FADO E-BULLETIN
November 2023

1. FADO PRESENTS HOLLER RAT (THE PERFORMANCE) BY ANYA LIFTIG
   DATE NOVEMBER 4, 2023
   LOCATION TORONTO, CANADA & ON-LINE
   SOURCE FADO & RENDEZVOUS WITH MADNESS

Curated by FADO Performance Art Centre and presented in partnership with Rendezvous With Madness Festival

Date: Saturday, November 4
Time: 1:00–7:00pm
Location: Old Gym, CAMH, Unit 3 entrance, 1001 Queen Street West, Toronto
Tickets: PWYC sliding scale/free

You can find UNIT 3 (entrance to the performance), ON THIS MAP or watch the LIVE STREAM of the performance from anywhere.

This is a durational performance. Audience is free to come and go at any time. If you have access questions or concerns, please email us at info@performanceart.ca

In Holler Rat (the book), Anya Liftig’s recently published debut memoir, the artist traces the many contradictions of her life, from her Appalachian childhood to her career as a performance artist, to a year-long period in which her life completely fell apart. Using her own book as a performance document and the site of a basketball court empty of players as her stage, the artist labours through a durational re-reading of her own biography—a journey of catalysts, calamities, art-making and madness, and catharsis.

In Holler Rat (the performance) Anya Liftig performs a 6-hour reading of her memoir (among other actions)—the typical author appearance at a book launch elongated to absurdity—while sitting in the middle of a basketball court empty of players and gameplay.

Over the course of the 6-hour performance, writer Malcolm Sutton will be responding to the performance and producing a text within the same time frame. In this way, the writing of a text about the reading of a book, is conceptualized as a time-based performance document. The finished text will be “published” on the FADO website at the conclusion of the performance.

Rendezvous with Madness, presented by Workman Arts, is the first and largest arts and mental health festival in the world. The 31st Rendezvous with Madness Festival runs from October 27th to November 5th and presents 11 feature films and two short film programs—a total of 38 films from 12 countries—in a hybrid format of virtual and in-person screenings. This year’s tagline “Mind the Gaps” considers gaps in infrastructure and the systematic “cracks” people, particularly those with lived experience of mental health and addiction, fall through. It is a call to think through what is missing and how things could be better.

2. FADO CALL FOR CURATORIAL PROPOSALS EMERGING ARTISTS SERIES
   DEADLINE DATE MARCH 1, 2024
   LOCATION TORONTO, CANADA
   SOURCE FADO

For over 10 years, FADO’s Emerging Artists Series was a highly anticipated and exciting staple of the performance art calendar. Initiated in 2003 by Canada’s own performance art matriarch Tanya Mars, FADO’s Emerging Artists series was created to provide a professional platform for emerging artists to develop and present a new performance, working within a specific curatorial framework. The intention of the series was to nurture new work and ideas, provide direction and mentorship to artists, and to showcase the work of the city’s newest perspectives in performance art.

As the series developed, it became clear that this was an opportunity to nurture not only emerging performance artists, but also emerging curators. In this way, FADO encouraged new curatorial voices in performance art, and in exchange were exposed to new communities of artists (new communities were exposed to FADO too). Soon after, the series started to include artists not just from Toronto, but regionally as well, giving local audiences a taste of the emerging performance scene across Canada.

Some of your favourite performance artists and curators cut their teeth making performances and developing curatorial projects in this context, and we want to do it all again!

FADO is ONCE AGAIN seeking Emerging Artists Series curatorial project proposals for our 2024 & 2025 programming years. We are looking for proposals from emerging artists and/or an early career curator, for projects that present the work of emerging/early career performance artists. FADO recognizes that the definition of ‘emerging’ is debatable, flexible and individual. For this context, FADO considers an ’emerging’ artist to have between 2–7 years experience making performance and/or to have not yet had a professional showing of their work.

Projects will be chosen for their inventiveness, rigour, and attention to the practicalities of execution within FADO’s presentation capacities and resources. Risk-taking is great but project feasibility is better. Overall project budgets will be set by FADO, including artist fees and curator honorariums.

We are open to project proposals that are:

• innovative in their use of technology;
• multi-disciplinary or performance-adjacent;
• conceived for public space or the site-specific;
• short, micro, on-line, invisible, furtive, durational;
• a series within a series or one-off event;
• conceptual or thematic;
• and/or anything else you can think of.

This is a Canadian call for proposals. FADO is not able to support projects from international curators and/or artists, on-site research or residencies. Curators living outside Toronto will work remotely and final presentations will take place in Toronto. If you have any questions while preparing your submission, please contact us at info@performanceart.ca.

Your proposal includes:

• Contact information
• Curatorial statement / CV
• Project description
• Artist project descriptions (to the extent they are known) & accompanying artist CVs
• Production needs & general project plan

Please submit your proposal using the Google Form, LINK HERE. If you prefer to send your proposal directly or have any issues using the google form, please email us at info@performanceart.ca

Deadline date: March 1, 2024

3. EVENT 2023 STONECROFT LECTURE WITH MARIA HUPFIELD
   DATE NOVEMBER 2, 2023
   LOCATION OTTAWA, CANADA & ONLINE
   SOURCE AKIMBO

8th Annual Stonecroft Foundation Visiting Artist Lecture: Maria Hupfield on Maria Hupfield

Thursday, November 2, 2023
6:00 PM ET
National Gallery of Canada, Auditorium, 380 Sussex Drive, Ottawa

Join us in-person or register for the Zoom livestream. Please register for the Zoom livestream HERE. The lecture will be in English with simultaneous French interpretation.

The Department of Visual Arts at the University of Ottawa, in collaboration with the National Gallery of Canada (NGC) is proud to present Maria Hupfield for the Eighth Annual Stonecroft Foundation Visiting Artist Lecture. The University of Ottawa is located on unceded territories of the Anishinabe Algonquin Nation, who are the traditional guardians of this land.

As a transdisciplinary artist, Maria Hupfield crosses boundaries at the intersection of performance art, design and sculpture. In her work, the art object is positioned as active belongings where sculptures become performers in a form of object choreography between artist, audience, and art gallery. She is engaged in an ongoing series of relations with community, places, ideas, and materials. An Urban off-reservation member of the Anishinaabek People belonging to Wasauksing First Nation in Ontario, Hupfield is deeply invested in embodied practice, Native Feminisms, and ethical collaborative process. Her art was included in the exhibition Beat Nation, as solo project Nine Years Towards the Sun at the Heard Museum, and The One Who Keeps on Giving at The Power Plant, which travelled nationally. Her work was also shown at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Galerie de l’UQAM, Art Gallery of Ontario and the National Gallery of Canada, NONAM – Nordamerika Native Museum Zurich, National Museum of the American Indian, Museum of Arts and Design in New York, Abrons Arts Center, Center for Art – Research and Alliances (CARA), BRIC House gallery, The Bronx Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, SITE SANTA FE amongst others.

This lecture series is made possible thanks to a significant gift from the Stonecroft Foundation for the Arts, in support of contemporary art discourse. The annual Stonecroft Foundation Visiting Artist Lecture Series allows the University of Ottawa students and general public to discover prominent Canadian artists’ practices.

4. EVENT WATCHING THE TIME PASS BY PIERRE BEAUDOIN
   DATE NOVEMBER 2–4, 2023
   LOCATION MONTRÉAL, CANADA
   SOURCE PIERRE BEAUDOIN

Watching the Time Pass
A performance by Pierre Beaudoin

November 2–4 | 12:00–5:00pm
Finissage: November 4 @ 5:00–7:00pm
Produit Rien, 6909 Rue Marconi, Montréal Canada

During this three-day performance (15 hours), Pierre Beaudoin will contemplate the passage of time and immerse himself in a universe of slowness. Every hour, on the hour (noon, 1pm, 2pm, 3pm, 4pm, 5pm), he will present a short action punctuating his contemplation. In this context of temporality, what do a bolo, mumbling, nails, a space, an electric guitar, a body, a hammer, a wooden rod, chalk sticks, the voice have in common? He invites you to join him in this performative exploration, and to come and watch time pass in his company. An invitation to discovery, observation, introspection.

Consultant, curator, and performance artist, Pierre Beaudoin has been active in the visual and media art sectors for over 35 years. As an artist, his performances have been presented across Canada and in Europe. As a curator, he has organized exhibitions and video programs in several cities in Canada. He lives and works in Montréal.

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5. EVENT EVAPORATE INTERNATIONAL LIVE ART FESTIVAL
   DATE NOVEMBER 4 & 5, 2023
   LOCATION BOSTON, USA
   SOURCE MOBIUS ARTIST GROUP

Mobius Artist Group (Boston) & Performance Art Bergen (Norway) present: Evaporate International Live Art Festival

ARTISTS
Anette Friedrich Johannessen
Bjørn Venø
El Putnam
Forbes Graham
Jan-Egil Finne
Jeff Huckleberry
Jimena Bermejo
Joanna Tam
Heather Kapplow
Kurt Johannessen
Kledia Spiro
Lani Asuncion
Marcel Marcel
Margaret Bellafiore
Marilyn Arsem
Max Lord
Nayara Leite
Nife Brzoza
Pavana Reid
Philip Fryer
Sandy Huckleberry
Sara June
Serena Gabriels
Tom Mackie

As an extension of the exhibition, Reservoir: What the Water Knows, curated by Arlinda Shtuni, Boston’s Mobius Artist Group presents Evaporate, a weekend’s worth of live art programming over the first weekend of November. Evaporate takes advantage of the Metropolitan Waterworks Museum’s unique setting and the special sensitivity of artists who work in ephemeral ways, and whose practices are deeply informed by watery surroundings, featuring artists from Performance Art Bergen in Norway and from Boston’s own Mobius Artist Group.

ARTIST BIOS (NORWAY)
ARTIST BIOS (USA)

PROGRAM

November 4 | 10:00am–3:00pm
Open Session, a large group improvisation spanning three hours, is a free and experimental art space, open to performers, artists and audience with an interest in performance art. The concept is inclusive and open, so performance artists can have an arena to test new ideas and freely work with their intuition and with each other. The theme of this Open Session will be water.

November 4 | 7:00–9:00pm
Performances by Anette Friedrich Johannessen, Bjørn Venø, Jan-Egil Finne, Lani Asuncion, Marcel Marcel

November 5 | 11:00am–4:00pm
Staggered around the museum and its grounds often in overlapping ways, Anette Friedrich Johannessen, Bjørn Venø, El Putnam, Jeff Huckleberry, Jimena Bermejo, Heather Kapplow, Kurt Johannessen, Marilyn Arsem, and Nayara Leite will showcase individual works related to water and the site throughout the day.

November 5 | 7:00–9:00pm
Performances by Kurt Johannessen, Sara June with Nife Brzoza and Max Lord, Philip Fryer, Tom Mackie

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6. CALL FOR PROPOSALS OFFTA 2024
   DEADLINE DATE NOVEMBER 5, 2023
   LOCATION MONTRÉAL, CANADA
   SOURCE OFFTA

The OFFTA, an annual artistic event on the fringes of the Festival TransAmériques (FTA), is announcing a call for proposals for its 18th edition scheduled for May/June 2024. OFFTA provides a platform for artists to share performances that captivate festivalgoers and pioneer new artistic frontiers. The supported works challenge, transform, and defy preconceptions. OFFTA offers emerging artists a stage to showcase their diversity, contributing to the evolution of established models.

We are seeking two distinct types of projects: completed performances and developing laboratories.
OFFTA affirms its support for historically underrepresented voices and marginalized identities.

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7. CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS PERFORMANCE RESEARCH ‘IN EXTREMIS’
   DEADLINE DATE NOVEMBER 6, 2023
   LOCATION THE WORLD
   SOURCE PERFORMANCE RESEARCH

Performance Research Volume 29, Issue 6 – In Extremis
Deadline: 6 November 2023
Edited by Charles Green and Helena Grehan

According to the OED ‘In Extremis’ means ‘on the point of death [or] in extreme circumstances; at the point of extreme hardship or suffering’ (OED 2023). So, what does it mean then to call for papers for an issue of Performance Research with this title? If ‘In Extremis’ is an end point, or a point of no return, what role might performance or artistic work play in thinking through this situation, accepting it or indeed rendering it artistically?

This issue of Performance Research challenges us to consider what practices, performances and other creative acts stand out in mobilizing extreme techniques, forms and modes, or alternatively, what forms are generating art that responds to external extremes, or the inevitability of end times, in productive and inspiring ways. Does their resonance reside in drawing attention to the status quo or in attempting to destroy it or rejecting it? Performance has a role to play in illuminating in graphic and truly disturbing ways the new world we are entering. It might also have a responsibility to undermine doom scenarios and to trouble them by demanding political action and calling for change.

We welcome submissions in the form of essays, manifestos and artists’ pages, from artists, art workers and scholars of performance and art history, but also scholars from sociology, philosophy, politics and law, the sciences, cultural studies, astrology and other disciplines. We are interested in submissions about performance and, in this issue, about art. We want to consider the concept of extremes both within and beyond performance spaces. How do we understand, live with, react to and interrogate extremes? What artists are leading the way? What artistic practices might be imagined seeing the possibilities in extremes, to productively prepare for them? […]

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

Issue Contacts:
All proposals, submissions and general enquiries should be sent direct to Performance Research at: info@performance-research.org
Issue-related enquiries should be directed to the issue editors via: h.grehan@murdoch.edu.au

Schedule:
Proposals: November 2023
Decisions: December 2023
First drafts: February 2024
Final drafts: May 2024
Publication: September 2024

MORE INFORMATION

8. EVENT HOOK UP – HOOKED UP – HOOKING UP
   DATE NOVEMBER 9, 2023
   LOCATION TORONTO, CANADA
   SOURCE BLACKWOOD GALLERY

Blackwood Gallery presents: hook up – hooked up – hooking up
By Lorena Wolffer and Kira Sosa Wolffer

Thursday, November 9 | 7–8:30pm
Isabel Bader Theatre, 93 Charles St. West, Toronto

hook up-hooked up-hooking up is a performance conceived by Lorena Wolffer to make young people’s perceptions and experiences regarding sex visible through a public conversation with Kira, her teenage daughter. This unrehearsed conversation revolves around Kira’s perceptions and positions, framed with the voices, stances, and experiences of other young people on the subject, both in the dialogue itself and in the form of video projections. The project aims to question gender today through the sexual practices of generations of teenagers and young adults who have grown up with a sexual education derived from normative pornography but, at the same time and thanks to feminisms, experience their bodies, genders and sexualities in more free and egalitarian forms than the generations that preceded them.

First performed in Madrid under the title darme-darse-darnos (to give myself, to give oneself, to give each other)—three conjugations of the verb “darse” (to give oneself), a common phrase used by Spanish-speaking youth to denote “making out”—this iteration renames the performance with an equivalent slang and involves the circulation of an anonymous questionnaire among young people between the ages of 18–25 at the University of Toronto, across the GTA and in Mexico City, with questions designed by Kira to collect their ideas and experiences in relation to gender and sexuality. Together with Kira’s own experiences, the collected responses inform the questions and topics addressed during the performance. Both performers are committed to discussing these matters solely in the presence of a live audience.

Register to attend the performance on Eventbrite HERE.

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9. EVENT SKIN AND BONES: A CHAPTER FOUR
   DATE NOVEMBER 9–11, 2023
   LOCATION VANCOUVER, CANADA
   SOURCE MARGARET DRAGU

SKIN AND BONES: A Chapter Four

A new work of performance exploring shared space and social contracts.
Developed by James Long, Margaret Dragu, Jami Reimer and CA450 class.

November 9: 7:30pm
November 10: 7:30pm
November 11: 4:00pm & 7:30pm

SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts
149 West Hastings Street, Vancouver

SKIN AND BONES: A Chapter Four explores “middle space” (a slippery zone between theatre making, choral practice & performance art). Eleven students join performance/visual artist Margaret Dragu, sound artist Jami Reimer and Theatre & Performance Faculty member James Long to collaboratively create a performance about shared spaces and our social contract. The primary source material is a collection of short texts Dragu wrote about her own experiences negotiating public transit while recovering from two hip replacements.

Part of the Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology at Simon Fraser University, the School for the Contemporary Arts (SCA) offers a dynamic and integrated arts curriculum at the undergraduate and graduate level. Our undergraduate programs in visual culture and performance studies, dance, film, music, theatre, and visual art are focused on developing creative artists and scholars who are equipped to excel in a transforming world. Over its 38 history, the SCA has produced outstanding alumni who have gone on to play a major role in redefining the arts in Canada. The interdisciplinary MFA program is widely recognized internationally as a unique opportunity where graduate students can explore connections between art forms and develop their own creative voice.

MORE INFORMATION & TICKETS

10. EVENT PERFORMANCE BY JEFF HUCKLEBERRY
    DATE NOVEMBER 18, 2023
    LOCATION RESTON, USA
    SOURCE MOBIUS ARTISTS GROUP

Performance by Jeff Huckleberry | Choosing to Portage

November 18, 2023
3:00–4:00pm
Tephra ICA, 12001 Market Street, Reston, VA

Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art (Tephra ICA) presents Choosing to Portage, an exhibition featuring the work of Ashley M. Freeby, Noelle Garcia, Jeff Huckleberry, Jackie Milad, and Michael Rakowitz.

Choosing to Portage is curated by Associate Curator Hannah Barco and is the second of a series of three exhibitions marking the 50th anniversary of Tephra ICA. The exhibition highlights this important milestone in the institution’s history by examining the theme of legacy.

Choosing to Portage brings together five artists who operate with deep reverence for the embodied knowledge that is passed down through skilled making processes and culturally specific materials. From distinctly different cultural backgrounds, these five artists’ work manifest quite diversely in the gallery: from illustrations that represent family to live task-based performance, from photography of ephemeral monuments to material translations of pre-existing objects, to poetic documentation and sculptural records of socially engaged projects, and more. This exhibition highlights how these artists leverage making processes and materials specific to their own lives and cultural heritage to create complex and vital inquiries into the urgent topics of our time. The resulting artworks do not look inward at the identity of the artist, but rather investigate such issues as the absurdities of white masculinity, the erasure of indigenous cultures, police killings of Black men, the visibility of Iraqi culture in the US, the ravages of war, and the loneliness of grieving.

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1. EVENT ARE (SOMMES SONNES)
   DATE DECEMBER 12, 2023
   LOCATION QUÉBEC CITY, CANADA & ONLINE
   SOURCE AVATAR / CHRISTOF MIGONE

You And I Are Water Earth Fire Air Of Life And Death: Part 4 (2023)
Are (Sommes Sonnes)

Curated by Myriam Lambert, Christof Migone & Alexandre St-Onge
Presented by Avatar & multiple partners

December 12, 2023
12:00 noon – 12pm midnight

After learning about all the steps involved in making whisky during a three-month artist residency with Marla Hlady at the Glenfiddich Distillery in Scotland in the summer of 2019 it struck me how inadequate the word ‘whisky’ (root meaning: ‘alcohol – water of life’) is because it only captures a small part of the manufacturing process. The resulting expanded 12-word sentence, You And I Are Water Earth Fire Air Of Life And Death, has evolved into a 12 year- long project, each year focusses on one word of the sentence and manifests into a yearly 12-hour event on December 12 from noon to midnight.

So far, three events have taken place: You (2020), And (2021), I (2022). This year: Are (2023). The project has morphed from a modest 12-word text piece to a sprawling curatorial endeavour featuring 79 artists from 11 countries across 5 continents (including this year). Thus far, the event has happened primarily as an online stream (audio & video), last year the last 3 hours were also live in person at Arraymusic in Toronto. This year there will be 6 hours presented live. The event will be held in Québec City and Avatar will be the main host institution. This year the entire 12 hours will live streamed as per usual, but the whole event will be screened at the Cinéma Beaumont in Québec City’s Méduse complex for free.

In 2023, the word is ‘Are’ and consequently the focus will be on plurals: multiplicities leading to infinities, polymorphs and polyglots, surrounded sounds, layers upon layers, etceteras upon etceteras. New this year is the inclusion of a subtitle: (Sommes Sonnes)—this translates from the French simply to ‘are sounds’.

Overall, the curatorial premise is intentionally left open as to how the theme is interpreted. Heterogenous experimentation is encouraged. The process is a conversation.

Each year artists and institutional partners are invited to participate. Usually each partnership entails programming one of the twelve hours and providing artist fees, consulting on the curatorial aspect, and spreading the word once the event line-up is confirmed and the promotional material is available. The project’s structure intends to remain nimble and stay as decentralized as possible. What is ‘usual’ is adaptable. Each partnership is unique.

MORE INFORMATION – ARE (2023)

12. EVENT ONE (2023)
    DATE DECEMBER 12, 2023
    LOCATION ON-LINE
    SOURCE FADO / CHRISTOF MIGONE

Different From The One Place Time Mood Mindset You Are In Now: Part 4 (2023)
One (Sommes Personnes)

This fourth edition of Different From The One Place Time Mood Mindset You Are In Now takes up a total of three hours out of the 12-hours of You And I Are Water Earth Fire Air Of Life And Death: Are (Sommes Sonnes) on December 12, 2023.

12 artists are invited to present a 12 minute audiovisual sort-of-self-portrait.

ARTISTS
Adriana Disman
Alice de Visscher
Amélie Laurence Fortin
Caroline Gagné
Evamaria Schaller
Georges Azzaria
Jocelyn Robert
Liina Kuittinen
Nadège Grebmeier Forget
Olga Prokhorova
Ronnie Clark
Tanya Mars

One (Sommes Personnes). A self that is one, just one, one amongst many. But that’s still you, still in a room different from anywhere else—the present of presence fully in a here and now deferred by pressing record. Portraiture that eschews the frontal in favour of the partial—the barely there, the fleeting, the merely-passing-by, the a-bit-askew. Staying still, but not stiff. Alive and well, simply at ease with the minutes passing, the unmomentous moment. The room we see might be the One’s home but does not need to be. The person you almost see is One that could be You but is not.

The single-take recordings will be stretched from 12 to 15 minutes (à la Warhol). Eight of the resulting 15 minutes will be presented in groups of four during the first and last hours of the 12 hour event. Each One will be presented on its own, as one, followed by another one, and so on. So, there are four solos in a quartet, times two. The remaining four will be presented at the end of hours 7, 8, 9, and 10.

This edition is presented by FADO Performance Art Centre. Artist selection done in collaboration with FADO’s Artistic Director Shannon Cochrane.

MORE INFORMATION about One (Sommes Personnes) presented by FADO