descriptions of five early VERB WOMAN performances beginning with
VERB WOMAN: mending
I believe mending is a form of healing. Repairing a hem can be the first step to mending a broken heart. VERB WOMAN began visiting galleries, clinics and social places in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside to sew sagging skirt hems, patch holes in torn sleeves, and replace missing buttons on shirts. For each “mending-aktion”, I sew a button on my own black clothes. An on-going project, my goal is to create a button-covered black suit similar to London Pearlies.
VERB WOMAN: a dance of forgetting
Verbs were performed and videotaped. The silent video of verbs was projected on a wall and the same verbs were re-performed, re-videotaped. This next layer of video was re-re-projected on wall; verbs were re-re-performed, re-re-videotaped; and then that video was re-re-re-projected, and so on. Not unlike the creation of geographical strata (i.e. coal) by pressures of time, weight, history: it was an essay on creation/disintegration. Three days of video became the background to Paul Couillard’s and my execution of a choreography-by-chance actions and improvisational performance. Our verb-aktions were largely drawn from and dedicated to my mother who recently died from Alzheimer’s-related causes.
VERB WOMAN: unravelling (romance and the anthemic)
This anti-Olympic piece employed 2 decks of cards, Edith Piaf hand gestures with Burroughs-style-cut-up song lyrics to explore notions/feelings and form/content without either/or.
VERB WOMAN: a kaleidoscopic history
This investigation of simultaneous time is like the moment you see your daughter’s toddler face in her grown up visage — when you lift your hands from the dishwater and realize they have become your grandmothers’ hands – that still and wide awake moment when you bear witness to then and now (and even the future) all at the same time. It plunders verbs from her personal history/memory (ie. aktions from 30+ years of her own performance history); memories of others’ performances (ie. aktions seen/known thru shared performance art history(ies); Alzheimer’s verbs (ie. verbs collected from her [deceased] mother and others in her mother’s care facility); and everyday kinetics (ie. verbs from her own age-ing body as personal fitness trainer/aerobic instructor/dancer/choreographer with arthritis and many various other injuries).
Verb Woman: a discrete dictionary
An DVD-publishing project of Verb Woman’s 18 verbs with multi-option audio tracks, bonus features, interviews with artists working with projection-performance, etc.