Artist Statement: 'Paths, Pulses' are spread densely between Canada's two largest economic centres, along the railroads that originally settled and unsettled folks. Aesthetically the work drafts associations with paths, roots, the effect that moving water has on land, the beat of one's heart, and wounds left on the surface of one's skin. These visual gestures speak to the experience of migration, settlement, and the land and people that are altered through both movement and stillness. At the same time, the multiple unique paths created by the technique are in argument with the singular path that I am carried across - the one that stretches across divisions of land and people and has placed itself over the aforementioned deviations in accepted cartographic records. The submitted work is in part of a series of immersive-drawings that present cartographic forms created by the influence of factors outside of my control. I sit on the train and let my hand be moved across the page over the course of the journey, allowing all external forces to help determine the result. The undulations of land and air, forces of gravity, train operator's technique, condition of the machine and its tracks, vibrations from the steps of those passing by, and the hand of the recorder are all present in the work. By allowing the recording body to be swayed as indifferently as is possible without removal I am able to capture the tension between myself, the land, and the machines that influence my navigation of these spheres. This presents anything but a straight line between two points nor a smooth bounding around any single discernible form.

Alexander Da Costa-Furtado is a Toronto-based transdisciplinary artist and archivist. Their art practice engages notions of evidence and the act of record creation to examine issues of memory, translation, and preservation.