At the edges of consciousness are phenomena we can perceive without understanding. Dreams, for instance, are sometimes seen as products of our minds and other times as bridges to another realm. Religious faith is derided as a fabrication of organizational control over weak believers, or the ultimate act of transcendent rigour. And at its root, the profound ambiguity between our sense of being individual and unique in contrast to being part of a collective continually strains our perception of identity.
In my work I try to allow these forces to operate; to direct my production based on private impulses—thought or felt—while acknowledging my participation in a collective enterprise that is larger than myself.
Spirituality represents one example. In Plastic Houses I introduce two people thrust into a retreat situation. How they are connected and isolated from each other is summed up in the tale of the rib used in the Garden of Eden to create a companion: both separated and connected at the same instant. In Pilgrim’s Progress (premiered at YYZ decades ago) two characters depict these alternate views of spiritually as enslaving or liberating.
Recent projects have likewise explored elected politics and art making itself as zones of individual/collective tension. Speech (I Want to Know) depicts the feeble function of language as a communicative tool, as I experienced in my three years in elected office, and Drawing of a Man shows the efforts of an imagined artist (played by myself) struggling to find the resonance in his own image making, as we project our readings onto his work.
In recent interactive works I have used “play” as the activity that allows for both singular and collective impulses to co-exist. In Tentacles and TRIO the viewer is asked to create an unprescribed relationship with other viewers, in a form of social engagement reminiscent of child-like discovery. The early developmental stage of toy-play engages us in acts of imagination in ways that later, rules-based game-play cannot.
Scale is a tactic that I apply in my work. For instance, 1000 Glances combines two video images: a poetic text performed on a tiny monitor and speaker mounted in the wall overshadowed by a large image of a rotating radar tower. Likewise, Spiral Text displays words on a monitor intimately encased in a small cabinet. Tentacles and TRIO both combine the shared space of a large outdoor projection with a private, personal component delivered on the viewer’s cell phone. Measured Mile (Parade Route) is an audio installation stretching over a city block, with dozens of small, interconnected speakers. And in Man + Sin the online images are a hundred times larger than you can see on your computer’s screen.
This work looks beyond the dualities of self and other, consciousness and unconsciousness. It attempts to operate in that territory we’re all aware of, where we experience knowledge deeply and directly, unmediated by thought.