Negotiating Spaces is an evolving installation working to continue an inter-generational dialogue about the affect of the railway on individuals memory and identity in Canada. Bringing together Indigenous and settler narratives, this project strives to create an alternate archive of images and collected stories that are not in the history books, rather those that live in the memory of the people and land affected by the railway. Comprised of photography, video, collaborative performance and participatory postcard installations, Negotiating Spaces utilizes the “memory-site”, as a term and platform binding the physical land site and the collected narrative; identifying sacred spaces and locating forgotten memories. I look to further understand the affect of the railway in Canada from an multiple perspectives, rewriting our shared histories together.
Story Line is a participatory installation where the public is invited to write personal stories, on postcard, about the effect of the railway in their community. The postcards move to open up a conversation about contemporary Canadian rail culture, through which we may confront our daily movement, mark memories and re-write history.
Negotiating Spaces has visited: Riding Mountain National Park, Waywayseecappo First Nation, Sandy Lake, Erickson, Dauphin, Winnipeg, Thunder Bay, Sudbury, Nipissing First Nation, North Bay, Wikwemikong First Nation, Manitoulin Island, Mississauga First Nation, Blind River, Toronto.
Artist Bio
Lindsey Bond is a re-settler media Artist, Educator and Mother from Edmonton, Treaty 6 Territory. Bond currently works in Winnipeg, Treaty 1, exploring how daily movement connects us to constructed and lived memory-spaces. Bond focuses her time on community-based projects that foster alliances and collaboration between Indigenous and settler communities. As Indigenous accomplice, she collaborates with artists, artist run centres and youth to create street-level photographic and video installations, postcards and books.
Current projects include:
Negotiating Spaces; an on-going act/ installation of collected stories that talk about the impact of the railway and the shifting ground around defunct rail-lines in Canada.
Bridge Meditations, a video triptych and photographic series where the journey (walking and singing across bridges) is a methodology to investigate the bridge as a safe/sacred space and a metaphor for transformation
Bond’s work has exhibited in Canada including: Gallery 44, Toronto in Proof 20, Latitude 53 Contemporary Visual Culture, Harcourt House Arts Centre and The Richmond International Film + Media Arts Festival. Bond received her BFA in Photography from Emily Carr University of Art + Design and studied Visual Communications in Edinburgh, Scotland.
To view more of her work please visit www.LindseyBond.ca
This project is generously supported by Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Jumblies Theatre, The Inspirit Foundation and ACI Manitoba.
Hi Lindsey, it was lovely to meet you and Keith on the Canadian in July – hope you enjoyed your celebrations! Thanks for sharing your website, it’s so interesting to learn more about the social history of the train in Canada. I’m reminded of the changes in Britain which were prompted by our railway, particularly the adoption of a single standard time across the whole country (whereas before, eg Oxford was 5 minutes behind London) and the effects that ‘sharing our time’ had on creating a shared sense of place and connectedness. Good luck with all your work, and feel free to get in touch if you end up in London.