Following their collaborative gathering at the Banff International Curatorial Institute in the spring of 2015, these writers reflect upon works of art they encountered both within, and outside of, the Banff Centre’s collection. Writing about concealed artworks, frequent returns to the Banff Centre, and the minor events that constitute one’s visit, these writers ruminate upon the ways in which these works defy their intended ephemerality, coming to embody a sense of place and history within the context of the Banff Centre.

Valinsky explores the works of Arakawa and Gins, who in 2010 founded the Reversible Destiny Foundation to act as a centre for theoretical collaboration across disciplines and for their architectural practices. The duo out-rightly refused their own mortality instead, and this rejection of death allowed for an intense focus on the present and an increased mental and bodily awareness. What Valinsky terms their “poetics of reversibility,” opens the perceiver-reader of their works to an expanded semantics, a new language that dispels complacency and automatisms, keeping us present and open to new forms of meaning and thinking.