Jasmine series

In 2007 Compassionate Action Enterprises began the ongoing jasmine series to suggest participatory actions and wanderings to encounter and re-imagine our quotidian environment through poetic means. The first iteration of the jasmine series was the installation and performance work jasmine in winter (2007), followed by the installations jasmine at the castle and to see, without reproach (2009) and navigating ways (2011). In addition to spatial environments, sculptural objects, and performative gestures, works in the series have included dérives and artist’s books.

The character Jasmine is an elusive, knowing being, and a conduit for interactive engagement. An astute, creative observer, Jasmine pertains to parallel realities. Her experience spans the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. She has been witness to innovation and change as well as periods of emotional and physiological defeat. She remembers deep snow and bitter winters, predictable seasons, a time before the ozone layer was compromised. She worries about rising water levels and wonders: who will remain on high ground? She sees poetry and senses music in everything. Jasmine understands silence. She is an interspecies communicator. She has conversations with stones. Jasmine knows the potential of interstices, thresholds— liminal places and states of consciousness.

Navigational kits, developed for the Jasmine series, aid in positioning one’s self in physical, metaphorical and social space to encourage new ways of seeing, perceiving and acting. Each device in the kit carries out a singular function for its user: the compass, to identify position, location and destination; the teleidoscope, to focus attention on one’s immediate environs; the magnifying lens, to closely examine; the kaleidoscope, to unify fragments into a whole; and the chain, to measure from point to point. As a symbol of physical and spiritual repair, a large, glass mending needle is also included.