Paul
Couillard
(Toronto, Ontario)
"UN"
Paul Couillard as part of "4 Cardinals" Saturday September 27, 2003, noon - 9 pm Toronto, Canada
I was thinking of both English and French in titling this piece "un". In English, the prefix 'un' refers to all that is actively (even if unconsciously) negated, as in unseen, unfelt, or unrecorded. In French, the article 'un' refers to one, the unified whole, and its sound is like a grunt, a root human syllable. I was looking for a way to unify at least two (and possibly more) understandings of myself, to resist the fragmentation of our consumer culture and also to focus and direct my own attention or awareness to include what I might normally fail to acknowledge. I was anxious to be a part of the 4 Cardinals project, but participation presented a basic problem. I was already scheduled to spend the day at a lobbying conference on behalf of Ontario artist-run centres. Attendance was important for the organization I run, Fado Performance Inc., not to mention my obligations as a Board member of the hosting organization, ARCCO (Artist-Run Centres and Collectives of Ontario). It took me some time to come up with a set of actions that I could feel comfortable approaching as a performance while still fulfilling my administrative responsibilities. I was interested in the 4 Cardinals project's foregrounding of "a dialogue between each human fragile subjectivity ... with the objective of raising questions from our common ideals and differences in a specific time frame." How could I participate in this? How could I intertwine two activities that are each significant to my self-understanding, but normally positioned as separate and distinct? I was also interested in the project's formal elements, its focus on duration and a specific time across the geography of the planet. I decided that I would record a sound from each minute of the nine hours, writing my observations in a notebook. I was particularly interested in seeing what subjectivities would surface from this recording. What would I manage to 'catch', and more importantly, what would catch my ear? Surely this recording would be able to reveal far more about me, as the recorder, than it ever could about what I was recording. The influence of the conference, which is after all a place for talk, had a profound impact on the resulting document -- which is primarily a text of spoken words. I chose to identify the speakers where possible, using first names. Recording was a repetitive task that probed to be exhausting, making demands that I failed to fulfill. There are a number of minutes for which I was unable to make a recording, and so these gaps also form a part of the recording, transcribed below.
12:00 "one does affect the other" (Tracy) 12:01 "I've been dying to ask this" (Jewel) 12:02 "assess ... merit" (Tracy) 12:03 "five thousand, three thousand, two thousand dollars" (Tracy) 12:04 "do you have a list of professionals to recommend to us" (Laura) 12:05 "compass consultant" (Carolyn) 12:06 "you don't know where to start" (Carolyn) 12:07 "we lose information that hasn't been recorded" (Jessie) 12:08 "a huge waste of time" (Gary) 12:09 "thanks for putting up with me" (Tracy) 12:10 "priority community" (Tracy) 12:11 "spring rolls" (Jewel) 12:12 "the one that has the two rooms" (Jewel) 12:13 "out of date now" (Carolyn) 12:14 "wanting to get the hell out" (Jewel) 12:15 "commit" (Jewel) 12:16 "share" (Jewel) 12:17 hum of the bathroom fan 12:18 water flushing 12:19 "a festival in himself" (Gary) 12:20 - 12:35 unrecorded: in transit 12:36 "recorded" (Jewel) 12:37 "broke down" (Paul) "cooperated" (Paul) 12:38 "one point five megapixel gross" (Gary) 12:39 "why are you writing backwards" (Sandra) 12:40 "significance of the compass" (Sandra) 12:41 "what determined the accuracy of what we record" (Paul) 12:42 "dancing to the beat of our own drum" (Tracy) 12:43 "the special only comes one way" (waitress) 12:44 "a quality" (Jewel) 12:45 "a day to have good noodles" (Sandra) 12:46 "I've got you under my skin" (Sarah Vaughan recording) 12:47 "an association for years" (Gary) 12:48 "amount of time" (Jewel) 12:49 "pretend you're not there" (Sandra) 12:50 "raining" (Tracy) 12:51 "that's fine" (Danielle) 12:52 "to relax" (Tracy) 12:53 "tour" (Sandra) 12:54 "ramp up" (Gary) 12:55 "networking" (Paul) 12:56 "efficiencies in being one person" (Gary) 12:57 "physical" (Paul) 12:58 "the drive" (Gary) 12:59 unrecorded 1:00 "split off" (Gary)
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"Art is the demonstrated wish and will to resolve conflict through action, be it spiritual, religious, political, personal, social or cultural." Alastair MacLennan
