Headingly Horse

Headingley Horse is a video of a performance, which takes place in a small community west of Winnipeg Manitoba traditionally known as the White Horse Plain. A large white horse is poised on top of a six-foot-tall concrete plinth along the Trans-Canada highway.

The plaque reads: A Sioux Indian chief wished to marry the beautiful daughter of an Assiniboine chief. The Assiniboine, however, gave his daughter's hand to a Cree chief with whom she was in love because the Cree offered a rare snow-white horse as a gift. The angry Sioux pursued the Cree and his bride whose father had returned the horse to help them escape. The Sioux killed them both but the horse escaped. For years it was seen roaming the surrounding plain and in memory of the young lovers, this part of Manitoba became known as White Horse Plain.

https://www.gov.mb.ca/chc/hrb/plaques/plaq1298.html

The video editing for this piece uses the live scrubbing technique used in many other video works. In the live scrubbing, I am filming the computer screen as the process unfolds, concurrently the audio records the video footage as well as my surroundings in the moment of editing. During the editing of this piece, I was in Winnipeg at Plug-In late at night. Matt Walker was also working and can be heard deep in the background cutting wood, which establishes the drone. The melody in this piece is the band AT (Sophia Erdahl, Ray Fenwick, Mitchell Wiebe, and Aaron Weldon) practicing in the garage, their tunes resonating through the walls. I performed in this space too, activating the solid structure and the vulnerable history that the structure represents by trying to push the horse over or release the horse from its monumental prison. This horse is a memorial to the “legend of White Horse Plain.” The story goes that in the 1690s the “chief of the Assiniboine had a beautiful daughter…two suitors [came] for her hand – a Cree chief … and a Sioux chief. The Cree was favored [because] he had…a coveted prize of the prairies, a horse as white as the winter snows [to exchange the Assiniboine chief].” The Sioux chief, distraught that he was not chosen, attacked the wedding. The Assiniboine bride on her white stead and the Cree bridegroom on his ran away. The Sioux caught up to them and killed them both but the white horse got away and to this day can be seen roaming the prairies. --- MacLeod, Margaret Arnett, The Legend of the White Horse Plain, Manitoba Pageant, Vol.3, No.2, 1958: http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/pageant/03/whitehorseplain.shtml

Exhibition History

A Video Novel for Winnipeg, Plug In ICA (group show), Winnipeg MB, 2013