Abi Hodson

(0:00 - 1:38)

Sendy-Loo Emanuelle: Hi, Abi.

Abi Hodson: Hi.

SLE: How are you doing?

AH: Good, how are you doing?

SLE: Very good. So we're gonna discuss about your piece. So my first question is how did your artwork come about?

AH: Yeah, of course. So I started thinking about this, like this idea of merging my body with the bodies of land that I am in regular relationship with.

About three years, well, longer. It's been a kind of longstanding theme, to be honest, in my work. But this specific body of work started about three years ago.

I had moved to Montreal, was living in Saint-Henri, and I was surrounded by construction sites, which I feel like is familiar in any neighborhood of Montreal. But as I was getting to know this new body of land that I was living with and on, I was thinking a lot about the imprint that my body has on this space and the way that it imprints on me through inhaling the dust as I go past the people drilling into cement as I kind of run my hands along the grading beside the construction sites. 

(1:38 - 2:14)

AH: And I was also, I come from a textiles background. And so I also was getting really drawn in by the textiles of these sites. So they have these giant blue tarps, which are apparently, and I can't cite this, but apparently they're used to kind of decrease our human eye's awareness of the site as kind of as an obstruction or intrusion on our sight lines. So it actually kind of invisibilizes the sites themselves, which I found very interesting.

And yeah, so I started to think a lot about the ways this interaction and how can I express or map this relationship between my body and this space and also what happens when we merge, like what new creature, other being emerges when I attempt to fully integrate my body with this site of disruption and possibility.

Yeah, yeah, I'll leave it there.

SLE: And why did you decide to create the piece that we're inside of?

AH: Yes, of course. So the piece that we're inside of, like as we enter the space, there's a curtain that you kind of peek around and suddenly you're inside this dark, close, intimate space with these very bright, brightly colored, moving, abstracted creatures. And as you look closer to them, you may recognize the shape of a hand or fingers or an arm or a head. And these body shapes are kind of webbed by a, or like defined with a knit structure.

AH: And then as you look closer inside of those shapes, you'll see closeup references to the construction sites that I was describing earlier. And then you kind of can zoom out again and see, be immersed in this kind of tank of creatures. And so I started out in this project by creating green screen bodysuit parts.

That was the central component. And I created these on a knitting machine. So I don't know if you're familiar with what a knitting machine looks like, but they're kind of like a large keyboard, but instead of the keys, they are hooks and latches.

And early computation actually originates, the binary code originates from knitting machines and industrial tapestry looms, right? And so you run a shuttle across back and forth to create each row of knitting on the structure that you're making and you adjust which hooks are available to receive that knit, to change the pattern or the increase or decrease your stitches. So I started there again through my textiles foundation and then started playing with activating these green screen bodysuit parts with my own body, moving them around and capturing that through video. 

And it's a very funny process where I'm standing in front of a blue screen because I need contrast. I need the green screen to actually still show up in the footage. And then I'm often have to position myself a bit awkwardly and I'm wiggling my arm in front of the video camera and making sure that it is capturing the whole, the full arm. And then once I've taken that footage, I started layering it with this footage of the construction sites in my neighborhood, extracting the green screen, a large component of the green screen sleeve and inserting footage of these zones. Yeah, and then layering things, playing all the fun stuff.

(6:26 - 7:36)

SLE: So if we would feel, if we could touch your piece, how would it feel?

AH: If you could touch my piece, it would, the sleeves themselves are like a soft wool. So they're a wool blend and they are, yeah, they're very soft to touch.

And then you would feel the body underneath them, which is firm and squishy. And it's a very kind of haptic and active piece. And so you'd also feel movement under your fingers and the tickling of yarns.

There are long tendrils of yarns that extend from the tips of the fingers of this, of these sleeves. And they get staticky. They kind of statically attach to whatever comes close to them. And it's, yeah, it draws a balance between being very soothing, meditative, immersive, and also energizing and silly. 

SLE: And from what I understood is that in the space, the more we move towards the end of the wall, the end of the room, there is more of these pieces that come alive.

AH: Totally. So this is the newest kind of addition to this piece is that I've made it motion responsive. So as the viewer, when the viewer enters the space, these creatures, I will call them, these creatures are relatively small. And as you move closer to the creatures, you'll experience them moving closer to you.

(8:37 - 9:07)

AH: And so that is again, part of this ongoing exploration of a desire to merge the impossibility of that merging, and the moment in between. So you can also, the projectors are angled so that they also, these creatures also merge over your body as well, but you can't feel it. Yeah.

SLE: And I understand there's a connection with another space that you've also created different components that are the extension of this space here.

AH: Totally, yeah. So I really dance between the physical and material and the digital image, right? So I'm very interested in multiple sensory experiences within my creative work.

And always connecting the body to that. So in the way that this piece, while it is highly colorful and immaterial, it still engages the viewer's body and moving in relationship with it. I then started, with the other piece, I started thinking about what happens when these creatures that I've been learning about, these creatures that represent the merging of my body with the construction sites of Saint-Henri, what shape do they take in the material world? Or what happens when they start breaching the boundary of the wall? And that's what led me into the sculptural work that I've got exhibited in that space.

(10:39 - 11:52)

SLE: And that's interesting because we see in that the other spaces, the sleeves that you were mentioning that we can actually feel and touch and some of the body coming out or some type of creature coming out when we feel and there's like that squishy effect that you were mentioning about the body. Would that be accurate?

AH: Yeah, definitely, yeah. So the window is, it's creating, it's in the window, yes, that is accurate. In the window, I've dressed wooden sculptures, pinewood sculptures in the green screen sleeves that I used in these videos. There is also a kind of play between reality and manufactured narrative in this where even like there are some sleeves in the window that are not present in these videos. And some of the sleeves that were present in these videos, I've manipulated and altered before installing the window between.So there's kind of a cheeky inside joke.

(11:52 - 13:47)

SLE: And how does your piece make you feel? Because we're talking about moving to Montreal and in Saint-Henri and moving around in different spaces of the city, especially encountering like different construction sites. So creating this piece, how does that make you feel?

AH: I feel... in seeing the piece come to life, I feel really excited. But when I take time to like be present in the piece as a viewer, I feel a level of, like I feel a bit of disturbance in the kind of uncanny, uncanny recognition of body, specifically my body and these glimmers of construction zones that are likely to be condos, things of that sort. And yeah, there's almost a, it's kind of contradictory, but like a meditative disturbance is how I feel.

SLE: Can you tell us the name of the piece?

(13:48 - 14:28)

AH: Yes. The name of the piece is called Parallel Loops and I've named it within the context of the show, which is called Peep Show, Parallel Loops, Porous Lines. So this is really contextualized within its relationship to the window between work and within this site-specific show itself. So Parallel Loops references the loop of the video itself, as well as the looping of the knit materials that are constructed from it.

(14:28 - 14:34)

SLE: Thank you so much for explaining your beautiful piece.

AH: Thanks so much for listening.

SLE: Thank you.