Documentation Study (It's Like Talking To A Wall (2021)

In February 2021, I presented It's Like Talking To A Wall, a live work that involved streaming video and audio through Zoom and YouTube. The audience remained stationary in a classroom while I embarked on a journey, starting from outside, travelling around and through the Visual Arts Department at the University of Ottawa. I broadcast live and recorded video from my phone into a Zoom meeting being projected on a wall. Another projection, from Youtube, on the opposite wall was a live feed of the Atlantic Ocean.   
 
For this Documentation Study, the twenty-five-minute performance is re-presented using the conventions of documenting performance art, namely video and photography. The performances were recorded using Zoom, and that combined footage is split into three videos. Each vignette seems rooted in place, fed by the site where it was made and now re-presented. While not a feedback loop precisely, connections cyclically form between the video, space, and the photographs.   
 
Some of the photos used are blown-up video stills. They trace the performance's physical memory, re-presenting mediated images, as they were initially viewed during the performance. I enlarged a video still, scaled to the 'real' banana peel and placed it on the floor near the basement entrance. It is placed with the beginning of the performance video documentation. This video loop ends when I throw out the peel. It also interplays with graphical elements in the space like arrows and the compost bin.    
 
Other photos, such as those displayed in the original classroom, were taken while performing, albeit outside the viewers' field of vision. These photographs, paired with the text messages, reveal what was unseen during the original performance and offer clues to how it was made within the different (virtual, physical, temporal) spaces. Due to the nature of the building, some confusion may occur through the repetition of windows, pipes and screens. Did this action happen here or elsewhere? The text messages were a strategy for ending the actual performance, finding whose phone number I had and letting them know the performance was complete.    
  
The potential for an audience to occupy the place as the artist and the viewer most effectively occurs in the classroom where the final live transmission occurred, and the performance ended. The monitor displays what the viewer would have seen during the performance in February. Yet, this documentation is viewed from where I performed. It occurred to me, the on-screen actions might compel a viewer to mimic me or investigate the site further. Behind the projector screen rests an enlarged video still of the boat postcard used in the original performance. This still image magnifies the texture of the window, condensation particles and wipe marks, while snow on the ground creates a temporal shift.  Like many moments in the original performance, this detail could be missed.