Transit
My work plays with notions of how we inhabit space that are both tangible and at other times elusive to the body. This piece plays with perspective and positioning and challenges us to negotiate space and to look at what it means to ground the body.
We are constantly recording information as “pictures” – they are stored in the body and contribute to a huge database of non-linear, situated, embodied, spiritual and physical information.
I am fascinated with the process of how we negotiate this space and create change. My intuitive training as a continuous source of inspiration has been with the Aesclepion Institute in California, where the first consideration we started to look at was “don’t believe everything you think”. Exploring phenomena of sense perception as a passage to self-knowledge continues to be a red thread in my research.
INFLIGHT (2017) Sofia, Bulgaria
InFlight (2016) Berlin, Germany
VBK Galerie Berlin, Germany; Airborne II + 2 new swings
Cloud nine
10,000 MONARCHS (2014) ART GALLERY OF WINDSOR
The performance was inspired by watching thousands of monarch butterflies on Point Pelee take off for their 3000km journey to their winter home in the mountains of central Mexico. For the performance I worked from a meditative trance and ‘read’ participants’ ‘pictures’ of how they navigate and negotiate that space between home and the faraway. These ‘pictures’ were in a dialogue with images I brought up from a database of video clips (monarchs taking off or landing within scientific explanations of their navigational tools) using a proximity sensor on the chair that I activated every time a ‘new’ image showed up on my imaginary ‘screen’.–Art Gallery of Windsor, ON (docu photos Nicolas de Cosson)
IB& (2012)
video looks at complexity, entropy and pattern as creative forces in Baxter&’s work: looking from a clairvoyant space – how ‘noisy information’ functions in relationship to creativity.–interPLAY Symposium on Noisy Information; York University
Rouge (2007)
as part of Nuit Blanche – Nightless City street event on Church Street, Toronto an all-night ‘reading’ of where participants negotiate that space between language and desire; 2 chairs; sensor-triggered video showing text (sensor connected to chair seat) – participants changed throughout the night from partying hipsters to homeless
Dark Cities (2006)
working from a deep trance, three psychics answer questions from the audience about the city (politics, fears, issues…) Sensor-triggered video & audio events bring up city-imagery from science fiction movies such as Metropolis, Blade Runner, Brazil… – ClubInstabil, Braunschweig Germany
Manifesto (2006)
in-trance ‘reading’ of where participants source their inspiration the video on one blackboard shows activity of cleaning a windshield; the video on the other blackboard shows snippets of an art manifesto I wrote as an early art student
One Second (2004)
from a psychic trance space, I read participants’ ‘pictures of labor and work in how they affect their relationship to their professions. (chairs with text animation on labor/work)–Labor Arts Festival, Artcite
Transit (2003)
3-hour trance, seated high above the audience, flanked by 2 chairs on the ground each showing ‘ungrounding ‘ video such as different states of swirling, swaying, falling, flying. Inspiration to do the piece was the public announcement a few hours before the opening that the Ambassador Bridge between the US and Canada was set to high alert, setting off a flurry of anxiety and panic near the art school which is located almost at the foot of the bridge.
Nadir (1998)
chairs showing videoloops in the seat (feet walking in the surf, a school of anchovies swimming cylindrically, the canopy of a eucalyptus tree, shot from beneath, by a twirling videographer) + slide projections of scientific drawings explaining how animals find their way home (orientation/navigation/”homing”) For me this piece has a lot to do with how we find our place, the importance of knowing how to ground the body, and the wonderful mysteries science is trying to solve. –San Francisco Art Institute
