The Subjective Fog: For Julian Hoeber

Pipe Organ, 2007–2013, mixed media.

1. Her Voice in the Night. The disc jockey broadcasts all night from the lighthouse. She back-announces her selections in a murmuring, insinuating tone that, while it wouldn’t disturb a sleeper, might seduce the long-distance trucker or the fisherman on the deck of a boat offshore, some night-shift laborer twiddling the dials of a transistor, barely able to grasp its signal through the wavering night air.

Execution Changes #73B (CS, Q1, LRJ, DC, Q2, LLJ, DC, Q3, ULJ, DC, Q4, ULJ, DC), 2013, acrylic on panel.

2. The Swamp. Yet no, we find we will have to adjust this account. This account is out of order, already entirely misleading, we must begin again; for in this place, there are no long-distance truckers or fishermen on boats. The lighthouse stands not at the juncture of land and sea but at the periphery of a swamp, a vast mire around which the city has erected itself. The lighthouse, once a bold, phallic monument, is dwarfed by skyscrapers, by the cathedral-like domes of vaulted banks, by gleaming condominiums, by monuments of commerce. The lighthouse is only a relic, dragged here by those with an intention to junk it. For it is also the case that the swamp has become the city’s dump. Perhaps the planners once believed the city’s detritus could landfill the mire, stabilize its quicksand core. The swamp might, after the disposal of tonnages of the city’s inconvenient clutter, become ground upon which a pleasant children’s park or a serviceable parking lot could be constructed. But no. The acreage has instead displayed a seemingly infinite capacity for engulfing the rejected material, for devouring structure and remaining nonetheless a moist and murky swamp. Read More »