Mug Up
Video · Sound
At an outdoor table on Little Bay Islands, seemingly at the end of the earth, my grandmother Doris and I share a mug up: tea and a snack taken between meals, a ritual that belongs to the Newfoundland kitchen. Water laps the shore; gravel crunches underfoot as we set out Purity Crackers and tea cups. Once the mug up begins, a conversation about resettlement is erased from the soundscape; what remains is the inhaled affirmative yes of traditional Newfoundland dialect. No house frames us; home has already left the frame.
At the time of filming, Little Bay Islands was undergoing resettlement to cut the cost of serving a remote outport. The performance takes the mug up out of the house and asks what of Newfoundland culture and dialect survives uprooting, and what is already half-forgotten by those who still use it daily.
On the ferry to and from the island, time won’t settle: the vessel feels still though it moves, until a swatch of sun slides along a bench and proves the minutes passing. Doris watches the horizon and barely shifts.
