Documentation
DOCUMENTS by Autumn Knight

Performance
A Score of Scores

10 artists. 10 score writers. A score is an old term for ‘twenty’ of something = A Score of Scores.

ARTISTS & SCORE WRITERS
Abedar Kamgari & Naseh Kamgari
Holly Timpener & Enok Ripley
James Knott & Francisco-Fernando Granados
Keith Cole & David Roche
Laura Paolini & Tomasz Szrama
Mikiki & Jan Peacock
Paul Couillard & Elvira SantamarĂ­a-Torres
Rita Camacho Lomeli & Alejandro Tamayo
SA Smythe & Autumn Knight
Tanya Mars & Myriam Laplante

Put together by Shannon Cochrane and Francesco Gagliardi

FADO’s spring performance art series invites 10 artists to perform the interpretation of a performance score, written for them by an artist of their own choosing. Artists from across a spectrum of practices grounded in live performance (including cabaret, music, experimental composition, intermedia, video and more) interpret a score designed for them by an array of Canadian and international artists. The duos have chosen to strategize their collaboration in myriad ways—from conspiring together to revealing the final score only moments before the live presentation.

Emerging in the early 1960s in the context of the FLUXUS movement and in conversation with the expanded compositional practices of John Cage and LaMonte Young, “event scores” relied on elements of collaboration, improvisation, and chance to challenge traditional understandings of originality and artistic creation. Often very short, event scores typically consisted of lists of prompts and instructions ranging from the mundane to the elusively abstract and were circulated among fellow artists with an open invitation to interpret and perform them however they wanted. 

A Score of Scores is an experimental back-to-basics platform for artists to create new small-scale work in a spirit of experimentation, collaboration, and agility.

May 12: Performances by James Knott, Tanya Mars
May 13: Performances by Keith Cole, Laura Paolini
May 18: Performances by Paul Couillard, Holly Timpener
May 19: Performances by Mikiki, SA Smythe
May 20: Performances by Rita Camacho Lomeli, Abedar Kamgari

Artist
Autumn Knight

© Autumn Knight, Nothing #12: Tang (performance), 2023. Photo Shawn Lachapelle.

USA
https://autumnjoiknight.com/

Autumn Knight is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist working with performance, installation, video, and text. Knight has been recognized for her work with awards and grants including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize, the Anonymous Was a Woman Award, Foundation For Contemporary Arts Grant, Rema Mann Hort Foundation Grant, Art Matters Grant, and an Artadia Award.

Performance
DOCUMENTS by Autumn Knight

DOCUMENTS centres uses dialogue, gesture and the voice of both the artist and the audience to uncover and critique structures of power. Troubling the division of labour between the performer and the audience divisions, DOCUMENTS involves a public reading of the documentation that serves to authenticate or legitimize citizenship. Central to this work is a filing cabinet that both holds the props required for the performance, while also serving as a portrait or trace of the artist. The interactive reading of the documents in the files addresses the embodied specificities of race, class, gender, sexuality to contest whether these categories accurately reflect the bodies they are meant to represent – while underlining how different audiences and relationships to power may influence this reading.

CREDITS
Curated and Presented by FADO Performance Art Centre
Conceived and Directed by Autumn Knight

Single Tickets: $25 | PURCHASE TICKETS
3-Show Progress Pass: $60 | PURCHASE PASS
Box Office: 416-538-0988

This year’s Progress, international festival of performance & ideas takes place between January 30–February 15, 2019. Progress is collectively curated by FADO Performance Art Centre, F-O-R-M, Native Earth Performing Arts, SummerWorks, The Power Plant, the red light district, The Theatre Centre, Uma Nota Culture and Why Not Theatre. Produced by SummerWorks in association with The Theatre Centre.

© Autumn Knight, DOCUMENTS, 2019. Photo Henry Chan.

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