’S’ is a project about transatlantic communication and virtual journeying between two artists who have never met in person. Carly Butler (Ucluelet, BC) and Gudrun Filipska (the Fens, UK) have been communicating since 2016 sharing their respective territories through a series of virtual and postal explorations. The title of the project references the first transatlantic wireless signal sent from Cornwall to Newfoundland in 1901. The message was simply the morse code signal for the letter ‘S’. 

Part of the project involves a virtual map where, tracked by pedometers, the artists’ steps, taken around their respective domestic locations are translated to a digital map where ‘avatars’ walk carefully designed routes between UK and Canada. Butler and Filipska have mapped trajectories to find a variety of half way points between our respective homes using combinations of celestial, nautical and gnomonic mapping techniques, embracing alternative cartographical practices and Google maps alternatives. These maps and charts form part of the ’S’ archive along with a catalogue of objects, artefacts and letters. 

The idea of walking long distances without leaving home is a physical expression of the artists’ current limitations as parents with ties to domestic space, and works with an ambivalence towards assumed identities generated around motherhood. The ’S’ project explores the radical potential present in the circular/fugal and domestic walk (set against male, colonial adventuring narratives), feeding into dialogue about feminist walking and journeying practices.

The project also reflects on ‘non-travel’ as an ethical position, both around environmental concerns, and as a critique of settler/tourist culture that has long been preoccupied with a desire to insert ourselves physically into far away places. Critiquing the idea of the ‘globe trotting artist’ as marker of success, ‘S’ challenges the attendant requirements of money and mobility - reaching out to another part of the world and sending a ‘signal’ to another artist with an isolated practice.