
AO ROBERTS
Crisis Canon
Site-specific intervention, sandblasting, sound score and performance.
Stages Biennial Plug In ICA, 2019.
Located on the former test pile site of the British-American Concrete company in Winnipeg, Manitoba, this multi-disciplinary project plays with the misinterpretation of historical sites, viewing this unbuilt site as a portal to dream of alternative space-times outside of extractive capitalism. As part of the westward corporate colonial expansion, in the 1950s the BAC speculatively drove piles into the ground to test its load bearing and sinkage. Ultimately, the contract was awarded to another corporation, leaving a strange, neolithic-looking site, with multiple mounds of concentric circles and a large rectangular cube at the centre of the site.
Text sandblasted onto the concrete cube is loosely derived from a mistranslation of Lorem Ipsum, a 1st c. BCE Latin text, used as a placeholder in graphic design. The score uses the form of the canon and forms of vocal modulation traditionally only done electronically.
Live performance featuring sopranos Sarah Jo Kirsch and Zohreh Gervais, Bret Parenteau (electronics) and Doreen Girard (prepared tsymbaly).
Curated by Jenifer Papararo
Photos by Karen Asher and Robert Szcolnicki.








