Wednesdays, Before Piano.

“Wednesdays, Before Piano.” is a video and sound installation developed over a series of weekends spent with my grandmother in Ottawa. Through the close proximity and frequency of these visits, familial dialogue evolved into collaborative performance. The work seeks to affirm that through a process of intergenerational exchange, modes of understanding can be nurtured, and ancestral memory continued.

Using multiple channels of video projection and audio playback, the installation presents stories, experiences, and histories that are not fixed, but instead placed in constant interaction with one another. Examining the mutable nature of memory, questions are raised about how inherited narratives can serve to develop a sense of self, as well as construct the image of a past for which one was absent.

It is through remembering, re-remembering and speech that these histories are rendered active and pasts brought into a present tense. “Wednesdays, Before Piano.” recalls, retraces, and remakes, while finding space for the gaps that occur in the process.

”Wednesdays, Before Piano.” was funded through SAW Video's Jumpstart program.
Installation photos by Mathieu Rioux.

naakita f.k.