Kayak Catapult: Test-Fling

Title:Kayak Catapult: Test-Fling
Time: 2019      

Size: varies, kayak 13′ x 24″ x 18″
(kayak has adjustable height and length via the catapult components)
Materials: beach-found: washed ashore sit-upon kayak, tent string, tent stake, plastic, marsh-found: door/hatch latch, rope, free-pile found: flexible flag rods and hardware, canvas fabric and straps, roadside-found: plastic floor moulding, trash-found: lifejacket, paddle, conduit, hardware, roofing tine, houseboards, plastic extinguisher mount, bicycle wheels, event tent metal tube, yard-sale found: survey tripods

Details (condensed):
Kayak Catapult is a machine meant to attempt to launch communication over borders across divides. It is a working contraption, capable of rolling or floating, engineered with a catapult component used to fling messages over walls, across rivers that divide, through barriers of communication. Kayak Catapult, is a large, odd, low-tech contraption potentially ill-fitting to its task. At the same time there is a willingness to persist, to keep trying, pushing through what seems unimaginable and impossible, awkward or ridiculous.  It is my hope that through perseverance there is momentum through difficulty.

Details (expanded):
Within Kayak Catapult exists my wish to launch communication over boundaries and across divides. Kayak Catapult is a working contraption, built to adapt, capable of rolling or floating, and engineered with a catapult component used to fling messages over walls, across rivers that divide, through barriers of communication. I use this sculpture to explore my feelings and modes of operation regarding circumstances that seem impossible, insurmountable. I carry with me a tinge of defeat, existing as awareness of dysfunction, unpredictability and uncertainness. I embrace the potential of misaligned trajectories, launches that fail, and the necessity of multiple attempts. Test-Rolls, Test-Floats, and Test-Flings become in part preparedness drills, training, tests of endurance and fortitude. Operating Kayak Catapult is cumbersome and a bit precarious; it pushes the limits of my physical strength, safety and comfort levels. I acknowledge the ridiculous essence within Kayak Catapult, a large, odd, low-tech contraption potentially ill-fitting to its task. At the same time there is a willingness to persist, to keep trying, pushing through what seems unimaginable and impossible, awkward or ridiculous. It is my hope that through perseverance there is momentum through difficulty.

While in the gallery Kayak Catapult is in dry dock; an altered survey tripod holds the boat stationary and elevated in a 3-point supported position. The angled legs of the tripod mimic the structure and function of the jack stands, poppets and boat blocks that hold watercraft in suspension while on land in the boat yard. In general a boat in dry dock seems to be held in an awkward, motionless and stalled position, suspended as an object and also halted in purpose. In a boat yard each boat, with exposed out-of-the-water hulls, is balanced and precariously blocked and shimmed into an odd static limbo on land while in for repairs or to wait out the off-season. I embrace the awkward, held in standstill, essence of dry dock as a concept, I am also interested conceptually in the information inherent within the nature of this tripod. The markings on the tripod point to its history as a survey tool establishing official land, airspace and water boundaries. Together these elements enhance Kayak Catapult’s use as an awkward tool in which to attempt to launch communication across boundaries. These attempts use momentum and perseverance to hold onto purpose, trying to push through what seems hopeless, insurmountable.