TWO
BLUE OCTOPUS
Shallow perspective, eye-level, as though we were meant to view an anamorphic painting.
This structure appears to have been braced with a pale blue, enameled, possibly spring-loaded tube with a white, non-slip plastic foot. It might be the rod for a shower-curtain, but here it is employed vertically. Flattened cartons are neatly lashed to this with poly-tie.
The murals. Very faintly, on the end of the structure, nearest the camera, against a black background, the head of the Buddha floats above something amorphous and unreadable. Above the Buddha are fastened what appear to be two packaging-units for Pooh Bear dolls. These may serve a storage function. The mural on the face of the structure is dark, intricate, and executed (acrylic paints?) with considerable technique. Body parts, a sense of claustrophobic, potentially erotic proximity. A female nude, head lost where the cardboard ends, clutches a blue octopus whose tentacles drape across the forehead of a male who seems to squat doglike at her feet. Another nude lies on her back, knees upraised, her sex shadowed in perspective. The head of a man with staring eyes and pinprick pupils hovers above her ankles; he appears to be smoking but has no cigarette.
A third nude emerges, closest to the camera: a woman whose features suggest either China or the Mexico of Diego Rivera.
A section of the station’s floor, the round black tiles, is partially covered with a scrap of grayish-blue synthetic pile carpeting.
Pinned eyes.
THREE
FRONTIER INTERNATIONAL
Shot straight back into what may be a wide alcove. Regular curves of pale square tiles.
Four structures visible.
The largest, very precisely constructed, very hard-edged, is decorated with an eerie pointillist profile against a solid black background: it seems to be a very old man, his chin, lipless mouth and drooping nose outlined in blood red. In front of this is positioned a black hard-sided overnighter suitcase.
Abutting this structure stands another, smaller, very gaily painted: against a red background with a cheerful yellow bird and yellow concentric circles, a sort of Cubist ET winks out at the camera. The head of a large nail or pin, rendered in a far more sophisticated style, penetrates the thing’s forehead above the open eye.
A life-sized human hand, entirely out of scale with the huge head, is reaching for the eye.
Nearby sits an even smaller structure, this one decorated with abstract squares of color recalling Klee or Mondrian. Beside it is an orange plastic crate of the kind used to transport sake bottles. An upright beer can. A pair of plastic sandals, tidily arranged.
Another, bigger structure behind this one. Something painted large-scale in beige and blue (sky?) but this is obscured by the Mondrian. A working door, hinged with poly-tie, remains unpainted: the carton employed for the door is printed with the words “FRONTIER INTERNATIONAL.”
Individual styles of workmanship start to become apparent.
Deeper in the image, beyond what appears to be a stack of neatly folded blankets, is located the blue enamel upright, braced against the ceiling tile. Another like it, to its right, supports a paper kite with the printed face of a samurai.
FOUR
AFTER PICASSO
Shallow perspective of what appears to be a single, very narrow shelter approximately nine meters in length. Suggests the literally marginal nature of these constructions: someone has appropriated less than a meter at the side of a corridor, and built along it, tunneling like a cardboard seaworm.
The murals lend the look of a children’s cardboard theater.
Punch in the underground.
Like so many of the anonymous paintings to be found in thrift shops everywhere, these murals are somehow vaguely after Picasso. Echo of Guernica in these tormented animal forms. Human features rendered flounder-style: more Oxfam Cubism.
Square black cushion with black tassels at its corners, top an uncharacteristically peaked section of cardboard roof. Elegant.
The wall behind the shelter is a partition of transparent lucite, suggesting the possibility of a bizarre ant-farm existence.
FIVE
YELLOW SPERM
We are in an impossibly narrow “alley” between shelters, perhaps a communal storage area. Cardboard shelving, folded blankets.
A primitive portrait of a black kitten, isolated on a solid green ground, recalls the hypnotic stare of figures in New England folk art.
Also visible: the white plastic cowl of an electric fan, yellow plastic sake crate, pale blue plastic bucket, section of blue plastic duck-board, green plastic dustpan suspended by string, child’s pail in dark blue plastic. Styrofoam takeaway containers with blue and scarlet paint suggest more murals in progress.
Most striking here is the wall of a matte-black shelter decorated with a mural of what appear to be large yellow inner-tubes with regularly spaced oval “windows” around their perimeters; through each window is glimpsed a single large yellow sperm arrested in midwriggle against a nebulous black-and-yellow background.
SIX
GOMI GUITAR
Extreme close, perhaps at entrance to a shelter.
An elaborately designed pair of black-and-purple Nike trainers, worn but clean. Behind them a pair of simpler white Reeboks (a woman’s?).
A battered acoustic guitar strung with nylon. Beside it, a strange narrow case made of blue denim, trimmed with red imitation leather; possibly a golf bag intended to carry a single club to a driving range?
A self-inking German rubber stamp.
Neatly folded newspaper with Japanese baseball stars.
A battered pump-thermos with floral design.
SEVEN
108
A space like the upper berths on the Norfolk & Western sleeping cars my mother and I took when I was a child. Form following function.
The structure is wide enough to accommodate a single traditional Japanese pallet. A small black kitten sits at its foot (the subject of the staring portrait?). Startled by the flash, it is tethered with a red leash. A second, larger tabby peers over a shopping bag made of tartan paper. The larger cat is also tethered, with a length of thin white poly rope.
Part of a floral area-rug visible at foot of bed.
This space is deeply traditional, utterly culture-specific.
Brown cardboard walls, cardboard mailing tubes used as structural uprights, the neat poly-tie lashings.
On right walclass="underline"
GIC
MODEL NO: VS-30
QTY: L SET
COLOR: BLACK
C/T NO: 108
MADE IN KOREA
At the rear, near what may be assumed to be the head of the bed, are suspended two white-coated metal shelves or racks. These contain extra bedding, a spare cat-leash, a three-pack of some pressurized product (butane for a cooker?), towels.
On the right wall are hung two pieces of soft luggage, one in dark green imitation leather, the other in black leather, and a three-quarter-length black leather car coat.
On the left wall, a white towel, a pair of bluejeans, and two framed pictures (content not visible from this angle).
A section of transparent plastic has been mounted in the ceiling to serve as a skylight.
EIGHT
HAPPY HOUR
Wall with mailing-tube uprights.
A large handbill with Japanese stripper: LIVE NUDE, TOPLESS BOTTOMLESS, HAPPY HOUR. Menu-chart from a hamburger franchise illustrating sixteen choices.
Beneath these, along the wall, are arranged two jars containing white plastic spoons, a tin canister containing chopsticks, eight stacked blue plastic large takeaway cups, fourteen stacked white paper takeaway cups (all apparently unused, and inverted to protect against dust), neatly folded towels and bedding, aluminum cookware, a large steel kettle, a pink plastic dishpan, a large wooden chopping-board.