'No man is an island' Exhibition

No man is an island,
entire of itself;

every man
is a piece of
the Continent,
a part of the main;

John Donne, 1624
Meditation XVII

An exhibition documenting 304 days of my most private and intimate thoughts through daily audio recordings captured on the island of North Uist

Ladyboss Collective
23 Candlemaker Row, Edinburgh EH1 2QG
Thu 4 – Sat 6 April 2019 // 12-6pm

I spent a year doing an Art & Design course in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. When I was leaving Edinburgh, a friend of mine suggested I start making daily audio recordings just for fun. He said start them like this:

Day 1. North Uist. Population 1000. Now, 1001.

So I did.

Every day I recorded approximately 3 minutes of my thoughts. I never intended to do anything with them though I jokingly referred to my ‘listeners’ from time to time. But for that reason, and maybe because I’m an over-sharer anyway, they have no filter – they’re private, embarrassing, and at times so cringe that I want to curl up in a ball and disappear. Some of them are funny, some very very sad, some deeply thoughtful, some extremely happy. They range from descriptions of everyday life, melodrama and tears over one boy that completely consumes me while I’m there, giggles with friends, reflections on my experience with nature, thoughts about creativity, my work, and much much more…

Honestly, I don’t know if they’re interesting to anyone but there’s only one way to find out! I’m committed to revealing my most private experiences because I sincerely believe that my deepest, most embarrassing self is also my most human. It helps me connect with people and enjoy the experience of being profoundly flawed.

So this is an experiment in connection. If I show you my island, will you show more of yours?

A big thank you to Ladyboss Collective for letting me use the space and making this experiment possible.

Photograph by Valaisu

The way to deal with the problem of ‘subjectivity’, that shocking business of being preoccupied with the tiny individual who is at the same time caught up in such an explosion of terrible and marvellous possibilities, is to see him as a microcosm and in this way to break through the personal, the subjective, making the personal general, as indeed life always does, transforming a private experience…into something much larger: growing up is after all only the understanding that one’s unique and incredible experience is what everyone shares.

– Doris Lessing

But listening to the D major, I can feel the limits of what humans are capable of – that a certain type of perfection can only be realised through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect. And personally, I find that encouraging.

– Haruki Murakami