Vicissitudes
Inkjet prints on outdoor vinyl
68" x 119" (173 x 302 cm) each
2019-2020
Vicissitudes is a year-long billboard series exploring ideas of performance without the presence of live bodies. The project emerges from adaptations of textual material from the 19th century text The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations, which comprises a seemingly exhaustive list created by French writer Georges Polti to describe and categorize all possible dramatic situations that may structure a story or performance. Out of the 322 sub-categories introduced by Polti in this volume, six situations are selected and typeset for each billboard, arranged in list form as if to suggest the sequence of events in an act. These situational descriptors suggest ways of looking, offering to the reader a pair of lorgnettes through which the surrounding neighbourhood can become animated, and the goings-on of its people playfully subtitled.
Texts accompanying Vicissitudes:
Two Women by Jaclyn Bruneau
The Perfect Crime by Jacquelyn Zong-Li Ross
Commissioned by Mercer Union, Toronto, 2019.
All photos by Toni Hafkenscheid.
