Pam Hall\u2019s ongoing meditation on the nature of knowledge comes out of a practice deeply invested in close looking and attentive listening. Framing art-making as a way of thinking, Hall offers a sustained consideration of how human knowledge is generated and retained in acts of doing \u2014 i.e. knowledge as a verb \u2014 undertaken by bodies situated in specific places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hall\u2019s projects often evolve through various iterations as image series, bookworks, installations, and encounters that reflect an acutely political commitment to valuing local knowledges and expertise. Her contribution to the interdisciplinary anthology Just Fish: Ethics and Canadian Marine Fisheries<\/em> (1997), for example, was a set of digital images reflecting the viewpoints of fisherman in contrast to the writings of biologists, ethicists, and historians. This carries over into her installation Fragments from the Inshore Archives (1997\u201398), which mapped how know\u00adledge is shared and physically passed between generations. Later works like Hall\u2019s series Re-writing the Body: Towards the Reading Room<\/em>(2003\u20132007) included not only a reading table featuring collaboratively authored books explicitly aimed at gathering female knowledge, but also a series of writing workshops with girls and women who became contributors to the project.
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This preoccupation with knowledge is most evident in Hall\u2019s ongoing work Towards an Encyclopedia of Local Knowledge<\/em> (2010\u2013present). The project features a growing series of visual\/textual scores of making and doing, developed through encounters with holders of local knowledges. Hall\u2019s collaborative approach involves not only an in situ gathering of local, everyday knowledges, but also a commitment to returning her reflections to their sources for revision and enhancement. Installations of panels and boxed sets of unbound pages invite a process of call and response. At its core, Hall\u2019s practice challenges art\u2019s tendency to disengage from broad and non-specialized communities and seeks to redress art\u2019s absence from discourses on knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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