Victoria Stanton, still from an HD video shot in Saskatoon
performance | arrivals by victoria stanton
roadside attractions
For the last two years, in several cities and towns across Canada and abroad, I have been exploring a travelling performance/ process called Roadside Attractions . I became interested in visually mapping my strategies for arriving, trying to literally embody transitional space in order to find meaningful connections to the landscape around me. Investing what I think of as a ‘performative consciousness’ into multiple sites, I track movement between places by means of small-scale public intervention.This has had a significant impact not only on how I perceive my surroundings but also on my understanding of the elusive process of acclimatisation.
Who am I when I’m not at home? Anxious. I’m not a good traveller. A good traveller gets there in one piece. It takes me days to arrive. First my nose, feet, and eyes. Next my hands and skin. Then my head, though still cluttered with cobwebs and clouds. Then my stomach, bundled in knots, brimming with fizz. My shoulders – up around my ears. And finally my heart: wondrous…alert…porous…timid…morose… hungry. Sore. Alone. I unpack my bag. I put some of my clothes on hangers. Others, folded, stay in the suitcase. I get groceries. I put them on a shelf in the kitchen. I buy flowers and scour the cupboards for a suitable receptacle. A dirty Mason jar will do. I separate the stems into two small bouquets. This way it fills up more of the room. I plan a bedtime routine: bring the toothbrush, already smeared with paste – along with a towel, soap and moisturizer – to the bathroom down the hall. The first night is clumsy; I splash water all over my feet. The next morning it’s a little bit better. The following night, I have it down pat. I figure out just how much force to use to rinse my face without flooding the floor and how low to put the heat on the hot plate so as not to burn the rice. I place a few drops of lavender oil on the lamp next to my bed, just before going to sleep. Now, it smells like home. Before I know it, three days have passed… How do I find a sense of home when I am away? Creating familiar spaces and comfort zones in otherwise unfamiliar settings. Attempting a sense of stability through a measured combination of intensely managed micro-routines and unconventional public actions. Familiarity Through Repetition. Repetition with slight changes. Attempting a sense of stability through a measured combination of intensely managed micro-routines and indiscreet meandering.
Is this how I get there? I enter the street. Extending the boundaries of the self into unknown territories. Expanding into the horizon. One corner at a time. One space after another. A succession of in-betweens caught unawares, the places you don’t usually see in the picture. Feeling grass on my hands, cement on my face. Folding into a wall, onto the ground. A handrail, a tree trunk, a metal fence, a rock. Actions form a visual map and become the concrete associations that trigger memory cues: how to get from my (temporary) home to the grocery store, from the grocery store to the gallery, and back again. It becomes a personal lexicon of sites, allowing non-places to become… extra- ordinary. Attempting a sense of stability through measured repetition, creating familiar spaces in now familiar settings. Meandering. Recognising the texture of that building.The sunlight at four o’clock. Brushing my teeth. A fence. A rock. Equilibrium is gradually achieved as the world becomes navigable; the trajectory, processed and ordered, now resembles my bedtime routine.The micro and the macro gently collide. Extending beyond the art context, the deliberate, perforated space between performance and travel creates familiar places; comfort zones for an identity confirmed through repetition. Making so many in-betweens into a whole.
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Is this how I get there? This is how I arrive.
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