An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
“you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”
and also
“don’t love your life too much”
Mary Oliver, excerpts from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
“you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”
and also
“don’t love your life too much”
Mary Oliver, excerpts from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
“you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”
and also
“don’t love your life too much”
Mary Oliver, excerpts from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
“you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”
and also
“don’t love your life too much”
Mary Oliver, excerpts from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
“you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”
and also
“don’t love your life too much”
Mary Oliver, excerpts from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
“you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”
and also
“don’t love your life too much”
Mary Oliver, excerpts from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
“you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”
and also
“don’t love your life too much”
Mary Oliver, excerpts from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
“you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”
and also
“don’t love your life too much”
Mary Oliver, excerpts from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves
and also
don’t love your life too much
Mary Oliver, from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves
and also
don’t love your life too much
Mary Oliver, from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves
and also
don’t love your life too much
Mary Oliver, from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves
and also
don’t love your life too much
Mary Oliver, from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
An Incredibly Small Space to Pass Through:
On Metaphor, Relation, and the Resonant Murk
you just have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves
and also
don’t love your life too much
Mary Oliver, from Wild Geese and One or Two Things, 1986
Contemplative Works
In line with a belief in experiential and lateral knowledge building, contemplation—through time spent with both humans and other actants—forms an important and generative part of the practice. The works demonstrate a skill for listening, an approach which is largely informed by my practice as a musician: it can be through attention paid, but it can also be a co-creation, combining a focus on another which is simultaneously engaged in attentiveness and generative activity. An interaction towards an obvious end.
While acknowledging the validity and importance of dangers associated with anthropomorphism, romanticism, and mythologization, I do not see this as a valid reason to either avoid engagement or to remain embedded in anthropocentric modes of relation. The works bravely explores other options, looking for ways to engage that not only embody respect, but that also hold the potential of learning something new, or of these encounters giving rise to some piece of thinking, some perspective, or some alternative knowledge-building that can only be arrived at together, and are not dictated by, celebratory of, or used to elevate those human participants already elevated by their social position or stature.
Ethics of relation are an important part of the works’ contribution, explorations and thinking in this realm. They think through this both practically and metaphysically, with a special emphasis on language and the way that it manifest, using both story and metaphor as a central zone of inquiry, or as realms worthy of troubling. In line with disrupting intellectual hierarchies towards an ontological approach built instead on relation and inclusion, the works use this reimagining of language as a method of opening lines of listening towards these other other voices.
In Reverse-Chronological Order, works that specifically engage with other others, through a methodology of contemplation, include:
Soft Pocket
This work is an example of trying to both listen and to engage, in a visual interplay which is evocative of Leif’s musical approach. It uses wild plant use etiquette to guide the use and treatment of all materials, including those harvested from the room and curators.
No Question
This work was born from a long-standing series focussed on celestial bodies. These books take the form of adages or aphorisms that are open-ended instead of closed and perscriptive. They act as responses to unasked questions, are cryptic, and are have indeterminate metaphorical capacity. On a literal level, they describe features of celestial bodies, and how they are experienced by a human body.
Lost Remote
consideration and exploration of time. This is an ongoing exploration that asks the question: What have we ever done for time? Can we give something back to it?
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This component also contains a large amount of work and research that backdrop all the thinking, manifesting outwardly through a depth of metaphor, a pointed stillness and a minimalism, and a tangible complexity of care.