Sarah Wendt and Pascal Dufaux share an art practice that takes form in sculpture, media art, installation and dance. Their collaborative methodology seeks to imbue their projects with strange forms of temporality and heightened articulations of labour to draw forward an environment that melds science fiction to reality.
They live and work as uninvited guests on the traditional land of the Haudenosaunee, Mohawk and St. Lawrence Iroquoian inTiohtiá:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal.
Somewhere in the unachieved
2021
Video [available on demand]
21 minutes
A SHORT FILM IN THREE PARTS
Buaahh (eeing) Guuhh!
(the creative potential of an unfinished thing)
Honeyed passage of time,
slipping.
An alternate space.
The wind blows through the pipes.
Many somatic sculptures,
morphogenic materials.
Where the matter of things of the world reveals its essential alchemy.
Borrowed from a work by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, the title evokes the creative potential of an unfinished thing: a partial sentence, a half-finished drawing, a technical glitch, or a failed performance. We are engaging here in a time that is all mixed up; a smooth blend of long ago, present moment and speculative future. A massive barren mountain becomes our collaborator: Being loose, being lost, letting loose. The video was shot in the immense geological formations of the Tablelands in the northwestern region of the island of Newfoundland.
Video preview (55 seconds)
Residencies:
AXENÉO7; Recto Verso; The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery & Parks Canada (Artist-in-residence program); Tangente Danse
Festivals:
Take me Somewhere Festival. Glasgow (United Kingdom), 2021. Curated by LJ Findlay-Walsh.
Screenings:
Tangente Danse, Montreal, Quebec (Canada), 2021.
Sappyfest, Sacksville, New-Brunswick (Canada), 2021.
Antigonight, Antigonish, Nova-Scotia, (Canada), 2021.
Photo: Denis Martin
Performer: Lucy Fandel
Video still
Performer: Sarah Wendt
With the support of: the Canada Council for the Arts; Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec; Confederation Centre Art Gallery; Tangente Danse
A production of Tangente Danse 2021
Artistic direction, music, performance, sculptures, choreography, costumes, editing, colourisation: Sarah Wendt and Pascal Dufaux
Performance and creative collaboration: Lucy Fandel
Video and collaboration in editing: Nina Vroemen
Performances and outdoor filming in The Tablelands, Gros Morne National Park, in Newfoundland: Sarah Wendt and Pascal Dufaux
Other performances: Dominique Pétrin and Bartleby the cat
Lighting design: Sophie Robert
Sound collaboration, sound mixing: moon moon
Light robot programming: Patrice Coulombe
Photo: Vanessa Fortin