Paul Couillard considers his work to be the creation of situations. Lately it has involved a keeping of silence, and an exploration of the meanings in silence. Listening is implicit, as are justice-related questions of what it means to speak a silence, to articulate that which is not heard. Paul has constructed a series of 24-hour works. A calendar day is an arbitrary unit, one that is unnatural for the human body to remain wakeful throughout. The duress that the 24-hour performances create allow Paul to experience time, his site, his body and his interactions in an invested, less comfortable, mindful way.
His set of parameters for “Jury” are a 24-hour duration, the Latitude 53 gallery space, and an invitation for audience members to bring a case, a problem, an injustice to him. As a peer, a juror, he will consider it, rule upon it, pass judgment, but will keep his silence, not voice or otherwise express his conclusion. In doing so he hopes to create a framework that creates equality with his audience, disrupting the traditional hierarchy in which the performer has control.
We spoke over breakfast yesterday morning about the life-and-death nature of performance art. How a Growtowski teacher once described it to Paul as, “A person takes a knife and is ready to stab someone or oneself. However the light catches the blade and s/he thinks, “That’s interesting.’” Form captures our attention and we use it to create meaning. As Paul says, “When you come face-to-face with your neighbour, morality enters in. Proximity creates the potential for love.”
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I went in to the room where Paul is performing the piece this morning. I was a bit shocked at how vulnerable I immediately felt within this very calm and quiet environment. I was trying to think of what I might bring to 'trial,' and thought that I was actually quite scared to tell a story for judgment by someone I consider to be a friend, even in this more formal environment. I left without having said anything, and still feel emotional about it. And have been thinking about it since.
I have also been thinking about how easily I accept and articulate my emotional response to things (whether art objects or consumer objects) -- but how jarring my emotion feels when watching or participating in a performance. Maybe that connects to Paul's comments about the morals that come into play when facing a neighbour.
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