_CUTS + PATCHES
At a certain moment, I was struck by the way in which what seemed to be defunct manhole covers were fit into granite sidewalks in downtown Manhattan. Surrounding each one was a channel incised in the granite slab, articulating the cut as more than a casual disruption in the ground. Without knowing their function, I called them ‘cuts and patches,’ since they had in common a channel incised around a hole cut into the stone slab of sidewalk, (for access to something below), and a patch over the hole, evidence that the holes were no longer in active use.
The outline of the channel varies: some are like teardrops or balloons, or targets, some like pitched roofs. Some float within a slab of paving, while most extend to the curb. Some possess a sculptural quality, some a lightness of spirit not usually associated with infrastructure. While the function of the channel was to divert water from the hole, it also framed the hole: recognizing, acknowledging, situating, and protecting this disruption in the ground.
I came to find out that these artifacts were the drainage channels around coal chutes. These images and the artifacts themselves – the drainage channels incised around moribund, filled in coal chute covers -- make tangible the particularity and diversity of urban places, including the fact that, in Tribeca and other previously industrial areas of the city, the ground is hollow, that these sidewalks—huge slabs of granite-- operated as roofs for interior vault spaces below.
At the same time, they are ghosts. The fact that none of these artifacts, which register different eras of construction and settlement, is active endows them with a kind of muteness or opacity. Their mysterious presence contributes to the texture and diversity and beauty of everyday space, yet is not recognized as doing so. They are disappearing everyday. In our neighborhood in Tribeca, each time a building is renovated, a piece of history is erased, when a hollow sidewalk, above a vault is replaced and made solid.
Each incision was made in support of a function: somebody carved a channel around a hole to keep water from going into the hole. The photographs register some historical process in which that function and therefore the holes themselves became obsolete and were filled in; the processes of erosion – the processes of cities, in which historical preservation is a powerful force, yet for the most part does not see the ground.