This place reminds me of another place I’ve inhabited. I have this relationship with Dufferin Grove Park located in Tkaronto, Kanata. This park is activated in many ways. It is used for bon fires, farmer markets, community sports, or as a short cut from the Ossington neighbourhood to the Dufferin Mall (a classic meeting point known for its ecological absurdity).
In the centre of this park though lives this public installation. It is a site made in memory of a local neighbour who passed away. Her request was to install a reflexology pad in the centre of the park. It is shaped like a figure eight with a hand rail along the insides and the base is made of concrete with stones placed halfway in.
There are acupressure points in the bottom of your feet that you can wake up when you stand or walk, or even lie on the rocks. It is intended that you walk barefoot, but most visitors keep their socks or sometimes their shoes on. There are different sections with different sizes of rocks that reveal different intensities through the body.
I want to acknowledge that I am not a reflexology expert by any means, and that what I know about this practice is only from stumbling upon this installation and experiencing it through myself.
When I walked this pad in Toronto, I always wondered about our relationship to the rocks— are they such givers in this situation? What if we performed a massage on the rocks? Give them a little massages with our fleshy bodies. Open up the souls of our feet as little ears to hear their desires.
Today I want to invite you to walk from this point to this point with the intention of caring for the rocks. Playing the role of giver. Watch for other life, be gentle with where you walk, and maybe find mutual pleasure together.
We ended up having to perform the work in the water. The tide came in as the day went on, and all of the midsized rocks were submerged. Everyone gathered barefoot to perform my score, or suggested of actions. Some participants commented on how they focused on the mantra of staying gentle, and open to the rocks. The book Women Who Run With Wolves came up as some kind of reminder of keeping barefoot as a practice of connecting with the ground.
The Misguided Tour Critiques_
JAD / My body feels empathy for your work to heal trauma through art practices. I feel this empathy through your artist statement, not necessarily through the “art” or meal itself. I see you working through these choreographic notions and grounding techniques to inherit mindfulness into everything you do. I also admire that there was no formal presentation, and it was just a practice for the individual with a consumable and sharable result.
SARAH S / I admire how methodical you are with the work, looking deeper into histories to find openings as you continue to work with the fruit, and tying together these opposing-histories that develop with associated words (hope). The fruit is an invitation for future prospects and gatherings; the fruit holds potential conversation and physical processes.
YILDIZ / From your presentation, it is really clear how you work with ideas and actualizing your work. The work is incredibly linear and thought out from a central and accessible starting place. I appreciate your commitment to this idea of common ownership, and how you continually invite it into everything you do. Each sculpture could stand alone on its own, what does that say?
SARAH / Performative expression of species in a way that allows us to make narrative of our surrounding. The request to have us surround the tree instilled a sense of alienation towards this vulnerable being. With the text you begin to relate the tree to other close by, the whole area comes alive.
AMINA / You hook us from the beginning with your explosive words. I like that there was frantic energy to find what she is looking for. We as the audience felt a commitment to the task. As Lexie mentions, maybe the metaphor could unfold differently, but it was still affective, heartfelt and frenetic in the mind.
FEEDBACK_
- feeling the feeling before forming it
- water giving us energy to give back to the stones
- reciprocal relationships
- make us think about the little things
- presentation allowed for autonomy