Category: Engagement

Join Francesco Gagliardi, Shannon Cochrane and the artists and score-writing duos from A Score of Scores performance series as we gather post-event to reflect on collaboration, performance writing, authorship, and scores and their interpretation.  

Many of the performer and score-writing duos have been working together across vast geographical divides and will not have experienced the live work created from the scores in-person. If you do not live in Toronto and/or are not able to see the performances before this artist talk, not to worry. You will be in good company.

Artists from Toronto, Ottawa, Québec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Finland, Iran, Italy, N.Ireland and USA gather around the digital long table to tell stories, fill in all the details and construct a conversation score of all the scores together.

Abedar Kamgari & Naseh Kamgari
Holly Timpener & Enok Ripley
James Knott & Francisco-Fernando Granados
Keith Cole & David Roche
Laura Paolini & Tomasz Szrama
Mikiki & Jan Peacock
Paul Couillard & Elvira Santamaría-Torres
Rita Camacho Lomeli & Alejandro Tamayo
SA Smythe & Autumn Knight
Tanya Mars & Myriam Laplante

Moderated by Francesco Gagliardi & Shannon Cochrane

Register to join the ZOOM here.

The FADO website, created by the unique minds at I Know You Know, is guided by colour and scent.

The navigation menu contains the various categories by which FADO presents our work. The menu on the left side of your browser, where you see “about,” “performance,” “series,” “engagements,” and so on, highlights these areas. Each of the categories is color-coded and contains a description of a unique fragrance. The scent illuminates the qualities of the various ways FADO works. You can read the description of the categories/colours/scents in the footer of each web page. The notes of each scent (top, middle, and base) conjure the elements, memories, and characteristics of our performances, artists, engagements, writing, bulletin, and the archive. 

The fragrances are conceptual and actual. Some remain on the website as a description, in the form of a digital scratch n’ sniff that you can read and imagine for yourself. Some are formulated and are for smelling. Really smelling. 

FADO and I Know You Know are producing small editions of scented postcards and collectible objects for selected scents in the FADO scent collection. The second scent in the series is titled ENGAGEMENT PINK. Here we consider how artists and audiences connect, communicate, and engage. The engagements include artist talks, studio visits, workshops, round tables, Q&As, and more. Audiences ask, and artists answer.

Subscribe to the FADO mailing list and include your mailing address. If you are already on our mailing list, update your profile with your mailing address. DO THAT HERE, and your ENGAGEMENT PINK-scented postcard will be on its way.

© Rah Eleh, Oriental Drag. Image courtesy of the artist.

In September, FADO hosted a two-day intensive workshop entitled Performance on Camera. Led by video and performance artists Rah Eleh, this workshop invited artists to investigate the intersections between performance art and the camera through their practice. Artist participants engaged in a series of physical exercises focused on character development, exploration and physicality; followed up by hands-on learning of some of the practicalities of filmmaking techniques and lighting.

Using this guidance and the generated performance and video materials, the artists in Performance on Camera created a series of new video works. It’s two month later, but we can’t wait to see the results. Join us for a screening of all the works created in Performance on Camera.

Snacks, refreshments, conversation.

© Rah Eleh, Oriental Drag. Image courtesy of the artist.

Performance on Camera investigates the intersections between performance art and the camera. It is a two-intensive workshop hosted by the performance and video artist Rah Eleh. During the first day of the workshop, attendees can expect to do a series of physical exercises that will focus on character development, exploration and physicality. The second day of the workshop will be a lecture about filmmaking techniques such as framing and lighting.

Workshop attendees will be given the opportunity to create their own video that will be screened at 401 Richmond in FADO’s presentation and screening space at a later date (TBD). Attendees do not need any knowledge of performance or video production to attend, however a camera (phone or tablet cameras are acceptable) will be required for participation. Some knowledge of post-production editing is beneficial but not necessary. Attendees are welcome to explore a character they have previously developed or explore a new one. Participants will provide their own camera and any necessary materials (costumes, props, pen and paper are encouraged).

This workshop is offered for free of charge. Space is limited to 15 participants. Attendance is required on both dates. This workshop is in-person. Participants are required to mask in the co-working space and when social distancing is not possible.

Artist-led embodied research project by lo bil
Hosted by FADO Performance Art Centre

While this is performance-artist-based invitation, there is no imperative to perform for others. Through presence and attending to what you wish to do, you are potentially helping others attend to doing something they wish to do. Artists can use the time and space in any way they wish, however it is important to note that this project makes space for different forms of movement to occur.

COMPASS is a cross between a studio, a gym, a playground, a library and something unknown that welcomes all kinds of action and participation from both artists and visitors.

PART 1: September 6–9, 2022
We are seeking artists who wish to spend 2–3 hours from 11:30am–2:30pm daily, in a process of navigating shared space while engaging in their own performance practice. Each session will be very open for experimental approaches, varying levels of public interaction, and is intended as real-time embodied research. Each artist will discover for themselves the benefits and challenges of working in this way. Artists may choose to attend one or more sessions.

PART 2: September 13–16. 2022
In this time frame, a smaller group of artists from the first week will continue to develop the discoveries they have encountered, working towards a public showing on the afternoon of September 17. Artists involved in this second week of COMPASS will be paid a small honorarium for their participation.

PLUS: Join us for an open showing on September 17, 2022 from 1:00pm–4:00pm.

We welcome proposals from artists who cannot be physically present at COMPASS sessions to connect via video call or to offer provocations for public to engage in. All contributions, whether in-person or remote, will be credited. Everyone from emerging to established artists are welcome to join. Artists are also welcome to drop by during the first week or the final showing to see what’s up and/or to participate in unexpected ways.

Istvan Kantor presents an Internationally Controversial Performance Art Gala, featuring:
NON GRATA: Storm Generation
Performance Art Network Group from Estonia / New York

PERFORMANCES
3:00pm: Empty parking lot, 163 Sterling Road
7:00pm: The Theatre Centre Pop-up, 1095 Queen Street West

WITH
Burning Iceberg Performance (Noise Band) with Wesley Rickert / Kathleen Reichelt
Solo performance by Jessica Patricia Kichoncho Karuhanga
Jubal Brown (A/VJ Mashup)

“Around the name NON GRATA there have been different hushes and shushes for a long time. Already from the point of view of death of conventionalization of art it has embodied the horrible and unwanted disembodiment of human person, from which the meaninglessness of nowadays art, is pouring out. For those, whose world of arts starts from the point, where the art world ends, NON GRATA has been a liberator, the orphic gap in the seemingly unalterable course, which however betrays us, it is a cure from incest. The main point of the group is ethical – it is the image of primitivism, impersonality and experimenting creativity. The performances of the group take place according to the logic of avoiding codes. The presentations are physical texts, whose ways of orthography and reading are kept within the limits of real actions by the group members. Aesthetical and provocative challenges are represented in places, where the Art World doesn’t work.”
~NONGRATA, Art of the Invisible, Performances 2008-2011

Sponsored by FADO Performance Art Centre. Co-presented with SMASH (store & gallery). Technical support by 253569. Special thanks to the Theatre Centre and Castlepoint.

NON GRATA is an international performance group from Estonia with a floating membership. In Non Grata there have been more than 300 members during the last 12 years from all over the world. The main characteristics is anonymity in group work, ignorance of the local art world and mass media. Group has performed in Asia, Europe, South and North America with street actions, chaotic space and context specific performances, and long lasting ghetto marathons.

Performance by Wit Lopez
With special guest performance by Amai Kuda et Les Bois featuring Y Josephine on percussion 

Feminist Art Gallery (F.A.G.) and FADO Performance Art Centre are pleased to bring to you a PERFORMANCE CINQ A SEPT with FAG residency artist, Wit López. With a Special Guest performance by Amai Kuda et Les Bois featuring Y Josephine. ALSO, Wit and Amai will also be performing original music!

Wit López is a Brooklyn-raised, Philly-made, award-winning performance conjurer and pro-magicianatrix creating art out of the joy and fear of being alive. As a disabled and chronically-ill, nonbinary trans, intersex person of African American and Boricua descent, López’s visual and performance work uses absurdity to convey and challenge how they experience the world.

Amai Kuda et Les Bois have been featured in NOW magazine and on CBC’s Canada Live and Big City Small World, as well as performed at venues like the Jane Mallett Theatre, Harbourfront, The Rivoli, The Garrison, and festivals such as Luminato, Kultrun, Big on Bloor and Small World Music Festival. They have given workshops on music, decolonization, African cultural knowledge and percussion at public schools, universities, libraries and community centres throughout Southern Ontario, in the Caribbean and Europe. Their latest album titled AfroSoul Volume Volume III: Re’ was described by NOW magazine as a “tantalizing Afro-soul combo of folk, roots, desert blues and African continental music.”

Performance!
Snacks!
Open invitation and free.

All welcome.
We can’t wait to see you.

Established in 2010. The Feminist Art Gallery (F.A.G) is—a response, a process, a site, a protest, an outcry, an exhibition, a performance, an economy, a conceptual framework, a place and an opportunity. We host we fund we advocate we support we claim. The Feminist Art Gallery (FAG) is our geographical footprint located in Toronto, Canada and run by Allyson Mitchell and Deirdre Logue. Other FAG activities: We are DAG (in collaboration with Gigi Basanta): a micro funding program that has so far supported 4 feminist art projects in Canada including: Les Blues, Colour me Dragg, No More Pot Lucks, Her Jazz Noise.

Curated by Dainty Smith & Golboo Amani

PUSH.PULL is a six-month online series of interdisciplinary events examining emergent and intersectional developments in performance art and QT BIPOC cabaret. Curated by storyteller, producer and stage performer Dainty Smith and multidisciplinary artist Golboo Amani, PUSH.PULL highlights QTBIPOC cabaret performers at the intersections of live stage performance and radical political performativity.

ARTISTS
Adrienne Huard
Aggie Panda
Amber Dawn
Anasimone
Babia Majora
Betsy Swoon
Cara De Melo
Cat Zaddy
Crocodile Lightning
Dolly Berlin
Gay Jesus
Imogen Quest
Ivory
James Knott
Johlene
Kimora Koi
LAL
Lucinda Mui
Lwrds
Mikiki
Perle Noire
Rania El Mugammar
Ravyn Wngz
Suki Tsunami
Tanya Cheex
Tygr Willy.

PUSH.PULL presents three online Showcases featuring performers from across North America. Each showcase offers a diverse range of contemporary practices reflecting the theatrical, political and emotional range and depth of cabaret performance. 

PUSH.PULL presents BARE
April 9 @ 9:00pm (EST)
Featuring: Suki Tsunami, Lady Ore, Crocodile Lightning, Gay Jesus, Ivory, LAL  
BARE: A showcase of sensual exploration that reimagines and extorts the expectations of our own desires. Performances offering consensual and deliberate confrontations, challenging the idea of the submissive and passive nude. When skin is presented, when nudity is shown, who is vulnerable? Who is powerless? 

PUSH.PULL presents TAUNT
April 23 @ 9:00pm (EST)
Featuring: Betsy Swoon, Dolly Berlin, Johleen, Ravyn Wngz, Lucinda Miu, James Knott, Anasimone
TAUNT: A show that celebrates the power of seduction; of intentional sexuality. A thread of rage runs though burlesque. Burlesque is unapologetically rebellious, it is where the feminine, self-love, sexual agency and manipulation are performed without shame or explanation. It is a place and space where we can all misbehave together and where we are taunted by sexuality wielded like a weapon. 

PUSH.PULL presents TOPPED
May 14 @ 9:00pm (EST)
Featuring: Imogen Quest, Babia Majora, Cara De Melo, Tanya Cheex, Cat Zaddy, Mikiki, Tygr Willy, Adrienne Huard
TOPPED: Cautions, titillates and teases. The cabaret is a feminized, glamourous and glittered, a holy and sacred place. Moving and living through expressions of sexuality in its full scope of dominance and assertion, the performer toys and plays with gender, power, laughter, vulnerability, and seduction. In cabaret, we have the audacity to believe that our bodies are important, invaluable, meaningful and worth listening to. 

PUSH.PULL includes a three-part speaker series inviting performers and cultural creatives to engage in conversations at the intersections of visual culture, sex work, performance and politics by recognizing cabaret as a site of cultural production and community engagement. We’ve also included a series of workshops led by professionals in the field, aimed at engaging audience participants and community members in immersive skill-sharing experiences deepening appreciation, interest and critical engagement with cabaret.

April 14: Speaker Series: Unusual Business: The business of being a showgirl
April 28: Workshop: Body Love with Dainty Smith
For more information about PUSH.PULL workshops AND artist talks, visit Aluna Theatre

PUSH.PULL is presented in association with Buddies in Bad Times Theatre & Aluna Theatre. Sponsored by FADO Performance Art Centre. Funded by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

FADO Performance Art Centre was pleased to help support Bricks & Glitter for their online and in-person (socially distanced) 2020 festival.

Bricks & Glitter is a community arts festival celebrating Two-Spirt, trans and queer talent, ingenuity, caring, anger and abundance. We are a trouble of queers who believe in creativity, collectivity and practicing the future in the now. We are intersectional be default and critical by necessity. Our 2020 festival centres Black, Indigenous and racialized artists coming together to imagine a world worth living in—for all of us. 

ARTISTS
Ms. Nookie Galore, Franny Galore, Mikiki, leZlie lee kam, Tamai Kobayashi, Rhona Spencer, Buster Cherry, David Bateman, Jord Camp, DJ Xeynamay, DJ Mirass, DJ MXMSXY, DJ Pothound, Ivory, TravoyInTheFlesh, Mango Lassi, Drag King Sebastian, Pastel Supernova, Cat Zaddy, Midnight Wolverine, Billie the Kid, Namitha Rathinappillai, Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collective, Mina Minou, Tygr Willy, Ola Minoul, Daddy Gambino, Kareena Pussy Couture, Sage Lovell, Thurga Kanagasekarampillai AND MANY MORE!

Bricks & Glitter 2020 was funded by the Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, FADO Performance Art Centre and Groundswell Community Justice Trust Fund.

Bricks & Glitter website
Bricks & Glitter on Facebook
Bricks & Glitter on Instagram

The Long Table, 2019. Photo Henry Chan.

Join us for a special presentation of the Long Table with Lois Weaver herself, presented in collaboration with Progress and the Rhubarb Festival.

The Long Table is a dinner party structured by etiquette, where conversation is the only course. The project ingeniously combines theatricality and models for public engagement. It is at once a stylized appropriation and an open-ended, non-hierarchical format for participation. Both of these elements–theatrical craft and political commitment–are mutually supporting in this widely and internationally toured work. The (often-feminized) domestic realm here becomes a stage for public thought.

As an experiment in performance as a means of public engagement, the Long Table has been taken up by a vast array of of practitioners in a variety of disciplines as a way to encircle, question, and reflect in a performative, and communal way. Lois Weaver, the originator of the Long Table, hosts this special edition for Progress.

Progress is an international festival of performance and ideas presented in partnership by SummerWorks Performance Festival and The Theatre Centre. The festival is collectively curated and produced by a series of Toronto-based companies, operating within a contemporary performance context. Progress 2018 is curated by: SummerWorks Performance Festival, The Theatre Centre, Anandam Dancetheatre, FADO Performance Art Centre, Little Black Afro Theatre Company, Toronto Dance Community Love-In, and Volcano Theatre.

This event will be ASL Interpreted. All welcome. FREE.

© Marita Bullman, untitled (another small matter), 2017. Photo by Rebekah Dahlia.

FADO is pleased to welcome Marita Bullman (Germany) and Ignacio Pérez Pérez (Venezuela/Finland) to the International Visiting Artists series, along with Liina Kuittinen (Finland). This series seeks to bring exceptional artists from the global performance art scene to Toronto, to present a new work and give an artist talk about their own practices and the contemporary performance art ecologies of their home cities/countries.

In addition to presenting new solo performance works, both Marita Bullmann and Ignacio Pérez Pérez will engage audiences in talks about their individual practices.

Marita Bullman and Ignacio Pérez Pérez’s appearance in Toronto is in collaboration with VIVA! Art Action, one of FADO’s enduring partners. FADO and VIVA! have partnered several times (2013: Tomasz Szrama / Poland, Macarena Perich Rosas / Chile; 2015: Victoria Gray / UK, Dorothea Rust / Switzerland) over the years to share the presentation of international artists to both platforms in order to bring exceptional artists and their work to audiences in both cities; in addition to giving visiting artists the unique opportunity of engaging with performance communities in both Toronto and Montreal.

Doors Open Toronto comes to The Commons @ 401 Richmond on May 26, for a day of film and video screenings. As a part of this program, FADO Performance Art Centre is excited to screen the world premiere of How to explain performance art to my teenage daughter (2018, video, 6:00) by Montréal-based artist, Rachel Echenberg.

How to explain performance art to my teenage daughter was originally a performance (2015) that was later remade as a video and photo series. The work references Joseph Beuys’ well-known 1965 performance, How to explain pictures to a dead hare, in which he explains his exhibition to a dead hare with his head covered in honey and gold. In Echenberg’s version, mother and daughter embrace the difficult intricacies of explaining art by simultaneously covering each other’s heads with honey and gold leaf. Absurdity and intimacy merge to reveal understanding as a sensory activity.

Echenberg’s work will be screened alongside a selection of works curated by our colleagues in The Commons @ 401, including: Alexandra Hickox’s Just Like You Do presented by Vtape; Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival presents A Cello in the Subway by Iven Tu; Wakening by Danis Goulet is presented by imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival; and The Mountain, Les Invisibles by Amshu Chukki is presented by South Asian Visual Arts Centre.

The 19th annual Doors Open Toronto, May 25–26, 2018, presented by Great Gulf provides an opportunity to see inside more than 130 of the most architecturally, historically, culturally and socially significant buildings across the city. This year’s theme, “Film: The Great Romance” explores the city’s film and television industry. With more than 1,400 on-location film, television and digital media productions taking place in the city each year, Toronto is North America’s third largest screen-based production centre and the heart of Canada’s film and television sector. The Doors Open Toronto program features historic cinemas, film and television studios, post-production houses, digital media studios, artist-run centres and film training schools. The program also highlights buildings that have been featured in film and television, many of which are often not open to the public.

AGYU and FADO Performance Art Centre welcome you to an on-line artist engagement with Joyce LeeAnn presented as part of the solo exhibition, Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective. During our time together, she will lead us on a journey to explore archival processing as performance art.

Joyce LeeAnn is a certified archivist, an interdisciplinary artist, and the founder of Archival Alchemy®. As an archivist, she has worked for a community archive, a corporate archive, a large public library, and a prestigious museum. However, her archival praxis began as a young girl, and as an act of decolonization she centers her innate methods. Through her artistic projects, she is creating an archive of everything that she has conquered and is overcoming. This is the essence of Archival Alchemy®. Created in 2017 and cultivated directly from Joyce LeeAnn’s practice, Archival Alchemy® is a small business that supports institutions and artists to activate and enrich archives.

This artist engagement is presented in community with the AGYU as part of a constellation of talks, perfromances and public engagements for Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective. The AGYU would like to thank: 16 TONNES, ampd*, FADO Performance Art Centre, franklin furnace, Hemispheric encounters (SSHRC), polyjohn, QUEST AV and Sensorium.

WATCH the archived talk on the AGYU website HERE.

Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective
September 2–26, 2021

“Driven by an interest in how one might performatively engage the energetic liveness of archives from polysemous perspectives Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective takes up and takes apart the linear, patriarchal, and authoritative conventions of archive-making impulses. Channeling them instead toward more rhizomatic readings and feminist relationalities, she upcycles her own archive of past performances in ways that constitute her concept of “bendy-time.” The “archive” performs in this exhibition at the same time as it makes sense of (as in making sensate and sensual) an artist’s 25-plus-years of performance art work—including all its material and immaterial remains, reminders, and affective labour. This exhibition demands of archives what we expect from performance: the live encounter of experience in a ritual of transformation. Taking past performances as cues and as clues, this exhibition is a polytemporal, feminist, and queer experience of an archive of possible futurities, open to forever accommodating the always-shifting communities of belonging that Dobkin’s performance practice entails and magically conjures.” ~Emelie Chhangur, curator

ABOUT AGYU
Art Gallery of York University (AGYU) is a socially minded public non-profit contemporary art gallery that is a space for the creation and appreciation of art and culture. It is an affiliated and supported unit of York University, with key funders including the Canada Council for the Arts, the Province of Ontario through the Ontario Arts Council, the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council, foundations, embassies, other cultural institutions, and through our membership. Throughout its 32-year history, AGYU has always operated at the forefront of contemporary artistic, curatorial, and art institutional practices.

The Hemispheric Encounters dinner party series is a collaboration between Joyce LeeAnn, Jess Dobkin, Shalon Webber-Heffernan and Justice Walz. 

These gatherings are an offering – and importantly, an experiment – for artists, academics, archivists and activists to gather across borders, language, time zones and cultures for sensory, intimate connection in pandemic times. 

This series of dinner parties were made possible by Hemispheric Encounters, a partnership project supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and FADO Performance Art Centre.

Hemispheric Encounters: Developing Transborder Research-Creation Practices is a partnership project that seeks to develop a network of universities, community organizations, artists, and activists across Canada, the US, and Latin America actively working in and with hemispheric performance as a methodology, a pedagogical strategy, and tool for social change. 

For information and to follow projects as they develop, visit the Hemispheric Encounters website.

© Liina Kuittinen, Organ of Repetition. Photo Antti Ahonen.

Blowing because mouth knows how to blow and makes a sound for ears to hear
WORKSHOP with Liina Kuittinen

This workshop is, in itself, an experiment in process sharing, modest but direct. During the 2-hours of the workshop, Liina will expose the process of creation behind her most recent performance work, referencing her work presented in Toronto (see below) as the starting point for a series of practical experiments that Liina and the workshop participants will elaborate on together.

“I consider my artistic practice as minor scale resistance to the dominance of language. For example, it is difficult to say anything new about blowing, without blowing; whereas every blow is different from the previous. My performance practice evolves from the physicality of being and action. The body and its habits are my main material.”

DETAILS of the workshop:
This workshop is offered free of charge.
The space that the workshop is offered in accessible.
The maximum number of participants is 15.
The workshop will be offered in English.
You will be asked to participate in various exercises which may involve movement and voice.

It is not necessary to have previous experience in performance-making to take part; however it is highly recommended that participants attend Liina’s performance in the International Visiting Artists series event (on September 20) as a precursor to the workshop.

Save your Thursdays in September for the ultimate trio of Queer Performance Clubs performed by Moe Angelos, Hope Thompson, and David Bateman.

This Performance Club Workshop will consider several of David Bateman’s past performance works, and ways in which he has re-considered various narratives/performance texts around sex and gender over the past thirty years. Works to be looked at may include: Death, Sex, & Macrame (2019), I Wanted To Be Bisexual But My Father Wouldn’t Let Me (1992), and the performance he will be presenting in the second part of his Performance Club 6, Art Immuno Deficiency Syndrome, subtitle; Does This Giacometti Make Me Look Fat? (2016).

Expect reading, writing and macrame curtain weaving.
THE GOLDEN BOOK
Join us for Performance Club and get your own Performance Club: THE SYLLABUS, a brand new addition to FADO’s Golden Book series (as always, designed by Lisa Kiss). This time, it’s bigger (it won’t fit in your pocket, think book bag) and it contains three performance texts and an incredible intro, entitled, This is a Queer Series… written by Moynan King.

CLUB TALK BACKS
Join us after each performance for a talk back with the artist and their fellow club artists.
September 10: Moe Angelos in conversation with David Bateman
September 12: Hope Thompson in conversation with Moe Angelos
September 19: David Bateman in conversation with Hope Thompson

Co-Presented by FADO Performance Art Centre and SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre) in the context of the In Situ Multi Arts Festival 

Reimaging & Remembering is a site-specific performance that collects and documents drawings of the Small Arms Building visitors over the period of In Situ. The piece is an evolvement of a previous memory building project that uses blind contour drawing technique as a way to preserve memory, through repetitive and organizational procedures. The drawings of the visitors will be installed on the windows of the Small Arms Building (an abandoned WWII munitions inspection building), as the drawings are created. The faces of the visitors will embody the physical space of the Small Arms Building, when looking in or out, the faces will help viewers remember the community that help to reimagine the possibility of the space. 

In Situ Multi Arts Festival is presented by the Small Arms Society, an incorporated non-profit organization. Our goal is to celebrate creativity and to begin public engagement around reimagining a future for this significant historic building.

FADO is pleased to present an Artivism workshop with Armando Minjarez. This workshop is offered as a part of the MONOMYTHS series and is presented in the context of Progress Festival. 

Migration in a Postmodern Society

Artists have historically served as agents of change, risk-takers that cross the threshold from the status quo into the vanguard. The term Artivism has been coined by artists and cultural workers to describe their creative practice aimed at creating long-lasting social change. 

This workshop will address the role of an artist as an agent of change in a postmodern western society. Participants will part-take in a process of dissemination and processing of site-specific cultural data, collected by artist Armando Minjarez through a series of interviews with community organizations in Toronto. Some of these community organizations or groups might include immigrants, refugees and native nations. 

How can artists introduce vitality, courage and innovation in social change work? The workshop will begin with a short presentation on the key elements of art in social change: Emotional, Visionary, Systemic, Popular and Bold.

Activities will be presented in a dialectic format with group discussions and sharing of personal experiences. Participants are encouraged to bring an open mind and full heart. 

MONOMYTHS invites a diverse collection of artists, scholars, and activists to revise Joseph Campbell’s conception of the hero’s journey through performance art, lectures, workshops, and other offerings. This new assemblage of non-linear un-narratives proposes a cultural, political and social feminist re-visioning of the world. The MONOMYTHS perception of the universal journey dispels the notion of the lone patriarchal figure on a conquest to vanquish his demons–both inner and outer–in consideration of community, collectivity, and collaboration.  

Teena Lange, from Legs, Too, 2015. Photo Henry Chan.

Co-presented by FADO Performance Art Centre + LINK & PIN Performance Art Series

Performative Writing or Creative Critical Writing is claimed to be, in itself, a form of performance, often taking as its subject a work of visual art or performance art. The core of this workshop is to develop sensitization for textures and the practice of taking the time to do the doing. 

Entering into performative writing allows the re/activation of the wording & being less paralyzed by the empty page, breaking through the trained fixation of meaning seeking structures of texts. Everyone can write. This workshop allows you to take time to experience another writing practice or develop one if you don’t currently have an active writing practice. Through a series of exercises the workshop will deal with linguistic matters, performative utterances, writing styles, the playground of proverbs, documentation dots & lines, various mechanisms of memory and referentiality, readership & queer quality management.

PLUS
Performance lecture by Teena Lange on performative writing
October 1, 2015 @ 7:30pm
Robert Gill Theatre, 214 College Street, Toronto

Presented by the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies, FADO Performance Art Centre and LINK & PIN Performance Art Series.

Join Jess Dobkin and Martha Wilson for an intimate conversation and reflection on the performance, How Many Performance Artists Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb? (For Martha Wilson) and discussion of the relationship between contemporary live performance and documentation. 

As the founder of the Franklin Furnace, a pioneering artist-run space that has led the exploration, promotion and preservation of performance art, Martha Wilson has been a trailblazer in preserving the history and documentation of live art practices. Speaking to the role of documentation in live art from the 1970s to present day, topics of interest will include the role of the archive, performing for the camera, and the ever-evolving relationship between live art and new technologies.

Post-performance Brunch + Talk with Jess Dobkin and Martha Wilson
Co-presented by Onsite Gallery at OCAD University and FADO Performance Art Centre

Photo Tanya Anderson

How Many Performance Artists Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb? (For Martha Wilson)
By Jess Dobkin and 40 volunteer documenters
Presented by The Images Festival

Made in response and as an ode to one of America’s foremost groundbreaking performance artists, Martha Wilson, performance artist Jess Dobkin’s newest work, How Many Performance Artists Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb (For Martha Wilson), is at once a question, a joke, and a reflection on the ways we see. Taking a direct cue from Wilson’s 2005 video The History of Performance Art According to Me, Martha Wilson, Dobkin takes on the complex and riddled history of performance art, defining its terms and conditions, while acknowledging the slippery temperament of her task. Wilson is also the founder and director of the renowned Franklin Furnace, a legendary artist run space in New York City that once served as a venue, and in more recent years, exists as a virtual archive with the mission of “making the world safe for avant-garde art.” 

In Wilson’s oral history of the history of performance art, she by direct address to the camera, relates the following joke: 

Q: How Many Performance Artists Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb?
A: I don’t know. I left after 4 hours.

True to the character of the light bulb joke oeuvre where deviations occur over time and regions, Dobkin adds an additional variation of this joke concerning performance artists:

Q: How Many Performance Artists Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb?
A: One to change the light bulb and 40 to document it.

As a manifestation of these jokes and as a reflection of our screen dependent culture, Dobkin has developed a four plus hour durational performance where a performance artist (Dobkin) will change a light bulb with at least forty people documenting the piece through an exhaustive list of forms. From the ever-present phone camera, social media fanfare, and GPS locator, Dobkin also turns to the generations of how performance art has been documented, revisiting the various models of photography, video recording, film formats, drawing, writing, along with treaded analogue technologies.

How Many Performance Artists Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb (For Martha Wilson) will be an attempt to overwhelm the definitions and intersections of performance, documentation, the archive and image reproduction to investigate the nature of performance itself. 

Questions at stake include: how is performance shared, transmitted, recalled, remembered? How do we understand the lifespan of a performance? How does the form and quality of the documentation impact our understanding of the original work? How have technological advances in documentation and image making changed our understanding and definition of performance art practices?

FADO Performance Art Centre is pleased to present a special screening of two episodes from VestAndPage’s performance-based trilogy, after which Verena Stenke and Andrea Pagnes will give an informal talk about the work. Refreshments will be served.

sin∞fin The Movie, is a trilogy of films of collaborative performances by artist duo VestAndPage in epic locations around the world. Teetering between the real and the visionary, the films feature the two protagonists undertaking surreal and ephemeral acts. Amplified by the unfamiliar environments, the performances reflect on universal human experiences such as altruism, partnership and the transient nature of existence.

Episode #1, Performances at the End of the World, set in Chilean Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego (2010) thematically focuses on the intimate, inner domain of the individual and the couple. The concluding episode, Performances at the Core of the Looking-Glass, filmed in Antarctica (2012) engages with narratives on nature and the universe. There is no script or storyboard and the artists’ actions evolve in direct response to the surroundings in which they find themselves. The camera records what possible spectators would view, yet the movie is not a documentary. Instead the works are pieced together organically, forming an autonomous story generated through the process of making to be read by each viewer in a personal way.

Diving into the absurdness of the quotidian, performances and installations were developed in response to each individual site. Based on the ethos of live performance, the two protagonists are primarily themselves – there is no acting in their actions; actions which appear poetic, but are based on real life. And still, sin∞fin The Movie is not a documentary, as the single acts are finally puzzled together organically, to generate a new story that enfolds through the dynamics that have been created, instead of through imposed intentions.

German artist Verena Stenke and Venetian artist and writer Andrea Pagnes have been working together since 2006, generating art in the mediums of live performance, filmmaking and writing, and through independent curatorship. Their works have been presented widely across Europe, Asia, the Americas, Australia and Africa. Their practice is process-led and conceived psycho-geographically in response to architecture, natural surroundings or historical sites. It examines the fragility of the individual within different social or environmental spheres. Exploring what, as human beings, we still have to offer, VestAndPage question our existence within a humanity characterized by social exclusion and global atrocities. Animated by a nomadic, confrontational spirit, they apply the themes of acceptance, resistance, crisis and endurance with a poetic bodily approach to art practice.

PROGRAM

Episode #1: sin∞fin – Performances at the End of the World (Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, 2010)
TRAILER

The two characters move through the rooms of a house that has no address: the structure of their interior spaces, stuffed with visions and memories. Patagonia is a hybrid of pathos and agony. Here the Magellan feeling arises by opposing surreal dream-sequences to situations of everyday life. The winds and climate of the land situated at the end of the world cause and favour a continuous disintegration and consequential transformation of beings. The vastness of the area, its isolation and solitude, tell repeatedly of a unique nature, permeated by mystery and surrealism, inside which the individual adapts him/herself searching to find a home. 

Chile / Italy / Germany, 2010
DVD PAL, color, 00:38:52, 16:9, English with subtitles
A VestAndPage production 2010
Coproduction with CONFL!CTA Contemporary Art and Science Research, Punta Arenas (Chile)

Episode #3: sin∞fin – Performances at the Core of the Looking-Glass (Antarctica, 2012)
TRAILER

Here the two characters move through the deserted, icy Vastness of an oneiric land. They find themselves creatures being torn between life and death, absence and misleading mirages, fortune and emptiness. The flux of nature is mercilessly immense, where the wind sings its laments and silences its lullaby. All paradises are merciless, in a search for Beauty where anything is a Mirror. Is there any game left to be played, is there someone left to call for, when clocks don’t display time anymore, and no compass is guiding one’s way? Who’s the player and who’s the pawn, and whose turn is it, when civilization has lost its quotidian schemes, and just basic rules count? In the backdrop of Antarctica, a place where humans have neither roots, nor future, but only a frail and temporary presence always at risk, all questions inevitably lead to humbleness.

Argentina / Italy / Germany, 2012
DVD PAL, 00:45:42, color, 16:9, English with subtitles
A VestAndPage production 2012
Coproduction with DNA Dirección Nacional del Antártico, Buenos Aires; Thetis Spa, Venice.
With soundscape by Zai Kuning, Angie Seah, Black Sea Hotel and recordings of Weddell seal callings under the ice by the courtesy of Douglas Quin.

In this 6-day intensive MayDay performance art workshop, participants experience VestAndPage’s unique method through the process of making a performance art piece. Through practical exercises and reflecting on the use of the body as a tool, the workshop will focus on introspection as a way to develop authentic modes of expression and artistic action, and participants will be provided with the means to conceive, develop, and realize their own performance piece. Through methodology aimed at understanding prevailing behavioral patterns, participants will develop new ways of communicating and overcoming fears created by conflicting contemporary conditions. The workshops will also offer insight into the framework of process-led and conceptual art practice, with the aim to provide basis for future material. Participants will develop a heightened awareness of mind and body, with the means to stimulate artistic personal action though inner sensitivity.

As facilitators, VestAndPage will lead exercises on a range of performance techniques and approaches which blur the boundaries between fine art, live art and contemporary performance practices:Working solo and as a group;

• Creating intimate solo performance material;
• Devising and improvisation techniques;
• Actions/rules/chance-based techniques;
• Objects and actions in space as performance;
• Developing quality of presence;
• Confidence in using the physical self as a vehicle for meaning in performance;
• Audience-performer relationships—levels and modes of interaction;
• Exploring the role of time and pattern, e.g. duration, endurance, speed, and repetition.

Through the following processes:

• To work towards touching point zero in judgment and intention, heightening perception, introspection, to then rebuild an authenticity-based expression, to transform visions and ideas into a concrete artistic action.
• To take distance from being virtuous by establishing, evaluating, and energizing the personal action in se.
• To free oneself from common behavorial patterns so as to create new ways of encountering, collaborating and living.
• To overcome the fragile constituent limits, may they be based on physicality, fears or social patterns.
• To touch and strengthen the most human inner sensors in order to activate personal and universal memories, for using as germinal matter for future artistic substance.
• To enter a state of heightened awareness and perception, in order to conceive out-of-the-ordinary artistic visions, being in first instance process-led.

Actions and exercises are innovative and process-led, inspired by processes and methods such as: Dynamic Creative Breathing, Social Theater, Living Theater, Grotowski, Barba Stanislavsky, Leclerc, Oriental Theatre, Martial Arts, Contemporary Dance & Butoh, Authenticity, Inner Library, Liminality, Breath, Archetypes, Rituality, Memory activation, Object work, Time-Duration-Rhythm, Voice/Sound, Emotional Atmosphere, Inter-activity, Group dynamics, Macro- and Microspherology.

There will be a final public presentation on May 19 @ 7:00pm

In September, FADO Performance Art Centre is pleased to present an instalment of our International Visiting Artists series. We welcome Macarena Perich Rosas from Chile; Tomasz Szrama from Poland, living in Finland; and Gustaf Broms from Sweden. Join us for a casual artist talk with these three amazing artists and hear them talk about their practices and the work they will be presenting during their time in Toronto.

Tomasz Szrama’s appearance in Toronto is in partnership with VIVA! Art Action (Montréal). Macarena Perich Rosas’ appearance in Toronto is in partnership with LIVE International Performance Art Biennale (Vancouver) and VIVA! Art Action.

LIVE International Performance Art Biennale was founded in 1999 and has located Vancouver, Canada as an important and recognized node of local, national, and international performance art activity and critical study.

Established in 2006, VIVA! Art Action is an international performance and live art festival presented once every two years in Montréal. The festival takes place in the of old bath St Michel in Mile End, and with the participation of the network of artist-run centres in the city.

FADO Performance Art Centre, Mercer Union Contemporary and PME-ART present:
The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information (Hospitality 5)

By Caroline Dubois, Claudia Fancello & Jacob Wren
Collaborators: Mathieu Chartrand, Sylvie Lachance & Radwan Ghazi Moumneh

A pile of records and a record player. For every record we have one story at the ready. For each performance we will play different records in a different order and tell the stories that go with them. This creation by PME-ART — part five of the HOSPITALITÉ-HOSPITALITY project series — explores the way music infiltrates our personal and social lives, affecting our ongoing understanding of love, work and how we think society should operate.

Focusing on artistic collaboration, the work of PME-ART is an ongoing process of questioning the world, of finding the courage to say things about the current predicament that are direct and complex, of interrogating the performance situation.

PME-ART’s past works include the installation HOSPITALITY 2: Gradually This Overview, and the performances HOSPITALITY 3: Individualism Was A Mistake and HOSPITALITY 1: The Title Is Constantly Changing, as well as Families Are Formed Through Copulation/La famille se crée en copulant, Le Génie des autres/Unrehearsed Beauty and En français comme en anglais, it’s easy to criticize. PME-ART’s performances have been presented over the last twelve years in thirty-five cities in Quebec, Canada, Europe, Japan and the United States.

In 2012, PME-ART was nominated for the Conseil des arts de Montréal’s Grand-Prix and was short-listed for the first 1% dedicated to performance art (Integration of Art in Artchitecture Program), commissioned by the new building 2-22 art actuel, in Montréal.

A PME-ART creation, in co-production with FFT-Düsseldorf. In collaboration with Studio 303 and the Norderzoon Festival-Groningen. PME-ART would like to thank The Conseil des arts de Montréal, The Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec & The Kunststiftung NRW (Germany).

Performance Art is often defined as a non-objectual art practice that celebrates proudly its ephemeral character by creating situations that are experienced live. Despite this almost every performance art work can be characterized by the interaction of the artist’s body with objects in concrete time and space. This performance art workshop aims to focus on the different uses, potential interactions and properties regarding this very important performance element: the object. 

Some objects seem to gaze back at us and attract our attention and curiosity. The workshop will explore these “special” objects and our relation to them through the concepts of aura, fetish, relic, symbol, poetic, memories, body, narration, fiction, transformation, function, meaning, (im)materiality, (in)visibility, presence/absence etc. in order to create a performance based on a composition of actions involving objects. 

The workshop will provide each participant with cross-disciplinary artistic instruments (such as text, speech, sound, video, photography, painting, sculpture, installation) and with historical and contemporary examples of different strategies for dealing with objects (including Dadaism, Happenings, Fluxus, Body Art, Minimalism, Conceptual Art, Arte Povera, Visual Poetry, Concrete Music) in order to obtain the necessary theoretical and practical background for developing their own performances. 

Every participant is asked to bring three personal objects to work with during the workshop. These objects will be the starting point for the various tasks and discussions in the workshop. The objects could be personally very resonant, reminding of a specific time or place, or they can be mundane objects that are encountered on a daily basis. In either case they will be treated as propositions for potential actions and conceptual exploration. 

Day 1: Introduction of the participants and of the workshop topics through the presentation of the personal objects. Physical exercises to warm up the body and get confidence in the group and in the space. Exploration of the body as an object: Exercises to be present and neutral. 

Day 2: Some group tasks and improvisations interacting with objects: exploring the meaning, function, use and properties of specific objects. Research around the immateriality and invisibility of objects and our personal memories and stories related to them. Some historical and contemporary examples of art works that approach objects from an interesting point of view. Screening of videos and photos to illustrate each position and open discussion.

Day 3: Some individual tasks and improvisations based on interacting with objects. Preparation of a proposal for an own performance based on the three personal objects. Individual discussion of the proposal with the facilitator and group. 

Day 4: After a period of individual preparation. Workshop culminate in an informal public presentation of the performances. 

PARTICIPATION CRITERIA
The workshop is open to students and professional artists who have a background in contemporary art practice. Although this is a performance art workshop, applicants are welcome from any artistic background, as long as they have a desire to engage with a performative process and tasks. The workshop may be of particular relevance to visual artists or text and sound based artists who have an interest in more conceptual based processes. 

Performance Art Workshop: Interaction with Objects
Workshop: February 20–23, 2013
Performances: February 23, 2019 @ 3:00pm

This workshop is presented in association with The 34th Rhubarb Festival and coincides with the presentation of Step by Step, a performance by Andrés Galeano and Ieke Trinks, taking place at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre from February 23–March 3, 2013.

FADO Performance Art Centre is pleased to offer a 5-day performance art workshop facilitated by Norwegian performance artist and educator Agnes Nedregård. This workshop is offered leading up to the dates of the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art taking place October 21-31, 2010. Workshop participants will present short works in early afternoon sessions and in the public realm on the first two days of the festival for festival audiences and visiting artists, organizers and curators.

This workshop will focus on the performance as an encounter in real time.
Encounter with space
Encounter with material
Encounter between performer(s) and audience

Question: You might know something about what you are bringing as performer, but what does the audience bring to the performance?

There will be an emphasis on process through exercises, using our bodies and creating material, trying to get a bit further in how to be present in a performative encounter. The students will work individually and in groups. Students are asked to bring an open mind and wear loose clothes.

Programme:
Day 1: Encounter between body and space
Day 2: Encounter between body and material
Day 3: Encounter between bodies
Day 4: Encounter with time and memory
Day 5: Encountering yourself in meeting with the other

Dates: October 16-20, 2010
Location: Toronto Free Gallery, 1277 Bloor Street West, Toronto
Cost: $250 (does not include food, materials or accommodation)
Maximum of 8 participants

FADO will not turn anyone away due to inability to pay the full fee for the workshop. If you have financial concerns, please contact us. If you are traveling from outside of Toronto, we can help you to find accommodation to fit your budget.

TO PARTICIPATE
Please send a short description of your experience as it relates to the workshop, performance art or related interests, including a brief statement of what you hope to gain from this experience. If you have a CV, artist bio and images of previous work, you are welcome to send those as well. The workshop is open to students, visual artists, performance artists, as well as non-artists, non-students, and non-performance artists.

A one-day performance workshop + performance experience

Nonsense Group Photo of 111 Toronto Citizens is a playful project in which the artist will gather 111 Torontonians for the sole purpose of taking a group photograph with a large format camera at a selected Toronto landmark or tourist location. Reminiscent of summer travels with family, this project is both a guerrilla intervention challenging the norms of “acceptable” behaviour on a public street corner and a hilarious group performance, documented in real time, elaborated by size and scale.

We need exactly 111 participants for this unique performative social experience. Bring your friends and families, everyone is welcome. Meet in the lobby of the 401 Richmond Street West building where we will organize ourselves, hear instructions from the artist, and venture out as a group to our photo location.

This workshop is presented in conjunction with the The Arts of Togetherness exhibition (July 11–August 23, 2008) at the Gendai Gallery, located at the Japanese Cultural Centre. The exhibition is guest curated by Milena Placentile, and includes works by Sandee Moore and Yoshinori Niwa. Thanks to community and presentation partners including the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, Manitoba Arts Council, Tani Miki and The Japan-Canada Fund.

This 5-day intensive performance art workshop will be led by internationally recognized performance artist and educator BBB Johannes Deimling. Presented in partnership with the 7A*11D International Festival of Performance Art, the participants will present final performances in the context of festival programming.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
lo bil
Val Desjardins
Agnieszka Forfa
Alica Grant
Rodolphe-Yves Lapointe
Hélène Lefebvre
Christian Messier
Guillaume Provost

Workshop dates: October 17–21, 2008
Final performances: October 23–24, 2008

7A*11D is a not-for-profit, artist-driven collective that curates and produces English Canada’s oldest ongoing biennial of performance art. 7A*11D was established in 1997 by a group of performance artists, collectives, and organizers, eager to develop a forum for performance art in Toronto. The first 7A*11D International Festival of Performance Art, in August 1997, presented the work of 60 local, national and international artists.

From Iconic to Ironic: The Performance Works of Tanya Mars
Edited by Paul Couillard

Tanya Mars has been a key figure in Canadian art since she burst on the scene in 1974 with her first groundbreaking exhibition, Codpieces: Phallic Paraphernalia. Provocative and political, Mars has relentlessly shown us that the way to the jugular is through the funny bone, creating a series of compelling “three-dimensional pictures” that have made her one of Canada’s most acclaimed and important performance artists. This anthology offers a comprehensive look at her career, including a DVD with photo and video documentation of many of her major works.

“An innovative leader in the performance art scene here and internationally, Tanya Mars makes art that is courageous, humourous, operatic and original. Ironic to Iconic gives the reader a cogent and too little-known background to Mars’ career and her role in the development of performance art in Canada.”
~Jessica Bradley, curator and director of Jessica Bradley Art + Projects

Join us for an afternoon conversation with Bruce Barber on the occasion of the launch of his latest two volume book, Performance, [Performance] and Performers (edited by Marc James Leger, YYZBooks, 2007).

Bruce Barber is an artist, writer, curator, and educator based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he teaches at NSCAD University. His artwork has been shown at the Paris Biennale, the Sydney Biennial, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Walter Phillips Gallery, London Regional Gallery, and ArtSpace Auckland. Barber is the editor of Essays on Performance and Cultural Politicization and of Conceptual Art: the NSCAD Connection 1967-1973. He is co-editor, with Serge Guilbaut and John O’Brian of Voices of Fire: Art Rage, Power, and the State. His critical essays have appeared in numerous anthologies, journals and magazines. His art practice is documented in the publication Reading Rooms. He is best known for his early performance work, his Reading Rooms, Squat Projects and his writing and theory on Littoral Art.

“Bruce Barber is the quintessential dissident theorist/artist. Navigating the history of contemporary performance and performative conceptual art with ease, he maintains the position of the artist, the maker. His unique approach is dense and rewarding, a virtual intervention into the standard social performance narratives. Barber’s subtle iconoclasm—aimed at the generalizations (we) critics have promulgated—expands the context in which performance is considered and creates in the process a new kind of criticism that tackles the contradictions embedded in postmodernism and political art activism. Barber zeroes in on the function of the work, monitoring a kind of chain reaction as it acts on culture, rather than as an enactment in culture. These two volumes contain the most intelligent treatment of performance phenomena to date.”
~Lucy R. Lippard, author of Get the Message? A Decade of Art for Social Change

Conversation moderated by Clive Robertson

In conjunction with FADO’s on-going International Visiting Artist series, we invite local performance artists to participate in a new networking initiative. This is a chance for you to come meet international visiting artists in person, and talk to them (and a few of your local colleagues) about your work. To this end, FADO proposes DOCUDRAMA, an informal evening where up to 10 local artists can meet to talk about their work and show up to 10 minutes of documentation. Space is limited and we want to keep the sessions limited, therefore participants must reserve their spot in advance.

In this DOCUDRAMA, local artists are invited to present short talks about their work in the presence of Mexican artist and organizer Elvira Santamaria, who presented her work as part of the IDea Series.

In conjunction with FADO’s on-going International Visiting Artist series, we invite local performance artists to participate in a new networking initiative. This is a chance for you to come meet international visiting artists in person, and talk to them (and a few of your local colleagues) about your work. To this end, FADO proposes DOCUDRAMA, an informal evening where up to 10 local artists can meet to talk about their work and show up to 10 minutes of documentation. Space is limited and we want to keep the sessions limited, therefore participants must reserve their spot in advance.

In this DOCUDRAMA, local artists are invited to present short talks about their work in the presence of Thai artist and curator Chumpon Apisuk, who will be visiting Toronto with various representatives of EMPOWER and 5 – 6 Kumjing dolls. EMPOWER’s project of migrant dolls will be exhibited at the Global Village (Metro Toronto Convention Centre) as part of the XVI International AIDS Conference taking place in Toronto August 13–18, 2006. EMPOWER’s visit is assisted by the Toronto Sex Worker group, Stella.

In conjunction with FADO’s on-going International Visiting Artist series, we invite local performance artists to participate in a new networking initiative. This is a chance for you to come meet international visiting artists in person, and talk to them (and a few of your local colleagues) about your work. To this end, FADO proposes DOCUDRAMA, an informal evening where up to 10 local artists can meet to talk about their work and show up to 10 minutes of documentation. Space is limited and we want to keep the sessions limited, therefore participants must reserve their spot in advance.

In this DOCUDRAMA local artists are invited to present short talks about their work in the presence of German artist and organizer Anja Ibsch.

Thanks to the Goethe Institut in Toronto for hosting this very special artist talk with performance artist Boris Neislony. This artist talk accompanies a new performance entitled, Four Nature Studies.

Artist Talk with Boris Neislony
November 17, 2003 @ 6:00pm
Goethe-Institut Toronto, 163 King Street West, Toronto

Four Nature Studies by Boris Neislony
November 18, 2003 @ 8:00pm
Cinecycle, 129 Spadina Avenue, Toronto

Rachel Rosenthal has been teaching and refining her original performance techniques for 45 years, beginning the 1950s in Hollywood with her company of performers, INSTANT THEATRE. She has done residencies with various colleges and universities, museums and galleries, artist colonies and companies throughout the US as well as in Canada and Europe. She also teaches regularly at her Espace DbD studio in Los Angeles. Her “Doing by Doing” approach integrates aesthetic, technique and performance theory with active movement and vocal improvisation. Her integrated approach to working recognizes that the human animal is a complex creature encompassing spiritual, political, social, emotional and physical realms. This is a rare opportunity to work with a teacher whose classes have been described by participants as a “mind/body spa.”

This workshop is a ‘master level’ class with limited space. The organizers are pleased to acknowledge the generous support of the Ontario Arts Council and the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council in helping to make this workshop possible.

Anna Banana is a Canadian artist from Vancouver known for her performance art, writing, and work as a small press publisher. She has been described as an “entrepreneur and critic”, and pioneered the artistamp, a postage-stamp-sized medium. She has been prominent in the mail art movement since the early 1970s, acting as a bridge between the movement’s early history and its second generation. As a publisher, Banana launched Vile magazine and the “Banana Rag” newsletter; the latter became Artistamp News in 1996.

In this artist talk presented by FADO Performance Art Centre at A Space, Anna Banana talks about her work in performance, and her various mail art projects including ARTISTAMP News and BANANAPOST.

The A Space Events Committee in cooperation with FADO is pleased to sponsor a poetry reading by Vancouver artists Deanna Ferguson and Judy Radul, who are currently on tour to promote their new books. 

Deanna Ferguson’s collection of poems The Relative Minor was recently published by Tsunami Editions of Vancouver. Her work has also been published in absinthe, Front, hole, Jag, Raddle Moon, Writing, West Coast Line and the anthology East of Main (Pulp Press). Ferguson’s poems are a collage of fragmented images and familiar phrases, peopled with pop icons from Jack Kerouac and Sid Vicious to Spock and Elvis. The effect is a distillation of the violent and the mundane framed in an unsettling shorthand.

Judy Radul is an interdisciplinary artists who has worked with the spoken and written word, performance, installation, photography, video and film. She has published three books including Character Weakness rivulets cross cross cross vision (1993), Boner 9190 and the weak (1989), both by KNUST press in Holland, and Rotating Bodies (1988) by Peterad Press in vancouver. She was recently the editor of Front magazine published by the Western Front in Vancouver, and is currently the curator Front Gallery. 

Judy Radul’s writings follow visceral experiences to unexpected conclusions. She probes the soft underbelly of first-person experience, finding the degradation, humiliation and occasionally exultation in being. Character Weakness rivulets cross cross cross vision is a limited edition hand-made artist’s book printed in full colour using a special process involving old and new Gestetner printing processes.