The Space Between Us

Into roughly the 8th week(??) of isolation (time has become incredibly fluid for me), and as the days pass, I think increasingly about what will be in the “time after.” Everyone is in such a rush to “get back to normal,” to reopen businesses and relax some of the protocols that have kept many of us safe and healthy – if not employed. I do absolutely sympathize with those who want to re-open their businesses, who are desperate to earn an income to support themselves and their families. It’s at least as frightening to have the economic rug pulled suddenly out from under you as it is to come face to face with a pandemic. This is about survival, on so many levels.

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https://www.carfac.ca/news/2020/03/30/a-notice-to-our-members-and-our-community-regarding-covid-19/

BUT. I am going to articulate  massively unpopular opinion.

I DO NOT WANT to get back to “normal life.” Not soon, and if I am honest, not ever.

I’ve been thinking a great deal about how ‘normal life’ breaks people and communities through its enactment of privilege, how many people are silenced in so many ways, how at its root this is all about the trade of labour and creativity to enrich the few on the backs of many – and at the expense of the environment and all other beings. How I desperately, urgently, passionately want it all to CHANGE for the better on the other side of this. How afraid I am that it won’t. And how I feel increasingly paralyzed by the prospect of a ‘return to before.’

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This is true for me in relation to the broader culture in which I live, and for the sector in which I work. This is a moment in which we could – and should – recognize that not only will the ‘new normal’ be with us for a long time (2 metres for the win!), but the ‘old normal’ is something that we should neither wish for nor return to. It also may be moot – because the ‘old normal’ may not exist for much longer, regardless of what some (or most) people desire.

“Normal” or “business as usual” has been exposed with utter clarity by the pandemic:  the glaring gaps in care, the enormous disparities that are actively cultivated and maintained by the systems in which we live and work. How many people have no choice but to risk their health and that of their loved ones & work in this time, in order to survive; how the most vulnerable of us have even fewer options to remain safe and healthy.

How many of us have seen our entire sector shut down, cancelled, income evaporated, in already tenuous livelihoods.

So this is a point in which we can CHOOSE what kind of world we want to live in moving forward. And we need to ask these questions of ourselves – NOW – while we have the time and opportunity to do so.

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What are you prepared to do to create a more equitable culture and community as we come out of this? How can we work together to make that happen?

What aspects of ‘normal life’ are you happy to see gone?

I leave you with these questions – and encourage your replies … and also with an excellent essay by Lou Sheppard; they articulate far more eloquently than I some of the things that have been worrying me about what comes next.

Take Care of Each Other.

Today: A Talk

Today, I have the happy opportunity to share the Boundary|Time|Surface project with the McGill University community.

Very much looking forward to hearing everyone’s thoughts on the project!

Macromareal (redux) – some images

After a whirlwind – and lovely – trip to Vancouver to install Macromareal(redux) at ECUAD, Scott and I are back in Edmonton and digging into all the other work we have to do.

Part of that for me has been editing the first batch of documentation from this exhibition, so I can share it with you.

So – without further hoopla:

macromareal redux walk thru from Sydney Lancaster on Vimeo.

And here are a few stills, for good measure!

Speechless.

Just back from an amazing, life-and-practice affirming few days on Lethbridge at IAST 2018. More on that later, when I aim more grounded and in a better space.

Being immersed in such a creative and positive environment made the return to ‘the news of the day’ perhaps more jarring & disheartening, I don’t know.

What I do know is that what is going on globally, and most certainly to the immediate south of Canada is deeply disturbing, more so by the day. And it is mirrored elsewhere in the world, including in my home province (to a lesser degree, to be sure – for now).

But I wonder increasingly about the entire notion of ‘humanity’ and ‘civil society’ in a time in which we are witness to fewer and fewer examples of both.

So, for the moment, I must sit with this reality, in order to move forward in a positive way.

Wishing you all peace and safety.

*feature image for this post from the work of Micheal Pederson)

Archived Land – Terrain Archivé

I am very happy to say that I will be presenting some brand-new work in a group show coming up very soon!

Details below – I look forward to seeing anyone in the area who cam make it to the Opening Reception.

Exhibition hours after the Opening are listed in the invitation, or by appointment.


Exhibit image (altered): Provincial Archives of Alberta #GR1983.0421

Some information about the exhibition:

ARCHIVED LAND : TERRAIN ARCHIVÉ   at Jackson Power Gallery, Edmonton September 15 to 29

2ndfl, 9744 60 Ave, Edmonton, AB

Opening reception 7pm, September 14, 2018

Exhibit hours: Noon to 5pm

Saturdays and Sundays, September 15 to 29

Or by appointment: 780-499-7635

 

Jackson Power Gallery presents Archived Land : Terrain Archivé, the final exhibit before the gallery closes its doors.

Land holds memory: layered, fragmented, buried, or strongly etched.  It represents identity and connection to our own history and to those who came before us; a narrative landscape that intersects human experience and the natural world.

The gallery’s layout of separate but interconnected rooms forms an environment for individual artist’s interpretation of the theme, providing the visitor with the perception of movement through time and place.

Exhibiting artists:

BELLE//MONDO

Une initiative par collaborateurs/a collaborative initiative by:

Patrick Arès-Pilon & Conor McNally

BELLE//MONDO vous invite à rentrer dans un assemblage de photographie tirée de vrai pellicule diapo Ektachrome datant de 1997.  Cette oeuvre place un regard sur les environnements naturels et bâtis captée sur le territoire du traité numéro 6 incluant à Edmonton, Spruce Grove et La Sapinière en 2018.

BELLE//MONDO welcomes you to enter an immersive photography installation using vintage 35mm Ektachrome slide film (frozen since 1997). This collaborative work features layered sights of natural and built environments captured on Treaty 6 land in and around Edmonton, Spruce Grove & La Sapinière in 2018.

 

Paddy Lamb

Paddy considers himself to be a Canadian, Irish, Ulster Scots, Quaker, Huguenot, Celtic, Proto-Indo-European citizen of the world. His painting, drawing, and installation work acknowledges the role of landscape as a repository for our history, culture and collective memory, exploring the imprint of society on nature and how we form deep and lasting attachments to the land. His work is also a form of self-examination – a search for alternatives that continue to define his ‘sense of place’.

 

Sydney Lancaster

Sydney’s multidisciplinary practice explores the complicated position the individual inhabits in relation to ideas of place, land & ownership, and the ways in which both people and spaces are ‘written upon’ by larger social-political-cultural narratives over time. She is interested in the realities exposed by branches that only bend so far and how newer growth offers much more flexibility, but less strength for supporting weight.

Ultimately, her work is about how we understand and make sense of the land and the space between us.

 

Marlena Wyman

As a long-time archivist and now Edmonton’s Historian Laureate, Marlena Wyman’s art practice is informed by history, and her rural Alberta upbringing provides her with a deep connection to land.

We interpret our memories and identities in part through traces of past lives, whether of our ancestors or others. A haunting photograph or a handwritten passage in the diary or a letter of a long dead stranger can create a profound personal connection.

Old Boats Recycled Into Sheds

After working this summer in Parrsboro with Scott Smallwood on a project
that explores the interconnections between the tide, the land, and the human history of the area (which included shipbuilding), these beautiful structures speak volumes to me – about change, and resilience, and different ways of looking at the idea of abundance.

I am also a total sucker for the ways in which these boat-houses help to retain the many generations of work and relationship to the sea in these coastal places.

My thanks to eMorphes for bringing these structures to our collective attention!

Adventure Time!

I’m sitting in the airport, waiting to board … and pondering what the next weeks will bring. I’m off to a residency in Parrsboro Nova Scotia for the next month.

Heading back to Main & Station to work with Scott Smallwood on our Macromareal project! Feels a bit odd, actually – after the year’s worth of planning and thinking – to actually be on the verge of doing.

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Excited, and a little nervous, and really really happy and grateful for the opportunity.

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I Took My Father for a Drive Today

A lovely piece on history, time, change – and sense of place. What place means when it is rendered in the first person, and intimately connected to the sights and sounds in a landscape? We are each responsible for the reality we inhabit, in all ways.

Have a good weekend, everyone.

My father was born and raised in Montreal in the first half of the last century. He served in the RCAF (briefly) and the Royal Canadian Navy (less briefly) during World War II. In the ’60s he…

Source: I Took My Father for a Drive Today

Bed

After all the busy-ness of the last few months, working on York:Moments, it has been a welcome thing to have a wee bit of time to reflect on the work that went into the project, and what it meant to bring the work back to the community.
What a gift that experience has been.
In the aftermath of our portion of the project, I’ve also had some fantastic conversations with people … two of which led me back to this post, which I wrote back in 2013 while Marian and I were working on the original YORK material.
I feel like it sums up a good deal about York:Moments as well … the way that work opened up some space to talk about the tension between ‘public’ and ‘private’ configurations of space, who has the power to determine the future of both public & private spaces, how sanctuaries of various types are crucial for the health and sustainability of neighbourhoods. How safe spaces can hold memories, how they can contribute to story-making, and the preservation of histories of all sorts.

Time Travel, part I

I have been continuing to delve into material for the NEST series over the last couple of years. I’m not “done” with it yet, and the work has taken a much-needed autobiographical turn in the last year.

One of the things that’s been really interesting to me in that process is how many gaps and silences I’ve found in the ‘family narrative’.  So much I don’t know, that wasn’t ever spoken of, or only mentioned in passing.

How many things I remember hearing about, but on further investigation, find that the “real” story is a little different from what I was told (or remember). Official documents with dates that don’t jive with what I’d understood to be the accepted truth for one (or more) family members.

There’s also photos and their inscriptions which fill in some blanks; more often than not though, they raise more questions than they answer … and call more received ‘facts’ into question.

I am left to tease out stories and threads, contend with gaps, accept different sorts of loss, again. Few people left to fill in or clarify information.

As I wade through this morass, and figure out exactly what to do with all of this raw material, I thought I’d share some of my finds.

So, to begin … some photos from my grandparents’ time:

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This is the first home my father’s family had in Canada; a homestead in Highvale, Alberta. A far cry from the brick rowhouse in Tynemouth, Northumberland where my father and his siblings were born!

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After some time in their first place, they were able to move to another house closer to Edmonton, on what was then called St. Albert Road. Still rural, to be sure, and at a time when travel was just as likely by horse and cart as by car (I was told the family had both).

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This is my paternal Grandmother and Grandfather, Ethel and Alfred. I believe the photo was taken outside the St. Albert house.

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I love this photo of my Grandmother and her friend; she seems happy, and it  looks as though they were having a great deal of fun on a summer’s day. That rose arbour is amazing … a bit of Jolly Olde England transplanted to the Canadian Prairie!

I don’t really remember her; not the sound of her voice or her laugh or her touch – just that she was small and birdlike. My grandparents lived with my parents and me in their old age, so it feels odd that I don’t have at least one clear memory of her. But then again, I was really young when she died.

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My father as a young man, posing with his Mum. I don’t know if they were close, but it seems from this image that they might have been; he wasn’t inclined to hug people, so the fact that he’s hugging her speaks to a warm connection of some sort. She’s wearing his hat too, so it looks like they were close enough to kid around together.

 

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I wish I’d known her better – it seems like she was quite a vibrant woman, with a sense of humour!  That grin (and the fact that she dressed up in my Grandfather’s old uniform for this photo) speaks volumes.

I wonder what stories she would tell me if she could, what her understanding of the world and its workings she would pass on … what she thought of coming here, to this country and it’s snow and space and enormous skies.

Her thread is but one I am attempting to pick up and trace, weave into my understanding of what and when and who and where.

And how all of that eventually brought me to here.