SaltWalks: Three Movements, 2013

Framed as an improvised walk, these three performances shared stories, anecdotes and information about the ubiquitous mineral know as salt. Participants were invited to join the artist for a walk through Chinatown exploring the enduring relationship that civilizations have had with salt from its importance in food preservation and healing to more aesthetic and philosophical implications. We began with taste tests of different kinds of salt from mass produced table salt to Himalayan rock salt and Fleur de sel from Brittany. These savory comparisons initiated conversations where we explored the use of salt across time and different cultures. Through an engagement with salt, this performance operated as a platform that literally embodies an aesthetic and philosophical enquiry into the importance of this substance to life, ritual, survival, health, industry and the imagination.

SaltWalks: Three Movements was the initial series of performance walks that later informed similar excursions in Nanaimo, British Columbia and Toronto, Ontario.