July 11, 2014 - Along the St. Lawrence River in Verdun. Victoria invited me to join her on a path that she often enjoys near her home. She also chose this location because her recent participatory walking performance, Bodies of Water (2014), occurred here. [Image/audio credit: Pohanna Pyne Feinberg]
BIOGRAPHY
Victoria Stanton is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher/curator/educator working with live action, human interaction, video, film, photo, drawing, and writing. Exploring within diverse media, while the outward results of her practice manifest in various forms, performance is the invariable core of her research. Her time-based work includes performance for stage and for the camera, infiltrating actions in public spaces, and one-on-one encounters in intimate contexts. Investing a performative presence and consciousness within multiple spaces/times, she continuously underscores the complex aspects of “transaction” and the possibility for transformation. Considered a pioneer of transactional practices in Quebec, Stanton has presented exhibitions, performances, interventions, and films/videos in Canada, the U.S., Europe, Australia, Japan and Mexico. Her first book Impure, Reinventing the Word: The Theory, Practice and Oral History of Spoken Word in Montreal (conundrum press, 2001), co-authored with Vincent Tinguely,chronicled a vibrant artistic movement via interviews with over 75 artists. Her second book, The 7th Sense, co-authored with the TouVA collective (Sylvie Tourangeau, Anne Bérubé and Stanton), draws upon a profound exploration of “the performative” in performance art (SAGAMIE édition d’art, 2017).
REFLECTIONS TO WALK WITH
Does walking help you solve problems or come to realizations? Are there specific places that are more helpful to you than others?
What are your sites of significance and how would you guide somebody who has never been there?
Are there things or beings that you encounter on your walks that you feel connected to and have now become a part of you?
Is walking a practice of cultivating an openness to the everyday unknown for you?