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Text extract from “PENUMBRA” – performance/demonstration of concept at Liverpool’s Bluecoat Art Centre on Friday 18th June 2010.  More information relating to the event: ‘REVOLUTIONS IN FORM’

I wrote a new piece ov fiction drawing a comparison between the evolution of clock mechanisms and the workings of the Law.  It has been published and beautifully illustrated in an excellent new e-Zine from my long-time collaborators – Mercy – read it here:  I am a Watchmaker

Writing a fictional narrative was a completely new departure for me and was actually really helpful for working thru aspects of my current understanding. To quote the Watchmaker:

‘Seeking Law in the relentless stutter of parliamentary acts and decrees is like searching for Time in the mechanism of a clock.’

Deadbeat Escapement gif used under CC Licence – Wikimedia Commons

Legal boundaries are often determined in respect of private ownership of land and property and are typically ascribed by the simultaneous use of physical boundaries – walls, fences, gates etc.

What happens if the physical boundary is removed or disappears or deteriorates?

The answer it would seem, is that the legal boundary, lacking its physical scaffold, is prone to demise, and the previously ‘private’ property risks falling into public domain. A simple strategy for combating this undesired collapse of law is to give notification of the established legal boundary whilst also making a symbolic gesture towards the previous physical boundary through the use of small markers.

In this way spaces can give the visible and physical impression of being ‘public’ whilst, at the same time, remaining psychologically, legally, economically and physically ‘private’.

The simple brass studs in the video above allude to the outline of a previous structure which, whilst no longer present, is still able to retain territorial supremacy by invoking law – in this case The Highways ACT 1959.

Regarding the Highways Act 1959 – the Office of Public Sector Information has no record of such an act in their 1959 archive. Further investigation reveals that the act was superseded and repealed with the introduction of the Highways Act 1980.

The situation above presents us with an imaginary building and a sign pointing to a vanished law.