Being There

On Thurs­day, I’m head­ing over to Hull (no, it will never be Gatineau to me) to print the pho­tographs for my show at  DAÏMÕN. Its an excit­ing oppor­tu­nity, the crew at the cen­tre is top-notch.

This month is insanely busy. I’m jug­gling my reg­u­lar work, prepa­ra­tions for the move to New York, and pro­duc­tion for three shows for this sum­mer and early fall. All this work, and I haven’t been pro­duc­ing many solid phys­i­cal things that you can actu­ally hold in your hands. The work has all been capac­ity build­ing, prepa­ra­tion, invest­ment and delayed grat­i­fi­ca­tion. I’m really look­ing for­ward to Thurs­day. All that hard work is start­ing to pay off.

Here’s the press release about print­ing at DAÏMÕN:

Jack­son Couse — Relo­ca­tion

In pro­duc­tion from June 9th until June 11th 2010.

Jack­son Couse uses doc­u­men­tary pho­tog­ra­phy as a myth­mak­ing and sto­ry­telling medium. Dur­ing is pro­duc­tion res­i­dency at DAÏMÕN, he will work on six pho­tographs for the upcom­ing exhi­bi­tion Relo­ca­tion at DAÏMÕN’ STUDIÕ  (open­ing Sep­tem­ber 22nd, 2010, dur­ing the Fes­ti­val X).  In Relo­ca­tion, Couse pro­vides an inti­mate inves­ti­ga­tion of empti­ness, both lit­eral and imag­ined. Relo­ca­tion uses human geog­ra­phy to con­struct a visual remem­ber­ing of for­got­ten places.

Jack­son Couse is a visual artist from Ottawa (Ontario) and he is cur­rently enrolled at The Inter­na­tional Cen­ter of Pho­tog­ra­phy in the Doc­u­men­tary Pho­tog­ra­phy and Pho­to­jour­nal­ism cer­tifi­cate pro­gram (Class of 2011) in New York City.

In 2008, Couse’s pho­tographs of objects and arte­facts were included in the book The World From My Front Porch by Mag­num pho­tog­ra­pher Larry Tow­ell. In July 2010, a selec­tion of works from Couse’s series Play­ing House will be included in the inter­na­tional exhi­bi­tion Bod­ies in Trou­ble at Galerie SAW Gallery in Ottawa. A limited-edition book, also titled Play­ing House, will be pub­lished by the artist to accom­pany the exhibition.

The exhi­bi­tion Relo­ca­tion at DAÏMÕN in Sep­tem­ber 2010 is Couse’s first solo exhi­bi­tion, the first to include video, and will include the release of a lim­ited edi­tion artist’s book.

I’m still not clear what a daïmõn is though. I under­stand that it is a spelling of dae­mon, and that Yeats was big on the idea. As far as I can muster, a daïmõn is a sort of guid­ing spirit. I can’t tell, how­ever, whether they are on the side of good or evil, what­ever those may be. I’ll have to ask on Thursday.