Nothing I Didn’t Already Know
2019
I dreamed that Mikiki and someone and I were sitting on a beach in Hawaii 4 days before the maybe-apocalypse collecting stones and shells. I looked down next to where Mikiki was sitting and saw an amazing collection of beautiful crystals and minerals, and started scooping them into my arms. Mikiki declared that the end of the world had caused huge shifts in the tides, which dredged up some amazing things. I started getting suspicious that some of the crystals had been hand-cut and polished, and then noticed that some of them were signed and dated, and that others had exorbitant prices listed on them, and then that most of them were on a display rack, and then that we were inside a commercial art gallery/gift shop. That was when I realized that we were probably just shoplifting, and Megan made me put some of it back when she realized that it wasn’t just crystals and minerals, but that I’d ‘discovered’ a tiny pair of earrings, one of which was the smallest aqua blue crystal, and the other of which was the word “lie” so tiny I could barely read it, but I secretly held onto my favourite items in the crook of my arm. We gave the whole display rack back to the woman behind the counter and we left, but the doorway was very small and up a rickety set of stairs made mostly of old magazines and flyers, and several couples were trying to get in as we were all hunched over trying to get out the door, but everyone was really polite and friendly and they were all so excited about finding this amazing little gallery.
My current practice focuses heavily on my ten-year catalogue of dreams, exploring the relationship between trauma, memory, and the body, and building on both past work and my ongoing interests in social systems and embodiment. I believe that the gravity of our dreams and their connection to a deeper meaning may be unveiled through re-visiting them in waking life. I’m interested in the potential for transformation, and the opportunity for a close examination of that transformation, in realizing my dreams. It is an experiment in awe and wonder grounded in cynical acknowledgement of the possible. For me, the art lies in unpacking how I might be changed through this process, and how that might change the world.
For Nothing I Didn’t Already Know, I created a stream-of-consciousness performance drawing from concrete images within that catalogue of dreams, each action informing and provoking the next. Coming prepared with objects, specific dream images, and a set of conceptual gestures, I allowed the performance to shape itself within those confines.
Props used within the performance included my car, 25 or so pillows, sheets, and duvets, a couple dozen purses, a suitcase full of water, a bucket full of water, a jug full of water, and several handfuls of crystals and costume jewelry.
This performance was a workshop/capsule version of a larger project performed later in the year in Laval and Montreal titled The Log House and the Ocean. In that work, the two cities represented the dual states of waking and dreaming, the dream world represented by the ocean, and the waking world represented by the log house. For Nothing I didn’t already know, the log house and the ocean were made one; the bedding formed into a bathtub in order to merge waking and dreaming in an attempt to pull dream narratives and dream objects into the waking world.
