Elyse Null

A building is a body; a street pulled up and laid back down is a body; a city is a body too large to take in at once, held together by many hands, in many places, always moving, all the time.

Support appears in what is built and in what bodies do: holding, carrying, repairing, bracing. But support is not always read the same way. A man at work is easy to place: hard hat, hi-vis, the body as strength and function. A man being held by another cannot be read so neutrally: support that disappears into labour becomes charged when it appears as intimacy.

We keep the clean street and forget who cleaned it; we keep our bodies running and forget what allows them to become whole. Maintenance erases its own author. Nothing lasts on its own: not a body, not a street, not a person. What stands is actively being held. A body is anything that needs support to persist.