What is metroblossom? *

First and foremost, metroblossom is about creation. The intrusion of unplanned life onto human-altered space has a transformative power that turns rust into art, monuments into sanctuaries and refuse into sustenance.

But we -- humans -- have transformed our physical and cultural environments to suppress spontaneous, creative uses of space. The private and public, local and global, commercial and nonprofit -- our divisions and methods of discourse and action -- combine with the pickax and petrochemicals to impose our vision on the world around us.

Nonhuman life bears the brunt of this domination. Unnecessary, illegible, invisible. If it cannot be harnessed, it is ignored or suppressed.

But it is everywhere you look.

When you stare out your office window, when you see a flock of birds fly over your traffic-bound car, when you walk by the "abandoned" lot down the street. Everywhere. These fragments are glimpses into the world we do not see -- glimpses we've all been trained to ignore.

Herein lies a paradox -- what we do not see is as important, if not more important, than what we do see. In the superimposition of the gnarled grid of the city onto the even more twisted root structure of the earth, the unplanned, often nonhuman, world reacts to and acts on us.

The passage of time, as we currently experience it, is an inevitability. With this passing comes the gradual and subtle wreckage of urban planning, shifts in dreams and the creation of something simultaneously new and ever-present.

But is planning truly wrecked? In what ways do planners compensate for the unplanned? In what ways do those adjustments matter? In what way is the intended use of space a lark? Like a work-to-rule strike, what would planning be like if it were achieved?

When a factory is closed, a drop of rain strikes the pavement, or a plot of land is purchased but goes undeveloped, these spaces, while held in intentional human stasis, take on a life of their own.

This unacknowledged vibrancy speaks volumes about our and other lives.

metroblossom seeks to document this shift, and to point an eye at beauty in its many forms. But what are the ramifications of our gaze?

Human beings have become new glaciers, carving hills and caves into the green earth.

metroblossom is a time-lapse photograph of these glaciers melting.

Of course, it's not that simple.

*This message was posted to give those of you with questions about the project a better sense of my intentions. This site and text is a work in process (for a start, it's too blunt and is theoretically naive), and is gearing up for the first real issue in the late summer/early fall.

The issue will be collaborative (painting, photography, poetry, essays, music). If you have any thoughts, please get in touch.