Category: Performance

FADO is pleased to feature the world premiere of a new performance by award-winning artist Aiyyana Maracle. Join us in the ravine of Toronto’s Trinity Bellwoods Park for ndn wars are alive, and … well?, a multimedia performance with video projections. This performance is a part of FADO’s IDea series, and was co-presented at the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art.

Inventive, passionate and multi-talented, Maracle is known for her eloquent actions that assert the ongoing struggle for aboriginal presence and title in this country, particularly in her ongoing “peace piece” series. She is also recognized as a key contributor to Vancouver’s vibrant First Nations performance art scene.

The ndn wars: Canada’s Indigenous people remain resistant to the perpetuation of an unjust colonial relationship with ‘the Crown,’ and within Canadian society. The Crown, by its own actions and inactions more so than its words, continues to show its resistance to entering into a new era of an equitable, respectful, peaceful relationship between our cultures and peoples. Canada the meek; Canada, the world’s peacekeeper. Can there be peace in this world while this country remains so willing to, yet again, engage in violent repression of the Indigenous people of this land?

Aiyyana Maracle

Masks by Aiyyana Maracle
Video by Aiyyana Maracle and La Mathilde

This performance is a part of FADO’s IDea series, and was co-presented by Toronto Free Gallery at the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art.

In Search of Friedrich Nichtmargen / From Uncreative Travel Book XXII [Surface Area 510,100,934 KM2 196.950.168 miles2] (short title: In Search of Friedrich Nichtmargen) will unfold as a series of talks (public and personal), actions, lectures and installations situated around the city, and a presence that aims to establish an ontological framework for the IDea of Friedrich Nichtmargen. Vassya Vassileva invites Toronto audiences to meet with her at the end of each day at Toronto Free Gallery. At that time she will share the daily results of her research through conversations, displays of the evidence she uncovers, and field trips to various local sites of interest.

Vassya Vassileva has been in search of the artist Friedrich Nichtmargen since Thursday, 4 Nov 2004 14:42:37 -0800 (PST). Upon losing him, Vassileva cancelled her engagements in order to search for all vestiges of evidence of his existence. According to Friedrich Nichtmargen, every declared identity is misleading, unhelpful and irrelevant – a pure diagnosis. In explaining her reasons for believing she might find traces of Friedrich in Toronto, Ms. Vassileva sent this fragmentary message:

I was informed by the artist Hermann Hessler that Friedrich intended to go to the Canadian woods in relation to the ‘indispensability of measuring the distance between certain kinds of trees.’ I decided at once that the next geographical locality of my quest shall be Canada. During my stay in Toronto I will search for Friedrich Nichtmargen. In order to prefigure his local appearance, I shall strictly follow his own rules of mathematical formalization while scrutinizing geographical twists and measuring the distance by my own…

Additional performance: October 19 @ 8:00pm
XPACE Cultural Centre, 303 Augusta Avenue, Toronto

© Vassya Vassilev, In Search of Friedrich Nichtmargen, 2006. Photo Henry Chan.

ARTISTS
Gyrl Grip
Irene Loughlin
Jess Dobkin
Tejpal S. Ajji

Curated by Paul Couillard

FADO presents four performance environments dealing with the sense of taste in this final ‘gustatotry’ component of the Five Holes series.

Taste is perhaps the most ‘personal’ of all the senses. It is both primal—providing the impulses that drive consumption—and individualized: one person’s desire is another’s poison. While the word ‘taste’ is often associated with the concept of aesthetic discernment, Matters of Taste places its emphasis on a specific, visceral definition of taste: the perception of flavour and texture that takes place inside our mouths.

This series explores the implications of a sense that operates through the placement of foreign material inside one’s body. Matters of Taste is not concerned with the familiar social terrain of banquets and dinner parties so much as the links between physical sensation, unconscious/conscious drives, and our mouths as a point of contact with the external world. How does one orchestrate a performance for another’s mouth? What are the dynamics that seduce, persuade or convince others to put things in their mouths? What are we or aren’t we willing to put in our mouths? What intentions are bound up in the impulse to stimulate one’s taste buds? What does our sense of taste reveal about our internal desires and external projections?

PROGRAM INCLUDES

Kobe by Gyrl Grip
Liquid Skyline by Irene Loughlin
Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar by Jess Dobkin
The Oral Projects by Tejpal S. Ajji

FADO and DeLeon White Gallery invite Toronto audiences to The Route to Rosa, an interactive media installation by Quebecois artist Alain-Martin Richard. The installation, which includes four simultaneous video projections, features a combination of live video and prerecorded footage collected during an urban “manœuvre” (conducted under the working title Étrangers) conducted by Richard in Toronto in January and February of 2006.

The Route to Rosa is a subjective and ever-changing portrait of the city. The installation offers a meditation on the question of how Richard, as a “stranger” to Toronto, was able encounter its ethnically diverse inhabitants during a one-month residency, using people’s hands as a starting point.

The Route to Rosa is the third project in FADO’s Canadian Performance Art Legends series. This multi-faceted series celebrates Canada’s senior performance artists through the commission of major new works.

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CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS

Étrangers is an urban “manoeuvre” being undertaken in the neighborhoods of Toronto as a form of research into the “other”. Regardless of religion, language, or nationality, there is one thing among others we all share: and this is “the hand”.

My work in the city will be to gather rough material, to seek out intimate contacts and to find a way to make it happen. I seek hands. If you live in Toronto, lend me your hands. Your hands may be black, white, or brown. They might be from here, or from elsewhere. This project seeks a method of recognition, a rapport stripped down to what we share.

It will take only a few moments of your time. I have only one question I would like you to answer on videotape. Starting with this collection of material and other footage taken in the city, I will present a multimedia installation here in Toronto at the beginning of June.

I am in residence in Toronto from January 10 to February 10, 2006.

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ARTIST STATEMENT

Dans une certaine mesure, Rosa représente l’éternel féminin, cet attracteur puissant, mère ou amoureuse, la femme que l’on recherche sans doute toujours, la femme en nous.

The Route to Rosa parle du trajet de l’homme à travers la violence du monde, de cette Rosa tapie au fond de notre violence. Je comprends maintenant pourquoi les mains. C’est Mirabeau qui dit: «Les mains, c’est pour caresser ma fille, c’est par mes mains qu’elle appréhende le monde… et par la voix». Ce que la majorité des gens diront, chacun à sa manière. Propos banal, bien sûr, évidence, et cependant essentielle. Peu importent les ethnies, les religions, les langues, la main c’est la route vers Rosa.

Strangers, étrangers, Fremde, manœuvre urbaine dans le Toronto ethnique, s’est transformée en cours de route en un séjour dans le paysage humain, en un lent dialogue avec des étrangers. N’en suis-je pas un moi aussi? Ils m’ont invité chez eux, ils m’ont montré leur cuisine, leur salon, leurs enfants, leur crainte, leur désir, ils m’ont parlé de leurs mains, de caresses, de sexe, de travail, de création. Le prétexte était bon pour tromper nos solitudes.

J’ai entrepris ce projet avec l’intention de me rendre chez ceux que je crains: musulman terroriste, sikh sanguinaire, noir assassin, autochtone warrior. Se peut-il que nous ne soyons qu’une image de violence, que notre existence relative passe forcément par la souffrance, par la guerre infinie?

J’ai fait des appels à tous, je ne me suis pas imposé, je n’ai pas forcé la note. La majorité des réponses et des invitations était le fait de femmes. Autant de Rosa séductrices, amicales, sensuelles, douces, amantes, sévères, craintives, autant de femmes pour s’abolir soi-même dans le désir, dans l’incapacité de les absorber toutes pour une relecture du monde. Autant de rencontres pour tomber en amour.

Et aussi la même tendresse, la même retenue chez les hommes. Je n’ai pas rencontré de musulman terroriste, mais une Égyptienne qui éprouve dans son corps l’anéantissement des prisonniers de guerre, une Israélienne qui porte à l’écran l’inconcevable situation palestinienne. Pas de noir assassin, mais un Jamaïcain qui fait chanter la musique du monde dans la cité, pas de warrior, mais un Cri qui explore la matière douteuse de nos consensus. Et pourtant je les sais là, tout près de moi. Je les sais troués de balles sur les rues de mon quartier, je le sais s’explosant comme des machines détraquées, je le sais dévorés par l’alcool et les drogues létales.

Je n’ai pas affronté la fureur. Elle était cependant souvent perceptible. On trouve l’humanité là où elle se manifeste. Bien sûr nous ne sommes pas en Irak. J’ai diffusé mon projet, mes intentions à travers les multiples canaux de la ville. Cinquante personnes ont répondu. Cinquante fois j’ai quitté ma maison, j’ai fait le trajet vers un inconnu. Cinquante fois on m’a fait entrer ; invité à l’intérieur, j’ai apprivoisé l’étrangeté. Cinquante fois, j’ai frôlé l’intime, cinquante fois j’ai posé la question: “What is the most important use of your bands?”

Voici leurs réponses.

Je tiens à remercier pour leur généreuse et émouvante rencontre: Debra Alexander, Warren Arcan, Janet Attard, Lakshmi Aysola, Robert Bailey, Abdel Bassit, Martine Becquet, Lo Bil, Diane Borsato, Oscar A Calle, Michele Clarke, Paul Couillard, Linda Duvall, Lisa Fitzggibbons, Irma Gagnon, Hassan Haj, Martin Heath, Johanna Householder, Kole Kilibarda, Emily Kulasa, Betty-Jane Landry, Serena Lee, Alvaro Lopez, Diana Lopez Soto, Bernice Lyons Page, Nahed Mansour, Tanya Mars, Danielle Massie, Kiisti Matsuo, Ian McRonald, Amish Morrell, Fabian Orozco, Andrew James Paterson, Angelo Pedari, Diane Pugen, Sandy Ramon, Heike Raschl McRonald, Hanna Raschl McRonald, Mirabeau Richard-Ferrante, Elio Riggilo, Abraham Rios, Catherine Rodriguez, Mandip Singh Neil, Lisa Deanne Smith, Tonik, Annalise Walmer, Durmot Williams, Claudia Wittmann, bh yael, Damien Zielinski.

I do performance art, because this is the only way to express, what I want to express. If I could say it in another way, it would be useless to do it any longer.

Anja Ibsch

FADO is pleased to present a series of performances by German artist Anja Ibsch over the month of March at The Drake Hotel in both the Yoga Den (durational performances) and during Notes from the Underground, The Drake’s ongoing performance series. In addition, Ibsch will give a lecture at Toronto’s Goethe-Institut, speaking about her own work and the current performance art scene in Berlin, where she lives and works.

In her performance work, Anja Ibsch characteristically tests her bodily limits, creating images that combine conceptual concerns with tasks of endurance or physical strength. For the audience, these images work to transform the way we view or understand the performer’s physical identity. At the same time, the works engage the performer in a changing perception of her relationship to the world around her. Ibsch creates her work in response to the circumstances that present themselves, adapting to local environments and situations.

Performances at The Drake | Co-sponsored by The Drake’s Artist Residency Program
March 3: 9pm–12pm
March 7: 9pm–12pm
March 21: 9pm

Lecture by Anja Ibsch | Co-sponsored by the Goethe-Institut Toronto
Performance Art in Berlin
March 22: 7pm
Goethe-Institut, 163 King Street West

FADO presents a new performance by Warren Arcand. Melting Point: An Amusement is a reflection on Aboriginal experience in Canada early in the 21st Century. Melting Point is presented as part of the Drake’s Notes from the Underground series. Sponsored by The Drake Hotel.

Melting Point: An Amusement offers a set of actions regarding desire and identity, a body in heat, a pantomime of becoming—combining elegant, cynical wit with an extra-strength dose of hopeful persistence. Pulling together disparate threads of historical, political and cultural theory, the performance plays out through a vaudeville of hilarity tinged with monstrousness. Filtered through the perspective of “the Abo experience within the idea of Canada,” this performance is, in the artist’s words, “. . . an Amusement regarding nations, naming, the making or modelling of an individual, what it is or isn’t—and maybe finally arriving at an appreciation that much is at stake at making Individuals because it entails making a claim on the world—a potentially totalitarian reproduction.”

Bonus Performance: The Chair by Warren Arcand
January 27, 2006 @ 8:00pm
The Drake Hotel Yoga Den | 1150 Queen Street West, Toronto

This performance was presented in FADO’s IDea series (2005–2007), curated by Paul Couillard.

ARTISTS
Cameron McKittrick
Erin Flyn
Fedora Romita
Joce Tremblay
Leslie Wyber
Lisa Young Kutsukake
Naty Tremblay
Richard Windeyer
Shanker Bhardwaj
Zeesy Powers

Curatorial Statement by Elle McLaughlin

Open Airway is an investigation of rhythmic and organized patterns that ensure the successful function of systems. The project brings together and negotiates five unrelated performance pieces, all dealing with different systems.

This concept reflects my interest in the hidden systems functioning throughout us. I am fascinated with the complex interplay between vital functions that keep us alive and the transmission of internal signals operating and maintaining our systems despite various inconsistencies and anomalies. My own anomalous anatomical structure is defined by a rare inverted positioning of all internal organs, known as situs inversus or mirror image anatomy. The uniformity of their inverted placement ensures that all systems operate in a relatively efficient manner. However, a significant percentage of people with situs inversus are also diagnosed with primary ciliary dyskinesia. For respiratory functions to operate successfully, cilia must move in a rhythmic pattern to what is called the ciliary beat. Ciliary disorganization, detected only under a microscope, is manifested by a lack of adherence to this rhythmic, swaying, sweeping motion. This inadequacy ultimately leads to the breakdown of systems that regulate our most vital function: breathing. Systems are maintained through constancy, and are dependant on a degree of uniformity. The rhythmic manipulation of seemingly unrelated elements culminates in a larger accomplished entity. When individual units fail, it creates disturbances throughout the system and leads to its eventual collapse.

Open Airway addresses the role of co-operation in fostering continuity. Interconnected elements have the ability to stifle or flourish. Our accepted naiveté of complex systems that operate around and through us, seemingly running on their own, independent of will or thought or purpose is examined and re-interpreted in this performative petri dish. This project also considers the collaborative nature of performance art. Artists working in this form often depend on the assistance of others. Choreography, technical support and documentation are all functions assumed externally to ensure the artist achieves a connection with his or her audience and that the work remains accessible even after the event has passed. The response from those witnessing a performance may shift and alter the direction of a piece, as well as shaping and informing the artist.

In Open Airway, the artists are aware and vulnerable to shifts in each piece. Many perform simultaneously, while attempting to maintain a sense of balance and respect for what each group has to offer. Most of the performances are collaborative works, testing trust and encouraging empathy between the artists. The exceptions are the first and last pieces, which feature solo performances representing autonomy within a larger system. The interconnectivity that exists between artists engaged in divergent trajectories often culminates in a similar destination. The systems explored are diverse. All the performance pieces were conceived independently of each other. Yet they complement each other with varying multi-sensory approaches and degrees of physicality. Some rely on video projection to convey inner processes; others, silence and restraint.

In Forced Function, Fedora Romita joins Joce and Naty Tremblay, who have already established familiarity with each other’s movements. Fedora’s presence helps to disturb the rhythmic tensions already established by the two siblings, while methodically surveying and measuring the space they construct.

Erin Flynn’s Sanctuary 101 incorporates algorithmic patterns into a combined choreographed and improvised exploration of perception. Hinging on interaction and analysis, her approach requires the coordination and integration of diverse systems of subconscious motivation.

Lisa Young Kutsukake and Shanker Bhardwaj employ the interrupted flow of communication as a symbol of natural and imposed systems which govern our ability to relate to one another. Obstruction in the vocal apparatus, resulting from an inability to articulate our confinement within societal constraints, inhibits the flow of conversation. Hesitation becomes a mode of coping with uncertainty.

The development of empathy is intrinsically linked to the negotiation of personal identity as is evidenced in Slice, a performance by the sound trio Finger. Cameron McKittrick, Richard Windeyer and Leslie Wyber function through rhythmic attunement to one another’s needs and wishes, monitoring their interaction and responses via projections and audio cues.

Zeesy Powers’ approach in Open Airway is a representation of the internal, and its reaction to external and sometimes contradictory systems. Zeesy’s work incorporates an awareness of the struggle to reconcile the multiplicity of our existence while maintaining order and balance.

SPIN’s large open space and its delineation of columns provides a grid structure. Within this grid, the artists have been arranged in symmetrical, geometric configurations, corresponding to the principles of balance and harmony. Rhythm and organization, the conceptual impetus for the event Open Airway’s structure adheres to numeric and spatial manipulation. Three of the five groups of artists have chosen to work behind screens, veils and a cell constructed of paper. Although these artists have the opportunity to work in a large, open and egalitarian space, they are aware of the need for compartment-alization. While this has the potential to hinder growth it is a necessary measure to ensure individual goals are realized.

The performance space tests the function of systems through collaboration, rhythm and organization. Under the microscope of the audience’s focused eye, the artists learn to cope and avoid system overload through steady negotiation. Opening and maintaining airways allow ease of breath. A rhythmic action, breathing is our most constant reminder of the need for maintaining and monitoring systems. Obstruction of airways impedes the natural flow of tension and exchange.

So please, take a nice, deep, dizzy breath, and enjoy.

FADO presents Egalitarian, a new work by Louise Liliefeldt, one of Toronto’s premiere performance artists. This work is the first in a major new cycle of performances by the artist entitled DEADICATIONS: A Collection of Live Art Works.

In Egalitarian, influences of pop culture and personal memories intersect as Liliefeldt creates the first in a series of “portraits shaped by ritualistic actions.” This special midnight performance takes place in the artist’s home, revealing a selection of her most private acts in an “intimate, honest, awkward and thoughtful” performance. Egalitarian will unfold through a series of images that respond to a specific set of popular songs. Liliefeldt explains: “I am interested in creating actions that respond to the pace and overall mood of each song while also representing ideas that until now I seemed unable to communicate within my artistic or social practices. They have something to do with deep and very personal opinions and emotions that have long been suppressed.”

DEADICATIONS takes its inspiration from a handful of individuals whose life on earth was spent dedicated to the same things I believe in. I was profoundly affected by the dedication of these selected individuals, expressed through their chosen lifestyles and the messages they communicated—whether through the lyrics they professed, their various art forms, or the statements made through life altering actions. All were motivated, inspired by or had no choice but to act with all they had, which in some cases was their life. They were all passionately driven by issues related to the politics of race and class. They are artists, writers and musicians who have given me the inspiration and will necessary to become the individual I am today, and the individual I have always been, as I realize little has changed when reflecting on who and what I am as well as why I am. These individuals are physically dead, but the essence of everything they stood for continues.

Louise Liliefeldt

This performance was presented in FADO’s IDea series (2005–2007), curated by Paul Couillard.

Cindy Baker invites you to get designing and turn her into a Fashion Plate. This two-week interactive performance is presented by FADO at The Drake Hotel. Sponsored by The Drake Hotel.

For Fashion Plate, Cindy Baker will set up a sewing machine and various fabrics and pattern samples at Toronto’s The Drake Hotel. Audience members can drop in daily to meet with Baker and design an item of clothing – or perhaps an entire outfit – for her. Visitors are asked to take the process as far as cutting out the fabric, and then Baker (or her assistant) will finish the sewing job, with the results to be shown at a clothing launch on the last day of the performance.

For Baker, this process is about asking audience members, “to think about a large woman’s body, about someone else’s body, regardless of size, about that body in relation to their own and in relation to fashion, (a visual translation of society’s rules or standards about bodies).”

Baker goes one to write:

“One of my interests with this project is in examining the dance people will do between wanting to create something that will fit (and look good) on my (relatively enormous) body, while avoiding creating something so large as to be farcical… This project asks the viewer to look at me not as a performance artist but as a model—they are the artist/designer, so there are many possible layers of awkwardness.

Fashion Plate is about taking categorically/traditionally/predictably disappointed expectations, culminating in nervous-viewer-meets-nervous-artist, and trying to come up with small solutions. What interests me about disappointed expectations is finding the truths hidden within: set up an unrealistic task, and map the strategies used in trying to achieve the task to reveal something real.

I usually take on these tasks to learn more about my limitations, but this project sets out to present small tasks to others who are willing—and I will share with them in return. For this to work, we must both be willing to be a bit vulnerable. It’s a negotiation; the more they share, the more I can share, and the more information changes hands, the more interesting (and perhaps wearable) the end product.

This performance was presented in FADO’s IDea series (2005–2007), curated by Paul Couillard.

© Cindy Baker, Fashion Plate, 2005. Photo Miklos Legrady.

FADO’s IDea series begins with The Sun is Crooked in the Sky; My Father is Thrown over my Shoulders, a continuous 100-hour performance by Guatemalan-born Canadian artist Naufus Ramirez-Figueroa.

The Sun is Crooked in the Sky; My Father is Thrown over my Shoulders is a visceral, searching visual and action-based exploration of aspects of the artist’s personal history. In his notes for the performance, Ramirez-Figueroa writes:

“The artist’s family, like many other Guatemalan – and Latin American – families, has dealt with common, though taboo issues of class and race differences that have affected the family dynamic. In the case of Ramirez-Figueroa there is a history of indigenous women having the children of whiter men, men who become fathers unwilling to recognize the children as their own. By using metaphorical elements of his childhood – like powdered milk – and through sleep deprivation, Ramirez-Figueroa will push the limits of his endurance with the purpose of reaching an altered state of consciousness through which to meditate upon a genealogy of absent white fathers.”

This performance was presented in FADO’s IDea series (2005–2007), curated by Paul Couillard.

ARTISTS
Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay
Brian Joseph Davis
Daniel Cockburn

For Feats, Might, curator Alissa Firth-Eagland asked artists known primarily for their video works to “unplug” their performative ideas, stepping out from behind the camera and onto the live stage.

Performance art vs. video? by Paul Couillard

Perhaps more than any other genres, performance art and video have set the stage for visual art developments in the 21st century. Fuelled by—and also fuelling—the conceptual and technical breakthroughs of art activity over the past several decades, these two time-based practices are at the forefront of changing ideas about what art can and should be. They are also forms in which Canadian artists have consistently excelled. While the formal communicative strategies of these two media are, on the surface, almost oppositional—the obsessive detail of the close-up vs. the immersive composition of bodies in a shared environment; the fragmentary distillation of editing vs. the immutable pace of real-time; the magical layering of audio and visual tracks vs. the immediacy of live presence—both are instrumental in an evolving debate about our visions of ourselves and the universe in which we live. Both serve as reflective facets for exploring our everyday behaviour and for influencing social dynamics. Both offer compelling possibilities for expression.

Curatorial Statement by Alissa Firth-Eagland

Daniel Cockburn’s videos are cleverly self-referential without being didactic. They are deliberately sleek and crafted, even produced, but it is Cockburn’s performances within these productions that intrigue me most; his personae are disconcerting in their honesty and familiarity. I find there are many blind spots for me in all his onscreen characterizations. A notable mutability of portrayer and portrayed is evident in particular in his work, The Impostor (hello goodbye): there’s a mysterious blurring of fact and fiction. I am always left wondering how much of his onscreen personalities are, in fact, him.

For his work We Are Made of Stars, Brian Joseph Davis interviewed people who believed they resemble celebrities. The work reveals complex character layers within each individual who applied. Some look nothing like their doppelgangers. Some brandish their celebrity look-alike’s gestures and mannerisms. While Brian is not physically present in his work, his performance is evident in his orchestration of the interview scenario. His concept management is that of a devil’s advocate—neither the interviewees nor the viewer are privy to all the details. And of course his editing is very personal—gently culling their tics, speech patterns, and their very human traits while also revealing their learned celebrity mannerisms.

Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay’s work struck me a few years ago when I watched the two new titles he had created during a residency in Banff and after his first stay in Berlin. I was blown away by how much they both played off of, and expanded on, the previous title of his I had seen at New Toronto Works in 2002, Je Changerais D’Avis. Live to Tell felt newer than itself, slick and plastic, its aesthetic deliciously euro. But it also felt intensely sincere. It aroused questions for me about the possibility for artists to use references from popular culture without appropriating—forging something instead of just deconstructing. Nemerofsy Ramsay’s work doesn’t take from pop culture and mainstream media any more than it gives to them. These three artists’ work hinges on each of their own personal dwellings within the ephemeral medium of video, rendering it tangible through varied manifestations of presence and absence. Whether in their lack of physical appearance or their charismatic inhabitation, we witness their emotional restraints and emanations. We see poised spectres haunting the video signal and frame with impeccable timing. They’ve each inspired the question: “What kind of work would you make if you were to perform live?” These are their responses.

Co-presented by MOCCA. With thanks to V tape and The Great Hall.

Video screening @ 8:30pm
We Are Made of Stars, Brian Joseph Davis, 2004, 11:00
The Imposter (hello, goodbye), Daniel Cockburn, 2003, 8:48
Live to Tell, Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, 2002, 6:00

Performances @ 9:00pm
Report on an Unidentified Art Event Audience by Brian Joseph Davis
Visible Vocals by Daniel Cockburn
Constellation by Nemirov and Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay

FADO is pleased to present an evening featuring visiting Polish artist Artur Tajber. The artist will perform TORONTO TABLEABLE, a new work in his ongoing WALK’MAN series. Tajber will also screen videos and talk about his extensive body of work. 

My interests are focused around what can be defined as shaping the environment by an individual and collective. I think that “physical space” is a reflection of state of soul; physics and psyche influence each other. Thus my work consists mainly in carrying out observation, constructing experiences, documenting them, and finally—presenting my observations and conclusions to others.

—Artur Tajber

He has also written about the genesis and development of the WALK’MAN series:

From 1995 I have worked on a subject matter for which I coined the phrase WALK’MAN, a street action. In the autumn of 1995 I was standing on the Lagan River Bridge in Belfast. Hundreds of thousands singing birds were circling over and over again on all levels and all possible planes, drawing in the sky simple (shape-wise), but extremely complex (structurally) forms. Since then I have walked along the streets in different cities with an altered attitude… I do not perceive a street-plan as a flat sheet of paper, but as a three-dimensional form in which time is the third factor, offering other passages and modifications of connection… I have no doubt that the most frequently repeated and important activity, which engages my body and mind to a similar extent, is walking—especially walking “freely,” without aiming anywhere specific (I do not “walk towards…” but I walk, hang about).

Artur Tajber’s visit to Canada was made possible through the School of the Arts at McMaster University. Supporters of this venture include the Centre for Leadership and Learning through a Teaching and Learning Project Fund, the Senator William McMaster Chair in Globalization and the Human Condition, Hamilton Artists Inc., McMaster Museum of Art, transit gallery, and the International School of Loose Affiliations. Artur Tajber will also be conducting presentations and performance at Transit Gallery while in Hamilton.

Working in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut Toronto, FADO is pleased to present an artist talk and new performance work featuring Boris Nieslony, one of Germany’s foremost performance artists.

Boris Nieslony creates unpredictable and unrepeatable improvisational performance works that manifest “an encounter and its effects.” Responding to local circumstances, Nieslony develops images attuned to the moment, rigorously searching for the truth of self-recognition at the intersection of history and live presence. His impressive performance style stems from the motto, “life is art enough.”

The decision on how a performance will transpire is mostly made when the artist is already on stage. Nieslony describes his process: “One small bag filled with helpful objects and photos will accompany me and I will attend them. Even people and certain materials from a given environment can appeal to me as support for my ideas.”

Boris Nieslony’s Canadian tour is a joint project of FADO, grunt Gallery in Vancouver, and Open Space in Victoria.

TIME ZONES residency with Tania Bruguera & Glenda León

Curated by Tagny Duff

VIGILANTES—the dream of reason creates monsters— by Tania Bruguera
October 19–31, 2004

During the TIME ZONES residency, Bruguera commuted weekly between Chicago and Canada (first to Montréal and then to Toronto), using these trips as an opportunity to perform for the unsuspecting audience of her fellow travellers. She also presented unannounced performance actions in Toronto. In conjunction with this work, Bruguera produced a booklet that compiled images and experiences associated with the project, including the texts of four talks that she presented (two in Montréal and two in Toronto). Each talk visited a text by one of the following performance artists: Allan Kaprow, Adrian Piper, Vito Acconci, and Francys Alys.

Bruguera describes the work in this way: “VIGILANTES—the dream of reason creates monsters— will be a series of performances dealing with the relationship between ethics and desire; with the tension that can be found in a state of emotional vigilia, which is the state between being awake and asleep. Each piece will have several layers of appreciation, either from the position of the audience or of their level of boldness. These will be pieces that talk about the false strength and the hidden fragility.”

Every Step is a Shape of Time by Glenda León

For the Toronto portion of her residency, León developed a new audio-based performative installation presented at OCADU entitled, Every Step is a Shape of Time. This work invited the public to create individual and collective aural experiences generated in the lag time between walking and listening.

León writes: “Every step we make is a small yet important instant in our lives. The direction, the speed, the decision to make one step or a sequence of them can take us to certain events or move us away from them. The sound amplification of this daily act is a way to make us reflect upon and notice infinite possibilities sculpted through time. Listening to our own footsteps is metaphorically linked to the act of listening to ourselves. Where are we going? How are we walking on this path we have chosen? In fact, have we chosen this path we are walking? I believe these are questions worth asking, however, they are ones not easily answered.”

PROGRAM & EVENTS

Performance: Every Step is a Shape of Time by Glenda León
October 29, 2004 @ 7:00pm
OCAD University, 100 McCaul Street, Toronto

Infiltration, a Panel Discussion
With Glenda León, Mideo M. Cruz, Esther Ferrer, Cheryl l’Hirondelle and moderator Johanna Householder
October 31, 2004 @ 3:00pm
XPACE, 303 Augusta Avenue, Toronto
Sponsored by 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art

Curated by Paul Couillard

ARTISTS
Erika DeFreitas
Linda Rae Dornan
Eric Létourneau
So-Yeon Park
Jed Speare

Five Holes: Listen! presents five unique performance ‘maneuvers’ dealing with the sense of hearing. Five Holes: Listen! is the fourth offering in the multi-year Five Holes series that seeks to examine the nature and importance of bodies (performer and audience) in performance art by focusing on individual senses.

This iteration in the series considers acts of “listening” as they are carried out by and impact upon physical, social, political and spiritual bodies. In OPEN, Linda Rae Dornan presents herself as a solitary figure, sitting quietly in the city, listening—encouraging us to also stop for a moment to hear what we normally ignore. Erika DeFreitas performance, entitled Untitled: Selective Hearing, offers her presence for a one-on-one exercise of listening as a way of locating the self. In A Quiet Zone II, Jed Speare lobbies the city for a quiet zone that would serve as an area of sound awareness. So-Yeon Park assembles chanters from various cultures to direct their voices toward individual participants’ wishes as a way of channeling transformative energy in Interfaith Chanting/Praying Ceremony. And in Standard III, Eric Létourneau evokes silence as a way of marking and remembering all of the world’s victims of political persecution in a multi-layered project that interrogates the role of the State and of mass media in silencing “silence” itself.

PROGRAMME

OPEN by Linda Rae Dornan
September 15, 2004 @ 8:00am–12:00pm | Queen’s Park, Toronto
September 16, 2004 @ 8:00am–12:00pm | University Avenue traffic island, south of Gerrard Street
Artist Talk: September 16, 2004 @ 8:00pm | WARC, 122–401 Richmond Street West

OPEN features Linda Rae Dornan in a durational tableau performance of listening, only listening, in an open space surrounded by non-functioning audio speakers. It is about slowing down, actually hearing the world breathe around oneself, and being part of that breath. Time slows down, and one is absorbed into the soundscape, into hearing oneself and the world.

Untitled: Selective Hearing by Erika DeFreitas
September 25–October 24, 2004
Saturdays & Sundays @ 9:00am–5:00pm | various locations
Presented in conjunction with the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art

Untitled: Selective Hearing explores the sense of hearing and more specifically the act of listening as an intimate act of inclusion, trust, and the location and dislocation of self amidst a variety of public venues in Toronto. Artist Erika DeFreitas will be offering her shared presence to those who are interested in taking the time to sit and listen to their surroundings. Participants sign up for a particular place and time to join the artist in a conscious act of listening to the surrounding space. DeFreitas notes about this piece: “Our society depends heavily on conscious auditory perception as being selective, and this perception has created a culture of selective hearing. Our ability to ‘block’ things out allows us to choose when we want to listen, what we listen to, and what we hear. Various components of our surrounding environment have perpetuated this practice of filtering sound and have dictated what is allowed to take root and what must be discarded. Such forms of selective hearing and escapism can alter our environment in a surreal way. In his writing about conceptual art, I believe that an awareness of the ways that a sense of space or environment can be established through sound, as well as an understanding of how we might unconsciously use sound to essentially make an environment transferable, can develop through a process of active listening.”

A Quiet Zone II by Jed Speare 
October 7, 2004
Artist Talk: October 7, 2004 @ 4:00pm | Rectory Café, Ward’s Island

In A Quiet Zone II, Jed Speare seeks to establish a zone of quiet through municipal channels in a neighbourhood of Toronto—not for the purpose of restricting noise, but for promoting sound awareness and contemplation. Under city by-laws, Quiet Zones regulating noise activity can be established around hospitals and retirement homes. Speare’s proposal seeks to overturn and expand the notion of the Quiet Zone philosophically and idealistically, creating an occasion and site for an aesthetic experience, listening to a particular urban environment. For the past several months, Speare has been seeking the appropriate agency to initiate a formal process to create a zone in the inner harbour at Ward’s Island. From late September, Speare will be working in Toronto to meet with community members and officials and continue this process, culminating in an event on October 7 that will present his progress to-date, at a site and time to be determined. A Quiet Zone II is supported in part by a residency at Do While Studio in Boston and a grant from the Nicholson Foundation. Download Jed Speare’s Quiet Zone (pdf)

Standard III by Eric Létourneau
Artist Talk: October 21, 2004 @ 9:00pm | XPACE, 303 Augusta Avenue, Toronto
Presented with 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art

Eric Létourneau’s “manoeuvre” Standard III began as a two-hour uninterrupted nationwide radio broadcast on Radio-Canada on April 11, 2004 (Easter). The program featured 198 30-second periods of radio silence punctuated by an alphabetical listing of every country in the world. The same phrase introduced each silence: “Thirty seconds of silence for domestic and foreign political victims…” This broadcast was recorded live off the airwaves and remixed for publication on two CDs along with a text that considers the effects of administrative regulation and State control on mass media. Beginning in October 2004, copies of the publication will be sent through diplomatic channels to each country of the world. On the occasion of each country’s national celebration, its head of state will be contacted to verify the receipt and subsequent response to the CD.

Interfaith Chanting/Praying Ceremony by So-Yeon Park
January 27, 2005 @ 7:00pm
Alumni Hall of Victoria College, University of Toronto, 91 Charles Street, Toronto

Interfaith Chanting/Praying Ceremony is an interactive event organized by Korean artist So-Yeon Park. Park has assembled a circle of local volunteer chanters from a variety of religious traditions who will direct their voices toward participants’ wishes as a way of channeling transformative energy. Audience members are invited to walk around the circle and listen, as well as to enter the circle and hold a wish while the chanters surround them and pray for their wish to come true. Park explains, “This spontaneous multi-faith circle of chanting and prayer brings together people from many faiths. Religious/spiritual practitioners are invited to experience and share their own deep faith in an environment of diverse spiritual devotion. Viewers will have an opportunity to witness and feel the power of prayer.”

GAME CITY consists of a series of urban experiments across Yorkville, Kensington Market and Queen Street by Jessica Thompson, Paige Gratland, Charlene Lau, SR Palm, and the Grey Sweatsuit Revolution, culminating with performances by Charlie Black, 640 480 Video Collective, and the Pauls and the Band of Outsiders.

These artists disrupt conventions by disorienting visual, spatial and auditory perceptions. Expect a range of approaches, from the subtle (Thompson, Gratland, Grey Sweatsuit Revolution), to the theatrical (Lau, SR Palm Black, 640 480 and the Pauls). The audience is encouraged to be as nomadic as the projects themselves as they move through the city. Various times and locations are indicated on the schedule, allowing audience members to take in individual projects, or spend their whole day with the works as they link up with each other.

SCHEDULE

Jessica Thompson
11:00am | Village of Yorkville Park, Cumberland Street
1:00pm | outside Bedford Academy, 36 Prince Arthur Avenue
3:00pm | outside Kensington Tavern, 40 Kensington Avenue (Kensington Market)

Paige Gratland
en route

Charlene Lau
12:00pm | outside Bedford Academy, 36 Prince Arthur Avenue
3:00pm | outside Kensington Tavern, 40 Kensington Avenue (in Kensington Market)
5:00pm | outside Cameron House, 408 Queen Street West

SR Palm
2:00pm | corner of Augusta Avenue and Niagara Avenue (start of procession)
3:00pm | corner of Augusta Avenue and Baldwin Avenue

Charlie Black
7:00pm | CineCycle, 129 Spadina Avenue

The Grey Sweatsuit Revolution
daytime (general sightings)
8:00pm | CineCycle, 129 Spadina Avenue

Pauls and the Band of Outsiders & 640 480 (VSL projections)
9:00pm  | CineCycle, 129 Spadina Avenue

FADO is proud to present Tyranny of Bliss by Tanya Mars. This major new performance by one of Canada’s most renowned performance artists occupies 14 different sites of continuous activity over 7-hours across the city of Toronto, starting at from Queen’s Park Queen’s Park legislative building, and stretching along University Avenue to Queen Street West.

Inspired by a variety of sources ranging from the 14th Century frescoes of Ambrogio Lorenzetti on the Effects of Good and Bad Government to Fellini’s Satyricon, Tanya Mars constructs a modern day social satire with a cast of 30 performers. Tyranny of Bliss looks at the current human condition from both utopian and dystopian perspectives. The piece offers a richly layered, series of spectacular and incongruous images juxtaposed against the outdoor urban landscape.

Loosely based on the pageant structure of the medieval Miracle/Mystery plays, Tyranny of Bliss is a 7-hour performance that uses limousines in lieu of wagons. Beginning from the Queen’s Park legislature, two limousines – one white and one black – will usher small groups of audience members past 14 “tableaux” locations featuring images based on the 7 heavenly virtues and the 7 deadly sins. The scenes will also be accessible to passersby, allowing audiences to create their own narrative by walking from site to site. At each location a different scene will unfold continuously throughout the day, using the languages of dance, theatre, sculpture, visual art and literature.

Tyranny of Bliss promises a thrilling and provocative meditation on city life, providing a unique experience of Toronto not to be missed.

Performance Locations

GREED, LOVE, WISDOM: Queen’s Park grounds, north of the Legislature

COURAGE: travelling south on University Avenue, from Queen’s Park to Queen Street West

HOPE, SLOTH, ENVY: Queen’s Park Legislative grounds

LUST: University Avenue & Gerrard Street

GLUTTONY: University Avenue & Dundas Street West

TOLERANCE University Avenue & Armoury Street

WRATH: University Avenue & Queen Street West

JUSTICE: travelling north along University Avenue, from Queen Street West to Queen’s Park

TRUTH: City Hall Speaker’s Corner, 100 Queen Street West

PRIDE: Pages Books & Magazines, 256 Queen Street West

FADO is pleased to present Home Repair, featuring the Regina-based performance art collective One Night Only. Home Repair will feature six simultaneous performances in an empty apartment building, focusing on ideas of communication and relationships within domestic spaces. 

Working collectively, the six members of One Night Only create individual performances on a common theme that act and react in relation to each other. The collective begins each project by agreeing on a common set of parameters. How each member chooses to fulfill, interpret or subtly circumvent the established rules becomes the basis of their developing dialogue, resulting in a multilayered and multi-perspectived approach.

One Night Only:
Adam Budd
Felipe Diaz
Blair Fornwald
Tanis Keiner
Tammy McGrath
Anna Scott

ARTIST TALK: One Night Only + Life=Art=Life
February 22, 2004 @ 2:00pm
Karen Schreiber Gallery, 30-25 Morrow Street, Toronto

Artist talk featuring One Night Only members with some of the participants of Life=Art=Life, a weekend of performances and talks featuring Louise Liliefeldt, Richard Martel, Tehching Hsieh and Kristine Stiles. Life=Art=Life is a FADO & Blank Slate presentation, with support from the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art.

ARTISTS
Kristine Stiles
Louise Liliefeldt
One Night Only
Richard Martel
Tehching Hsieh

Presented by Blank Slate, with support from Karen Schrieber and the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art.

Curated by Istvan Kantor

Life=Art=Life is designed to be an exploratory forum evaluating the past and present trends of performance art in the context of everyday life. Under the auspices of Blank Slate, the weekend event will bring together local and international artists and theorists to present and discuss their work.

The artists include local tableau-vivant diva, Louise Liliefeldt; art-action ambassador Richard Martel from Québec City; writer, professor and Dr. of destruction and art theory Kristine Stiles from North Carolina; and self-declared non-artist Tehching Hsieh from New York City forever famous for his one year performances. Among guests at the Sunday panel discussion will be One Night Only, a Regina-based performance art collective, in Toronto for their event Home Repair hosted by FADO. The six members of the group are Adam Budd, Felipe Diaz, Blair Fornwald, Tanis Keiner, Tammy McGrath, and Anna Scott.

Today it seems to us, that performance art, as a rebellious and revolutionary force, has completed its mandate by infiltrating every aspect of life. The life=art=life theory, historically supported by the avant-garde, has never been more relevant than today.

If it is true that performance art, as a social engine and generator of change, has accomplished its mission, then what is its’ place in current artistic activities and everyday life? Blank Slate hosts forums for discussions, critical talks, conferences, workshops and interdisciplinary events, conducted in a non-intimidating environment. Participants are encouraged to freely express their ideas concerning today’s artistic activities, new trends, theoretical issues and practical methods. The purpose of Blank Slate is to encourage everyone in the exploration of creative ideas and critical thinking, blending together science, technology, philosophy, politics and art.

PROGRAM & EVENTS

Performances by Louise Liliefeldt, Richard Martel
February 20, 2004 @ 7:30pm
Karen Schreiber Gallery, 25 Morrow Avenue, Toronto

Performances/Videos/DJ by Ulysses Castellanos, Marlee Cargill, Lewis Kaye, Machinesexactiongroup
February 20, 2004 @ 10:00pm–dawn
Polish Canadian Legion No.621, 2290 Dundas Street West, Toronto

Performances by Tehching Hsieh, Kristine Stiles
February 21, 2004 @ 7:30pm
Karen Schreiber Gallery, 25 Morrow Avenue, Toronto

Artists Panel Discussion
February 22, 2004 @ 2:00pm
Karen Schreiber Gallery, 25 Morrow Avenue, Toronto

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The first Blank Slate event took place in 2003 and was marked by the world-famous blackout that put Blank Slate on the right track of enlightening discussion. Since, Blank Slate has hosted ten Discussion cocktail events with local and international artists and has co-operated with performance art agency Fado Perfomance Inc. Participants have included action-artist Gusztav Uto from Transylvania, Canadian Art editor Richard Rhodes, artist stand-ups Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan from Winnipeg, avant-garde legends Eldon Garnet and Istvan Kantor, Toronto Arts Council visionary Jim Garrard, emerging local talents Maria Legault, Jennifer Matotek and Beth McEachen. The Blank Slate strategy is based on the practical doctrine that life is a collective social sculpture and everyone is an artist/constructor/architect.

Life=Art=Life (event), 2004. Photo Miklos Legrady.

ARTISTS
Constanza Camelo
Kinga Araya
Myriam Laplante
The Two Gullivers (Flutura & Besnik Haxhillari)
Vessna Perunovich

FADO is pleased to present Diaspora, a performance art event that examines the experiences of dispersed and exiled populations. The event will feature five performances followed by a public discussion. Diaspora presents artists from various cultures, now living in Canada, whose performances consider their ‘foreignness.’ Developed by Montréal curator Sonia Pelletier and touring with support from CALQ, Diaspora features performances modified from an initial event presented in 2003 at Galerie Clark in Montréal. A fifth project featuring local artist Vessna Perunovich will be included for this Toronto version of Diaspora.

In consideration of the project, Pelletier writes:

Performance art [is] surely the most immediately expressive way to depict survival, resistance and the accommodation of differences. This commingling, driven by the artists’ concerns with identity issues, leads us to consider how the precarious state of the artist in a foreign land reverberates on one’s own culture, as well as the status of the artist in general…

A major portion of the project is devoted to reflection, with a focus on the identity issues of cultural transformation, hybrid cultures, belonging and cultural transference. …We are also attempting to refashion and re-view the word ‘Diaspora.’ Performative acts convey cultural evidence, but to what extent can one assert one’s belongingness in a world so polarized between Western and non-Western culture? And in the art world, haven’t the concepts of globalization and internationalization gotten confused as well?

Presented in cooperation with Blank Slate with support from the Conseil des art et des lettres du Québec.

FADO is pleased to present the Toronto premiere of new works by two Finnish performance artists, Irma Optimist and Pekka Luhta.

Irma Optimist and Pekka Luhta will present solo performance works that hint at a slightly surrealist sensibility, employing rapid-fire humour and high-impact visual imagery. These two artists use entertainment and surprise as elements to lead the audience into a world of serious thought and theory. For Irma Optimist, female sexuality is the tactic of choice in her performance art works. Using various personas, from sex kitten to the mythical huntress Diana, she seduces, captivates and captures males within her audience in order to explain mathematical formulae. Pekka Luhta’s prosthetic limb provides the departure point for setting up complex readings of cultural and social theory.

Irma Optimist has been a performance artist since 1989, producing over 100 works to date throughout Europe and North America. She was last seen in Toronto in 1996 performing in FADO’s Rencontre Performance. In addition to her performance art career, Optimist works as a professor of mathematics and statistics at the University of Vaasa.

Pekka Luhta is a performance artist and writer who lives and works in Finland. He has performed throughout Europe and in North America. This is his first visit to Canada. He writes of his work: “I concentrate on living art using my body as the most important instrument. The works tell about the situations in which I manifest my corporal thinking. Photographs, performances, videos, writings, drawings and paintings are the fragments of living experience.”

Irma Optimist and Pekka Luhta will also perform in Hamilton on October 8, 2003, as part of the Art Gallery of Hamilton’s Sevenseason program.

This event is presented in conjunction with TRANZ < – – – > TECH 2003, Toronto’s International Media Arts Biennial. Artist travel support was provided by the FRAME (Finnish Fund for Art Exchange).

© Pekka Luhta, Valid – War – Invalid, 2003. Video still.

Curated by Jim Drobnick and Paul Couillard

ARTISTS
Cheli Nighttraveller
Clara Ursitti
Helen Paris & Leslie Hill
Millie Chen & Evelyn Von Michalofski
Shawna Dempsey & Lorri Millan

reminiSCENT, is the third instalment in FADO’s performance series, Five Holes, which examines the significance of the body and the senses. 

WORKS INCLUDED IN THE SERIES:

Pull Up To The Bumper by Clara Ursitti
Street intervention: September 18, no set times
Exhibition and limo tour: September 20 @ 6:00-9:00pm
Karen Schreiber Gallery, 302-25 Morrow Avenue, Toronto

On The Scent by Helen Paris & Leslie Hill (with guest artist Lois Weaver)
September 19–21, please register to experience this performance
168 Simcoe Street, Toronto

Untitled by Cheli Nighttraveller
September 20 @ 12:00pm
Berczy Park, Front Street, Toronto

The Seven Scents by Millie Chen & Evelyn Von Michalofski
September 20–21 @ 12:00pm–4:00pm
Harbourfront Centre, 235 Queens Quay West, Toronto

Scentbar by Shawna Dempsey & Lorri Millan
September 20 @ 6:00pm
Karen Schreiber Gallery, 302-25 Morrow Avenue, Toronto

Working in collaboration with Blank Slate, FADO is pleased to present a performance, video screening and talk by Gusztav Uto, one of Romania’s foremost performance artists. This will be the final work in Visa Trauma, a series of four actions undertaken by the artist during his visit to Canada (previous actions were performed in Chicoutimi, Montréal and Québec City during August 2003).

Gusztav Uto presents performance actions combining political and poetic impulses that respond to current and local situations. Visa Trauma comes out of the circumstances under which Uto finds himself in Canada. Originally invited to perform as part of SYLVA, a collective of Transylvanian artists formed for this tour, Uto found himself alone after his five companions were denied Visas by the Canadian embassy in Bucharest. Consequently, these performances speak to this unexpected absence of his colleagues and of the difficulties of communicating across cultural, geographic and administrative borders.

After his performance, Uto will show some video documentation of the ANNART festival in Romania and engage in a discussion with the audience about how art is valued in Romania versus Canada. 

This event is presented in collaboration with Blank Slate, a new Toronto forum for discussions, critical talks, conferences, workshops and interdisciplinary events blending together science, technology philosophy, politics and art. Special thanks to Le Lieu for organizing Gusztav Uto’s trip to Canada.

© Gustav Uto, Visa Trauma IV, 2003. Photo Miklos Legrady.

ARTISTS
Armand Vaillancourt
Constanza Camelo
Jocelyn Robert
Sylvette Babin
Sylvie Cotton

Curated by Eric Létourneau

FADO is pleased to present Pas de Traduction, a series of street actions featuring Montréal- and Québec-based performance artists. The performances will take place in the Queen Street West and Alexandra Park area. A program detailing the exact locations and nature of the performances will be available on the day of the event from weewerk Gallery (located at 620-A Queen Street West) within walking distance of all of the activities.

Pas de Traduction is the first in a new series of events by FADO that examines the work of various Canadian performance art communities, defined culturally, regionally, ethnically, or aesthetically. This inaugural series focuses on the city of Montréal. Pas de Traduction focuses on the ways interaction between performer and public can take place in site-specific contexts. The title (“no translation”) refers light-heartedly to the traditional tensions between English and French Canada. More importantly, however, the title reflects how the practice of performance privileges direct action and shared presence as a way of expressing ideas and moments that are ephemeral and essentially untranslatable. Pas de Traduction dances among the ambiguities of what needs no translation, what cannot be translated, and what we refuse to translate, focusing on the interpretation process between artist, audience and location.

PROGRAM & EVENTS

Performances
July 12, 2003 @ 12:00pm–5:00pm
Alexandra Park, Toronto

Round Table: Pas de Traduction, moderated by Sonia Pelletier & Johanna Householder
July 13, 2003 @ 11:00am
Metro Hall (meeting room 308), 55 John Street, Toronto

FADO is pleased to announce A Way of Making, a First Nations performance art residency project featuring artists Bently Spang and Rebecca Belmore, and curated by Reona Brass.

Curator Reona Brass writes of this project:

A Way of Making brings together Northern Cheyenne artist Bently Spang and Anishnabe artist Rebecca Belmore in a residency that examines how ritual in performance art functions in fashioning a new self within the cultural body. Taking up residence in a studio at OCAD University, the artists will explore the boundary between what we understand as “authentic experience” and what is “merely performed” to discover how this practice functions in creating a cycle of cultural desire, resistance and fertility.

Sharing a desire to address several communities at once with their work, these artists maintain a delicate relationship with the world that surrounds and encroaches upon the world that they were raised in and return to frequently. For these artists, to walk between, negotiate and address these two worlds is simply a necessity they accept, balancing as they do between yesterday and tomorrow. Their interdisciplinary practices, flexible vehicles for engaging very different audiences in a dialogue about the reality of contemporary Indigenous life, entail an ancient way of making that assists them in making this connection between the past and the future.

While primarily installation artists, both artists revert to the medium of performance art when the need arises, usually to address barriers and establish signposts of cultural change. Belmore and Spang use their performance work to aggressively, and sometimes humorously, move the viewer away from the defining frame of native people within the colonialist construct of North American society. Creating acts of political defiance and cultural determination with their performance work, Spang and Belmore deliberately subvert the classical values of traditional native art for the flux of contemporary reality. Striking a complicated balance between the aesthetic and the political, the monumental and the transitory, the works of these artists ultimately serve as crucial indicators in the rapid and continual renegotiation of contemporary Indigenous identity.

Audience is invited to view the artists’ creative process during daily open studio hours from March 11 to 14. The performance being created in this residency entitled Tongue River will take place on the evening of March 14. The artists will be available on March 15 to discuss their work. All events are free.

PROGRAM & EVENTS
Open studio: March 11–14 @ 11:00am
Performance: March 14 @ 7:30pm
Artist discussion: March 15 @ 11:00am

© Rebecca Belmore & Bently Spang, Tongue River, 2003. Photo Miklos Legrady.

Kirsten Forkert’s Walking and Getting Rid of Something is the final performance project in FADO’s three year long Public Places / Private Spaces series. This performance considers the problems of living in a consumer culture, juxtaposing two situational questions: what to do with unwanted material goods; and how to work through a collaborative or community decision-making process.

SEEKING: participants for collaborative performance action on March 1, 2003.
You are invited to come along for a walk. Bring an object you would like to get rid of. 

This could be:
for personal reasons
because it’s broken or useless or just takes up space
for other reasons, you just don’t need it anymore
because it can be easy, or difficult, to give something up

We are going to meet on March 1 and go for a walk together. During this walk, we will each find a way to get rid of the object, without simply throwing it away or selling it. We will help each other to do this. We will all decide together on the directions the walk will take, depending on where people want to go and how well we know the area. The walk will be over once everyone has rid themselves of their objects.

This project developed out of a collaboration with Peter Conlin. It is inspired by questions of what defines a collective experience: Why did you come here? Why are we here together? What kinds of relationships and dialogues could develop out of a group of people brought together, absurdly, by what we don’t need? Could this be thought of as community, however brief? Is this utopian? Maybe.

Artist Talk with Kirsten Forkert and Sylvie Cotton
February 26, 2003 @ 8:00pm
WARC (Women’s Art Resource Centre), 122–401 Richmond Street West, Toronto

From February 19 to March 1, 2003, Montréal-based artist Sylvie Cotton will undertake a residency project as part of FADO’s on-going Public Spaces / Private Places series.

Promenades is a socio-artistic experiment featuring one-one meetings between the artist and selected participants, taking place between February 21–28, 2003. Participants will agree to spend between 3 to 8 hours with the artist, either in silence, or looking after the artist while she is temporarily blindfolded.

SEEKING VOLUNTEERS FOR INTERACTIVE PERFORMANCE ART ACTION

Sylvie Cotton, Art Action and Performance Artist, seeks participants to share with her (individually) in a day of either silence or blindness. Apart from maintaining a mutual respect for the moral and physical integrity of the other, each meeting will have only one condition: to be together in silence; or to be responsible for the temporarily blindfolded artist, or vice versa.

Each meeting will be unique. The activities that unfold will be decided in advance or as the day goes on according to an agreement reached by the artist and participant together in a preliminary telephone conversation.

The project will be documented by drawings made by the artist after each meeting. An evening bringing together all the participants will take place at the end of the project so that they can exchange their impressions of this socio-artistic experience based on trust, instinct and intuition, a divergence form our normal methods of communication, and also on chance.

Artist Talk: Sylvie Cotton & Kirsten Forkert
February 26, 2003
Women’s Art Resource Centre, 122-401 Richmond Street West, Toronto

© Sylvie Cotton, Promenades, 2003. Photo Paul Couillard.

FADO is proud to present Gestures, an evening of performance works by five emerging artists and recent art school graduates. Curated by Tanya Mars, the evening focuses on concepts of gesture: gesture as movement, gesture as courtesy, gesture as mark. Reflecting a range of strategies and approaches to performance, Gestures introduces a fresh, vibrant, and diverse group of local and regional performance artists to Toronto audiences.

ARTISTS
Adrian Kahgee
Christine Peplinksi
Erika DeFreitas
Julian Fiala
Keith Fernandes

FADO’s on-going Emerging Artists series grew out of this first event, initiated by performance artist and educator Tanya Mars. One event expanded into an on-going series in order to provide a professional platform for emerging artists and curators from Toronto and beyond. Working within a curatorial framework, the series is intended to nurture new work and ideas, as well as provide direction and mentorship. The series is also a vehicle to showcase the work of the community’s newest perspectives in performance art.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Erika DeFreitas’ multidisciplinary practice includes performance, photography, video, installation, textiles, drawing and writing. Placing emphasis on gesture, process, the body, documentation and paranormal phenomena, DeFreitas mines concepts of loss, post-memory, legacy and object-hood. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally.

Keith Fernandes is a fifth year arts management student at the University of Toronto majoring in Drama. His recent credits include an original adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, and an original clown performance entitled The Golden Ball, which was awarded Best Production at the University of Toronto Drama Festival.

Julian Fiala is a feminist artist/activist working predominantly in performance and installation. Over the last two years, Julie has worked with marginally housed communities, women, and Queen’s University janitors to explore themes such as sex and class privilege, as well as notions of public/private space Recent credits include speaking at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre’s Active Practices Symposium and co-curating ARTHappens2, an evening of performances, happenings and events at Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre. Julie currently resides in Kingston, where she has taken a job as Modern Fuel’s Program Director.

Adrian Kahgee is an Anishnaabekwe originally from Saugeen First Nation. She currently resides and teaches in Toronto. As an emerging video and performance artist, Adrian has worked on a number of collaborative projects with other First Nation artists, including Four Red Women Nude a radio/ performance art production aired on CBC radio. She has also been involved with the emerging video artist collective 640 480. Her most recent collaborative work, a documentary titled The Original Summit, Journey to the Sacred Uprising premiered at the 2002 imagineNATIVE Media Arts Festival in Toronto.

Christine Peplinski is a recent graduate of the Fine Arts program at the University of Toronto. She believes that art is better than the truth.

Iwan Wijono’s The Rootless Man is curated in the context of FADO’s Public Places / Private Spaces series. The performance is presented at the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art.

In The Rootless Man, Iwan Wijono considers the commodification of culture and the destruction of nature, using a remote-controlled toy dump truck filled with earth. Wijono writes about his concerns:

“We live on the earth, we need the earth; we need food and water from the earth. But modern people little by little have distanced themselves from the earth; they want to conquer the earth, benefit and profit form the earth without having to take care of it properly. Most modern people from morning til night do not even touch the earth, everybody wants to be a businessman or millionaire, nobody wants to be a laborer or farmer, nobody wants to get their hands dirty. Forests have been felled in the name of industry, villages increasingly become cities or ghost towns, where villagers move to the cities. When the earth is plagued by disease, there are no longer any forests or clean water, dollars can buy nothing!”

A second performance, Body for Rent / Body for Auction, will take place between November 7 and November 9 as a public intervention at local malls in Toronto. The artist will offer his body as a commodity for public sale. Audience members can negotiate to “rent” Wijono’s body for a purpose and length of their choosing.

FADO is pleased to present the Toronto premieres of Japanese performance artists Mimi Nakajima and Shin-Ichi Arai, curated as a part of FADO’s International Visiting Artist series, and presented at 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art.

Mimi Nakajima and Shin-Ichi Arai are part of a recent trend in Japanese performance art toward a rawer, more direct style that eschews the formalism and romanticism of an earlier generation. While traces of the poetic influence remain, these artists’ works reveal their interest in casting an unblinking eye on our bodies as a site of social tension.

Happy Japan! and Tourist: For E. Herbert Norman, by Shin-Ichi Arai
In Happy Japan!, Shin-Ichi Arai calls attention to some of the contradictions of his native country. Critical of the political system and alarmed by conservative and xenophobic cultural tendencies, Arai makes his own patriotic statement through a bold art action: “Here in Japan, which is said to be rich, to be mature democracy, to have freedom of expression, all I can do is cry; Happy Japan! Happy Japan!”

Wind doesn’t blow branches by Mimi Nakajima
In relation to her work, Mimi Nakajima writes: “My performances develop from problems in my daily life, which I try to observe in an optimistic way. As I start to find the truth of a question, my thinking moves toward philosophic conclusion, the territory of ‘reason.’ If I bring my conclusions back to reality, it creates a funny gap. That is what I want to express in performance. There is always some ‘vagueness’ in trying to clarify truth. It is quite difficult to express the vagueness itself, but I find performance a useful means of accepting it. In performance art, people experience discovery through sharing time and place.”

© Mimi Nakajima, Wind doesn’t blow branches, 2002. Photo Arai Shin-Ichi.

FADO is pleased to present Israeli artist Adina Bar-On’s performance, Disposition. A walking tour, lasting between one and two hours, Disposition is presented as part of FADO’s Public Spaces / Private Places series.

In Disposition, Adina Bar-On reframes personal stories in the context of local surroundings and circumstances. This ambulatory performance work speaks to the concept of viewpoint, using local geography, history and culture to influence the shape of the artist’s shared journey with the audience. As Bar-On leads people on a walking tour, she presents situations, instructions and images that question the familiar, and bring to the forefront the variability of both physical and emotional points of view. Bar-On’s work challenges us to reconsider the factors that determine what is seen and not seen.

Although the performance is free, attendance will be limited, so advance reservation is recommended. This performance is an outdoor walking tour, so audience members are reminded to dress appropriately.

This project is part of an exhibition partnership between FADO and the Art Gallery of Hamilton. Under this partnership, a number of FADO performances will be presented in Hamilton as part of the Gallery’s Sevenseason program. Disposition will be performed at the AGH on September 27, 2002.

Adina Bar-On will also present an evening featuring a screening of recent video works, an artist talk, and her performance Home of Course. Adina explains this short, emotionally charged performance: “This work is my attempt to question what appears as the inevitability of destruction in the process of deconstruction.”

SCHEDULE

Artist Talk & Screening
October 2, 2002 @ 8:00pm
Implant, 58 Wade Avenue, Toronto

Disposition by Adina Bar-On
October 5 & 6, 2002 @ 2:00pm
275 Carlton Street, Toronto

© Adina Bar-Om, Disposition, 2002. Photo Miklos Legrady.

FADO is proud to present Talking to my Horse, a new performance by Vancouver-based First Nations artist Archer Pechawis. This work is presented as part of FADO’s ongoing Public Spaces / Private Places series.

Talking to my Horse is a meditation on two images: a wire service photo of American soldiers on horseback in Afghanistan, and a scene from Thomas Berger’s book, Little Big Man. In the book, Little Big Man’s horse tells him (in Cheyenne) of an imminent attack by General Custer. In this performance the Afghan horses speak to the American soldiers.

Pechawis writes generally of his work:

“My current fascination is what I call ‘transitional Cree culture’, the place where Cree culture meets the onrush of millennial technology. I explore this fascination in performance. Using digital technologies I attempt to locate and query this meeting place, however fleeting. My work is a temporary roadmap. These maps are signposts of the moment, which I create to share.”

In addition to the performance, FADO will host an artist talk on April 6 at 2:30pm in which Pechawis will discuss his work as well as providing information on current First Nations performance art practice in western Canada.

© Archer Pechawis, Talking to my Horse, 2002. Video still.

FADO is proud to present the premiere of A Gathering for Her, a new performance installation by Reona Brass. This work is presented as part of FADO’s Public Spaces / Private Places series.

As a performance and installation-based artist, Reona Brass explores concepts of ritual, transgression and resistance. Through the use of various prolonged and/or repeated actions, Brass explores the construction and meaning of these concepts. In A Gathering for Her, Brass will make preparations in a room at The Native Canadian Centre to be bound into a reconstructed “cradleboard,” a rite of passage denied her by a broken history. Referring to the rite of binding a child too young to walk, Brass will seek knowledge and comfort as she learns to take on the attributes of patience and humility.

Reona Brass writes:

Our own actions are what we can wish or hope from humanity.

—Elvira Santamaria, Deep Sleep

As a performance and installation-based artist, I am interested in how the discourse, and practice of, compassion, struggle, growth, transformation, ritual and survival relate to contemporary indigenous culture. The first in a new series of works, A Gathering for Her is based on inquiries into and reflections upon Saulteaux rites of passage for women. Specifically, this work is based upon the rite of binding a child too young to walk. I seek to develop my knowledge of this rite away from all force of habit and scars of history. My intention is to bring about the experience of self -discovery from the private sphere into the public. A Gathering for Her is both metaphor and transformation. The boiled beet root, sewing machines and mattress are all chosen for their feminine qualities and histories. The actions are both predictable and unexpected. A parallel for the cultural evolution and matriarchal values that struggle to emerge. This is a real time action across real time passing. A moment now, or an hour later, you bear witness and take part.

The development of this project was funded in part through the Performing Arts Programme of The Laidlaw Foundation.

FADO is pleased to present the Toronto premiere of Polish performance artists Wladyslaw Kazmierczak and Ewa Rybska in a new work entitled, We Love Dada for Today. 

The performance is about the world of dramatic divisions, the great transformation and breakdown of totalitarian ideologies. The world of relative principles, pretence and inauthenticity, forces the lonely search for ones own criteria to build a different world. We Love Dada for Today offers insight into the concepts of multiple identity and individuality in an imperfect and fragmenting society.

—Wladyslaw Kazmierczak and Ewa Rybska

Wladyslaw Kazmierczak and Ewa Rybska present striking and witty visual tableaux that consider the shifting worlds of pop culture and geopolitics from an Eastern European perspective. Their work reflects a sharp eye for the symbolic and iconic significance of everyday items. These artists comment on the human condition in an imperfect and fragmenting society through a dense layering of art historical references with the languages of advertising and electronic media.

The artists’ visit is sponsored by FADO as part of an international networking project. While in Toronto, Kazmierczak and Rybska will host a networking meeting (March 3, 2002 at The Green Room, 296 Brunswick Street), meeting with local artists and art students to discuss performance art activity in their native Poland. This project also marks the beginning of a new exhibition partnership between FADO and the Art Gallery of Hamilton. Under this partnership, a number of FADO performances will be presented in Hamilton as part of the Gallery’s Sevenseason program, including We Love Dada For Today, which will be performed at the AGH on February 28, 2002.

FADO presents Mettachine (Sequence 1), an interactive performance installation by Canadian artist Louise McKissick. This event, presented in conjunction with Tranz <—> Tech and is the latest instalment in FADO’s Public Spaces / Private Places series.

Mettachine (Sequence1) is the first in a series of works by Louise McKissick that explore the social framework of medical biotechnology. A biofeedback machine will be used to track the effects of touch and language on the bodies of subject participants. These effects will then be mediated and broadcast over the web. Audiences can be a part of the project either as subject participants; by visiting the waiting room, which will feature a live feed of the biofeedback results; or by monitoring a live stream on the web.

McKissick creates a provocative performance situation by marrying clinical and relaxation biofeedback techniques—including hypnosis—with brainwave interface technology from IBVA Technologies Inc. IBVA provides an interface between brainwave patterns and personal computers—in essence, allowing users to control computers by thought. For Mettachine (Sequence1), McKissick will use the brainwave patterns of subject participants to access a web stream of live and/or archived visual information. This information will be relayed back to the participant, creating a biofeedback loop. The technology allows McKissick and her subjects to map a geography of information through visual narrative, where the rules of navigation are controlled by brainwaves.

Presented in the context of Tranz <—> Tech, Toronto’s international video art biennial.

FADO is pleased to present Feu de Joie, a new performance by Randy & Berenicci. This work is presented as part of FADO’s Public Spaces / Private Places series and is performed on the autumnal equinox.

Feu de Joie uses optics, trompe-l’oeil effects and a bit of low-tech magic to transform the Toronto Island airport into a backdrop for a meditation on the nomadic nature of contemporary existence. Disaster and delight intermingle as the artists frame themselves as miniatures on a puppet stage, endlessly struggling to arrive – or is it to escape?

Whether they are creating public art commissions or site-specific performances, Randy and Berenicci have proven themselves to be masters at creating intimate, small-scale monuments. They are pioneers of a style of work that combines sensitive and playful references to site with visionary metaphors that infuse historical and popular cultural references from art, media and science. Poetic and multi-layered, their work is unexpected, surprising, but never out of place.

Meet the shuttle bus at the Cameron House (408 Queen Street West) for transport to the performance location.

FADO presents Open Surgery, an interactive live art installation with British artists Oreet Ashery and Svar Simpson. This is the latest instalment in FADO’s ongoing Public Spaces / Private Places series. Presented with support from the British Council and London Arts.

Surgery (Concise Oxford Dictionary)
2) a place where a doctor, dentist, lawyer or other professional person gives advice or treats patients;
3) the occasion of this

Open Surgery is a playful investigation of notions of ‘self-improvement,’ with references to psychiatry, psychoanalysis, alternative therapies and ‘self-help’ industries. Ashery and Simpson look for ways to address notions of isolation and alienation while exploring the role of the artist as communicator, activist and magician.

Open Surgery kicks off on Sunday, August 19 with an opening party in the Waiting Room, an installation space where the general public is invited to play. The Waiting Room will be open every day from 4:00pm to 8:00pm. At the opening, ten lucky individuals will be invited to book an appointment in the Consultation Room, where the artists will work with the visitor to identify the participant’s sense of their own physicality and difference. A Treat-Meant will then be proposed.

Join us after Open Surgery hours on Thursday, August 23 at 8:00pm for an artist talk with Oreet Ashery and Svar Simpson. The exhibition closes with a feedback party on Sunday, August 26, 2001.

The Treat-Meant may involve, for example, text, photography, creating body-prosthetics, breathing, touch, self-prescribed herbal remedies, food, juice, sense-stimulation, clubbing, and so on. We might propose to cook a dinner for the visitor, or make a toy for them/with them….We’re addressing the ‘confessional’ and notions of ‘true/fictional/performed-self’ in relation to confession. Open Surgery is interested to act out a common obsession to know-and-better-oneself, especially in relation to our bodies, our differences, and our sense of identity/identities. We want to investigate and develop models of shared intimate experiences.

Oreet Ashery & Svar Simpson

ARTIST STATEMENT by Oreet Ashery and Svar Simpson

Open Surgery will take place in two rooms. The first room will act as a Waiting Room open to the public throughout the duration of the piece. Entrance into the Consultation Room will be by appointment only, for participants who have booked a session. Participants/visitors come for a first one to one/two consultation with the artists. This initial session will combine various methods of communication, like: conversation, questionnaires, touch, the use of websites and ‘gadgets’, art-making, etc. We work together with the visitor to identify an aspect of the participant’s sense of their own physicality and difference.

Combining our ‘life-experiences’ (as a move away from using notions of ‘expertise’) the two of us then create a Treat-Meant for the participant, which than becomes a Treat-Meant proposal. The Treat-Meant may involve for example text, photography, creating body-prosthetics, breathing, touch, self-prescribed herbal remedies, food, juice, sense-stimulation, clubbing and so on. We might propose to cook a dinner for the visitor for example, or make a toy for them/with them.

The participants come for their second meeting, where we present them with our Treat-Meant Proposal, and then they can commission us to go ahead and treat them, which we do. At the end of the piece, participants are invited to a feed-back party/dinner/ meeting.

Open Surgery is working with and critiquing institutions like psychiatry, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, new-age/alternative/art-therapies, methodology of conventional science, western medicine, ‘self-help industries’. Therefore, the relationship between us and the participants attempts to mobilize some of the power-structures and epistemologies embedded in institutions such as those mentioned above, and offer a channel for shared communication in ways that re/address notions of isolation, alienation, a disturbing sense of difference, displacement, feelings of lack of attention/time. We offer a treat!

We are interested in acknowledging the artist as communicator, activist, magician, shaman, alchemist, cook, visual performer, as a friend and as a stranger. We’re addressing the ‘confessional’ and notions of ‘true/fictional/performed-self’ in relation to confession. Open Surgery is interested to act-out a common obsession to know-and-better-oneself, especially in relation to our bodies, our differences, and our sense of identitiy/ies. We want to investigate and develop models of shared intimate experiences.

Although the project is performative, it’s intentions are by no means cynical. The process involved intends to be experimental, experiental, expanding and playful by nature.

Open Surgery also plays with notions from the art -world like ‘commissions’ and ‘open surgeries’ [a term sometimes used in the British art system for art crits], as a way of exploring the slippage between art and general strategies of survival and expansion.

© Oreet Ashery & Svar Simpson, Open Surgery, 2001. Photo Paul Couillard.

FADO presents Shut Up!, a series of ten outdoor performances dealing with the themes of incarceration and wrongful imprisonment—literally, the state of being “shut up.” This event is the second half of a performance art exchange between Chicago and Toronto that began in 1998. Shut Up! offers a unique opportunity for Toronto audiences to sample the styles and aesthetics operating in Chicago’s performance art community in relation to performances by some of Toronto’s hottest performance artists.

The evening will feature a range of styles, from tableaux to spoken word, from interactive, participatory works to spectacle and multimedia presentations. The theme of incarceration will be approached from a wide variety of perspectives, from the highly topical and political (e.g. the recent persecution of Falun Gong practitioners) to considerations of the philosophical, psychological and emotional aspects of incarceration.

CHICAGO ARTISTS
Andrea Polli & Chuck Varga
Jeff Callen
Julie Laffin & Andrew Cook
Louise McKissick
Marlon Billups & Shannon Harris

TORONTO ARTISTS
Ed Johnson
Louise Liliefeldt
Paul Couillard
Shannon Cochrane
Will Kwan

Untitled by Jeff Calan
Jeff Calan continues his work with storytelling using a series of intimately mechanized objects and a camera obscura, and will perform inside it. A frame in a false wall shows what appears to be a photograph, but upon closer inspection it seems to be a film or video, as it is moving, yet it is very sharp, sharper than a film. A hand is seen pulling a scrolling roll of paper, upon which is written a narrative that is full of various events, their causes and effects, and the desperation that comes from being unable to connect cause and effect. The image the audience sees is really from an old, large-format camera with a groundglass back which is behind the frame and it is pointed toward the performer who is moving a roll of paper that contains text from court transcripts of wrongly convicted people on death row. Small objects will be presented within the frame every few minutes. If an audience member walks behind the false wall, the performer takes a flash photograph of the audience member.

Eleven Cent Magic by Shannon Cochrane 
With Jennifer Rashleigh. Thanks to Andrew Pommier. For Kenneth because he invented and constructed the first ‘portable pitcher’s mound’ in 1952. Unfortunately, when it was filled with sand, it was too damn heavy to actually be transported anywhere. His father looked out the cottage window, laughed and went back to reading the paper. The research continues here. Eleven Cent Magic: an experiment to prove that time flies and birds really only float.

Blackstrap by Paul Couillard
In this tableau work, using the fitness trail apparatus, Paul’s body slowly shifts from light to dark.

Untitled by Edward Johnson
This solo tableau work (in the skating rink) considers the physical and psychological realm of confinement in all of its vastness and claustrophobia.

Untitled by Will Kwan
This performance draws links between the “silent” gestures of mime performance and “silent” displays of state power as exhibited through a popular form of punishment known as community service, in this case, maintenance work. The performance addresses the issue of the function of the artist in society: as performer, worker, criminal and clown.

255 by Julie Laffin & Andrew Cook
255 is not a performance. It is an actual memorial to the practitioners of Falun Gong who have lost their lives since July of 1999 when Jiang Zemin branded Falun Gong an “evil cult” and launched his campaign to erase all the Falun Gong practitioners in China by any means necessary. Falun Gong is an ancient moving meditation (Qi Gong) that was once supported by the Chinese governvment for it’s great abilities to improve health. It was banned partly because of the sheer numbers of practitioners, which before the crackdown began, far out-numbered communist party membership in the PRC. The number 255 attempts to quantify the number of human lives that have been taken (that we know of) by means of unspeakable brutality by the Chinese authorities during the deadly campaign against Falun Gong. Practitioners who would not renounce their faith were and are at this moment being tortured to death. When we began this project in May of this year, only two months ago, the number of documented deaths was 196. The number 255 does not begin to speak about the tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners now illegally detained in prisons, psychiatric facilities and labor camps. It does not speak of the rapes, torture, beatings, threats, intimidations, indignities, humiliations, unfair trials, force-feedings, forced druggings, “re-education” efforts, psychological abuses, and countless other inhumane acts against a group of people for simply asserting their right to their spiritual beliefs and peaceful practices. The number also can never represent the suffering of the families and loved ones of the practitioners that have been murdered or have had atrocities perpetrated upon them. The dress you see documents with photos and written names those Falun Gong practitioners who have been killed in police custody since the merciless crackdown began in China exactly two years ago yesterday. It is a companion dress to one that is currently in Washington, D.C. at a rally held there to bring global attention to end the crackdown in China. As citizens of the free world, we urge you to refuse to tolerate the policies of the Chinese government against Falun Gong practitioners in whatever large or small ways you can.

DEVI by Louise Liliefeldt
Devi, also known as the “Bandit Queen,” was born into a poor lower-caste rural family in the northern Indian state of Bihar. She became the subject of great fame and notoriety throughout India as the leader of a violent gang of dacoits (bandits) who terrorized authority for years until their surrender in 1983. Phoolan Devi became a popular cult figure, a vigilante liberator and a symbol of empowerment for the lower-castes of Bihar. This work is a homage to her journey and the strength for which she stands.

I Will Cut Your Grass by Louise McKissick
Digital Video, 1:26:13, 2001
At one time, Dorothy Gaines “loved the wrong man” and ended up in prison. She was put away by purely circumstantial evidence—her ex-lover, a convicted crack dealer, accused her of dealing drugs in order to obtain a reduced sentence for himself. The prosecutors found no evidence of cocaine or any other illegal drugs in her home. She was given a nineteen-year sentence. “I will cut your grass” is based on a letter written to the judge by Dorothy’s son, Phillip Gaines, age 11, at the time of her sentencing. A fluidly moving camera tracks youthful exuberance at the Washington Park waterslide on a Sunday afternoon, providing a counterpoint to Phillip’s words.

Untitled by Andrea Polli & Chuck Varga
Andrea and Chuck are interested in the use of sound in the establishment of power in government and the military. Their piece involves a “Speaker’s Corner”-style open mic, but those who try to use the forum will discover that the words broadcast are not those spoken in the microphone.

PLUS: The Ghetto by Marlon Billups & Shannon Harris

© Louise Liliefeldt, DEVI, 2001. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Remembrance Day is a new performance work by Johanna Householder created in collaboration with her daughter Carmen Householder-Pedari, and is presented as part of FADO’s ongoing Public Spaces / Private Places series.

Describing Remembrance Day as a counter-monument, Householder uses war movies as source material to pose questions about the transferal of cultural values, information and attitudes from generation to generation. The work will be presented not as a theatrical narrative, but as an installation in which audience members are free to come and go as they choose—in the words of the artist, “less … a definitive performance experience than … some proposals for experiences.” Remembrance Day continues Householder’s investigations into the cinematic texts of the late 20th century, and her lifelong obsession with the gendering of knowledge.

In this performance, the artist works with her daughter Carmen Householder-Pedari. Carmen Householder-Pedari is completing seventh grade at Winona Drive Senior School. She has appeared in a number of film, video and performance works by artists such as Janice Cole, Robert Lee and Wende Bartley and Roz Kalloo.

ARTIST STATEMENT by Johanna Householder

From time to time over the last ten years I have collaborated with my daughter to produce performance works which explore some ideas around the transference of knowledges which we do not normally think of as taught—how to respond to emotional stimuli, how to physically occupy space, how to convey information with your face, which things are important to remember, and how our expressions are evaluated by others.

Parallel to this exploration is a fascination with how we take the large, crude expressions of popular culture; the big emotions, the clichéd syntax, the cartoon physiology, and adapt these ways of being to our own less grandiose existences. This too is something that is transmitted, perhaps involuntarily, in the intimacy of the mother-child relationship.

Remembrance Day is a kind of counter-monument to the things that are popularly commemorated, in this case, actions against the backdrop of war. How do we compose our anxiety (or lack of it) at being temporarily ‘at peace’? Re-embodying the codes contained in a variety of war time films, the performers will plunder their mutual memory banks for instructions for heroes and rules to live and die by.

Remembrance Day continues a recent series of investigations into the cinematic texts of the late 20th century and a lifelong obsession with the gendering of knowledge.

Some of the ideas we develop are visual, some active, some audial. Performance allows us to approach an idea from a number of directions and with a range of processes simultaneously. And speaking of processes, I find now that I am less interested in a definitive performance experience than in some proposals for experiences. For this reason we leave the audience free to come and go, to circulate around the work—more like one would view painting or an installation than theatre.

FADO presents three separate site-specific performances collectively entitled Disclosure, created and performed by the audio-based duo UNDO. This work is presented in the context of FADO’s ongoing Public Spaces / Private Places series.

UNDO uses minimal electronics to perform intimate sensual live soundscapes. For Disclosure, the performers accent the intimacy of the enclosures of a living space. The performers and their “extensions” (small B&W monitors and speakers/amplifiers) will be placed in closets and cupboards so that the audience will encounter the performance simultaneously in various forms at various locations. A second set of actions will refer to disclosure by focusing on corridors and thresholds (the spaces of negotiation between an outside and an inside). In this series, the performers will narrow or block the audience’s passage and force a reconsideration of the space given the intervention of the performer’s bodies.

UNDO offers these thoughts on the work:

“To enclose is both to hold and to be held by your own grip. To occupy an empty apartment is to fill it with its own emptiness, to saturate it with nothing. To disclose is to open yourself up to closeness, a reduction of distance, a proximate and narrow. How to read a throat as a corridor, a closet as a mouth, a threshold as lips and jaws. Investment of closet spaces, diffusion onto outside spaces; a room under, a room aside, a room over. How to speak here and in the next room and in the other’s mouth. Bare speaker and barely speaking. In Disclosure, you will have to step over, listen inside and duck under.”

Disclosure on Christof Migone’s website: https://christofmigone.com/disclosure/

PERFORMANCES
June 28 @ 8:00pm
June 29 @ 8:00pm
June 30 @ 2:00pm–5:00pm

© UNDO, Disclosure, 2001. Photo Paul Couillard.

FADO presents Meridian, a new work by Boston artist Marilyn Arsem, presented as part of FADO’s ongoing Public Spaces / Private Places series.

Meridian will take place at the beach on the south side of Ward’s Island on the longest day of the year. Beginning at dawn and ending at sunset, the artist will follow the line of the sun, marking out a hundred years of time. Now in the 50th year of her own life, Arsem will use this solstice mid-point as an opportunity to take a considered look in both directions – back into the past and forward into the future. As she undertakes her measured progression along the beach, Arsem will recount the history of the last 50 years, and imagine the next 50 years. Audience members will have an opportunity to ask questions about specific years and enter into discussion with her as she buries the past and sows the future.

ARTIST STATEMENT by Marilyn Arsem, May 2001

In recent years I have been creating site-specific installations in outdoor locations in the United States, Europe and Asia. In each work I am responding to both the history of the site, as well as to the immediate landscape and materiality of the location. All of these recent works examine hidden worlds that lie beneath the surface, ones which lurk underground, and those which eventually decay and dissolve back into the earth.

I am particularly interested in implicating the audience directly in the concerns of the pieces. I use different strategies to design a very distinct role in the work for the viewer, so that they have an experience that is both visceral and intellectual. To accomplish this, I incorporate a range of media, including text, video and performance, as well as using materials and objects generated from and in response to the site.

I insert my installation into the site so that it is nearly invisible. The viewers’ initial impression is that there is nothing to see. It is only as they begin to pay closer attention that they become aware of the elements that I have hidden in the landscape. The audience must make an effort to discover the buried images, take time to assemble the fragments, use their intellect, often in discussion with other audience members, in order to decipher and construct meaning out of their experience.

The installations operate in a liminal space, blurring the boundaries between art and life. Because of the almost imperceptible images, and the inevitable intrusions of the real world, the viewers’ interpretation of the experience has as much to do with their own projections and concerns as it does with my own. In that respect, the work functions as a kind of Rorschach test, and the audiences’ response is a critical component of the final work. Documentation of their interpretation of the pieces reveals the collaboration between artist and audience in the construction of meaning.

© Marilyn Arsem, Meridian, 2001. Photo Paul Couillard.

One Stitch at a Time is presented in the context of FADO’s ongoing Public Spaces / Private Places series and begins with an artist talk in Toronto. The project then continues, over several weeks in residency with three separate families.

This project follows upon and works with the tradition of the itinerant seamstress, who once moved into the homes of the people whose clothing she made. For One Stitch at a Time, over the course of several weeks, Devora Neumark will take up residence with three separate host families for as long as it takes her to stitch (crochet or embroider) a personalized object for a family member or the home.

One Stitch at a Time honours intimate spaces as a means of community engagement. It is an invitation to share and explore daily life and issues of the heart through personal storytelling and stitching. This participatory process is a key component, as the work is not meant primarily as a viewing experience. In the deliberate blurring of roles – invoking a question of who is the audience and who are the performers – is a statement about the capacity for each and every one of us to be authorizing agents of individual and collective memory and history.

ARTIST STATEMENT

To date my projects have included durational performative interventions on street corners, in subway stations and bus terminals, private homes and outdoor parks; place-mats inserted into restaurants; postcards; photographic works installed as memorial structures in public gathering places; stone markers, storytellings, sound pieces, and community based collaborations.

Working within seemingly ‘ordinary’ frames of action (peeling beets, crocheting, singing, telling stories, making dough, sweeping flour, walking the landscape), the contexts that I create for my work are in many ways a (re)negotiation of daily dwelling practice — attempts at rewiring both self and society in the aftermath of violence and trauma. Performative rather than performance, the work has been characterized by a direct sharing and exchange with the individuals who come across it (mostly incidentally) and who choose to approach / witness / participate.

I have been concerned with the authority of memory, social agency in the memorial form(s) and the negotiation of control and authority inherent in historical and cultural constructions and their representations. I place a particular importance on the continuum between the private and public spheres (the individual and the social body) and on the nexus between public(s) and community(ies).

Devora Neumark, 1999

The artist wishes to thank The Canada Council’s Inter-Arts Program and SKOL, a Montreal-based artist-run centre, for their support of this project.

FADO is pleased to present The Addmore Session, a new work by internationally acclaimed Toronto artist Istvan Kantor. Presented as part of FADO’s Public Spaces / Private Places series, The Addmore Session is the latest instalment in The File Cabinet Project, a body of work that Kantor has been developing since 1993.

Audience members are invited to meet Kantor in his favourite environment, surrounded by file cabinets in Addmore Office Furniture, one of Toronto’s largest office furniture stores. Kantor and a number of guest performers will demonstrate the links between the office and the concert hall, information technology and sexual symbolism, communication and insanity. The all-day performance will include a furniture-opera, desktop-dancing, cabinet-catwalking, office-crucifixion and much more.

Kantor explores the file cabinet as a sculptural element in machinery installations, performances and video productions. His interest is more than a physical fascination or aesthetic obsession with monolithic office furniture. In Kantor’s hyper-theoretical interpretation, the world wide web is a machinery-monument of information storage furniture interconnected through computers. The gesture of moving cabinet drawers in and out, sliding them back and forth, becomes the engine of information exchange.

© Istvan Kantor, The Addmore Session, 2001. Photo Paul Couillard.

FADO is pleased to present Spoken House, a new work by the British performance duo otiose, as part of the Public Spaces / Private Places series.

Spoken House is part of an ongoing series of works by the artists which examine various aspects of household space. Over three days, the artists will hold public conversations with everyone who visits this constructed space, beginning with a spoken description of the fictional Southfork ranch of the television series Dallas. With each description, Southfork will be remodelled into a private space built up from the recollections and desires of each ‘house guest.’ Visitors on the fourth day will find a text/audio archive documenting the results of the three-day performance project.

TEXT ARCHIVE

On November 1 & 2, spoken house inhabited the following fictional, historical and actual homes:
The Southfork ranch from Dallas.
Seinfeld’s apartment.
The family residence of the Brady Bunch.
The living room of All In The Family.
The home of the Simpsons.
The shared apartment in Friends.
The house occupied by Norman Bates in Psycho.
A shared bedroom in New York.
A house lived in by an old Estonian lady in London.
A shared flat in Finland.
An 18th century Chinese house.
Military barracks housing in Canada.
Cooperative housing in Toronto.
Mary Tyler Moore’s apartment.

Presented in the context the 3rd 7a*11d International Performance Art Festival with travel support from The British Council Canada.

FADO is pleased to present << Public Web >>, a new performance project by Tagny Duff, as part of the Public Spaces / Private Places series.

<< Public Web >> is a performance provocation and interactive audio tour that places the audience in the role of performer and explorer. Wearing portable headphones and guided by the transmitted voice of the artist, participants will tour various destinations in the downtown core. A sculptural apparatus will connect a group of up to ten participants together for an intimate journey exploring various physical and virtual entry points into the space between the public and private.

<< Public Web >> is an interactive tour based on the model of constructive hypertext, offering the possibility for the audience/participant to create, change and recover particular encounters with the developing body of knowledge. Participants are given the opportunity to navigate through the city landscape while co-authoring a performance experience.

Wearing headsets with mics, individuals in the tour group communicate via a single-channel radio transmitter. The tour group is held together by an apparatus consisting of nylon straps and plastic snaps allowing for participants to detach from the group at any moment, if they so choose. Performative gestures and conversations are undertaken by the group that in turn prompt the tour to navigate through one site to the next, resulting in a unique narrative/experience for every tour.

The artist’s voice offers the participants a variety of destination points and actions to be selected by the tour group. The artist follows the group unseen, wearing camouflaged radio surveillance gear. Ultimately, the tension between the artist’s ability to remote control the tour and the group’s decision-making ability (or inability) exposes the subtle complexities and agencies of influence inherent in the notions of “navigation,” “consensus” and “interactivity.”

Tagny Duff writes of the project:

“<< Public Web >> is an interactive tour that navigates through downtown Toronto. The performance tour is designed as a constructive hypertext model, offering the possibility for the audience/participant to create, change and recover particular encounters with a developing body of knowledge. In << Public Web >> participants are given the opportunity to navigate through the city landscape while co-authoring a performance experience. This performance questions both the limitations and possibilities of “interactive” navigation in the physical realm. Some other questions raised are: is consensus an effective model of decision making when groups are presented with multiple “options” for action? how is our experience and perception of the city and the body changed by utilizing a constructive model of navigation? and finally, how does the apparatus affect and transform the behaviour of the individual, the group and the incidental audience?”

Thanks to Jen Small, Paul Couillard, FADO, Tim and Peter, The Scadding Community Cafe, 7a*11d, Samantha and Elyps, volunteers and participants.

© Tagny Duff, << Public Web >>, 2000. Photo Paul Couillard.

FADO is pleased to present Christine Carson’s Numb/Hum: A Subterranean Metropolitan Opera, part of the Public Spaces / Private Places series.

For the first three days of November, Toronto subway commuters used to the familiar sounds of moving crowds, screeching wheels, electronic warning signals may find themselves encountering something unexpected. Numb/Hum: A Subterranean Metropolitan Opera is an urban intervention that will bring 40 singers to a subway platform to hum harmonically in relation to the surrounding aural landscape. Arriving anonymously and unobtrusively in street clothes, the singers will perform the work for half an hour each morning during rush hour over the course of three days.

Presented in the context of the 3rd 7a*11d International Performance Art Festival.

© Christine Carson, Numb/Hum: A Subterranean Metropolitan Opera, 2000. Photo Paul Couillard.

This performance is part of FADO’s Public Spaces / Private Places series and is presented in the context of the 7A*11D International Festival of Performance Art.

For Between Us, the audience entered a room set up with six industrial fans. As the performance progressed, a repetitive soundtrack gradually increased in volume over twenty minutes from nearly inaudibly to uncomfortably loud, then slowly faded away over the next twenty minutes to silence. The performer, dressed anonymously, moved slowly around the room, whistling quietly into people’s ears and presenting a card with a poetic text. 

Between Us addresses the discomforts associated with intimacy, examining the double-edged sword of awkwardness, which can encourage solidarity and bonding or lead to alienation and isolation. The work also considers issues of proximity and personal space, setting up a situation that questions the role of the performer and his relationship to the audience.

FADO is pleased to present Ethel: Bloodline, a performance by Louise Liliefeldt as part of the Public Spaces / Private Places series. In this new work, Liliefeldt weaves together the disparate elements of her personal history into a tableau that plays on the tensions between the public meaning of private symbols and the private meaning of public symbols.

A wooden cross angles up out of the grass as the sun hangs low on the horizon. As you approach, you hear a piano playing, and you notice that the surface of the cross is covered in photographs. This is a language, a series of keys to a personal history, but how do you interpret them, and what do they tell you of the figure who clings to the cross?

Louise Liliefeldt’s work explores notions of beauty and the attempt to slow time through metaphors, symbols and physical actions. Her work is predominantly concerned with the politics of identity, especially as it intersects with issues of gender and race. Other concerns include the cultural conventions of spectatorship and the links between expanded emotional/psychological states and physical experience.

© Louise Liliefeldt, Ethel: Bloodline, 2000. Photo Paul Couillard.

“A deviser of territories, languages, works, the deject never stops demarcating his universe, whose fluid confines… constantly question his solidity and impel him to start afresh. A tireless builder, the deject is in short a ‘stray.’ He is on a journey during the night, the end of which keeps receding. …And the more he strays, the more he is saved.”
Power of Horror by Julia Kristeva

FADO is pleased to present where do I go from here?, a new performance by Stefanie Marshall, as part of the Public Spaces / Private Places series. where do I go from here? undertakes a form of artistic alchemy by bringing ritualized behaviour and obsessive gesture into the public realm.

For several hours on two separate days, Marshall will wheel an old 2-burner stove through the streets of downtown Toronto. Following her instinct, she will navigate the social and physical geography of the heart of the city, stopping frequently to engage more closely with her surroundings. This work is about carving out a public place of permission for the private poetry of the body and the imagination. In taking everyday objects and private actions into the street, Marshall holds a mirror up to the privacy of our emotions and inspires a different conscious awareness. Those who choose to enter Marshall’s world may find themselves taken deeper into their own senses, where half-forgotten memories can be reawakened.

Marshall writes: “If they had lips, my fingers would be my teeth, masticating, probing holes, moving, wrapping, marking days and cloth, rubbing, sliding, grabbing, squeezing, slapping—manifesting complex thought into repetitive patterns of action. They are my memory… allowing me to survive.”

August 21, 2000 from 2:00pm–5:00pm
The artist’s walk begins at the corner of Queen and Yonge streets, ending at Spadina Avenue and College Street.

August 26, 2000 from 12:00pm–3:00pm
The artist’s walk begins at the corner of Bloor and Yonge streets, ending in Kensington Market.

© Stefanie Marshall, where do I go from here?, 2000. Photo Paul Couillard.

FADO is pleased to present the latest work of artist Jinhan Ko as part of the Public Spaces/Private Places series. Jin’s Banana House is back with Urban Disco Trailer, a small-scale multimedia extravaganza that redefines the dance club experience. The raw material for this project is a 25-foot long 1974 Holiday Cruiser—one of those pull-behind camping trailers originally designed to accommodate up to six people with the modern comforts of home. The transformed Urban Disco Trailer has been retrofitted with not-so-modern technology approximating a discotheque. Follow this impromptu, intimate discotheque-for-the-21st-century as it circulates the city.

Jin’s Banana House wants to know how we can be bored in a world where television is filled with dating game shows and cooking networks and the internet is filled with more shopping than we know what to do with? I’m not offering an answer to this question, but I’m inviting you to Urban Disco Trailer… This wheeled disco offers you the aura of utopian desires associated with motor travelling without leaving the parking lot. Club goers and art patrons alike are encouraged to attend this private/public party.

Jinhan Ko

August 17–19, 2000
35 Liberty Street, Toronto

August 24–26, 2000
101 Niagara Street, Toronto