Dominion, Cargo

Dr. Lawrence Bird. Juried Artist

UNISC Gallery

Artist Statement

Dominion is a critical meta-survey of the western Canadian landscape. It intersects two systems of survey/surveille – one early modern, and one contemporary to our own time. The first of these is the Dominion Land Survey (DLS), instigated in the 1870s as part of the colonization of Western Canada. The second is Google Earth, which like other popular imaging platforms commodifies the Earth and its image today. Using Google Earth to document the DLS, Dominion sets these two regimes of image to interrogate each other and identifies ruptures in both: the landforms, episodic flooding, and older forms of land tenure which erode the grid of the DLS, and the double images, blind spots, and anomalies in the machinery of representation deployed by Google Earth. Somewhere, in the gaps between these two – and all our other systems – is a place for new forms of life, a new land between digital and material.

Cargo is a creative output of a larger research-creation project investigating shipping networks, their physical environments (landscapes, infrastructure and architecture), and the regimes of image that coordinate, monitor and represent them. The project underlines that global shipping networks and systems – predicated on the smooth flow of materials and information – seem inevitably to provoke a self-destructive generation of delays and disruption: container ships smash repeatedly into infrastructure. Cargo harvests moving imagery from Google Earth terrain models of ports around the world, focusing on disruptions to that imagery and the degradation of the environments documented. Applying this imagery to a shifting array of virtual shipping containers, it intends to provoke a contemplation of these conditions.

About the artists

I am a settler artist of Welsh and English heritage, living on the territory of Treaty One (signed in 1871 between the Anishinaabe and Maskêkowiyiniwak and the government of Canada), and in the homeland of the Métis Nation. I am fascinated by the intersection of space, material, and image. My media artwork explores urban sites, geographies, and traces of land use through video, short films, image processing, projection mapping and installation in public places.

I also write, on the embedding of cultural histories in film, media, and architecture. I have co-edited two books on public art and architecture; my writing has been published by Arbeiter Ring Press Books, Intellect Books, Leonardo, Canadian Architect, and Azure. My PhD in History & Theory of Architecture (McGill, 2009) focused on the image of urban destruction in anime; I also hold an MSc from London School of Economics (2000) and a professional degree in architecture (McGill, 1991). In architectural practise I’ve worked mainly on cultural and public art projects, including an interpretive trail in collaboration with First Nations, Métis, and settler communities (with Sputnik Architecture). I’ve taught at McGill University, University of Manitoba, the Winnipeg Film Group, Kanazawa International Design Institute (Japan), and Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Credits: Lawrence Bird

URL: https://vimeo.com/lawrencebird