Angelique Jobelle

Poetry, Performance & Installations by Artist Extraordinaire Angelique Jobelle!

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Performance: "Autistic 4"
Widow McDonald's farm, near Hythe, Alberta
June 21, 2005
Maybe it's because Tim pissed me off with his "Ass-tistic" performance, but I really pulled out all the stops on this one. Cow-shit = methane = boom! Who knew?

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Tim crawled out of the woodwork last week to do a performance parodying my "Autistic" series. He's just making an ass out of himself & I'm really glad we aren't together anymore.

Sunday, June 12, 2005

Performance: "Autistic 3"
Route 27, outside Grande Prairie, Alberta
June 12, 2005
Pablo agreed to help me with this one, but I'm not listing him as collaborator because all he did was follow my instructions & didn't provide any creative input. We managed to total both vehicles.

Sunday, June 05, 2005

Performance: "Autistic 2"
Lambert Expressway, Grande Prairie, Alberta
June 5, 2005
I got such a charge out of "Autistic" that I started doing a series of similar works, all exploring the border between control & catastrophe. In this one I set fire to the "fire-retardant" fabric of a rental car while driving in circles around Grande Prairie. This shot was taken (by my new friend Pablo) just seconds before I was forced to jump out of the driver's seat.

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

Performance/Installation: "Autistic"
Final Project, University of Halibut, Alberta
Eaton Street, Grande Prairie, Alberta
May 22, 2005
I hadn't really spent any time thinking about my final project while I was in bed eating percocets, the deadline just kind of came flying up on me & I realized I needed to do something quick. So this just came to me in a flash. I think it had something to do with my "Landlubber" performance, some kind of psychic residue or something. Anyway my mind just filled with the images & sensations of disaster or disasters. All kinds of disasters: tornados, blizzards, ships sinking, bombs going off etc. Maybe I'd watched too many Guy Maddin movies during my bedridden period, taken too many narcotics, had too close a call with my academic career, I'm not sure. Anyway it just came to me that I was very privileged, being white, able to go to college, living in Canada which is pretty danger free really, having both parents still living & still married, and having a small trust fund so I don't have to work at Javacide. I mean, I really had it made & I instantly knew that I had to let someone rear end me on a freeway off-ramp, I had to to this as my final project, a kind of make it or break it type of thing. So I sent out invitations to everyone saying my Final Project performance was going to be at such & such a place at such & such a time, everyone was supposed to wait in the BP station at the foot of the Eaton Street off-ramp & look up the off-ramp at exactly 4pm.

Somehow I timed it perfectly - I had decided not to try to arrange or control anything - it was either going to work out or it wasn't - make it or break it - and it worked out perfectly - I followed a moving-van type of truck till it started to pull of at the offramp (I picked Eaton Street because of all the truck traffic that exited there) then I whipped around it, driving on the shoulder, sped up ahead of it, let it catch up with me near the bottom of the ramp & then slammed on my brakes, letting the truck smash into the back of my car. Off course the truck was slowing because of the oncoming merge with traffic & because of my earlier reckless driving, so the impact wasn't enough to be fatal for anyone. The truck driver was well-strapped in and, as I had anticipated, never in any real danger. The truck's hydraulic brakes worked well & basically the front end of the truck just squashed down on my hatchback, pretty much crushing it. Everyone was absolutely astonished when I jumped out of the car and took a bow.

Of course there was plenty of controversy, but the police couldn't really prove anything, technically the truck driver was at fault for rear-ending me & was happy enough that I (a) didn't sue him (he was an independent operator) and (b) paid him cash for repairs to the minor damage done to his truck bumpers & brakes &c. The University administration was furious but based on the strength of Professor MacLeod's arguments (it turns out he is much more famous & influential than I'd thought!) they allowed this to stand as my final project & - after I finish my incompletes this summer, I'll be able to graduate.