Video/installation
Embodied, play, journey
2022 (throughout)

How can people be subtly and gently prompted to think of the planet as a whole as they go about their day to day lives?

A prompt, a provocation, a starting point. To contemplate outer space, as in, the space outside of our atmosphere, is to contemplate what lies beyond. The demand, in writing, in a public space, is meant to compel thought about inner spaces, about what our planet is in comparison to outer space. A “pale blue dot” (Sagan) which contains all of the entirety of what humanity is, to contemplate outer space is to contemplate a vastness, a vacuum, an unknown, and to thus become more aware and conscious of the fragility and unity of what connects us as we travel around the sun. To think about outer space implies an inner space that is separate. Is it the inner space of what is outside of our minds, or our bodies? Is it the inner space of our communities, our networks? Is it the inner space of our atmosphere that protects us from a harsh airless void? What does it mean to expand our notions of inner and outer space? What does it mean to contemplate that which is outside of us? How might such a prompt compel thought in the viewer, and what unknown effects will that have on their daily life? 

By presenting this prompt in the window of my studio at NSCAD, in the top floor of a heritage building in a public space, visible but easily missed as the traffic of humans in cars, bikes, skateboards, wheelchairs, on foot and in vehicles, passes by the site, it is unlikely that a large volume of people will notice it. Of the small selection of those who do, what might this noticing propel within them? Will it have any impact at all? The experiment is not interested in knowing, but in imagining, what might happen in the minds of the viewers. Their minds are part of that outer space we are thinking of, outside of the institution, outside of the art school, outside of my studio. Did even one person look up and read the words (written in English)? Did they know that the building is used as an art school (at the Academy campus, it is not obvious)? Did they think about outer space? What did that look like? What did they experience? This experiment is pondering the outer space of the minds that it hopes to (but does not assume it will) connect with. The further back you pull the perspective, the more united we all seem to be.