Reclaiming PKOLS (Mt.Douglas)

PKOLS Day of Action

I am very far away from this incredible mountain...but not for long...

I support this movement and day of action. 

In solidarity!

NOTE: Please click HERE for excellent photos, notes and VIDEO from my good friend Frank Noland (Treeline Photojournalism) on this historic and important day.

White Ash 2008

In the summer of 2008 I discovered a strange site: a ring of white ash encircling a rock, hidden under an Arbutus tree in Mt. Douglas Park, Victoria, BC. The letters "AL" were freshly cut into one of the tree's branches.

The topography of the scene was a fascinating contradiction. Ascertaining the details of the aftermath of this rite required getting so close to the cremated ashes as to seem in intimate private contact with another person, and yet the site of it had been so chosen that the view one looked out upon was still vast and expansive. One was somehow looking out and looking in almost simultaneously.

A further point of interest to this memorial site was that the view from it included the literal lookout spot on the top Mt. Douglas. This one private lookout spot was offering a view of another, public one, which is frequented by an unending stream of human figures who gaze out from it in every different direction, totally unaware that from this lookout spot, they themselves are being symbolically observed. The numerous and transitory observers of the one, as opposed to the symbolic sacred one of the other, represent two very different dichotomies which are nonetheless symbiotically interconnected.  

The following imagery and video clips are documentation of the original site and observations made that will eventually become a video/installation for my AIR 2013. Updates, imagery, more video, sounds will be uploaded as the project progresses. 

Ring of Ash. Ceremonial site found in March 2008.

June 2008

Summer 2012

Returning to the Lookout site (with Terra Jean Long) in summer 2012. The landscape had changed and spontaneous observations made.



LOOKOUT Clips AIR 2013 from Kyath Battie on Vimeo.