FADO E-BULLETIN
October 2023

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

Curated by FADO & presented in partnership with Rendezvous With Madness Festival

Saturday, November 4
1:00pm–7:00pm *
Old Gym, CAMH Community Centre, 1001 Queen Street West, Toronto
PWYC/free

In Holler Rat, Anya Liftig’s recently published debut memoir, the writer and 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. Her story is a journey of catalysts, calamities, art-making and madness, and catharsis.

Using her own book as a performance document, in Holler Rat (the performance) Anya Liftig performs a 6-hour reading of her memoir—the typical author appearance at a book launch elongated to absurdity—while moving around and taking up various positions on a basketball court empty of players and gameplay.

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.

* This is a durational performance. Audience is free to come and go from the performance space at any time. There is no fixed seating. Access questions or concerns? email us info@performanceart.ca

All tickets are Pay-What-You-Can. Tickets for the entire festival are available on the RWM website starting October 2nd.

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2. EVENT LATIN AMERICAN MEDIA ARTS SYMPOSIUM (LAMAS) & PERFORMANCE
   DATE OCTOBER 4–7, 2023
   LOCATION TORONTO, CANADA
   SOURCE LAMAS

Latin American Media Arts Symposium (LAMAS)
October 4–7, 2023
Friends House, 60 Lowther Ave, Toronto

Over the course of 4 days, we will gather with a group of curious and thoughtful artists, filmmakers, critics, and academics engaging with Latin American artistic production in Canada. We will be having panel discussions, round tables, performances, and special collaborations with local arts organizations. Some of the questions we will be tackling are: how are spaces and institutions supporting the visibility of Latin American media arts and film in Canada? What challenges and opportunities arise from translations and mistranslations? How are identities and bodies transformed as a new notion of home is built? How can we move forward through local and transnational collaboration?

PERFORMANCE
Elephant Woman by Helena Martin Franco
Thursday, October 5
3:30pm–4:30pm

Join us for a live performance with Montreál-based, Colombian artist Helena Martin Franco. Her persona, the Elephant Woman, arises from a failed affair: that of the migrant and the local, the alien and the native. An inevitable heartbreak, resulting from inequitable power relations traversed by guilt, disenchantment, and taboos burdening a body whose slippery and unclassifiable nature renders it disquieting.  Martín Franco embodies a fiction, a chimera, a fantasy that overflows the flesh and spoken language.

This performance event is free and open to the public, but please register in advance.

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3. EVENT LIVE BIENNALE
   DATE OCTOBER 10–15, 2023
   LOCATION VANCOUVER, CANADA
   SOURCE LIVE BIENNALE

ARTISTS
Samra Mayanja
Zeus Bascon & Jordan Baylon
Megan Arnold
Jessica Karuhanga
Elizabeth Milton
Michelle Sylliboy
Joshua Ongcol

Visit the Live Biennale website to dive into the amazing performances we have in store for you this year! Our carefully curated schedule offers a wide range of artistic expressions and experiences, from cutting-edge avant-garde shows to thought-provoking exhibitions and interactive installations.

Make the most of your visit by exploring the website to discover detailed information and artist bios. We can’t wait to share this immersive journey with you, so be sure to check the website regularly for updates and exclusive content. Get ready for a year filled with creativity, inspiration, and unforgettable moments!

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4. EVENT THE GOLDBERG VARIATIONS BY CLAYTON LEE
   DATE OCTOBER 13, 2023
   LOCATION TORONTO, CANADA
   SOURCE AGO

The Goldberg Variations by Clayton Lee
Friday, October 13
7:00pm–8:30pm
AGO Walker Court, 317 Dundas Street West, Toronto

The Goldberg Variations is an iterative research project that freely references and entangles queer diasporic sexuality and aesthetics with classical music (Johann Sebastian Bach) and professional wrestling (Bill Goldberg). Intentionally conceived to respond to and re-shape itself across spatial contexts like clubs, galleries, theatres and public space, it serves as a foundation for collaboration between Clayton Lee and invited artists, musicians and wrestlers.

Using deadpan humour, generosity and a low-vibrating mischievousness to facilitate and indulge the “what-ifs” of the live encounter, The Goldberg Variations will manifest in the AGO as a series of performative interventions and audience engagements. The project not only grounds the artist’s body as a site of humour but deepens the texture of this humour by playing with power dynamics while simultaneously inviting in layers of sexual desire, fantasy, domination/submission, heartbreak, vulnerability, tenderness and the tensions that exist within.

Clayton Lee (he/him) is a Toronto-based performance artist and curator. Performances include (◕‿◕✿) at The Performance Arcade in Wellington, New Zealand and Chapter’s EXPERIMENTICA in Cardiff, Wales; Ways of Being, co-created with Michael Rubenfeld (FOLDA, The Kick and Push Festival); Duets for Beginners (SummerWorks); and Informal Beginnings (Katzman Contemporary’s Duration & Dialogue II). He is also the Rhubarb Festival Director at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and the Curatorial Associate at the Luminato Festival.

This project is presented as part of the 2023 AGO x RBC Artist-in-Residence Program. This year, artists are asked to respond to the theme of humour, and to share with us what makes them and others laugh, and to consider if laughter is merely a physical response or something more? Artists were encouraged to work with concepts or materials that offer surprising, absurdist or playful engagements and consider how humour might bring people closer together. The 2023 AGO x RBC Artists-in-Residence artists are: Lauren Prousky, Eva Grant, and Clayton Lee.

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5. EVENT TAKE ME SOMEWHERE
   DATE OCTOBER 13–28, 2023
   LOCATION GLASGOW, SCOTLAND
   SOURCE TAKE ME SOMEWHERE

Take Me Somewhere is an international, biennial festival and year-round sector support organization that exists to position Scotland as the place to create and see radical performance.

Take Me Somewhere’s presence pulsates across the city with inspirational work igniting the city’s main stages, arts venues, churches, nightclubs and gardens. The festival—which has innovative performance at its core—acts as a connector between people, work and ideas, and is inspired by the talent, energy and voracity of the city’s arts community. It’s a space for crucial, diverse voices from here and abroad that take us somewhere in our personal and collective journeys, understanding the globalised and multicultural world we live in; voices that allow us to consider where we are now and envisage what a future somewhere could be.

ARTISTS
Goldendean
Carolina Bianchi
Desire Marera
FK Alexander
Billie Zangewa
Silk Huysmans & Hannes Dereere
Christian Noelle Charles
Giorgia OHanesian Nardin
Mamela Nyamza
Laura Fisher
Clarinda Tse
Silvia Calderoni/Ilenia Caleo
Adam Kinner & Christopher Willes
Eve Stainton
Nando Messias
NXSA
Ashanti Harris
Sonya Lindfors
Afriartik

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6. OPEN CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS SOUND OFF FESTIVAL 2024
   DEADLINE DATE OCTOBER 16, 2023
   LOCATION EDMONTON, CANADA & ONLINE
   SOURCE SOUND OFF

SOUND OFF Announces Open Call for Submissions for 2024

Attention DEAF PERFORMING ARTISTS!

SOUND OFF, Canada’s national festival dedicated to the Deaf performance, is proud to announce its OPEN CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS. Celebrating our 8th year, this annual edition of SOUND OFF will take place March 5–10, 2024, in Edmonton, Alberta both live and online.

Our hybrid festival will feature both live and online performances, workshops, panel discussions, staged readings and talk-backs. We are seeking submissions for both live and online performances. We are also announcing a call for workshop leaders who are interested in hosting peer-led training workshops during the festival. We are also looking for submissions for our staged reading series which presents new works in progress which are not ready for staging but which would benefit from feedback from a live audience.

SOUND OFF is Canada’s national festival dedicated to the Deaf performing arts. SOUND OFF is committed to diversity and we encourage applications from marginalized communities, including BIPOC and LGBTQ artists, as well as marginalized sign language communities including LSQ, MSL and ISL.

A limited number of spots are available. Deadline is 11:59 PM (ET) October 16, 2023. Funding for travel and accommodation is available for participants and professional fees will be paid.

MORE INFORMATION & LINKS TO APPLY

7. ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS SUMMERWORKS 2024
   DEADLINE DATE OCTOBER 27, 2023
   LOCATION TORONTO, CANADA
   SOURCE SUMMERWORKS

Applications for the 2024 Summer works Performance Festival are now open!

SummerWorks expands the possibilities of performance. Approaching its 34th year, the SummerWorks Performance Festival is widely recognized as one of the most vital and necessary platforms for launching new performance work in the country.

We are currently seeking proposals within our Presentations, Lab, and Public Works programming streams for the Festival’s next iteration, taking place from August 1–11, 2024, in Toronto, Canada.

Proposals are encouraged from established and emerging creators working across all disciplines and artistic traditions. In-person, digital, and hybrid performance projects will be considered.

Scroll down to uncover more detailed information about each Call for Submissions, learn about our different programming streams, and apply!

NO APPLICATION FEE. GUARANTEED ARTIST FEES. Submission Deadline: October 27, 2023 at 11:59pm EST.

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8. EVENT INTERWEAVING SPACE TIME WITH TBL (TALLBLONDLADIES)
   DATE OCTOBER 27–29, 2023
   LOCATION WUPPERTAL, GERMANY
   SOURCE TBL

Interweaving Space Time – the Next Decade by TBL
Galerie Kunstkomplex, Marienstraße 19, 42105
Wuppertal, Germany

TBL (TallBlondLadies) is a Swedish/German performance duo founded in 2003 by Anna Berndtson and Irina Runge. The duo specializes in creating and performing durational live performance works and this year are celebrating 20 years together, working with Long Duration Live Performance Art.

Each new TBL performance begins with different footwear, launching the performers’ quest to trace out movement possibilities and the exploration of sound. Movement units and their related audio are juxtaposed with diverse female stereotypes, which develop new choreographed scores, allowing a clear and discernable pattern to emerge. Synchronously and partially mirrored, an ornamental path is produced by doubling of movement, processes and materials. The monotonous soundscape underlines this path. Scores are repeated over and over in a seemingly endless loop.

October 27, 2023
18:00–22:00h
Re-Performance by Mijin Kim & Jimin Seo

October 28, 2023
15:00–21:00h
New Live Performance & Artist Talk by TBL

October 29, 2023
15:00–17:30h
Live and Re-Performance by TBL and Mijin Kim & Jimin Seo

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9. 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?

In some respects, we could argue that ‘In Extremis’ is about art’s obsession with end times, with the ongoing negotiation that takes place between the impossibility of representing them and the incessant desire to keep trying. If we think of performance in terms of this notion we might conjure Dante’s Inferno, Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty, Beckett’s The Unnamable (L’Innommable), the work of Raffaello Sanzio and Romeo Castellucci or the best of Greek tragedy, for example. We might imagine dismembered bodies, bodily fluids, torture, pain, loss and fiery excess. If, however, we read ‘In Extremis’ as at the point of ‘extreme hardship or suffering’ rather than the point of ‘death’ how do acts of performance and art practice more broadly assist us in understanding these scenarios? […]

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. It has been edited here for length.

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

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

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10. CALL FOR PROPOSALS OFFTA 2024
    DEADLINE DATE NOVEMBER 15, 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 festival-goers 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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11. EVENT LEGS TORONTO-II
    DATE DECEMBER 16, 2023
    LOCATION TORONTO, CANADA
    SOURCE SIMLA CIVELEK

Seeking performance artists for LEGS Toronto-II.

LEGS is a series of relay performance events initiated by the performance art community in Montréal and is characterized by a questioning of curatorial and institutional financial models to allow for greater freedom of action and deployment. The first iteration of LEGS was presented in Montréal on February 7, 2015, at Le Cercle Carré. The score and format of the event was initially imagined by an informal collective of artists (including Christian Bujold, Michelle Lacombe, Marie-Claude Gendron, Nadège Grebmeier Forget, Katherine-Josée Gervais and Jean-Philippe Luckurst-Cartier) and was created with the intention of activating and making-visible the often fragmented local performance art community.

It is a durational, independent and flexible performance event open to everyone, regardless of level of experience and artistic approach. Participating artists are suggested by other participating artists, snowballing a self-organizing event that is disinterested in traditional curation.

It is a minimum of 7 hours and a maximum of 9 hours long; the durational for each work is decided by dividing the total chosen time with the number of participating artists in order to realize a continuous performance relay without pause. The order of the performances is arbitrary.

LEGS Toronto-II will take place on Saturday December 16, at OCAD Great Hall in Toronto.

If you’re interested in taking part please contact:
lo bil: lobil@ocadu.ca
Simla Civelek: simla.civelek@gmail.com

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