My name is Scott Hocking, I am a Detroit based installation artist and photographer. A lot of my earliest influences that led me to be who I am now, were brought on just from the environment and surroundings I grew up around. Working class circumstances, learning how to use my hands at a young age, growing up near the railroad tracks and factories and all the junk that existed in Detroit. For me, walking on the railroad tracks was a very early influence. The neighborhood I grew up in was in a township called Redford Township, which is on the northwestern border of Detroit City. We had dirt streets that were oiled to keep the dust down, to go to school I might have to walk across the train tracks and that exploration of my neighborhood extending into the railroad was just the beginnings for me to want to explore further. I like old buildings even when they're in decay, because I still think they're a part of the fabric of the history of Detroit and every place has a story. So to me, the most important thing... the word community gets thrown around a lot... But I think the most important thing is respecting history. 

I think that a lot of people have a preconceived idea of working in a vacant, abandoned, decrepit or decaying building as a place that again has negative connotations.. it's dangerous... there's a risk involved - but the reality is that most often when I work in a space like this, I'm encountering silence, the rain, kind of dripping through the building... you can hear the birds. You're a bit surrounded by nature. And as a kid growing up where I did, I sought out nature. I was trying to find my solace, my nature in Detroit. And whereas some people might think it's sad when a building gets taken over by nature. For me, this was the kind of place that was my sanctuary... and I would come to feel like I was in the woods. 

For me, working in a space that someone might say is an abandoned building, I see this as just a place on the timeline of natural proceedings. Things are born, things live, things decay, things die, things are reborn. They live, decay, die. There's a natural cycle to all things. The Earth has a way of correcting our mistakes and shaking us off if it needs to. So I don't know. I'm not so positive or negative. I think that the earth would just keep moving and doing its thing with us or without us.