These participatory performances became inquiries into the question of negotiation and consent in relational works. Wanting to consider audience agency, situations were set up in which an audience member could accept (or not) the role of becoming participant. Further, if accepting to participate, deciding precisely how.
[Feature photo: Jussi Virkkumaa]
Photo: Cindy Doucet
Seven Minutes in Heaven
(Nov 2017)
Salle de spectacle du Merlon, Zone Cabaret Su’l’perron, Mercier, QC
The experience from a month earlier in Turku produced a dream-like sequence of movements around the space of the Kåren Centre. Audience members negotiating swiftly among them to make sure my feet didn’t touch the ground (they succeeded!) I was curious: what would this experience be like, in a Quebecois/Canadian context?
Photo: Jussi Virkkumaa
Seven Minutes in Heaven
(Oct 2017)
Kåren Centre, Festival Club HULLABALOO – New Performance Turku Festival, Turku, Finland
Jetlagged and disoriented (having just arrived but without my luggage), I accepted the festival’s challenge to spontaneously perform at the opening. The result: a request to the audience that my feet not touch the ground for seven minutes. Am I ready to take no for an answer – and flow with what happens if people say yes?
Photo: Christian Bujold
Would you do that for me? (Feb 2015)
Espace Cercle Carré, LEGS performance relay event, Montreal, QC
Not wanting to assume that because I ask a viewer to engage, the viewer will, or in the way I expect them to, Will You Do That For Me? took this reflection as point of departure into a short action that, while being done “for an audience” required an active negotiation and empathetic listening in order that the actions be completed.
Photo: Todd Janes
Hotel
(May 2003)
The Holiday Inn, Visualeyez Performance Festival, Edmonton, AB
An exchange for confined spaces. Within an individual encounter occurring in a hotel room, the “audience” (comprised of one person) was invited to choose from a selection of four possible topics. Ensuing interactions explored notions of intimacy, risk and trust, and blurred boundaries between art and life; artist and spectator.
Photo: Andrew Pommier
Please Choose an Item from the Menu
(Nov 2001)
Gladstone Hotel, Reciprocité- three-city performance exchange, Toronto, ON
In a room of the famous Gladstone (before gentrification and renovation would occur), individual encounters took place during which, once again, the “audience” (of one) was invited to choose from a selection of possible topics, among them, a story, a confession, a song, or gift. Strangers sharing close space, and time. 
Photo: VS
Menu
(Mar 2001)
Galerie SKOL, Annual Fundraising Performance, Montreal QC
In a small tent inside a gallery, I experimented for the first time with “intimate” one-on-one encounters. Not wanting to dictate the unfolding, but offering a loose structure nonetheless, each person I sat with was invited to choose a topic from a limited selection as a starting point toward a shared encounter into the “unknown.” 
Victoria Stanton 