One of the things-you-must-accept of boat life – well, on my old battle-axe of a beautiful boat anyway – is that you share your life with others. Out in the open in a narrow long square box of metal and wood, the boat is exposed as a refuge to many. You enjoy the natural world and the natural world enjoys you.
One of which are spiders. Lots of them. Everywhere, all the time. In window sills, light fittings, and dangling from the ceiling, where I’ve literally had them fighting each other in the mid-air as I try to walk past them. Over the last few months, I’ve gone through a progression of relationships with them. First, when they were only a few in key spots, I gave them names and said hello to them in the evenings when they came out for supper. Next, after a brief trip away following which they exploded in numbers – and I’m talking into the 100s here – a rapid removal program was put in place to take down their numbers as quickly as possible. 30 or more spiders were “removed” every day until their population grew tolerable once more. And by tolerable, I’m saying that I still see many each day but at least now I can use the counter to make meals and that I only have to push through 1 to 2 webs to get to the front door. Now, I’m falling into a zone of appreciation. Not just for what they do, in terms of ridding away those pesky moths, but for simply how beautiful they are.
In this growing appreciation for their beauty, I’ve realised that I’m not the only one who feels this way. A recent exhibition by Tomás Saraceno in London (Serpentine Gallery) is put on, not so much by him, but by the spiders themselves. Framed boxes loom from the dark coated by webs of various spider breeds (please check out pictures from the exhibition online). With careful lighting, Saraceno expresses the marvels of the mix of different structures, their labour and skill, to recognise their work as art. While the spiders themselves remained absent from their masterpieces, I enjoyed how this show recognised their agency as the authors of their work and placed them – literally – in a new light.
So this is my version along that theme. Last night I took photos of spider shadow puppets. Making bigger monsters out of the small ones in real, I wondered if, in our human minds, are we seeing their shadows or what they really are? Or, for that matter, how do the spiders see themselves?
Ferne Edwards 