Agnes NedregÄrd is a Norwegian performance artist based in Scotland and Norway. Her working practice is primarily based in live performance, while exploring a bodily language in other mediums like video drawings and sculptural installations. She holds a Masters of Fine Art from the Glasgow School of Art (2005), and has since showed her work in festivals, galleries and screenings in Europe, USA and Asia. Frequently she engages in collaborative practice with other artists, among these Scottish visual artist Moray Hillary and Brazilian performer Raquel Nicoletti. She teaches performance art workshops to students of art, film, theatre and architecture in Europe. NedregÄrd is the editor of Nordic Tantrum, a web magazine for Nordic performance art.
Curated and presented by FADO Performance Art Centre at the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art.
A visual image, one performer, pressure from the inside, pressure from the outside. One or several actions, the audience is invited, what are you carrying? We meet, we share, after it is over, what do we have left? It remains to be seen.
“Norwegian artist Agnes NedregĂ„rdâs performance, on the other hand, was all intensity. A board hanging on a rope from the ceiling and a board with two holes on the ground, she began by placing a mouthpiece in her mouth that held it open grotesquely, her tongue poking out. A metronome ticked to one side. She blew a whistle. She took her rubber boots off and prowled past the audience in stockings full of dirt and rocks, scowling. She then took her jacket off, revealing an old shirt ripped loose down the front between her breasts. Using needle and thread, she then began sewing the flaps of the shirt to the sides of her breasts and chest. She approached individual audience members, staring at them intensely, the pieced the needle through her skin, pulling the thread tight. She blew the whistle again. The metronome continued to tick. She fit her legs through the holes in the board on the ground and set herself on the one hanging from the ceiling, gazing, again, with a blank intensity at the audience. Then she suddenly leaped off the board, and it snapped back up toward the ceiling, swinging. The performance ended with her putting her jacket and boots back on and stopping the metronome, whose ticking by then permeated the room. Nedregardâs performance might seem to be about the denial of the body, and of womenâs bodies in particular, but it struck me as too physically intimate and present for that; it seemed to me more about the fragility and instability of the body as it exists in time, where time, through the metronome, has become an active, physical, literal part of the performance.
FADO Performance Art Centre is pleased to offer a 5-day performance art workshop facilitated by Norwegian performance artist and educator Agnes NedregÄrd. Workshop participants will present short works in early afternoon sessions and in the public realm on the first two days of the festival for festival audiences and visiting artists, organizers and curators.
This workshop will focus on the performance as an encounter in real time. Encounter with space Encounter with material Encounter between performer(s) and audience
Question: You might know something about what you are bringing as performer, but what does the audience bring to the performance?
There will be an emphasis on process through exercises, using our bodies and creating material, trying to get a bit further in how to be present in a performative encounter. The students will work individually and in groups. Students are asked to bring an open mind and wear loose clothes.
Programme: Day 1: Encounter between body and space Day 2: Encounter between body and material Day 3: Encounter between bodies Day 4: Encounter with time and memory Day 5: Encountering yourself in meeting with the other
Dates: October 16-20, 2010 Location:Toronto Free Gallery, 1277 Bloor Street West, Toronto Cost: $250 (does not include food, materials or accommodation) Maximum of 8 participants
FADO will not turn anyone away due to inability to pay the full fee for the workshop. If you have financial concerns, please contact us. If you are traveling from outside of Toronto, we can help you to find accommodation to fit your budget.
TO PARTICIPATE Please send a short description of your experience as it relates to the workshop, performance art or related interests, including a brief statement of what you hope to gain from this experience. If you have a CV, artist bio and images of previous work, you are welcome to send those as well. The workshop is open to students, visual artists, performance artists, as well as non-artists, non-students, and non-performance artists.
Workshop: Performance As Encounter, 2010. Photo Henry Chan.
Engagement Pink
How artists speak about themselves publicly lives somewhere between fantasy, biography, and history. This fragrance is showy yet vulnerable; a new light illuminates the artist and their work. You get to decide what is fantasy, biography, or history.
