from Report from the Earl Society, Vol. 1, No. 1
Amanda Earl’s social media posts of abandoned chairs on the street (see also ‘bishop’s throne,' see also ‘cathedral’) are one of the lovely, quiet mysteries of the feed. Someone has discarded a repeatable shape in fabric or bent metal. A passerby snaps them, slips them into our day and moves on. Are these chairs portraits? Or, more intriguingly, trail markers? Do they signal a way to move through a city, hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ?
The chairs are interesting in themselves, now that Amanda has passed them (on). They are half-bodies and headless. Maybe they smell of others’ backsides or sport a crescent where pomaded hair touched. But these are photos, cenotaphs of a moment, and we walk elsewhere in other weathers. Plus these chairs are on their way out in every sense. Maybe there’s a suggestion in their not-craig’s-list poses that the chairs could be adopted. But mostly they are too far gone. And how would someone walking manage to carry that awkward shape the many unseen blocks toward home?
Sometimes
Amanda’s feed drops offer tangled chairs; these recall her posts about sex.
Mixed chair multiples suggest that, and also something about ruined
architecture and discarded monuments. Half-thoughts only. That
the chairs are mostly alone, though, does seem to say something about the
day of the walker, who also seems alone. Is this, as Amanda says of solo
sex, not a walk but “a wank”? The chairs are calming and a little sad.
Maybe someone will come by soon with a sled or a wagon.
Or maybe the chairs liked being shifted solo or together away from their offices or hotels or apartments….who knows the dream lives of objects? Maybe Amanda Earl’s photos of abandoned chairs dropped into our media streets/streams say let go now: let’s get out from under this. Why stop, then, at each of their strange, erratic appearances between shoutouts and faces and pet deaths and ads ? Ahhhhh. Thanks, Amanda. For a minute your chairs give us back the less-seen side of our bodies, our cities, our wandering thoughts. Let’s bend a little and rest there. Hello, Ottawa.
