The Tower Fable
In October of 2015, I traveled to Toronto to participate in the Biennial conference of the BABEL Working Group at the University of Toronto, where I collaborated with an international group of Medieval Studies scholars, artists and thinkers to create a series of palimpsests that eventually comprised a book. While I was there, I also built these palimpsests, which have their place among the pages of the Chronicle of the City of Babel.
It is an ongoing question for me about how the materials and the location affect the work. The materials are often from the place I am staying, and I make the work as an artifact of that city while I am in that city. I have noticed distinct differences between work executed in Berlin, Boston and Toronto using the ephemera found in those respective places. This is what Toronto "looked" like, to me, at that time.
I continue to play with the idea of finding images beneath layers of time, some of the layers permanently obscuring critical parts of the image, and discovering a fragmented legend of a disappeared culture. I created three images that are part of a series of indeterminate number. Clearly, The Tower Fable was a story that everyone once knew well, but its full narrative is lost to us. These are the fragments we are left with, only to wonder what the complete story is about.
It is an ongoing question for me about how the materials and the location affect the work. The materials are often from the place I am staying, and I make the work as an artifact of that city while I am in that city. I have noticed distinct differences between work executed in Berlin, Boston and Toronto using the ephemera found in those respective places. This is what Toronto "looked" like, to me, at that time.
I continue to play with the idea of finding images beneath layers of time, some of the layers permanently obscuring critical parts of the image, and discovering a fragmented legend of a disappeared culture. I created three images that are part of a series of indeterminate number. Clearly, The Tower Fable was a story that everyone once knew well, but its full narrative is lost to us. These are the fragments we are left with, only to wonder what the complete story is about.