Assignment Three – Shuswap Places

Artist’s Statement

I would like to begin by acknowledging that the photographs I have made for this assignment were taken on land which is located within the unceded traditional lands of the Secwepemc First Nations. The Secwepemc [pronounced suh-wep-muh] territory covers an area of approximately 180,000 square kilometres in the south central interior of the province of British Columbia, Canada. Secwepemc translates to Shuswap in English. Originally the land consisted of old growth forests, but gradually with colonization things began to change.  “Think of the way a new country is settled. At first there is wilderness, undifferentiated space. A clearing is made in the forest and a few houses are built. Immediately differentiation occurs; on the one side there is wilderness, on the other a small, vulnerable, man-made world. The farmers are keenly aware of their place, which they have created themselves and which they must defend against the incursions of wild nature. To the passerby or visitor, the fields and houses also constitute a well-defined place, obvious to him as he emerges from the forest to the clearing.” (Tuan: 1977 p. 166). Photographers who connotate this concept very clearly in their work are Jem Southam and David Bate (Beauty of the Horrid). My detailed comments on their work can be accessed from the links provided.

Compared to the rest of the world, Canada is a very young country – only 151 years old this year. It is still forging its culture. The province of British Columbia is characterized by its many mountain ranges and is divided into the “Coastal” region and the “Interior”. Eighty percent of the population reside in the metropolitan area of Vancouver, Victoria and the south eastern part of Vancouver Island. The balance of the population is spread out in the Interior. It is to this area that I recently moved in June of this year.

The move was quite significant for me. It officially marked my retirement from the nine to five daily grind and a transition into a slower pace of life (although I’ve been busier now than when I lived in the city). My surroundings have also transitioned from the urban setting to the rural where I see farms and the wilderness on a daily basis.  The forests represent space – a wilderness, freedom to roam and disappear – to live off the grid if one is that way inclined. The overall colour palette from city to rural has changed as well. The blue tones of Vancouver – glass-paned high-rises reflecting the ocean – have given way to the lush green of the forests and farmlands.

Because of the low percentage of population living in this area, the wilderness in the form of forests is very prevalent. It was with great interest that I observed the human intervention and intersection of nature when exploring my new surroundings. Having spent my teen years growing up on a farm in South Africa, it came as a bit of a surprise that certain things flooded my memory of the past, even though the topography is so different here. Familiar farm implements, fences, hay baling machinery and certain smells all triggered memories of my youth spent on the farm. Freud would probably state that my involuntary memories had been activated by these associations.

Farmlands juxtapose with forests wherever you look giving credence to Tuan’s statement above. One is exceedingly aware that the back country (what Canadians call the wilderness) is literally on the doorstep of these farms. The forest forms a liminal space between the farms and the greater wilderness – between the wild and the civilized. The pre-cultural reality of nature is very evident indicating what came first. Man’s intervention and working of the landscape is likewise manifest in the fields, paddocks and structures that he has made. Dirt roads, fencing, visible farming activity, man-made structures and crops are part of man’s articulation in the struggle to tame the wilderness. How tenuous the slivers of barbed wire or log fences seem in their task of holding the encroaching forest at bay!

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My edited down contact sheets from which I did my final edit can be seen below.

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ASSESSMENT CRITERIA

Demonstration of technical and visual skills: Materials, techniques, observational skills, visual awareness, design and compositional skills.

I would have preferred to have a variety of different weather conditions for this project, but sadly we have barely had any rain here in the Shuswap for the last two months. Our summer days are extremely long so one could easily confuse a photograph taken at 9:00 am or 4:00 pm as being taken around noon, which was unfortunately surmised during one of the Google Hangouts I attended. There was one day where the weather seemed to cooperate and provide some looming rainstorm in the distance, but as they say here in the Shuswap – just wait ten minutes and the weather will change – which it did – back to sunny skies again. I would also have liked have been able to get into the forest and approach the farms from that way, but these forests are really too thick to navigate in notwithstanding the fact that wild life such as bears, cougars and coyotes roam freely there so I wasn’t going to risk it. But on the whole I am happy with my images.

Quality of Outcome: Content, application of knowledge, presentation of work in a coherent manner, with discernment. Conceptualisation of thoughts, communication of ideas.

I struggled during the various Google Hangouts to convey the type of terrain to the students, probably because there is no local type of reference point in the UK which could convey the vastness of these forests and the fact that about 80% of the entire population of Canada lives along the American border, making the interior of the country, not just the province that I live in, a veritable wilderness in which one could disappear and never be found again. Hopefully I have overcome this difficulty and have now communicated this clearly.

Demonstration of Creativity: Imagination, experimentation, invention, development of a personal voice.

Due to the initial communication difficulties with my peers I struggled quite a bit with this assignment. Despite that I really enjoyed exploring the farmlands and invoking those involuntary memories from my youth.

My initial planning post can be seen here and feedback on the Google Hangouts can be seen on these posts: Canadian & New Zealand students – June 3, 2018; Landscape Hangout – June 21, 2018; Live Forum – July 15, 2018; Canadian/Commonwealth students – July 21, 2018.

Context: Reflection, research (evidenced in learning logs). Critical thinking (evidenced in critical review).

My main inspiration for this project came from the work of Jem Southam and David Bate, as well as the book by Yi-Fu Tuan Space and Place – The Perspective of Experience. I was quite surprised to see that one of my images had a slight resemblance to one of Jem Southam’s dewpond images. That was pure coincidence I think. As I reflect back on past modules that I have done it seems to becoming clearer to me that a lot of my work revolves around memory and personal experiences. Is my personal voice developing at last? I really hope so, but I don’t think I’ve reached one hundred percent certainty yet.

I attended the following exhibitions, the detailed write ups are on the pages linked below:

• The Poetics of Space at the Kamloops Art Gallery
• Cabin Fever at the Vancouver Art Gallery
• Site Unseen at the Vancouver Art Gallery (all three these exhibitions had direct relevance to this part of the Landscape module)

I also attended an online MOOC presented by Deakin University and Griffith University in Australia in preparation for Assignment 4, Why Planning your Research Matters (Week 1 and Week 2) which has given me some structure and planning aids for my critical essay.

I have also joined the Arts, Visual and Audio (AVA) collaboration in which a group of OCA students from all disciplines are creating work based on a monthly theme and interpreting the theme in the form of Chinese Whispers. The initiative was begun by one of the music students and we are now in our second month and it is quite exciting to see the interaction between the written and spoken word, music and imagery.

I have almost crossed off all the items on my to-do list that my tutor suggested to me during the Assignment 2 feedback:

• The Society of the Spectacle (I opted for a podcast discussion on the book)
• The Culmination of Separation In The Society of the Spectacle
• Charles Baudelaire – The Painter of Modern Life

Apart from the Google Hangouts mentioned above, I also attended the following Google Hangouts:

• Live Forum Google Hangout – 2018/05/20
• Live Forum Google Hangout – 2018/06/17
• Live Forum Google Hangout – 2018/08/12

I really enjoy these Hangouts as they provide a valuable link to other students.

Reference List

Tuan, Yi-Fu (1977). Space and Place | The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press

Bibliography

Fiske, J. (1989) ‘Reading the Beach’ In Reading the Popular. Routledge: London

Freud, S. (1925) A Note upon the “Mystic Writing Pad”. General Psychology Theory Ch XIII. Simon & Shuster: New York