If an afterlife could exist, what would the transition look like? Would it be a gate, or a door way? Or could it be something less instant, like a pathway or a journey? Through personalized objects and the Canadian landscape, Jake Klein-Waller is attempting to find his own afterlife. In I Can Be an Island, Jake will perform in a boat and on a island while crossing the Bow River.
Jake Klein-Waller: In my work I am attempting to explore ideas of silence, time, place, consciousness, and mortality. Silence is an important part of my practice, not just in the sense of sound but also in visual and conceptual portrayal. I view silence as a paradox, because I believe silence is an unachievable state for a living being to experience because of consciousness. My work revolves around the inevitable, using personal feelings and fears in an attempt to project a question of time and existence on the viewer. Performance, sculpture, photography, and video are medias that I work with, often combining several of them in to a single work. I use elements of the natural world in a ritualistic or ceremonial way, focusing on combinations of image and object that attempts to allow the viewer to explore this relationship between the two in relation to place and their own body. Image in my work often reflects a past I have lived, placing a sense of myself behind the camera in quiet and desolate spaces. Much like how I view myself in the work, the images themselves act more like a ghost of place rather than a specific place in the world. I am drawn to materiality, using materials and mediums to explore associations of body and spirit, or body and consciousness. The natural materials I considered are used for transformative qualities of mind and place. Collecting the material myself brings the association of place that the material was found in, as well as my experience with the material, and context of the landscape. I hope to place some part of the viewer, mind or body, into an allusion of experiencing these spaces. Nature, and the Canadian landscape are subject matter that I use. I am exploring the history of the landscape in Canada by finding desolate and quiet areas. I am attempting to make the viewer conscious of both the absence and presence of something in these spaces. Basing my research in philosophy, ritual, and forgotten human practices, I am trying to ask the viewer questions about consciousness and place through the personification of nature and material.
