Use of the word “hypothetical” peaked the year I was born. Hypothetical art forms that I employ in my practice include fiction (where I get most of my information), images (moving or not), gesture (a category of movement and body language that is interpersonal and political).
Most of my projects have involved the idea or façade or container of something that isn’t actually itself. In this way, I stage the conundrum that possibility involves its own impossibility, or vice versa. Within this/my logic, embodiments of impossibility include inability, illegibility, representation, a future without resources or choice, the irreducible distance between self and other, and refusal.
Compulsive with form and fixated on genres, I rehearse the exhilaration and deception of how something both is and isn’t. The/my body, its gestures, words, and the category broadly defined as ‘image’ document and translate each other. I use mise-en-scène to elicit expanded myths or meanings, most recently referring to debt economy, love, and erotics within the psychosomatic and psychosocial conditions of post-truth/necro capitalism. I often need other people to help me do so; i.e. I collaborate.
Whether this takes shape as performance, video, or writing, the outcome might be felt as combinations of athletic, brutalist, absurd, dark, verbose, dense, and intentional.
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Emma-Kate Guimond is an Edmonton-born performance and video artist who has lived in Montreal since 2005. She has created and performed solo and collaborative works across Canada, including at VIVA! (Montreal, 2019), M:ST (Calgary, 2014, 2018), and Visualeyez (Edmonton, 2013). Notable collaborations include the feminist performance collective WIVES, with whom she presented FEELED at the OFFTA (2016) and ACTION MOVIE at Théâtre La Chapelle (2017).
Recent work includes the performance Strong Legs Folding, presented at the OFFTA (Montreal, 2024) and 7A*11D (Toronto, 2024), and the exhibition and short film The Plot, presented at Centre Clark (Montreal, 2024) and L’Écart (Rouyn-Noranda, 2025). She has published essays on performance in Revue Espace, Inter, C-Magazine, and Spirale.
From 2019 to 2024, she was the creative ally to Edon Descollines with Joe, Jack & John, producing Le magasin ferme at Montréal Arts Interculturels (2021) and contributing to Le trou noir at Espace Libre (2025). Recently, she played FARMER in Kízis’ musical Down that Trail in the Woods.
She holds a BFA in contemporary dance from Concordia University and an MA in Visual and Media Arts from UQAM.
EMMA-KATE GUIMOND 