Jackson Couse

Home Made

Fait Maison (French for "home made") is an art collective and performance series held at Thomas Grondin's house in Hull Quebec.

Sometimes the performances happen in the living room, the kitchen, or the bathroom. Others take place in a specially constructed room in the basement. Because it all happens in Thomas' living space, the performances always have an overwhelmingly intimate quality. Everything is always too-close. At times, standing in the crowd, it seems as though what is happening could not possibly be real.

And the performances do, in fact, sometimes reach out and touch you. During one performance, the crowd watched from outside the living room window as Hélène doused herself with a garden hose. Then she disappeared, only to emerge through the front door, hose in hand. The crowd recoiled in a moment of panic. At Fait Maison, you can't escape. There's no chance to run away.

Fait Maison won't let you turn away, either. In another performance, Thomas fell off the roof. We all stood there, watching, unsure if he was injured or performing. As time stretched on the tension built. Some debated what to do. Eventually, assistants carried Thomas into the house, stripped him of his clothes, and bathed him. I was disturbed by the quiet violence of the performance. I was more disturbed by my own inability to overcome my inhibition. Despite the obvious distress, I could not assist what appeared to be a person in need. The performances may be surreal, but they are often all too-real at the same time.

I find myself haunted by a performance for days. After the shock of my first time, I decided to give myself over to the performance, to accept it, to engage with that which I do not understand. Watching performance is the opposite of television. It does not ask you to suspend your disbelief. It does not ask you to stop being yourself. It is real, here, and now. All it asks is that you are present and aware. As a photographer, I approach performance with an open mind (and a fast lens), and then I react.

We are all performers. A great deal of performance occurs in our daily life. Fait Maison may be so powerful because it confronts us in a context we are all familiar with: the Home. For everyone, but particularily at Fait Maison, the Home is a construct, something we perform to each other and for ourselves. Home is fraught with frailties, flaws, and insecurities. Fait Maison busts apart our conceptions of the home, and turns the purpose of a house inside out. Fait Maison puts on display all of our most secret and personal performances.

Our relationship with Home, and who home makes us, is one of the fundamental relationships of life. While all of the performances vary, each of them is, in some way in the end, about the house. I am terrified by the many permutations of personal anguish, from exsaungination to mock death, that are displayed by the performers. Although I do not always understand the intention of a performance, I nearly always understand the emotional bagage they explore. I usually leave Thomas' house somewhat shaken, but with the feeling that I have been part of something profoundly human. Fait Maison Makes lets me feel part of something, lets me feel alive. Fait Maison helps me understand my own secrect and fragile performance of Home.

For more information about Fait Maison and the performers, visit Gallery 101.

18 photos