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Contemporary Art Gallery

555 Nelson Street
Vancouver, Canada
Closed for installation
until June 7, 2024

Admission always free
ArchiveExhibition
18 Jan 13until3 Feb 13

Mariano Pensotti

Sometimes I think, I can see you

Offsite at the Central Branch Atrium of the Vancouver Public Library, and the lobby of the Vancouver Art Gallery

Two people sit back-to-back at folding tables in a public space. Both are typing on white laptops. A large poster for Push Festival is visible behind one desk, an elevator door behind the other.

Mariano Pensotti, Sometimes I think, I can see you. Vancouver Art Gallery. Presented with PuSh Festival, 2013

What stories simmer just beneath the surface of the public spaces that we dwell in? What characters are the strangers we brush shoulders with? What characters are we?

Argentinian artist Mariano Pensotti’s ingeniously voyeuristic work Sometimes I think, I can see you places writers in public spaces and uses them as literary surveillance cameras. Over the three weekends of the 2013 PuSh Festival, a group of Vancouver writers including Michael Turner, Lisa C. Ravensbergen, Adrienne Wong, Kay Slater, Charles Demers, Anakana Schofield, OZ12, and Caitlin Chaisson were stationed in the lobby of the Vancouver Art Gallery and the atrium of the Vancouver Public Library Central Branch equipped with laptops connected to projection screens. Their directive? To write a live account of whatever it is they saw — or imagined they saw — in these urban surroundings. Through the eyes and minds of these various writers, speculations unfolded, narratives were woven, and the anonymous individuals around us became implicated in a series of beautifully spontaneous fictions.

Sometimes I think, I can see you is presented with PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, The Playwrights Theatre Centre and Vancouver Art Gallery, and supported by Vancouver Public Library. The work is produced with Ciudades Paralelas, a co-production between HAU Berlin and Schauspielhaus Zürich in collaboration with Goethe-Institute Warschau and Teatr Nowy.

Biography

Mariano Pensotti is known internationally as one of the foremost directors in contemporary theatre. His work El Pasado es un animal grotesco was presented on a revolving stage in the Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre at PuSh 2012, and his work La Marea presented outdoors in the streets of Gastown at PuSh 2011.

A person sits at a white desk outside an entrance to a public building. A white laptop sits on the desk. The person looks out at people entering and exiting while typing on the laptop.
A person in a grey jacket looks at a monitor installed in an upper corner of an indoor space. The screen is black with illuminated text in red.
An image of two monitors, one in sharp focus in the foreground, one in softer focus in the background. Both screens show red text on black. The closer monitor reads “Now I can only hear you.”
A person sits in front of a laptop at a small circular table. They face a white wall filled with framed artworks. Beside the framed artworks, another person sits with a laptop at a table.

Documents

Program guidepdf2mb
Two people sit back-to-back at folding tables in a public space. Both are typing on white laptops. A large poster for Push Festival is visible behind one desk, an elevator door behind the other.
A person sits at a white desk outside an entrance to a public building. A white laptop sits on the desk. The person looks out at people entering and exiting while typing on the laptop.
A person in a grey jacket looks at a monitor installed in an upper corner of an indoor space. The screen is black with illuminated text in red.
An image of two monitors, one in sharp focus in the foreground, one in softer focus in the background. Both screens show red text on black. The closer monitor reads “Now I can only hear you.”
A person sits in front of a laptop at a small circular table. They face a white wall filled with framed artworks. Beside the framed artworks, another person sits with a laptop at a table.