Lits de Procuste

(Procrustean beds)

With François Lemieux

Installation and live performance

Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery (Montreal)

2021

_{Lits de Procuste

Video documentation (excerpts—in French)}

But the most beautiful thing about my burrow is the stillness. Of course, that is deceptive. At any moment it may be shattered and then it will be over. For the time being, however, the silence is still with me. (…) The place feels both warm and cool. Sometimes I lie down and roll about in the passage with pure joy.

— Kafka,
The Burrow

Procruste is the name of an innkeeper from Antiquity who, according to myth, laid weary travelers upon a bed that served as his template. Bodies too large were sawed down; bodies too small, quartered. Lits de Procuste (Procrustean beds) are all the apparatuses that have reversed their functions and that demand their occupants adapt to their measure, rather than the inverse. From this premise Edith Brunette and François Lemieux draw their watchword, a performance made to measure for these confined times.

The performance was recorded with the help of a 360-degree camera. Viewers could navigate in the video by clicking on the image and holding down the left mouse button.

Presented as part of the exhibition Going to, Making Do, Passing Just the Same ↗ at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery (Montreal), Winter 2021.