FADO E-BULLETIN
June 2023

1. EVENT VIRTUAL ENCOUNTERS: PARALLEL 03 BY ENDLINGS
   DATE JUNE 4, 2023
   LOCATION ONLINE
   SOURCE LONDON ONTARIO MEDIA ARTS ASSOCIATION

Virtual Encounters: New Entanglements in Performance and Media
Curated by Christine Negus

LOMAA is excited to close out our Virtual Encounters series with new works by Jerron Herman and Autumn Knight. Their works will be available to view online for the entirety of June, and both artists will come together in virtual conversation on Sunday, June 4 at 3pm EDT, presented in partnership with Tangled Art + Disability. This talk will additionally be available for viewing the remainder of the month.

Below you will find info about their projects and how to access them, how to sign-up for the talk, accessibility information, and the Virtual Encounters series. For more, please visit:

LOMAA Website
LOMAA Vimeo
LOMAA Instagram
LOMAA Facebook
LOMAA Twitter

London Ontario Media Arts Association (LOMAA) is a regional, non-profit, artist-run organization focused on the exhibition of media art and experimental time-based work. With an emphasis on progressive contemporary Canadian practices, LOMAA supports the presentation of local, national, and international artists in the areas of moving images, performance, new media, and sound art while facilitating the creation of new work through workshops, commissioning, and partnership.

2. EXHIBITION MAPA MUNDI BY FRANCISCO-FERNANDO GRANADOS
   DATE JUNE 9–JULY 22, 2023
   LOCATION TORONTO, CANADA
   SOURCE OPEN STUDIO

mapa mundi (study for extended intersections)
by Francisco-Fernando Granados

June 9–July 22, 2023
Open Studio, 401 Richmond St. West, Suite 104, Toronto
Opening Reception: June 9, from 5:00–7:00pm

Created through the Nick Novak Mid-Career Printmaker Residency, the work in this exhibition presents an exploration of contemporary possibilities for printmaking as a conceptual tool. Playing with modes of inscription that range from the performative to the mechanical, printmaking allows Francisco-Fernando Granados to negotiate formal questions of difference and repetition within the context of the multiple.

Two new works present parallel strategies that stage perceptions of movement within a picture plane. mapa mundi (study for extended intersections) recontextualizes a key composition from the artist’s ongoing archive of more than 400 abstract drawings into a varied edition exploring different kinds of paper support, as well as hand-colouring. These drawings are developed digitally through the layering of gestures, resulting in interlocking geometries. Workbook (randomized) samples readymade elements excerpted from Guatemalan calligraphy workbooks authored by Jaime F. Sanchez into an all-over composition generated by an algorithm. The workbooks are familiar to the artist as part of his elementary education before coming to Canada.

For this body of work, Granados worked with Heather J.A. Thomson in order to experiment with photolithography, a technique not previously used in his practice. The study of other print techniques was integral to the artist’s formation at Langara College in Vancouver (unceded Coast Salish territories) during the mid-2000s. There, Granados learned intaglio and serigraphy under the supervision of Gordon Trick and Timothy Nash, while simultaneously taking drawing classes with Lesley Finlayson. These years in the drawing and printmaking studio taught him not just technique, but also patience, process, and a sense of being-in-community as an artist.

Francisco-Fernando Granados was born in Guatemala and lives in Toronto, Dish With One Spoon Territory. Since 2005, his practice has traced his movement from convention refugee to critical citizen, using abstraction performatively, site-specifically, and relationally to create projects that challenge the stability of practices of recognition. His work has developed from the intersection of visual arts training, working in performance through artist-run spaces, studies in queer and feminist theory, and early activism as a peer support worker with immigrant and refugee communities. This layering of experiences has trained his intuitions to seek site-responsive approaches, alternative forms of distribution, and the weaving of lyrical and critical propositions. His exhibition project ‘who claims abstraction?’ is currently on view at Simon Fraser University Galleries in Vancouver. An accompanying book created with SFU and Publication Studio Vancouver, titled ‘who claims abstraction (with a difference)?’ will be released in July 2023.

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3. PERFORMANCE MOTHERGINGER PROMENADE BY ERICA STOCKING
   DATE JUNE 10, 2023
   LOCATION TORONTO, CANADA
   SOURCE INSTANT COFFEE

MotherGinger Promenade by Erica Stocking
Saturday, June 10, 2023
Performance at 3:00pm; Reception at 4:00pm

AGYU is pleased to host a special performance by Erica Stocking as part of MotherGinger Promenade. The performance charts a path through the emergence of fashion as a discipline in late nineteenth-century Paris. Inspired by early examples of public promenades (such as those on the Bois de Boulogne after its redevelopment as a society gathering point in the late 1800s) as spaces where economic, social, and aesthetic interests come together in an event of looking and being seen, Stocking invites you to consider: what is a closet and where can it take you? The performance builds on Stockings ongoing project, MotherGinger, named after the iconic drag character from Russian composer Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker. By referencing this figure, characterized by a massive dress that houses eight children, Stocking foregrounds the connection between mothers as producers of human bodies for labour, Western industrialization, and the blurring of the boundary between leisure and work. Stocking has developed MotherGinger as a brand, expressed in multiple forms from performances to pop-up shops. Situating itself within fashion as a conceptual framework, this project considers the ways that gender, subjectivity, and survival intertwine within this balletic character. Engaging both container technologies and the characters roots in the Zanni characters of commedia dell’arte, MotherGinger Promenade is an invitation, a monologue, and a fashion show.

Erica Stocking is an artist working at the intersection of sculpture, performance, and installation. Her work has been exhibited in Canada at Artspeak, Mercer Union, The Western Front, and the Contemporary Art Gallery. Stockings public artworks are part of the City of Vancouver, City of Surrey, and SFU Community Trust Collections. She received her BFA from Emily Carr Institute in 2004 and recently completed an MFA at OCAD University in 2021. Stocking lives and works in Toronto and is currently pursuing her PhD in Visual Arts at York University.

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4. CALL FOR PROPOSALS VOL. 29, NO. 2: ON SOCIAL IMAGINARIES
   DEADLINE DATE JUNE 12, 2023
   LOCATION THE WORLD
   SOURCE PERFORMANCE RESEARCH

Call for Proposals: Vol. 29, No. 2: ‘On Social Imaginaries’ (March 2024)
Proposal Deadline: 12 June 2023
Edited by Danae Theodoridou with Falk Hübner (Fontys University of Applied Sciences)

This issue on Social Imaginaries focuses on the complex relationship between performance, social imagination and community building, investigating some of the ways in which the performing arts contribute to the reactivation of public space and public time by constructing alternative—to capitalism—social imaginaries.

In 2007, Fredric Jameson argued that it seems easier for us to imagine the end of Earth being hit by a comet than imagining an alternative to capitalism. More recently, performance scholars Bojana Cvejić and Ana Vujanović (2016) have written that the least discussed crisis today, after the more ‘popular’ ones (financial or environmental crisis, etc.), is probably the crisis of social imagination. Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby (2013) have posited that since the 1970s a series of key changes in the world (such as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the triumph of market-led capitalism and the individualization of society) have made imaginative, social and political speculation more difficult and less likely. Following the broader frustration that accompanied the decay of the great dreams of the twentieth century, we now seem unable to imagine and produce visions for our present and future – to create new dreams for the twenty-first century.

The performing arts could be considered as a strong context for (re)imagining the social, given their public character and the fact that their working material is primarily imagination. However, as Bojana Kunst (2012) or Cvejić and Vujanović (2016) have argued, artistic production seems to suffer from a similar limitation of social imagination, partaking in the capitalist machinery of an art market organized mainly on the basis of financial ‘value’ – offering at best cynical criticism, but not new imaginaries.

We welcome submissions in the form of essays, manifestos and artists’ pages, by artists, other art workers and scholars, but also scholars from sociology, philosophy, political and law sciences, and other disciplines interested in the relation of arts to social imagination and connectivity.

[…]

Please visit the Performance Research website to read the full call for submissions text and the guidelines.

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5. EVENT ARCHIVES ACCESS: MARGARET DRAGU
   DATE JUNE 13, 2023
   LOCATION ONLINE & VANCOUVER CANADA
   SOURCE WESTERN FRONT

Archives Access: Margaret Dragu
June 13, 2023 at 7:00pm
Western Front, Grand Luxe Hall

Attend In-Person: Register HERE
Livestream: Watch HERE

Western Front is pleased to present Archives Access: Margaret Dragu, an evening of archival excerpts, conversation and the screening of a new work by artist Margaret Dragu. Margaret Dragu played a prominent role in the history of Western Front, creating and presenting performance and video artworks from as early as the late 1970s. This evening of archival screenings will show excerpts from Backup (1979), created with Kate Craig; Urban Skills #5: Secretarial (1979), created with Cornelia Wyngaarden; and Bread (2004). Throughout the event, Dragu will be joined in conversation with Western Front’s assistant curator, Nathaniel Marchand, as they discuss topics such as durational performance, labour and working conditions, X’s and O’s compositional style, and other recurring themes that have emerged throughout Dragu’s practice. The night will culminate with the screening of Margaret Dragu’s latest video work, Tick and Talk of Common Time.

Margaret Dragu is a Vancouver based artist known for her work as a performance artist, dancer, choreographer, writer and video artist. With an early career focus on dance and the incorporation of burlesque into her own brand of art performance, Dragu soon branched out into acting, film, and video art. Some of her work involved the adoption of recurring personas, such as Nuestra Señora del Pan, Lady Justice, and Art Cinderella. Her work explores class, feminism, sexual politics, motherhood and community-engaged practice. In addition to her work as an artist, Dragu is also employed as a fitness instructor and has co-authored several books. She is the creator of a radio show called Momz Radio as well as VERB FRAU TV, a video series that blends video art, news, performance and conversations about contemporary art practices.

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6. EVENT FAAS 7 / SUDBURY ALTERNATIVE ART FAIR
   DATE JUNE 14–17, 2023
   LOCATION SUDBURY, CANADA
   SOURCE LA FAAS

LA FAAS is back!
June 14–17, 2023
Kathleen Street, Sudbury

For its 7th edition, the Sudbury Alternative Art Fair (FAAS 7) takes place on Kathleen Street in the Donovan neighbourhood. Under the theme of neighboUrhood, some twenty artists will create original installations, artworks and performances in unusual locations. With a schedule and map in hand, you are invited to stroll down Kathleen Street all week to follow the evolution of the pieces. FAAS 7 concludes with a festive vernissage of the installations and a presentation of the performances. Free and open to all.

The Donovan is home to many ethnocultural, marginalized groups, as well as a new wave of communities who have come to call it home. With the theme of neighbourhood, it is a great opportunity to rally a community of proximity, to be in solidarity with the changes it is facing and to highlight its considerable contribution. Inspired by the desire to create a place for discussion and exchange and to and to propose activities of popular reappropriation, this art fair aims to shed light on the logics of our urban and economic systems.

Every two years since 2008, la FAAS has celebrated a public space in the nickel city’s downtown. Invited artists are challenged to complete new works over the course of the festival and according to each edition’s concept and theme.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Alanis Magali Rodriguez Beaudoin
Alegría Gobeil
Alix Voz
Alyssa Scott
Annie-Claude Deschênes
Connor Lafortune
Debajehmujig Storytellers
Fauxciles
Félix Hallée-Theoret
Florencia Sosa Rey
Geneviève et Matthieu
Géronimo Inutiq
Jessica Karuhanga
John Boyle-Springfield
Johannes Zits (presented by FADO Performance Art Centre)
Nico Glaude
Rotchild Choisy
Violaine Lafortuna
Emilio & Elyse Portal, Clayton & Tara Windatt
Laurie McGauley, Cora-Rae Silk & Tracy Gregory

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7. ONLINE EXHIBITION GARDEN WITHOUT WALLS
   DATE ON-GOING
   LOCATION ONLINE
   SOURCE FACEBOOK

Gardens Without Walls is an online platform dedicated to presenting performative encounters devised in the context of the Grantham Foundation for the Arts and the Environment. Deep in the woods of Saint-Edmond-de-Grantham, surrounded by maple trees and ferns, each artist was invited to explore how their practice responds to environmental issues with a particular attention to care, hospitality, and an attentive listening between living beings and their natural surroundings.

ARTISTS
Rachel Echenberg
Cynthia G.Renard
arkadi lavoie lachapelle
Pascale Théorêt-Groulx
Eve Tagny

Co-curated by Ji-Yoon Han and Didier Morelli

In this first edition of Gardens Without Walls, five artists were invited to hold one-week residencies at the Foundation over the course of two months in January and February of 2023. At the end of each period of immersion, the artists were joined by a film crew led by Bogdan Stoica for one day of filming. The resulting five films are standalone works that seek to capture the essence of an experience, relating something singular about the act of inhabiting the built and natural site of the Grantham Foundation. Each of the resulting works are unique and distinct, a testament to the variety of practices and the infinite potential drawn from such a wonderous environment.

VIEW THE WORKS HERE

8. OPPORTUNITY CALL FOR REVIEWS EDITOR
   DEADLINE DATE JUNE 30, 2023
   LOCATION UNSPECIFIED
   SOURCE PERFORMANCE RESEARCH

The Performance Research journal seeks an incoming Reviews Editor, to begin in August/September 2023 for an initial three-year term. This is an opportunity to join a team of committed global scholars and artists invested in innovative and equitable publishing.

In particular, we seek a Reviews Editor who will be attentive to new trends in Performance Studies, uplift emergent voices in the field, value a diverse range of scholars, methods and topics and operate with a generously collegial attitude to support contributing scholars.

While the position is unpaid, it offers the post holder the opportunity to develop editorial skills re the curation and management of published work, to expand international networks of collaboration and collegiality with both select presses and contributing scholars, and to enhance experience for CV purposes. A free subscription to the journal is provided. All are welcome to apply; no prior editorial experience is required as we will work with the new editor to ensure they are supported in the role.

About Performance Research: Since 1996, Performance Research has set a precedent that has become standard for thematic and cross-disciplinary ways of bringing together the varied materials of artistic and theoretical research in the expanded field of performance. Working closely with designers, artists, academics, theorists, performance practitioners and writers, Performance Research resists disconnected, disembodied and disinterested forms of scholarship. We prefer instead the possibilities of imagining the journal as a dynamic space of performance that produces inspiring conversations, unlikely connections and curious confluences. Our emphasis on contemporary performance arts within changing cultures and technologies is reflected in the interdisciplinary vision and international scope of the journal. Performance Research continues to combine writings and works for the page in an interplay of analysis, anecdote, polemic and criticism—interweaving the oblique with the conflicting, the pivotal with the resistant and the eclectic with the indispensable.

Reviews Editor responsibilities:
Performance Research is published eight times annually; for each issue, the Reviews Editor has full responsibility for initiating and curating the Reviews Section. As such, the Reviews Editor:
Monitors press catalogues and selects the works to be reviewed
Commissions reviewers for each review/receives submissions for reviews
Liaises with relevant presses to secure a review copy text for contributing reviewers
Supports first-time reviewers in shaping their submissions in terms of content and style
Liaises with the designated managing editor to support final revisions

Performance Research also wishes to take this opportunity to expand the scope of the reviews section to include, for example, performances, conferences and festivals in addition to publications. Mentorship will be provided for those who seek guidance or support when beginning this role and on an ongoing basis.

If you are interested please email a cover letter expressing your interest and experience, along with a relevant CV to Deputy Editor, Helena Grehan (h.grehan@murdoch.edu.au) by 30 June 2023. If you have questions about the role prior to submission, please don’t hesitate to reach out to the current Reviews Editor, Anna Jayne Kimmel (ajkimmel@stanford.edu).

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9. PROJECT/PERFORMANCE NADÈGE GREBMEIER FORGET
   DATE THROUGH JULY 9, 2023 (PERFORMANCE JULY 7, 2023)
   LOCATION MONTRÉAL CANADA
   SOURCE PHI FOUNDATION

I WILL NEVER FINISH REMOVING ALL THESE FACES. (GUIDED REFLECTION) is a public engagement project conceived by Nadège Grebmeier Forget and presented in dialogue with the exhibition Terms of Use, which is on view at the PHI Foundation from March 9 to July 9, 2023.

Performance: July 7, 2023 at 7:00pm
REFRACTIONS, HOW TO ELEVEN by Nadège Grebmeier Forge

This performance will be presented within the installation. Traces will be visible to the public during the last two days of the project’s presentation. Due to limited space, reservations are required.

Though it is not usually regarded as participative or interactive, Grebmeier Forget’s practice is based on different mediations of the self via the image, operated through the mediums of performance or installation. Through mirrors, visual echoes, and constant passages between analogue and digital realms, the artist explores the meanderings of self-representation, proposing that it is an inescapable contemporary phenomenon, both aesthetically and psychically. If Grebmeier Forget tends to place herself at the center of her works, acting as both subject and object, this public engagement project is an opportunity for the artist to open up her approach to different spectatorial postures that also oscillate between action and observation, between the unique and the replicated image, or between abstraction and figuration.

The title of the project is a nod to Claude Cahun (1894–1954), whose work includes images in which the artist is both the photographer and model. Using clothing, make-up, and poses, Cahun reframes and reimagines personal expressions of gender and, more broadly, codes of representation. Operating in the same spirit, Grebmeier Forget has conceived of an installation that will host creative group activities facilitated by the PHI Foundation’s Education Team. Guided by a performative score written by the artist, participants will produce self-portraits on mirrors, using various beauty products as pigments. Acting as ghosts of past activations, these changing traces will accumulate and remain visible to the general public, who are invited to visit our Education Room during the Foundation’s opening hours and see themselves reflected in the installation.

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10. SAVE THE DATES VIVA! ART ACTION IS BACK
    DATE SEPTEMBER 11–17, 2023
    LOCATION MONTRÉAL CANADA
    SOURCE VIVA!

Following a long pause imposed by the pandemic, we are delighted to announce the return of our international festival, VIVA! art action! Highly anticipated, this upcoming 8th edition will take place the week of September 11, 2023, and bring together some twenty local and international artists, highlighting practices that stand out for their vivacity and the singularity of their performative vocabulary.

VIVA! would like to thank the Canada Council for the arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Conseil des arts de Montréal, and Ville de Montréal for their support. Programming details and schedule will be released this summer.

We look forward to celebrating with you!

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