Langscape

Refra(le)ction

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Swimming, it was my favourite thing to do my whole life. Until the last couple of years where I have developed an odd aversion to it, though I still really enjoy being in the water. I would swim almost every day and, in the summer, I could not wait to find a pond, a river or an ocean to jump into. Really, it seems to be the quiet…

Piscine [Grand Cru]

Piscine [Grand Cru] :: St. Petersburg FL, 02012

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A great awesome silence where you get to hear your body’s workings, oddly amplified by water vibration. A silence that has a beat and a rhythm that can be controlled with a bit of concentration. Sped up a beat or two per minute, then slowed down; the breath becoming a longer harmonic sequence. A rush of air through a pipe, a much longer loop. Then there are odd muffled sounds coming from “outside”. Quiet does not necessarily mean the absence of sound, it is more a question of the opportunity to hear those sounds that don’t cry for quite as much attention.

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Pond Song

Pond Song :: Beaver Pond NL, 02012

Images of that quiet; images that make the sound of quiet.

Eye Scream

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Eye Scream

Eye Scream :: St. Petersburg FL, 02012

The election ran on forever; the potential elected carved of the same cheap Italian marble as so much tchotchke that collects minuscule flakes of dead flesh all over the world. Nope,nothing original here. But it begs the question: Would we really expect change? Could we deal with it?

Change is much like choice; it is always just over there beyond reach; a rock as Sisyphus would say. Nothing seems to come without some level of tumult, a friction of signals. This is the period of unrest, anxious manoeuvring knowing a direction should be taken but the signage is weathered, paint long since faded by the sun. Every path looks just about as unkept. Any choice will change things, but every choice offers brambles, deadfall and general muck.

     This all has very little with why I took and decided to use these photographs. I can still call them photographs can’t I? There were thunderstorms all around, a strange stereo of thunder off in various distances mixed with that interesting sound and smell of tires on wet-warm pavement. The moment called for the contrast of mixing the flash with natural light (fairly warm and dim). I knew the flag would pop like crazy, as would the ice cream cone. It was possible to get a bit of information from the sign and maintain the “glowiness” of the neon, again, the flash was useful for that.

     The images capture a certain Canadian vanity I may have that always wants to treat America as “the simulacrum“; not just Canadian I guess as I am just now recalling a text by Umberto Eco (Travel’s in Hyper Reality) that explores this idea quite eloquently. But the image are are really very tongue-in-cheek since I am very aware of this strange kind of transverse orientalism; it is more me-looking-at-myself-being-condescending-and-aloof than anything else. I always wonder how much of this come through and how much gets lost in the translation.

Home Made

Home Made :: ST. Petersburg FL, 02012

Planar Thought

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Vista Blanc

Port au Port :: 02010

Older images, collected bytedust on a hard drive for a bit.

Were the images also flattened by the latency of existence as data, as real potential?

Can something be nothing but potential without the intrusion of langlanduage?

Sometimes, the work is seeking out those spaces where the past/present is in the act of coming-to-being. We seem to spend so much time chastising ourselves as the culture that will bring on the end of the world. But if you sit down and think about it, has the planet ever been at rest? Heck, there was a time that most of the Earth’s surface was molten rock, sulphur pits and unpleasantly warm surfaces everywhere else. We are certainly changing things, but they are also changing us. It is simply a question of waiting it out to see which gene pool ends up being able to thrive.

Mont Blanc

Port au Port :: 02010