Alluvion Statement, 2010

The map is the key and the limitation.
The map is the record of the experience,
and reflects the journey,
but remains limited
to what can be said clearly.

Identity is assigned once location is determined.
Location requires the fixing of the process,
requires the creation of
a designation
that is already redundant,
a designation
referencing that which is continually in flux,
untouchable,
defined,
plotted and lost.
A discontinuous location creates a
discontinuous identity.

The Alluvion works trace the contours of mapped lakes.
Information is located
and layered,
re-presented,
re-located.
Shorelines retain only the inner identity,
paint flows away from the origin,
recombining,
obscuring previous layers,
forming shared territories,
creating and taking
possession of a location,
a location soon to be modified,
repositioned and lost.

The work is an accumulation of events,
an unfolding of the cartographic
that mimics the organic,
the geologic,
the construction of a history,
representing the world using the
tools that simultaneously
present and prevent the world
from presenting itself
in itself as itself.

To travel into the landscape is to focus,
to choose a set of rules,
much as to speak
is to choose a language
and to accept the limitations
inherent in that language.
Not to advance into nature
but into the record of nature,
the map,
the net of trails and measures.
Without narrative,
to advance to become lost,
to create a position and take
possession of that position,
to become lost and return.
To connect,
projecting a trail
quickly mislaid and lost.
A view
with a memory,
a cartography of loss,
grid less, map-less.

© fulton 2010