Desire Paths, 2026

Participatory performance-workshop

Desire paths is a participatory performance examining the friction between digital mediation and the physical body. The work opens with a solo performance in which the artist mimics systematic labor through rigid, mechanical movements and gestures, set against a projected backdrop of Montreal’s high-speed metropolitan landscape. Using handheld mirrors to refract the projected video onto the walls, ceiling, and audience, she seeks to liberate the body from the digital plane and rigid boundaries. As the performance progresses, these rigid movements shift into a frantic effort to track and ground her own reflection. This struggle to follow a slipping image captures the anxiety of a body attempting to remain present under the weight of a system that demands constant utility. Within this interaction, humor and absurdity become tools of resistance, exploring how presence becomes ephemeral when trapped in a loop of constant production. 

Following the performance, the work shifts into a collective exploration. Participants are invited to intervene in the digital environment by first suggesting videos or photos of places that evoke for them a sense of rigidity or entrapment. Then, using a DIY, green screen setup, participants are invited to record their own movements, gestures, and interpretations of breaking these patterns. These recordings are live-keyed and projected directly into the suggested landscapes, allowing the participants to transform the spaces they wish to subvert. By exposing the technical process and live editing, the work emphasizes community-based accessibility over high-tech polish, centering the body as the primary site of intervention. 

This work was exhibited as part of the Montreal Monochrome XI — TRANSIENT