An Anvil, a Coil, a Patterned Ocean

Presented by MacKenzie Art Gallery and New Dance Horizons 2023; Brian Webb Dance Company 2025.

'An Anvil, a Coil, a Patterned Ocean' proposes labour, iteration, and automation, each as both subject and performance technique. Using Betty Goodwin and Paul-André Fortier's sculpture-dance collaboration "Bras de plomb" as our scaffolding, we deploy movement as a sonic tool, the work of our own bodies rendering us increasingly obsolete as the sounds we produce take on an algorithmic density of their own. In this space of controlled menace, a soft touch becomes a wail, and we, the artists, pave the way for our own disappearance.

Read Beth Graham’s text-response to the 2025 Edmonton performance.