wings walking water
a project, a practice, an ongoing story by Baco Ohama
For a long time I have had an interest in language; in what gets carried and conveyed, hidden and revealed, through one’s use of language; and in what gets discovered and understood when working with language as one aspect of an artistic practice. I am interested in stories that aren’t necessarily narratives told in one stretch, from beginning to end. My interest is in building, telling, and sharing stories in ways that might be experienced through glimmers and bits or felt in the relational spaces between locations and generations, between the dreams of night and the sensory experiences of day, between the uncanny and the mundane, and between the spoken and heard.
wings walking water is a project and practice that plays in the osmotic space of both the known and unknown and tends to flow backwards and forward in time, moving from location to location, site to site, even as I try to live and work mindful of each present moment and experience . . .
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current project: the poetic and the pandemic
Part two of the poetic and the pandemic project is the video fall into winter. From September through to the end of 2020, I continued to go out text walking in local neighbourhoods here in Calgary, Alberta. And while I wasn’t sure at first, if I would end up writing any new poems from the material I was gathering, and I was even less sure that I could edit another video, I decided to at least be open to the idea.
Actually these past months have been challenging, because of the pandemic of course, but also in other ways. Maybe at a future time I’ll come back to this website and share more about what these past five months have been like for me and my creative process. For now though, I simply want to share this new video piece. It’s 11 minutes, 28 seconds in length.
I hope all of you are finding ways of staying safe and staying well. And I hope also, that there’s much kindness and a sense of wonder to your days.
(Saturday, January 30, 2021)
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After six months of writing haiku and working on this text walking video, part one of the poetic and the pandemic is finally completed. I share it with you here, with the hope that all of you are staying well and finding creative ways to manage through this strange and challenging time.
(Tuesday, September 1, 2020)