June 11, 12 and 13 from 9:30 to 11 PM

 

Victoria Park - Queen Victoria Statue, 57 Jubilee Dr, Kitchener

 

Queen Victoria is a video projection of life stories of as told by seven community members, projected on the statue of Queen Victoria, in Victoria Park, Kitchener.

 

On May 17th and 18th of the Victoria Day week-end just past, seven individuals from the community told their life stories. Each individual was video recorded with two video cameras. A head mounted camera was focused on the face to capture a fixed image of the head and the expressiveness of the eyes and mouth. A second camera was focussed on the torso, to capture the the expressiveness of the hands and arms.

 

The two video recordings were merged into one, to be projected onto the statue and to track and fill in the face and torso of Queen Victoria. The projected video animates the statue, effectively making the face and hands of the Queen those of each individual story teller.

 

Krzysztof Wodiczko is Professor in Residence of Art, Design, and the Public Domain at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He is renowned for his large-scale slide and video projections on architectural facades and monuments. He has realized more than eighty such public projections in Australia, Austria, Canada, England, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States. Since the late 1980s, his projections have involved the active participation of marginalized and estranged city residents. Simultaneously, he has been designing and implementing a series of nomadic instruments and vehicles with homeless, immigrant, and war veteran operators for their survival and communication.

 

 

Gary Kirkham is a Kitchener-based playwright, actor and filmmaker whose plays include Falling: A Wake (Scirocco Drama), Queen Milli of Galt (Samuel French), Pearl Gidley (Scirocco Drama) and Pocket Rocket, written with Lea Daniel. He is an artistic associate at the MT Space, and has worked as a playwright collaborator with the company on several shows including Seasons of Immigration, Body 13, Occupy Spring, and the critically acclaimed The Last 15 Seconds. He has also collaborated with Lost & Found Theatre on Radio Leacock and Inter Arts Matrix on Frankenstein's Ghost. He authored an adaptation of Easter by August Strindberg for the Chemainus Festival. His plays have had over 40 productions across Canada, the United States and the Middle East. Gary was the Blyth Festival’s Playwright in Residence in 2008.

 

The Queen Victoria project has been made possible by Christie Digital and the Christie/CAFKA Artist-in-Residence program. Thank you to Charles Fraresso, Senior Manager, Research & Innovation and Roy Anthony, Senior Solutions Architect at Christie.

 

Video by Lyndon Horsfall. Compositing by Aylwin Lo.

 

A very special thank you to Samad, Jennifer, Lamees, Pouria, Hiba, Amy and Hadi for sharing their perosnal stories.

 

Produced by CAFKA with the support of Christie Digital.