A Levitation for Calgary 2012

Enacted for the M:ST Performative Arts Festival in Calgary on Thursday 18th October 2012. Photography: Stacey Watson.

I asked the artist community of Calgary to support the work by donating a lamp for the evening, to enable the levitation to happen.  

A Levitation for Calgary is a durational performance, in which there is a pair of images: one ‘live’, and one mediated, via a camera obscura.

The performer in the live action lays face down engaging an active pose, attempting to lift as much of the body from the horizontal surface as possible.

This action is (per)formed in front of a pinhole camera obscura. With the aid of light from the donated lamps, and the mechanism of the camera, the viewer is able to witness the fragile image of a pale figure, hovering face-up, in short, a levitation.

Levitations are an act of faith. By lending a lamp, the network of people in Calgary will lend their support, and declare their belief in the project, and thus physically and metaphorically make the performance happen.

A Levitation for Calgary continues the investigations of the (A) Play of Three Magic Particles: Light, Dust, and Photographic Grain, a body of work which investigates matter, mediation and duration through performance and the body, photography, and drawing. The project explores futility, failure, and success through what is lost and gained in making and re-making, interpretation, misinterpretation and translation. The works often utilised the conceptual and physical construct of the pinhole camera and camera obscura, to create images that are often transient, elusive, and inverted, yet very physical.