Throughout the Summer Institute, we'll be bringing you Bite Sizes which is sort of an episodic mini studio visit where we get to know bits about what the participants are up to and a bit about themselves. OK, in this episode we speak with Letch Klinhoch who is a writer, artist and arts administrator. She also started the free access artist book library, Also As Well Too.
Maybe its probably a good thing to appear and present yourself as being confident. And sure, if you happen to be the person overseeing a team or maybe the same is true if you are a parent just so your kids feel a kind of confidence, security, and ease. But as Kinloch mentioned during our conversation, it is always scary to be vulnerable and it sucks to live that alone. Maybe, it would be nice to talk and share that and know that other people feel vulnerable. Perhaps, a balance of faking it to you make it and leaping in with your eyes closed and being vulnerable when you need to as Kinloch describes is a way to do it. “I think if you are sensitive person at all then that is always a negotiation with yourself in your head. I guess I’m saying I’m crazy but I think we might all be. Even you, she declares to me and we both laugh. Yes, its true of course we are all a little nuts and in some ways feeling outwardly vulnerable can be productive but I wouldn’t say the latter is much different.
"I never like to think too much about what I was like outwardly because that would make me too aware and inauthentic. But you do want to be aware of how people are perceiving you and what they think your motives are because other people are thinking about it." Shortly after she tells me this I find myself distracted by what looks like a decapitated giraffe shaped pin Kinloch wears on her shirt. I ask her about it and she describes to me the story of how the pin suffered the same fate as a similar giraffe she use to wear. "Its hard to have a long neck that’s why I identify with a giraffe" she asserts and we both laugh.
Kinloch discusses all this with me because of how tuned in she is about her relationship to any group setting/community setting like that of the Winnipeg art scene. “I’m in it and every time I think I have my foot in it I’m so wrong.” But she also sees it as just life in general. She talks about the double edge of being part of a community, its open-hearted side as well as its parasitic nature depending on how one looks at it. So many things are like that, she indicates. It can be about the art community or it could be about anything at all. It all comes back to the perspective of whether you are doing something helpful or useless. It is this contrasting sizes of being part of something or working towards something that surround Kinloch’s INFEST/INVEST concept she’s been working around during the summer institute.
Kinloch has been looking at this study of beavers she came across. It talks about beavers sort of investing in making their dam based on a perceived leak or running water. The beavers build and build and kill themselves because they recognize the sound of water she explains and at some stage it turns into the opposite of the intention.Throughout the institute she’s been trying to workshop these ideas that are mainly notes into something she can concretely write about. She’s been thinking about this pretend doctor with no medical training and how helpful to people this character could be even if it had nefarious purposes. So she’s been writing a story about that and sees it as playing into this same concept as well. "I, being a hypochondriac, know I have all this medical knowledge and I think that a lot of the time people just want someone to listen and hear what they are going through. I think about what qualifies a doctor, many of them don’t listen to you. A lot of them don’t even look at you. Sometimes I think I’d be a better doctor than a lot of the doctors, then I think about how much harm I could do at the same time. I think it’s the same as invest and infest. I think that's how our society is."
Maybe its probably a good thing to appear and present yourself as being confident. And sure, if you happen to be the person overseeing a team or maybe the same is true if you are a parent just so your kids feel a kind of confidence, security, and ease. But as Kinloch mentioned during our conversation, it is always scary to be vulnerable and it sucks to live that alone. Maybe, it would be nice to talk and share that and know that other people feel vulnerable. Perhaps, a balance of faking it to you make it and leaping in with your eyes closed and being vulnerable when you need to as Kinloch describes is a way to do it. “I think if you are sensitive person at all then that is always a negotiation with yourself in your head. I guess I’m saying I’m crazy but I think we might all be. Even you, she declares to me and we both laugh. Yes, its true of course we are all a little nuts and in some ways feeling outwardly vulnerable can be productive but I wouldn’t say the latter is much different.
"I never like to think too much about what I was like outwardly because that would make me too aware and inauthentic. But you do want to be aware of how people are perceiving you and what they think your motives are because other people are thinking about it." Shortly after she tells me this I find myself distracted by what looks like a decapitated giraffe shaped pin Kinloch wears on her shirt. I ask her about it and she describes to me the story of how the pin suffered the same fate as a similar giraffe she use to wear. "Its hard to have a long neck that’s why I identify with a giraffe" she asserts and we both laugh.
Kinloch discusses all this with me because of how tuned in she is about her relationship to any group setting/community setting like that of the Winnipeg art scene. “I’m in it and every time I think I have my foot in it I’m so wrong.” But she also sees it as just life in general. She talks about the double edge of being part of a community, its open-hearted side as well as its parasitic nature depending on how one looks at it. So many things are like that, she indicates. It can be about the art community or it could be about anything at all. It all comes back to the perspective of whether you are doing something helpful or useless. It is this contrasting sizes of being part of something or working towards something that surround Kinloch’s INFEST/INVEST concept she’s been working around during the summer institute.
Kinloch has been looking at this study of beavers she came across. It talks about beavers sort of investing in making their dam based on a perceived leak or running water. The beavers build and build and kill themselves because they recognize the sound of water she explains and at some stage it turns into the opposite of the intention.Throughout the institute she’s been trying to workshop these ideas that are mainly notes into something she can concretely write about. She’s been thinking about this pretend doctor with no medical training and how helpful to people this character could be even if it had nefarious purposes. So she’s been writing a story about that and sees it as playing into this same concept as well. "I, being a hypochondriac, know I have all this medical knowledge and I think that a lot of the time people just want someone to listen and hear what they are going through. I think about what qualifies a doctor, many of them don’t listen to you. A lot of them don’t even look at you. Sometimes I think I’d be a better doctor than a lot of the doctors, then I think about how much harm I could do at the same time. I think it’s the same as invest and infest. I think that's how our society is."
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