The protagonist of this landscape, BILL hEgEL (or 73634 7718) is a sometimes charming despotic goose that rules the isles of hELL through a monopoly on oil (both ShELL and ESSO), as well as a whole host of common consumer products. He is an entrepreneurial dreamer, roaming the fine line between the commendable search for the good life and its double: greed, disappointment, and madness.
Using the textual strategies of OULIPO and a mytho-poetic approach to the visual, Dubuc fashions an improvisational story-line from within the strictures of a largely predetermined linguistic cosmology. Akin to listening to radio feedback in the hopes of finding any voice from beyond, any meaning whatsoever—whether diabolical, ridiculous, or utterly schizophrenic—hE BLESSES hIS gOOSE is a lulling, fragmented glimpse into issues of over-consumption and the global energy crises. Seeking out meaning from the mundane, the project asks if a simple trick played in high school can be filled with potential, like maybe the calculator (a ghost in the machine) is really trying to tell us something.
Joey Dubuc is an artist and writer living in Vancouver. He has exhibited his work in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and Brisbane. His novel, Neither Either Nor Or was published in 2003, and his work has been featured recently in Matrix, The Walrus and in Alphabet City: Suspects.
