What Can a Hammer Do?

What can a hammer do? is part of a body of work that explores the ‘Traces & Aura’ of my own house through its demolition space-time. The project gives insight into how the moment of destruction reveals a greater history of complex socio-cultural, psychological and physically embodied meanings.

The trace is appearance of nearness, however far removed the thing that left it behind may be. The aura is appearance of a distance; however close the thing that calls it forth. In the trace we gain possession of the thing; in the aura, it takes possession of us.”

Benjamin thinks about ruins as ‘petrified life’ visibly bearing ‘marks and wounds of the history of human violence’. The hammer (a ready-to-hand tool) which destroys my house also damages my body insofar as the house was already an indication of my body. As the hammer smashes the house and its elements, it can never smash it in the same way again. The relation of value and significance of that blow is seen as the aesthetic moment - the collapse of subject-object and time-space-place in spatial unmaking. The break is an opening, an inbetween-ness of becoming.

In collaboration with Santosh Thorat and Niti Gourisaria.

International Association of Urban Photographers, 2013