Démarche artistique [en français] Thoughts about what I'm doing I keep two reflections posted in my studio : Art is to awaken us to the life we're living, by John Cage and art helps us to navigate our way through life, by allowing us to see more clearly, by Arthur Koestler. These words remind me what I am doing in all this making. In work that is primarily sculptural, paper is often both my subject and material of choice. Writing is integral to my research process. Recently, I began to make text material using cotton pulp. Words that are given an actual physical body and presented as concrete/visual poetry, changing with the passage of time and video that documents their ephemeral installations were central to the works : Poésie de passage, 1996, L'une fait lire l'autre, 1997 and the video Mothertext, 1999. In these exhibitions and works paper texts were suspended in space to interact with the sun and wind, creating shadows and movement; paper words were left to float and mould over time in milk. In current works, I am exploring the horizon as a line for writing in two related but separate projects : a video installation and a series of computer-manipulated, panoramic images that have been ink-jet printed onto my own handmade japanese paper (washi). In these works, the horizon is a site for converging two different methods of describing human and planetary states of being and dislocation. With words on the horizon, I am interested in creating a poetic resonnance, the result of juxtaposing objective and subjective methods of description. Handwriting and computer-generated type suggest these different methods. The texts, partly French, partly English converge, creating another layer of meaning, the poetry rising from the gaps and dissonnances of meanings. As part of a generation of people raised on farms and now living in the city, the changing rural to urban demography of this country is an experience that I focus on in this work. Using the computer combined with weaving I intersplice urban and rural landscapes. I want people who view these works to be reminded that parallel to our own infinite wanderings over this planet, we all stand on a rounded surface that is spinning in space. Ideas of precariousness, movement and balance remain underlying themes in all of my work. My only stability – instability. Karen Trask December 2002 Further texts are available in the catalogue, Parenthesis - Parenthèses