11.01.29

Snow falls inch by inch, hour by hour. Almost everywhere in the province highways are closed to traffic. Stuck in the city, we explore the missing gap in the full-scale drawing process. As building paper only exists on the floor and exterior walls in each room, we question how the interior walls can be carried into the reconstruction, and whether or not this is a necessary introduction.

Considering the use of blueprint paper developed with Windex as a simple way to produce large images, two possible methods emerge: one, that we could use a projector to expose the photographs we take onto the paper at the true scale of the room, and two, that we could tape the room projections simultaneously onto the building paper and blueprint sheets before exposing them to daylight.

Preliminary tests with the projector prove that this particular process will be very time intensive. After three hours, the image is only faintly visible. With so few days in the city as it is, it seems doubtful that we’ll have time to pursue this tangent any further. Whether the cyanotypes will become relevant at the site remains to be seen.


Cyanotype test.

11.01.30

It’s still dark when we begin the two and a half hour drive. 6:00 a.m. and traffic in the city is slowly crawling to life, shaking off the storm. Highways are clear until the gravel road to my parents’ farm, where we’re confronted by drifts yet to be cut through by another vehicle. Our small rental car barely avoids the ditch, so after unpacking our things and sharing a cup of tea, we decide to take my dad’s truck to the site.

The house has been quiet for too long, our work internalized to the dark, cold rooms upstairs. After the roof’s dramatic shift from solid to skeleton, there has been little noticeable change on the building’s exterior. To passing traffic and the neighbour across the road, we are at a standstill. Inside, we are ready to push forward, through the thickness of shiplap and siding on the south façade to daylight.

After photographing each wall in its current state of disassembly, we work in the dark, stripping the exterior down to sheathing. The wood is dry and cracks under the wrench of the crowbar. Using a hammer and nail puller instead, we’re able to relieve the point pressure of the nail and prevent cracks. The boards are loose, but remain captive wherever they extend past an interior wall.


Removing lath.


Demolishing drywall.


De-nailing shiplap.

11.01.31

We’re still adjusting to the difficult balance between working in darkness and working in daylight. Practicalities of doing things efficiently are countered by a desire to record, to black out the room and conjure ghosts.

In the dark, distant sounds become magnified, distorted by the silence. Phantom voices and truck engines interrupt our work, stirring us to our feet. Eyes blinking against the bright sunlight, we peer out the bedroom windows and scan the road for movement. More often than not the view is empty, but for an area so isolated, there have been more visitors than we expected. The next-door neighbour, the father of my high school classmate, the husband of my grade three teacher – all of them come to the yard expectantly, not waiting for us to emerge but instead meeting us at the door, or on the staircase, or in the room where we’re working.

The freedom with which they come and go suggests something about the rules of abandonment, that when a house is not lived in it becomes unclaimed territory. A spectacle, a space to be filled. It suggests there is something inherently compelling about change in a community that idles, that exists in a strange limbo where things do not grow, they just grow smaller.