Brief selections from an art essay by Fae Logie:

Scattering from a plot of land evokes thoughts about territory, identity, migration, and surveillance, specifically of women and children. Women around the world take immense risks to escape corruption, poverty, oppression, war, and climate catastrophe. Research scholars, Monica Boyd and Elizabeth Grieco write, “a decision to leave, [...], is not the same as being allowed to exit or to enter a specific country” (Boyd and Grieco 2003, 5).

My human-scale kinetic installation is held together by two intersecting aluminum tent poles that are suspended from the ceiling. The space beneath the poles creates a visualization of a volume approximately three meters cubed. This volume is both a metaphor for a temporary refuge during migration or a magnitude of sea water below an overturned ship. Strung together within this space, over 100 high-contrast 4x5 inch Kodalith photo transparencies form a fragile system of equilibrium, fragments of faces and hands, gestures and glances. These images were saved originally from illustrated magazines and newspaper articles highlighting the parrels of forced movements; rephotographed, enlarged, and manipulated, the images retreat from their source. Now, as particles of narratives, moments of histories framed outside of what happened just before or just after, they take on the designation of found images.

Scattering from a plot of land mirrors the idea of a scatter plot - a mathematical diagram using coordinates to display data and possible correlations. The tent poles reference the x, y, and z axes, each dangling image a cell of information, a traceable data point. The photographs are marked with standardized symbols of flow-charting, outlines in white ink and loosely woven thread - many partially or fully cut out to expose a non-visual dimension operating out of sight, “visualizations of the apparatus of state power” (Wilkinson 2015, 2). The symbols stand as singular instructional commands inherent in algorithms, without directional defining lines of progression. Cutting away of fragments of faces and bodies mimics the dehumanizing processes of surveillance.

The nine cubic meters of my installation is a weighted territory, an allegory of containment and exposure by pervasive surveillance systems. The layers of materials and meaning function in the discourse on cultural surveillance representation as a question of visibility, and who decides another’s fate.

References:

Boyd, Monica, and Elizabeth Grieco. 2003. “Women and Migration: Incorporating Gender into International Migration Theory.” Migration Policy Institute, (March): 1-7. https://www.migrationpolicy.org

Wilkinson, Jayne. 2015. “Art Documents: The Politics of Visibility in Contemporary Photography.” Invisible Culture, 22.