The starting point for this project was incredibly intimate. What motivated you to share the stage with other artists?

At its core this project asks how to collaborate with and continue a relationship with someone who’s gone. Shortly after Jeremy Gordaneer died, in British Columbia, I came back to Montreal because I needed to be close to my community. My friend and close collaborator Rachel Harris very quickly suggested that we go into the studio together —to find a familiar space for work and research, where we could listen to each other, and as a space of support in my grieving process. At the same time, I was reading Performing Mourning by dramaturge Guy Cools, where he studies the performing arts as potential site for metabolizing grief, and in particular in our culture where grief often remains hidden. It was out of these two events that Un-nevering arrived.

I didn’t want to make something autobiographical so having Rachel Harris and Elinor Fueter there helped the process to be less personal, more collective. We have a long history of collaboration, practice, and trust, and both they also had met Jeremy, which was important. Having their presence in the work, they became like sentinels that guarded and supported the space for me. Their role was also inspired by keening—the Celtic tradition of women’s lament for the dead, which was used to assist the mourning process.

The piece hinges on space and sound, and the relationship to the movement and weight of objects. How did you choose the objects you wanted to work with?

I’ve been working with objects for a long time. Inspired by New Materialist philosophy where objects have agency, or as vibrating matter, my work with objects is about listening to what they have to say, and not imposing my will on them. So, I wouldn’t really say that I choose the objects, but rather that most often, they chose me; I call this “when objects wink”. For example, the black balls which I’ve used in other pieces belonged to my grandmother, and carry traces and stories. And before he passed Jeremy was working on an installation called “Weights and Measures,” which used rope and pulleys and where objects moved other objects, so I was also inspired by that. I see objects as our partners. They require a certain kind of attention and care. We listen to them— and they guide us. It’s a conversation… that allows us to decentre ourselves, as we share the space together.

Is that conversation with objects a spiritual experience, would you say, an interaction with the invisible?

Spirituality can mean so many different things; I think it’s a tricky word. Some people might have a spiritual experience with this project, while others won’t. But that’s not explicitly what I’m inviting the public to do, and I don’t want to set up that expectation. I’d rather talk about presence and absence, about what brings us together or what raises again that question of the invisible. What makes absence present, and vice versa? Aren’t the two intrinsically linked? Un-nevering is an attempt to maintain a connection in spite of absence. And, yes, of course, there are other worlds… but it’s hard to find the right words to talk about that. For me, what is important is to create ways to express and approach bereavement.

What’s that space you’re inviting us into made of?

We invite the audience into a space where they can enter into a dialogue with their own relationship to loss and mourning. Bereavement is a common experience, which we will all go through and so it is a place where we can all meet. I think this project offers a frame, a context, a possible container for talking about grief. It’s an invitation to allow ourselves to feel, to share. It’s a space where we have permission to go there.

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