Sunday morning, I will be journeying far out of London to participate in PLACE EXPLORATION, "a practice-based research residency into the depths of place at Kestle Barton, whereby place is defined as something that is constructed by a washing back and forth between the past and the future, between the self and the collective, as the shoreline is perpetually recomposed by the sea."
https://trailmixed.online/2017/09/14/place-exploration/
"How did you get here?", they asked:
As far as I can tell, my memory begins on the coast with the highest tides in the world.
I grew up in rural New Brunswick, Canada. Spending my formative years so close to the ocean, I developed a need to see where it went every 6 hours and 13 minutes, which is the length of time between high and low tide in the Bay of Fundy. As I developed an attachment to my surroundings, I also grew eager to leave.
I spent time away; years in Asia—Japan, Thailand, Korea, India— tides in Hawaii, the UK, Europe and across Canada. Each place has gotten under my skin, but I never feel more of a participant in the rhythms of the world than when I am one foot in the ocean, knowing that my body is a conductor.
With that, I have dedicated my practice to act as an embodied collage of that moment: to be a conductor. Flowing through curatorial projects, teaching and learning, installation and other forms of making, most of my work involves collaboration. It hasn't happened overnight and, like the coastlines responding to the tide, it is always shifting and evolving, with wear lines and erosion as certain memories/ideas have been repeated and reworked or lost along the way.
PLACE EXPLORATION appeals to me for a number of reasons beyond it being nearly the closest point (that I can currently access) to where my practice began, although that has crossed my mind. As an artist with a socially engaged practice, PLACE EXPLORATION is an opportunity of being with, connecting and conducting moments with artists who might share a similar ethos, participating in their practices and developing new instances of wear lines and erosion in my own.
And, it takes me to the coast.