Myriam Yates: Échappées, connivences

“I am interested in our relationship to the city, particularly in the expression of our individuality in public space. I use video and photography to explore the tenuous relationship between public and private space. Combining shots of a documentary nature with scripted shots, I bring the two types of space these approaches produce into dialogue.

Following Skol’s 2004-2005 programming on the theme of human beings and built-up environments, my installation concerns the circulation of people in the interstitial spaces of office towers: in and around the building, in the entrance halls, in elevators. These spaces — transitional places between inside the office and the city outside, where the private/public dialectic plays itself out — often serve as an escape hatch. The crux of the installation comprises snippets of conversation captured during the year in the elevators of a building in downtown Montreal. In the elevators, conversations elude the dominance of architectural structures and perspectives, they take on polite or confidential forms. In the installation, they create a soundtrack that accompanies two video projections evoking both the office towers and the negotiation of closeness and distance between individuals in a closed space.”

– Myriam Yates