LOVING STRANGERS
Interactive Performance, XPression Gallery, Montreal, QC, Canada, 2011
Loving Strangers is an experiment in establishing the dialogue of trust between the artist and the audience. The show is a game in the darkness, not a dark game, but a unique exercise of moving in the space of unknown together with the artist, step by step unveiling the world of fresh sensorial experiences. It is an opportunity to reinvent the other – the other in oneself, the other opposed to oneself, the other beyond the self – and to expand the space of individual body to more collective forms of physicality. In the performance blindfolded spectators go through a number of physical and psychological ordeals facilitated by the artist that stimulate imagination while leaving the actual experience obscured. Exploring the possibilities of smell, sound, touch and taste Loving Strangers creates sensorial environments that plunge the spectator in a world of unorthodox sensuality and dramatic bodily exercises. Through physical interaction between the artist and the audience a new level of trust and confidentiality is established.