My Name is Scot

Hello Stranger features myself (or perhaps my alter ego) in the guise of a creature called Madillah. (79second video)

Madillah is a post-human being who explores the borders of the virtual and the actual. He’s an obscurely iconic other, who responds to the economic downturns and political upheavals that increasingly define our global environment with empathy and humour. As a performance character developed over my 30 years of living and working in Vancouver’s DTES, he’s appeared on screen and in person in 15 different countries.

In the video Hello Stranger (filmed in the neighbourhood) he stares out from somewhere behind the digital façade. First on one side of a chain link fence, then on the other, facing away from the camera and then looking towards the viewer, waving. His simple gesture of greeting provokes speculation about the nature of the real and imagined self and the limitations or parameters, virtual or actual, that describe our location, define our identity, and support or deny our cultural authenticity. “Who are you, where are you from, where are you going and where do you belong?

Madillah’s welcoming gesture is a signal to the outsider that potentially exists inside each of us. His greeting acknowledges our presence, affirms our ‘likeness”. His Image reaches across the confines of the mediated landscape and invites us to do the same: to find a way to identify with the people who exist outside the physical or (especially in these Covid days) digital borders of our ‘comfort zone’.

Madillah is an entity that acknowledges the displacement of histories, the strangeness of the new and the ongoing struggle to maintain or reclaim identity and find a place where you can belong. His image is perhaps the more honest reflection of my self as an artist and as a human being - vulnerable, somewhat mysterious, not completely true, yet committed to reaching out, and connecting with others in the truest way I can. “Hello Stranger”.