two hours at Ancienne Ecole Des Beaux-Arts, Montreal, March 23, 2012
photo by: David Romero, Video by: Pirouz Nemati, Edit by: Zohar Melinek
performers: Alida Esmail, Karoline Lebrun, Emily Schon, Kendall Savage, Eliane Abdellahi, Paula Duffy, Danielle Doiron, Emilia Gallo, Janaki Banting, Elisabeth Racine, Anna Mayberry, Zoe Roux, Emilie L-Choquette, Alexandra Cote, Allie Blumas, Maude Thibault Morin, Claire Evans, Lili Monette-Crepo, Alexandra Cote, Katrina B, and who those i unable to name.
Sixteen females wear red mouthpieces and white bath towels, standing in a row and facing the same direction. They repeat three still gestures: standing, kneeing, and lying on the floor. The performers hold each gesture for five minutes and then move to another gesture.
The gestures in the performance are inspired by gargoyle, a legendary stone-carved grotesque with a spout that normally is designed to convey water from a roof. Mouth serves as the opening for food intake and in the articulation of sound and speech. However, when performers wear the mouthpieces, or when women’s mouth is forced to open, the mouth loses its function. In fact, it silences and disables the women because they are unable to talk when their mouths are widely pulled open. This performance explores another side of the unseen and unspoken—the vulnerability, struggle, shame, and suffering that we are uneasy to share and expose while examining multifaceted struggles of a woman associated with identity, gender, and sexuality in order to reveal the struggle and conflict rooted in oppressed individuals and groups.
