Technical Specifications:
An enclosure in the corner of the gallery, what feels like a domestic space, with a rug, a cushion, a table, a floor lamp, and a bowl of mandarines. Two-channel video installation with one film, a video performance, encased in a wooden structure opposite the table, and another video projected on 3 cardboard panels.
Talk to Strangers, 2019, two-channel installation, single-channel sound. Video lengths: 10:24 min and 8:49 min
Talk to Strangers, Lecture performance, 2019, 45 min
Synopsis:
An embodied approach to storytelling, this project starts with an autobiographical story, a street encounter that took place in Vancouver, in 2018, a year after I moved there. What does a story do to our body? How does it sit in our gut, how does it transform, and how does it reemerge or make itself manifest in a future present? This story’s protagonists are a friend, a decorative scroll with “Instructions on How to Create a Livable Community”, a homeless person, a strange(r) woman, a Candy Crush addict and an empty bench with the words “Talk to Strangers” etched on its backrest. In the retelling of this narrative, I expose how encounters trigger us somatically, and reveal questions and apprehensions about the social codes of the streets of Vancouver.
Role:
Installation Design, Camera, Lighting, Acting, Editing, Writing, Performance, Live Storytelling
Lecture performance
In the lecture performance I reenact the story. I use the space of the gallery to recreate scenes of the actual event. The audience follow me as I take them from one corner of the gallery to another. After the live storytelling, we gather in a circle and I read a text, a performative part theoretical analysis part memoir essay about the process that engendered the work.