Coire Simpson
Through my practice, I navigate a fear of the unknown, finding meaning through storytelling. I’m interested in the ways in which we come in and out of being, drawing upon both personal and collective narratives of grief, loss, and healing. My recent work moves between physical and digital environments, using 3D animation and installation to explore the ambiguos nature of memory between virtal and real life spaces.
I believe that ghosts move within and between us. This informs a personal philosophy that embraces encounters with that which is haunted. I consider how ideas of haunting may aid in healing from experiences of loss and trauma, embracing the entangled nature of being and non-being. I’m interested in ways of reconfiguring the past as part of the present, the movment between presence and absence entangled nature of time and space.
Holding places
I was intrigued by Western rituals surrounding death which often deny the experience as collective and ongoing. I believe this is part of the grieving process, in which one or many become stuck in the stage of denial. Parallel to this fracturing of space from time is the continuity and entanglement of the life and death dichotomy.
The movement between being and non-being is lived and understood through the experience of trauma and loss. I considered how these understandings materialize within collective places of healing.
Through digitally rendered environments and animation, I hoped to simulate a state of disembodiment whist forming a holding space for stillness and reflection upon physical and spiritual death.
By integrating animation with installation, I attempted to form a bond or feedback loop between real and imagined spaces, hinting at the mimetic nature of memory and history. I believe digital spaces have spiritual implications and provide a kind of extension of time and space. The slow, cyclical animations may synchronize with the breath, and perhaps the anatomy of these places may integrate with the viewer’s present state.
A Possession of Sorts
This collection of 3D rendered images capture fractured memories, considering clinical environments as a kind of threshold between sickness and health, presence and absence. I’m interested in the ways these spaces exacerbate confusion and disembodiment and the ways in which we haunt these spaces as they haunt us.
These abstractions of spatial memory draw upon the relationship between physical and imagined experience, a kind of dislocation between mind, body, and spirit which stem from loss.
Without Time
Digitally augmented environment intended to simulate an out-of-body experience. Drawing from dissociative experiences, spiritual awakenings, and gameplay.
I believe these experiences are a way of comprehending the entanglement of our internal and external worlds. I understand virtual space as a kind of portal into the collective conscious.
The interactive nature of this work attempts to bring the viewer into a space that can be visited anytime anywhere, existing beyond traditional understandings of time and space.
This Present Little Moment
This video work consists of a figure of a ghost passing back and forth. The animation was projected onto the base of a wall, causing the illusion of the figure being stuck in continuous motion. This work came about through an inquiry into the relationship between space, time, and being and the feeling of being stuck.
I was interested in the purpose of screen savers, the slow, simple looping motions intentionally have a calming effect on the mind, timed be in harmony with the breath. This work both suggests the experience or illusion of being stuck in a caporal form, however, also hints at the possibility of subverting this experience through an openness too, and acceptance of our present state.