2nd Year Final Show
Into Thin Air +
The Memory of a Map
2021
The Memory of a Map
2021
Into Thin Air
The Echo has made itself at home in my body
At first pushed together now pushing away
Like a secret my skin seems to remembers
(Sounding in your silence)- I sound in resistance
Screaming at the sun
(Screaming at the unplaceable self)
There are words here that we do not know of. There are words here that are being said: in the walls, in the corners, in the open, in the air, in the light, in the dark, by the sun and by the rain. I shout my own shadows.
(Where is my mirror?)
Thinking of the institution as a protective yet exclusionary space - my words fill and lose there (as light attempts and fails in capturing my voice). Such a space gives me power and I uphold its power through participating in its supremacy. I have gained access to a level of acceptance in the white world; in going to university, in being mixed and white passing. I melt into such a space - I consider my role in white supremacy.
The shadows and reflections act as imprints of the self. Presenting them to the wind – hoping the wind will whisper and roar them when I cannot. Resisting through infiltrating the air. Resisting like writing and writing until I’m there somehow, in and amongst the other histories that the air holds. I like that as I am sending these words out – they change – they are mine but they are also no longer- they are of something else – an offering? They are temporal- developing a life of their own through their relationship with time. Working with the natural world obstructed by structure as sunlight is confined by the parameters of the building. Each day the words wake up, move about, and slowly fade out.
The puddles act as another kind of shadow – a shadow in reflection – how do we sit with words? Despite the elusive nature of the piece, I hope it acts as I reminder to remain resistant: in the corner of your eyes, in the back of your mind- somehow always there- the importance in wondering with the words that stuck.
The Memory Of A Map
I am struck by maps. Moved by them- and in them. I walk and walk and walk and surely there is something in that? Something complete?
This piece has allowed for a contemplation of movement – the systemic nature of it. Through considering mapping a colonial tool to control, the way in which we engage with space is thus never neutral. How we move and the lines in which we draw as we move are a result of our colonial history. Our movements are determined by the structures, physical or not, that surround us. In this way, I explore my migrations through this understanding.
I found myself routinely walking as a way of gaining insight into this project. It felt like one big performance piece – that no one, but me, knew about. It was confusing to have walked so much and have so little to show for it. I was there - in-between, in and out of, up and down- all over really- and yet, the data collected from my walks held incomplete in relation to the lines they were capturing.
Though I experienced the movements elusively, the data acted as a kind of ‘memorialization’ of my actions. And in this, showcased the very nature of mapping- translating power and ontology. There is a language in my floating. It will always say something.
I wanted to express this in the shape of a map – in looking at it as a visual translation of person- without imposing and holding it accountable to the bounds of information. Through neglecting context, all I give you is a painting of a thing- in this I mean, it is not the map of my walkings, but it is shaped by them.
I find tension between what the bronze signifies - a solid tangibility used historically to assert power - and that that it is representing- professing the blur of a movement. Maintaining and so involved in its own subjectivity. A deconstruction of the map through this interplay. (Overflowing line - what does it hold? Where does it go? Do I go somewhere with it?). I made elongations out of wax and clay as lines that are yet. Potential more-ing. Potential movements.
“All texts are…embedded within chains of signification: meaning is dialogic, polyphonic and multivocal- open to, and demanding of us, a process of ceaseless contextualization and recontextualization”
[John Pickles, 2004]
This haziness continues through sound. I recorded myself, my movements and all that I moved through, as a kind of map making. The sounds hold a memory - asking the viewer to think of a map as something in the air- floating and forever changing.
*Could you understand a map through its sounds?*Much like the bronze piece itself, the sounds articulate the inability to directly translate a map. It always loses something. Though the sound piece holds some kind of answer, it is unclear. I made the recording something else entirely as it hallows and commands. And through this, it reiterates the concept of a map as a memorialisation of ones memory.
*Where did I go? What did I see? What did my presence do in the space?*