Projects

John Shipman, details from three Nuit Blanche Toronto installations, 2015-2017

Recent Work

15000 Years of Housekeeping · 2017
Celebrating the ordinary, yet fundamental daily tasks we assign ourselves and share with others — planning, organizing, storing, cleaning and repairing — as practiced on Lake Ontario's North Shore. Housekeeping, John's 12th independent Nuit Blanche Toronto installation, was presented on 30 September–1 October 2017 at St. Matthew's United Church, 729 St. Clair Avenue West, Toronto.

Other installations and site-specific projects

100 Libraries. 99 Books. · 2016
An examination of books and libraries as powerful visual means of human exchange.

The Endless Proverb (EPMOU) · 2013–2015
The Department of Household Sciences & Advanced Proverbs announced the publication of the 300-page, limited-run print version of the 10,000 line poem, The Endless Proverb Model of the Universe by John Shipman, which one reader described as «sometimes grim, sometimes hilarious, always thought-provoking and hypnotic.» Catch an hour or so of The Endless Proverb crawling news-ticker style across your screen at endlessproverb.ca

The Great Journey of a Lifetime: Hold onto the Rope · 2015
A 100-meter, 10-decades long StoryRope, tagged with small bells and the thoughts of people 1 to 100 years old, encouraged visitors to pause and reflect, then add their thoughts to the 100-Year Story Wall.

Dried Beans Models of the Universe from the Department of Household Sciences & Advanced Proverbs · 2014
We sometimes forget that astrophysicists talk about peanuts when they talk about the universe.

Ten Models of the Universe by the Department of Household Science & Advanced Proverbs · 2013
Featuring The Endless Proverb and offering possible answers to the perplexing question:
We are here, but where and what is here?

Caverne St-Clair 20012 · 2012
Re-imaging our present as past in the distant future

Listening to Love: Next time can we choose our gender? · 2011
Exploring gender and sexuality

All Night Long I Mourned Myself: When I am gone what will be said? · 2010
Examining mortality and grief, loss and remembrance

In Search of a Wife in Search of a Husband · 2009
Ideas about love and marriage, in English, Korean and Ancient Greek

The Temptations of St. Clair · 2008
A consideration of presentness in Toronto, Europe in the 1800s and China during the Song Dynasty

Night Light Atlas of Toronto · 2007–2010
A collection of videos shot with a camera-in-motion some of which were featured in drift

Auditoria Illuminatorium · 2007
Illuminating the complex functions of an urban church with light and sound

AS IS: Northern Lights Sanctuary · 2006
A soundscape exploring the hardly-heard and the barely-seen

Related projects

Dragging my video camera down the front steps: 30 years of unconventional camera movements · 2009
A curatorial project at Vtape

Photos · Marcelle St-Amant

  • From F.W. to S.B.A.

    Government [ is ] housekeeping on the broadest scale.

    Francis Willard in a letter
    to Susan B. Anthony · 1898

  • Beginnings

    Odd that we call the end of a rope or chain, the end; while in Greek it is the beginning.

    Geoffrey Madan · circa 1930

  • Five theories of the universe

    Three great scientific theories of the structure of the universe are the molecular, the corpuscular and the atomic. A fourth affirms, with Haeckel, the condensation of precipitation of matter from ether — whose existence is proved by the condensation of precipitation. The present trend of scientific thought is toward the theory of ions. The ion differs from the molecule, the corpuscle and the atom in that it is an ion. A fifth theory is held by idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any more about the matter than the others.

    Ambrose Bierce · 1911

  • Can it be?

    Can the universe be more than we can imagine?

    Edla Puff · 2015