MOSER, Bridget

Bone Conduction (It’s in My Blood)
Launches October 29, 2025

Bone Conduction (It’s in My Blood) is inspired by the notion of the “compulsive performer” that Andrew James Paterson explores in Performance: A Performance (1997). In Paterson’s performance, various speakers (both live and on video) lecture, question, sing, and examine what performance is, who it serves, and how it shapes both performer and audience. It is also, at times, very funny.

Bone conduction refers to the transmission of sound through the bones of the skull rather than through the air to the ear—essentially, the way we hear our own voice literally inside our head, in contrast to how it sounds to the rest of the world. The first audio-only work I’ve ever made, Bone Conduction (It’s in My Blood) uses computer-generated clones of my voice to perform different monologues or vignettes alongside layered song textures and sound compositions. To provide a source for the digital cloning software, I recorded myself speaking in different modes and registers, then input sections of the script for each clone to perform, coaxing out varied results that I later edited together.

At times, the voice clones sound a bit like me, and at other times they are quite off. Sometimes their speech patterns are awkward and unnatural; sometimes they sound like a bad actor (admittedly, that too is a bit like me). Together, they form a fractured digital “performance” of confused personas consumed by replication, capitalism, spectacle, and alienation. As an artist who has mostly made live work using my body as primary material—now existing almost exclusively as digital replicas through video documentation—these ideas felt like a natural point of departure.

Bridget Moser is a performance and video artist whose work blends elements of prop comedy, experimental theatre, performance art, absurd literature, existential anxiety and intuitive dance. She has presented work at venues including Remai Modern, Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Vancouver Art Gallery, Western Front, Mercer Union, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Art Gallery of Ontario, SPACES Cleveland and Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts. Her work has been featured in Artforum, Frieze, Canadian Art, Art in America, C Magazine, Artribune (Italy) and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. She has been shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award, Canada’s preeminent prize for contemporary visual artists, and received the 2023 Hnatyshyn Foundation Mid-Career Visual Arts Award.

References/Resources

The following references were cited by Bridget Moser and Andrew James Paterson in their TPAC interview:

The Government: Andrew James Paterson’s new wave/punk band active in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
VideoCabaret: A Toronto-based theatre ensemble established in 1976 whose output includes black-box epics, multi-media cabarets, musicals, opera, and masquerades.
Michael Hollingsworth: A Toronto-based playwright and co-founder with Deanne Taylor and Marien Lewis of VideoCabaret.
Clive Robertson: A Canadian performance and media artist, a 2025 recipient of the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media, and also a 2014 Éminence Grise with the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art.
Voicespondence: A media art production and publishing entity begun in 1974 by Clive Robertson. As an indy label, it produced or co-produced first vinyl releases by The Government (1978), Clive Robertson (1981,1985), Gayap Rhythm Drummers (1982), the Dub Poets – Lillian Allen, Clifton Joseph, Devon Haughton (1983), Fifth Column (1983), and the Plasterscene Replicas (1984).
Erving Goffman: A Canadian-born sociologist whose first book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, was published in 1956. The book analyzed how everyday face-to-face interactions are theatrical acts.
Oliver Husain: A Toronto-based artist and filmmaker
Who Killed Professor Wordsworth?: A video work by Andrew James Paterson from 1990, described as “a video-novelette, a murder mystery involving mass media and academic characters.”
Camille Paglia: An American academic, cultural critic, and feminist
Arthur Kroker:  A Canadian author, educator and researcher of political science, technology and culture, perhaps best known for his years as the editor of the online academic journal CTheory, an international journal of theory, technology and culture.
Frank Sinatra: An American singer and actor (1915-1998)
Michael Kirby: A late professor of drama at New York University who was the author of the article of the often-cited text On Acting and Not-Acting
A Space Gallery: A Toronto-based artist-run centre incorporated in 1971
Western Front: A Vancouver-based artist-run centre founded in 1973
Laurie Anderson: An American artist, musician and filmmaker
Lou Reed: An American musician and husband of Laurie Anderson from 2008 until his death in 2013.
Brian Connolly: Performance artist based in Belfast who participated in the 2010 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art with Market Stall Performance
the plumb: A Toronto-based DIY artist-run project administered by an ad hoc collective of artists, writers, and curators working alongside guest programmers and collaborators. In 2024 they presented Never Enough Night, a retrospective of Andrew James Paterson’s work.
Jubal Brown: Toronto-based video and multimedia artist and 7a*11d festival co-founder; he was part of what became the Toronto Performance Art Collective from 1997 – 2000.
The Sims: A “life simulation” video game in which players create virtual people called “Sims”
William Gibson: American science fiction novelist who moved to Canada in the late 1960s to avoid the military draft. He is perhaps best known for his cyberpunk Neuromancer trilogy of novels, which explore themes of artificial intelligence, identity, and the nature of reality.
Bill Burns: A Canadian artist whose output spans artists’ books, performance, sculpture, drawing and multiples
Stelarc: An Australian artist whose projects “explore alternative anatomical architectures” and who is known for his assertion that “the body is obsolete“.
Elvis Presley: An American singer and actor (1935-1977)
Johanna Householder: A 7a*11d co-founder and active member of the Toronto Performance Art Collective
Canadian Theatre Review: An academic journal for Canadian theatre, published by the University of Toronto Press. The script for Andrew James Paterson’s Performance: A Performance was published in their Spring 1996 edition, CTR Vol. 86.
Joseph Beuys: A German sculptor and performance artist (1921-1986)
Kate Craig: A Canadian video and performance artist, and founder of the Western Front (1947-2002)
Timothy Findley: A Canadian novelist and playwright (1930-2002)
Patricia Highsmith: An American novelist and short story writer (1921-1995). Her collection The Animal Lover’s Book of Beastly Murder was published in 1975.
Jennifer Rudder: A Toronto-based curator, writer and educator
MIX Magazine: Formerly Parallellogramme, MIX was a Canadian publication of artist-run culture and contemporary art published in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Brian Piitz: A Toronto-based photographer and educator
Samuel Beckett: Irish playwright and novelist (1906-1999) whose plays include Krapp’s Last Tape
4’33”: A 1952 work by John Cage in which the musicians are asked not to play throughout the 4 minute and 33 second composition, which then consists only of ambient sounds
Mike Hoolboom: A Toronto-based independent film and video maker
Aleesa Cohene: A Canadian visual artist based in Los Angeles
Kevin Dowler: A Toronto-based musician and educator, and Andrew James Paterson’s collaborator in Derwatt
The Jean Genie: A 1972 song by the English singer/songwriter David Bowie (1947-2016)
I’m a Man: A 1965 song by the English rock band The Yardbirds
Jean Genet: A French criminal turned novelist and playwright (1910-1986) who was seen as a rebel and an anarchist
Black Eagle: A Toronto gay bar
Randy Padmore Park: A small Toronto city park located at at 47 Denison Ave. near Bathurst Street and Dundas Street West
Theo Cuthand: A Toronto-based video and performance artist featured in the 2018 edition of the 7a*11d international Festival of Performance Art
Steve Reich: An American composer and pioneer of minimal music whose compositions include Drumming
Steve Reinke: A Canadian video artist and filmmaker
Robert Mitchum: An American actor (1917-1997) known for his work in film noir

Performance Art Daily (Andrew James Paterson in conversation with Bridget Moser)
Saturday October 12, 12 pm
401 Commons, 4th Floor, 401 Richmond Street West
Sponsored by Vtape

In conjunction with God Play, Vtape’s video exhibition featuring Tanya Mars and Andrew James Paterson (this year’s 7a*11d Éminences Grises), join us for a conversation between Andrew James Paterson and Bridget Moser. Paterson will share anecdotes from his personal history as a key contributor to Canada’s artist-driven culture and talk about his works in the exhibition, which runs from October 1-19 at the Bashir Yerex Presentation Space.

Andrew James Paterson is an interdisciplinary artist living in Toronto, Ontario. His work engages in a playful questioning of language, philosophy, community and capitalism in a wide range of disciplines, including video, performance, writing, film and music. Now a senior artist, Paterson has contributed to artist-run discourse for nearly four decades — serving on the boards of Trinity Square Video, A Space, and YYZArtists’ Outlet. He has curated media-arts and other programmes for these organizations as well as Cinematheque Ontario, Mercer Union, Images Festival, Pleasure Dome, and Available Light in Ottawa. He has edited and co-edited books for YYZ’s publishing program; and contributed to anthologies published by Gallery TPW and to periodicals such as FILE, IMPULSE, FUSE, and Borderlines. Between 2011 and 2017 he worked as coordinator for the8fest Small-Gauge Film Festival. His media-arts works have shown locally, nationally, and internationally over three and a half decades — in Seoul, Bangalore, Montreal, Buenos Aires, Amsterdam, Paris, New York City, and many other centres. Paterson’s artist’s book Collection Correction was published in 2016 by Kunstverein Toronto and Mousse of Milan. His novelette Not Joy Division was published by IMPULSE B in Toronto in early 2018. In 2019, Paterson received a Governor General’s Award for his work in Visual and Media Arts.

Bridget Moser is a Toronto-based video and performance artist and friend and fan of Andrew James Patterson. She has presented work at Remai Modern, Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Vancouver Art Gallery, Western Front, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Esker Foundation, the Art Gallery of Ontario and Mercer Union. She has been shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award and was the 2023 recipient of the Hnatyshyn Foundation Mid-Career Visual Arts Award.