Bodies of Knowledge -- Installation Proposal: Scars and Cities (an abandoned idea)

I proposed this (below) in 2006 -- working with ideas of the city as body, which takes its basis from the long history of analogies between land and body (e.g. the King as Head of State).

It was accepted. I tried it, and it didn't work. Thanks for comin' out.


Installation Proposal:

A large mirror stands against the wall. As people mill about, entering the presentation space, they catch sight of their own reflection. Intrigued, a few walk over. They are instructed to consider the scars on their bodies: where are they? How did they get there? How do they feel about them? What stories are associated with them?

There are pens available. Different colours are assigned to different height ranges (for example, those who are between four and five feet tall will use a blue pen; between 5 and 6 will use a green pen, etc.).  The participants are asked to draw their scars on the mirror in front of them. One at a time, they approach the mirror. They draw their scars in the way they experience them – perhaps larger or more jagged than would appear to an observer.

At the end of the evening, the pattern of scars will be recorded. I plan to have at least hundred people draw their scars in this way. Their marks will overlap and undercut one another. This is a spatial summation of difference. I hope to find areas of the body that are more likely to be scarred than others – areas where this particular sample reported more scarring.

The pattern that results will eventually be scaled to match the size of a map of Toronto. Toronto is the city in which the participants meet; the city is a macrocosm of the body we inhabit. Following the lead of artists who have explored the translation of data from one discipline/realm/space/encoding to another, the pattern of marks accumulated from the scar mapping will be mapped onto the city.

Conceptually, the downtown core will be situated where the ‘average’ head of the participants is approximately situated. They are parallel their mutual connotation of intellect and productivity. Descending through the conceptual body, the heart will map onto approximately Rosedale; there are parallels here as well, in the sense that Rosedale is a neighbourhood of large, comfortable homes -- the heart the city would like to present to the world. The extremities (hands and feet) overlay the extremities of the city: suburban areas.
I hope to eventually conduct installation/interactive pieces in the areas that are demarked by a high density of scars.