Performance
The Ribbon Cutting Ceremony: A Travelling Circus by Cason Sharpe

Join writer and artist Cason Sharpe for four public ribbon-cutting ceremonies to commemorate the partial unveiling of Alexandra Park, a neighbourhood that’s been under re-construction for the past decade. Each ceremony will occur live in four different locations around Alexandra Park, bordered by Dundas Street West, Augusta Avenue, Queen Street West, and Cameron Street in Toronto. Combining the civic rituals of the walking tour and the ribbon-cutting ceremony, this series of performances turns a neighbourhood stroll into a travelling circus, a spectacle through which we may catch a glimpse of an ever-changing city. 

Four ceremonies. Four opportunities to witness. See you at the circus.

The Ribbon Cutting Ceremony: A Travelling Circus is part of FADO’s newest on-going series, Walk-and-Talk, put together by Francesco Gagliardi and Julian Higuerey NĂșñez.

CEREMONY 1: Saturday, September 21 at 3:00pm
Meet at the foot of Kensington Avenue (one block west of Spadina Avenue), by the construction hoarding on the south side of Dundas Street West.

CEREMONY 2: Saturday, September 21 at 7:00pm
Meet outside the basketball courts on the corner of Cameron Street and Paul Ln Gardens.

CEREMONY 3: Sunday, September 22 at 3:00pm
Meet outside 75 Augusta Square, in front of the rose bushes across the street from Randy Padmore Park.

CEREMONY 4: Sunday, September 22 at 7:00pm
Meet on the corner of Augusta Avenue and Grange Avenue (one block south of Dundas Street West), by the construction debris next to the dumpsters.

Performance
part of the ramble that remained in the end without by Mark So

part of the ramble that remained in the end without explores the nexus of inner and outer worlds through a dual writing/recording practice: daily list-form notebook writing and a tapeloop of recorded fragments, both accumulated from reading. The reading, writing, and recording aspects of the work are free to diverge and intersect across a kind of roving open privacy, producing a coherent field of potential performance or realization marked by characteristic modularity and switches between discrete modes of action. This work stems from So’s longstanding use of field recordings and performed readings, but with a deeper connection and contiguity with wherever he happens to be working–creating an evolving register not only of recorded and written surfaces, but his movements through a changing field.

part of the ramble that remained in the end without manifests in two parts. The first part takes place on-line throughout the month of November. The second part, an in-person live presentation in Toronto, will take place on December 7.

PART 1: November 2024 (on-line)
Throughout the month of November, So will post to FADO’s Instagram page with a selection of recordings, images, and writing as he goes about his work along walks in urban and suburban areas of greater Los Angeles.

Part 2: December 7 | 7:30pm start time, The Commons @ 401
Mark So’s part of the ramble that remained in the end without culminates in a unique presentation at FADO, featuring a performance of writing and recordings made along walks in Toronto as well as around Los Angeles during the month of November.

part of the ramble that remained in the end without is part of FADO’s newest on-going series, Walk-and-Talk, put together by Francesco Gagliardi and Julian Higuerey NĂșñez.

Series
Walk-and-Talk

Curated by Francesco Gagliardi and Julian Higuerey Nunez

There’s a storytelling technique, originated in procedural TV and later adopted by narrative films and videogames, in which two or more characters have an important conversation while walking between places. The technique is generally used as a way of conveying large volumes of information in a dynamic way, while introducing the audience to the relative placement of various locations and communicating a sense of urgency. As a narrative device, it effectively functions as a way of combining two distinct vectors of a narrative (the visual and the aural) into a more compact and efficient whole. 

This technique is referred to as Walk-and-Talk. 

While there isn’t anything analogous in the realm of performance art, walking (to and from the site of a performance; as a component of the performance itself; as a stage of the creative process) and talking (as part of the performance or around it, like in the “artist talk”) are, for artists and audiences alike, such commonplace components of the experience of making and watching performances, that they tend to be taken for granted and disappear from view.

In this new, ongoing series, FADO highlights and investigates these foundational gestures of the performance art vocabulary—walking, talking—through performances and discursive interventions that explore their intrinsic mutual imbrication. After all, isn’t the stroll of the flñneur always also the articulation of an argument? Aren’t the verbal excesses of every character in a classic novel who pines for an unattainable elsewhere just another way of getting there?


Walk-and-Talk Programming for Autumn 2024

September 21 & 22: The Ribbon Cutting Ceremony: A Travelling Circus by Cason Sharpe

November: part of the ramble that remained in the end without by Mark So (Instagram)

December 7: part of the ramble that remained in the end without by Mark So (in-person performance)

Performance
More Cleaning and Loving (It) … Again by Margaret Dragu

Canadian performance artists Margaret Dragu and Jordan King re-visit, re-kindle and renovate Dragu’s previous iterations of the performance cycle; Cleaning and Loving (It) (1999) and More Cleaning and Loving (It), which was produced by FADO (in collaboration with screening partner V Tape) in 2000.

Nearly 24 years after the first parade Margaret, along with Jordan and Alan Peng and Jeff Zhao (Peppercorn Imagine), have collaborated on the creation of a new performance and video document. More Cleaning and Loving (It) … Again is (once again) a reflection on the dirtiness of politics. 

Our foursome infiltrate Toronto’s 2023 Labour Day Parade for a covert cleanup operation; after which they take a tour down memory lane to walk ‘n’ talk about life and art. Margaret and Jordan recount the parade route of the 2000 performance, ruminating on the pre-gentrified city as they walk through present-day Toronto. This 2023 performance of More Cleaning and Loving (It) … Again was documented and edited by Peppercorn Imagine.

FADO’s REAL TO REEL series was screened as a complete program in Toronto on March 14, 2024. REAL TO REEL was made possible by funding from the Canada Council for the Arts Digital Strategies grant.

WATCH More Cleaning and Loving (It) … Again by margaret Dragu below in the documentation gallery.

Performance
OPEN FIRE | FEU OUVERT by Marie-Claude Gendron

“Well, our age is one of those fires whose unbearable burning will undoubtedly reduce many works to ashes! But for those that remain, their metal will be intact […] One can no doubt wish, and I wish it too, for a softer flame, a respite, a stopover conducive to daydreaming.”

Albert Camus, The Artist and His Time (lecture), 1957.

OPEN FIRE | FEU OUVERT is a furtive, political, symbolic and poetic work conceptualized by Marie-Claude Gendron. Involving the artist and many members of the MontrĂ©al action art community, the group will feed a fire—daily, stealthily and anonymously—keeping the fire burning continuously over the course of the last two weeks of January. Up to 40 members of the community of fire keepers will be culled on invitation by the artist. Those who choose to participate in the project will receive a detailed map of the route to find the exact location of the fire. 

OPEN FIRE | FEU OUVERT is an attempt to revive the invisible link that unites us through the practice of action art. Confined, for the most part, to the home, Marie-Claude Gendron’s wish is to propose an outside simple manoeuvre that involves the participation of artists in whatever way is possible given their respective means and motivation. The resolution is to foster being together, even in an abstract and active way in the imagination.

With the participation of fire-keepers: Alexis Bellavance, Laurence Beaudoin-Morin, Catherine Bodmer, Caroline Boileau, janick burn, Sylvie Cotton, Anne Florentiny, Pierre Gauvin, Léo Gaudreault, Stéphane Gilot, stvn Girard, Katherine-Josée Gervais, k.g. Guttman, Michelle Lacombe, Frédérique Laliberté, arkadi lavoie lachapelle, Julie-Isabelle Laurin, Helena Martin Franco, Diyar Mayil, Rhonda Meier, François Morelli, Florencia Sosa Rey, François Rioux, Jacqueline Van De Geer, Stephanie Nuckle.

The closing event for OPEN FIRE | FEU OUVERT is a co-presentation with VIVA! Art Action.

© Marie-Claude Gendron, OPEN FIRE | FEU OUVERT, 2022. Photo Manoushka Larouche.

Performance
single use salmon plogging by Ayumi Goto

Curated by FADO Performance Art Centre
Co-commissioned by FADO and The Toronto Biennial of Art

single use salmon plogging addresses the labour required for enacting upon human responsibilities for taking care of the environment. The performance meditates upon the all too human compulsion to purchase and then discard that which is easily accessible, mass-produced, and presumably replaceable. 

In this performance, Toronto audiences are introduced to Ayumi Goto’s performance-alter ego, geisha gyrl, who is part salmon and part human. A performative shadow of Adrian Stimson’s Buffalo Boy, geisha gyrl and her team of scavenger-collectors intervene with the Toronto Waterfront Marathon and run the forty-two kilometre route, collecting plastic and other debris along the way. single use salmon plogging culminates at the finish line of the marathon. 

This performance is dedicated to the Anishinaabe grandmother, activist and water walker, Josephine Mandamin, who circumnavigated the Great Lakes, covering over 17,000 kilometres to raise awareness about the pollution in the river and lake systems. The performance is also dedicated to David S. Buckel, an LGBTQ rights lawyer, environmental activist, and runner, who self-immolated in Brooklyn to protest humanity’s addiction to fossil fuels.

The route run by geisha gyrl and her team of scavenger-collectors—Deb Lim, Peter Morin and Soleil Launiere—references and at points overlays the site of the Toronto Biennial’s curatorial activities, located along the original boundaries of the so-called Toronto Purchase of 1805 that stretch from Ashbridges Bay to Etobicoke Creek. 

The performance begins at the starting line of the marathon and finishes when Ayumi and her team of scavenger-collectors cross the finish line. The performance will conclude in a final action a short distance away near Larry Sefton Park, which is located at the northeast corner of Nathan Philips Square.

SCHEDULE
Start time: 9:00am
Starting line: Queen Street West & University Avenue

End time: 2:30pm–3:30pm (approximate, time unknown)
Finish line: Queen Street West & Bay Street


Launching September 21, 2019, the Toronto Biennial of Art is a new international contemporary visual arts event as culturally connected and diverse as the city itself. For seventy-two days, Toronto and surrounding areas will be transformed by free exhibitions, talks, workshops and performances that reflect our local context while engaging with the most pressing issues of our time. The inaugural Biennial will present over 100 works by Canadian, Indigenous, and International artists installed at more than fifteen sites on or near Toronto’s waterfront.

© Ayumi Goto, Rinrigaku. Photo by Yuula Benivolski.

Performance
Performance by John Court

FADO Performance Art Centre is pleased to co-present a new in situ performance by John Court in the context of FAAS: À Qui?, Sudbury’s 6th Fair of Alternative Art taking place from October 24–26, 2018.

John Court’s performance practice is informed by the site he is performing in, often responding with continuous, repetitive actions that create a rhythm that runs parallel to that of the site. In many of his works, he refers to his own days at school, counting (or trying to), reading and drawing. In this site-specific action, Court utilized several wooden stair handrails sourced from around the school. Balancing them on his shoulder, the artist moves in repeating circles around the space, side-stepping the handrails scattered around the school room floor and marking a line on the chalkboard in an effort to keep track of each revolution.


Every two years since 2008, the Fair of Alternative Art in Sudbury (FAAS) has occupied and transformed a public space in the Nickel City’s downtown. Invited artists are challenged to complete new works over the course of the festival and according to each edition’s concept and theme. This year’s festival takes place in an empty school, St-Louis-de-Gonzague Elementary School.

INVITED ARTISTS: Martin Beauregard (MontrĂ©al), Ruth Belinga (Cameroon), Michel Bitimbhe (Cameroon), Mathieu Boucher CĂŽtĂ© (Moncton), John Court (Finland), Quill Christie-Peters (Canada), Raven Davis (Canada), John Deneuve (France), Marika Drolet-Ferguson (Moncton), Anyse Ducharme (Sturgeon Falls), Serge Olivier Fokoua (Cameroon), Patrick Harrop (Sudbury), JĂ©rĂŽme Havre (Toronto), Terrance Houle (Calgary), Camille LarivĂ©e (Canada), Salifou Lindou (Cameroon), GeneviĂšve MassĂ© (MontrĂ©al), Laurie McGauley (Sudbury), Joseph Muscat (Toronto), Yanie Porlier (Ottawa), Les Poulpes (Chicoutimi, MontrĂ©al and St-Émile-de-Suffolk), Rah (Toronto), Cora-Rae Silk (Sudbury), Cheryl Rondeau (Toronto), Laura Taler (Toronto), Camille Usher (Canada), Jean-Ambroise Vesac (Rouyn-Noranda), Clayton Windatt (Canada) and many others!

PRESENTING PARTNERS of FAAS: À Qui?
Aboriginal Curatorial Collective
AXENÉ07
BRAVO
Centre Bang
Dare-Dare
Debajehmujig Creation Centre
FADO Performance Art Centre
Gallery 101
Galerie Louise
Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario
Galerie Sans Nom
Imago
L’Écart lieu d’art actuel
Myths and Mirrors
Perte de signal
RIAP
Ruben Cohen
Voix visuelle

© John Court, FAAS, 2018. Photo Camille Tremblay Beaulieu.

Performance
MONOMYTHS Stage 5

MONOMYTHS is conceived and curated by Shannon Cochrane and Jess Dobkin.
The series is presented by FADO in the context of Progress.

MONOMYTHS invites a diverse collection of artists, scholars, and activists to revise Joseph Campbell’s conception of the hero’s journey through performance art, lectures, workshops, and other offerings. This new assemblage of non-linear un-narratives proposes a cultural, political and social feminist re-visioning of the world. The MONOMYTHS perception of the universal journey dispels the notion of the lone patriarchal figure on a conquest to vanquish his demons—both inner and outer—in consideration of community, collectivity, and collaboration.

MONOMYTHS Stage 5: Belly of the Whale
Thoroughbred by Jefferson Pinder
Performed with Ravyn/Jelani Ade-Lam Wngz, DaniĂšle Dennis, Jasmyn Fyffe, Chy Ryan Spain

In Jefferson Pinder’s Thoroughbred, four performers work themselves to exhaustion running on treadmills that are remote controlled by the artist who sits at a single controller. Pinder â€œskillfully exhumes a corpse of black captivity and subjugation of black bodies in America that started four hundred years ago and brings it into the foreground into our present day experience.” (Fo Wilson, The Evidence of Things Not Seen)

American artist Jefferson Pinder works in video, installation, and performance. His work explores the tangle of representations and misrepresentations, visual tropes, and myths—often referencing historical events and invoking cultural symbolism. His work portrays the black body both frenetically and through drudgery in order to convey relevant cultural experiences. 

SummerWorks, in partnership with The Theatre Centre and a roster of Toronto theatre and performance organizations/presenters and companies including Aluna TheatreDancemakers, FADO Performance Art Centre, SummerworksThe Theatre Centre and Volcano Theatre brings the world to Toronto with Progress, an international festival of performance and ideas from January 14–February 7, 2016.

© Jefferson Pinder, Thoroughbred, 2016. Photo Henry Chan.

Performance
Transmitting Trio A (1966) with Sara Wookey

Over the course of a five-day intensive workshop led by Sara Wookey—one of the few dancers authorized by Yvonne Rainer to “transmit” (to use Rainer’s own phrase) her works—a mixed group of dance and performance artists will learn several of Rainer’s dance works, focusing primarily on Trio A (1966). 

Consisting of a four-and-a-half minute sequence of movements that progress without repetition, phrasing, or emphasis and performed without musical accompaniment, Trio A (1966) is largely considered to be one of the originative works of the postmodern dance movement, as well as one of the most influential works in the canon of twentieth-century dance. Rainer’s interest in task-based movement, the ephemeral, the un-spectacular, and rethinking the performer-audience relationship are characteristic concerns of both contemporary dance artists and performance artists.

The starting point for this project is the shared conversation between dance and performance artists around the distinctions between repertoire and reenactment, in particular consideration of how these modes of archiving in live art relate to the increasing interest in presenting performance art and choreography in the museum.

The results of the project are a series of presentations of Trio A (and other works in the Rainer repertoire) in a variety of contexts: a dance studio, a gallery, and a museum; as an open rehearsal, a single iteration, and a rotating relay.

FADO’s Transmitting Trio A (1966) project overlaps with Yvonne Rainer’s visit to Toronto where she will deliver an artist talk (Saturday, March 21, 7:00pm) entitled Where’s the Passion? in the context of the AGO’s Radical Acts Unconference taking place on March 21. In addition, there are other activations to experience: Sara Wookey will be giving a lecture demonstration about Trio A and Gallery TPW will present a discursive series (March 20–28) curated by Jacob Korczynski and Kim Simon. Entitled, “
a container for mere possibilities that have not yet happened, a body in a state of becoming through time, or a structure for the expression of time as it moves both forwards and backwards at once,” the series responds to and thinks alongside the performances initiated by FADO, allowing the opportunity to see Rainer’s dance again within a constellation of conversations, readings and newly commissioned work.

CREDITS
Curated and presented by FADO Performance Art Centre
Directed by Sara Wookey, concieved by Yvonne Rainer
Performed by: Aleesa Cohene, Ame Henderson, Andrea Nann, Francesco Gagliardi, Jon McCurley, Margaret Dragu, Martin BĂ©langer, Mikiki, Robert Abubo, Shannon Cochrane, Simon Rabyniuk, Sara Wookey
Workshop partners: Dancemakers & Public Recordings
Performance venue partner: AGO
Gallery partner: Gallery TPW

PROGRAM & EVENTS

Lecture Demonstration: Dance is Hard to See: Capturing and Transmitting Movement through Language, Media and Muscle Memory, by Sara Wookey
March 19, 7:30pm @ Dancemakers, Distillery District, 15 Case Goods Lane

Performance: Trio A (1966) by Sara Wookey
March 24, 7:00pm @ Gallery TPW

Open rehearsals: Trio A (1966)
March 22, 4:00–5:00pm @ Dancemakers
March 25, 7:00-8:00pm @ AGO, 317 Dundas Street West
March 28, 12:00-5:00pm @ Gallery TPW, 170 St. Helens Avenue


THANK YOU. This project is possible because of the generous support of Dancemakers (Ben Kamino and Emi Forster) in making the workshop possible. Warm thanks to Public Recordings (Ame Henderson) in conceptualizing the project and helping to assemble the group. Thanks to the AGO (Kathleen McLean and Paola Poletto) for inviting this project into their activities. Thanks to the contribution of Gallery TPW as main host venue, and to curators Jacob Korczynski and Kim Simon for their keen thinking in organizing a series of discursive events in response to the project’s proposal.

Above: Trio A rehearsal with Yvonne Rainer. 2015. Photo by Henry Chan.
Below: Trio A dinner with Yvonne Rainer. 2015. Photo by Henry Chan.

Performance
Potential Fertility Rite by TallBlondLadies

FADO is pleased to present a new durational performance, Potential Fertility Rite, by TallBlondLadies. Established in 2003, TallBlondLadies is a collaborative performance project between Anna Berndtson (Sweden) and Irina Runge (Germany).

Two nearly identical tall blonde women, wearing white folklore blouses, grey leather shorts and white moon boots strapped into traditional wooden snowshoes manipulate large red exercise balls, enacting a traditional invocation rite by utilizing non-traditional gesture, action and costume. In this five-hour performance movement, TallBlondLadies repeat a ritualized synchronized dance using modern-day props, in time to the sound of snowshoes.

TBL inverts female stereotypes through the composition of absurd and unexpected performative gestures, often incorporating a range of accoutrement from high-end fashion to sports gear. Their works present diametrically opposed concepts; beauty and grace are juxtaposed and diminished through brute action and athleticism, tacitly disrupting and challenging gender-based categorizations.

—Artists Space, New York, 2007

TBL will also be performing at Hysteria Festival, an annual festival of women hosted by Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, on October 24, 2009.

© TallBlondLadies, Potential Fertility Rite, 2009. Photo Stephanie Sirant.

Performance
Tyranny of Bliss by Tanya Mars

FADO is proud to present Tyranny of Bliss by Tanya Mars. This major new performance by one of Canada’s most renowned performance artists occupies 14 different sites of continuous activity over 7-hours across the city of Toronto, starting at from Queen’s Park Queen’s Park legislative building, and stretching along University Avenue to Queen Street West.

Inspired by a variety of sources ranging from the 14th Century frescoes of Ambrogio Lorenzetti on the Effects of Good and Bad Government to Fellini’s Satyricon, Tanya Mars constructs a modern day social satire with a cast of 30 performers. Tyranny of Bliss looks at the current human condition from both utopian and dystopian perspectives. The piece offers a richly layered, series of spectacular and incongruous images juxtaposed against the outdoor urban landscape.

Loosely based on the pageant structure of the medieval Miracle/Mystery plays, Tyranny of Bliss is a 7-hour performance that uses limousines in lieu of wagons. Beginning from the Queen’s Park legislature, two limousines – one white and one black – will usher small groups of audience members past 14 “tableaux” locations featuring images based on the 7 heavenly virtues and the 7 deadly sins. The scenes will also be accessible to passersby, allowing audiences to create their own narrative by walking from site to site. At each location a different scene will unfold continuously throughout the day, using the languages of dance, theatre, sculpture, visual art and literature.

Tyranny of Bliss promises a thrilling and provocative meditation on city life, providing a unique experience of Toronto not to be missed.


Performance Locations

GREED, LOVE, WISDOM: Queen’s Park grounds, north of the Legislature

COURAGE: travelling south on University Avenue, from Queen’s Park to Queen Street West

HOPE, SLOTH, ENVY: Queen’s Park Legislative grounds

LUST: University Avenue & Gerrard Street

GLUTTONY: University Avenue & Dundas Street West

TOLERANCE University Avenue & Armoury Street

WRATH: University Avenue & Queen Street West

JUSTICE: travelling north along University Avenue, from Queen Street West to Queen’s Park

TRUTH: City Hall Speaker’s Corner, 100 Queen Street West

PRIDE: Pages Books & Magazines, 256 Queen Street West

Performance
Walking and Getting Rid of Something by Kirsten Forkert

Kirsten Forkert’s Walking and Getting Rid of Something is the final performance project in FADO’s three year long Public Places / Private Spaces series. This performance considers the problems of living in a consumer culture, juxtaposing two situational questions: what to do with unwanted material goods; and how to work through a collaborative or community decision-making process.

SEEKING: participants for collaborative performance action on March 1, 2003.
You are invited to come along for a walk. Bring an object you would like to get rid of. 

This could be:
for personal reasons
because it’s broken or useless or just takes up space
for other reasons, you just don’t need it anymore
because it can be easy, or difficult, to give something up

We are going to meet on March 1 and go for a walk together. During this walk, we will each find a way to get rid of the object, without simply throwing it away or selling it. We will help each other to do this. We will all decide together on the directions the walk will take, depending on where people want to go and how well we know the area. The walk will be over once everyone has rid themselves of their objects.

This project developed out of a collaboration with Peter Conlin. It is inspired by questions of what defines a collective experience: Why did you come here? Why are we here together? What kinds of relationships and dialogues could develop out of a group of people brought together, absurdly, by what we don’t need? Could this be thought of as community, however brief? Is this utopian? Maybe.

Artist Talk with Kirsten Forkert and Sylvie Cotton
February 26, 2003 @ 8:00pm
WARC (Women’s Art Resource Centre), 122–401 Richmond Street West, Toronto

Performance
Disposition by Adina Bar-On

FADO is pleased to present Israeli artist Adina Bar-On’s performance, Disposition. A walking tour, lasting between one and two hours, Disposition is presented as part of FADO’s Public Spaces / Private Places series.

In Disposition, Adina Bar-On reframes personal stories in the context of local surroundings and circumstances. This ambulatory performance work speaks to the concept of viewpoint, using local geography, history and culture to influence the shape of the artist’s shared journey with the audience. As Bar-On leads people on a walking tour, she presents situations, instructions and images that question the familiar, and bring to the forefront the variability of both physical and emotional points of view. Bar-On’s work challenges us to reconsider the factors that determine what is seen and not seen.

Although the performance is free, attendance will be limited, so advance reservation is recommended. This performance is an outdoor walking tour, so audience members are reminded to dress appropriately.

This project is part of an exhibition partnership between FADO and the Art Gallery of Hamilton. Under this partnership, a number of FADO performances will be presented in Hamilton as part of the Gallery’s Sevenseason program. Disposition will be performed at the AGH on September 27, 2002.

Adina Bar-On will also present an evening featuring a screening of recent video works, an artist talk, and her performance Home of Course. Adina explains this short, emotionally charged performance: “This work is my attempt to question what appears as the inevitability of destruction in the process of deconstruction.”

SCHEDULE

Artist Talk & Screening
October 2, 2002 @ 8:00pm
Implant, 58 Wade Avenue, Toronto

Disposition by Adina Bar-On
October 5 & 6, 2002 @ 2:00pm
275 Carlton Street, Toronto

Performance
<< Public Web >> by Tagny Duff

FADO is pleased to present << Public Web >>, a new performance project by Tagny Duff, as part of the Public Spaces / Private Places series.

<< Public Web >> is a performance provocation and interactive audio tour that places the audience in the role of performer and explorer. Wearing portable headphones and guided by the transmitted voice of the artist, participants will tour various destinations in the downtown core. A sculptural apparatus will connect a group of up to ten participants together for an intimate journey exploring various physical and virtual entry points into the space between the public and private.

<< Public Web >> is an interactive tour based on the model of constructive hypertext, offering the possibility for the audience/participant to create, change and recover particular encounters with the developing body of knowledge. Participants are given the opportunity to navigate through the city landscape while co-authoring a performance experience.

Wearing headsets with mics, individuals in the tour group communicate via a single-channel radio transmitter. The tour group is held together by an apparatus consisting of nylon straps and plastic snaps allowing for participants to detach from the group at any moment, if they so choose. Performative gestures and conversations are undertaken by the group that in turn prompt the tour to navigate through one site to the next, resulting in a unique narrative/experience for every tour.

The artist’s voice offers the participants a variety of destination points and actions to be selected by the tour group. The artist follows the group unseen, wearing camouflaged radio surveillance gear. Ultimately, the tension between the artist’s ability to remote control the tour and the group’s decision-making ability (or inability) exposes the subtle complexities and agencies of influence inherent in the notions of “navigation,” “consensus” and “interactivity.”

Tagny Duff writes of the project:

“<< Public Web >> is an interactive tour that navigates through downtown Toronto. The performance tour is designed as a constructive hypertext model, offering the possibility for the audience/participant to create, change and recover particular encounters with a developing body of knowledge. In << Public Web >> participants are given the opportunity to navigate through the city landscape while co-authoring a performance experience. This performance questions both the limitations and possibilities of “interactive” navigation in the physical realm. Some other questions raised are: is consensus an effective model of decision making when groups are presented with multiple “options” for action? how is our experience and perception of the city and the body changed by utilizing a constructive model of navigation? and finally, how does the apparatus affect and transform the behaviour of the individual, the group and the incidental audience?”

Thanks to Jen Small, Paul Couillard, FADO, Tim and Peter, The Scadding Community Cafe, 7a*11d, Samantha and Elyps, volunteers and participants.

Performance
where do I go from here? by Stefanie Marshall

“A deviser of territories, languages, works, the deject never stops demarcating his universe, whose fluid confines… constantly question his solidity and impel him to start afresh. A tireless builder, the deject is in short a ‘stray.’ He is on a journey during the night, the end of which keeps receding. …And the more he strays, the more he is saved.”
Power of Horror by Julia Kristeva

FADO is pleased to present where do I go from here?, a new performance by Stefanie Marshall, as part of the Public Spaces / Private Places series. where do I go from here? undertakes a form of artistic alchemy by bringing ritualized behaviour and obsessive gesture into the public realm.

For several hours on two separate days, Marshall will wheel an old 2-burner stove through the streets of downtown Toronto. Following her instinct, she will navigate the social and physical geography of the heart of the city, stopping frequently to engage more closely with her surroundings. This work is about carving out a public place of permission for the private poetry of the body and the imagination. In taking everyday objects and private actions into the street, Marshall holds a mirror up to the privacy of our emotions and inspires a different conscious awareness. Those who choose to enter Marshall’s world may find themselves taken deeper into their own senses, where half-forgotten memories can be reawakened.

Marshall writes: “If they had lips, my fingers would be my teeth, masticating, probing holes, moving, wrapping, marking days and cloth, rubbing, sliding, grabbing, squeezing, slapping—manifesting complex thought into repetitive patterns of action. They are my memory… allowing me to survive.”

August 21, 2000 from 2:00pm–5:00pm
The artist’s walk begins at the corner of Queen and Yonge streets, ending at Spadina Avenue and College Street.

August 26, 2000 from 12:00pm–3:00pm
The artist’s walk begins at the corner of Bloor and Yonge streets, ending in Kensington Market.

© Stefanie Marshall, where do I go from here?, 2000. Photo Paul Couillard.

Performance
Clock by Jennifer Nelson & Glen Redpath

FADO is pleased to announce Clock by Jennifer Nelson and Glen Redpath, the latest event in its twelve-month durational performance series, TIME TIME TIME.

Visit seats of government around the world and you will find towering clocks. Situated at the centre of public life, they mark the passing hours and give order to the day, fulfilling that most basic of human impulses—to know the time. In an unusual US-Canada collaboration, two performance artists will offer Toronto’s city hall a different kind of monumental timepiece—a “human clock.”

At sunrise, Jennifer Nelson will begin moving almost imperceptibly around the reflecting pool at Nathan Phillips Square, completing a single circle as the sun sets almost twelve hours later. Meanwhile, Glen Redpath will follow the same path at a run, covering the distance of several marathons over the course of the same twelve-hour day. Testing human limits of speed and endurance, these two artists will act like the hands of a clock, using their bodies to mark the time.

Nelson writes, “Time … appears in the space between seconds, when the strain of prolonged physical and mental concentration alters perceptions of what is slow or what is long.”

Nelson and Redpath began working together four years ago when both were at the San Francisco Art Institute. They continue to collaborate despite the geographical separation – distance fueling their interest in the possibility of a universal body. Both artists use duration in their performances as a way of allowing time to contribute its influence on their bodies.

Presented with travel support from the Manitoba Arts Council / Conseil des art du Manitoba.

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