Sidewalk Project began as a study into the Parisian, 19th century concept of the "flaneur". A mysterious character that sat in the arcades of the city, simply observing everyday events. I became fascinated with the "everyday-ness" of things and wondered how to best record them. And, how could I observe the everyday as a historic event? Were they somehow archived? It became evident that in a city, sidewalks were the most democratic for recording the everyday, urban life. Be it objects that accidentally fell or were intentionally placed into curing cement – animals that ran across them, love or hate notes scrawled into them, or abstracted drawings done while no-one waqs looking, In my mind, cement sidewalks are vaults with archival histories. Sidewalk Project was a process of extracting those histories, making them live again.
Walking was a be a process of fact-gathering, over the period of 5 months I found and recorded over 60 impressions in sidewalks. The old neighbourhoods of Winnipeg, Canada, was a great place to discover but was metaphoric for any city. During the Winnipeg winter I created a data-base of all the images and locations, and returned back to 20 of them. The data base allowed me to compose the works into a composition of "concrete poetry" where I could juxtapose images and texts. I returned to the locations from the previous summer and set-out to make plaster casts of each selected "slab" based on the size of the size of usual sidewalk slabs.
I later used that cast to remake the sidewalks into synthetic gelatin. I chose it as a substance because I set out to breathe life into historic imprints - to re-cast them into another permanent substance was just repeating the original process. After a lot of research, a military grade gelatin was the only one that would not mold, and it took many experiments to come arrive at the conclusion. The ballistics gelatin is used for shooting bullets into, as it is same density as a human body.
The "onlooking cart" became my device for finding interesting things in or on the cement as well as lead to Ellipsis, the work that followed Sidewalk Project in 2004.
Walking was a be a process of fact-gathering, over the period of 5 months I found and recorded over 60 impressions in sidewalks. The old neighbourhoods of Winnipeg, Canada, was a great place to discover but was metaphoric for any city. During the Winnipeg winter I created a data-base of all the images and locations, and returned back to 20 of them. The data base allowed me to compose the works into a composition of "concrete poetry" where I could juxtapose images and texts. I returned to the locations from the previous summer and set-out to make plaster casts of each selected "slab" based on the size of the size of usual sidewalk slabs.
I later used that cast to remake the sidewalks into synthetic gelatin. I chose it as a substance because I set out to breathe life into historic imprints - to re-cast them into another permanent substance was just repeating the original process. After a lot of research, a military grade gelatin was the only one that would not mold, and it took many experiments to come arrive at the conclusion. The ballistics gelatin is used for shooting bullets into, as it is same density as a human body.
The "onlooking cart" became my device for finding interesting things in or on the cement as well as lead to Ellipsis, the work that followed Sidewalk Project in 2004.
Onlooking mirror, mirror, video loop, Ottawa Art Gallery, 2004
Cast gelatin, plexiglas,"Sidewalk Project", Ace Art inc, Winnipeg CAN, 2003
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Sidewalk Project-Onlooking. Future Cities exhibition, Art Gallery of Hamilton, 2002
Ellipses, 2004
is a multimedia installation whose idea somehow originated with me learning chess. For a full season (Winnipeg), I meandered the city looking for randomly discarded soft-drink, plastic lids with straws intact. On looking down at one, the seemed like a clock or a compass with the "large hand" pointing into a navigational direction. I began to see urban spaces as game boards and discarded pop-drink lids as game pieces. This (as well as Duchamp/Cage/Ono) sparked my desire learn chess and in turn, it became a node that carried me to new projects.
is a multimedia installation whose idea somehow originated with me learning chess. For a full season (Winnipeg), I meandered the city looking for randomly discarded soft-drink, plastic lids with straws intact. On looking down at one, the seemed like a clock or a compass with the "large hand" pointing into a navigational direction. I began to see urban spaces as game boards and discarded pop-drink lids as game pieces. This (as well as Duchamp/Cage/Ono) sparked my desire learn chess and in turn, it became a node that carried me to new projects.
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Chess began as a continuance of drinks lids, in a form of game.
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