Benveniste and España

Douglas Coupland on the wild:

In Canada, the wilderness is out there – millions of square kilometers of it – and it likes to mess with
your mind. It seduces you with beauty and calm – that’s the bait. You have to be careful with the
wilderness, because one false step and you’re blood, hair and bone. Or you’ve vanished 1.


Nothing is close to anything......
Ritual and repetition affects how culture is created. Two female urbanites step into
the wild landscape of Canada’s north and into a campy constructed narrative. This
act repeats a typical Canadian weekend out in the country presented in all its
banality. A brisk workout into the wilderness, hunting and scavenging for prime
firewood; are they campers? Who else goes out into the arctic air to build a
campfire and roast marshmallows in the middle of nowhere? It all looks familiar and
all Canadians have a story of a similar encounter that binds us together as a
community, as a people, as Canucks.

The plot thickens by the call of the wild, the attempt to communicate with it and in
its deepening perspective of the glistening, snowy landscape that encircles them.
The female protagonists outfitted in protective winter gear are equipped for any
winter scenario and the valuable contents of their handbags. They are after all
carrying significant ‘Canadian Tire’ hand tools; a given for most Canadians who are
equipped for this type of terrain on any given day.

This video work is a collage of the real + fiction. Arranging a composite of multiple
layers [inherent in cultural identity] manifests a new hybrid of parts that fabricates a
new reality.
Is it a fake documentary? Are we portraying ourselves as Canadians? Or perhaps
we are just merely portraying ourselves as we are in the unavoidable; ‘actors’ and
the Canadian experience immersed in an interwoven fate.

1 Coupland, Douglas. Souvenir of Canada, 2004. Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver/Toronto 2004