The Burden 

The Burden invites spectators into a darkened room one at a time, where an arrangement of mirrors and a pair of headphones await them. The soundtrack is made up almost entirely of vocals sung by the artist, layered, and processed.

The listener hears an individual trapped at the threshold of making an I-statement, caught in the infinite complexities of this word, traveling through the vast pleasures, lamentations, and solitudes of the ego. The "I" is sustained, uninterrupted over seven minutes, and as it stretches, a constantly shifting musical score emerges, transforming the colour of this vowel through a spectrum of wordless emotions.

The Burden is accompanied by an editioned concertina book work that notates the tenor vocal line as a band of shifting, shimmering colours.  

The first staging of The Burden took place at the solo exhibition Legacy at Dazibao, Montréal, in 2010. A new iteration was presented at the Frankfurter Kunstverein in the exhibition Per Speculum in Video in 2013.


Critical writing about The Burden includes “Miroirs Trompeurs” by Marie-Éve Charron in Montréal’s Le Devoir.