this.
My last image is of the writing on the wall asking for the place to be kept clean.

Present: Kalyan Uprichard

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