#expandedmedia

Our featured MFA this week is second year Performance artist Jacinte Armstrong!

Jacinte is an artist based in K'jipuktuk (Halifax) NS. Her work explores embodied practice through performance, choreography, collaboration, and curation, communicating the experience of the body in relation to objects, materials, sounds and people. She performs regularly with SiNS (Sometimes in Nova Scotia) Dance, Mocean Dance and independently. She was Artistic Director of Kinetic Studio from 2014-18, and since 2015 has been part of 8DAYS8JOURS, an annual gathering of Canadan choreographers (8days8jours.ca). See more of her work on her website: www.jacintearmstrong.com/

How do you see/relate to your studio?

I used to work in a dance studio, and coming to NSCAD I didn't know what or how to relate to another kind of studio. I certainly don't lie on the floor like I used to in a dance studio. These days I work on performances that take place in alternative sites to a gallery or theatre, so I use my studio to store the larger materials I use (there's a lot of big paper), and to try new materials-based explorations. I'm in the Lift gallery, where there's a structure in the middle of the room that was a lift for pianos that were sold in a showroom on the ground floor, and stored higher up. I try to incorporate that into my work too.

Is there an object in your studio with significance/a story? Maybe it's just weird?

I am using some dance images from a famous German choreographer named Pina Bausch. I cut them out of a calendar I had bought at a performance at the National Arts Centre. The images represent ‘dance’ and women in a very particular way. This way of using them allows me to reference their original or inherent qualities without actually doing them. I am constantly negotiating my relationship to dance: what it is for me, what it could be, and what I think people expect it to be.

What are you working on right now?

Surface

Seven Channel Video Installation

Two of three Groups of Monitors

Apart of ‘Human (Adj.)’ Group Show at the Turner Gallery

Documentation of ‘Walking’

Three Channel Video made for Immersive Space

Approx. 8 mins

Edited with Digital Mixer, Adobe Premiere