Martine Folkersma

SUB
SubUrban SubScene SubSub
Essay for Belgian art collective SUB IV / September 2017
for complete essay contact martine@online.nl

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"For a moment, I was confused. Capital. In the sense of economic capital or capital city? An entanglement of finances and places that bewilders or enlightens? For the thrill of revelation, I searched on:

Capital/ letter: an upper-case letter in a writing system.
Capital/ architecture: the crowning member of a column.
Capital/ fortification: a proportion of a bastion.
Capital/ punishment: death sentence.
Language, architecture, death.

I read somewhere ‘When we’re no one, we’re nowhere’. Residing in non-places must have taking its toll, no doubt.  I used to work in a city that was built as suburb, it’s raison d’être being: ‘residing’. Not meant for actual living but foremost for ‘populating’ or simply ‘staying’. A devotion that brims on death. Inhabiting my place in the service-sector I eight-hourly resided in a room that complemented the (non-) architectural type of the building: airco, computer, coffee machine. I resided in information that evaporated from the computer screen straight to my eyes, to my brain and back to my fingers, the keyboard, the screen. I was looping requests into the machine through the intervention of my serving body to the final granting of information, as a gift all most."