Alison Chen - Someday Soon [Climbing]

Alison Chen

Consumed by the vast expanse, I thought I could hear you. The rustling of the leaves whisper, as the prickling pinch of thorns alert my thighs. Tangled in vines, tussling, gaining my balance. I close my eyes and feel the pink heat of the sun’s rays penetrate my now translucent lids. The landscape is endless. My footing is unstable as I search. The cold soil, laced with dead branches, seeps through the soles of my feet. I am interested in the landscape as a form of the unknown. Trees bleed into the horizon. The sky encompasses our field of view. I put myself in these non-spaces which go on for days without any clues grounding it to a geographical location. While completely immersed, I perform, using my body to physically comprehend my place. Displaced from the known, these scenes allow for an intersection of the imagination and history. Like the “myth”, these spaces anchor themselves with one foot in the real and the other in the fantastical. Without memory to inform experience, the unfamiliar becomes a clean slate onto which my individual experience can be inscribed. I continue searching. Light creeps from behind, filling the valley. You voice returns, but I cannot make out the words.