Meeting the Ground

In the midst of meeting the ground I am experiencing a quiet revolution. I don’t know where I am, whether I am in the process of gradually falling to the ground or floating away in the great stream. I don’t know if I am less afraid of death. For sure I am more alive. I sense a wider spread of tingling energy touching beyond what I can see. And that was my wish, the impetus for this investigation. I didn’t want my fear of death to stop me from being alive and flourishing right now. I knew running away and denial wouldn’t work; facing my fear and looking at death seemed risky. I might be overcome by the darkness. I might not be able to continue my life and be happy in it if I let death get huge.

The revolution turns me from my old belief (cherished for its profound reality in my life) of aloneness in life and in the of death, no ma tter how many people are in sight. This project has involved me in unfolding myself. A few years ago I began this investigation. I worked alone. In my falling practice I filmed myself. I was free to try anything. I chose soft ground. I fell in different seasons. I continue this.

Meeting the Ground now involves collaboration in several directions. Five of us have been constructing a movement piece to embody the physicality of the investigation. People who came to help with filming have become performers. Ideas and approaches are no longer only mine. Word thoughts are swept away by a stream which now has a star role. The setting and the action have become bigger than myself or what I had imagined.

– Renée Poisson, 2016

Poisson, a Comox Valley resident who has been practicing art for five decades, is conducting a performance residency prior the opening as she prepares and installs the exhibition.

Poisson’s work is immersive, with an emphasis on dissolving identity through her ongoing experience of walking towards death as an ordinary aging person.  She uses the repeated practice of deliberate uncontrolled falling and video documentation to examine the movement.

Her performance, “We Rise We Fall” is collaboratively constructed with Susan Cook, Ann Marie Lisch, Nicole Crouch, Trudy Beaton and Holly Bright.

In conjunction with “Meeting the Ground” there will be a community exhibition entitled “Falling.” It will include the work of local school groups and ongoing participatory art-making in response to Poisson’s exhibition.

There will also be workshops and all-ages Make Art Saturdays in conjunction with the exhibition.

The workshops, led by storyteller and teacher Margo McLoughlin, will include sessions up to an hour long for children and youth, and longer sessions for adults. The children and youth workshops are booked through school programs. The adult workshops cost $25, and advance registration is preferred.

Exhibitions

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  Falling

  1. Local School Groups

  This is a thematically linked student exhibition in conjunction with the multi-media exhibition “Meeting the Ground”.

  January 22 - March 4 2016
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  Meeting the Ground

  1. Renée Poisson

  In the midst of meeting the ground I am experiencing a quiet revolution.

  January 22 - March 4 2016