THE FIELDThe Field

Index

A footprint

Sign · Whenever a body has left · Wet ground

A single bare footprint pressed into wet clay beside a puddle.
Generated interpretation. Not an archival document.Someone was here. The print does not say who they were to you.

Describe the clay before inventing the walker.

An index is stubborn. It is connected to what made it. That stubbornness is not a message. It is a trace.

Concordance

The thing
A depression in wet ground in the shape of a foot.
Seen
Toes, arch, heel, water, grass.
Sourced
The image is generated. A real footprint is an index of a particular foot at a particular time.
Miss
The print does not narrate. Association writes the walker.
One question remains
What does the ground actually support?

Provenance

THE FIELD. A trace, not a symbol.

  • Peirce on the index. A pointing finger, a weathercock, a footprint.
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