Muskwa-Kechika photos by Wayne Sawchuk. See the full sized photo essay at The Tyee
A few weeks ago I reported that Nanmac and I walked from Trinity Bellwoods Park to the Toronto Zoo. In fact, our desintation was specifially the grizzly bear pen at the zoo. I wanted to make an urban expedition to bear country (shooting Grizzly Man-style video all the way) in preparation for my August expedition to a large tract of wilderness called the Muskwa-Kechika in Northern B.C. Von Bark and I are going there with my father, Don McKay, for an Artist Exploration Camp, co-organised by poet Donna Kane and photographer/ conservationist Wayne Sawchuk. Donna's website has more details on the camp and bios of all the participants. If you follow this link to a photo essay by Wayne Sawchuk in The Tyee you will see that, unlike the Toronto Zoo, the Muskwa-Kechika is a bona fide wilderness. The animals in this area are not contained for our viewing pleasure, and the grizzly bears just roam around all day doing bear stuff. This means the chances of us actually seeing one are pretty slim, and I'm definitely not hopefull about getting any big fauna on video. No worries, though, cause I am packing the following props.
The ultimate goal of the Artist Exploration Camp is to help draw attention to the Muskwa-Kechika, a unique, vast, mostly undeveloped area (the size of Ireland, they say), that has recently been designated a management area. The whole group of us artist/campers will be collaborating on a touring art exhibition about the region, so watch for us in your town! I will keep you posted.
A while ago I posted preliminary sketches, including the one above, for a video about the ghost of the victim of a grizzly bear attack, trapped forever in the grizzly bear afterlife. Yesterday we shot good ghost footage with actor Brian Marler, using a home-made green screen at Trinity Bellwoods Park. My work plan for the Muskwa-Kechika includes shooting some landscape video for the project to key in later. I also plan to create a digital "Muskwa-Kechika Menagerie" of animal gifs, similar to the windy tree-pig I posted a few days ago. I will also be doing drawings and research for the upcoming Thicket, an evolving series of multi-media installations, created in collaboration with Von Bark, that speculates on the interior consciousness of animals in diorama form. Thicket 1: The Voyage is coming up at Harbourfront Centre in November.
I am pretty excited about this expedition, and I'm very much looking forward to meeting and collaborating with the other participants. There ain't no internet in them thar hills, so L.M. will be holding the blog fort on her own for the month of August.
background notes...
The images above are from previous projects of mine involving the concept of wilderness. The first version of the Miss Mouse "Fight Club" lectures included a section on people who obssess about predators. The mouse herself had a slightly perverse interest in cats. The Killer Whale Victim performance was the story of a lost dog, told from the posthumous POV of a man who had been mauled at Marineland. The Trouble With Oscillation is about a tourist who tires of whale watching expeditions, and goes on a quantum physics vacation instead, seeking the ultimate wilderness 'hit'.
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"... '_blank' Sally McKay holds a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. She is a multi-media artist working with websites, video, performance, and installation. She is interested in the way that humans construct meaning and has an ongoing in..."
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