I must begin with a confession. I was born a media star, or so the Northern Daily News and the local Kirkland Lake TV station believed at the time. I was born a leap year baby on February 29,1956, at the Kirkland Lake Hospital in Kirkland Lake, Ontario.
Though as a child I shared in my family’s communal television experiences, I also came to experience my own personal interpretations (memories) of such events, which I have come to call the televised real.
An example of this televised real happened one night when I snuck downstairs from my bedroom, as I often did, to greet my father’s late night arrival from work, usually around ten at night.
Forty-nine years later, after my first encounter with Paladin, I developed a large-scale installation work entitled Vertebra, Part 2: The Skinning of Memory or VP2
Personal memories played a key role in the development of VP2. One such memory involved watching my mother knit. I remember on many a occasion, glancing over from my schoolwork, and being drawn to her subtle, yet precise gestural movements of her hands – magically weaving dollies, scarves, and sweaters for hours on end.
The title, Vertebra, Part 2: The Skinning of Memory (VP2), defines the overall intent of this work, specifically regarding society’s relationship to technology and its associated objects.
An overview of how the medium of Television plays out in the Vertebra, Part 2: The Skinning of Memory (VP2) installation : Plurality of Moments : The philosopher Henri Bergson in his seminal work Matter and Memory states that “however brief we suppose any perception to be, it always occupies certain duration, and involves consequentially an effort of memory which prolongs one into another a plurality of moments” (25).