I am a Newfoundlander without a Newfoundland accent.

The Salt House addresses the division in my Canadian and Newfoundland self. It explores isolation/exile/loneliness as being both metaphorical and literal, geographic and personal.

The exaggerated ‘Newfoundland’ character is used as an access point within the work. The humor of her accent, and the delivery of her narratives invites the audience into the video. Yet, the act of ‘putting on an accent’ is also dangerous cultural territory. My accent is no longer authentic. Newfoundlander’s often ask me if ‘I’m from here’, and the rest of Canada asks me ‘Where I’m from’. And according to what they hear, apparently I am neither, yet of course, both.

Newfoundlanders are proud people with tumultous political and personal historical roots, and despise disparaging jokes by other Canadians about Newfoundlanders being ‘stupid’ or ‘backwards’.The romanticising of a past that perhaps did not exist is also dangerous terrain- it leads to a commodification of culture and exotic notions of place and historical exile. Fanny and the unnamed ‘Newfoundland’ character delve into an exile that is both imagined as a loss, as a ghost, as a past that does not exist, and attempt to wrestle with an imaginary future. The Salt House acknowledges storytelling as unstable and open to mutation, interrogation and analysis.