THURSDAY MORNING May 25th Part A

photo: Suzanne Caines in RELOCATION

Part A: Chat with Suzanne Caines

RELOCATION is a very touching work that,
in fact, cannot be touched.
This is why discussing RELOCATION easily seguays
into the role of documentation (esp. video)
in performance art.

When I watched the performance, my automatic response
was that I was disturbed the general public didn't know
they were being videotaped.
But almost immediately this thought was re-informed by
the mall architecture and the pervasive amount of surveillance
in all malls and in most urban space.
If Big Corporations can watch and listen to us talking
in front of Birk's Jewellery and La Senza Lingerie,
then why not Suzanne or you or me?

Watching Suzanne in the mall is to see a professional-looking
survey worker engage with the general public.
In reality, she is asking them questions that may or may not
engage them in a discussion about home
along with their feelings/values around the idea of home/community.
It is stunning how many people are eager to enter a moment of
intimacy with Suzanne while surrounded by mall-people traffic
and cues for commerce. Individuals often tell her deeply touching stories.
Her performance testifies to our need for social contact
and connection.

Suzanne made her first performance THE BLUE HAMMER
in a hardware store in London, England, in response to living
there for a year in relative isolation with only shopkeepers to chat with.
It is her experience and understanding of being the lonely outsider
that resonates in BLUE HAMMER (asking hardware store shoppers
to test 3 hammers in exchange for a blue plastic one she made herself)
and in MEATLOAF EXCHANGE (giving homemade Canadian meatloaf
slices to rural French seniors wwhile traveling with a local vendor).

Suzanne's work is both relational and intervention performance.
In RELOCATION she is moving farther from object-making and references
to commerce. She is plunging deeply into human exchange.
The exchange with the public is touching to hear/watch
on video documentation but is even more powerful to hear
these stories re-told by Suzanne.
The power of this work lies inside the artist herself.