Knot Project Space, with support from Arts Court Theatre, presented a performance and related workshop by Winnipeg-based artist Andrea Roberts, who performs under the name VOR. Situated within an empty wood-panelled Courtroom in the Arts Court, VOR presented an iteration of their sound performance Kempelen’s Breath. This voice-driven work draws from personality-based statements that make up the back end of Cambridge Analytica’s OCEAN algorithm. The work’s title comes from Wolfgang Von Kempelen, the inventor of the first speaking machine who also created one of the first automatons. VOR’s presentation was the second action in a short series of events and workshops that were coordinated by Knot Project Space in the Courtroom from December 10-12, each reflecting in some way on the gravities and world-making potentials of individual and collective speech in a site so directly tethered to the languages, processes and force of law.
Andrea Oliver Roberts (VOR)
Andrea Oliver Roberts is a Winnipeg based multidisciplinary artist known for their sculptural installations and performance works that use sound, video and print to contend with technology, identity, and systems of belief within capitalism. Roberts has shown at galleries and performed at festivals internationally with recent presentations including Send + Receive 2019, Plug In ICA Stages Biennial, Montreal Film Pop, Truck Gallery, SomArts San Francisco, and The Auxiliary, UK. Roberts has performed as VOR, their solo as experimental sound project, since 2015. Roberts writing on the voice, gender and technology has been featured on SoundingOut! and they were a recent artist in residence at Oolite Arts, Miami and Brooklyn’s Pioneerworks Center for Art and Innovation. Their work has been recognized by the Murphy & Cadogan Contemporary Art Award and numerous awards from Canada Council for the Arts and the Manitoba Arts Council. They hold an MFA in Sculpture from California College of the Arts (2014) and a BFA Hons. in Sculpture from the University of Manitoba (2011).
Related Programming
Workshop: Second Tongues, Serena Lee. Courtroom, Arts Court. Nov. 23, 2019.
Workshop: Cold Read, Andrea Oliver Roberts. Courtroom, Arts Court. Dec. 11, 2019.
Residency: Expanded Practice, Shani K Parsons. Knot Project Space. Dec. 2-14, 2019.
Performance: Documents, Autumn Knight. Courtroom, Arts Court. Dec. 12, 2019.