Shipwreck
Overview
Art is usually there to be looked at, from a safe distance. Shipwreck is an opportunity to occupy territories of devastation and to make a home in a strange and changed world. Cultural, social, economic, and environmental crises are terrains of uncertain governance and this project explores how these terrains might be inhabited and how meaning might be sought and made.
Shipwreck is an exploration of art as something to be lived in and among. For the Iceland edition, six North American artists have brought with them ruins of potential futures of ecological, political, and cultural crisis. Six Icelandic artists were then tasked with making a home among these ruins.
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Shipwreck
We look at drawings on caves and are mystified. We know what they are – animals extant and extinct – but what do they mean? There is a kind of strange joy in inhabiting these alien consciousnesses, constructing meaning through lenses long warped into other shapes.
Might we apply this process in reverse? Might we cast audiences forward into consciousnesses shaped by new realities of climate damage, ubiquitous technologies, and institutional actors unimaginable in their reach and ambitions?
Working with six local artists in Iceland, UKAI will deploy immersive scenarios that provide community members with opportunities to occupy territories of potential devastation in order to surface and make visible the stories and postures necessary to respond. Cultural, social, economic, and environmental crises are terrains of uncertain governance, and we wish to involve audiences in aesthetically constituting their meaning and to participate in the myth-making necessary to occupy a changed world.
This is a multi-phase undertaking that includes research & development (Toronto, April – May 2024), project refinement and presentation (Korpulfsstadir, Iceland, June 2024), presentation at the Carnival of Shipwreck in Fall 2024 (see the bottom of this letter), and subsequent global touring (various locations, post-Fall 2024).
Our lives are soaked with the assumptions of modernity – ideas of progress, disenchantment, and rationalization. We hold to time as a straight line, and innovation is in service to getting to a better future faster. In a world altered ecologically, technologically, and politically, what will become of the shape of time? Where will the boundaries between the individual and the collective be drawn? What forms might re-enchantment take?
Process
Six artists from Canada and an accompanying documentarian will work alongside six artists from Iceland over several weeks to create and evolve scenarios for public occupation and transformation. We will be introducing the artists in the coming weeks.
The boundary between creator and audience will be elided as works are occupied and altered by community members while creators respond by offering up a range of fragmented and partial glimpses into worlds reconciled to the irreconcilable and somehow finding joy in devastation.
We recoil from the complexities, contradictions, and challenges of ecological crises. Our sense-making tools are inadequate. Shipwreck is an opportunity for creators and communities to step into the overwhelming and begin developing an aesthetic capacity to assemble beauty, harmony, or expression in a changed world.
Durational Performance & Exhibition
Art is usually there to be looked at, from a safe distance. Shipwreck is an opportunity to occupy territories of devastation and to make a home in a strange and changed world. Cultural, social, economic, and environmental crises are terrains of uncertain governance and this project explores how these terrains might be inhabited and how meaning might be sought and made.
Shipwreck is an exploration of art as something to be lived in and among.
In Phase One, UKAI installs a constellation of artworks designed to situate a dialogue in the ruins—sculptures, story objects, or atmospheric interventions that invite curiosity. These are offered to the site and to the local community as open questions.
In Phase Two, local artists respond to the work without verbal explanation—using only what is present to interpret, build upon, or negotiate spatially. This method invites deep listening, trust, and a shared language of gestures, textures, and form.
Phase Three opens the space to the public. Audiences are invited to explore, respond, and co-inhabit the growing assemblage. Activities during this phase facilitate unexpected dialogue, new artworks, and social rituals that help audiences feel the stakes of being in a space of provisional, shared worldbuilding.
Shipwreck is made possible through the support from Canada Council for the Arts
