Olympia, Washington.
Over the past few years, I’ve gradually come to understand that home isn’t a geographical position, it’s a state of mind and being; it’s a collection of people and memories. I began this project with a deep sense of hurt that what I considered to be home was scattered across the United States, a myriad of minds and hearts isolated by land.
Place and connectivity. I’m always homesick for people, images, concepts, and my associations of this city-center were at first less of what I saw inside of it and more of what I had been told about it, more of a grasp at someone else’s conceptualization of a Place and a struggle to understand it with new senses.
My location is the intersection of Franklin and 5th Street, as well as the surrounding nine blocks. It is both immersive and accessible, a thoroughfare for the rest of the city but not without destinations of its own. It has seating sanctioned by the city, a calm place to exist and observe, but not without the benefit of being able to interact with passersby.
Here’s a map of my observations and interactions.
Speaking geographically, it’s altitude is just a few feet higher than the surrounding blocks, which according to my current projections would make it an inlet of its own above the newly-risen future waters.
For the duration of the Olympia project, I aimed to dissolve my current associations of the area; to either remove or build upon my beliefs, or at least explore them more fully. I hope to gain insight into this Place from the perspective of others. To understand what they are seeing, to represent it both realistically and expressionistically, and to translate both the cultural and ecological experience of Oly into language that is accessible and inspiring.
My quest will transcend the timeline of this assignment. I have gained an invaluable appreciation for any human’s ability to preserve the impermanence of any given moment through language, photography, and memory. Sometimes, it’s no wonder that the idea of Place is difficult to communicate: we’re all attempting to convey something that, in a sense, exists entirely within us.
Feel free to choose your own adventure or begin one of mine.
