Luna Sol Cantos |
Moon Sun Poem
Luna Sol Cantos was created during a 7 day residency at Banff Centre and is based on the site and surrounding area. I was not able to bring natural materials into the gallery or create works directly in the land, because of these restrictions I worked with video to bring the outside in.
The Banff Centre campus map gives the impression that Banff Centre is roughly circular in shape – so I overlaid a circle on the map as an initial site area. I wasn’t aware that I arrived at Banff on the even of the full moon. During my initial research I discovered that on July 11th, moonset would be at 4:21 am; sunrise at 5:39 am and sunset at 9:55 pm; moonrise at 11:02 pm.
I decided to walk the circle, I’d drawn around Banff Centre, four times on July 11th – a walking meditation – collecting video images along the way. The number four is a sacred number in many cultures and signifies the four directions, manifestation and abstraction, while the circle symbolizes unity, wholeness and life. It’s interesting to note that the July full moon is known as the Thunder Moon (also Hay Moon) – the night of this July full moon was filled with lightening and thunder storms.
I began the first circle walk between moonset and sunrise on the morning of July 11th and each subsequent walk equally spaced 5 hours and 35 minutes apart, ending with the final walk between sunset and moonrise.
Each walk began at one of the cardinal points – with the initial walk beginning in the east, the second beginning in the south, the third in the west and the final in the north – all moving in a clockwards direction.
The video footage shot during each walk corresponds to a moving upwards of each circle – ie: the video footage shot on the first circle walked was shot at/below knee level, the second circle at hip level, the third at shoulder/eye level and the final reaching into the night sky. The sense of time of day and light changes with each circle moving upwards – and although the footage is presented in order of circle walked, there is no obvious separation between circles provided.
The video was projected onto a 10 feet x10 feet gallery wall, turning the micro into the macro.
The video is approximately 12 minutes long, with 3 minutes of edited footage for each circle walked. Originally I’d intended on including sound – not only site sounds: birds, leaves, wind – but also voice/chant, but once the editing was nearly complete I decided to leave the work silent – letting the images, the Land, the site, speak for itself.