Imprints In The Gyre
Axial Frames for Vanishing Currents of Life and Death at Franklin Park
Grief is a fluid process that does not resolve itself at any specific end. It is gradual, slow, and particular to the relationship held between the living and the departed. Yet it is also universal a shared experience that is essential to the human condition.
This project identifies four prominent peaks in Franklin Park and imagines them as anchors
within the turbulent storm of emotions that follows death. Circulating around these ritual spaces are landscapes of flux – zones of interment that are consecutively cleared to create meadows that are then populated with graves blanketed in aggregate.
Once 100 graves are placed in a single zone, the remaining space is planted with vegetation in a polar grid. The effect is one of enclosure that increasingly tightens as a person moves higher up the hill until a clearing suddenly appears at the peak.
This portal between the earth and the sky remains fixed as the interment zones around it fluctuate. The aggregate atop the graves subsides over time, creating shallow imprints that gradually disappear into the landscape as they pool with water, collect leaves, and become overgrown. The gyre of life gradually washes everything away.
