Flight in Place
“Flight in Place” was created in the childhood home of the writer Carson McCullers in Columbus, Georgia. It is a narrative that illustrates the obsession of a young person. For whatever reason, the desire to escape home life has consumed her. There are multiple maps marked with routes, travel books with pages marked, and the beginnings of plans. There is a worktable filled with maps in the process of being marked, with books open as references. All of these materials completely cover the room. At first glance this person may seem worldly, but small clues (empty travel journals, blank passport applications, maps with a single map pin marking the city in which she lives, postcards sent to her displayed like art, and an absence of souvenirs) give her away.
Twelve clocks on the mantle, set to the local times of various cities in the world, tick slightly out of synch, signifying the heavy reality of whiling away the time (hours, days, years), perpetually held in a place, a life, from which escape seems her only goal. It is all-consuming wanderlust.