Skate to stay

TITLE : Skate to stay
Performance
DATE : 1993-96
CAMERA VIDEO : Nicole Catellier , Boris Firquet
EDITION VIDEO : Diane Landry

VIDEO

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1997
1996

1995

1994
1993

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- during 3e Symposium en arts visuels de l'Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Amos (Quebec).
- during Sound-Symposium 8, St.John's (New Foundland).
- Espace Virtuel, Chicoutimi (Quebec).
- lors de Vitrines, histoires d'étalage, Musée de la Pointe-à-Callière, Montreal (Quebec).
- Obscure, Quebec city.
- during Mois de la performance, La Centrale/Powerhouse, Montreal (Quebec).
- during II Festival del performance ciudad de México, X'TeReSa Arte Alternativo, Mexico city, Mexico.
- during East/West Action/Performance Festival, Pitt Gallery, Vancouver (British Colombia).
- VU, Quebec city.
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"The most visually powerful and emotionnally succint performance I saw was Landry's. Wearing a pair of ice skates mounted on joined wooden rockers (a symbolic, constraining device into which she had to lace herself at the beginning of the performance), dark clothes and a bicycle helmet, with a peculiar contraption strapped to her back, Landry enacted the span of human life. In the darkened room, the contraption — curved plexiglass and an electric lamp — cast an eloquent shadow on to the wall in front of her : a large-headed human form with luminescent wings. As with a child learning to walk, Landry graduated from tiny, unsteady rocking movements to increasingly long and confident motions, rocking more and more deeply, casting longer and bolder shadows on the walls. At her fullest trajectory, she was making grand, sweeping movements with her body, arching her back and stretching out her arms. Then, gradually, the light dimmed and the movements diminished : Landry slouched into old age, then curled into a fetal position. The light went out, Landry rocked a little more, then was still. Wow. Without words, this artist had created a work of stunning purity and compelling universality." Excerpted from/Extrait d'un texte de Robin Laurence «Stranger in a strange land of performance», The Vancouver Sun, Vancouver, 16 octobre 1993.