How does change shape us? As we acknowledge the forces of change that move us from one stage of life to another – loss, relationships, aging, survival, opportunities, inspiration, and more – what does it mean to learn from and change each other? How have you changed?
Design: Véronique Claude
ABOUT
Trophy is an award-winning performance installation that has been touring nationally and internationally since 2016. Audiences explore up to one hundred architectural tents in a public space. Inside each tent is a local community member telling the true story of a turning point in their life. Following each story, audiences are encouraged to write their own stories on colourful transparencies. These are attached to the tents, transforming them into multicoloured, translucent structures. Through each interaction, the installation transforms into a living trophy or monument to the experiences that make up our lives.
Credits
- Director, Producer & Co-Creator: Sarah Conn
- Installation Designer & Co-Creator: Allison O’Connor
- Dramaturgs: Laurel Green and Joël Beddows
Collaborators
Each performance is developed in collaboration with local artists including: Marisa König Beatty, Erin Kang, Laura Teasdale, Peyton LeBarr, Laurel Green, Lisa Anita Wegner, Dustin Harvey, and Change of Address.
Partners
Developed with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, Arts Network Ottawa, the City of Ottawa, Canadian Heritage, and STO Union.
Photos (from top to bottom): Zenon Kai, Alžběta Jungrová, Sarah Conn/Allison O’Connor, Zenon Kai, Sarah Conn/Allison O’Connor
TOURING
Trophy continues to tour to urban and rural public spaces all over the world, appearing in parks, public squares, main streets, ferry terminals and more.
Provocation Ideas Festival (Toronto ON 2022, 2023) • Huntsville Festival of the Arts (Huntsville ON 2022) • About Us! Festival (Zurich, Switzerland 2021) • Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design (Czech Republic 2019) • Worldviews Conference (Toronto ON 2019) • Intrepid Theatre’s UNO Fest (Victoria BC 2019) • Vancouver Civic Theatres (Vancouver BC 2019) • Antigonight Festival (Antigonish NS 2019) • Public Energy’s [in]Sites Festival (Peterborough ON 2019) • LIFT Festival (London UK 2018) • Harbourfront Centre (Toronto ON 2018) • OYR’s High Performance Rodeo (Calgary AB 2018) • Dublin Fringe Festival (Ireland 2017) • National Arts Centre’s Canada Scene (Ottawa ON 2017) • Nocturne: Art at Night and XOSECRET (Halifax NS 2017) • SummerWorks Performance Festival (Toronto ON 2016) • In the Soil Multi-Arts Festival (St Catherines ON 2016) • Nuit Blanche Ottawa + Gatineau (Ottawa ON 2015) • AOE Art Place + Ottawa Mission (Ottawa ON 2015)
Process & Insights
- Developed methodologies for engagement with public spaces as performance sites.
- Crafted considerations on how to create scalable and modular performance structures that can be tailored to diverse sites and communities.
- Created processes for collaborating with diverse community members.
- Fostered national and international networks of community members and artists.
- Revelled in porousness and collective creativity: the creation of work with multiple points of engagement that invite people to share in the creative act, and to see themselves and their lives as works of art.
Photos (top row, L-R): Allison O’Connor, Vojtech Brtnicky, Tim Matheson, Vincent Kember, Tim Matheson
Photos (bottom row, L-R): Dahlia Katz, Tamara Him, Vaiva Bezhan, Tamara Him, Tim Matheson
ABOUT
While Trophy focused on acknowledging experiences of change, Remixed is an urgent search to identify how we instigate change. Remixed is a hybrid performance that can be experienced either remotely or in-person. Participants receive a playlist of music, narrative prompts, and true stories of transformation from all over the globe, personalized for them by our algorithmic DJ and experienced via our custom web app.
Credits
- Director and Producer: Sarah Conn
- Dramaturg & Collaborator: Laurel Green
- Environmental Installation Concept & Flower Installation Designer: Allison O’Connor
- Projection & Cloud Installation Designer: Michaela van Beinum
- Lighting Designer: Guillaume Saindon
- Assistant Lighting Designer: Alexis Gagnon-Clément
- Electrical Designer: Michaela van Beinum
- UI/UX, Graphic Designer: Véronique Claude
- Web Developers: Kieran Dunch, Miceal Gallagher
- Backend Developer: Julien Desautels
- In-App and Performance Sound Designer & Collaborator: Nancy Tam
- Assistant Sound Designer: Charlier Cooper
- Decade Music Curation: AL Connors
- Creative Makers: Robert Simonea, Kris Van Loon, Madison O’Connor, Robert O’Connor
- Disability Dramaturg: Shay Erlich
- Consultants: Hosan Lee, Mutual Design (Lead: christian scott), Frankie Latour
Partners
Remixed is being developed thanks to the incredible support of Artengine, In the Soil Arts Festival, the undercurrents festival’s under development program, the City of Ottawa, Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ottawa Seed Library. Our story gathering partners include the Parkdale Food Centre, Wellspring Calgary, Orange Shirt Day Victoria, and Calgary’s Centre for Newcomers.
Photos (from top to bottom):
TOURING
Remixed is currently in beta. The remote and in-person versions are touring, visiting theatres, galleries, and non-traditional venues across Canada.
- IN-PERSON: Intrepid Theatre’s Incoming Festival (Victoria BC 2023)
- IN-PERSON: In the Soil Arts Festival (St Catharines ON 2022)
- REMOTE: Third Shift Festival (St Johns NB 2021)
- REMOTE: undercurrents festival (Ottawa ON 2021)
- REMOTE: Nocturne: Art at Night (Halifax NS 2020)
- REMOTE: In the Soil Arts Festival (St Catharines ON 2020)
Process & Insights
- Evolved Trophy’s community-engaged story gathering/telling process to reach more people.
- Expanded into digital practice through collaborations with data scientists, UX/UI designers, and developers.
- Explored data and the intersection of quantification and qualification by creating an algorithm that attempts to quantify change.
- Designed a hybrid experience that considers remote and in-person audiences.
- Collaborated with sound designers to shape stories and construct playlists, applying DJ practices to directing.
- Conducted extensive research into listening and the supports necessary for durational listening.
- Experimented with new dissemination models and ways for audiences to engage with performance, including those used in consumer technology.
”Remixed offered me not only autobiographical stories of small participation in big change and but also an invitation to try it out myself. This kind of emergence, specifically planting the seed, is a future-oriented phenomenon. The seed proves a perfect metaphor for the fact that small acts of nurturing and care do the real work to change the world by first changing my world.
PLAY: DRAMATURGIES OF PARTICIPATION
Photos (L-R):
ABOUT
Meet Me in the Yard (MMITY) is an audio installation created in collaboration with five community contributors, each sharing true stories of the personal impacts of incarceration. The story contributors ask powerful questions about justice and restitution on both national institutional and interpersonal levels, and offer visions of a transformed criminal justice system.
Credits
- Created by: Adelaida, Astrid, Jaren, Redwood, Sony, Emma Zabloski, Sarah Conn
- Original composition and sound design: Nancy Tam and Charlie Cooper
- Developed with the support of: Jeni Luther, Allison O’Connor, Laurel Green
Collaborators
Story contributors were located in collaboration with artists and activists working within the Canadian and American criminal justice systems.
Partners
Originally commissioned by the Provocation Ideas Festival, and presented in partnership with the Toronto International Festival of Author’s MOTIVE Festival.
TOURING
Meet Me in the Yard continues to tour to public spaces, and can also be experienced online.
- Provocation Ideas Festival & Toronto International Festival of Authors’ MOTIVE Festival (Toronto ON 2023)
- Provocation Ideas Festival & Toronto International Festival of Authors’ MOTIVE Festival (Toronto ON 2022)
Process & Insights
- Extended ongoing creative inquiry into transformation to new fields, specifically justice and restitution.
- Experimented with new applications of Remixed’s story gathering process.
- Explored intersection of public space and audio installations.
- Created avenues for more active community-informed visioning for the future.