"The Canadian woods are a patch of trees that travels—literally and metaphorically—around the world.

From seeds blown into windows, potted saplings on transatlantic journeys, or landscapes of the mind giving rise to extra-territorial occupations, those thick Northern forests have taken root through artists residencies that have circulated from Montreal to Rotterdam, and from Vancouver to Lisbon. These residencies in a migratory wood, which Yvette Poorter has cultivated since 2001, have sprouted up as semi-solitary retreats accompanied by maple shoots in the spare room of her Montreal apartment (“A Week in the Woods,” 2001-2003); a temporary declaration of Canadian soil in a garden shed in Rotterdam with all the requisite legal arrangements, (“This Neck of the Woods,” 2005-2007); and a nomadic kit including a pop-up cabin complete with flags for declaring a temporary site of artistic occupation across multiple geographies (“Knock on Woods,” 2007-2009). Grouped together as a set of projects titled “Dwelling for Intervals,” these ongoing and related residences have involved performances of sites within sites, temporary autonomous zones, which open the fabric of everyday places into other orders of spatial practice."
                                                              -Jennifer Gabrys

 
Dwelling for Intervals was a morphing International Artist Residency program, an independent state, a sculpture, a series of collaborations, a wilderness, a tree house, a traveling circus and a relative site for temporary doing and undoing.

First known as A Week in the Woods, the project included a forest of seedlings in a room, in an apartment, in Montreal, Canada (2001-2003). Several years later some of these saplings went on a trans-Atlantic journey to a cabin, in a backyard in central Rotterdam, The Netherlands to be known as This Neck of the Woods (2005-2007). Finally as a roving para-site called Knock on Woods the International Residency staked claim to land in The Netherlands, France, Portugal, Canada, Germany and Japan (2007-2009).

This web site uses archived images, texts, videos and other remnants left behind by residents in the "official box-under-the-bed." The Resident Technician has freely re-presented and interpreted these archives to tell the story of Dwelling for Intervals.

This ten-year-long project was conceived, constructed, maintained, edited and re-presented by The Resident Technician (Yvette Poorter).

Exchanges and Transformations

"...by offering a space of occupation Poorter plays host to numerous artist residents, who then generate stories to add to this ongoing collaboration and transformation. But a lot of “noise” erupts in this exchange of stories. Poorter describes her role in these exchanges as that of a “technician.” And while this job description on one level portrays someone working behind the scenes to ensure an apparatus and situation can effectively give rise to improvisational meetings, on another level it suggests someone deliberately adjusting the frequencies of communication. In these adjustments and occupations, Poorter ensures that these territorial stories—and their generative transformations—can continue to take place. “Dwelling for Intervals” reveals a commitment to the project of making places, cultivating exchanges, capturing traces, and traveling with imaginative intent between the multiple territories in which we are always situated."

                                                                                             -Jennifer Gabrys

Dwelling for Intervals and The Resident Technician would like to thank the following institutions for their generous support to this project and its participants:

AIRY—Artist in Residence Yamanashi (Kofu, JA), articule (Montreal, CA), Buro Dijkstra (Rotterdam, NL), Canada Council for the Arts InterArts (CA), The Canadian Embassy in The Hague (NL), Concordia University (Montreal, CA), conundrum Press (Montreal, CA), The Field Foundation (Toronto, CA), Helen Pitt Gallery (Vancouver, CA), Het Fonds voor beeldende kunsten, vormgeving, bouwkunst (NL), IA-Instituto das Artes / Ministry of Culture (Lisbon, POR), Intrepid Tourist Press (Montreal, CA), Kaus Australis (Rotterdam, NL), Manitoba Arts Council (CA), Mercer Union (Toronto, CA), Modern Fuel (Kingston, CA), Open Space Gallery (Victoria, CA), Ouvé, O Século (Lisbon, POR), Pilotprojekt Gropiusstadt (Berlin, GER), rad’a gallery (Montreal, CA), ramfoundation (Rotterdam, NL), Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (USA), TENT—Rotterdam centre voor beeldende kunsten (NL),  Quartier Éphémère (Montreal, CA), The University of Victoria’s Visual Arts Department (CA).