Performance
One (Sommes Personnes)

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

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

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 twelve to fifteen minutes (Ă  la Warhol). Eight of the resulting 15 minutes will be presented in groups of four during the first and last hours of the twelve-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. Artist selection done in collaboration by Christof Migone and Shannon Cochrane.

SCHEDULE

12:00pm EST
One Number One by Tanya Mars
One Number Two by Ronnie Clark
One Number Three by Olga Prokhorova
One Number Four by Liina Kuittinen

5:45pm EST
One Number Five by NadĂšge Grebmeier Forget

7:45pm EST
One Number Six by Adriana Disman

8:45pm EST
One Number Seven by Alice de Visscher & Evamaria Schaller

9:45pm EST
One Number Eight by Alice de Visscher & Evamaria Schaller

11:00pm EST
One Number Nine by Amélie Laurence Fortin
One Number Ten by Georges Azzaria
One Number Eleven by Jocelyn Robert
One Number Twelve by Caroline Gagné


For programming for the full twelve hours, plus start times for all time zones, click on the project links.

One (Sommes Personnes) is the fourth edition of Different From The One Place Time Mood Mindset You Are In Now, taking up a total of three hours out of the twelve-hour event Are (Sommes Sonnes) happening for twelve hours on December 12, 2023. Are (Sommes Sonnes) is part of Christof Migone’s epic twelve-year project entitled, You And I Are Water Earth Fire Air Of Life And Death.

Are (Sommes Sonnes) is presented by Avatar to close their 30th anniversary celebrations.

Artist
Alice De Visscher

© Alice De Visscher, Queue De Cheval II, 2013. Photo Henry Chan.

b. 1979, Belgium
https://alicedevisscher.wordpress.com

I am interested in the image of my body, the structure of the space, the properties of the material. By putting those three elements into a relationship, I’m looking for unusual, somewhat minimal actions which stimulate the interpretation of the audience. I’m following my intuitions, in the belief that they will translate my way to live in this world now. I’m interested in the perceptions by the body and the creation by improvisation, because for art I trust body, intuition and improvisation more than mental reflexion.

Born in 1979, Alice De Visscher lives and works in Brussels. She studied theatre and after graduating in 2004, worked mainly in visual and experimental theatre in Belgium. Since 2006, her work has focused on performance art and video, as well as drawing and installation with paper. Her work has been presented in Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, France, Poland, Lithuania, Singapore, Thailand, Korea, Israel, USA and Canada.

Performance
Performances by Alice de Visscher and Simla Civelek

FADO Performance Art Centre is pleased to present an evening of new solo performance works from Alice de Visscher (Belgium) and Simla Civelek (Turkey/Toronto).

This event invites a local artist and an international artist to present new solo performance works created for the same space on the same evening. The artists and the audience come together to experience side by side the work of peers from different parts of the world. Each artist will present two short works in alternating sequences.

PROGRAM
Sesame Blanc by Alice de Visscher
Untitled One by Simla Civelek
Queue De Cheval II by Alice de Visscher
Untitled Two by Simla Civelek

© Alice de Visscher, Sesame Blanc, 2013. Photo Henry Chan.

Performance
New Maternalisms curated by Natalie S. Loveless

ARTISTS
Alejandra Herrera Silva (Chilé/USA)
Alice De Visscher (Belgium)
Beth Hall & Mark Cooley(USA)
Dillon Paul & Lindsay Wolkowicz (USA)
Gina Miller (Vancouver)
HélÚne Matte (Québec)
Jill Miller (USA)
Lenka Clayton (UK/USA)
Lovisa Johansson (Sweden)
MarlÚne Renaud-B (Québec)
Masha Godovannaya (Russia/USA)
Victoria Singh (New Zealand)

Mama-writer-in-residence Christine Pountney will be live blogging throughout the event, here.

Curatorial Statement by Natalie S. Loveless, March 2012

New Maternalisms started for me with the following questions: forty years after the intervention of feminist art around the sexual division of labour, what is the experience of the daughters of that era, now that they have become mothers? How is that expressed in their artwork and how does this artwork relate to the work that was being done in the 70s?  I am thinking, of course, of work like Mary Kelly’s infamous six-year installation piece Post-Partum Document, which she worked on from 1973 to 1979. With Kelly’s work in mind, I invited a group of artist-mothers to produce a performance or video piece speaking to their experience as mother-artists today. These artists use performance to bring attention to the embodied, biological, and material enmeshment of early maternity in ways that stand in stark formal contrast to Kelly’s work. They do this in a way, however, that is not simply at odds with the insights of post-structuralism and the linguistic turn informing Post Partum Document. Rather, while grounded in a “return to the body,” they demonstrate a commitment to non-determinist modes of signification and analysis, opening up the affective, enmeshed, experiential flows of maternal experience in ways that invite us to ask questions about maternal invisibilities and the power and challenge of the maternal to the professional body of the artist. 

DESCRIPTION OF PERFORMANCE WORKS

Maternity Leave by Lenka Clayton is a durational, Skype-mediated piece that invokes overlapping cycles of responsibility: government to citizen, institution to artist, artist to audience, parent to child, and audience to artwork. Maternity Leave was originally commissioned by the Carnegie Museum of Art for the exhibition Pittsburgh Biennial.

Challenge by Alejandra Herrera Silva is a durational piece exploring the impact and affect of maternal labour.

Milky Way and Jumping Lullaby by Lovisa Johansson. Milky Way is a durational piece inspired by the intimacy of the breastfeeding relation. Jumping Lullaby invokes the unique despair of maternal sleep deprivation.

L’Essence de la Vie by HĂ©lĂšne Matte is an action and text-based piece that offers a provocative, humorous, and sometimes threatening take on maternal embodiment and the cycle of life.

Jill Miller brings The Milk Truck, a mobile breastfeeding unit that combines guerrilla theatre, activism and slapstick humour, to Toronto for its Canadian debut. The Milk Truck will be running in Toronto from Friday March 23–Sunday March 25, and will be parked in front of the gallery during performances and events. In preparation for its arrival, The Milk Truck is collecting personal stories from mothers who have breastfed children in public in Toronto (at any time, past or present). We are collecting stories to create a narrative about the city.

Dis/sociation by MarlĂšne Renaud-B is an action and endurance-based performance exploring the complex ambivalence of maternal enmeshment.

DESCRIPTION OF VIDEO WORKS

Beth Hall and Mark Cooley present Safe (60 min., loop), a performance and research-based video juxtaposing the daily rituals of child care-giving with the immensity of the information and disinformation overload that has come to characterize much contemporary maternal experience.

Masha Godovannaya presents Hunger (39 min., loop), a performance-based, split-screen video recording her experience of the conflicts of motherhood, creativity, domesticity and critical self-reflection.

Gina Miller presents Family Tissues (6 min., loop), a video documenting and contextualizing a social-practice performance in which she defrosts and discusses her childrens’ placentas with them.

Dillon Paul and Lindsey Wolkowicz present In Place (3 min., loop), a performance-based video that offers a round-the-clock time-lapsed view into the shifting puzzle pieces, rhythms, and textures of the artists’ family routine.

Victoria Singh presents SON/ART: Kurtis the 7 Chakra Boy (22 min., loop), a video that compiles documentation from the seven year LIFE/ART performance that she began on July 7, 2004, in collaboration with Linda Montano (Another 21 years of Living Art). The soundtrack was composed specifically for this piece by Kurtis’ father, Derek Champion.

Alice De Visscher presents Dream or Nightmare of Motherhood (4 min., loop), two short performance-based videos that invoke her fantasies and fears surrounding the experiences of birth and lactation.

Performance Yellow

This fragrance opens us to the question, has the show started? It's winter, the theatre is colder than the street and the room is filled with people and all their winter smells: wet faux leather, down, too much shampoo, and beer breath. The atmosphere is a trickster. Am I late, am I early?

Top Notes

yellow mandarin, mimosa

Middle Notes

honey, chamomile, salt

Base Notes

narcissus, guaiac wood, piss, beer