Justine A. Chambers is an artist and educator living and working on the unceded Coast Salish territories of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Her movement-based practice considers how choreography can be an empathic practice rooted in collaborative creation, close observation, and the body as a site of a cumulative embodied archive. Privileging what is felt over what is seen, she works with dances “that are already there”–the social choreographies present in the everyday. Her choreographic projects have been presented at Libby Leshgold Gallery (Vancouver), Culture Days (Toronto), Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), Helen and Morris Belkin Gallery (Vancouver), Sophiensaele (Berlin), Nanaimo Art Gallery, Artspeak (Vancouver), Hong Kong Arts Festival, Art Museum at the University of Toronto, Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery at Haverford College (Haverford, PA), Agora de la Danse (Montréal), Festival of New Dance (St. John’s), Mile Zero Dance Society (Edmonton), Dancing on the Edge (Vancouver), Canada Dance Festival (Ottawa), Dance in Vancouver, The Western Front, and the Vancouver Art Gallery. She is Max Tyler-Hite’s mother.
Early this April 2020, Justine A. Chambers and her colleagues in dance and performance across the country were coming to terms with the need to sequester at home. For artists attuned to states of embodiment, the changes to codes of movement were everywhere. Improvisational modes were evident: the need to be more palpably present in moving through public space; looking less at the phone, negotiating distances with heightened spatial awareness. Movements that might have been seen as hostile or negative – stepping into or crossing the street, donning a mask – became recognized as a gesture of care.
In individual emails with Chambers, her colleagues noticed that these new conditions for bodies moving in domestic spaces and the less-travelled streets allowed for closer attention to the sustaining rhythms of daily experience. From different time zones and with markedly differing amounts of time and attention, emerged a dramaturgy of their everyday actions: recipes for moving in public with children, experiments with restlessness and experiencing time as “lots and none,” simultaneously.
In gathering these research findings conducted in parallel but dislocated seclusion, Chambers noticed the potential of rhythm to transmit between bodies remotely. Each artist recorded a rhythm that connected to their daily circumstance, capacity or situation. For some this communicates the fulsomeness of time alone at home, while for others, 30 seconds of quiet was an eternity. According to the new order, the days seemed to organize themselves in a series of three-hour episodes between waking and retiring.
Chambers’s choreography organizes the sounds offered into an accompaniment for right now, intended to be streamed from this page in real time only. Her edits arrange the collection of rhythms with silent pauses, to give space for the listener to attend to our own tempo. Waking Hours keeps us company, calls out to be with us, to return to the flesh, in the background of our day.
3.25% milk
Stainless steel frothing pitcher
Breville Cafe Roma espresso maker
Darkroom
Bed
Couch
Nursing pillow
Baby
Breast
Cloth
Ceramic mug
Teaspoon
Orange Pekoe tea bag
Honey
2% milk
Electric kettle
Water
Toddler
Shoes
Gravel
Duplo
Hardwood floor
Imogen Keith
Stroller
Outdoor clothes
Shoes
Backpack
Baby granola bar
Water
Sunglasses
Destination
Wooden spoon
Scouring sponge
Soapy hot water
Voice
Ear worm from song: Papa Hobo by Paul Simon
Deteriorated cartilage
Wooden box
Fluorescent lighting
Electric baseboard
Heater
Maple hardwood flooring
Cat litter
Dirt
Hair
Dust
Synthetic bristle broom
Plastic dust pan
Neighbourhood condominium construction
Electric scissor lift
Deck
Running shoes
Right leg
Left leg
Pilates chair
Buttocks
Feet
Hands
Wooden desk with one loose leg
Laptop
USB mouse
Crowds and Power by Elias Canetti
Gravel
Shoes
Breath
Basketball
Basketball hoop
Trumpet player
Traffic
Sink
Water
Hands
Soap
Kapla wooden building blocks
Abandoned block towers
Triple-wall corrugated cardboard storage bin
Hardwood floor
Hands
Plastic makeup pencils
Polyester reflective tracksuit
Carpet
Laptop
Loose slippers
Garbage bins x 3
Plastic bags
Dishwasher
Sewing machine
Charcoal
Metal stool
Drafting table
Yoga mat
Water
Witch hazel
Lavender essential oil
Peppermint essential oil
Spray bottle
Hands
Fingernails
Left hand
Left naked buttock
Justine A. Chambers is an artist and educator living and working on the unceded Coast Salish territories of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Her movement-based practice considers how choreography can be an empathic practice rooted in collaborative creation, close observation, and the body as a site of a cumulative embodied archive. Privileging what is felt over what is seen, she works with dances “that are already there”–the social choreographies present in the everyday. Her choreographic projects have been presented at Libby Leshgold Gallery (Vancouver), Culture Days (Toronto), Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), Helen and Morris Belkin Gallery (Vancouver), Sophiensaele (Berlin), Nanaimo Art Gallery, Artspeak (Vancouver), Hong Kong Arts Festival, Art Museum at the University of Toronto, Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery at Haverford College (Haverford, PA), Agora de la Danse (Montréal), Festival of New Dance (St. John’s), Mile Zero Dance Society (Edmonton), Dancing on the Edge (Vancouver), Canada Dance Festival (Ottawa), Dance in Vancouver, The Western Front, and the Vancouver Art Gallery. She is Max Tyler-Hite’s mother.