Video

 

Hiccup #1 - 2000

1/8 - Day 1

Video Still

7 channel DVD video: 15 minutes each, silent
photo credit: Emily Brian / video credit: Marc Piccinato

This 7-channel video entitled "Hiccup" is based on a 30 day performance that took place daily between 8:45 am & 9:00 am at Central Tech High School in downtown Toronto. Conceived as an orchestrated "ballet of the ordinary", the work pivots on the play of two differentiated timelines: my standardized routine of carefully choreographed body movements, juxtaposed against the limitless variables of the everyday world.

Everyday for one month I arrived at the front of the school at the exact same time, wearing the same clothes and sitting on the same step. Then as the students began to arrive, I began my performance of a pre-set routine of simple everyday actions. I smoked a cigarette, took sips from my coffee, looked to the left, stretched my leg, adjusted my hat, red the same 5 pages from a book and underlined the same passage etc... Although appearing to be moving and acting in a completely natural and spontaneous way I was in fact, with the aid of a pre-recorded and time audio track on headphones, completing the exact same actions and gestures everyday at exactly the same time. For one month I entered into the normal daily routine of the people around me as a background element... a small anonymous deja-vu experience.
During this month I had 7 days of this performance video taped from across the street, this is what was exhibited, and the effect of each video shows me moving in synch with myself from monitor to monitor while everything else around me is different.

exhibition history>
2003 Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery (Toronto, ON);