X Marks the Spot that Will Have Been

Exiting the platform at Kennington Tube, after a particularly arduous day, I drag myself up the steps and along the curved corridor to the lifts. A woman flicks her hair just past my cheek and glances up at the curved mirror up in the corner to check her reflection. I start to follow suite … tilting my head upwards towards the image of her distorted face and the view back down the corridor disappearing behind her shoulder, but my gaze flickers over and is caught by a rather odd diagram, one I have not noticed before. This is a brand new, carefully framed and very well produced image. It is a simple black and white drawing of a circular labyrinth (or is a maze?) divided into quadrants. Down at the bottom, next to the entrance (or is it the exit?) I see a small red cross. X marks the spot.

 

Jane Rendell, ‘X Marks the Spot that Will Have Been’, John Hendrix and Lorens Holm (eds) Architecture and the Unconscious (London: Routledge, 2016).

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X Marks the Spot that Will Have Been
You tell me