What Is Love Video Installation
2.5hrs (8min sample), digital video, 2015-2017

WHAT IS LOVE

What Is Love has been created in response to standardized understandings and definitions of what love is. While Webster’s Dictionary defines love as “a feeling of strong or constant affection for a person,” this uniform definition precludes our understanding that the human experience of love is varied.

In order to collectively, collaboratively and currently redefine ‘love,’ I drove over 17,000 km across Canada and the USA in Debbie (a 1977 RV I’d remodelled to be a pop-up photo studio), setting up at diverse (some predetermined, some random) locations along the way. Inside the RV studio, I engaged in 300+ conversations with individual passersby, documenting our conversations using a camera, portable flash, seamless backdrop and an audio recorder.

To facilitate symbiotic comparative viewing, I created a 2.5hr stop-motion video (including 70 individual conversations), 100 on-the-road photographs and 300+ quadriptych's (with transcribed responses) using the mediums of video, lightbox/duratrans, wall vinyl film, print (book) and online. What Is Love has been shared in and out of institutionalized settings.

Partial funding for What Is Love was graciously provided by community through Kickstarter.

What Is Love is housed under the umbrella project Wabisabi Butterfly, founded in 2010 with the concept of bringing together adult survivors of trauma and sexual abuse to help form safe, respectful and inclusive communities, through engaging in the arts and co-creating change, together.