Tag: Golden Book 5

Canada
www.daynarama.com

Dayna McLeod is a queer performance-based media artist. Her work often uses humour and capitalizes on exploiting the body’s social and material conditions. At the core of her work is a queer, aging, feminist, perimenopausal (for now!) body whether the audience wants to see or hear from it or not. She stages this aging body in often uncomfortable proximity to her audience, collapsing the space between them literally and figuratively to challenge their fears and desires about queer bodies marked female.

Dayna earned a PhD from the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture at Concordia University that combined studies in performance art, feminism, queer theory, age, and research-creation practices. Dayna’s dissertation research examined how over-40 feminist performance artists use the body (their own or bodies-for-hire) within their practices and work in relationship to mainstream mass culture. As part of this research, McLeod embarked on a one-year durational performance piece that investigated and lived the stereotypes of a ‘cougar,’ a woman over-40 who aggressively demonstrates her sexuality, by wearing nothing but animal print clothing, 24/7 (archived at: www.CougarThis.com).

Dayna’s work has been presented at OFFTA in Montréal, FADO Performance Art Centre in partnership with SummerWorks Performance Festival in Toronto, the Tang Teaching Museum in Saratoga Springs, the Abrons Art Center in NYC, Les Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois in Montreal, the Impakt Festival in Utrecht Netherlands, the Mardi Gras Festival in Darlinghurst Australia, MIX Brasil Festival Of Sexual Diversity in São Paulo Brazil, the Modern Art Museum in Warsaw Poland, the City of Women International Festival of Contemporary Arts in Ljubljana Slovenija, and Le Centre d’art contemporain in Paris. She is currently working with AI tools to explore human to non-human collaboration, embodiment, and performativity to examine issues of the uncanny, embodiment, representation, and authenticity.

© Dayna McLeod, Intimate Karaoke, Live at Uterine Concert Hall, 2018. Photo Henry Chan.

“Great acoustics, but shitty seating.”
“Honestly, WHY? Just WHY?”
“The faint sounds of ovarian partying.”

Curated by FADO Performance Art Centre and co-presented with SummerWorks

You are invited to sing your favourite karaoke songs in this performative installation that examines vulnerability through the site of my body. Wearing headphones that contain your voice and requested karaoke song, this mix is wired via fifty-foot cable into my vaginal canal, which acts as the stage for the audience of my uterus. Other listeners are invited to eavesdrop on your performance through the flesh of my body via stethoscope.

Intimate Karaoke, Live at Uterine Concert Hall transforms the site of the theatre into a social space where an awkward karaoke party minus the amplified music shares the intimacy of the artist’s body as it is offered up as the venue where dialogue around the cultural and political expectations of bodies marked female and a critique of medical surveillance, reproductive rights and the aging Queer female body collide.

Intimate Karaoke, Live at Uterine Concert Hall is a durational performance. Audience members are asked to purchase tickets to arrive for a one-time slot but are welcome to stay until the end of the night.

Stay as long as you want!
Sing your favourite karaoke song for Dayna McLeod’s uterus!
Live at Uterine Concert Hall!

CREDITS
Curated by FADO Performance Art Centre
Co-presented with SummerWorks
Conceived and Performed by Dayna McLeod
Technical Direction by Adrien Whan
Attendants: Rhainnon Collett, Theo Gallant, Cara Spooner, Athena Trinh

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THE GOLDEN BOOK
Pick up your copy of FADO’s ongoing pocket essay series, the Golden Book, at the performance. This time, the Golden Book has a blood-red cover in honour of Dayna’s performance. Essay entitled, From Specular to Speculative: Intimate Encounters @ Uterine Concert Hall by Alanna Thain contained within. Alanna is Director, Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies; Director, Moving Image Research Laboratory; and Associate Professor, Department of English at McGill University.

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This performance is part of the SummerWorks Presentations programming, offering you a snapshot of contemporary performance in 2018. A vital collection of theatre, dance, music, and live art works from across the country.

SummerWorks supports work that has a clear artistic vision and explores a specific theatrical aesthetic. It encourages risk, questions, and creative exploration while insisting on accessibility, integrity, and professionalism. This year’s eleven-day Festival (August 9-19, 2018) features over thirty unique projects as part of SummerWorks Presentations and SummerWorks Lab. New this year: we’re teaming up with an incredible group of arts organizations to bring you the SummerWorks Exchange, a new stream of the Festival that features artist workshops and professional development opportunities.

© Dayna McLeod, Uterine Concert Hall, Montréal, 2018. Photo Helen Simard.

Golden Book 5 has a blood red cover in honour of Dayna’s performance. Dayna McLeod’s Intimate Karaoke, Live at Uterine Concert Hall transforms the site of the theatre into a social space where an awkward karaoke party minus the amplified music shares the intimacy of the artist’s body as it is offered up as the venue where dialogue around the cultural and political expectations of bodies marked female and a critique of medical surveillance, reproductive rights and the aging Queer female body collide.

Essay entitled, From Specular to Speculative: Intimate Encounters @ Uterine Concert Hall by Alanna Thain contained within. Alanna is the Director, Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies; Director, Moving Image Research Laboratory; and Associate Professor, Department of English at McGill University.

Golden Book 5: Intimate Karaoke, Live at Uterine Concert Hall (2018) Dayna Mcleod
Author: Essay by Alanna Thain
Design: Lisa Kiss
Publisher: FADO Performance Art Centre
Series: Golden Books, 5th
16 pages; 1 photo (colour); 4.24 x 6 inches ; Print Book, English