(in)stability: The Weight of Distance

Mixed-media interactive installation

(in)stability is an interactive installation that explores how actions undertaken at a distance reverberate through interconnected systems. The work unfolds through a responsive arrangement of ceramics, movement, sound, and liquid.

A large circular table presents a terrain composed of more than two hundred ceramic elements. As bodies gather around it, the structure begins to shift. The table tilts, destabilizing the landscape as a dark liquid emerges between the ceramic forms and spreads across the terrain. Without instruction or intention, viewers alter the balance of the system.

As the terrain shifts, sound emerges from within. Resonant tones bend and distort with the movement, echoing tension and strain. When distance is restored, the system gradually returns to equilibrium. Yet traces of repeated encounters remain. Over time, the movement of the liquid leaves marks across the ceramic surface, recording a history of accumulated interactions.

Rather than depicting a specific place, the work points to shifting geographies of intervention, where instability emerges, relocates, and persists across different regions and moments. Formed through fragmentation and repetition, the ceramic landscape evokes a built environment while remaining exposed to forces that exceed it.

Through the shifting relationship between proximity and disturbance, (in)stability reflects on how actions projected from afar enter systems whose consequences are borne elsewhere. By placing the viewer in direct relation to a shifting structure, the work collapses this distance without resolving it.

Technical support
Electromechanical consultation: Simon Laroche
Glazing: Reihan Ebrahimi
Software development: Lauria Clarke
Structural fabrication: Sébastien Dallaire