In My Headlands 2016

Artist, Carrie Hott invited me, along with Walter Kitundu and Constance Hockaday, to contribute a “navigational pamphlet” to her ambitious Key Room project—a poetic revisioning of Headlands Center for the Arts' archive room. It is both a permanent art installation and visitor resource center, and manages to hover, generatively, between the two.

My memories of the Marin Headlands stretch back over two decades. With an abundance of general interpretive information already available from the park service I concluded that I could take a more autobiographical approach to the geography, thus “a map of the Marin Headlands showing sites of varying degrees of personal significance from the past 23 years.” I also wanted to incorporate Hott’s use of key words for categorizing and cataloging objects from the archive room. Instead of familiar place names denoting points of interest I used idiosyncratic terms pulled from my narrative text.

Of course I am interested in sharing my experience of the Headlands, but in so doing hope that any overlap with visitors will be an invitation to re-inscribe the various sites with new and personal associations.