Virginia Hall, 1914, 2014

Video

Virginia Hall, 1914
2014, two-channel HD video (left screen 14 min 32s, right screen 13 min 17s)
Produced with the assistance of the Two Rivers Art Gallery, Prince George

Virginia Hall, 1914, was created in the town of Prince George in central British Columbia. The piece is both set in, and comprised of, a careful recreation of an actual ballroom that had been a feature of the newly constructed Virginia Hall in the Fort George Hotel in 1914. Named after the daughter of the hotel owner, this lively spot burned to the ground in November of the year it was built. Adad Hannah made tangible the sanguine nature of this site for the first time when he recreated it at the Two Rivers Art Gallery (Prince George) through a series of vignettes of an imagined costume party at the hall. Represented in a two-channel video with a suite of photographs, the videos are presented in this exhibition alongside the set in which they were shot. In the videos we see nearly still images of the actor-participants (local artists and volunteers who also helped to construct the set, props and costumes) frozen in a joyous, perhaps even raucous, moment tinged with interpersonal intrigue. One could say that even the personal stories of those who created it are a travelling component of the piece.

- Christopher Eamon