www.paulette-phillips.ca

As Could Be, 2009

Video and sound installation 

Sound installation made in collaboration with Isabelle Noel 

The original work was commissioned by Scotia Bank Nuit Blanche, 

As Could Be is a 3D animation of Vladimir ’s Monument to the Third International, a grand, un-built, utopian building meant to symbolize the spirit of the Bolshevik Revolution. It was planned to be erected in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) as the headquarters and monument of the Comintern (the third international). Now projected onto a suspended screen on the bank’s second level where the original classical architecture can still be seen, derelict dreams and spaces collide.  

The sound installation, a compilation of interviews about how Canadian workers feel about issues of employment, can be heard on the stairways up to the second floor.  The disembodied voices create a sad lament to a crumbling labor force.