DETAILED PROJECT PROPOSAL

DETAILED PROJECT PROPOSAL and APPROXIMATE TIMELINE [500 words]
Banff Centre : WALKING and ART Creative Residency Application
March 2007

Return : 1987 – 2007 is a series of explorations investigating the fluid boundaries between the past and the present, sited at and around the Banff Centre, in the town of Banff and the area’s natural environs.

Using walking as the primary medium, I explore the themes of memory and loss, reunion and communication with the absent, and a return to nature.

Creative inspiration for this body of work resides in the collision of events and tragedies occurring between 1987 – 2007, specifically with consideration to the life and death of artist Ingrid Muan (1965-2005)**, and the influence of musician Bruce Cockburn . . . a friend lost and a friend gained.

** Ingrid Muan and I were fellow visual arts participants and Banff Centre roommates the summer of 1987.

Remains: During/for walk(s), objects are made to be left in place, to decompose in their natural settings – not intended to survive long. Barely there, short life.

Traces of the walks are collected in various media such as: digital image, Polaroid, digital video, audio, and drawings. These walks are loosely detailed in a blog format online for others to read/follow/participate in from afar. A limited edition of postcards/mail art may also be created for 1987 Banff participants and friends of Ingrid Muan, and others.

While incorporating pre-planned ideas detailed here, it is my intention that the work develops and builds experimentally in response to the physical and creative environment and walking-focused exposure brewing in the residency.

Collaborations with fellow residents will be sought out.

Potential development / timeline:

Week one: 17 – 23 Sept
Dazed and Amazed! Resituate, meet fellow participants, walk the around the Centre, to town, the trail to Tunnel Mountain, explore the original location of Siding 29, the work camp which unfolded to become the town of Banff.

Week two: 24 - 30 Sept
Wake up early and get dressed quickly, as Ingrid did. Explore Banff on foot, as guided by postal codes. T0L 0C0 (1987) becomes T1L 1H5 (2007).

Week three: 01 – 07 Oct
One day I walk on flowers, one day I walk on stone. Today I walk in hours.
Listen to lots of Bruce Cockburn songs. Travel beyond the immediate area. Ask fellow participants to join along. Overnight hikes (if possible).

Week four: 08 – 14 Oct
Go to the library and look for the signed copy of In the Skin of a Lion. Is it still there on the shelf? Re-read it. Stay up all night, fall asleep with it in hand. The next day, return to the library and select a poem of Michael Ondaatje. Try walking the journey of the poem.

Week five: 15 – 21 Oct
A walk which takes place only when nature says so.

Week six: 22 - 28 Oct
A walk where the predominant theme is the overt physicality demanded by the work.

Week seven: 29 Oct – 02 Nov (partial week)
Mountain culture in a social setting: a walk for the Banff Mountain Festivals.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

ARTIST’S STATEMENT [250 words]
Banff Centre : WALKING and ART Creative Residency Application
March 2007 for 21 September – 02 November 2007

My work is about collaboration. I am interested in the space between. Between myself and others. Between all kinds of things, real or imagined: between ideas, between objects, between individuals, between communities.

I seek to activate that space.

I am research oriented, and find myself frequently motivated initially by concept and process.

I create work by building on concrete experience and active experimentation.

A central theme of my work is loss and remembrance, most often visibly applied to larger scale projects I design which examine one’s relation to the environment and nature.

Since the spring of 2006 my art practice manifests itself regularly in the medium of walking. Most walks are created to engage the public in some way, depending on the location and other specifics.

The underlying, deep-rooted methodology of my life work incorporates art as the medium for an experimental approach to environmental education of the general public. To that end, I am very driven to create public art, and to create works that exist outside of the traditional gallery and museum setting. It is here, I believe, that new audiences are “found” . . . out in the everyday world which they inhabit.