it's often said that the difference between the country and the city is that the country is friendlier. anyone will speak to anyone. everyone knows everyone's business. the city is a cold, singular place where you can keep your anonymity. this can self-fulfill into a state of distrust through non-communication and lack of acquaintance. in fact, it is more likely in the modern day city to see people walking along apparently talking to themselves in what would have previously been regarded as a form of madness but now merely means that they are chatting remotely to someone they are familiar and safe with by mobile communication.
the city is full of texts - civic and man-made to direct us through its spaces and keep us within its laws. it's also full of textless signs. textless in the sense of words. a host of symbols, of varying recognisability, but most with which we are so familiar that we subconsciously allow them to guide us, on the straight and narrow, tacitly acquiescing to their authority.
walk 7 was about recognising and collecting such signs along the journey of the perimeter square. i tried to ignore signs with words attached. Many of the signs were placed way above eye level, so as to afford as wider view as possible.
walk time 1h 50
approaching the end of the walk, having looked at and photographed every non-text symbolic sign, i felt drawn to an area of factory land which lay just outside my designated route, and was largely hidden from view. on several earlier walks i had been tempted to investigate this particular area but had decided against as it was out-of-bounds. i can't say what was different today or why i decided to look, but just as walk 3's shadows had led me to the homeless bed image, today's walk looking at signs threw up this scene.
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