Margate: Places, Spaces, Heterotopia I

We arrived in Margate the first week of April, well out of the season so it was really empty, especially in the morning.

In my course we studied the difference between images and pictures, things and objects, spaces and places; where the first item in each pair merely is, whereas the latter has some human significance or meaning.

A heterotopia, again according to Wikipedia, is a concept elaborated by philosopher Michel Foucault to describe certain cultural, institutional and discursive spaces that are somehow ‘other’: disturbing, intense, incompatible, contradictory or transforming. Heterotopias are worlds within worlds, mirroring and yet upsetting what is outside. In my limited experience of reading about heterotopia, the term is extremely elastic, not to say nebulous, in the way it’s thrown about in art criticism.

Click any image to see them all full-sized.

Meadowlands, UK?

My last show in NY (pre-pandemic) and the images I showed at the Lightbox here in Woking were beautiful landscapes in New Jersey’s Meadowlands, interpenetrated by the detritus of human industry. On our walk a few weeks ago, we saw something similar as we passed a sand quarry, right here in Farnham. (Click any image to see them all enlarged.)

Abandonment at the Parking Lot

I was wandering around in this Chicago neighborhood for a little while, waiting to meet someone, and I happened to notice quite a few empty parking lots (it was Sunday morning) within a couple of blocks, some in sadly dilapidated condition.

Click any image to see them all enlarged (on a laptop or PC).