"Body, Space, City" - Text

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Here is the accompanying text that went with my collage poster for the 'Body, Space, City' task:

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" No Smoking.

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Alright. Thank you dear government representative for putting up that sign and wanting to save my lungs. And sure, I won’t smoke. But I came to see Sydney, I came to experience it, not to be told how, where and when to.

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That seems to be the modern city. So big and busy has it become that it fashions with its own hands a system to regulate itself. It’s not a group of buildings atop grassy hills to explore, but an omnipresent network of signs and directions. I’m accosted by a fluid river of polished plates, of aluminium lollypop ladies holding my hand and moulded shapes sparkling their contrived and controlling smiles.

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They make me too conscious of the options my footsteps have, too conscious of what is ahead and what isn’t, instead of letting me see and feel and discover and wonder.
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It’s almost insulting. What if I want to consider the distance to the nearest station in terms of place and not metres? What if I want to turn right here, to park between 10am and 10pm there?

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Yeah yeah, realistically it’s all perfectly understandable and undisputable. How else would you get around? How else could everything be safe, be legal, be commercial, be efficient? And yeah, I know... all these signs are there for my own good, so I don’t pester every shop assistant for directions, or drive in a frustrated loop, or return to my home country espousing what an exercise in uncontrolled lunacy this place is.

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But a city should be about more than control. Engaging in the fluid existence of towering structures and historical places is a humbling experience, that you can only feel right there in a sudden moment. A city of signs and directions betrays that, even though I know without them the modern city can’t exist.

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And I do appreciate my lungs being saved. But that single, uninterrupted moment is something you can’t factory-cut and polish, or point someone in the direction of. "

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