FRANÇAIS | ENGLISH

The first piece, Standard I was performed at the Canadian Forces Base in Bagotville. Before I started this series of pieces, curator Gilles Sénéchal and I had been asking Canadian Forces Authorities for official permission to present the work in the backyard of the Aviation Museum. This park is located right in front of the military landing strip of CFB Bagotville.

Observation systématique d'un certain nombre de séquences de trois minutes de silence face à un livre ouvert dévoilant une page blanche. Le nombre de séquences de trois minutes silencieuses est déterminé par la division du nombre de décès entranés par l'application des politiques domestiques et étrangères étasuniennes dans différents pays du monde. Chaque tranche de 3000 victimes correspond à une séquence de trois minutes de silence. Le calcul est basé sur différentes statistiques publiés par les ONG les plus connues et par des organismes de surveillance pour la liberté civile. Exemples de statistiques évidemment trop modestes et plutôt symboliques : 5 périodes de silence pour l'Argentine, 5 pour la Bolivie, 3 pour le Brésil, 6 pour le Chili... etc. Tous les trois minutes, je tourne une page du livre et recommence l'opération. Lorsque le livre est terminé, je range celui-ci, en prend un nouveau et recommence. La performance doit durer dix heures de manière ininterrompue afin de couvrir l'entièreté des statistiques officielles. Je demeure installé silencieusement sur le terrain de la base, assis sans bouger sinon pour tourner les pages et repartir le chronomètre tous les trois minutes, dans l'incessante et rugissante ambiance des F-18 s'exerçant avant de partir pour l'Afganistan.

After the request had been processed by the higher authorities of the base, we received the official answer : the authorisation had been officially denied, not because of the «artistic» nature of the action, but because the military authorities declared they were scared that the mass-media could interpret this work as a sort of political activist action. After considering my options, I decided to do it on the base anyway. Just outside of the fences. I chose a picnic table which is placed next to the road to let tourists admire the Military Museum courtyard and the warplane exercises. I seated myself on the single picnic table facing a 2nd World War military jet . I also chose this location because of the soundscape : they were doing F-18 take-off and landing exercises just above this location. The action consisted of timing sequences of three minutes of silence using a stop watch and turning the white pages of an empty book. The performance did not seem explicitly subversive. Of course, it took more or less 45 minutes before an MP officer came armed with a gun and some firm politeness. He ordered us to move out of the territory of the base. A few days later, Galerie Sequence received a phone call from the Base Commander, who asked many questions about the curator Mr. Senéchal and myself. Because Mr. Sénéchal was not available, the officer asked many questions to the people of the gallery about many weird things such as : the colour, make and model of Mr. Senechal's car. Whether we have a cell phone. When one of the Galerie employees asked the officer why he was asking all these questions, his response was even more interesting than we could have imagined: «Because they have black hair and beards. One of the two looked arab.»... I thought that was marking the end of Standard I. However, I soon realised that secret services followed us for probably a couple of days. Then by chance I met a Corporal at a bar in Chicoutimi. He started to court me but it did not work. Then, one of the books I used, mysteriously disappeared ... That definately marked The End of the work.