Caroline St-LaurentTandem
Courtoisie des athlètes, 2015
Tandem is a performative video portrait of national-level para-cyclists Shawna Ryan and Joanie Caron, who have been working together since 2015. Shawna is a skilled cyclist who is visually impaired, and Joanie, her sighted guide, is also an experienced cyclist and coach. In a long sequence shot, we see Ryan and Caron biking, while discussing their experience of high-performance sports. This portrait aims to gain recognition and visibility for the pair, who, as female paralympic athletes, receive little media coverage. In the context of this residency at OBORO, I will pursue research on accessibility in art and sports for visually impaired people. In collaboration with Shawna and the Institut Nazareth et Louis-Braille (INBL), we will realize several versions of the video adapted to the most common types of visual impairment. We also intend to implement different modes of accessibility within OBORO’s communications and exhibition space. In addition, with electroacoustic music composer and sound engineer Stéphane Claude, we will create an audio experience that reproduces certain types of sensory compensation developed by Shawna, as someone who uses her senses differently than a sighted person.
Residency from August 21 to 28, 2019, and from June 16 to 19, 2020
Courtoisie des athlètes, 2015
In her multidisciplinary, performance-based practice, Caroline St-Laurent brings together art and sports within a feminist perspective. For St-Laurent, sports, and its various rules, disciplines, contexts, codes, and modes of accessibility all form a breeding ground for questioning our culture of performance, as well as the stress and inequitable relationships it breeds.