Fox=Cow
(2026)
Fox=Cow is a project comprising of 8071 photographs automatically generated by a wildlife camera, intermittently over a period of two years. I enlisted the wildlife camera, like a subcontractor, to produce photographs for me that I had no time to make myself. As a full-time carer for my mum and minder on the family farm, the camera enabled me to sustain an art practice while I committed time to caring for others. At night, the automated camera blindly, unsympathetically, and sometimes poetically went about its work, relaying fragments of information about the farm in a sequential open-ended fashion.
With its capacity to generate large volumes of photographs in short periods of time, decisions about what to keep or what to dismiss soon became a new thief of my time. Organisational tools rooted in domestic everyday life were drafted in, as an attempt to sort through the digital mess. Mimicking the tempo and pace of the camera settings, a common kitchen timer was utilised to make time-based editorial decisions for me. Another approach sought to round up each individual animal that had crossed paths with the camera once in the last two years. Futile. Another shifted emphasis to occasions when the camera had been used for security. Rather than registering potential intruders or rural thieves, resulting photographs chronicled the nimble movements of cats, hedgehogs or birds as they came and went throughout the night.
After countless and often pointless schemes to configure, order and control, I eventually accepted the insurmountable archive of photographs. I learned to accept their repetitive nature and found ways to tolerate the shortcomings and mistakes. My pathway towards acceptance uncovered a shared set of traits between the photographs and caring where moments of endearment, points in time worth remembering, or rare occasions of time well spent, mixed haphazardly, like cake ingredients, with half-finished jobs, incomplete lists, with repetitive and very often, unseen work. The presentational strategies for this work pay homage to the nonlinear ways in which it was produced and appraised, mostly in bits and pieces, in fits and bursts and regularly, towards the end of the day.
Mirroring the repetitive and often glitchy nature of the camera, text-works also inform this project. These short texts often remain in a liminal state, or sometimes, are worked and reworked over and over again. What began as a practical solution to personal circumstances continues to evolve into an ongoing exploration of technology, labour and care.
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Fox=Cow is a work in progress and was selected by an international jury for PhotoIreland’s, New Irish Works Programme. Further information on New Irish Works can be accessed here.
With its capacity to generate large volumes of photographs in short periods of time, decisions about what to keep or what to dismiss soon became a new thief of my time. Organisational tools rooted in domestic everyday life were drafted in, as an attempt to sort through the digital mess. Mimicking the tempo and pace of the camera settings, a common kitchen timer was utilised to make time-based editorial decisions for me. Another approach sought to round up each individual animal that had crossed paths with the camera once in the last two years. Futile. Another shifted emphasis to occasions when the camera had been used for security. Rather than registering potential intruders or rural thieves, resulting photographs chronicled the nimble movements of cats, hedgehogs or birds as they came and went throughout the night.
After countless and often pointless schemes to configure, order and control, I eventually accepted the insurmountable archive of photographs. I learned to accept their repetitive nature and found ways to tolerate the shortcomings and mistakes. My pathway towards acceptance uncovered a shared set of traits between the photographs and caring where moments of endearment, points in time worth remembering, or rare occasions of time well spent, mixed haphazardly, like cake ingredients, with half-finished jobs, incomplete lists, with repetitive and very often, unseen work. The presentational strategies for this work pay homage to the nonlinear ways in which it was produced and appraised, mostly in bits and pieces, in fits and bursts and regularly, towards the end of the day.
Mirroring the repetitive and often glitchy nature of the camera, text-works also inform this project. These short texts often remain in a liminal state, or sometimes, are worked and reworked over and over again. What began as a practical solution to personal circumstances continues to evolve into an ongoing exploration of technology, labour and care.
__________________________________________________
Fox=Cow is a work in progress and was selected by an international jury for PhotoIreland’s, New Irish Works Programme. Further information on New Irish Works can be accessed here.
