Un Cadeau, A Gift, About giving away precious shells, stones and curious objects collected over years to connect with people after the isolation of the pandemic, and to give thanks for community and life. 20 minutes approx. Photographer: Annie France Noël. PERFform 23 tour http://www.perfform.ca/
Continue Continue, Surrounding myself with decades of correspondence from family and friends, interspersed with layering soil and sand while continuously humming. Finished by singing the chorus of “Wild Mountain Thyme,” as I held out earth and sand to the audience then let them fall on the letters and myself. 15 minutes approx. Photographer: Annie France Noël. PERFform 23 tour
Carrying a large sack of wooden letters on my back, my shoulders or in my arms, I walked the perimeter of the Saint John Arts Centre, Saint John, NB, stopping, looking, contemplating at various points before resuming the journey. 20 minutes. Photography: Mathieu Léger, PERFform 21
Performing Rituals of Place, A series of solitary performances bringing Bay of Fundy mud with me when travelling—the idea of carrying your home wherever you go. Reykjavìk, Iceland, 2015
Panagea Memories, 2018 Arbroath, Scotland and Wood Point, NB.
I submerged a piece of canvas in the Scottish Sea, brought it home and re-submerged it in the Bay of Fundy to reconnect the separated continents, both with red mud cliffs.
Brooming, 2019. PERFform 19 Biennale tour.
Brooming hundreds of wooden letters within the gallery space referencing the many possibilities of language(s), of writing, of alphabets. The sound made while brooming spoke like a crowd’s buzz.
HELLOS, PERFform 19 Biennale tour, Struts Gallery & Faucet Media Arts Centre, Sackville, NB, 2019. Each audience member was greeted with a HELLO in one of 55 memorized languages.
Text Braid, PERFform 17 performance art tour.
Clapping out a poem in Morse code and pulling out a braid of text from my belly pouch to continue the need to communicate, if only failing. Photographer: Todd Fraser.
In winter, 2017, Mathieu Léger and I did a nine-venue performance art tour of New Brunswick, presented by Galerie Sans Nom. You can view the documentation at the link below. http://www.perfform.ca/2017/03/
Calling the Cuckoo, 2014, 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art, Toronto. Photographer: Henry Chan
A series of short and long actions about language as body, voice, space and movement from the personal perspective of being a mature woman. Each performance short builds into the next using chanting, song, extended vocal techniques, speech, actions from daily routines and life cycles where verbal and gestural languages intersect. From building a poem phonetically through repetitive song, reading a story backwards, thumping my chest to force sound out, bodily spelling words, telling a story with words and onomatopoeia effects, to dancing with paper cut-out words/sentences while singing.
Woven, woven, lost and found, Visualeyez 2016. Photographer: Sandra Der.
Objects found while walking were transformed, given value through storytelling (verité and imagined) – written, spoken and sung.
Remember, Shangri-La Studio Exhibition, Beijing, China, 2012
Chanting + writing “remember” with red soil carried from the Tantramar marshes near the Bay of Fundy where I live. The performance was about carrying memories, being attached to the land, and not forgetting. The final gesture of the performance was eating the soil.
Where the Bee Sucks, 2010, one hour
About how we inhabit our lives and about the particularity of place in our psyches, including video and spoken text with singing, sound making, and original soundtracks by composer Ian Crutchley. The whole reflects sensual, emotional and psychological experiences where verbal and gestural languages intersect in a spatial and sensual world of communication, inclusive of the non-human world. The performance’s allegorical format stretches over a twenty year period in six chapters, including both quirky and serious elements of life.
Will You Promise?, White Rabbit, an open air art project, Lower Economy, NS, 2010.
Calling out questions about promises between people while swinging in a gully with a cape (like a child). Innocence, hope, belief structures up in the air.
Flying into the Wind and 1+1=, Cabaret, Symposium of Art, Sackville, NB, 2010. Language as hidden, revealed, and communicated any way possible.