October 2023

Description:

Born in Lebanon, Skkandaloza identifies as a video performance artist. They moved to Montreal in August of 2022 in order to develop their artistic practice. As a queer Arab individual, they manifest in their works issues surrounding the Middle Eastern community. Through their performances, they express a reaction to present contemporary issues in the world and in their personal lives.

“Bachelor of F*cking Arts is a live video performance which aims to illustrate how the educational institution (such as art school) plays a role in killing the inner child inside of us. I wanted to explore how the educational system transforms our joy and innocence we have as kids in order to transform us into productive machines. After graduating from grade school, I was so excited to study art as a full time student. Unfortunately, even the things you love the most will seem like a task you need to complete with a lot of constraints to be able to graduate from university.

In this performance piece, I locked myself inside a shed and installed surveillance cameras connected to a TV outside the confined space. This allowed people to view the live footage, and see me as being an experiment by Concordia. Inside the shed, I began by acting like a kid having fun, but as the music would get intense and fast, and the more I’d start to harm myself and become manic. I wanted to show with the fast actions how much work is demanded from us: which will make us more likely to burn out.”

“The idea was to recreate in a smaller version the inside of the shed I was in with the destroyed painting I realized hanging and from a screen part of the performance is playing.”