Created during his two-month-long residency at the Burrard Arts Foundation, Erdem Taşdelen’s new work A Vagrant Kind of Life consists of a poem shown in the form of a slide projection. The poem, revealed rhythmically one line at a time through photographic slides, tells the fairytale-like story of a feral child and was composed by Taşdelen using excerpts of text from a book published in 1802 titled An Historical Account of the Discovery and Education of a Savage Man written by a French physician named Jean Marc Gaspar Itard.

A Vagrant Kind of Life is an extension of a larger film-based work co-commissioned by the Contemporary Art Gallery and Cineworks, which the artist has recently completed. Titled Wild Child, this work is scheduled to be shown in an upcoming installation at the Contemporary Art Gallery.

Banner image credit: Erdem Taşdelen, A Vagrant Kind of Life, slide projection with 70 slides, 2016