This response arrived from a friend -
". . . I've been following with interest and delight your progress with the boats, and not infrequently find myself musing on the project's many meanings. The images you've given us on the blog -- of the boats in ones and twos, arrayed in rank and file, in a nested circle -- have been gorgeously suggestive. I have grown fond of these small paper barques, their grace, their simplicity, their innocence. I'm charmed by the picture of them clamped with clothespins for gluing -- 'watching' them being made like that resonates through the word craft, as boat, as process, as workmanship.
It's when I imagine them installed as you described last week, rising up the wall, that I am most moved by your concept. Despite an undeniable innate dignity, there is also something comic about each boat, poignantly so; a delicacy that becomes almost cartoonish. To consider each unit on its own, it's hardly a boat at all, in a sense, as much the idea of a boat, a boat dream. All alone, there isn't one that could survive a bathtub, much less be seaworthy. And yet, to consider them together, they become mighty, a flotilla, as you've said, or an armada, as one of your blog crew suggested. And herein lies the great power of your poem (for I agree with you, the installation is fundamentally a song) as it reflects on the human condition.
Like your boats, we too are vessels, noble in our aspirations, but a bit comic as well when we propose our inviolability against the world, or imagine ourselves as self somehow ending at our skin. Our vulnerability belies such a claim. (Indeed, despite its balletic grandeur, there is something existentially disquieting about the film in this regard, a sense of each boat drifting in its own isolation, at the whim of the currents. To end up belly up under the ice is a grim fate.) It is not as separate vessels, but together, as a collective, united, ascending soul, that the boats achieve their highest nobility. . . and become something nearly indomitable. " Timothy Cahill
Oh Claire, that is so beautiful! I feel so much calmer after watching your video--like I can breathe so much better! :)
ReplyDeleteHi Jayne - thank you. My hope with this meditative film is to offer balm. . . There is so much chaos in the world right now; we need to find places of pause, moments of calm to help steady us as we make our way forward. I hadn't realized till very recently that you have discovered this site. Lovely to find you here ; )
ReplyDeleteYou have probably realized that I created this site at a time when I was working towards my exhibition titled 'Waters I Have Known'. Although that came to a head in November 2010, I continue to post here from time to time as the themes are as strong today as they were then - if not more so. Finding you here is an encouragement to me, so thank you.
There is a long story behind this boat/mudra film - my intention is to write it up fully one of these days. Meantime, if you would like to read a little more about the process behind it, you could follow these links. . . http://www.clairebeynon.co.nz/Antarctica_new/boatmeditation.html and http://icelines.blogspot.com/2010/11/drift-snippets.html and (providing you still have stamina!) http://icelines.blogspot.com/2010/11/drift.html
In the aftermath of the earthquake in Christchurch (NZ) and the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, it seemed fitting that the work I'd begun during a personal 'Season of Grief' should become an expression of our universal story; a way to link up with our global family and send loving, healing energy out into the world.
Love to you,
Claire