Paige Sabourin

Nuit Blanche 2014: October 4, 7:00pm-2:00am
Opening Reception: October 16, 7:00pm-10:00pm
October 9 – 26, 2014

ROCK SHOW
The monument is principally a site of remembrance, a way of allowing something to live on past the lifespan of the body. With monuments of extreme age, the divide between its originators and the viewer is so great that ideas of the collective past begin to accumulate, constantly shifting as we re-interpret their meanings according to cultural need. Surrounded by images as we are, it is difficult to picture any site without filtering it through snapshots and postcards. The matrix of human symbolism that forms the image of Stonehenge is responsive. The monument is not solid - it is malleable and able to be influenced, more like a pillow or a living body than rock.

This malleability of perception means that there are many different ways to look at monuments. Removing or adding context to a construct modifies how that construct functions. The more focused the perspective, the narrower the scope. As the scope of the image widens, our moment-to moment understanding of it shifts, becomes shallower and more abstract. This explains the early belief that looking through holed stones would allow the user to see through illusions. The image can either be viewed in small, detailed glimpses or in its entirety, on a plinth, under a case. With both choices, the user sacrifices something.

Complete understanding of a monument like Stonehenge is impossible. Over six millennia, It has played the role of cosmic map, burial ground, sacrificial site, coronation hall. There are two different kinds of stone making up the henge, raised centuries apart by different peoples for different purposes. Even for the original builders, the stones served whatever need was most pressing, could only ever be a reflection of the self. It has been supposed that Stonehenge has been a burial site for kings, each menhir erected to immortalize an important body, now part of the landscape, forever watching. Stone is bone of the earth, the last thing remaining after the flesh has melted away. Creating self portraits wherein my image acts as that bone, that permanent trace- is a way of examining this memory and presence in the landscape through the photograph. Photography too has the ability to preserve some sign of our presence, something that seems to be deeply embedded in our psyche.

This desire to mark our passing, to reach through time and set something in stone forever, works both forwards and backwards. As people from millennia ago reach out to their future in hopes that some detail of their body would be preserved, we reach backwards to assure ourselves of our collective presence on the Earth, our universal desire for connection.