· John G Hampton ·

Please note that I no longer update this site

Theatre from the Jungle is a collaborative experiment in theatre and installation that emerged from the unique landscape of immigration and labour in Brandon, Manitoba. The artists spent two months working primarily with recent immigrants living in Brandon, conducting interviews and workshoping performances built from lived experiences and literary sources. The project begins with selected passages from Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle—a story which documents the struggles of immigrant labour in the Chicago meat packing industry at the turn of the century. Participants rehearsed a script that weaves together the events depicted in the novel and the present-day situation in Brandon. The workshops were then filmed and are presented alongside participant interviews in a multi-channel video installation that gives an intimate yet theatrical representation of a dynamic that has a profound impact on the fabric of the Westman community.

The first part of Theatre from the Jungle presents a reading group consisting of currentand ex-employees of Maple Leaf Foods in Brandon, Manitoba. The group reads from a selection of rewritten passages from Upton Sinclair’s work of fiction entitled The Jungle, a novel which depicts the harrowing experiences of a group of immigrant labourers working in the stockyards in Chicago at the turn of the twentieth century. It is worth noting that, unlike all of the participants, Sinclair’s mother tongue was English, he was not an immigrant, and he never worked in the meat packing industry.

The second part of Theatre from the Jungle presents a group of twelve individuals performing movements common to a hog processing plant, such as ushering in pigs, removing heads, slicing guts, chopping ribs, counting chops, packing boxes, etc. The piece gives a glimpse into the organization of the production line, but more explicitly portrays the patterns of bodily movements at work in the meat packing industry. By subtracting the factory, meat, tools, noise, and protective gear that employees normally wear, the piece calls attention to the singularity of the individual—not as a worker but as a person—as well as to the interaction and cooperation between colleagues. It also gives visibility to the particular form that a body and mind adopt in a highly repetitive production process designed for standardisation and efficiency.

The third part of Theatre from the Jungle presents an installation of eight videos, each featuring one participant’s description of their experiences immigrating to Canada and working in the meat packing industry. The participants reflect on the motivations and circumstances which led them to migrate, and their imagination of what their future in Canada might be like. Most of the interviews were recorded in the participants’ homes. Taken together, this collection of testimonies reveals borader trends about how labour and migration are connected to broader social, cultural, political, and economic realities. It also offers a glimpse into how the international mobility of workers is shaped by both local and global historical forces, and how individuals from different geographical and migratory circumstances think of, and come to live in, a single city in Manitoba.

In “The Blue Pill,” Jennifer Chan uses video, sculpture, webpages, sound, and print to explore her frustrated relationship with radical politics, workplace mundanity, and equality. The exhibition's title is taken from a crossroad scene in “The Matrix,” where the lead character, Neo, is presented with the choice to "take the red pill" or the “blue pill.” To “take the red pill” means he must confront and resist the excruciating reality of human subjugation and exploitation within a simulated cityscape that’s controlled by machines. To “take the blue pill,” would mean he conveniently rejects this arcane knowledge in favour of living out a comfortable yet inauthentic lie. These terms have since been co-opted by online members of Men’s Rights Activist groups who equate their radical anti-woman and sometimes-xenophobic philosophies with “taking the red pill.” Opting to see the world through their lens means opening one’s eyes to how inclusion and equality are actually veiled attacks on men, limiting their freedom for the elevation of women and other marginal groups. Chan’s work undermines this ideology through direct confrontation with its hyperbolic rhetoric; presenting “the blue pill” as a palatable alternative to MRA agendas, while highlighting the commodification of progressive politics as they move into the mainstream. Chan examines how “equality” and “diversity” become buzzwords divorced from their original intent, repurposed for political maneuvering and marketing.

Jennifer Chan Agency, 2017, digital video, 20 min.

Jennifer Chan Agency, 2017, digital video, 20 min.

Jennifer Chan

Jennifer Chan Equality, Video, 14:51, 2016

Jennifer Chan Happy or Not button, 2017, Raspberry pi, google spreadsheet API, buttons, created with assistance of John Hampton.

Jennifer Chan Natural Office Sounds, 2017, digital audio installation, 20 min.

Jennifer Chan Holographic Will, 2017, laser etched acrylic, rock made of foam, plaster, paint and truck bed filler, internal LED strip circuit, led lights

Jennifer Chan White Guilt, 2017,  laser print on tracing paper, 4x5"

Jennifer Chan Stay home, 2017, vinyl adhesive on acrylic, 33"x24"

Jennifer Chan Rather not work, 2017, vinyl adhesive on acrylic, 33"x24"

Jennifer Chan Self-pitying Eeyore (Nice Guy), 2017, limited edition stuff toy with embroidery thread and assorted detritus