Jackson Couse

Playing House

Fait Maison (French for "home made") is an art collective and performance series in Gatineau, Québec.

"Initiated by Thomas Grondin, Fait Maison was conceived of as a party, a laboratory and a performance space. Performers Grondin and Hélène Lefebvre had discussed the need for a comfortable and supportive space where artists could try out new performance work; so in August 2005 Grondin opened his home to friends and fellow artists for the first Fait Maison. Over the years Fait Maison has grown to incorporate a vast array of performance artists both emerging and established as well as local and national. On selected evenings three or four times a year an audience is invited to a party in which performances happen at different moments and spaces in and around Grondin’s home."

Anna Khimasia for Gallery 101.

The performances take place all over the house; in the living room, the kitchen, the bathroom, and in a small white room in the basement with one open wall. The performances always have an overwhelmingly intimate quality. There are boots piles up at the door, chips and beer on the kitchen table. It feels like a house party. An unusual gathering of familiar and unfamiliar faces. Grondin's acceptance of friends and strangers into his home creates a rich space to explore performance.

At home with the Fait Maison performance art collective

Inside the house, everything feels too-close. The performances are right there in front of you, only inches away. It seems as though what is happening could not possibly be real. But the performances do, sometimes, reach out and touch you.

During one performance the crowd watched from outside the living room window as Hélène doused herself with a garden hose. Then she disappeared, only to emerge through the front door, hose in hand, ready to spray the onlookers. The crowd recoiled in a moment of panic. Someone screamed, in what sounded like both of terrror and excitement. At Fait Maison, you can't escape. There's no chance to run away.

Fait Maison won't let you turn away, either. In another performance, Thomas fell off the roof. We stood, watching, unsure if he was injured or performing. As time stretched on the tension built. Some debated what to do. Despite the obvious distress, nobody could overcome the inertia of the performance to assist what appeared to be a person in need. Eventually, assistants carried Thomas into the house, stripped him of his clothes, and bathed him. It was disturbingly quiet performance, lonely, dramatic, violent and moving.

The house plays with your inhibition, magnifies your sense of self and the group, twists and distorts social conventions. The performances may be surreal, but they are often all too-real at the same time. Performance does not ask you to suspend your disbelief. It does not ask you to stop being yourself. It is real, here, and now. All it asks is that you are present and aware. Attending Fait Maison is an intense visceral experience.

Fait Maison may be so powerful because it confronts us in a context we are all familiar with. In a sense, we are all performers. A great deal of performance occurs in our daily life. We are fathers, daughters, workers, lovers. We are citizens and neighbors. We are almost constantly performing a role, in the most intimate and public ways. For everyone, but particularily at Fait Maison, the home is a construct, something we perform to each other and for ourselves. Home is fraught with frailties, flaws, and insecurities. Fait Maison busts apart our conceptions of the home, and turns the purpose of a house inside out. Fait Maison puts on display all of our most secret and personal performances.

On View

Photos from Playing House are part of the international exhibition Bodies in Trouble on display now at Galerie SAW Gallery in Ottawa. The exhibition concludes October 3rd, 2010.

• July 22nd to October 3rd, 2010
• Galerie Saw Gallery, 67 Nicholas St. Ottawa (at Daly, the Arts Court building), see Google map.
• Facebook event page for updates.
• Admission is free.

Go to the exhitition announcement page here or Galerie SAW Gallery for more information.

Inclusion of photographs from Playing House in Bodies in Trouble at Galerie SAW Gallery was made possible by an exhibition assistance grant from the Ontario Arts Council.