(Dear Milton,) You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
We are at an uneasy moment in social history. On the precipice, looking around and seeing that despite all appearances… something just isn't quite right. But what to do about it?
This installation is a slice of our time, suspended, boundaries fluid, straddling the line of what is and what is possible. One at a time, participants become co-authors of that line between how we are and how we could be, together.
Endlessly curious about connection and disconnection, I stumbled across work by The Trailblazery in Ireland. Their Census of the Heart asked how Ireland was feeling at the time of the national census. The results were interesting, especially on feeling cherished. Women of working age, in cities, reported feeling less cherished in society and families than older women. The difference was even more striking in language groups with Gaelic speakers feeling more cherished than English speakers. So many questions…but the biggest is why?
I also got to wondering, given what’s going on in the UK, how Scotland was feeling. What is like to live in Scotland at this moment in time? Might folks in Scotland be feeling similarly? And of course, why or why not? And so the Heartbeat on Scotland project was born. Which starts with a survey to ask, What does being in Scotland at this moment in time feel like? Conversations over tea, performing being, together, with willing folks will follow, to get more into the whys, to really get a good sense of how respondents define what they are feeling, what it looks like. The product will be an art work that reflects, explores, and interprets what I’ve heard into a visual and interactive experience.
The survey is currently up in English, Scots, and Gàidhlig. It's open to anyone 16+ who lived in Scotland. At the moment there's just under 200 responses in English and only a handful in Scots and Gàidhlig. I hope to have more representation across languages by this summer when I’ll be digging into the data and contacting folks for a chat. So if you live in Scotland, or know someone who does, pass the survey along. That’d be awesome of you. And stay tuned...
Recent duh! moment; the Little Boxes* and Surreality: Modern Woman themes are related
insert *forehead slap* here.
surreality | modern woman series
surreality | modern woman
surreality | modern woman series
The song played over and over in my head while working out the sculpture for Surreality: Modern Woman. What if… the song played while the same image repeated over and over? Might that reinforce the message? And if that happened to be a flip animation, then it could lend to an interactive experience. A heavy-handed experience, but interactive all the same.
And so, we have… Surreality: Modern Woman : Opportunity
The installation, and the video. Please take the opportunity to critical examine a cultural myth and decide if conforming to this version of reality is for you.
Putting together the last bits to finish off a fun, and emotional, project. Time Exchange is meant to express the mental disconnect we feel at times from a physical routine, punching in and clocking out.
Time Exchange, full installation
The wonderful antique punch clock I found in a coal mining Pennsylvania was just inspiration needed to finally do something with xeroxes of my head from 20 years ago. Bored silly at a banking temp job in my early 20s, I snuck into a copy room and xeroxed my head. Not just once, but three times.
The punch clock, which is also an emotional connection to prior generations of my family who worked in the mines in that area of Pennsylvania, inspired creating videos of physically punching in while mentally clocking out. I can't even imagine what punching into the mine must of felt like to my great-grandfather, his father, brothers, uncles, and father-in-law. As immigrants at the turn of the 20th century, it was steady work if dangerous and back breaking. It's easy to imagine they'd rather be elsewhere and also were in their minds.
Time Exchange as a whole piece will be the punch clock on a pedestal with the video playing above it, one of the xeroxes printed on brushed aluminum also on the wall above, and definitions of time exchange and disconnection on the wall to the right of the lot. Ideally you'll be able to participate, but that depends on the venue.
Look for Time Exchange at TAG's annual Le Salon Show in Frederick, MD this summer. The show runs August 4th - 27th with the opening on August 5th from 5-9pm. See you there!
