Anywhere is Everywhere is a Circular Tale
Texas and the possibility of the origins of its founding inhabitants
September 12 to October 10 2014
tAd Gallery, Denton, Texas
belonging to one of the Dentons. The second reading of the work
is one that relates to the opposition between real and virtual, its
Artist: Chris Wright
position in-between here and there and concerns of space and
place, as well as exploring facets of contemporary tourism.
Anywhere is Everywhere is a Circular Tale is the narrative of a
journey linking the eleven places called Denton in England. It
Artistically, it relates to the ready-made and questions of
authorship and value.
presents the 1,026 mile, 21 hours and 57 minute circular
journey negotiated via internet-based maps, which provide the 301
This essay seeks to contextualise the different aspects of the
steps of detailed instructions. Postcards, photographs and other
ephemera from the journey are presented to form a
elements of the exhibition beginning with the journey. The step by
step directions and map, the presentation, the photographs from
comprehensive retelling of the tale. However, the places have only
been visited virtually, the sights are seen through others’ eyes, the
the two identically named but very different Denton Islands, the
cut-out model souvenir sheets and the postcards sent from
descriptions are second-hand and the impressions gained only
through what is seen on my computer screen at home. It is a
England are each discussed to create a comprehensive dialogue
with the notion of place as the basis.
th
th
tourist guide that, by way of its virtuality, creates a false reality,
destroying, perhaps, a desire to visit but presenting a new sense
of community.
History
The Domesday Book, commissioned in 1086 by William the
The decision to begin and end the journey at Denton, Lincolnshire
is an obvious choice as it is closest to my home, which is where
Conquerer1, lists eight places called Denton and one called
Dentone. Now there are eleven places named Denton
you would begin any journey. It attempts to ‘make real’ the trip. The
title of the exhibition refers to the ubiquity of images that exist of
disregarding Upper and Nether Denton in the county of Cumbria
due to their prefixes. The name of Denton was also a fictional
any location. These present a familiarity that overcomes any sense
of surprise when seeing a place in reality. It also relates to the way
place for a UK TV series ‘A Touch of Frost’. The name Denton
comes from Old English meaning a settlement in a valley except
of viewing and accessing such information.
for the place in Northamptonshire, which means to ‘settlement
associated with Dodda’ (http://www.ancestry.co.uk/name-origin?
This work can be read on two levels. Firstly as a straightforward
road trip linking places whose only relationship is the same
surname=denton).
geographical feature that provides the name except for one
location. The name obviously provides the connection to Denton,
1 ‘The first draft was completed in August 1086 and contained records for
13,418 settlements in the English counties south of the rivers Ribble and Tees
(the border with Scotland at the time)’ (http://www.domesdaybook.co.uk).
acknowledging its presence. The speed of the presentation means
Journey
The narrative of the journey is accounted for solely in the list of
each is almost lost in the constant motion. The roads and junctions
with their endless roundabouts act as disjointed but recognizable
steps that give little indication of place or time. They show purely a
means of getting from D to D. On arrival at a Denton, itself just
links and nodes.
another step, a letter from A to L is given that gives no clues about
each place The journey begins and ends at the same Denton,
The places become lost in that moment of viewing time, they are
not experienced as much as a fragile moment created. It is akin to
indicated by letters A and L. There are no pauses, just the constant
motion of the directions with no comfort breaks, no holiday
watching sport ‘live’ on TV. The collapse of time and space within
the virtual viewing experience is, however, mitigated by the very
romances, no viewpoints from which to stand and dream or time
for sleep indicated. We follow directions as if automatons,
public showing of the journey and the presentation of souvenirs
and postcards. It is as if the collapse has been countermanded. It
machines with no minds of our own. This is the point where the
virtual journey is shown to be unreal. The artif iciality of such a
could also be said that, here, time is marked only by the presence
of the viewer. However, temporality is necessarily implicit within
journey reads drily. This is no place for affect.
journeys of any kind. It could be said that Anywhere is Everywhere
is a microcosm of a psychogeographical practice where time and
Using only the Internet to provide information, there is the constant
doubt about sources and their accuracy. The facts presented in
space are conflated to become one. The succession of moments
thus has a kind of vertical layering due to the making real of the
Anywhere is Everywhere have not been checked; they have been
accepted as they stand bringing in an extra dimension of fiction.
virtual moment relating to the provenance of the exhibits, the
virtual world and the act of viewing.
This is commonly how the Internet is used, with misguided trust.
The aim here is to use that trust and look at how complete fictions
The ways of experiencing the journey shown in this exhibition
can be manufactured whereby, whether true or false, their outward
appearance looks genuine.
reveals a different way of looking that takes account of
technological innovation. Barbara London writes ‘the assurance
The presentation shows scenes from the journey, flashing by in an
that time flows in an unending regular manner no longer applies.
Time must now conform to a menu of future events’ (London
endless loop. Each flash is an image that is, by necessity, low
quality and often disjointed exposing their provenance. Each
1995:423)3. The ‘future’ of time therefore has to be visualised
according to the technological events that may occur but these
image is taken from other peoples’ web photographs or street map
views from Google2, the symbol of which is present in each image
may not yet be known. Time is a way of negotiating space that is
2 These images do not contain people or identifiable vehicles and much care
has been taken to avoid direct recognition. In the main, they are roads and
junctions.
3 Barbara London is video curator at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
implicit both within that negotiation itself and also within the
come, or to be cut out and folded, as per instructions. From here, a
accessing of that negotiation. It is also true that space is a way of
negotiating time.
new Denton can be created in your own home, moving the models
around to show different configurations and aligning to the maker’s
Souvenirs
view of how a model village should look and collapsing the 1026
miles that exists between them. Slipped amongst the models of
Whilst the concept of souvenirs is as a keepsake to remind the
traveller of the places they have visited, they are also brought
the eleven English Dentons, however, is an additional sheet
pertaining to Denton, Texas. It highlights both the similarities and
home as gifts for family and friends. This may be taken to mean a
genuine message of missing the stay-at-homes but there could
differences of diverse communities but also creates a new global
community, a community of Denton that disregards nationality,
equally be an element of showing off involved. Souvenirs from
museums are generally educational and/or designed to boost the
wealth, power, race and class.
income of the under-funded. Here, they could be any of these
reasons but create a question mark over their purpose. Their
Here emotions that relate to class, power and authority are
rendered powerless by the scale of the models. These do not
authenticity is questionable but, as Adrian Franklin states, ‘we
accept that everything has a claim to authenticity; everything has a
reflect the actual building size but the size of the image creating an
erratic sense of scale. For example, the larger the building, the
unique cultural content, even fakes…It is a world of fakes,
reproductions, fusions, hybrids and so forth and computer-driven
smaller it has become due to the standardizing of image size. This
could be placed to reflect the way the stately home is further away,
simulation electronics enable (almost) everyone to be quite
creative within this graphical, visual infinity’ (Franklin 2003:266)
or higher up the hill from the hoi polloi and general everyday
happenings of a village or to anarchically invert the class system
From each place called Denton, fictional souvenirs have been
particularly endemic, even today, in the UK. An image shows a
version of the village that places the ‘big house’ on the hill and
created in the form of cut-out models 4 akin played with by children.
Each shows the frontage of a building (reflecting the origin of the
slips other buildings nearby and oddly sited reflecting the nature of
English villages. This does not represent any particular viewpoint
images), a specif ic, named building from each place called
Denton5 to create a memento of the trip. The sheets are intended
of my own.
be displayed whole, as artifacts, a reminder of the trip in years to
By creating souvenirs, I am attempting to formalize the journey
and make it real. Within the model village of New Denton, a
4 The images are acknowledged and credited on each sheet.
5
It must be noted that the buildings chosen have not been private dwellings
in deference to the individual but are public buildings or places such as
guesthouses. They are therefore not representative of the places as a whole.
community is imagined and maybe idealized. The conflation of the
cut-outs reflects the nature of the viewing process through webbased media where time and distance are immaterial. In addition
to these souvenirs, postcards, themselves mementoes as well as
message cards, have been sent from England to Texas unifying
There is also an element of consumerism. The browsing of
the Dentons of England with Denton, Texas.
different shops in holiday places is an accepted leisure activity and
the spending of carefully saved money akin to all souvenir buying.
Postcards
Each of these shows the same image, Denton at Night, where it is
The act of writing the cards and the ritual of posting is here seen
impossible to distinguish which Denton is referred to. The back of
the card has hand-written messages, all different, with some
as a link not only between the places of Denton but also between
the artist and Denton, Texas.
signed by the artist.
Discussion
The use of postcards to send greetings to those back home or at
work is an old one but still happens today with lessening
Images of Denton, Texas have been seen in the same way to how
I have seen all the Denton images. They have shown the
frequency. Nowadays it is easier and cheaper to text, email,
Facebook or tweet your friends and family. However, tourist
similarities, that of everyday places where people carry out
everyday things. There came a point, though, where there was a
destinations and other places display an abundance of postcards
with a huge variety from landscapes to comic cards. Based on the
definite collapse in space and time and the notion of place became
one that was nebulous. Distinctions were blurred and highlighted
tradition of comic postcards depicting ‘at night’ scenes, Denton at
night seeks to unify the places called Denton.
one of the purposes of this exhibition, which was to show how the
Internet reduces these gaps. However, by the act of sending the
postcards, the physical separation became more obvious and
emphasized the distance between here and there.
The circular journey to the places called Denton is a binary
opposition to the notion of the flâneur. Here, the directions
minutely laid out leaving no space for wandering and following
interesting paths. Yet, by the motion of the viewer within the gallery
space, it can again become an act of wandering. This has some
similarities to the act of Internet browsing. Franklin writes ‘We surf
the net routinely, whizzing about the world at fantastic speeds and
this does indeed cancel distance, but the point I want to make here
is that we surf like tourists and the Web is set up in a touristic way’
(Franklin 2003:8). Contemporary artists such as Richard
Wentworth and Francis Alÿs have used the concept of the flâneur
to encounter first-hand everyday activities whilst here it can be
through art practice, theoretically and through field research and I
said that the wandering takes place within the exhibition space but
the basis of the exhibition is a kind of Internet flâneurism. The act
look forward to hearing your views and joining in discussions.
of viewing, and wandering, also relates to the act of walking. There
seems to be a relationship with the act of walking as to how places
Chris Wright
www.chriswright.co.uk
are created. De Certeau says ‘to walk is to lack a place. It is the
indefinite process of being absent’ (De Certeau 1988:103). It could
be seen either as the constant creation of place or that each step
removes us from our ‘place’, from what we know, however
temporarily. Questions arise as to how this aligns with the
knowledge of places through the web? How does this journey, the
virtual narrative of actual places align to the concept of travel as a
leisure activity? Is it pleasurable, will it create along-lasting
impression, a memory to be unraveled at various points of life for
the benefit of others, an indulgence?
The authenticity of the souvenirs, in fact, any souvenirs in the
global world of counterfeit, has to be questioned but in the context
of the exhibition are presented as authentic. This debate about
authenticity has existed for a long time and a conclusion of sorts
has been generally reached that everything is authentic within its
own context. The ‘fake’ souvenirs presented here are no more
false than say, souvenirs of England made abroad in places such
as China. The authenticity of this whole exhibition is based on the
artist manipulating information and artefacts to present a coherent
References
BUCHANAN, I., 2010. A dictionary of critical theory. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
DE CERTEAU, M., 1984. The practice of everyday life: trans. by Steven
Rendall. University of California Press.
FRANKLIN, A. 2003. Tourism: An Introduction Sage Publication
LONDON, B., 1995, 28,5, 423. Time as Medium. Leonardo
Internet Sites
http://www.domesdaybook.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denton
http://www.ancestry.co.uk/name-origin?surname=denton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denton,_Lincolnshire
http://parishes.lincolnshire.gov.uk/Denton/
http://www.denton-norfolk.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denton,_Cambridgeshire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denton,_Kent
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denton,_East_Sussex
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denton,_Oxfordshire
http://www.denton-village.com/news-3/information-from-the-police/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denton,_Greater_Manchester
http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/LAN/Denton/
http://www.geograph.org.uk/gridref/SJ9250095400
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denton,_North_Yorkshire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Marley_(geologist)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denton,_Newcastle_upon_Tyne
account of a fictional journey. Where does art lie, is it fact or
fiction?
Here different ideas are posed and questions asked which do not
necessarily have immediate answers. The purpose is to try and
tease out some of these. I have conducted extensive enquiries,
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