on April 25 of the year 2022 at 11:47 pm, i couldnt get home
To give a bit of context as to the gradual shift in my work towards abstract night photography, I should elaborate on the art movements that aggregated into this recent interest. I had previously engaged in what can be described as "hauntological" art, my senior exhibition itself being a culmination of my exploration into childhood memory, dreams, suburbia, etc.
Defining "hauntology" will lead me down extensive tangents so for the sake of brevity, when I speak of hauntology I am talking about art that (to paraphrase Wikipedia) explores the ways in which elements of the past linger; the intangible ghosts of yesterday. It can loosely be connected with the horror genre, but it is less interested in "horror" and more in the subconscious, the mystical, the supernatural, and the unarticulated energy of environments, sounds, and objects as they relate to us. In other words, the things not perceived that linger. Hauntological art by its nature becomes connected to our relationship with a cultural past and our own memories, and often it can evolve into a perception of the spiritual.
I was closely following several internet art genre movements that concerned themselves with hauntology. Vaporwave in particular had over time splintered into a variety of different hauntological phenomena: abandoned malls, ancient internet, outdated technology, our relationship to consumerism in the past and its inherent emptiness, etc. I eventually stumbled onto the Liminal Space genre, which I and so many other young artists resonate with on a very personal level in the same way that we did with Vaporwave back in 2016.
Liminal space explores our relationship to man-made environments separated from their purpose and function: a train station with no commuters, a classroom with no students, a playground with no kids (see also "kenopsia" from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows). But more than just the lingering spirits of a location, liminal spaces are interested in zones of transition, places meant to be occupied and experienced only briefly. It becomes incredibly difficult to holistically describe with words the feeling of a liminal space when images can capture it so much more succinctly and with such puncturing exactitude. However, I hope that much of what I'm saying will sound familiar as the elements of liminal spaces are oddly parallel to what I was exploring in The Neo-Suburban Memory and its subsequent projects.
My recent Samsung Galaxy smartphone was capable of creating long-exposure night photographs, and its accessibility meant that I got in the habit of shooting frequently when I encountered spaces that resonated with me in some hauntological manner. As I mentioned in Someone You Love, my frequent nightmares were compelling me to explore the spaces unoccupied in times of sleep and their connection to our dreams. The rudimentary and sometimes messy manner of the phone's night settings only helped to increase the abstract hypnagogic state of the space.
On a particular night, I was inclined to bring my Sony camera in an attempt to rekindle my enthusiasm for spontaneous photography that wasn't on my phone. I often visit Amato on my nights off with my friends, where we will sit in the diner booths and chat into the late hours of the night, the stores and grocery marts vacant, the parking lots dotted with abandoned vehicles and the occasional roaming sanitation crew.
At that moment, my only interest was documenting the things I had visualized as shots countless times: the harsh fluorescent bleeding onto the dining tables from outside, the kitchen night lights rotating colors, the warm glow of the overhead lamps. I didn't realize until later that I was connecting with the liminal spaces of my workplace during the hours of their irrelevance, separated from their function. I thought back to the dreams of working here so late that I risked the sun rising, an endless piling of orders, registers with functions suddenly unrecognizable to me, working on a single pizza for 20 or 30 minutes and never being able to finish it.
Never Get Home is the nightmare of being delayed indefinitely, until you have no chance of ever reaching your destination or leaving or doing anything other than singular stagnation. The empty restaurant: never making progress. The walk to my front door: the end of the dream, its mystical forces guiding me into the waking world.