THIS PLACE

Film running time — 6:35 minutes
In collaboration with Alyssa Bistonath

Excerpt from Tiffany Schofield’s curatorial essay, It can only be this place:

Scarborough’s physical features have come to define much of its worth in the eyes of outsiders, but what captivates us is not easily understood by viewing alone. It’s difficult to articulate the power of this place, how it radiates from spaces where nothing in particular is happening. It exists as a feeling, what we might call qualia –instances of bodily and perceptual experience that are ineffable, intrinsic, and personal. How do you describe a sensation to someone who has yet to experience it? Analogy can only take us so far. This is a place that needs to be experienced haptically.

We can sense it in the vibration of cars and busses that roar above as we rest under the overpass. We feel it through our backs, pressed against the cool concrete, trace it with our fingertips as we follow the contours of deepening cracks. Shading our eyes from the sun that sparkles on the creek, we understand: where there is movement above, we have movement below.

*photos by: Toni Hafkenscheid