“The room is there for the human being – not the human being for the room.”
El Lissitzky
RIGHT place, wrong time. Wrong place, right time. Most of the ills of humanity can be traced back to timespace disconnect. Despite all the alluring emoluments of the internet, we still happen to live in a physical universe, surrounded by empty space in every direction, compelling us to ‘mind the gap’. Everything from immigration to commuting, from real estate to tourism, from maternity to the grave is a physical affair. Half a century ago the English punk band The Sex Pistols extolled the virtues of being pretty vacant, “Don’t ask us to attend ‘cos we’re not all there”. Pretty Vacant is a paean to being disconnected at a generational level, and a creatively destructive insight into the perils of human disorientation. There are so many things that can go wrong in space with a human being, and getting lost is just the start of them.
“But the spatial realm is also always open, converting closing time to an enriching interlude.”