Bearing Witness

Kemi Craig

Victoria Park. Performances at 9pm and 10pm.

Bearing Witness Movement Workshop

A series of free workshops leading to a performance at Art in the Open. Led by Victoria (BC) based, interdisciplinary artist, Kemi Craig, the workshops use improvisational dance, sensory responsive technology, and audience engagement to amplify the connection between performativity and spectatorship.

WORKSHOP 1: Wednesday, August 23, 6-8pm
This workshop will focus on movement, using techniques from improv dance, Black social dance and everyday gestures.

WORKSHOP 2: Thursday, August 24, 6-8pm
This workshop connects the previous witness bearing movement exercises with responsive technologies using sound and light sensors. Using performers bodies as instruments (percussion, voice, etc.), these responsive technologies visibly illustrate the intersections between witnessed and witness and how we respond and influence each other.

WORKSHOP 3: Friday, August 26, 6-8pm
Workshop three is a rehearsal for the performance, integrating the work with movement and responsive technologies with ways to interact with the audience.

 Kemi Craig is a film and dance artist living and working in the Lekwungen and W̱SÁNEĆ territories also known as Victoria, BC. In her practice, she uses community storytelling, images and movement to investigate embodiment and futures of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour) communities. Her performances and installations play with performance, expectations and critical spectatorship as a way of embedding audience engagement and subjectivity. A recent graduate of Emily Carr School of Art and Design with a Master of Fine Arts, Craig has collaborated on numerous projects with Dance Victoria, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Legacy and Flux Gallery.

Project curated by Charles Campbell

Bearing Witness is a multi-sensory live performance/performed installation which uses dance, sound and light to explore what it is to see and to be seen. Led by Kemi Craig the project questions the boundaries of performer and audience, subject and spectator. 

This project is presented by the Black Cultural Society of PEI & the Confederation Centre Art Gallery.