A curatorial project by Jess Dobkin
Presented by FADO Performance Art Centre

With collaboration and support from Hemispheric Encounters: Developing Transborder Research-Creation Practices, York University, and the Queer and Trans Research Lab, Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, University of Toronto and OCADU University.

ARTISTS
Germaine Liu (Toronto, CA)
Juma Pariri (Abya Yala/São Paulo, Brazil)
Juru (Fortaleza, Brazil)
Karen Finley (New York, USA)
Leslie Ting (Toronto, CA)
María de Lourdes Santana Arcos (Havana, Cuba)
n:u (melissandre varin) (Benin/Birmingham, UK)
Sara Baron-Goodman (Toronto, CA)
Tamar Carter-King (Toronto, CA)
Twysted Miyake-Mugler (Toronto, CA)

Curatorial Impulse

I’m thinking about our bodies: singular, plural, collective, communal, human, and other-worldly; with abandon and abandoned, in power and empowered, possessed and self-possessed, exalting and exalted. Political, primal, passionate. This program of artists reaches into and beyond conversations of trauma carried in the body to explore embodied scores that run parallel and perpendicular to wounding, and to perform the archives of our physical, personal, political, and transcendental bodies. Bodies on the line, bodies transgressing boundaries, bodies keeping scores.

It is also an opportunity for local and international artists to meet, to encounter each other’s work, and to meet Toronto audiences. You are warmly invited to join us in spaces of gathering, sharing, and experimentation with artists, curators, activists, musicians, dancers, scholars, students, and seekers. Together, in our vessels and vibrations, we take shape and shapes. 

I look forward to welcoming you.

Jess Dobkin

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PROGRAM

Thursday, November 5
Doors 6:30PM | Performances 7:00PM

Enoch Turner Schoolhouse, 106 Trinity Street (map)
FREE | Wheelchair accessible | ASL interpretation

Performances: Juma Pariri, n:u (melissandre varin)
Food Activation: Sara Baron-Goodman
Music-Composition: Germaine Liu

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Friday, November 6
7:30PM
OCADU University, Room 190, 100 McCaul Street (map)
FREE | Wheelchair accessible

Performance by Karen Finley
Music-Composition: Leslie Ting
Food Activation: Sara Baron-Goodman

Pandora’s Rage: We Keep Our Victims Ready revisited by Karen Finley
Followed by talkback with Karen Finley & Jess Dobkin

Responding to the urgency of the political moment,  Finley revives excerpts from her infamous performance that took her to the US Supreme Court case in 1998 as the lead plaintiff, We Keep Our Victims Ready. Finley manifests arousing verse, lyrical political testimonies examining power, abuse, patriarchy, war, and body autonomy. Finley uses her body as palette — where she exploits the gaze with a raw and transgressive rage speak. Smearing her skin with chocolate sacrament to transform and poetically elevate being treated as s**t and other symbolic ritual. With humour, sarcasm and soul shiver Finley inspires hope and the radical art imagination as strength. 

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Saturday, November 7
The Commons @ 401, 4th floor, 401 Richmond Street West (map)
FREE | Wheelchair accessible

12:30PM
Screening: This is Ballroom by Juru and Vitã
Followed by conversation with Juru, Twysted Miyake-Mugler, Mother Tamar Miyake-Mugler
Limited capacity | RSVP required

4:00PM
Creatives Anonymous with Karen Finley
Creatives Anonymous is a 13-step program that is part sardonic yet serious that is influenced by 12-step programs except that we are not approved or part of a traditional self help group. Join us and share your creative issues!

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Sunday, November 8
The Commons @ 401, 4th floor, 401 Richmond Street West
FREE | Wheelchair accessible

11:00AM–3:00PM
Screening: Guajira Synth (performance) by María de Lourdes Santana Arcos

11:00AM–12:30PM
Grief, Loss and Creative Transformation: Writing Workshop with Karen Finley
Limited capacity | RSVP required

1:00–3:00PM
Closing Reception
Food Activation: Sara Baron-Goodman