Border Sounds, 2011

Alexis Mitchell - Toronto, Canada
Sharlene Bamboat - Toronto, Canada

Sound and Video Installation

Border Sounds is a video, performance and sound installation in the form of a "silent disco" within a parking garage. The work examines notions of territory in relation to nation-states and diasporic experiences. Musical tracks with lyrics referencing the text inside passports are employed to heighten and accentuate the ever-changing boundaries that we navigate daily. These tracks are experienced privately via headphones and accompanied by video projections.  An atmosphere similar to a club or disco is created in the garage and the audience is encouraged to participate, to move in unison with the audio, or enact their own performance in relation to these constructed borders. Created out of a desire to explore the troubling policies entrenched in national and territorial border politics and question access and mobility within those borders, this work reconstructs discourse surrounding notions of territorial sovereignty. While the audience participates in the "silent disco", they experience an engagement with mobility and nationalism, both individually and collectively.

Sharlene Bamboat is a film and video artist whose work centers around aspects of diasporas, critiques of nationalism, and the ways in which the queer body relates to sites of mobility.  Alexis Mitchell is a documentary filmmaker and media artist whose work explores performativity, memory, statehood, space and architecture.

Suitable for all ages