Lindsay Kirker // Sites of Contemplation: Meditations in the City
“One has to live in the world as it is, because society really makes things beastly for those who disobey the rules.”
-Fanny Logan, The Pursuit of Love
I’m going to take you to a place.
It’s a nearby place.
It is one of my favourite places…
Just as in life, art is a perpetual unfolding of that which came before. My painting exhibition at the end of 2021 at the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art was titled, This is a Love Story, and I have recorded a series of walks that are an extension of that; the search for meaning, and the decision to rest in the space of Love during the present time when it often feels easier to choose fear. In my painting practice the built environment stands as a metaphor to explore the spectrum of human experience. Our lives are the construction site. Experience teaches us what is no longer of use, we demolish and rebuild, continuously, it can be no other way. The great expedition that is life, is the persistent pursuit of Love and purpose.
Walk One: Demolition
While utilizing the space of Studio 111, and with the support of the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art, I have recorded a series of walks that I invite members of the community to take. I have created a booklet to accompany the walks, a limited print available for pickup at the Alternator Centre. Inside there will be a QR code that will link you to listen to each walk. A large part of my research is traveling through the city on foot. On walks and runs I discover the construction taking place. This series takes the participant off the beaten path to areas under development that have continued to inform my art practice (and by extension, life). This is me thinking out loud, and the booklet is more of a reflection of my actual sketchbook. I rarely plan my paintings. Instead, my sketchbook is filled with thoughts, poetry and quotes, and I pull from an abundance of images on my phone. In the recordings, I reflect on why I employ the visual language from the construction site. Walking the city allows for moments of space and so I hope these walks can offer sites of contemplation. I wanted both the booklet and the walks to feel like the beginning of an idea. The Alternator values experimental creation, most significantly, connection and exchange, and because of this I felt a sense of freedom in creating this project with their support.
Walk Two: Home
Through these recordings my intention is to encourage the participant to pay attention to what is in their immediate surroundings. In Waking Up, neuroscientist Sam Harris speaks about how we typically travel from point A to B without noticing the scenery; going over past conversations, planning future events and interactions, we aren’t fully present in the spaces in-between. I think about how we are funnelled through the city on set paths, concrete lanes, through grid-like structure, pattern and repetition, as the city communicates a linear and structured unfolding. During times of uncertainty the only thing we can rely on is what is happening now. I think by paying attention to what is right in front of us, we can better understand the grander astonishment that is life. “You don't have to understand the desert: all you have to do is contemplate a simple grain of sand, and you will see in it all the marvels of creation” -Paulo Coelho.
Walk Three: The Parking Lot
Climate change is always top of mind, and something I continuously think about when painting the relationship between the built environment and Nature, but I can’t discount the whole world of personal experience that has drawn me to paint the construction site. There is always a negotiation between the micro and the macro; contemplating the personal, in order to better understand the collective, and the universal. With this project, I feel I have been allowed the space to explore more personal aspects of my work. Where my university experience sought to supress elements of my work that were ‘sentimental’ or ‘romantic’, typically perceived as more feminine traits in our society, I was encouraged to avoid speaking about my feelings and by association, female experience. In order to make a male dominated environment more comfortable, I established an academic way of speaking about my work. The amount of freedom I have experienced over the last year since graduating is immeasurable, these walks and the booklet that accompanies it are a sketch and an experiment of me being honest, vulnerable, cheesy, and romantic, and dipping my toe in the world of Love. As a culture we devalue love (bell Hooks 103), but I have grown to believe that it is in the very ethics of Love that we expand our capacity to care about one another and more importantly, all living things, and so I put this out there, sit with it and wait patiently to see how it unfolds.
Walk Four: This is Water
Our life is an art, we curate our surroundings, who we spend time with, our thoughts, and response to our experience. When I see a building under construction I think of the endeavour that is a lifetime. The older I get, the less I know, and certain beliefs or truths about the worlds workings that once seemed concrete, feel less solid. Any building you look at can easily be demolished, there is always the opportunity to rebuild. Sometimes life forces you to rebuild. We can choose to rebuild on the foundations that we are comfortable with, using the materials we can easily rely upon, concrete and steel, or perhaps we reassess? Maybe there are new materials, new ideas we can instill in the foundations. I have to thank the support of the Alternator and the many books I was leant to inform my practice, however, for the last two months, bell hooks, All about Love and Communion have been my guides. We always have the choice to decide where to focus our thoughts. Trust yourself. Let go of control. Be okay in the in-between, work towards being here and now, in this moment, and find certainty and trust within this space.
Thank you.
Lindsay Kirker
For more information, visit Lindsay’s website.