Wiped

October 17, 2009
Performance Art

About the Program

Wiped was a site-specific live performance directed by Jennifer Campbell in collaboration with Sven Johansson and Discovery Dance that was presented as part of the LIVE Performance Art Biennale of 2009. Two performers attached to large brooms are swept back and forth across the street-front windows of a large downtown business tower. This staged performance transformed the performers, in combination with the brooms, into active windshield wipers. The audience, both invited viewers and passers-by, were able to view the performance from both the outside of the building, where the brooms and the performers were situated, as well as from the inside lobby, where the performer's bodies were visible smearing across the outside of the window.

Each performer was attached at their waist to the end of a mechanical broom that was controlled by an operator at the opposite end. While the performers transform into the blades of the wipers, the two brooms become the shafts of the device. The brooms (referred to as ES Dance instruments by Sven Johansson) are able to emulate the arc of the wiper blades accurately by controlling the movement on vertical, horizontal, and rotating axes. Running water was rigged to the top of the windows in order to emulate rain running across a windshield, as well as offering lubrication for the performers as they are dragged across the glass surface. After the live performance, the event captured on video and edited with sound was projected back onto the site of the original performance.

Artist

Jennifer Campbell

Identifier

2009.1017 WIP

Collection

grunt gallery Programming Archive

Location

Opus Art Supplies
Dominion Building
100-207 W. Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6B1H7
Unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ/selilwitulh (Tsleil- Waututh) Nations

In copyright. For uses beyond Fair Dealing, research requests, corrections, takedown requests, or other inquiries, please contact grunt gallery: archives@grunt.ca