FLOAT I & II

2009

Float I & II was an interactive performance developed for the White Rabbit Open Air Art Festival in Red Clay, Nova Scotia. Structured as a guided tour of the ponds located throughout the festival grounds, the work examined authority, risk, participation, and the production of knowledge through performative encounters with landscape.

The performance unfolded in two parts. Participants were first led to the smallest pond on the property, where they received a guided orientation that combined factual observations with fabricated information concerning the pond ecosystem and its inhabitants. Visitors were warned about potential hazards while being presented with a mixture of credible and unreliable environmental knowledge, blurring distinctions between expertise, speculation, and fiction. The textile work Hair Net (2005) was installed within the pond environment as part of the performance setting. The second component, Float II, took place at a larger pond where participants were invited to undertake a series of water safety exercises before being granted permission to swim. Those who volunteered were instructed to wear handmade flotation devices constructed from wine corks and crab apples and were guided through a sequence of training procedures designed to demonstrate safe aquatic practice. The system (intentionally) failed, rendering absurdist performances comparable in motion to drowning.

The flotation devices separated from their wearers and drifted across the pond while participants sank beneath the water's surface, exposing the inadequacy of both the equipment and the procedures intended to ensure safety. Through humour, participation, and deliberate malfunction, Float I & II examined the fragility of systems that promise security, while questioning the authority of instructional structures, environmental expertise, and institutionalized forms of risk management.

WhiteFeather was invited to return to White Rabbit in 2011 as a Mentor Artist, funded by Canada Council for the Arts, and was also invited to participate in the Soley Cove Legacy Project in memory of White Rabbit's Founder, Tom Young, also funded by Canada Council for the Arts.