2016/17 – Search & Research

The Year of Weird

After everyone went home from WILD_ _NESS/WEIRD_NESS, Rod and I spent a good amount of time discussing how we might encapsulate the exploration of wildness, wilderness, and weirdness that happened at the Inquiry, in a serious work of our collaboration. The concluding project: dedicate ourselves to witnessing and noticing the weird for one year. This…

Printing + Folding Practice

Scrolling through summer photos I realize how momentous and full these past months have been. Only a few weeks away from beginning the residency at ArtEZ for the fall, I wanted to record some of my early progress towards the project I will be working on there, reversible paper houses that fold down to the…

OTHER/WISE

When the DesignInquiry framers conceived of OTHER/WISE last fall (and/or, for that matter, Rod and I committed to our year of appreciating the weird), we had no idea how much the goings on in American government would warp the focus. Mainly we were thinking about alternative approaches to practice, and how coming at something from…

hawiicaqḥi

Halfway into our year of appreciating the weird, we present the Sauna/Smokehouse as part of Arrivals + Departures at the Nanaimo Art Gallery’s 40th Anniversary exhibition, a group show on view January 26-March 25. And our next project presented itself days after the opening: a studio. Located on River Road/the Alberni Highway, we’ll have larger more expansive space, big…

Search & Research, a Record of Our Practice(s)

This website represents work over the last three years; walks in the woods, enough sleep, countless conversations. Between its lines, there is a complete overhaul in how we think about how food is grown and how it is distributed. It is informed by one week in 2014 when we took on Truth and Reconciliation wholeheartedly,…

WILD _ _ NESS / WEIRD _ NESS

This past August DesignInquiry traveled to Bamfield, BC to study the topic WILD _ _ NESS / WEIRD _ NESS. Amidst discussions of climate change, the anthropocene, queering of spaces, and questioning what is a wild space, the outcome of this Inquiry for Rod and I is a commitment to notice and appreciate wildness, wilderness,…

Productive Counter-Production

Some thoughts on DesignInquiry’s Productive Counter-Production residency on Vinalhaven, Maine. Productive Counter-Production, an idea put forth by Gabrielle Esperdy, and fostered by Gail Swanlund after Gabrielle gave a memorable lecture on the subject at CalArts, arrived in my life when the idea of productive counter-production struck as more about doing something different than doing something other than what…