The place I seek to go
Artist
Duane Linklater
(Canadian, born 1976)
Date2014
Mediumcoyote fur, garment rack, hanger, flat screen TV, Mac Mini, HD video loop, cables
Dimensions335 × 168 × 52 cm
Credit LineCollection of Remai Modern. Purchased with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts Acquisition Grants program 2016.
Object number2016.4.a-f
Classificationsinstallation
On View
Not on viewWorking in performance, installation, film and other media, Duane Linklater addresses issues of cultural loss and recovery as well as authenticity, appropriation and authorship. The place I seek to go is an assemblage comprised of a video monitor along with a fur skin from a coyote hanging on a garment rack. The coyote fur hangs like a luxury good, or perhaps evidence of its demise, while the video soundlessly shows the artist’s hand. A range of gestures conceal then reveal a past injury to one finger. Linklater’s video recall’s Yvonne Rainer’s first film, Hand Movie (1966), where the bedridden American dancer used her hand to perform the kinds of everyday movements that characterize her minimalist choreography.
Linklater’s hand appears to gesture to the coyote, perhaps in communication. In an art historical context, the coyote also refers to Joseph Beuys’ performance or action, I Like America and America Likes Me (1974) in which he challenged American colonialism by spending three days with a coyote. As an animal indigenous to North America and with deep cultural significance to Indigenous people, the coyote has a powerful symbolic role in both Beuys’ and Linklater’s work. In this work, as in others, Linklater reconsiders oral traditions where the transmission of knowledge, stories or histories is essential to future generations.
Linklater’s hand appears to gesture to the coyote, perhaps in communication. In an art historical context, the coyote also refers to Joseph Beuys’ performance or action, I Like America and America Likes Me (1974) in which he challenged American colonialism by spending three days with a coyote. As an animal indigenous to North America and with deep cultural significance to Indigenous people, the coyote has a powerful symbolic role in both Beuys’ and Linklater’s work. In this work, as in others, Linklater reconsiders oral traditions where the transmission of knowledge, stories or histories is essential to future generations.
