“14920 is a digital photography and video installation that aims to explore the possibility of capturing and re-activating the experience of a time and place that is no longer accessible or existent, and to evoke the durational process of saying goodbye to such a place through the act of photographic documentation. In August 2016, I spent one week staying alone in my Grandparents’ home in Los Angeles, a place I had gone to visit once a year since I was born. Previously, the house had always been full of other people- aunts, uncles, cousins, my grandparents of course, and my immediate family- all gathered in the same place each year at the same time, carving out a space in my memory that served as a time capsule within which I stored experiences of myself, my family, and my identity as I continued to grow up. This year, however, the house was empty, my grandparents both having died recently, and was about to be sold and knocked down by developers. I spent each day photographing and filming every nook and cranny of the house, a process which was just as much about collecting and archiving as it was about saying goodbye. The photos and videos I took during this time do not depict features of the house in a simply presentational or demonstrative manner; but rather, through their framing, choice of subject matter, and their insistence on resting patiently with an otherwise ordinary moment, capture a visceral feeling of ‘being there’- of entering into a familiar room from a familiar angle, of running one’s fingers along a baseboard while playing on the floor as a toddler- even as the time and place they re-present is no longer ‘there.’”

Hannah Schallert is a Toronto-based dance artist, choreographer, arts administrator, filmmaker, and videographer. She is currently completing her BFA in Dance at York University, after which she hopes to pursue a Master’s in Cinema and Media Studies. Her creative practice involves integrating media and performance in order to explore the body, movement, and sensation from strange and surprising perspectives, and often investigates the formal and methodological aspects of dance and film as artistic disciplines. Her academic research interests centre around expanded understandings of choreography and the body in relation to new media technologies, and include computer animation, motion capture, Science Fiction film and television, and experimental film.

Hannah’s work has been presented at dance and film festivals in Toronto since 2016, and most recently she was commissioned alongside dance artist Marie Lambin-Gagnon to create a short film for RT Media Collective’s Screen Moves event at Dancemakers’ Centre for Creation. She has worked since 2015 with Social Growl Dance as a general manager, and recently joined Immer Collective as an administrator and artistic apprentice. Her videography and filmmaking work can be viewed at: https://vimeo.com/user38878860