Performance
Performance Academy 1: Inconsolable Solvency with Bethany Ides

FADO Performance Art Centre is pleased to offer the first iteration of our newest recurring series Performance Academy, with Bethany Ides’ Inconsolable Solvency, taking place at our new home in The Commons @ 401, over three consecutive Sundays in September. 

What extra-sensory signals do we exchange when we trade money for goods, services and conveniences? How out of whack would a transaction have to be in order to hardly be recognizable as such? Would it—could it—seem like something else entirely? Like love? Like devastation? Like relief?

In this workshop, we will be troubling the methods of assessment and valuation we rely on every day in order to manage and/or mitigate our senses of security, trustworthiness, likability and fairness. Participants will work collaboratively to re-interpret and re-model concepts like “efficiency,” “transparency” and “trust,” by inventing tools for dissolving those social structures that depend on them. During each meeting, individuals and smaller clusters will propose experimental contracts or modes of currency for possible use by the group as a whole. Readings will be distributed and short process/speculative writing will be assigned each week. This workshop is offered free of charge. There is no fixed monetary cost, other kinds of equitable exchange are welcomed and encouraged. 

Inconsolable Solvency is presented in three sessions. If you cannot join each of the sessions, that’s okay, but it is preferable that participants make a commitment to attend at least two of the sessions. This workshop is open to all participants of all levels of study and/or experience (including just plain curiosity).

Bethany Ides’ Performance Academy is presented in conjunction with, in relationship to, and in the context of the work she is developing at HATCH entitled Deathbeds. Described as an opera created in community, Deathbeds is a multi-platform work about desire as a contested resource and the ways various commodification compulsions affect romantic and economic ecologies alike. And how harrowing matters get when we try to break through all that–how funny but also jittery, how dizzyingly everything becomes blur the more emphatically we expect the expiration of the patient, Capitalism. With accelerated excitations, we imagine a body on the brink and tend to it even as we call for its demise.

Performance
Ghost Days by Terrance Houle with Simla Civelek

Created and Performed by Terrance Houle
In collaboration with Simla Civelek

Presented at SummerWorks in partnership with FADO Performance Art Centre

Evoking our colonial and non-colonial histories that exist in the light of night as in the darkness of the day, GHOST DAYS awakens a collaboration with artists, audience, and spirit. Internationally celebrated performance artist Terrance Houle will work in residence overnight at the Theatre Centre throughout the festival, culminating in a final performance that combines video, performance, photography, and music to conjure spirits and ghosts as audience and collaborators.

Terrance Houle is in residence at SummerWorks as part of the SummerWorks Lab–a place for exploration, experimentation, and process, allowing us to support work in early stages and create connections between audiences and artists.

SummerWorks is Canada’s largest curated performance festival of theatre, dance, music, live art and interdisciplinary forms. This year’s 11-day Festival features 52 unique projects, as well our SLIP series of artist workshops, a collection of new performance experiments in the SummerWorks Lab, and nightly parties. Festival runs from August 3–13, 2017.


© Terrance Houle, Friend or Foe #7 (Toronto), 7a11d International Festival of Performance Art, 2014. Photo Henry Chan.

Performance
MONOMYTHS Stage 14

MONOMYTHS is conceived and curated by Shannon Cochrane and Jess Dobkin.
Presented by FADO Performance Art Centre, in association with The Theatre Centre.

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.

Stage 14: The Return Home
CRONE by Tanya Mars

CRONE, the latest durational performance by Tanya Mars looks at how superstition and myth intertwine. In keeping with her recent performance strategy, Mars will create an atmospheric work that combines visually rich layers of spectacular, satirical feminist imagery with light and sound. A revered matriarch of the Canadian performance art community, it is fitting that Mars offers the conclusion to the year-long epic MONOMYTHS journey, illuminating Stage 14: The Return Home.

Performance
MONOMYTHS Stage 13

MONOMYTHS is conceived and curated by Shannon Cochrane and Jess Dobkin.
Presented by FADO in the context of the 38th Rhubarb Festival at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.

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.

Stage 13: Freedom To Live
Performance by Staceyann Chin

This is a rare opportunity to experience the powerful and provocative work of Staceyann Chin, an out spoken-word poet and LGBT rights and political activist. In her performance for MONOMYTHS, Chin weaves excerpts from her 2015 solo performance Motherstruck! with new thoughts and words ruminating on survival and action strategies for living in the current political situation in the USA as an intersectional life-term activist. 

Staceyann Chin’s work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Pittsburgh Daily; and has been featured on 60 Minutes and The Oprah Winfrey Show. In 2015, she was named by Equality Forum as one of their 31 Icons of the 2015 LGBT History Month.

“To watch Chin perform is to watch the very essence of poetry manifested: her performances are imperfect, volatile and beautiful. Chin’s poetry is passionate and well-written, sure; but it’s her ability to communicate that passion in performance that is unparalleled. She becomes the poetry.”
~Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, author

Performance
MONOMYTHS Stage 12

MONOMYTHS is conceived and curated by Shannon Cochrane and Jess Dobkin.
Presented by FADO in association with The Theatre Centre and sponsored by Images Festival.

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.

MONOMYTHS Stage 12: Mistress of Two Worlds
Silver & Gold
Nao Bustamente (performed with Zachary Murphy)

Silver & Gold combines film, live performance, and original costumes into a hyrbid work that Nao Bustamante proclaims a “filmformance.” In this filmformance, Bustamante evokes the muse of legendary filmmaker Jack Smith and his tribute to 1940s Dominican movie starlet Maria Montez in a magical and joyfully twisted exploration of race, glamour, sexuality, and the silver screen.

The performance alternates between action and live narration of a film projection. In the film, inspired by iconic underground filmmaker Jack Smith, Bustamante interprets Smith’s muse: 1940s Dominican movie starlet Maria Montez. Honing-in on Smith’s interest in Hollywood’s obsession with filmic reproduction of the exotic, Bustamante embodies Miss Montez. Using video, live voiceover, audience interaction, and the body as a source of backdrop, narrative, and emotion, she takes the spectator on a bizarre and radical journey as she discovers a new bejeweled body part, which is at once her curse and oracle. This performance is the fruit of a commission by the LIVE FILM/ Jack Smith festival, co-organized by Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art and Hebbel-am-Ufer Theater (HAU) in Berlin. 

Watch the trailer of Silver & Gold.

Performance
MONOMYTHS Stage 11

MONOMYTHS is conceived and curated by Shannon Cochrane and Jess Dobkin.
Presented by FADO Performance Art Centre, in association with The Theatre Centre.

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.

MONOMYTHS Stage 11: Refusal of the Return
Refusal of MONOMYTHs
claude wittmann with Adam Herst

For me the question in the arts right now is not “How?” (form), “When?” (place/time),”By/for whom?” (authorship/audience), but “What for?” which is locating the projects in a political and ethical path.
~Tania Bruguera

2894 by claude wittmann asks participants to read outloud from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report (TRC report, 2015.) Each participant reads the report to a live streaming radio station with the aid of a cell phone and streaming software provided by the artist. Readers start where the last one left and read as much as they want. Sometimes the readings take place in a specific location, but mostly, participants may read anywhere they choose–in their homes, or in public. Participants read as much or as little as they can. Listeners can similarly be anywhere, listening on any device at any time. The connection of the radio provides a special kind of intimacy between readers and listeners. This project started in April 2016. It is on-going, until the entire report (all 2894 pages) has been read or until the project transforms into something more relevant to social change. 2894 is not a Truth and Reconciliation project. It is a Truth project. It is currently co-managed by claude wittmann and Adam Herst.

ABOUT 2894

2894 starts at the point where we acknowledge that it is not possible yet for Indigenous People and Settlers to meet in equal terms.
2894 reads the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report (TRC report).
2894 is nothing else than reading the TRC report with integrity.
2894 is a trial at triggering something.
2894 will bring stuff up in the hearts of readers and listeners. We will see what we choose to do with it. 

2894 is managed with an artistic ethics:
2894 will not exploit the suffering of people who went to residential schools;
2894 asks us to act with integrity at all times, even if this has the risk to create discomfort;
2894 should generate equality;
2894 is not owned by anybody. 

In 2894: Refusal of MONOMYTHs, claude and Adam facilitate a 3-hour reading session. Audience is invited to attend to listen to readings of the report. Audience is invited to become readers should they wish. Readers read as much or as little as they choose, to the assembled audience of witnesses.

Performance
MONOMYTHS Stage 10

MONOMYTHS is conceived and curated by Shannon Cochrane and Jess Dobkin.
Presented by FADO Performance Art Centre, in association with The Theatre Centre.

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.

MONOMYTHS Stage 10: The Road Back
Rise and Fall by Serena Lee

Rise and Fall is a performance and collective exercise on the desire for inevitability, on how the return is narrated. A mutant reading group: we will create a model by weighing things–thoughts, images, and otherwise.

The first part is called Exposition.
Here, the key idea is introduced, the character established, giving us the main melodic line, the voice to follow. We set out along the path of its making.

The second part is called Development.
Here, we find ourselves getting lost, having followed the voice, the key idea, as it veers off into unpredictable territory: shadowy undergrowth, tangled density, change to a minor key, etc. A narrative device to create tension and interest, verging on dissolution.

The third part is called Recapitulation.
Here, we have regained our orientation and found our footing in the familiar. The compounded tension yields the reward of resolution, now that we have cleared the unknown and are following the path that, we expect, will take us home.

Some things to consider:

  • Because it feels good to know where you’re going or, at least, to look like you know.
  • Conventional models of societal collapse include the runaway trainthe house of cards, the dinosaur
  • With circular narratives we expect to be familiar with the unexpected, we expect to come home. How does desire arrange history?
  • Referring to paths, wayfaring, weaving: Lines: A Brief History (Tim Ingold, Routledge: 2007).
  • Hannibal used vinegar to break through rocks, traverse the Alps and take on Rome.
  • To dress a table or a body – let’s say, with a heavy polyester banquet table linen or a sheet of  silk – you must be familiar with how fabric works in relation to the forces acting upon it, how it was made, how it reacts. You must anticipate how it falls, how it feels.

We will not call it progress. How to describe the movement?

Performance
MONOMYTHS Stage 9

Conceived and curated by Shannon Cochrane and Jess Dobkin.
Presented by FADO and sponsored by The Gladstone Hotel

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.

MONOMYTHS Stage 9: Apotheosis/Journey to the Inmost Cave
Waiting for Sunrise by Marilyn Arsem

Apotheosis (from Greek áŒ€Ï€ÎżÎžÎ­Ï‰ÏƒÎčς from áŒ€Ï€ÎżÎžÎ”ÎżáżŠÎœ, apotheoun “to deify”; in Latin deificatio “making divine”; also called divinization and deification) is the glorification of a subject to divine level. The term has meanings in theology, where it refers to a belief, and in art, where it refers to a genre.

In theology, apotheosis refers to the idea that an individual has been raised to godlike stature. In art, the term refers to the treatment of any subject (a figure, group, locale, motif, convention or melody) in a particularly grand or exalted manner.

“In this stage of the journey, the inmost cave may represent many things in the Hero’s story such as an actual location in which lies a terrible danger or an inner conflict which up until now the Hero has not had to face. As the Hero approaches the cave he must make final preparations before taking that final leap into the great unknown. 

At the threshold to the inmost cave the Hero may once again face some of the doubts and fears that first surfaced upon his call to adventure. He may need some time to reflect upon his journey and the treacherous road ahead in order to find the courage to continue. This brief respite helps the audience understand the magnitude of the ordeal that awaits the Hero and escalates the tension in anticipation of his ultimate test.”

Performance
MONOMYTHS Stage 8

Conceived and curated by Shannon Cochrane and Jess Dobkin.

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.

MONOMYTHS Stage 8: Atonement with the Father/State
Movement: Training Sessions for Freedom Fighters
Syrus Marcus Ware

In this stage of the monomyth narrative, the hero must confront and be initiated by whatever holds the ultimate power in life. All the previous stages of the journey have been moving into this place; all that follow will move out from it. This stage is frequently symbolized by an encounter with someone or thing with incredible power, often conceived as masculine, through the patriarchal heterosexist imagining of the state. 

In Movement: Training Sessions for Freedom Fighters, Syrus Marcus Ware invites you to join in the present moment (after, back then and just before, in the future), wherein the potential directions are seemingly endless, yet also hyper- focused. In this confrontation with the Father State, we move past what we have been training for, and into what we are creating anew. We will move into the prefigurative political dreams we have been working towards. All participants (heroes) will participate in collective struggle that harnesses all the activisms that have come before and that will lead us into the future together. This work will be rooted in the often invisibilized labour behind the scenes, work often done by those on the margins of the struggle. It celebrates the powerful behind the scenes hustle that facilitates–and is its own kind of–direct action. 

Participants (heroes) will create a 36-square metre banner, in four connected pieces. The 4-piece banner will be themed around 4 phrases that guide our heroes journey:

  • Octavia E. Butler’s phrase, “Our future is in the stars”;
  • Nat King Cole’s resistance statement to a white supremacist concert audience, “Some people are just afraid of the Dark”;
  • Assata Shakur’s famous words, “I believe that we will win”;
  • And finally, the relatively ambivalent expression, “What if we don’t?” 

Separately the phrases convey hope, fear, confidence and uncertainty. Together they tell a broader story about the decidedly hopeful uncertainty of our current struggle–the struggle against the supremacist state with the future of humanity and our planet in the balance. 

The banner will be gifted to the movement for use in future actions, bringing all participants into the process of supporting this life giving work. As a collective journey, as heroes we are all witness and archive to this behind the scenes labour; and as allies to the struggle for self-determination of all people through the liberation of black people, we are all implicated in the shared risks and responsibilities of this work. 

We will work together, collectively, to create these works and through the process we will meditate on the question, “what if we don’t?”, perhaps coming up with answers together as we go. For, ‘its not all we got’….and we do have each other.

This event will be ASL interpreted.

Performance
MONOMYTHS Stage 7

MONOMYTHS is conceived and curated by Shannon Cochrane and Jess Dobkin.
Presented by FADO in the context of Art Spin’s in/future.

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.

MONOMYTHS Stage 7: Ordeals
PULSE by MC Coble

In MC Coble’s Pulse, the artist climbs the iconic Cinesphere at Ontario Place each day in order to repurpose it as a beacon of protest. A series of Morse Code messages are transmitted from the structure to receivers on the ground positioned throughout Ontario Place island who then relay the message on using their own light source. The transmitted messages are composed of statements and chants used in recent and current protests and fights for civil rights which will be selected from the artist’s archive as well as in collaboration with local community. This collaborative gesture of solidarity merges activist and nautical language to amplify a collective call for action.

Coble’s Pulse fits into the MONOMYTHS journey at Stage 7: Ordeals. During this stage of the journey the heroine has come face to face with their personal challenge. In this moment they either confront death or face their greatest fear. The hope of this stage of the journey is that by confronting their greatest fear and conquering it, they can embark on a new life. Coble’s response to illuminating this stage of the journey suggests the necessity of challenging seemingly inaccessible structures and systems (social, political personal), while insisting on the interdependency of a collective effort by employing the communication of multiple bodies, versus attempting to cross this personal bridge alone. Refraining from a heroic narrative of conquering an iconic structure, the piece lends itself to chance and even possibly, failure.

PULSE is presented in the context of in/future, a festival of art and music, presented by Art Spin in partnership with Small World Music. 100+ transformative experiences re-animating the West Island of Ontario Place during this once-in-a-lifetime festival. 60+ artists including large scale installations, films, and performances. 40+ musical performances on the Small World Music stage.

Thanks to Rui Pimenta and Layne Hinton (Art Spin), Mike Hazleton (Ontario Place), and special thanks to Matthew Languay and Basecamp Climbing for their expertise and support. Thanks to Matt Seto for facilitating the climbing team who are supporting this project. 

Performance
MONOMYTHS Stage 6

MONOMYTHS is conceived and curated by Shannon Cochrane and Jess Dobkin.
Presented in partnership with University of Toronto Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies.

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.

MONOMYTHS Stage 6: Tests, Allies, Enemies
Physics of Blackness: Understanding Beyond Linear Time
Dr. Michelle M. Wright

FADO picks up the epic MONOMYTHS series at Stage 6: Tests, Allies, Enemies with a talk given by (and a reading group led by) Dr. Michelle M. Wright entitled Physics of Blackness: Understanding Beyond Linear Time.

In this talk, Physics of Blackness: Understanding Beyond Linear Time, Michelle M. Wright shows how our current struggle to be diverse and inclusive in our worldview has more to do with Isaac Newton’s laws of motion and gravity than most would realize. Blackness, for example, can only be understood accurately by drawing on different understandings of time and space—specifically going beyond linear time and the myth of universal progress. Moving from discussions of 17th century physics to 3rd century Christian religions, to 21st century African travel narratives to Black European postwar histories to Black Caribbean settlement in 18th century Australia, Physics of Blackness goes around the globe through all spaces and times to show us the unexpected ways Blackness reveals and encounters itself.

Performance
MONOMYTHS Stage 5

MONOMYTHS is conceived and curated by Shannon Cochrane and Jess Dobkin.
The series is presented by FADO in the context of Progress.

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.

MONOMYTHS Stage 5: Belly of the Whale
Thoroughbred by Jefferson Pinder
Performed with Ravyn/Jelani Ade-Lam Wngz, DaniĂšle Dennis, Jasmyn Fyffe, Chy Ryan Spain

In Jefferson Pinder’s Thoroughbred, four performers work themselves to exhaustion running on treadmills that are remote controlled by the artist who sits at a single controller. Pinder “skillfully exhumes a corpse of black captivity and subjugation of black bodies in America that started four hundred years ago and brings it into the foreground into our present day experience.” (Fo Wilson, The Evidence of Things Not Seen)

American artist Jefferson Pinder works in video, installation, and performance. His work explores the tangle of representations and misrepresentations, visual tropes, and myths—often referencing historical events and invoking cultural symbolism. His work portrays the black body both frenetically and through drudgery in order to convey relevant cultural experiences. 

SummerWorks, in partnership with The Theatre Centre and a roster of Toronto theatre and performance organizations/presenters and companies including Aluna Theatre, Dancemakers, FADO Performance Art Centre, Summerworks, The Theatre Centre and Volcano Theatre brings the world to Toronto with Progress, an international festival of performance and ideas from January 14–February 7, 2016.

Performance
MONOMYTHS Stage 4

MONOMYTHS is conceived and curated by Shannon Cochrane and Jess Dobkin.
The series is presented by FADO in the context of Progress.

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.

MONOMYTHS Stage 4: Crossing the Threshold
Armando Minjarez

Armando Minjarez’s performance is part of his long-term international participatory art project AlieNation, which is grounded in his personal experiences as an undocumented Mexican immigrant living in the USA. AlieNation examines mass migration and the disturbing trend of dehumanizing the migrant – an alien without a home, without rights or a defined identity.

Racism and identity politics remain prevalent threads in the fabric of America, existing in a constant tension of mine vs. ours and black vs. white, a dangerous game hidden behind the veil of diversity and progress. This constant denial of a history of oppression and white supremacy has normalized a language of hate and hostility toward communities of colour throughout the USA. This performance serves as a mirror of America’s denial of self. Only through self-awareness can the process of healing begin. Armando Minjarez has traveled and conducted research on displacement and migration of people in the USA, Mexico, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia. The project will eventually travel to Southern Mexico and Central America to follow the steps of displaced Central American minors. 

SummerWorks, in partnership with The Theatre Centre and a roster of Toronto theatre and performance organizations/presenters and companies including Aluna Theatre, Dancemakers, FADO Performance Art Centre, Summerworks, The Theatre Centre and Volcano Theatre brings the world to Toronto with Progress, an international festival of performance and ideas from January 14–February 7, 2016.

Performance
MONOMYTHS Stage 3

MONOMYTHS is conceived and curated by Shannon Cochrane and Jess Dobkin.
The series is presented by FADO in the context of Progress.

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.

MONOMYTHS Stage 3: Meeting of the Mentor
The Exquisite Course

Performances by Dainty Smith, Tamyka Bullen, Eliza Chandler, Zanette Singh, Ariel Smith, Johnson Ngo

The Exquisite Course, presented by the Feminist Art Gallery (F.A.G.), is an evening of short lectures by feminist and/or queer artists and creative folks from a variety of disciplines, interests, and positions. A mixture of fiction and non-fiction, The Exquisite Course collages real-life stories and performance mythologies around the microphone campfire to stitch together tales of meeting real-life mentors.

The Feminist Art Gallery 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 (F.A.G) is our geographical footprint located in Toronto and is run by Allyson Mitchell and Deirdre Logue.

This event will be ASL interpreted.

SummerWorks, in partnership with The Theatre Centre and a roster of Toronto theatre and performance organizations/presenters and companies including Aluna TheatreDancemakers, FADO Performance Art Centre, SummerworksThe Theatre Centre and Volcano Theatre brings the world to Toronto with Progress, an international festival of performance and ideas from January 14–February 7, 2016. 

Performance
MONOMYTHS Stage 2

MONOMYTHS is conceived and curated by Shannon Cochrane and Jess Dobkin.
The series is presented by FADO in the context of Progress.

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.

MONOMYTHS Stage 2: Refusal of the Call
What is Being Refused or Your Local Sky Tonight
By Shawna Dempsey & Lorri Millan

What is Being Refused or Your Local Sky Tonight is a new performance turn by Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan. Part planetarium show, part rumination on Alice in Wonderland, the nature of rabbits and heroes, Dempsey and Millan deliver an off-kilter guide to the stars tonight. Collaborators since 1989, Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan were catapulted into the international spotlight with their performance and film We’re Talking Vulva (1986/1990). Their humorous, feminist, and provocative works work has been exhibited in diverse venues as far ranging as women’s centres in Sri Lanka to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. To most, however, they are known simply as the Lesbian Rangers of Lesbian National Parks and Services.

This performance will be ASL interpreted by Sage Willow.

SummerWorks, in partnership with The Theatre Centre and a roster of Toronto theatre and performance organizations/presenters and companies including Aluna TheatreDancemakers, FADO Performance Art Centre, SummerworksThe Theatre Centre and Volcano Theatre brings the world to Toronto with Progress, an international festival of performance and ideas from January 14–February 7, 2016. 

Performance
MONOMYTHS Stage 1

MONOMYTHS is conceived and curated by Shannon Cochrane and Jess Dobkin.
The series is presented by FADO in the context of Progress.

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.

Nikamon Ochi Askiy (Ke’tapekiaq Ma’qimikew): The Land Sings
Ursula Johnson, in collaboration with Cheryl L’Hirondelle 

Post Performance / Conversation Action
Maria Hupfield

Nikamon Ochi Askiy (Ke’tapekiaq Ma’qimikew): The Land Sings is an audio-based endurance performance by Ursula Johnson created in collaboration with Cheryl L’Hirondelle, and is offered as an apology to the land for the ways in which our human impact has shifted and shaped the landscape, displacing the voices of many First Nations. 

Ursula Johnson and Maria Hupfield’s works are presented in conjunction with #callresponse, a Canada Council {Re}Conciliation initiative project. #callresponse positions the work of First Nations, Inuit and MĂ©tis women and artists as central to the strength and healing of their communities. This socially engaged project focuses on the “act of doing” through performative actions, highlighting the responsibility of voice and necessity of communal dialogue practiced by Indigenous Peoples. #callresponse is a multifaceted project which brings together five site-specific art commissions that invite collaboration with individuals, communities, lands and institutions, culminating in an exhibition in October 2016 at grunt gallery in Vancouver. The The fifth visitation of Ke’tapekiaq Ma’qimikew: The Land Sings will be a part of this exhibition.

Following The Land Sings, Maria Hupfield presents Post Performance / Conversation Action, a hybrid performance and conversation with Ursula Johnson and Cheryl L’Hirondelle on how revitalization, collaboration, and the act of refusal are used in performance art to shape current dialogue on Reconciliation.

SummerWorks, in partnership with The Theatre Centre and a roster of Toronto theatre and performance organizations/presenters and companies including Aluna TheatreDancemakers, FADO Performance Art Centre, SummerworksThe Theatre Centre and Volcano Theatre brings the world to Toronto with Progress, an international festival of performance and ideas from January 14–February 7, 2016.

Performance
Legs, Too

Offered as an antidote to Toronto’s annual all-night “art thing” Nuit Blanche, LEGS, TOO is an all-day performance art relay. The form of the event is dictated by a chosen duration (in this case 8-hours), which is then divided equally by the number of performance artists from the local community who invited to participate.

We asked a staggering 116 artists to participate, and 53 decided to join in. For this second iteration of LEGS, TOO, audience will witness a continuous performance work made up of 53 eight-minute performances over the course of 8 hours.

Participating artists are suggested by other participating artists, snowballing a self-organizing event that is disinterested in traditional curation. Founded on a belief in community trust, performative dialogue and artistic self-determinancy, the resulting collective event lets participating artists be responsible not only for the continuous stream of idea- and image-making, but also for the realization of event itself. There is no staff, no coordinator, no stage manager, only artists working together. LEGS has legs. LEGS is a manifestation of the social and performing body through the collective network and expanded community.

The first iteration of LEGS was presented in our sister performance art network in Montréal on February 7, 2015, at Le Cercle Carré. The score and format of the event was initially imagined by an informal collective of artists (including Christian Bujold, Michelle Lacombe, Marie-Claude Gendron, NadÚge Grebmeier Forget, Katherine-Josée Gervais and Jean-Philippe Luckurst-Cartier) and was created with the intention of activating and making-visible the often fragmented local performance art community.


(The score) LEGS,

  • is made by local artists (local/provincial) participating on a voluntary basis.
  • is not crafted by a singular artistic direction or selection method, and refuses all curating models (there is a lead organizer who acquires a space and starts the chain of invitations – this is the only entity-driven action).
  • is intergenerational, and the invitation is extended to performance artists at all stages of their careers. It does not however pretend or attempt to be an exhaustive representation of a community.
  • is a minimum of 7 hours and a maximum of 9 hours long; the durational for each work is decided by dividing the total chosen time with the number of participating artists in order to realize a continuous performance relay without pause. The order of the performances is arbitrary.
  • is not performed for the sake of the camera, but is photo documented and live streamed, if possible. Images will be collected by the transmitter, made available to participating artists, and published on a collective LEGS website, where the multiplying manifestations can co-exist.
  • is characterized by the fact that each participating artist is autonomous; there is no technical or material support. Artists are responsible for their own set up and clean up (which is part of their allotted time). No performance will be stopped but artists will begin at their scheduled time.
  • is not financed by any public program or entity and doesn’t generate monetary profit for the organizers or the participants.
  • asks, if desired, for a donation from attending audience who are free to come and go as they please; the collected donations compensate venue rental or documentation, if necessary, and the remainder is spent on refreshments for all.
  • can only be transmitted to/in another community by an individual (or a small group) who has participated in the directly previous edition, and the physical participation of these transmitters in the next event is preferred.
  • is shared through this score and set of principals across the performance art network.

LEGS in Toronto is initiated by FADO Performance Art Centre. The custodians of this iteration are Shannon Cochrane and Adriana Disman. There will be two LEGS transmitters from the authoring collective/performers from the first iteration present in Toronto.

Audience is invited to come and go throughout the day. If you cannot make it, watch the LIVE STREAM.

ARTISTS (in order of appearance)
NadÚge Grebmeier Foget (transmitter from Montréal), Katherine-Josée Gervais (transmitter from Montréal), Tiffany Schofield, Adam Filek, Ed Johnson, Shaista Latif, Kate Barry, Emma-Kate Guimond, Katie Kehoe, Holly Timpener, Yan St Onge, Ellen Furey, Johannes Zits, Jonathan Simpson, Fiona Griffiths, lo bil, Anna Sarchami, Adam Herst, Lauren Scott, Eroca Nicols, Andrew James Paterson, Coman Poon, Alisha Mascarenhas, Brianna MacLellan, Alan Peng, Maggie Flynn, Dorothea Rust, Paul Couillard, Clayton Lee, Moynan King, Bojana Videkanic, Carrie Perreault, Johanna Householder, Christopher Willes, claude wittmann, Julian Pivato, Liz Khan, Simon Rabyniuk, Robert Luzar, Marcin Kedzior, Golboo Amani, Liz Peterson, Aliya Pabani, Chad Dembski, Berenicci Hershorn, Teena Lange, Francesco Gagliardi, Zeesy Powers, Jessica Cimó, Alex Beriault, Rosa Mesa, Raki Malhotra, Tanya Mars, Adriana Disman and Shannon Cochrane.

For an archive of the collected events in the LEGS series including the original event in Montréal, and subsequent events in Toronto and Zurich, visit the LEGS website.

Performance
Performances by Dorothea Rust & Victoria Gray

FADO Performance Art Centre is proud to present new solos performance works by Victoria Gray (UK) and Dorothea Rust (Switzerland) in the context of the on-going International Visiting Artists series. Dorothea Rust and Victoria Gray’s appearances in Toronto are presented in partnership with VIVA! Art Action, the next stop on the artists’ tour. Established in 2006, VIVA! Art Action is an international performance and live art festival presented once every two years in MontrĂ©al.


Ballast by Victoria Gray

“An action may be gentle, but it is not benign.” ~Victoria Gray

Often durational, Victoria Gray’s performances utilize slowness and stillness, in conjunction with performing unsighted, bringing a cellular-attention to kinesthetic sensations. Integrating affect studies, process philosophy, political theory, and somatics, her work aims to bring dormant psychosomatic memory to consciousness. Specifically, that which subsists at the sentient level of the bones, muscles, organs, fluids, glands and nerves. This cellular-attention aims to disturb “common-sense” hierarchies of sensory organization, activating the political potential of a body that is intimately attuned to affective experience. Each work is highly contingent upon the audience’s particular presence and the specificities of each performance space. In this sense, like time, affect becomes a material in performance, it is “shaped” moment-by-moment in an immediate exchange between performer, audience and site. 


Übung / Exercise No. 6 – Gender – Render by Dorothea Rust

My (our) languages is (are) (long ago already) ramified: expanding to technological documentation and medias of expression, onto the handling with objects, including music, sound, text and movement/choreography and probably more to come. Thus constantly throwing another (new) light onto the relationship and my (our) being with others present or absent in a (different) space/place, be it audience, visitors, co-performers. 

I don’t consider performance as an ephemeral, singular event, disappearing like a soap bubble. I see it as a space and a ‘milieu’ [The term ‘milieu’ refers to Jean-Luc Nancy in: Sybille KrĂ€mer: Medium, Bote, Übertragung – Kleine Metaphysik der MedialitĂ€t, 2008 , pages 54 – 66], me (us) moving in it, being part of a flow, of a social, cultural environment, hence performance an  incident, an intervention, a disturbance, a time/moment in a process … 

Any kind of preparation and processing before and after – such as script, notation, documentation, narration, photos, video, audio – can function as a possible trace which can become again a script and material for the next performance, a new intervention, disturbance etc., like Ariadne’s thread in a labyrinth with many exits, which is picked up not only by me, but by others. Thus the performance doesn’t belong to me, it’s part of a ‘milieu’, others as much belonging to it and being part of it as me.


Image © Dorothea Rust, Übung / Exercise No. 6 – Gender – Render, 2015. Photo Henry Chan.

Performance
CHARCO Exchange

FADO is pleased to be facilitating the LIVE ART EXCHANGE’s Canadian edition: CHARCO EXCHANGE. Presented in partnership with DARE-DARE, Link&Pin, and Rats9 in MontrĂ©al; and VideoFag in Toronto, CHARCO EXCHANGE happens between two cities from May 11–30, 2015.

The first phase takes place in MontrĂ©al from May 11–23, and will culminate in a public sharing in where works in progress/creation will be presented. The duos working together (who have already started the process before meeting in person through email, writing, Skype etc.) are Sofia and Ana; and Isabel and Olivier. In the last week of the project, the four artists move to Toronto where they continue their research, with a final sharing of the work produced will take place on Saturday May 30, in an event that will include live specimens, lectures and exhibition of the process carried out.

ARTISTS
Ana Matey (Spain)
Isabel LeĂłn (Spain)
Serge Olivier Fokoua (Cameroon/Canada)
SoufĂŻa BensaĂŻd (Tunisia/Canada)

LIVE ART EXCHANGE is a process-based research and creation project initiated by Ana Matey and Isabel Leon in 2012, and has realized projects with dozens of artists in Spain, Finland and Norway. 

LIVE ART EXCHANGE is an on-going research project on communication and interpretation of messages between individuals, using performance and action art as the basis for this research. LIVE ART EXCHANGE is interested in collective creation and believes that artistic creation is a live act, without boundaries or limits. The project manifests in a variety of proposals including meetings, residencies, workshops, talks and other outcomes including photography, video, and performance working with artists and creative people from different disciplines, backgrounds and origins. LIVE ART EXCHANGE proposes focusing on artistic process and the artists themselves, rather than the outcome or production of specific works. In this project, the research around ideas of ​​communication-interpretation and the process of creation itself goes beyond the outcome of the play itself.

DARE-DARE supports research and valorises emerging practices. Its members are interested in the context of creation and answer the need of exchange and collaboration. DARE-DARE is a flexible, open space devoted to research, experimentation, risk and critical inquiry. The artist-run centre manifests a sustained interest in exploration and in the diversity in the modes of presentation.

LINK&PIN is an international performance art series based in MontrĂ©al, Canada. It is organized and curated by Adriana Disman along with a huge amount of support from the local performance art community. It holds a constantly changing mission in an effort to stay relevant. Currently, L&P strives to support artists who are in some way marginalized and engages with thinking through anti-disciplinarity and the politics of arts funding.

RATS9 est un espace positif et inclusif oĂč il est possible, Ă  travers l’art, d’engager une conversation Ă  propos des enjeux fĂ©ministes, post/dĂ©-coloniaux et queer. Notre mission est d’offrir un support Ă  la crĂ©ation et Ă  la diffusion d’artistes dont le travail aborde les problĂ©matiques liĂ©es Ă  l’identitĂ© sexuelle, ainsi qu’aux pratiques anti-oppressive. Rats9 strives to be a positive and inclusive space where it’s possible, be through art, to engage in conversations about feminism, post-/de-coloniality, and queerness. Our mission is to offer support for the creation and diffusion of artists whose work addresses issues related to sexual identity, as well as anti-oppressive practice.

VIDEOFAG is a storefront cinema and performance lab in Toronto’s Kensington Market, dedicated to the creation and exhibition of video, film, new media, and live art. The space is run by Jordan Tannahil and William Ellis, who converted the space from an old barbershop in October 2012.

Performance
Transmitting Trio A (1966) with Sara Wookey

Project curated and presented by FADO Performance Art Centre

Workshop partners: Dancemakers & Public Recordings
Performance venue partner: AGO
Gallery partner: Gallery TPW

PERFORMERS:
Aleesa Cohene
Ame Henderson
Andrea Nann
Francesco Gagliardi
Jon McCurley
Margaret Dragu
Martin BĂ©langer
Mikiki
Robert Abubo
Shannon Cochrane
Simon Rabyniuk
Sara Wookey

The Project: TRANSMITTING TRIO A (1966)
Over the course of a 5-day intensive workshop led by Sara Wookey — one of the few dancers authorized by Yvonne Rainer to “transmit” (to use Rainer’s own phrase) her works — a mixed group of dance and performance artists will learn several of Rainer’s dance works, focusing primarily on Trio A (1966). 

Consisting of a 4Âœ minute sequence of movements that progress without repetition, phrasing, or emphasis and performed without musical accompaniment, Trio A (1966) is largely considered to be one of the originative works of the postmodern dance movement, as well one of the most influential works in the canon of 20th century dance. Rainer’s interest in task-based movement, the ephemeral, the un-spectacular, and rethinking the performer-audience relationship are characteristic concerns of both contemporary dance artists and performance artists.

The starting point for this project is the shared conversation between dance and performance artists around the distinctions between repertoire and reenactment, in particular consideration of how these modes of archiving in live art relate to the increasing interest in presenting performance art and choreography in the museum.

The results of the project are a series of presentations of Trio A (and other works in the Rainer repertoire) in a variety of contexts: a dance studio, a gallery, and a museum; as an open rehearsal, a single iteration, and a rotating relay.

FADO’s Transmitting Trio A (1966) project overlaps with Yvonne Rainer’s visit to Toronto where she will deliver an artist talk (Saturday March 21, 7:00pm) entitled Where’s the Passion? in the context of the AGO’s Radical Acts Unconference taking place on March 21. In addition, there are other activations to experience: Sara Wookey will be giving a lecture demonstration about Trio A and Gallery TPW presents a discursive series (March 20–28) curated by Jacob Korczynski and Kim Simon. Entitled, “
a container for mere possibilities that have not yet happened, a body in a state of becoming through time, or a structure for the expression of time as it moves both forwards and backwards at once.” the series responds to and thinks alongside the performances initiated by FADO, allowing the opportunity to see Rainer’s dance again within a constellation of conversations, readings and newly commissioned work.

THANK YOU. This project is possible because of the generous support of Dancemakers (Ben Kamino and Emi Forster) in making the workshop possible. Warm thanks to Public Recordings (Ame Henderson) in conceptualizing the project and helping to assemble the group. Thanks to the AGO (Kathleen McLean and Paola Poletto) for inviting this project into their activities. Thanks to the contribution of Gallery TPW as main host venue, and to curators Jacob Korczynski and Kim Simon for their keen thinking in organizing a series of discursive events in response to the project’s proposal.

SCHEDULE
Dance is Hard to See: Capturing and Transmitting Movement through Language, Media and Muscle Memory, a lecture demonstration by Sara Wookey
March 19, 7:30pm @ Dancemakers, Distillery District, 15 Case Goods Lane

Performance of Trio A (1966) by Sara Wookey
March 24, 7:00pm @ Gallery TPW

Open rehearsals of Trio A (1966)
March 22, 4:00–5:00pm @ Dancemakers
March 25, 7:00-8:00pm @ AGO, 317 Dundas Street West
March 28, 12:00-5:00pm @ Gallery TPW, 170 St. Helens Avenue

Above: Trio A rehearsal with Yvonne Rainer. 2015. Photo by Henry Chan.
Below: Trio A dinner with Yvonne Rainer. 2015. Photo by Henry Chan.

Performance
Silent Dinner

FADO Performance Art Centre presents Silent Dinner, an 8-hour performance in which a group of people arrive to the theatre space, set up a rudimentary kitchen, and then prep, cook and eat a dinner in shared silence, without communicating in their language of origin, in front of the attending audience. The performance is created with special guest artist Irish performance artist Amanda Coogan who is CoDA (Child of Deaf Adults) and 12 performer/participants who are a combination of Deaf and hearing performers and non-performers from Toronto.

PERFORMERS:
Ahmed Muslimani
Alexandrose Dayment
Amanda Coogan
Anselmo DeSousa
Catherine MacKinnon
Christopher Welsh
Keli Safia Maksud
Mary Balint
Michelle Bourgeois
Mikiki
Laura Nanni
Sage Willow
Shannon Cochrane

Conceived by Shannon Cochrane & Amanda Coogan

Silent Dinner is inspired by a choreographic exercise devised by Canadian dance artist Justine Chambers entitled Family Dinner, and American artist Lois Weaver’s well-known public discourse practice, The Long Table. In Weaver’s Long Table (inspired by Marleen Gorris’s film Antonia’s Line, in which the dinner table continually extends to accommodate the growing community of outsiders and eccentrics, until finally the table must be moved out of doors), the rules of engagement allow those sitting at the table to participate in the conversation in whatever way they wish, without limit or restriction to access or content. Using the table as a structure to orchestrate a conversation around, this long table combines community interaction with theatricality. As a form The Long Table, “acknowledges the sometimes uncomfortable side of both private exchange and public engagement, while celebrating the potential for new forms of knowledge-making and -sharing”, while the rules (or rather, the helpful hints as Weaver calls them) state that there can be silence.

In FADO’s Silent Dinner, silence is transformed from a potential born of discomfort or newness, and transformed into the landscape in which indirect communication between people who don’t share the same language is negotiated. The dinner table becomes a meeting place for the intersection of culture and language (hearing and Deaf culture, English and ASL, performance as language) via a performance score employing the everyday activity of sharing a meal. Over the course of the 8-hours of the performance the performers experience, and the audience bares witness to, the many varied and complex layers of communication, compromise, and decision-making that are being performed through construction and deconstruction, art and food, theatre and everyday ritual, the performance of the public and the private. The table functions as both motif (in theatre the table is a prop, in performance it is material) and metaphor for community and connection.

POST-PERFORMANCE Q&A
Join us at 9:00pm for coffee, dessert and a post-performance Q&A with the performers of Silent Dinner. ASL interpretation provided.

VLOG about Silent Dinner

FADO would like to offer a big THANKS to our friends and colleagues who have helped us and made this project possible, including Signs Restaurant and Rachel Shemuel, Nicka Noble, Jess Shane, Deanna Bradley-Coelho, Kerry Grandfield and Corene Kennedy and the 2nd and 3rd year students of the ASL-English interpreter program at George Brown College, and our team of trained professional ASL-English interpreters Amanda Hyde, Tara Everett, Shelly Nafshi and Silvia Wannam.

Curated and presented by FADO Performance Art Centre in association with Progress: an International Festival of Performance and Ideas.

SummerWorks, in partnership with The Theatre Centre and a roster of Toronto theatre and performance organizations/presenters and companies including FADO Performance Art Centre, Buddies in Bad Times, Dancemakers, Why Not Theatre, Video Fag, and Volcano Theatre, brings the world to Toronto with Progress: an International Festival of Performance and Ideas, February 4–15, 2015.


All images © Silent Dinner, FADO Performance Art Centre, 2015. Photo by Henry Chan.

Performance
AYOTZINAPA, busqueda, muerte y renacimiento by Roberto de la Torre

Curated and presented by FADO Performance Art Centre in the context of the 10th 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art.

Roberto de la Torre works with temporary and contingent elements, and his work is usually generated in the public sphere. Manifesting as ephemeral actions in the form of sculpture, architectural, and sensory experiences created through the use of different media, and often employing the collaboration of a large number of participants, de la Torre’s work is best understood as documentation of the transient. The focus of his work ranges from social issues that occur in the local context as well as a global context. A tension between the physical and the intellectual permeates the fabric of his work, and the notion of “social sculpture” is developed through complex negotiations of permissions and participation in each setting the work takes place.

Ayotzinapa, muerte y renacimiento
Ayotzinapa, death and revival

Performance Art Dailies: Border Crossings (panel)
With Roberto de la Torre, Ali Al-Fatawi, Wathiw Al-Ameri, Serena Lee
October 29, 2019 @ 1:00pm
Artscape Youngplace, 180 Shaw Street, Toronto

The Toronto Performance Art Collective (TPAC) is a not-for-profit, artist-driven collective that curates and produces the 7a11d International Festival of Performance Art—English Canada’s oldest ongoing biennial of performance art. 7a11d 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 7a11d International Festival of Performance Art took place in August 1997 and presented the work of 60 local, national and international artists. The 10th edition takes place from October 29–November 2, 2014.

Performance
I was there by Francesca Fini

Curated and presented by FADO Performance Art Centre in the context of the 7a11d International Festival of Performance Art. Supported by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Toronto.

I was there, because I’m here now. I was there, even before being and idea in my mother’s head.

I was there is a live art project where the traditional languages of documentary and “mockumentary” are subverted and updated, while blending with the surrealism of live media performance. In the performance the artist approaches the past of western civilization – and the one of my her own family – by digitally and lively inserting herself into historical pictures and movies. Fini sabotages the past in a metaphysical scenario that integrates live media, video projections and chroma key technology, and ends up loosing herself while becoming “part of the picture.” It’s an impossible encounter with the past, with culture, and with family, in which space and time collapse into the ideal dimension of performance art.

Performance Art Dailies: Uncomfortable Physicalities
With Francesca Fini, Eduardo Oramas, Andrée Weschler
November 1, 2014 @ 1:00pm
Artscape Youngplace, 180 Shaw Street, Toronto

The Toronto Performance Art Collective (TPAC) is a not-for-profit, artist-driven collective that curates and produces the 7a11d International Festival of Performance Art—English Canada’s oldest ongoing biennial of performance art. 7a11d 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 7a11d International Festival of Performance Art took place in August 1997 and presented the work of 60 local, national and international artists. The 10th edition takes place from October 29–November 2, 2014.

Performance
11:45 PM curated by Kate Barry

FADO Performance Art Centre’s 2014 Emerging Artist series, co-presented with Xpace Cultural Centre.

ARTISTS
Anthea Fitz-James (Toronto)
Emma-Kate Guimond (Montréal)
Jessica Karuhanga (Toronto)
Arkadi Lavoie Lachapelle (Montréal)
Rah Eleh (Ottawa)

Durational performance is a mode of live art where the artist works directly with the medium of time. Over the course of hours, days or longer the performer and the audience can experience a physical, mental, spiritual and/or emotional transformation. Durational performance functions to bring the performer and the audience into the moment; time is made palatable and visceral. Artists like Tehching Hsieh, Alastair MacLennan, and most famously, Marina Abramović, demonstrate how durational performance art can use mental and physical endurance to challenge the commoditization of art by offering an experience of art that is ephemeral by nature. 11:45PM will present a collection of durational works, spread out over the course of March, throughout the gallery.

The 2014 Emerging Artists Series was curated by FADO board member Kate Barry, in consultation with Xpace and a committee of local artists (including Xpace Director Amber Landgraff, Videofag founder Jordan Tannahill, theatre artist Audrey Dewyer, and Xpace intern Humboldt Magnussen.

PROGRAM & EVENTS

Unraveling the Daughter’s Disease: Secrets, Knitting and the Body by Anthea Fitz-James
March 8 @ 12:00pm–6:00pm
March 9 @ 1:00pm–5:00pm

In Time with a Body: Duration as a Performance Practice
March 13 @ 7:00pm
Performance artist, curator and FADO co-founder Paul Couillard gives an informal lecture on duration as a performance practice. His talk will share insights from his creative work as well as performances by other artists, including a reflection on his 1999 curatorial project TIME TIME TIME, a year-long series of 12 works by various performance artists, each a minimum of 12 hours long. 

digestion/liquidation by Emma-Kate Guimond
March 16 @ 12:00pm–8:00pm

The trip, and the fall, and the lost heap of longing by Jessica Karuhanga
March 19–22 @ 1:00pm–5:00pm daily

6 hours 6 minutes 6 seconds by Arkadi Lavoie Lachapelle
March 28 @ 6:00pm–12:06:06am
For this performance, the audience is encouraged to bring with them, or to drop off at the gallery anytime during gallery hours from March 8–28, items from their homes that represent evil to them. Can be any kind of object, from a banal household item to a talisman. Object must be wrapped, so the contents are not known. All objects will be used in the performance.

Ululation by Rah Eleh
March 29 @ 12:00pm–6:00pm

What Happens After Midnight: Artists Panel
Moderated by Tanya Mars, in conversation with the artists and curator Kate Barry
March 29 @ 6:30pm

Performance
Duorama #114–121

In 2014, FADO is celebrating a milestone—our 20th Anniversary. To commemorate we are looking back to our very beginnings, and are proud to present Duorama #114, #115, #116, #117, #119, #120 and #121, a series of performances created by FADO’s former Performance Art Curator and founding Director Paul Couillard, together with FADO founding member Ed Johnson. Partners in life and art, Paul and Ed have worked together on the performance art series Duorama since 2000.

Playful, beguiling and often minimalist, these pieces explore notions of relationship, and draw on collaborative and competitive tensions that underlie all partnerships. Responding to site and examining cultural attitudes toward male intimacy are key elements of Duorama. Recurring themes revolve around shifting interpretations of what is political and what is personal. Many of the works can be read in terms of the current social and political climate surrounding gay culture, offering askance references to issues such as gay marriage, HIV-status, and portrayals of gay culture. To date, 113 Duorama performances have been presented at galleries, festivals and various events in Canada, France, Poland, Croatia, Ukraine, Belarus, Finland, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, the USA, Singapore, Ireland and the UK.

Starting with Duorama #114 presented in the context of the Rhubarb Festival at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (where it is rumoured Paul and Ed met for the very first time), FADO hosts seven new Duorama performances between February and September. 

Duorama #114
Presented at the 35th Rhubarb Festival
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, 12 Alexander Street
February 12, 2014 @ 6:00pm–9:00pm

Duorama #115
Presented in the context of the LINK & PIN performance art series, LONG-TERM, which focuses on duos and long-term collaborations. Curated by Sandrine Schaefer and Adriana Disman.
hub14, 14 Markham Street
April 12, 2014 @ 2:00pm–6:00pm

Duorama #116
Presented by Offthemap Gallery | With the Counterpoint Community Orchestra
St. Luke’s United Church, 353 Sherbourne Street
June 7, 2014 @ 7:30pm

Duorama #117
Presented in the context of the exhibition Generations of Queer, curated by Lisa Deanne Smith
Onsite @ OCAD University, 230 Richmond Street West
June 25, 2014 @ 8:00pm

Duorama #118
An intervention into Toronto’s 2014 Pride Parade!
June 29, 2014

Duorama #119 & #120 (plus post-performance artist talk)
Presented by Sunday Drive Art Projects in Warkworth, Ontario
August 24 & 30, 2014 @ 1:00pm
Sunday Drive Art Projects has brought together a roster of some of Toronto’s most active artist-run centres and collectives to present satellites in the beautiful village of Warkworth from August 23–September 6, temporarily transforming it into a hub of contemporary art.

Duorama #121 & Golden Book Launch
Centre Island Pier, Toronto Islands
September 27, 2014 @ 3:00pm–6:00pm
For this last image in the series, the artists present a 3-hour turning meditation on the Centre Island pier, a kinetic and visual action designed to connect land, water and sky. FADO is also pleased to be launching the second in our Golden Book series with a 4-book ‘zine chronicling the entire Duorama series to date, from #1–120. The books are divided by years, and shows one image for each performance in the series. You can get your limited edition Duorama Golden Book at our watery publication launch on the 2:30pm ferry to Centre Island, or on the 6:45pm ferry home.

© Paul Couillard & Ed Johnson, Duorama #115, 2014. Photo Henry Chan.

Performance
Art Nomade

FADO Performance Art Centre is pleased to be partnering with Art Nomade, International Meeting of Performance Art of Chicoutimi, to present four of the festival’s artists in Toronto. Founded in 2007, Art Nomade takes place once every two years in Saguenay, QuĂ©bec. Art Nomade also serves as a networking platform that works with partner organizations to present invited artists in regional and provincial artist-run centres, galleries and museums.

PERFORMANCES
October 25 @ 8:00pm: Henri Louis Chalem, Danny Gaudreault
October 26 @ 8:00pm: Lynn Lu, Mathieu Bohet

ARTIST TALK
October 27 @ 3:00pm

Art Nomade is an international meeting of regional, provincial, and international performance artists, showcasing the breadth and depth of contemporary performance art. Founded in 2007 by performance artist and Artistic Director, Francis O’Shaughnessy, the Meeting is produced by the artist-run center Espace Virtuel. Art Nomade takes place every two years in Saguenay, Quebec. The meeting also serves as a networking platform that allows the artists to perform in different artist-run centers, galleries and museums both on the provincial and national levels. Art Nomade is spreading its wings this year by proposing a two-week program in Chicoutimi, doubling the one-week schedule of first two editions, and a networking platform program that will run throughout the month of October. Taking place at the magnificent patrimonial site, the Pulperie de Chicoutimi, the Meeting will present no less than twenty artists from four continents, which will represent the most important international presence that Art Nomade has ever programmed. The Meeting’s new deployment will also take place into the networking platform. Therefore, the 2013 edition proposes to double the number of partners and to perform in 15 to 20 different sites throughout Quebec and Canada.

The 3rd edition of Art Nomade takes place from October 1–31, 2013.

Partners for this edition of Art Nomade include La Pulperie (Chicoutimi), Langage Plus (Alma), MusĂ©e amĂ©rindien de Mashteuiatsh (Mashteuiatsh), CaravansĂ©rail (Rimouski), VIVA! Art Action (Montreal), Praxis Art Actuel (Sainte-ThĂ©rĂšse), Le Lieu (QuĂ©bec), L’Oeil de Poisson (QuĂ©bec), Folie/Culture (Quebec), Gallery 101 (Ottawa), AXENEO7 (Gatineau), Galerie SAW Gallery (Ottawa), and FADO Performance Art Centre (Toronto).

© Henri Louis Chalem, Untitled Performance, Art Nomade + FADO, 2013. Photo Henry Chan.

Performance
Performances by Macarena Rosas Perich & Tomasz Szrama

FADO Performance Art Centre presents new solo performance works by Tomasz Szrama (Poland/ Finland) and Macarena Perich Rosas (ChilĂ©):

¿QUÉ SOY? by Macarena Rosas Perich
Enter Through the Emergency Exit by Tomasz Szrama

Macarena Perich Rosas lives and works in Punta Arenas. Located at the southern tip of Patagonia in the Magallanes and Antartica Chilena Region, Punta Arenas is, literally, situated at the end of the world, and Perich Rosas just might be the only performance artist from this part of the world. Macarena’s work is engaged with themes of territory, location and place, often employing materials unique to her region of the world, including skins and fur. Her presence is raw and intense, conjuring the animal world and a deep connection to geography and the uncharted environment. Since 2009, she has been organizing Confl!cta: Contemporary Art at the End of World. Confl!cta is a call to action, based on research and experimentation, providing education for audiences and residencies for performing artists, with a goal to work with structures, difficulties and tendencies that problematize the relationship between people and their environment. Through dialogue between the artist and the audience, the impact between the body and territory is acknowledged.

Tomasz Szrama’s practice shifts between multiple disciplines, including photography and video. Regardless of the medium, a dominate common thread in all of his work is the use of his own body and methods of performance art, such as action, gesture, and the physical manipulation of everyday materials. Szrama’s work is humourous and self-reflexive, often putting his own body into impossible and even ridiculous situations such as attempting to hang himself with helium balloons, covering his entire body in plaster cast making himself immobile and then waiting for hours in a busy tourist street, or attempting to board a plane with his own parachute. His work touches on themes of travel, trust, and the ever present potential for personal failure.

Tomasz Szrama and Macarena Perich Rosas’ appearances in Toronto are in partnership with VIVA! Art Action. Established in 2006, VIVA! Art Action is an international performance and live art festival presented once every two years in MontrĂ©al. 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.

Macarena Perich Rosas’ appearance in Toronto is also in partnership with LIVE International Performance Art Biennale. Founded in 1999, LIVE has located Vancouver, Canada as an important and recognized node of local, national, and international performance art activity and critical study. 

© Macarena Perich Rosas, ÂżQUÉ SOY?, 2013. Photo Henry Chan.
© Tomasz Szrama, Enter Through the Emergency Exit, 2013. Photo Henry Chan.

Performance
Pentagram by Gustaf Broms

The complicated relationship 
HuMans and the surroundings
/ natural / human / species /
must be resolved on a psychological level, 
before any real change can take place ?
do I live with identity restricted to the borders of my skin ?
or
do I live with the understanding that this is a construct of mind ?
as the water and air flows through my body
is it at all possible to identify with this vessel ?
The work I am planning for Toronto is my first attempt to
explore the possibilities to aid this change,
using the language of the body as tool.

Gustaf Broms

FADO Performance Art Centre presents a new durational performance work, Pentagram, by Gustaf Broms. From September 23-27, Broms will perform a series of street actions in public spaces throughout Toronto’s downtown core, each day from 9:00am to 5:00pm, mimicking a “typical” work day.

Gustaf Brom’s artistic practice is engaged with the exploration of the nature of consciousness, the dualistic concept of “i”, and the biological reality of the body, in an effort to understand the ‘being mind’ as a direct experience of ‘reality.’ In his practice, he started off working photography and installation, but two work in particular led him to work with the more formless processes of performance. In 1991, Broms burned all of his work, and in doing so realized that the intensity of the action and the remaining ash far outdid anything he had previously made. In 2005, he completed a series of works entitled 5 Faiths for a Brave New World in which he worked with objects that were physically too heavy for the body to move. These two experiences created a longing to explore the formless and led up to the project entitled A Walking Piece made with Trish Littler, in which the two artists spent 18 months walking across Eastern Europe. The result is considered a drawing.

Currently, Broms continues to work with a series of movements that look at concepts of inner/outer and movement/stillness, working with his own body as the tool for examining these processes. The constant question for Broms is, “why are the dancing atoms of this body not merging wit the dancing atoms surrounding it?”

Monday, September 23: Union Station pedestrian path, 65 Front Street West
Tuesday, September 24: Toronto-Dominion Centre, 66 Wellington Street West
Wednesday, September 25: Bay Street, near the old Toronto Stock Exchange
Thursday, September 26: Bay Street, south of Wellington Street
Friday, September 27: Queen’s Park Crescent, south of Bloor Street West

© Gustaf Broms, Pentagram, 2013. Photo Henry Chan.

Performance
Quatre re-traitĂ©s* tirĂ© de ‘”ils” “viennent” : KhĂ©dive et Mamelouk, en un seul, sur son patron (work-in progress) by AndrĂ© Éric LĂ©tourneau

Quatre re-traitĂ©s* tirĂ© de ‘”ils” “viennent” : KhĂ©dive et Mamelouk, en un seul, sur son patron (work-in progress) is a psychogeo(hörspiel) performance involving radio transmission, narration and action, with a simultaneous translation from French to English and/or Italian. Psychogeo(hörspiel) is a neologism created by combining ‘psychogeography’ meaning an approach to geography that emphasizes playfulness and drifting around urban environments; and the German word ‘hörspiel’ meaning radio-play or radio-drama.

This performance is part of a work-in-progress by Letourneau entitled, “ils” “viennent” : KhĂ©dive et Mamelouk, en un seul, sur son patron, which is a 3-hour site-specific text-based science-fiction conceptual performance that can be performed for any media.

This version includes the participation of Toronto performer claude wittmann, and on recorded media by Alice Lafontaine, Alexandre St-Onge, Marie Brassard and Jac Berrocal.

The audience is encouraged to bring portable radios or walkman radios so they can leave the gallery and move around the neighbourhood during the action, picking up snippets of the narrative remotely.

© Eric LĂ©tourneau, Quatre re-traitĂ©s* tirĂ© de ‘”ils” “viennent” : KhĂ©dive et Mamelouk, en un seul, sur son patron (work-in progress), 2013. Photo Jordan Tannahill.

Performance
Queer Noise Solidarity by Wednesday Lupypciw

Presented by Feminist Art Gallery (F.A.G.) and FADO Performance Art Centre

Conducted by Calgary-based artist Wednesday Lupypciw, QUEER NOISE SOLIDARITY (QNS) is a gigantic experimental noise event. One dozen drummers, each with their own kit, will occupy the space between the baseball field and the wooded area in Christie Pits Park where they raise the racket of their percussional superjam to the outer limits of the stratosphere over 3 different, intense sessions. The drummer’s sound vibrations expand into political/intentional realms, as well as psychic/aesthetic zones, like ripples in a pond.

Inspired by the roles that feminists play in developing community solidarity across many social justice trajectories including the LGBTQI2S, feminist, anti-racist and anti-poverty movements, QUEER NOISE SOLIDARITY also blows the roof off the traditionally dude-dominated art world of rock n’ roll.

QNS is a queer feminist project. QNS is proudly matronized by FADO Performance Art Centre.

THE DRUMMERS [* Not all the drummers identify as female]
Alaska B
Celina Carrol
Heidi Chan
Tyla Crowhurst-Smith
Karen Frostitution
Laura Hartley
Eleanor King
Samara Liu
Rita McKeough
Conny Nowé
Shavonne Tovah Somvong
Simone TB *

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 is run by Allyson Mitchell and Deirdre Logue. F.A.G. does not depend on formal funding sources nor will it ever be tied to one government or corporate controlling purse string. Instead, F.A.G. has created a web of matronage whereby people contribute to a pool of resources insuring that artists will always be paid for exhibiting their work.

Thanks to Johnson Ngo and Heidi Cho for their energy gettin’ it done.

© Wednesday Lupypciw, QUEER NOISE SOLIDARITY, 2013. Photo Henry Chan.

Performance
Film: Rope by Francesco Gagliardi

Film: Rope is curated and produced by FADO Performance Art Centre, and presented in the context of 2013 Images Festival.

Created by Francesco Gagliardi
Performed by Cara Spooner, Francesco Gagliardi, Marcin Kedzior and Michael Caldwell

Film: Rope explores the relationship between cinematic space and the space of live performance, and our ways of interpreting and recollecting the experience of movement within the film frame.

In Dangling that Rope, Andrew James Paterson writes, “In Film: Rope, Gagliardi has accentuated the simultaneous clash and fusion of different disciplines by using as source material a film that has been controversial at a number of different levels: Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948). Rope is something of an anomaly within the Hitchcock canon, as it is directed to appear as if consisting almost entirely of one continuous shot. In this respect it breaks the modernist dictum that film should not appear simply to be recorded theatre. The film eschews montage altogether.”

Rope (1948) is considered one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most experimental films. Containing only four unmasked cuts, it was shot in single 10 minute takes (the length of a camera roll), tracking in an out of black surfaces (the back of a jacket or a piece of furniture) to create the illusion of even longer continuous shots. This virtuoso technique, which required the constant shifting of stage walls, furniture, and props to make way for the camera, was partly developed by the director in order to convey the illusion of theatrical real time and continuous space.

By paradoxically attempting to re-embody and transpose the movements and positions of the characters in the film in relation to a live audience, Film: Rope perversely exposes and explores the discontinuities and incongruities between cinema and live performance.

PERFORMANCES
April 12, 13, 14 @ 3:00pm
April 16 @ 7:00pm & 8:30pm

FADO ARTIST TALK
April 14 @ 4:30pm
Moderated by Andrew James Paterson

IMAGES ARTIST TALK
April 15 @ 4:00pm
Urban Space Gallery, 401 Richmond Street West
Performance and Media Art: Tools with Which to Deconstruct
With Francesco Gagliardi, Tanya Lukin Linklater and Duane Linklater

© Francesco Gagliardi, Film: Rope, 2013. Photo Henry Chan.

Performance
.site.specific. curated by Francisco-Fernando Granados

ARTISTS
Basil AlZeri
Golboo Amani
Cressida Kocienski
Maryam Taghavi

.sight.specific. proposes performance art as the staging of sight as site: observation as contour, terrain, and architecture for modes of aesthetic embodiment. The project consists of four commissioned live works in search for situated perspectives on the possibilities of performance as a contextual spatial practice. The works situate artists and audience by trading knowledge on the streets, tracing trans-planetary sight-lines, creating home and hospitality in real time through cyberspace, and staging variations on absurdity. The shapes of these relationships brings into focus questions of knowledge and memory, contact and distance, longing and belonging.

.site. specific is co-presented with Xpace Cultural Centre

PROGRAM

Friday and Saturday in March @ 2:00pm–6:00pm
The School of Bartered Knowledge by Golboo Amani

March 8 @ 8:00pm
Planetaria by Cressida Kocienski

March 15 @ 8:00pm
T.M.K.L Presents: beit Suad by Basil AlZeri
Co-presented by FUSE Magazine and Israeli Apartheid Week Toronto

March 16 & 17, 1:00pm
Workshop: T.M.K.L Presents: beit Suad by Basil AlZeri

March 22 @ 8:00pm
Variations on Absurdity by Maryam Taghavi

March 28 @ 7:00pm
Opening of the exhibition of sight.specific exhibition of residue/ephemera

March 30 @ 2:00pm
Panel Discussion: Viewing .sight.specific.
With Basil AlZeri, Golboo Amani, Cressida Kocienski, Maryam Taghavi
Moderated by Johanna Householder with Francisco-Fernando Granados

Performance
Performances by Alice De Visscher and Simla Civelek

FADO Performance Art Centre is pleased to present an evening of new solo performance works from Alice De Visscher (Belgium) and Simla Civelek (Turkey / Toronto).

This event invites a local artist and an international artist to present new solo performance works created for the same space on the same evening. The artists and the audience come together to experience side by side the work of peers from different parts of the world. Each artist will present two short works in alternating sequence.

PROGRAM
Sesame Blanc by Alice De Visscher
Untitled One by Simla Civelek
Queue De Cheval II by Alice De Visscher
Untitled Two by Simla Civelek

© Alice De Visscher, Sesame Blanc, 2013. Photo Henry Chan.

Performance
Performances by Andrés Galeano & Ieke Trinks

FADO Performance Art Centre presents new solo performance works from Andrés Galeano (Spain) and Ieke Trinks (Netherlands):

iPerformance by AndrĂ©s Galeano
Sing, Sync, Sink by Ieke Trinks

The performance work of Andrés Galeano and Ieke Trinks share a similar methodology, and sometimes, a desired goal. Developed in situ, Galeano and Trinks create performances which combine everyday and found materials with instruction (scores), observation and live action, resulting in combinations and configurations that are both deeply philosophical and highly absurd.

While in Toronto, in addition to the solo performances listed above, the artists will also be presenting a collaborative performance in the context of the 34th Rhubarb Festival. FADO is pleased to be collaborating with The Rhubarb Festival for the third year in a row with this presentation.

Step by Step by AndrĂ©s Galeano and Ieke Trinks

Want to know how to do, well
 just about anything? Ask google. In Step by Step, AndrĂ©s Galeano and Ieke Trinks spontaneously create a performance score in front of a live audience using seemingly random pieces of instructional information researched on the internet. Using the cut and paste function of their computers, instruction texts and how-to explanations are sorted and compiled into a dance choreography created for, and then performed by two non-dancers. The result is an unsettling and funny live performance that oscillates between conceptual demonstration and structured chaos.

February 27–March 3, 2015 @ 8:00pm (5 performances!)
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, 12 Alexander Street, Toronto

© Andrés Galeano, Ieke Trinks, Step by Step, Rhubarb Festival, 2013. Photo Henry Chan.

Performance
International Visiting Artists: MagnĂșs Logi Kristinsson & Denis Romanovski

Curated and presented by FADO Performance Art Centre in the context of the 9th 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art.

FADO continues with the on-going International Visiting Artists series with new performance works from MagnĂŒs Logi Kristinsson (born in Iceland, living in Finland) and Denis Romanovski (born in Belarus, living in Sweden). In addition, Denis Romanovski will also be presenting guerrilla performance in the form of a tour of the Toronto subway system on October 26, 2014.

Stories in a Box by MagnĂșs Logi Kristinsson
The artist is inside a large wooden box, and he is telling a story. A story about himself from his times in Iceland. He only shows one foot and one hand to the audience and with that hand, he give extra details to the story.

That’s Ok by Denis Romanovski
That’s OK Manifesto (fragment) *written in collaboration with KKH students
To mean nothing – that’s OK.
To have money and to be hungry – that’s OK.
To do nothing under surveillance – that’s OK.
To wait for better times and to be still alive – that’s OK.
To hate museums and rebellions – that’s OK.
To sing for old people and to dance with strangers – that’s OK.
ETC.

The Toronto Performance Art Collective (TPAC) is a not-for-profit, artist-driven collective that curates and produces the 7a11d International Festival of Performance Art—English Canada’s oldest ongoing biennial of performance art. 7a11d 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 7a11d International Festival of Performance Art took place in August 1997 and presented the work of 60 local, national and international artists. The 9th edition of the festival takes place from October 24–28, 2012.

© Magnús Logi Kristinsson, All the Beatles Songs, 2012. Photo Henry Chan.

Performance
International Visiting Artists: Claudia Bucher & Andrea Saemann

FADO Performance Art Centre is pleased to present the International Visiting Artists series, with a focus on Switzerland. Claudia Bucher and Andrea Saemann will each present a new solo performance work. Join us the following afternoon for an informal gathering where each artist will talk about their individual practices.

In order to personally experience performance art history, Andrea Saemann’s work utilizes a process of the “performance copy”—repeating aspects or entire performance works by other artists. This allows the artist to enter into a work on a very visceral level with her body, and constrict her field of action, allowing for intense focus on even the smallest of gestures.

“I work because I am impressed.
I recognize: authority is a performative achievement.
I see: a constricting frame opens up possibilities, to experience the world differently.
I benefit from that procedure.
In order to experience performance art history, I repeat single aspects or entire pieces. The process—to enter with my body into a performance copy—liberates unusual energies, on the battleground of autonomy versus heteronomy. The process of copying constricts my field of action and opens up new perspectives and sights on the world.”

Andrea Saemann

“I perform in order to engage with my thoughts—and my questions, too. I think in images. I focus on the space surrounding me, myself as sculpture within that space, and on how an action can change the relationship between my body and my environment. As I interact intensively with a material in the here and now, a transformation occurs. I‘m interested in the moments of transition—when beauty changes into ugliness, when clean becomes dirty, when gentle turns aggressive—and the opposing associations they evoke.”

Claudia Bucher

© Claudia Bucher, Untitled Performance, 2012. Photo Henry Chan.

Performance
TRACE by Tristan R. Whiston and Moynan King

trace: evidence or an indication of the former presence or existence of something

Can one man stand amidst his many voices and find herself there? Can a person sing harmony with different parts of theirselves? Can we trace the sound of ourselves as we change? If so, what remains of the original voice? Through an exploration of voice, trace transforms a private story into a performative experience integrating sound, video, installation and live performance. Using archival recordings taken before and during Tristan R. Whiston’s gender transition from female to male, along with recent recordings and live vocals, trace explores the idea that change is constant and we are always becoming someone new.

Throughout the installation are multiple speakers, each playing a single part or element in the immersive soundscape. Audience is invited to contribute to the performance by entering one of the installation’s beach inspired changing huts and, using old-fashioned technology, create their own vocal recording, eliciting an experience of auditory self-reflection. 

CREDITS
Video by Leslie Peters
Set elements by Trixie and Beever
Software design by Dafydd Hughes
Photography by David Hawe

Tristan R. Whiston and Moynan King are artists with distinct multi-disciplinary practices. Their shared interest in ideas of identity, gender, communication and the element of time (in both life and art) brought them together as artistic collaborators early their careers.

Co-presented by New Adventures in Sound Art for the Sound Travels Festival of Sound Art
Sound Travels Festival of Sound Art: August 4–31, 2012
New Adventures in Sound Art: www.naisa.ca

Performance Installation
August 24 @ 7:00pm–9:00pm
August 25 @ 11:00am–1:00pm & 7:00pm–9:00pm
August 26 @ 2:00pm–4:00pm
Artist talk: August 25 @ 1:00pm

Photo David Hawe.

Performance
New Maternalisms curated by Natalie S. Loveless

Curatorial Statement by Natalie S. Loveless, March 2012

New Maternalisms started for me with the following questions: forty years after the intervention of feminist art around the sexual division of labour, what is the experience of the daughters of that era, now that they have become mothers? How is that expressed in their artwork and how does this artwork relate to the work that was being done in the 70s?  I am thinking, of course, of work like Mary Kelly’s infamous six-year installation piece Post-Partum Document, which she worked on from 1973 to 1979. With Kelly’s work in mind, I invited a group of artist-mothers to produce a performance or video piece speaking to their experience as mother-artists today. These artists use performance to bring attention to the embodied, biological, and material enmeshment of early maternity in ways that stand in stark formal contrast to Kelly’s work. They do this in a way, however, that is not simply at odds with the insights of post-structuralism and the linguistic turn informing Post Partum Document. Rather, while grounded in a “return to the body,” they demonstrate a commitment to non-determinist modes of signification and analysis, opening up the affective, enmeshed, experiential flows of maternal experience in ways that invite us to ask questions about maternal invisibilities and the power and challenge of the maternal to the professional body of the artist. 


ARTISTS
Lenka Clayton (UK/USA)
Masha Godovannaya (Russia/USA)
Alice De Visscher (Belgium)
Beth Hall & Mark Cooley(USA)
Lovisa Johansson (Sweden)
HélÚne Matte (Québec)
Gina Miller (Vancouver)
Jill Miller (USA)
Dillon Paul & Lindsay Wolkowicz (USA)
MarlÚne Renaud-B (Québec)
Alejandra Herrera Silva (Chilé/USA)
Victoria Singh (New Zealand)

Mama-writer-in-residence Christine Pountney will be live blogging throughout the event at http://newmaternalisms.wordpress.com/

DESCRIPTION OF PERFORMANCE WORKS

Maternity Leave by Lenka Clayton is a durational, Skype-mediated piece that invokes overlapping cycles of responsibility: government to citizen, institution to artist, artist to audience, parent to child, and audience to artwork. Maternity Leave was originally commissioned by the Carnegie Museum of Art for the exhibition Pittsburgh Biennial.

Challenge by Alejandra Herrera Silva is a durational piece exploring the impact and affect of maternal labour.

Milky Way and Jumping Lullaby by Lovisa Johansson. Milky Way is a durational piece inspired by the intimacy of the breastfeeding relation. Jumping Lullaby invokes the unique despair of maternal sleep deprivation.

L’Essence de la Vie by HĂ©lĂšne Matte is an action and text-based piece that offers a provocative, humorous, and sometimes threatening take on maternal embodiment and the cycle of life.

Jill Miller brings The Milk Truck (www.jillmiller.net/themilktruck), a mobile breastfeeding unit that combines guerrilla theatre, activism and slapstick humour, to Toronto for its Canadian debut. The Milk Truck will be running in Toronto from Friday March 23–Sunday March 25, and will be parked in front of the gallery during performances and events. In preparation for its arrival, The Milk Truck is collecting personal stories from mothers who have breastfed children in public in Toronto (at any time, past or present). We are collecting stories to create a narrative about the city.

Dis/sociation by MarlĂšne Renaud-B is an action and endurance-based performance exploring the complex ambivalence of maternal enmeshment.

DESCRIPTION OF VIDEO WORKS

Beth Hall and Mark Cooley present Safe (60 min., loop), a performance and research-based video juxtaposing the daily rituals of child care-giving with the immensity of the information and disinformation overload that has come to characterize much contemporary maternal experience.

Masha Godovannaya presents Hunger (39 min., loop), a performance-based, split-screen video recording her experience of the conflicts of motherhood, creativity, domesticity and critical self-reflection.

Gina Miller presents Family Tissues (6 min., loop), a video documenting and contextualizing a social-practice performance in which she defrosts and discusses her childrens’ placentas with them.

Dillon Paul and Lindsey Wolkowicz present In Place (3 min., loop), a performance-based video that offers a round-the-clock time-lapsed view into the shifting puzzle pieces, rhythms, and textures of the artists’ family routine.

Victoria Singh presents SON/ART: Kurtis the 7 Chakra Boy (22 min., loop), a video that compiles documentation from the seven year LIFE/ART performance that she began on July 7, 2004, in collaboration with Linda Montano (Another 21 years of Living Art). The soundtrack was composed specifically for this piece by Kurtis’ father, Derek Champion.

Alice De Visscher presents Dream or Nightmare of Motherhood (4 min., loop), two short performance-based videos that invoke her fantasies and fears surrounding the experiences of birth and lactation.

Performance
The Gift by Lee Hassall

Is art torn between the commodity and the gift, the supermarket and the church?

Lee Hassall will use the gallery as a repository and home base from which to engage with the surrounding neighbourhood, gathering impressions via exchanges with objects, paraphernalia and people, culminating in a final performance action.

For two days, audience is invited to the gallery to witness the growing installation and to donate a gift for the artist. Donated items or materials may be altered, deconstructed, disappeared or hybridized. All gifts will be considered and engaged with, and will become a part of the final public performance.

March 14: performance-installation in progress @ 6:00pm-8:00pm
March 15: Artist talk in gallery, @ 6:00pm
March 16: Final performance @ 8:00pm

© Lee Hassall, The Gift, 2012. Photo Henry Chan.

Performance
Expectations by SiĂąn Robinson Davies

Curated and presented by FADO Performance Art Centre in the context of the 33rd Rhubarb Festival

Expectations started with the question; what do I hope to gain when going to see a performance? As I have spent a fair amount of time over the past couple of years doing them, seeing them and talking about them, Expectations is way of thinking about what it is in performances that leaves me feeling dissatisfied.

When I was younger I used to copy photographs of animals from books into my sketchpad. I used to be good at making the animals look realistic, which is why I went on to study art. I don’t draw pictures of animals anymore and Im not sure if what I do now has any relation to that activity, but somehow I got from there to here under the guise of art. I studied at Goldsmiths in London and have since done performances at art festivals and comedy nights in places such as Whitstable, Hildesheim and Aberystwyth. Now I mostly write scripts and texts and perform them.

SiĂąn Robinson Davies

Buddies In Bad Times Theatre presents the 33rd Rhubarb Festival
Raw. Radical. Performance.
February 8–19, 2012

Canada’s premiere experimental performance festival offers Toronto fresh, live encounters with contemporary theatre, performance art, dance and music. For two weeks, hundreds of local and international artists descend on Buddies to share new ideas in performance creation with adventure-loving audiences.

Performance
Intra Muros I by Martine Viale

Intra Muros I, a performance installation by Martine Viale

Through self-displacement, successive actions and minimal materials, Intra Muros I proposes a sense of contemplation, as the artist gradually tries to accumulate meanings through a constant folding and unfolding of images. Pursuing a process based on persistence, Viale’s work suggests multiple stages of working, rather then presenting a completed product. Transformation through time and accumulation plays a major role in the elaboration of the work. The artist’s body becomes a “doing body” engaged in creating, layering and collecting traces of actions, which progressively transform the space and the artist herself.

Performance installation in progress: February 2 & 3, from 2:00pm–7:00pm
Closing performance action: February 3 @ 8:00pm
Artist talk: February 4 @ 1:00pm

© Martine Viale, Intros Muros I, 2012. Photo Henry Chan.

Performance
Commitment Issues curated by Jess Dobkin

Commitment Issues presents the work of five artists and one collective who use their bodies as primary source material to investigate qualities and dimensions of commitment—to ideas, to performance, to audience and to the artists themselves. Through play, risk, intimacy and sexuality, these artists transcend fixed social, psychological, physical and spiritual notions of commitment.

Further confounding the interplay of fixed notions of commitment, the venue for Commitment Issues is Oasis Aqualounge, home to Toronto’s preeminent swinger’s club. Performance sites will include the outdoor heated swimming pool, steam room, hot tub and locker room. Audiences are invited to stay late and enjoy all of Oasis Aqualounge’s amenities that also include a sauna, two bars and multiple lounges. Locker and towel service provided. Bring your bathing suit or birthday suit. Admission restricted to patrons 19+ years of age.

ARTISTS
Cassils (Montréal / USA)
MC Coble (USA / Sweden)
Alicia Grant (Toronto)
Dominic Johnson (UK)
Dana Michel (Montréal)
The Pole Club (Toronto)

Processing: Artist’ Panel & Reception
Studio Theatre, Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse, 4 Glen Morris Street
November 17, 2011 @ 7:30pm

The panel is co-sponsored by the Graduate Centre for Study of Drama at the University of Toronto and the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto.

Performance
Imagined Spaces/Lost Objects | curated by Victoria Stanton

FADO Performance Art Centre is proud to present Imagined Spaces / Lost Objects, a programme of performance works curated by Victoria Stanton for the 2011 Edgy Women Festival presented at Studio 303 in Montréal.

Between the timeless and the transitory, between dream and reality, fact and fantasy, there emerges a potent junction. This intersection, a “no-man’s land,” straddles temporal veracity and produces a space difficult to pin down. In this imagined space, a series of self-consciously constructed identities come to embody an invested trace – of lost love, lost words, of lost or stolen objects. Lost and yet, the trace of what remains sticks in the memory, and to the body. And in this “no-man’s land” we find four women – charting four distinct paths on land in-between multiply defined world.

ARTISTS
Janine EisenÀcher (Berlin)
Amalie Atkins (Saskatoon)
Julianna Barabas (Calgary)
Laura Margita (Saskatoon)

Within the context of a fictional world, Amalie Atkin’s work investigates aspects of loss, isolation, transformation, and ritual to create a mythology both awkward and spectacular. Over the past few years I have been working in film, performance, fibres and photography, using these mediums in ways that at once inform one another and contribute to the creation of these fantastical environments. Fusing these separate entities together this seires marks the first appearance of my cinematic work in the context of performance. Initially made as a 16mm film for this event, Three Minute Miracle will be presented as a live performance, incorporating a live audio component and additional performative elements that tie into key events and objects in the film.

Antidote by Julianna Barabas is a series of performance actions designed to break down social norms around touch, gestures of care, vulnerability and public intimacy. Using hand washing and then massage of the hands of the audience participants, I offer them an opportunity to use the time spent engaged in the performance to metaphorically cleanse or alleviate tensions they may have in relation to their identities. Throughout the massaging of the hands, I also sing to the person receiving the massage, further heightening the intimacy of the gesture and interaction between us.

In her solo performance-series Eat Your Enemy #3 I am the Coca-Cola of art, Janine EisenĂ€cher works with the Brazilian cultural concept of Antropofagia (cannibalism) and by that explores its potential of being an alternative subversive strategy. Focusing on processes of incorporation and transformation, the performance artist discusses matters of identity in relation to work and gender-specific questions, the (post)colonial discourse of “the other”, and the economic structures in the field of artistic work itself. By using text, objects, body and sound in a ritualistic structure, EisenĂ€cher each time undertakes a new self-experiment of an imaginary voyage to overcome felt dependencies and to follow her own desires. The starting point for Eat Your Enemy #3 is a quote by the female performance art-legend Marina Abramovic, mentioned in the German art magazine monopol: “I am the Coca-Cola of art.” EisenĂ€cher has been researching and working with Coca-Cola as material in her performance work since 2007, and Abramovic’s claim is the perfect basis for a new anthropophagic investigation
this time EisenĂ€cher incorporates Abramovic and transforms into the Coca-Cola of Art herself. The traces of the live performance remain in the gallery space as ongoing installation. The artist would like to thank the Goethe Institute (Munich and Toronto), Edgy Women Festival (MontrĂ©al) and La Centrale.

Madame Blanche Hears Your Confessions by Laura Margita was a serious, heartfelt performance with all the things that make a performance professional like invitations, assistants, a videographer, a sculpture technician and a location in an artist run centre with a highly educated audience. The audience/participants were horrified, amused and afraid for me and the documentation of the events is one of the most embarrassing and distressing displays of loss of control that I have ever seen recorded on video. I may have lost the tape on purpose or not. I will try to find it or recreate it for this performance and take what I can learn from it in the service of my search for:

1. meaning
2. self awareness
3. forgiveness
4. love
5. power
6. artistic expression for a community of people that is 
a. beautiful
b. nourishing
c. scary
d. sad
e. funny

Performance
Extra-Rational curated by Gale Allen

Extra-Rational is a series of performances by emerging Canadian artists that embrace the aesthetics of popular culture and seek to recuperate/utilize these “low brow” processes of production and cognition. The artists in Extra-Rational intentionally make use of aesthetic choices and methods of production that directly challenge the rubric of high-brow vs low-brow culture. These artists use the position of the trivialized, the unmentionable, the frivolous, the carnal and the other as a means to challenge the rationalization of high culture. 

ARTISTS
Amy Jenine Ling Wong
Amy Lam
Johnny Forever
Iris Fraser-Gudrunas
Lisa Visser
Marisa Hoicka

Trust My Gut: A Drag Opera Surgery, performed by Mini Maul and Uncle Wink (two characters selected from the drag oeuvre of Johnny Forever and Marisa Hoicka) dramatizes the recent merging of home and stage on social networking sites such as YouTube, Vimeo and facebook. This eight-hour durational installation references Orlan’s televised performance art surgeries of the early ’90s. Framed by a crochet replica of a YouTube window, Mini Maul performs surgery on Uncle Wink with a pair of tailor’s scissors, crochet hooks and a sewing needle. While splayed open Uncle Wink remains gloriously conscious as Mini Maul crafts his innards, a mass of yarn and fabric, into outrageous sculptural forms that rise from his belly and spill onto the floor. From time to time patient and doctor break into lip-synced duets chosen by audience members from a nearby laptop.

Insight mixes with consumerism and pop culture to create intuitive knowledge in Iris Fraser-Gudrunas’ performance Pop Tarot. Fraser-Gudrunas divines the future and answers the viewers’ life questions using a collection of strange and unfamiliar pop bottles. Viewers are invited to blindly select 4 beverage bottles/cans from a large inventory, stored in a nondescript cardboard box. The bottles represent the past, present, future and soul of the participant. Carefully analyzing the qualities of the consumer packaging, the clarity of the labels, the visual nature of the liquid and the list of ingredients, Fraser-Gudrunas provides the viewers with insight and guidance. 

NANA by Amy Jenine Ling Wong is a four-hour durational performance that references narcissism in youth culture and questions the rise of the self-made Internet celebrity. Occupying the gallery’s street level window, Wong confronts viewers caught off guard with the image of her slowly licking a honey-encrusted monitor. Under the honey, the monitor flickers with a mirror image of herself performing various actions. NANA is an extension of Wong’s online Vimeo library, in which she plays a wide variety of characters including: a young girl offering advice on the application of Avatar make-up, a sullen woman smoking a cigarette while explaining her attempts to replicate the “real community” of the ‘60s on facebook and a teenager aimlessly video blogging about piercing her nose.

Droozle Help Me, a performance that references the comedy sketch genre, makes use of humour and high concept comedy. In this performative lecture Amy Lam plays a character named Droozle who is looking for a new roommate. She uses inappropriate props and costumes in her attempt to be persuasive. As the performance unfolds Lam creates deliberate incongruence between herself as performer, the goals of her character and the audience’s reactions. Lam’s work continues the dialogue started by female comics of the ’50s who used intelligence, wit and a fair amount of acting out to comment on contemporary culture.

We Don’t Love Each Other is a reflexive performance that investigates the female abject body. Composed of a series of simple actions and objects, Lisa Visser drinks a copious amount of hard alcohol while attaching her left arm to her right with the use of a sewing needle and thread. The performance combines contrasting images of harm and repair: what appears to be harmful (sewing) is conceptually approached as repair – or reclamation – of not just a body but everything that is given and compromised in a relationship. And the repair – drinking and drowning one’s feelings in alcohol – is actually harmful. The piece is implicitly humorous; the artist is drunk, awkward and bloody, while the audience is compelled to watch seriously and earnestly while the hour-long performance unfolds.

PROGRAM
March 8 @ 1:00pm–5:00pm
Trust My Gut: A Drag Opera Surgery by Johnny Forever & Marisa Hoicka

March 12 @ 1:00pm–5:00pm
Pop Tarot by Iris Fraser-Gudrunas

March 12 @ 7:00pm
Trust My Gut: A Drag Opera Surgery by Johnny Forever & Marisa Hoicka
NANA by Amy Jenine Ling Wong
Droozle Help Me by Amy Lam
Pop Tarot by Iris Fraser-Gudrunas
We Don’t Love Each Other by Lisa Visser

Performance
they perform on friday and on saturday they respond to friday | curated by claude wittmann

ARTISTS
Jo SiMalaya Alcampo
Yumi Onose
Simon Rabyniuk

They see us. They perform in front of us. We see them perform. We see them. They feel us. They perform near us. We feel their work. We feel them. Something happens. Something goes through us. Something goes through them. They process the encounter. We process too. We eat. We sleep. We dream. We think. We all come back the next day. We see them. They see us. We see their response to the day before. We see more. Way more. We feel more. They feel more. Way more.

Jo SiMalaya Alcampo, Yumi Onose and Simon Rabyniuk perform on Friday and the next night they present a new work in response to the previous evening’s performance, creating an interrelated series of actions that exist in dialogue with each other. This situation challenges the artists to work directly and immediately with site, a changing and repeating audience and to consider the impact and influence of working side by side over a duration of time.

Performance
Small Acts of Great Significance by Teresa Dillon

Curated and presented by FADO Performance Art Centre in the context of the 9th 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art

CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS: Are you a dancer (any style), male and over 60? Would you like to take part in a short dance piece? Or maybe you have never danced before but would like to try? If you answer ‘yes’ to any of the above questions, I would like to invite you, to create a simple dance piece together. What will you need to do? Simply to turn up and be interested in learning some a simple dance and movement based routine. Be available for 1 hour rehearsals sessions. No previous performance experience is required, however you must be open and comfortable to participate in a public performance.

Small Acts of Great Significance by Teresa Dillon

This new work by Teresa Dillon is a three-part collective sound and dance performance, created in collaboration with 20 men from the city of Toronto who are over the age of 60 years. Over the course of the festival, Dillon will work with the men to create a sound and dance piece, comprised of three parts which we will perform together for a live audience. As each element of the performance is delivered aspects will be captured and replayed into the gallery space, creating a layered sound and dance composition.

“Irish artist Teresa Dillon’s piece, by contrast, was both improvisatory, in the moment, and trace-like. Having invited men over fifty to collaborate with her on a work that combined visuals and music, Dillon and her small entourage had created the performance earlier that morning. Lights dimmed, patterns pulsed on the screen on the back wall. Andrew Paterson appeared with an electric guitar and began playing a low, repetitive refrain, the other men following with microphones singing ditties reaffirming their desires and life. Dillon meanwhile literally hissed into the microphone, her voice seeming to come from a megaphone in some old revolution. In the end, Dillon’s piece had a slow, beautiful violence to it that got under one’s skin and is ultimately difficult to describe.”

Daniel Baird

Thanks to the men that participated in Small Acts of Great Significance. The final work was created by Teresa Dillon with Roy Mitchell, Andrew J. Paterson, Ken Fraser and Joe Borowiec.

The Toronto Performance Art Collective (TPAC) is a not-for-profit, artist-driven collective that curates and produces the 7a11d International Festival of Performance Art—English Canada’s oldest ongoing biennial of performance art. 7a11d 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 7a11d International Festival of Performance Art took place in August 1997 and presented the work of 60 local, national and international artists. The 8th edition of the festival takes place from October 21–31, 2010.

© Teresa Dillon, Small Acts of Great Significance, 2010. Jasmine Savoy.

Performance
Even Out The Pressure by Agnes NedregÄrd

Curated and presented by FADO Performance Art Centre in the context of the 9th 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art.

Even Out The Pressure by Agnes NedregÄrd

A visual image, one performer, pressure from the inside, pressure from the outside. One or several actions, the audience is invited, what are you carrying? We meet, we share, after it is over, what do we have left? It remains to be seen.

“Norwegian artist Agnes NedregĂ„rd’s performance, on the other hand, was all intensity. A board hanging on a rope from the ceiling and a board with two holes on the ground, she began by placing a mouthpiece in her mouth that held it open grotesquely, her tongue poking out. A metronome ticked to one side. She blew a whistle. She took her rubber boots off and prowled past the audience in stockings full of dirt and rocks, scowling. She then took her jacket off, revealing an old shirt ripped loose down the front between her breasts. Using needle and thread, she then began sewing the flaps of the shirt to the sides of her breasts and chest. She approached individual audience members, staring at them intensely, the pieced the needle through her skin, pulling the thread tight. She blew the whistle again. The metronome continued to tick. She fit her legs through the holes in the board on the ground and set herself on the one hanging from the ceiling, gazing, again, with a blank intensity at the audience. Then she suddenly leaped off the board, and it snapped back up toward the ceiling, swinging. The performance ended with her putting her jacket and boots back on and stopping the metronome, whose ticking by then permeated the room. Nedregard’s performance might seem to be about the denial of the body, and of women’s bodies in particular, but it struck me as too physically intimate and present for that; it seemed to me more about the fragility and instability of the body as it exists in time, where time, through the metronome, has become an active, physical, literal part of the performance.

Daniel Bard

The Toronto Performance Art Collective (TPAC) is a not-for-profit, artist-driven collective that curates and produces the 7a11d International Festival of Performance Art—English Canada’s oldest ongoing biennial of performance art. 7a11d 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 7a11d International Festival of Performance Art took place in August 1997 and presented the work of 60 local, national and international artists. The 8th edition of the festival takes place from October 21–31, 2010.

Performance Art Daily: Artist Talk with Agnes NedregÄrd
October 28, 2010 @ 12:00pm–2:00pm
Toronto Free Gallery, 1277 Bloor Street West, Toronto

© Agnes Nedregård, Even Out The Pressure, 2010. Photo Henry Chan.

Performance
Ranchero by Jamie McMurry

Curated and presented by FADO Performance Art Centre in the context of the 9th 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art.

Ranchero by Jamie McMurry

American artist Jamie McMurry’s epic new performance work, Ranchero, begins inside at Mercer Union and using a moving vehicle filled with audience members moves to a second location.

The cacophonous actions and objects that one encounters in everyday life are not only often absurd but also are the unseen details that define our characters and separate us from all others as individual beings. McMurry’s recent performance installation works as part of the Ego series have sought to make manifest these day-to-day actions and interactions with objects to illustrate a vocabulary with the outside world that has been developed over the span of his life. Ego instalments 1-4 have been presented in Bangkok, Los Angeles, Glasgow and SĂ©te, France and have typically taken place in very small spaces over the course of several hours. This context only allows for a few viewers to see the on-going work for a short period and leaves them with a fraction of a glance into the biography being depicted in these performances, much as we all encounter one another’s biographies in everyday life. With Ranchero McMurry continues to share this language of one’s history through performative acts but instead of having the viewers pass through the work, the work will pass through the viewer.

The Toronto Performance Art Collective (TPAC) is a not-for-profit, artist-driven collective that curates and produces the 7a11d International Festival of Performance Art—English Canada’s oldest ongoing biennial of performance art. 7a11d 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 7a11d International Festival of Performance Art took place in August 1997 and presented the work of 60 local, national and international artists. The 8th edition of the festival takes place from October 21–31, 2010.

© Jamie McMurry, Ranchero, 2010. Photos Henry Chan.

Performance
Pneumatic Vision: Cut by Helge Meyer

Curated and presented by FADO Performance Art Centre in the context of the 9th 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art.

Pneumatic Vision: Cut by Helge Meyer

Every breath has its own quality. Once you breathe in, there is no chance to control what is going inside your body. If you transform the idea of breathing into a question about the content of philosophical values, is it the same? Once you “inhaled” an idea, there is no chance of re-questioning the content? Is religion a drug? Do we still need to know about sins? What is a sin? Maybe the answer is to be found if the black water is inhaled…

This new performance work of Helge Meyer deals with the idea of breathing as a visible sign of being alive. The performer is searching for poetic images that make the fragility of human existence obvious.

The Toronto Performance Art Collective (TPAC) is a not-for-profit, artist-driven collective that curates and produces the 7a11d International Festival of Performance Art—English Canada’s oldest ongoing biennial of performance art. 7a11d 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 7a11d International Festival of Performance Art took place in August 1997 and presented the work of 60 local, national and international artists. The 8th edition of the festival takes place from October 21–31, 2010.

Performance Art Daily: Artist Talk with Helge Meyer
October 22, 2010 @ 12:00pm–2:00pm
Toronto Free Gallery, 1277 Bloor Street West, Toronto

© Helge Meyer, Pnuematic Vision: Cut, 2010. Photo Henry Chan.

Performance
International Visiting Artists: Singapore

ARTISTS
Amanda Heng
Kai Lam
Lee Wen

FADO Performance Art Centre is pleased to present an evening of performance from Singapore’s most influential contemporary performance artists, a cross section of generations and approaches. From participatory to material based – the work these three artists traverses a range of approaches, often incorporating social and political commentary. 

Often audience participatory in nature, Amanda Heng’s work mixes eastern and western values, traditions and gender roles. Kai Lam’s performance works are created in response to urban pluralistic society. And finally, Lee Wen’s performances and installations expose and question the ideologies and value systems of individuals, as well as social structures. 

Amanda Heng, Kai Lam and Lee Wen make their stop in Toronto in the midst of a North American tour which includes stops in Québec to perform at LeLieu and New York City to perform at Grace Space.

Performance Yellow

This fragrance opens us to the question, has the show started? It's winter, the theatre is colder than the street and the room is filled with people and all their winter smells: wet faux leather, down, too much shampoo, and beer breath. The atmosphere is a trickster. Am I late, am I early?

Top Notes

yellow mandarin, mimosa

Middle Notes

honey, chamomile, salt

Base Notes

narcissus, guaiac wood, piss, beer