The Float exhibition flyer

Carole Itter’s interest in assemblage, performance, poetry, music and ecological concerns are interwoven in her artwork The Float. This work follows a group of women – including Itter – as they orchestrate a "spill" of wooden materials on the surface of tidal waters on Burrard Inlet. The jostling of wooden objects against one another as they move with the water share aural qualities with Itter's rattles, which receive their name from the sound they create when shaken, and is a process that, she observes, “sometimes… sounds like water running.” 

In 1995, The Float was shown at the Or Gallery, which included an installation and a performance by a number of the artists who performed in the video: Dominique Fraikin, Madonna Hamel, Esther Rausenberg, Jehanne Rogowski, Aki Yakimoto and Helen Yeomans. These six, along with Itter, discussed their experience participating in the work and what it meant to each of them. This conversation was recorded and transcribed for this handout. Of the original performance and later installation at Or Gallery, Itter writes: “A group of eight performance artists moved a loosely-spilled indoor sculpture work out of the usual gallery setting and into the ocean. This presentation at the Or Gallery shows what happened in the water. By and large, the incoming and outgoing solstice tides determined the choreography of this event. We laid out the objects on an extreme low tide, watched them float for six hours, then wrapped a ‘boom’ around them. We slowly moved this floating mass to a fresh water source during which time it was discovered that these objects could also become percussive. The pieces were rinsed, dried off and then stored; a re-enactment of a commonplace process, the ritual of gathering and harvesting.”