In-Separable 1.0

Wendy Holm on the Site C Dam, 2016.

In-separable

oil & water

Objectives & Overview:

- performance

- performed multiple times to experiment with documentation of same project

- possibly re-performing in different spaces/publics other than the gallery

- inquiring about re-performing, multiple iterations etc.

What do I know:

- there are different forms of oil in its unrefined state.

- Place-based: BC-specific, site-c is being used not only for hydro-electric power, but for a water resources that will be used in tar sands fracking.

- Site C is a historical plan to re-direct water from CAN to US…(see above video).

What I don’t know:

- what are the forms of unrefined oil, what is each product's refinement process, and where do we experience these products everyday?

- What are the refinery processes involved with petroleum products?

- What is the visual aesthetic of oil between its crude state and its refined?

- stats between fed./prov. $$ spent on Site C, while there is no money spent to assist First Nations and their need for access to clean water.

Resources - Books:

Beautiful Destruction

Tar Sands and Slick Water by Andrew Nikiforuk

Fuel

Resources - Artist references:

Aleesa Cohene works with scent.

Rita Wong's activist and creative writing work

Resources - websites:

https://www.desmog.ca

Develop a working description of my position is on these subjects:

1.a) where do I stand?

1.b). Why do I take that position?

2. What, if any, emotions are involved, senses, philosophy, and experiences?

1.a,b,2.) Sometimes…my positionality is futile, unnecessary, too painful to encounter, a colossal colonial language fails to tongue the depth of my anxiety.

i feel as though I can’t go there, the wound is fresh and fragile...the governing bodies are dissidents of humanity and ecological feedback loops. the government body is cowardly, does not and cannot think present or past, perhaps, only a few moments into the future...time is too immaterial for them and looking ahead means to "re-member" and as I said, they cannot think past, they have no memory. See Lee Maracle's chapter on "Peace" in Memory Serves.

Documentation:

- 3 versions: video still, delete video. (stage)

photographs (stage)

no documentation (with peers during lunch)

Questions for creative process:

materiality:

- what are the smells of different, recognizable petroleum products?

- what edible materials will behave like oil in a glass of water?

public proces:

- What does it mean to perform process, as in, make the process public, as opposed to presenting a (even if only partially) rehearsed performance?

- how does the audience/artist relationship shift as performed on stage, off stage but distinguished as "performer" (how do I curate that distinction), and among the audience directly (eating with my peers during the pot-lunch)

- How does a public process add or diminish the creative practice or validity of a project? does this question perhaps resist the society of spectacle?

- how does the artwork or audience reception shift when performed multiple times?

In-blog references:

- "re-member": Lee Maracle, Memory Serve