Victoria Stanton – Montreal, QC
Aug 6th to Aug 28th, 2010
For the last two years Victoria Stanton has been exploring a traveling performance called Roadside Attractions. Asking questions such as: How do you show a transitional space? Where are the interstices between leaving and arriving? What are our strategies for getting there? Roadside Attractions is an unconventional travelogue that is more interested in the journey and the acclimatization, than in the final, definitive destination.
Having brought this process of site-specific performance for the camera to seven cities and towns both in Canada and abroad (Carleton-sur-Mer, QC; Leeds, UK; Gabriola, BC; Hull, QC; Assemini, Sardinia; Berlin, Germany; Toronto, ON), an exhibition of video and photo Roadside Attractions: From A to B and Back Again will portray the culmination of this series of meditative micro-interventions since 2008. Focusing on the parallels between performance and travel, and on a potentially destabilized relationship to place, this exploration of transitional space examines comprehensive states of “performative consciousness,” investing a performative presence within multiple locations, while addressing notions of connectedness, (dis)orientation, abandon, and transformation.
Prior to the exhibition Stanton will be bringing the research process to Saskatoon in the form of a short residence; visually mapping and documenting a succession of “flash-landmarks” – sites that become instant points of orientation on a variety of routes leading her to and from the place where she’ll be residing. A montage of these micro-performances will become the backdrop for a gallery performance on the night of the opening: projected looped video segments accompanying subtle, repetitive actions, punctuated by inter- textual narration of reflections related to being a body in transit/transition and to ideas of what it means to be, or to call a place, “home.”
