The stasis syndicate Reuben samson
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REUBEN SAMSON
The Stasis Syndicate - Elucidation Art in Transit 2015
There are numerous ways to be lost. One could be tentatively peeking down passageways and darting past their gaping mouths with uncharacteristic shortness of breath, possessions held tight to sternum, eyes flickering. One could be enthralled by a moment, lost in it for minutes, if not for hours. And then one could be lost in timeexisting in a foggy, prosaic nether-realm of unbelonging, overlooked and overshadowed by a series of similar presences that advertise minute distinctions among themselves that counteractively highlight their sameness.
vestibule Flanked on either side by garrisoned palisades of corrugated sheets woven together with corroded filigree, stands an arched concavity- enfeebled by its rusty ruination but reinforced by its daunting imposition. A pylon to a forbidden place, allowing glimpses of the compound’s ominous occupants, but denying admission. The threshold acts as a diffusion barrier, a thin wall of non-reactive neutrality, preventing elements on either side of it from corrupting and contaminating the other.
The lone ingress to the quarantined enclosure offers brief glimpses of fatal premonitions- prophesying the inevitability that the spectators outside the walls await the same fate of the residents within. The menacing inmates climb upwards for lack of vertical obstruction, growing ladders to vantage points, hoping to see what lies beyond the isolation. Luminous clumps of kinesthetic shrubbery however, protrude like tactile tongues, diffusing freely through the blockade, engulfing whatever they please, teasing convicts and bystanders alike with their immunity, demonstrating their accelerated osmosis, leaving a trail of tracks that cannot be followed.
dockyard With helmsmen long since departed and cargoes long since raided over scores of machinations and victories, an isolated fleet of vessels lies sinking in its own harbor. The former wharf that offered solace in times of anchorage now exercises imprisonment over embankment. Profitable port now cut off from township, piers severed off in favor of barrage, the moldy merchant vessels swarm with miniscule life-forms, emphasizing the folly of abandonment. The earth lies parched, with no channels to direct moored Carracks past the industrial colossus that marks the dock’s inlet, leaving those stationed to waste away and be enveloped by gaping mouths encrusted with rubble.
platform An industrious ruin was left behind in abandon, frozen in mournful flux. And it was deliberately ignored, not out of condescension, but out of courtesy, to preserve the last vestiges of dignity. Former foundry of horology, the institution has long since relocated to new premises, leaving behind a hollow shell of corporeal ancestry and compost of obscure micro-histories. Fortified by corroded lattice embankment of oxidized metal and crumbling concrete, adorned with verdant fungal embellishment, the enclosed compound is reminiscent of a ghost station.
A goods yard conceived to serve a purpose, but fallen to dereliction and left to turn feral. The corrugated awning of the former parking lot, roof of the anterior space built for stagnancy, resembles the winged hood of a railway platform. Where time was once clocked in and paused, one now halts in perennial standstill, awaiting a train that has long since departed.
pavillion Along the circumference of arid open acreage, lies a confined garden feature, forsaken member of a series, unaccompanied and unfrequented. Conceived to form a shaded walkway, but counter-intuitive in its offering of shelter to a family of anomalous obelisks, the arbor trains a mass of woody vines. Layering sturdy stone awning beneath dense canopy, the knotted marquee serves neither as extension of nearby structure, nor as protection for an open terrace. Shrouded in an inflated lantern-like calyx, forming the cape of a Physalis around oblivious and unconscious cairn, the arbor stands obstinately inflexible, insisting on offering the penumbral concealment of its parasol to elements that will never require it.
compartment Cordoned by linked fences, braced by heavy timber, and stabilized by pavement, a matchbox tenement plays linchpin to an unseen dwelling. Contrasting the coolness of the vegetative eclipse rather than complimenting it, the cabin remains cloistered, offering sanctum in its cubical cove. A trellised foundation of woodpile threatens to double as kindling, emulating a pyre ready to be set afire. A corresponding pile of cordwood weighs the delicate structure down from above, anchoring the abbey to its corner, restraining it, preventing any chance of escape. In this forced sentence of standby, the lines between sanctuary and asylum shift from ambivalent to obscure.
sentinel Somewhere between the roles of convoy and chaperone, a quartet of imposing sentries stands resolute. Permanently positioned in stance apt for battle, guarding a ward that seems hardly worth safekeeping, for any chance of invasion seems long since past. The wired towers are draped in imperceptible webs that dissolve in the sunlight, demarcating the nodes of the encrypted telegraphic message passeed between them, the same redundant command reminding themselves not to shift posture, not to break formation, but to stand their ground.
Silent, stubborn, stoic, their relayed transmission enfeebled by the deafening silence of the fenced bastion behind them. Only ghosts of interceptors threaten to interlope, a pitifully weak omen without the capacity to instill fear, soon vaporizing itself in the hollow cells of the lost cause.
fray A solitary goalpost, the veiled archway to an underworld, stands cold and unflinching, warning of matches once lost, taunting passing voyagers with its priapic presence, positioned at the very mouth of a demolition ground. Piles of rubble, fragments of failed constructions, stripped of their skeletons lie emitting plumes of smoke in the background.
The tattered net bleeds into the fray, trawling through the carcasses, the seine drawing in wraiths of old establishments while their bodies slowly melt into oblivion. While lost souls beg to linger on the horizon, the victors of the match preen themselves from the stands of the arena, their hubris self-justified.
conduit As suburbanites traverse the elevated annex, the skies split forth and carve the terrain into serpentine creeks. The spontaneous watercourse washes away clusters of debris like clogged arteries, revealing a system of underlying trenches, dendritic gutters demarcating trails of elemental sparsity that mirror subterranean channels of industrial effluents. In the absence of dikes and levees, the brooks run rampant, bleeding iridescent estuaries, reveling in their virility before they are saturated by contaminants.
terminus A wide, gaping gash gnawed right into an earthy precipice, cutting into its every sedimentary layer, revealing embedded signs of industrial stigmata. Beneath barricaded entwinement of pipes and wires and poles, lies an inbred disfigurement of the ventricles of a barrel of discharge, stabbed into the crevasse, sustaining the succubine roots of a cemented stump. The rotting arteries and eroded pipes, unable to siphon the acrid liquid, drain it into the chasm, which is stained as it trickles down, collecting into a murky, septic pool at its base, the final point of stagnation and torpidity.