You are Here

Limited edition concertina book, offset printed, 1999

You Are Here is a small book about two writers whose life circumstances brought them, at different times, to the Mediterranean island of Ibiza. Walter Benjamin, the German cultural critic, spent time there twice–in 1931 and 1932. The New Zealand writer Janet Frame lived on the island for several months in 1956-57. Both were individuals who had been dislodged from their country of birth by events beyond their control–Benjamin by the rise of National Socialism in Germany, Frame by her encounters with modern psychiatric treatment.