FADO E-BULLETIN
June 2022

1. EVENT OFFTA
   Date May 27–June 5, 2022
   Location Montréal, Canada
   Source OFFTA

OFFTA’s 16th festival continues through June 5 at the Festival TransAmériques!

After having produced its last two editions in a format adapted to the pandemic context, the OFFTA returns this year to its (re)materialized form, like a gust of fresh air! We invite you to reconnect with the effervescence of festival life around dazzling works put forward by the new generation of artists in theater, dance, performance and multidisciplinary arts. It will also be an opportunity for you to participate in the festival’s professional activities to exchange with the artists of OFFTA and LA SERRE – arts vivants.

Participating artists include: Joshua Sofaer, Marion Leeper, Stéphane Maddix Albert, Kamini Ramachandran, Aurélie Pedron, Nate Yaffe, Guillaume Saindon, Sarah Wendt, Pascal Dufaux, Collectif Tôle, Katia-Marie Germain, Camille Paré-Poirier, Kama La Mackerel, Rachelle Bourget, Audrée Juteau, N. Zoey Gauld, Catherine Lavoie-Marcus, Adam Kinner, Christopher Willes, Mohammadreza Akrami, JJ Houle, Charles Voyer, Caroline Gravel, Odile Gamache, Emile Pineault, Safia Nolin, Maryse Goudreau and more.

Annual artistic event created on the edge of the Festival TransAmériques (FTA), the OFFTA is a festival dedicated to avant-garde creation in live art. The OFFTA bases its identity on an artistic direction that encourages strong and singular approaches, emerging practices and experimentation. Again and again, the OFFTA aspires to decompartmentalize contemporary art practices along with their respective audiences. In keeping with its vision of disciplinary encounters, the OFFTA produces and presents hybrid events which challenge established live art practices and question modes of representation, as well as facilitate participation, dialogue and cooperation.

2. EVENT Adventures can be found anywhere, même dans la repetition | PME-ART
   Dates June 1–5 & June 7–9
   Location Montreal, Canada
   Source FTA

Adventures can be found anywhere, même dans la répétition
by PME-ART

Dates: June 1–5 & June 7–9
Times: 12pm–6pm (June 1–8) | 3pm–9pm (June 9)
Location: Galerie Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery (1400 Maisonneuve Boulevard West, Montreal)
Free, no registration required

Presented by: FTA-Festival TransAmériques, Galerie Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, PME-ART
With: Burcu Emeç, Marie Claire Forté, Ashlea Watkin, Adam Kinner, Nadège Grebmeier Forget, Jacob Wren

Seated around a large table, a group of artists apply themselves to the task of rewriting the journals and notebooks of the US author and activist Susan Sontag. They reappropriate her words and unpack their possibilities, altering the substance of the text by projecting themselves into it. Each fragment is read, shared, exhibited. Through this ceaseless communal labour, the performers produce a new, collective work that’s closer to us.

Immersed in the silence of writing, the drawings of words, and the echoes of voices that mingle together, the audience combines its own experience of the world, of art, and of desire with that of the young Sontag, who is transformed and multiplied under the authorship of the assembled artists. This performance-installation presented continuously over eight days is a vibrant and mischievous declaration of love to literature. The interdisciplinary group PME-ART celebrates the creative power of reading by seizing upon its potential for perpetual reactivation.

For more information: https://fta.ca/en/event/adventures/

ABOUT PME-ART
PME-ART never turns away from paradox, drawing on it instead to supply the generous and unpredictable material of its work, where critical and poetic reflection mix together freely. Bilingual since its founding, PME-ART performed En Français Comme en Anglais, It’s Easy to Criticize in 1999 at the FTA-Festival de théâtre des Amériques. Driven by the pursuit of a new form of representation that’s more collaborative and performative, the Montréal company has since created a dozen projects that have appeared around the world, including Le Génie des autres/Unrehearsed Beauty (2002), HOSPITALITY 3: Individualism Was a Mistake (2008) and The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information (2011). Jacob Wren, who steers PME-ART’s activities with a gentle hand, and Sylvie Lachance, artistic co-director, work within a prolific artistic community. A loosely defined group, PME-ART constantly seeks to refresh its practice through local, national, and international collaborations. As an author, Wren has written a number of acclaimed books. In 2018, he published Authenticity Is a Feeling: My Life in PME-ART, which he adapted into the show A User’s Guide to Authenticity Is a Feeling. Along with recounting the company’s fascinating journey, this work, which has been translated into French by Daniel Canty, represents a compelling contribution to the theory of performance.

3. SYMPOSIUM Flow • embody in site 2022 organized by Out of Site
   Date June 2–12, 2022
   Location online & Chicago, USA
   Source Carron Little

Flow • embody in site 2022 is an online public performance symposium organized by Out of Site Chicago. We invite you to participate in practice-based performance workshops facilitated by Nieves Correa, James King, Frans van Lent, and Dimple B Shah. Ebb & Flow registrations can select two practice-based performance workshops and opt-in to perform in the finale weekend on June 17/18, 2022. For more info please visit: https://www.flowsymposium.org/

STILL TIME TO REGISTER!
Registration is still open for Flow • embody in site 2022
Ebb & Flow: $150 (2 performance workshops + presentations + opt-in to perform June 17/18)
Steady Stream: $50 (presentations + community gathering program only)

If you wish to attend the performance lecture/artist presentation only program starting on June 2–12, 2022, please register for the Steady Stream. This gives you access to the full lecture and community gathering program. All symposium attendees will receive a 30% discount code to Intellect Books Live Art Performance Monograph catalog, and we are especially thrilled to discuss the release of the new monograph called Actional Poetics – ASH SHE HE, The Performance Actuations of Alastair MacLennan, 1971 – 2020 edited by Sandra Johnston, Cherie Driver, and Paula Blair published by Intellect, 2021.

We invite everyone to tune in and join the live public performance program on June 17/18/19. Symposium workshop attendees will be signing up to perform on June 17/18 and Beau Coleman is curating a live public performance lunchtime event on June 19 from 12pm–2pm (CT). To download the full program of events please visit: https://www.flowsymposium.org/schedule

Workshop Facilitators:
Nieves Correa (Spain)
James King (N. Ireland)
Frans van Lent (Netherlands)
Dimple B Shah (India)

Performance Lectures/ Artist Presentations:
Paul Couillard (Canada)
Yvette Teeuwen (Netherlands)
Sandra Johnston (N. Ireland)
Alastair MacLennan (N. Ireland)
Brian Patterson (N. Ireland)
lo bil (Canada)
Hector Canonge (Bolivia/ U.S.A.)
Carali McCall (Canada/ U.K.)
Victoria Stanton (Canada)
Bernadette Hopkins (Ireland)
Jolanda Jansen (Netherlands)
Eleni Kolliopoulou (Greece)
Sandrine Schaefer (USA)

Public Performances on June 19, curated by Beau Coleman
On ESS twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/experimental_sound_studio
Performances: Yaryna Shumska (Ukraine), Vanessa Dion Fletcher (Canada), Sophie Castonguay (Canada), Jody Oberfelder (NYC)

ABOUT Out of Site Chicago (OoS)
OoS curates unexpected encounters in public places since 2011. In 2020 we pivoted into an international network with a technological platform to support live stream public performances from around the globe. In addition to the annual public performance festival, we organize symposia, workshops, cross-cultural conversations, and screenings of films. Our ethos is to facilitate a conversation about artistic ideas with the diverse publics who come across our performances in public sites by surprise and through extended public programming that center artistic imagination and thinking at its core. Artist Focus is an extension of this ethos facilitating an eight-week program in the Spring and Fall that initially started during the pandemic to support our artist community to create a reflective space about each artist’s practice. Out of Site organizes the public performance symposium Flow • embody in site with practice-based workshops, artist presentations, performance lectures and a final weekend of live public performance.

4. EVENT MBL: Freedom
   Date June 4, 2022
   Location Toronto, Canada
   Source Toronto Biennial of Art

MBL: Freedom by Syrus Marcus Ware
Small Arms Inspection Building (1352 Lakeshore Road East, Mississauga)
1pm–3pm (in-person performance)

Join 2022 Biennial artist Syrus Marcus Ware and actors Dainty Smith and Ravyn Wngz for a staged reading of the complete performance of MBL: Freedom (2022), an interactive film experience reflecting on climate change, white supremacy, abolition, and disability justice, currently on view at the Small Arms Inspection Building.

MBL: Freedom presents the newest chapter of Ware’s expansive, interdisciplinary, multi-year project that predicts a near-future taking place between the years 2025 and 2027, wherein Antarctica has become the only habitable place on the planet. In it, three Black, Indigenous, and POC Antarcticans abandon their mission to colonize Antarctica, swimming in icy waters toward the only part of the continent not claimed by a country, “Mary Bird Land,” or MBL. The three set out to create a territory for all activists and abolitionists to be free in, but when they land on the shores of MBL, they make an unexpected discovery that changes their trajectory.

The Toronto Biennial of Art’s mission is to make contemporary art accessible to everyone. For 10 weeks every two years, local, national, and international Biennial artists transform Toronto and its partner regions with free exhibitions, performances, and learning opportunities. Grounded in diverse local contexts, the Biennial’s city-wide programming inspires individuals, engages communities, and contributes to global conversations. The Toronto Biennial of Art launched in 2019 and was a popular and critical success. The Biennial provides expanded understandings of contemporary art practices and is building a legacy of free, inclusive, and accessible contemporary arts programming in Toronto, Mississauga, and their surrounding communities.

INFORMATION

5. EVENT this is an artwork… a performance of keyon gaskin
   Date June 4, 2022
   Location Vancouver, Canada
   Source Western Front

this is an artwork… a performance of keyon gaskin

June 4, 2022
5pm–6pm
Grand Luxe Hall, Western Front, Vancouver
Admission: $10 / Space is limited and tickets are required to be purchased in advance

this is an artwork/ this is for you/ you are a community/ you are my material/ this is a prison/ leave when you want.
keyon gaskin

Western Front is pleased to present this is an artwork… a performance of keyon gaskin, as part of a series of live works to accompany the exhibition Touch and Tumble. One of the reasons Western Front is interested in keyon gaskin’s work is how it does away with the traditional divide between spectators and artist, inviting audience members to move throughout the performance space and challenging them to experience the work in unforeseen ways.

Western Front is a non-profit artist-run centre. We support a multidisciplinary program that provides opportunities to artists working across music, media art, visual art, performance, and literature to create and present work. Through commissions, exhibitions, performances, concerts, publishing, residencies, and workshops, Western Front promotes public exchange at a local, national and international level. We also preserve and provide access to an ever-growing audio-visual archive that documents the organization’s history of artistic programming and production.

6. EVENT A Tribute to Toronto by Judy Chicago
   Date June 4, 2022
   Location Toronto, Canada
   Source Toronto Biennial of Art

A Tribute to Toronto by Judy Chicago
June 4, 2022
8:00pm
Sugar Beach, Toronto

A Tribute to Toronto (2022) is commissioned by the Toronto Biennial of Art and made possible with the generous support of the City of Toronto, ArtworxTO, Waterfront Toronto, Waterfront BIA, Menkes Developments, the Delaney Family Foundation, and the Women Leading Initiative.

Marking the closing of the 2022 edition, the Toronto Biennial of Art presents a newly commissioned site-specific work by artist Judy Chicago. This one-of-a-kind Smoke Sculpture™ will be visible from the shore of Lake Ontario, as a series of environmentally safe, non-toxic coloured smokes are released from a barge. For this one-time performance, the public is invited to gather at the waterfront to see the lake and sky transformed. Harkening back to Chicago’s Atmospheres photo series of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which sought to soften and “feminize” harsh, man-made environments, A Tribute to Toronto, 2022 works against the tradition of male Land Art artists whose work imposed itself on the earth. Instead, Chicago’s performance offers an alternative and impermanent approach that merges colour with landscape to increase awareness of the beauty of our natural environment.

Judy Chicago (born in 1939, Chicago, USA; lives and works in New Mexico, USA) is an artist, educator, the author of fifteen books and humanist. She considers her work and life as models for an enlarged definition of art, an expanded role for the artist and women’s right to freedom of expression. Judy is most well-known for her role in creating a feminist art and art education program in California during the early 1970s and for her monumental work The Dinner Party (1974–1979).

The Toronto Biennial of Art’s mission is to make contemporary art accessible to everyone. For 10 weeks every two years, local, national, and international Biennial artists transform Toronto and its partner regions with free exhibitions, performances, and learning opportunities. Grounded in diverse local contexts, the Biennial’s city-wide programming inspires individuals, engages communities, and contributes to global conversations. The Toronto Biennial of Art launched in 2019 and was a popular and critical success. The Biennial provides expanded understandings of contemporary art practices and is building a legacy of free, inclusive, and accessible contemporary arts programming in Toronto, Mississauga, and their surrounding communities.

INFORMATION

7. EVENT Talking Earth | Performance by Santee Smith
   Date June 10-12, 2022
   Location Toronto, Canada
   Source Nahed Mansour

Talking Earth
Performance by Santee Smith

June 10–12 (rain date: June 18)
9pm
Gardiner Museum, 111 Queens Park, Toronto
Free | no registration required

As part of the International Ceramic Arts Festival (ICAF), The Gardiner Museum is pleased to present a new commission to honour the ongoing Indigenous presence on Turtle Island, Santee Smith’s installation Talking Earth. Smith’s performance is an embodied experimental entanglement between forms which honours Haudenosaunee pottery making. It’s a lived encounter with clay, etched from our memory of and from land, ancestors and projected into a present-day space. The installation offers a site for education/teachings, contemplation and reconnection to earth. The juxtaposition between traditional inspired material and new media and performance, bridges ancient to present and fracture to intactness.

This is not a ticketed event and there is no need to register. It is standing room only, though there will be some chairs available for those who need them. The performance will start around 9:15pm, and be 30–45 minutes long. The artist will join the audience for a Q&A after the performance is over. There is a rain date of June 18th if only one performance is possible.

Tekaronhiáhkhwa / Santee Smith is a multidisciplinary artist from the Kahnyen’kehàka Nation, Turtle Clan, Six Nations of the Grand River, Haldimand Treaty lands. Santee trained for six years at Canada’s National Ballet School and holds Physical Education and Psychology degrees from McMaster University and a M.A. in Dance from York University. Santee produced her first choreographic work Kaha:wi—a family creation story in 2004 and later founded Kaha:wi Dance Theatre in 2005, which has grown into an internationally renowned company. Santee is also a pottery designer at her family studio, Talking Earth Pottery.

INFORMATION

8. EVENT Weeping Concrete by Hazel Meyer
   Date June 11 & 12, 2022
   Location Toronto, Canada
   Source The Bentway

Weeping Concrete by Hazel Meyer

June 11 & 12
4:00pm
The Bentway, Toronto

This summer, The Bentway invites you to see the streets of Toronto anew. Through a series of free art installations, performances, workshops, public conversations, and community celebrations, we ask: How can we learn from, and take to, the street? What do we borrow from these spaces, and what do we offer back to them? How do we capture this collective moment to re-imagine our streets as public spaces for all? Come join us at street level for STREET: A summer of public art featuring installations, performance, and interchange.

In a growing city such as Toronto, scaffolds are a ubiquitous feature of the urban environment. WEEPING CONCRETE by Hazel Meyer is a site-specific project for a trio of performers across two towering scaffolds; asking us to reflect on the streets as we know them and imagine what they might be “Sistering” is a construction term for the act of placing supports on either side of a beam to add stability. In WEEPING CONCRETE, the three performers, including artist Hazel Meyer, animate this makeshift, temporary architecture as it “sisters” one of the concrete bents holding up the Gardiner Expressway. Borrowing from activist aesthetics, athletic tropes, and consumer advertising practises; the performers unfurl banners, engage objects, and introduce elements of queer joy in an ongoing conversation with one another, and the audience. Through these actions, WEEPING CONCRETE presents a reflection on intimacy, interdependence, and infrastructure.

The Bentway works “to ignite the urban imagination,” using the city as site, subject, and canvas. Anchored under Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway and guiding its complex future, The Bentway is a not-for-profit powered by vital partnerships with the City of Toronto, artists, neighbours, supporters, and other city-builders who believe in the possibilities of public space. Since Phase 1 of The Bentway – under the Gardiner from Strachan Ave to Fort York Blvd – opened in 2018, it has proven to be both a vital backyard park, a cultural platform for artist experimentation, and a growing creative movement. In partnership with the City of Toronto, The Bentway is creating a network of public spaces, developing a cohesive vision for wayfinding and reconnecting the waterfront to the downtown core.

INFORMATION

9. EVENT Tairseach
   Date June 25, 2022
   Location Belfast, N.Ireland
   Source Sinead O’Donnell

Tairseach
Collaboration with Sinéad O’Donnell, Selina Bonelli, Marta Bosowska
June 20–26, 2022
Public Performance: June 25, from 2pm–5pm (location TBA)

‘Tairseach’ in Gaelic (‘threshold’ in English, ‘próg’ in Polish) means ‘the beginning of something’ to be explored.

“We are three disparate female and non-binary performance artists coming together to find new ways of continuing to make art in a post-pandemic world and to develop new and innovative methodologies that can be used by us and other artists. This project is about not just adapting and managing, but acknowledging that the world has changed and that our practices will never be the same. We want to use this project to develop new ways of working that encompass the past and the pandemic, but that adapt to us and our future.” ~Sinead O’Donnell

This collaboration between Irish performance artist Sinéad O’Donnell, Selina Bonelli (Maidstone, England) and Marta Bosowska (Poznan, Poland) is a disability-led project and hybrid way of creative engagement. After a period of online dialogue and virtual and in-person research, the project will culminate in a residency and live public performance in Belfast.

This project is funded by the Four Nations international fund by Arts council of Northern Ireland, Arts Council of England, Arts Council of Wales & Creative Scotland and supported by the Belfast based disabled-led arts charity The University of Atypical.

ABOUT SINEAD O’DONNELL
Sinéad O’Donnell works in performance, installation, site and time-based art. Based in Belfast, Sinéad studied sculpture at the University of Ulster, textiles in Dublin and visual performance and time-based practices at Dartington College of Arts. Her work explores identity, borders and barriers through encounters with territory and the territorial. Sinéad’s practice is nomadic and travel has broadened her cultural perceptions and influenced her artistic sensibilities regarding time and space. She is active on the Belfast performance art scene working with local organisations to foster performance art activity and supporting emerging artists in her community. Curating artists, exchanges, projects and exhibitions of performance between Northern Ireland and Canada, Chile, Croatia, Germany, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Japan, Iraq, Montreal, Peru, Transylvania region Romania, Scotland, Serbia, Singapore, Thailand, Poland, Peru, Montreal and USA.

10. EVENT You’re Invited by Jess Dobkin & Clayton Lee
    Date June 27–July 17, 2022
    Location Birmingham, England
    Source Fierce Festival

Fierce Festival presents:
YOU’RE INVITED by Jess Dobkin & Clayton Lee
June 27–July 17, 2022

Through sensory, embodied and energetic encounters, join Canadian performance artist Jess Dobkin in collaboration with Clayton Lee and members of the Healing Gardens of Bab Steering Group to explore connections and intersections in the dynamic relationship of live performance, archives and activism. YOU’RE INVITED presents a constellation of engagements: an iteration of Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective Archival Reading Room, a queer teen art and activism workshop, community meals, and a DIY poster project spotlighting 25 years of FIERCE archives through the streets of Birmingham. All artists, archivists, activists, finders, keepers, scholars, collectors, witches, mystics and queers are welcome.

Schedule of activities:
Wetrospective Archival Activation: July 1–3
Fierce at 25 – Archive Workshop: July 6
Queer Teen Art & Activism Workshop: July 9
Community Dinner: July 10

For more information: https://wearefierce.org/event/youre-invited/

ABOUT JESS DOBKIN
Jess Dobkin is an internationally acclaimed artist. Her performance and curatorial projects are presented at museums, galleries, theatres, universities and in public spaces internationally. She was active in the downtown performance art scene in New York City before moving to Toronto in 2002. Recent projects include her 2017 Dora-nominated performance, The Magic Hour, which was developed through The Theatre Centre Residency program with support from the Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council. She created The Artist-Run Newsstand (2015-2016), a one-year artist-run newsstand that operated in a vacant subway station newsstand kiosk. Her Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar (2006, 2012, 2016) continues to receive significant scholarly consideration and media attention. She was Guest Curator of MONOMYTHS at FADO Performance Art Centre (2016-2017), Guest Curator of Harbourfront Centre’s HATCH performing arts residency program (2011-2012) and a co-curator of the 7a-11d International Festival of Performance Art (2009-2012.) She has taught as a Sessional Lecturer at OCAD University, the University of Toronto and Sheridan College, and was a Fellow at the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto.

ABOUT FIERCE FESTIVAL
Fierce has been putting Birmingham and beyond on the map since 1998, when its first festival of theatre and performance originally launched as Queerfest. Founded by Mark Ball, who went onto be Artistic Director at LIFT (London International Festival of Theatre) 2009–2017, and then joined Manchester International Festival as Creative Director. It was renamed Fierce! Festival in 1999 with the strapline ‘the festival that bites’–partly in response to a desire to be inclusive to an audience who craved the unusual, the edgy and the spectacular and also to reflect a more intersectional politic (before that word was even trendy!).