David Nadeau
Encore Évapore
Encore Évapore, Permanent marker graffiti in the pedestrian corridor of Université Laval (Québec City), May 10th 2006. Photograph taken from a police report.
A series of spots and lines on an part of a wall of the Université Laval pedestrian subway corridor irresistibly attracted my attention on May 10, 2006 in the afternoon. I imagined that there were traces, hard to decipher at first glance, of an inscription, which became gradually more precise as I traced the letters and groups of letters that appeared automatically, one after the other, in the dirt and roughnesses of the wall. Then, I drew the elementary form that emerged around the words “Evaporates Again” (“Encore Évapore”) and took the time to see if other visions would took form on the concrete surface. But the finger of a security guard on my shoulder abruptly interrupted my reverie. He led me to the policemen whom his colleague had called. Later, after I was convicted of voluntary degradation of public good by a judge, these words were used as the last lines of my poem Sites of the Shadow (Chantiers de l’ombre).