Caustic Assets – video show, 2009, Centre for Art Tapes, Dalhousie Art Gallery, Sackville, NS

It started with a walk.

Behind Gastown in downtown Vancouver, near the cruise ships that come into the harbour, there is a sidewalk that leads to parklands and docks and is frequented by families, tourists, binners and the unhoused.

I came across Jimmy’s diary, torn apart and strewn out all over the deck, along with photographs, needle caps and a torn up scratch and win. I gathered my find and took it home where I read the contents.

I should have stopped right there (should I have?) but I didn’t. I decided that the universe had given me a gift. Me. I would be foolish to let the opportunity pass.

looking for you is a show about the “diary of a homeless man” I found on a dock in a park, my relationship to the find and my subsequent utilization of the book in the making of art.

It’s also about private and public spaces and objects, ownership, finders keepers, doing the right thing and found object art. It’s about apathy, guilt, anthropology, complicity, exploitation, lucky breaks and voyeurism.

In my perfect rendition of this show, the installation would encompass two rooms or areas. Upon entering, the viewer would encounter a photo show. Photographs of the pages of the found diary would be hung in typical gallery fashion, matted, framed and labelled. At the far end of this viewing room would stand a pedestal with a glass cover and, in that cover, would sit the book, encased. It would be shown as artifact. The book would be closed and inaccessible, the photographs supplying the only clues to it’s contents.

The back room would be a video viewing area. In this secondary area, a context would be affixed to the show which would alter the viewer’s relationship to the photographs by injecting the audience into the narrative. In this way, the Photography Show would act as stage or prop for the video narrative. The viewer would have to re-move through this re-contectualized space in order to leave the show, thereby causing them to “perform” as the audience within the narrative.

This “perfect rendition” was never realized however, it was attempted in 2012 at the Firehall Art Gallery in Vancouver BC via a hanging of the photographs and an improvised opening. One person attended – a man who may, or may not have been Jimmy. I was too afraid to ask.

looking for you, 2012, Firehall Art Gallery, Vancouver BC