Charles Campbell

Actor Boy: Travels in Birdsong

Presented by Or Gallery & Confederation Centre of the Arts

Tweel’s Corner, 161 Kent St.

21-24 September, 2017

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Responding to the histories of migration and settlement along the Atlantic coast, Victoria-based artist Charles Campbell will perform Actor Boy: Travels in Birdsong. Actor Boy is a persona derived from the Jamaican emancipation celebration Jonkonnu. As both witness and instigator, he brings these aspirations into the present, manifesting alternative possible futures.

Actor Boy will investigate the The Bog, Charlottetown’s historic community of African-Islanders, a marshy bird habitat that has since been paved over. With members of the Island’s black communities, they will create an auditory bog of birdsong, reversing perceived extinctions and restoring sonic and visual presence to historical erasures.

MEDIA COVERAGE

“Charles Campbell presents, ‘Actor Boy: Travels in Birdsong’, in Charlottetown,” The Guardian, September 24, 2017.

Joni Low, “What’s Missing,” Flotilla, 2019.

Joni Low, “Actor Boy: Travels in Birdsong” Curatorial Text, Or Gallery, 2017.