the woman playing the guitar with the open guitar case in front of her, back pack and shopping bags stashed behind her, asks, “is it theatre?” julianna and i, who have straggled behind as we watch and respond to the street life and the questions of various edmontonians who want some information as to what this strange procession of people with flags and flares and whistles and lanterns and call-response phrases are doing, stop to answer her.
the woman continues, “is it a rehearsal?” we respond by saying it is a kind of street theatre led by one person. the woman wants to know if this is fiction or real. we communally decide this theatre is a fiction, the artist’s fiction who is leading the procession. “her story?” the woman asks. yes her story we say nodding our heads.
so yes, it is a kind of fiction, this parade down jasper street in edmonton. it is as if we are a group of scouts on an urban survival training mission with a very organized and enthusiastic leader who tells “facts” of the colonization of this piece of land from the proud perspective of the colonizer. a colonizer who does not tell the “facts” of colonization from the perspective of the faces and bodies of the displaced aboriginal population who populate the area we move through.
the colonizers “facts” are delivered with an evangelical fervour all the while making sure the congregation are all accounted for and shepherded together like new converts to a religion that requires communal ties. aimée henny brown delivers her sermon standing on a small stool with a music stand in front of her displaying a score of words. wearing a bright orange suit and holding a flare in her hand she preaches to the converted. and a good preacher she is. her congregation responds to her with enthusiasm spouting the appropriate phrases to the preacher’s calls and clearly enjoying her sermon.
there is something decidedly surreal in this procession of converts brandishing lanterns casting candle light and waving high tech reflective flags. at one of the locations where aimée stops to stand on her stool and deliver her speech there is an outdoor screen streaming the news. a woman with an enthusiasm not unlike aimée brown is telling her audience the news of the day. i am struck by how both women compete for the attention of their respective audiences, although aimée brown might not have been aware that on the screen behind her an image of a woman preaching her own sermon was being projected.
i enjoyed this walk, this walk along jasper street. i noticed people and buildings and an active street life in edmonton i had not witnessed before. for although i was not an active convert in the congregation of aimée’s followers, i did let my gaze wander and take in sights i had not previously noticed. it is quite an amazing street with a diverse and shifting clientele. for colonial historians i am sure the “facts” of aimée’s sermon were of interest, “facts” as to what building was built when and who populated the street back in the day. interesting fictions of a brutal and greed centred population who wanted, above all, to take what they could.
we meet outside on the patio. today there are two people from edmonton who join us (like). we talk about the performances of turner prize*, danny gaudreault, and michael dudeck. the artists speak of the relation between artifice and reality, the relation to objects and the relation to audience. i am reminded of how words are used to define, to judge, to hierarchize things. artifice, often associated with the female is probably given less value than reality for example. although i have to wonder what real is. a “toy” gun is still real, isn’t it? i mean, i can touch the gun, take it into my hands, and the gun occupies a physical location in the world. is a feeling of sadness real? how can i quantify this, hold it in my hands. and what of humour? how can i even describe how this sensation is produced? (btw no one else brought up “scooby doo” in relation to the turner prize*’s performance last night. i don’t know, i thought it was a pretty straight forward connection…but in fact, most of the artists seemed to have common references to films viewed i had never even heard of.) yeah, so real and artifice. interesting dichotomy. especially when the artists are dealing with dreams and mythologies. are dreams real? are myths real? and who decides? if i say something is not real does that mean it is discredited? so are these artists “making real” things that are “unreal?” according value to the underside of socially acceptable values?
this is lance mclean. one of the volunteer photographers latitude has documenting the performances. of course, volunteers have other skills than what they volunteer for and lance is an alumni of visualeyez as well as an active audience member. today he braved the morning meeting, and shared some very pertinent thoughts with us all. kinda cool i think.
Fish Griwkowsky spoke to Emilio Rojas about his project for Visualeyez, which he performs this Sunday afternoon:
Part of the project is a pair of sealed letters he and his mother wrote each other, never to be opened. As we walk from the gallery to his hotel to retrieve hers, Rohas discusses how equal they are in the project, and how after working with him a few times she has started to ask questions of his artistic motivations. “I like that we are equal partners. With another performance artist you may have a disagreement and move on. But my mom and I are bound together,” he says peacefully.
“The collaboration began because we were really close and I’ve been in Vancouver for 3½ years,” says Rojas. Besides keeping track of how each other are doing, working together over the past two years has made their relationship stronger. “I have to say this to anyone out there, if you get a chance do something with your mother, whether it’s painting or writing or whatever you can, just do it.
we all know place creates borders, boundaries. we know this through common sense, but here we will also give credit to the philosopher henri lefebvre (la production de l’espace, 1974) who spent a long time thinking and writing about just how this all works. knowing the way space performs us (because we are performance artists who work with the creation of place, space) we decided to head out for our morning meeting to privilege, well, …food. there was some wistful looks exchanged when eggs were mentioned. and so the gang all trooped out to the highlighter diner. like most diners food was the main reason for this diner’s existence, and so, the place was constructed to privilege the serving and eating and getting people in and getting people out function. meaning leisurely group conversations would be out of the question. noise level for one is a factor while eating (eating is a noisy activity, people clink dishes, babies scream, and sheesh, other diners talk too.) so we enjoyed food, and as these circumstances dictate, we conversed with the three or four people closest to us. it was lovely! and i have to say the borscht soup was delicious.
this is jacqueline ohm who is often seen at latitude 53 occupying herself with a self made educational regime. i don’t know if learning how to beam sunshine is part of her curriculum, but if it is i think she deserves an a+.
things progress don’t they? or rather, things accumulate. things like anger, hatred, wounds, scars. and how does one “undo” these accumulations? can they be swept away like in a tsunami, or is the process laboured and demanding of fine motor skills, like twisting and turning cloth to unstitch one stitch of thread at a time to separate one segment of cloth from another? it the undoing as “brutal” as the doing?
we are such vulnerable beings. our skin breaks open, or back grows weary, our heart breaks. barefoot she sits. oh god! i think(she who professes to not believe in god) please protect this woman in her task, for it can only be breaking her heart. for the uniform she is undoing cannot but be related to a body. and bodies and bombs, bodies and bullets, bodies and armoured tanks, bodies and grenades, bodies and barbed wire, bodies and gas, bodies and chemicals, bodies and bayonets, bodies and torture, they do not go together.
helene is so calm in her task, is this why all the emotion comes to me? can i carry this for her? i think of gillian’s performance, her standing on the chair, outpouring some inarticulate communication to some “other.”
i think, this is inarticulate. this act of warfare we wage on each other. how can one articulate that?
scissors come out to cut. cut away one thing from another. separate one thing from another. jews cut away from muslims, cut away from christians, cut away.
i wonder, do we worship death? is war an act of worshipping death?
the sound of thread being torn as one piece is taken away from another. she writes a name for each piece.
