Rita McKeough, Long Haul, 2007, performance and installation. Photo credit: Tara Nicholson.

Rita McKeough, Long Haul, 2007, performance and installation. Photo credit: Tara Nicholson.

Rita McKeough Performance:
Informal Architectures

Long Haul is a performance which originally took place in the downtown area of Toronto and in the Ontario College of Art Gallery. Accompanied by a motorized tree, the artist will comb the downtown area of Banff looking for fragments of natural material like leaves and branches found lying on the sidewalks or streets. These fragments will each be tagged with a sound chip circuit and plugged into the dirt below the tree, allowing the voice of the fragment to be heard as it is transported back to the Walter Phillips Gallery. 

As the artist arrives at the gallery with the tree, all of the light power switches and plugs will respond by moving and talking to the leaves and branches. The fragments will be grafted onto the walls using drywall gauze tape and will be plugged into power creating a chaotic and uncontrolled chorus of overlapping voices.

The artist will plug the tree into its battery charger and then she will embed herself into the wall and regenerated for 40 minutes. Long Haul will continue as an installation piece for the rest of the exhibition. The viewers entering the space will trigger the sensors and activate sound and movement.
 
Long Haul re-imagines a relationship to nature within the context of the built environment. The project examines an architecture that attempts to supply the needs of its inhabitants and draws comparisons to the natural world's effort to survive within the city.
 
Technical Assistance - Robyn Moody