Video Poem: What Remains

What Remainsis a three-minute poetry film I created to address the issue of “becoming-with” (Wright 2014). In the film, I document two large-scale, public-art spectacles I witnessed in Toronto, as historical markers of collective becoming-with. I contrast super-8mm film footage of the 1984 outdoor public performance “Shibola” at the Bell Trinity Square building in Toronto, by the Japanese Butoh dance group Sankai Juku, with digital video of “A Tribute to Toronto,” Judy Chicago’s 2022 Smoke Sculpture on the Toronto waterfront. I then intercut these images with digital recordings of ruins and relics, both ancient and modern, merging as evidence of life, labour, and loss, embedded with the residue of centuries of human material engagement in the world. What Remains was first presented in a theatrical context in April 2024, at the 11th annual International Video Poetry Festival in Athens, Greece, and in July 2024, at the Female Eye Film Festival in Toronto, Canada.