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Spirit Site

Multimedia Installation
Video Projection, Sound, Model House Hanging from Gallery Ceiling, Photographs in Small Window Frames on Back Wall.

Statement:

The video projection of salmon rushing upstream ignites the spirit of the body. imbuing the house with a life force. The journey of the salmon is a transformative passage - from the salt water of the ocean to the fresh water of the stream, from the deep water of the ocean to the turbulent, rushing water of the stream. They persevere, with the determination to return to their birthplace to spawn and give birth. Driven by their acute sense of smell, they travel hundreds of miles jumping up fiercely turbulent waterfalls. against raging currents of water, fasting the last portion of their journey. This salmon run embodies the struggle of elderly people to stay alive.

In the US many elderly people choose to live in retirement homes, assisted living facilities, or by necessity, in nursing homes. This breaks the continuity of the familial cycle, ignoring the value of remaining contextualized in the nuclear family. Even though their struggle to stay alive is intense, the meaningfulness in their lives is stretched thin because they are fragmented from their familial cycle. The cyclical perspective has become invisible. This artwork repositions older age people into the natural cycle, through the ritual of the journey. My objective is to provoke a critical re-thinking, a re-evaluation of the current mythology of elder care, and to provoke a dialogue about this issue of the quality of life for elderly people.

Video is projected into an empty model house, 25 inches high, 20 inches deep and 48 inches wide, hanging from the ceiling of the gallery. This house is infused with the spirit of the salmon, depositing its life-giving force. The video projected into the house spills out through the windows, lighting the photographs in the small window frames on the wall behind the house. The journey of the spirit is parallel to that of the body, until it is transformed into another form as the body fades.

FLATFILEgalleries, Chicago, October 18 - November 16, 2002.