Location

Buhlao, Labo,  Camarines Norte, Philippines

N 14.16587, E 122.83229

Description

This table defined my experience of visiting the Philippines.  It became my bed for two days offered to me as a guest, while those working with me slept on the floor below. It was a privilege that made very clear the differences of living in a country of excess to that of one continuously struggling to support it’s own people.  It provided for me a unique perspective that allowed me to see past who I am and live for a moment in another culture.

Contributor – Matthew Slaats

Location

Bagasbas Beach, Camarines Norte, Philippines

N 14.13674, E 122.98447

Description

The sun is yet to rise on an early June morning.  Yet throngs of people are already at the beach enjoying the cool winds and warm waters. The surf continuously rolls drowning out the sound of activity taking place around it.  Except when the laughter of children playing in the waves draws your attention.  The interaction of human activity and nature then becomes tangible to the viewer.

Contributor – Matthew Slaats

Location

Marikina City, Manila , Philippines

N 14.61713, E 121.05774

Description

Armies of drivers and passengers navigate the streets of the Philippines via tricycles like these. When filled, 8 passengers attach themselves to various parts.  Two in the side car, two behind the driver, two sitting on the back, one holding onto the side car and one on top of the side car. Each is designed by their owner, reflecting the culture and area they drive in.

Contributor – Matthew Slaats

Location

Barbados

13° 6′48.03″N, 59°36′53.64″W

Description

In Barbados, there’s a lot of action in the mornings. On a street corner at about 7:30 am, here are school boys in their neat and clean uniforms on their way to school, a nicely dressed granny heading – where, I don’t know, maybe she’s getting on the yellow bus that you see in the foreground. One thing’s for certain, there’s always a rum shop nearby which is the red building and the white building across the street might possibly be one too.

Contributor – Meg Stewart

Location

Tibet

29°39′10.11″N, 91° 7′47.57″E

Description

This is in Barkhor Square which is next to the Jokhang Temple in Tibet, China. These roof tops make it seem like a quiet scene with the lovely, waving prayer flags, but below on the streets of the Barkhor Square is a large bizarre. There is plenty of bartering, and lot’s ofinteresting English words repeated over and over to ‘entice’ you to go and look at the goods. In the photo, beyond the roof tops are the austere, treeless mountains rising high above the Tibetan Plateau.

Contributor – Meg Stewart

Location

9 Main St. Beacon, NY

N41.5081, @73.9770

Description

This fountain is filled in now. It’s a weird feature, asymmetrically clinging to the side of this building. It’s the oddness of this feature that continually draws me in.  I have no reminiscences or longing attached to this site, save for the longing that comes from seeing an empty space that should be filled.  It sits there now as a niche and pedestal for a thousand constructions in my mind.

Contributor – Christopher Albert

73016 San Cesario di Lecce LE, Italy

+40° 17′ 59.16″, +18° 9′ 41.91

Description

A while ago, before the summer, in the courtyard at Careof in Milan, Efrem, a guy with a beard, told me he came from San Cesario: «I live on the edge of town, at lluca fausu», he said, with that sly Salento accent. I thought: «He lives in a false Luca, at Luca-the-fake… whatever.» Over the next few days, for no apparent reason, I kept thinking about this fake Luca. A couple of months later we were driving through San Cesario, Alessandra had a blue wig, it was three in the morning and we were on our way home from a party. We had ingested red wine, rum and chinotto, and I had chewed some mint leaves. «I want to show you something – she said. Have you ever heard of the lu cafausu?» I couldn’t believe my ears. Around two bends and down two one-way streets (the wrong way, she was driving) and there was the fake Luca. A dozen buildings surround what might almost be called a piazza. At its center stands a strange structure (more of an “object”) in crumbly masonry, a weird sort of pagoda with a Middle Eastern air (a crescent moon on the roof), fragile, almost an eyesore. Efrem’s neighborhood doesn’t take its name from some dishonest Luca, but from a “coffee house” (twisted by local dialect into “lu cafe-haus-u”) that has been many little things for many long decades: a gathering place for peasants, a gazebo that provided shade for noblemen and English officers as they sipped tea, a dwelling for a young orphan and his white horse, a henhouse, a toilet, a garage for a Lambretta, a sexual trysting place, a farmer’s tool shed, an illegal gambling joint, a dream object and, last but not least, the site of performances by four artists. It was and is an inadmissible spot, a territory of accumulation and absence of meaning. A metaphor, perhaps, of what we might become.

In the last three years we have been involved in a sort of aesthetic and anthropological investigation, dealing with the contradictions of both urban and metaphorical spaces, the “self-generated” beauty (by chance or necessity) and the “errata” of the landscape.

Lu Cafausu, an old coffeehouse located in a small town in the south of Italy, has become the inspiration for stories, performances and actions in Lecce, Rotterdam and New York. We identified Lu Cafausu as a metaphor for something that is, at the same time, both central and marginal, where aesthetic contradictions meet the meanings (or maybe the lack of any meaning) of our time. It’s “an imaginary place that really exists.”

Contributors – Emilio Fantin, Luigi Negro, Giancarlo Norese, and Cesare Pietroiusti

828 80th St, Niagara Falls, NY, 14304 United States

N43.0888, W78.9741

Description

The location of my first real fight.  We didn’t stand a chance.  Joel got thrashed.  My friend Brian just froze up, at least I got hit trying to help.

Contributor – Tom Hughes

Location

1496 Military Rd, Niagara Falls, NY 14304, United States

N43.0935, W78.97125

Description

Where my High School used to be.Poignantly, it is now a parking lot that separates a Chili’s from a Wal-Mart.  Yeah.  Awesome.

Contributor – Tom Hughes

2420 FDR Drive, Service Road East
New York, New York 10010

N40.7367, W73.97438

Description

The east river was 16 ft from the one studio, we’d made up images from the 2008 project that covered on side, the other had over 50 images of sheds from a project in the UK … The one studio was used by an artist who was going back to school after spending a good 20 years in graphic design … the other one we used as a info booth for the project, and moved it for events at Solar 1 during the summer

Contributor - Simon Draper