Butterfly – Murdo Eason – From Hill to Sea

The Brutalist Butterfly

Walking up Lady Lawson Street in Edinburgh, I stopped for a closer look at Argyle House, an office block dating from 1968, designed by the architectural practice of Michael Laird & Partners. The building has many critics and is often described as an ‘eyesore’ and one of Edinburgh’s ‘ugliest buildings’. It appears to exist under a constant threat of erasure from property developers, and the City of Edinburgh Council, proposing new (re)development schemes.

The façade which borders the north side of West Port and the junction of Lady Lawson Street is very much of the brutalist box style. All right angles, rectangular windows and the material heft of concrete and harling.

Today, walking in behind the building, I see it from a different angle. The hidden curves, the windows as light reflecting scales. It takes on the appearance of some brutalist insect, flexing its wings, as if about to fly.

Now playing: Asva – Futurists Against the Ocean.

Some Questions of the Drift

Weather vane, NSEW, blue sky, light — Kirk Wynd, Kirkcaldy

“I ask you:

– What is the weight of light?“

– Clarice Lispector

≈ ≈ ≈

Merchant's House, Kirkcaldy — Merchant’s House, Kirkcaldy

– What are the colours of time?

Merchant's House Kirkcaldy II — Merchant’s House Kirkcaldy II

– What are the sounds of the stones?

≈

– When does the inside become the outside?

Rosyth Church - East Gable Inner - from West — Rosyth Church – East Gable Inner – from West

≈

Gravestone, decay, erosion — St Cuthbert’s Churchyard, Edinburgh

– What is the material of memory?

≈

– What would the trees think?

Scot's Pine - Devilla Forest, Fife — Devilla Forest, Fife

≈

– What is the geography of a butterfly?

– What is the shape of flight?

≈

– When does the local become – the universal?

≈ ≈

– Where does the sky begin?

≈

– What is the taste of place?

≈

– Where are the energy flows?

– What is the future of the past?

≈ ≈

Watching over Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow — Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow

– Who watches the watcher?

≈

– Who controls this space?

≈

– Who determines the boundary?

≈ ≈

Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow — Sauchiehall Street Glasgow

– Where is the coldness of the sun?

– What is the gravity of the moon?

at Mogwai play Zidane, Broomielaw, Glasgow

≈

– Where is the boundary of night?

Under Regent Bridge, Calton Road, Edinburgh (Callum Innes installation).

≈ ≈

Where is the future of freedom?

Stirling Jail car park mural. Detail from Freedom Versions v.1

≈

– What is the distance of love?

Berlin Wall, late 1980s. Looking towards the East

≈ ≈ ≈

Opening quote from Clarice Lispector’s The Hour of the Star.

The photos of the Berlin Wall are from an inter-railing trip in the late 1980s. It was a coincidence to rediscover them in an old shoebox on the day that it was announced Lou Reed had died. I can still vividly recall a lurid, orange BASF cassette being pressed into my hand in the school playground. “Listen to this!” It was a recording of Rock n Roll Animal. Things changed.

I can still remember a number of the cassettes that travelled in the rucksack on that inter-railing adventure. Berlin was certainly one of them.

Now playing: Lou Reed – Berlin. RIP LR.

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: