Traces
Geographer Karen Till writes, “[i]f places can be seen as thresholds through which the living can connect to the voices, imprints, and inheritances of those who have gone before, then a significant part of caring for place, I would argue, is to create the spaces and times for ghosts…” Those forgotten places, long gone, play an important role in our lives since “these past presences occupy the realities of our lived worlds—even while we also understand them as existing 'elsewhere,' beyond the realms of the living.” Learning about places that no longer exist could help us put our lives in perspective and help us understand some of our current practices, behavior and values that are so habitual that they often go unexamined. By mapping traces of places that no longer exist we hope to make that past world visible to us. Traces of phantom-places make us aware that the way we Picture Milwaukee today has roots in past conventions and that there are contested traditions of representing the city.
Karen Till, Mapping Spectral Traces, Exhibition Monograph, Edited by Karen E. Till, Curated by Deb Sim, (Blacksburg: Virginia Tech College of Architecture and Urban Studies Virginia Tech, 2010), 2.
Karen Till, Mapping Spectral Traces, Exhibition Monograph, Edited by Karen E. Till, Curated by Deb Sim, (Blacksburg: Virginia Tech College of Architecture and Urban Studies Virginia Tech, 2010), 2.