The Floating House

Paulette Phillips's The Floating House is a video installation of a house floating on the sea, a recreation of the relocation of a specific house built in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, in the 1890s. The historical practice of moving houses from one location to another by sea is an important part of the cultural history of Atlantic Canada. The mass relocation of outport communities in Newfoundland and Labrador in the 1960s is recalled by Phillips' video and the past traces of those resettled communities are documented in Scott Walden's silver gelatin photographs in his series titled Unsettled.