Les V’là

A multidisciplinary exhibition and performance at Antoine Sirois Gallery, University of Sherbrooke, QC, September 2021.

Two themes link the exhibition to the performances: borders and transmissions. The Canada/U.S. border, (Canada’s only border), and the longest shared border in the world, is examined in terms of its physicality, demarcations, guardedness, and legality. Transmissions, radio transmissions, specifically, do not follow the same rules as political borders, but are controlled nonetheless. Transmissions are unseen, they are received, they have a radius which is interrupted only by geography and the power of a signal’s amplification. They represent the ethereal quality of listening, and refer to the power of listening as a political tool to affect societal change.

Les v’la is Québécois argot which roughly translates to “there they go” or “there they are”. It’s a reference to the holiday classic La guerre des tuques in which two groups of kids engage in an epic battle for control of a snow fort. As a title it speaks to the proximity and strangeness of having neighbors across a metaphorical wall, even across the street, as it is in Stanstead. And yet the reality that everything across that line is differentiated in terms of law, language, dialect, currency, attitude, is both profoundly mysterious and a matter of routine.