Kim WALDRON

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Kim WALDRON

Participating Project	Exchange Residency Program (Creators from abroad)
Activity Based	Montreal(Quebec)
City	Tokyo
Period	2022.5 - 2022.7

Purpose of the residency

I would like to document what people in Tokyo are doing to fight climate change and create a series of photographs that depict myself joining others in doing these actions. Most of the narratives we create in text and film use the hero as a familiar device to tell a story. This often involves one person fighting villains and overcoming the odds to save everyone. With this project I am interested in deconstructing our hero myth, where my use of self-portraiture and the repetition of myself in the images, points out how impossible or improbable our hero fixation is—one person cannot accomplish the change that needs to happen.

Plan during the residency

• Research the various actions residents of Tokyo are doing to fight climate change
  
• Contact participants for the project and travel onsite to make photographs
• Print photographs from the No Hero project and present them during the Open Studio
• Meet with artists and curators taking part in the artist residency

Activities during the residency

During the residency at TOKAS I worked on a project titled No Hero that explores how people in Tokyo are contributing to the fight against climate change. I joined others to document with photographs this important work that is being done collectively, by many different people. I am interested in deconstructing our hero myth using self-portraiture. My repetition in the images points out how impossible or improbable our hero fixation is—there is no one person who can save us.

Outcome of the residency

My experience of making this project in Japan has made me aware of how much the cultural context of a place influences the form of climate action that people engage in. It has made me want to continue this project in other places to deepen this understanding. The photographs made in Tokyo will be part of a solo show in January 2024 at Expression, Centre d’exposition de Saint-Hyacinthe.

Creator Information