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Vanessa B. Rieger: Not as many as you might think. A lot of people go to the pool with their friends. If you've got a loner, a guy who's there by himself, he's there to look at women [but] for the most part these types of people aren't confrontational. If I go up to a guy who's staring at women, I can go "Hey, they don't appreciate that," and they're just embarrassed that they got caught.I help people educate themselves to learn how to do things in a safe way. If they're already hopping a fence, I'll tell them "those aren't the shoes you should wear" or "put a towel over the top so you're not catching the spikes," things people don't think about in the moment when they're drunk. It's about preventing injury.
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It was in 2010. Two of my friends were injured [pool hopping]: one broke both of his feet, and my other friend impaled her hand on a fence, which sent us to the ER. I realized this was a need that wasn't being addressed. I had an art studio in Kensington Market, up the street from one of the most popular pools in Toronto, and I kept all my [lifeguard] gear there. It was really crude, I bleached t-shirts to say "Nightlifeguard" on them.It was a performance experience. I viewed it as a social experiment and art project: it was a social commentary on people getting hurt, the lack of accessible pools, people who can't afford A/C or time off during the day to go swimming.A lot of people thought I was legit. They thought Toronto was paying me to be the Nightlifeguard, [saying] "oh, Toronto's so cool," and I'd be like "No, Toronto has nothing to do with it." Or people thought I was a narc, and then I'd give them a beach ball or a glowstick to play with like, "No, I'm cool."
I wasn't always. I was quite a party animal in my early 20s, and could have used a Nightlifeguard myself on a few occasions, but I had to redefine my role in a party atmosphere when I was 25 because I had health issues where I suddenly had to get sober. I had to figure out how to participate in a party without consuming alcohol or drugs. For anyone who's tried to do that, it's really awkward. A part of relearning my social interactions at parties was giving myself jobs to do, to be that person who's like, "hey are you okay, do you need water?" So Nightlifeguarding applied that in a pool atmosphere, and it's something that's gone beyond the pool now, to the "social pool," or general party atmospheres. I've used the original context of Nightlifeguard as a metaphor that I take into the bars and clubs with me.
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There's no preventative measures at the pool at two or three in the morning, everyone's already fucked up. At the bar, you can do preventative measures to stop people from getting too fucked up, which would lead to things like falling off a fence or slipping and impaling yourself, or misjudging the depth of the pool and diving in headfirst. At the bar you can get to people before they're at that point.Did your experiences poolside prepare you for your work in bars, because you knew how people could end up if you didn't intervene?
If you're dealing with the aftermath of a person who spent their night at a club or a bar, you're dealing with the monster that person becomes. Most people don't like being fucked up to the point where they're hurting themselves and puking all over the place.One thing that started at the pool was paying attention to how women are treated. Women were in their bathing suits, their underwear, or skinny dipping—and that's great, skinny dipping late at night at a public pool? That's awesome—but then you have the guys who gawk and stare and accost these women. And it's not just women, gay guys get accosted a lot too, not just by men who are interested but by homophobes who aren't comfortable with someone else's sexuality.Is Nightlifeguard something that could spread to cities beyond Toronto?
I would love that, but are these people going to do it respectfully? Without me being there to train these people, I worry about my project being coopted. I built this persona and role, and when I train friends to be volunteers the first thing I tell them is, "when this shirt is on, it's a uniform, take this seriously." [Nightlifeguard] is changing from this small insulated performance piece to this thing that's bigger than me.We have people talking about safe spaces, issues at festivals, and people are asking, how do we prevent this? The Nightlifeguard project is resonating now more than ever. RaveSafe programs have been in rave culture since the 80s, and that's what I grew up in: PLUR, which I've turned to "Pool Love Unity Respect."I'm really interested in creating partnerships with venues and promoters. I can't just give all the rights to reproduce my project without my involvement in some form. That has to do with my rights to my own artistic…Capital?
Yeah—it's not like I'm making money off it, but I've seen people posture themselves as safe people or feminists, who then use that to exploit people who are at risk. Say some bro on King Street bought a Nightlifeguard shirt? That idea scares me, someone taking my project and doing it for evil. It's like Spiderman: with great power comes great responsibility.Kristel Jax interviewed Nightlifeguard earlier this summer on her 'Infinite Poolside' podcast. Listen here.