sLeeP

New Myths \\ Nouveaux mythes (2018)

Installation au Labo d'arts médiatiques, Toronto : La 3e langue \\ The 3rd Tongue ("Glossolalie\\Glossolalia")

Exile Place Migration (2004-2013)

Deleuze & Guattari (nomad quote)

"The nomad distributes themselves in a smooth space; 
they occupy, inhabit, hold that space ... 
Whereas the migrant leaves behind a milieu that has become amorphous or hostile, 
the nomad is one who does not depart, 
does not want to depart, 
who clings to the smooth space left by the receding forest, where the steppe or the desert advances, 
and who invents nomadism as a response to this challenge ... The nomads are there, on the land, 
wherever there forms a smooth space that gnaws, 
and tends to grow, in all directions. 
The nomads inhabit these places; 
they remain in them, and they themselves make them grow, for it has been established 
that the nomads make the desert 
no less than they are made by it. 
They are vectors of deterritorialization. 
They add desert to desert, steppe to steppe, 
by a series of local operations 
whose orientation and direction endlessly vary. 
The sand desert has not only oases, 
which are like fixed points, 
but also rhizomatic vegetation that is temporary 
and shifts location according to local rains, 
bringing changes in the direction of the crossings ... 
The variability, the polyvocality of directions, 
is an essential feature of smooth spaces of the rhizome type, and it alters their cartography" 

(Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaux: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi, Minneapolis: U Minnesota P, 1997, 381-83). 

(I changed 'himself' to 'themselves' and 'he' to 'they' + 'plateaus' to 'plateaux'.)

"My Memory Is This" (painting text \\ texte d'un tableau) 1996-2018

Archive: les années 90 \\ nineties _ Mixed-Media \\ Médias-mixtes

Exposition \\ Exhibition : La troisième langue \ The Third Tongue: oct-déc 2018 - Le Labo d'arts médiatiques, Toronto

bénédiction \\ blessing

Playdate performing at Sa_te_lit's Mots et mondes, July 2018

Charlotte Cornfield performing at Sa_te_lit's Mots et mondes, July 2018

Lilian Ross-Millard - performance - Mots et mondes \ Temporality2 July 2018

with Lillian Ross-Millard

Mots et mondes (Temporality2) July 2018

with Playdate

Mots et mondes (soirée francophone) avec BRAVO-sud - juillet 2018

Fuat Tuaç chante 

Notre deuxième projet Sa_te_lit 's second project

Space of Being

landscape of this now of this then of this was 

this beginning

landscape shifting transforming 
becoming other than what is was

in this land of what had been has been

emerge new forms of belonging

into these times we surface

resurface

become

           

Grace's Story (mid2000s)

ancestral

1

The lakelands west of the Abitibi  east of the Driftwood: this is where the story begins. 
Solidly brought forth: ancestor to offspring  
carried forward through             

          a century

          a land of winter

      peopled by spirit and burden

            command

            fruitful

            carried

 Springtime in their souls  Cold harsh spirit wanting 

      envelopped by the landwaters

      north of the Height of Land

      north of Shield

      claylands flat into

 green muskeg  earth flowing into Great-North-Sea

      flat landwater soul

      delicious fragrant air

      those first few people:

cree   franco/anglo:euro 

those people:us

this is a story of some of them some of us

2

Earlier in the South, Seaforth near the great lake Huron: Was it the Thirties or the Forties? Grace, you were there, fervent of spirit, a flapper, I was told. I’m not sure what that means; but somehow, I’m seeing a woman strong.

The few photos that I do have show a person of vibrancy. You, Jack and Glenn. I try to make sense of the relationships. Told that you were married to one of those brothers: my grandfather’s brothers. One looks like me . The blood flow of generations - to me, to this new century. 

I figure maybe he was like me, too -not such a good choice if it’s about Loving Women. 

I could see it in one of my mother’s brothers, and there it is in my mother’s uncle. 

Things are different now. I’m sorry it wasn’t so for you, Glenn, nor you, Uncle                  

(but that’s another story). This is Grace’s story, really.

I asked my mother’s oldest sister, about you this summer: 
to find out about you, about who you were.

She told me about Glenn joining the army during one of the wars -the second one, I guess. Did he ask you, or did he just go? I’m thinking, from hearing the stories, that it was probably the latter. You were left then, with the children, with your hunger. So you dated. Alice mentioned something about servicemen. And then the children being taken away.

 

  It was a different time. Maybe Glenn and you wouldn’t have married  if things had been different for him

 and for you. You could have found a man truly capable of loving you. You could have been the person you wanted to be. And he, the person that he needed to be.

(This is all speculation on my part, of course;

      but the story does seem plausible. I’ve seen it in my own lifetime -close to home.)

  My favourite photograph of you is the one with the big toothsome smile, your 1920s hair. I see a baby’s leg in the corner of the photo -possibly a doll.

 The verdant lushness in the other  photos tell me the setting is Seaforth or Goderich -some Victorian garden, at an ancestral home. (I’ve driven through there once, but not to stay.)

  Your estranged son visited you in the nursing home

       when you were older, is what my aunt told me. She lost touch with him.

    Was that him in the photograph,

                   that chubby baby leg in the corner?

              Grace, your story is not finished.