Tag: Gyrl Grip

USA

The Gyrl Grip is driven by the desire to reveal, and de-veil challenging issues that exist within postmodern life and society. Their goal is not to provide answers, but to expose the difficult questions hidden behind cultural taboos and media spectacle, and to provide a forum for dialogue (internal and external) through the performative act. The core members of the Grip are co-founders of the Portland, Oregon based 2 Gyrlz Performative Arts, Lisa Newman and Llewyn Máire (with their associated Avatars). 

Since forming in 1998, the Gyrl Grip has manifested over 25 public showings. Notable performances include: the Proud to Put Out text-based performance series hosted in Portland by 2 Gyrlz, participation in the 2002 Black Sun Festival in Washington State, Full Nelson 5 in Los Angels (2003), FluXconcert PDX (2003), and street performances throughout the Pacific Northwest. Boot Camp, which explores violence against transpeople through live action and media, was presented in Helsinki and Turku, Finland in 2004 as part of Studio Là-Bas’ Space Contentions festival, as well as in Victoria, BC, Segue was performed at Lewis & Clark College’s annual Gender Symposium in March of 2006.

ARTISTS
Gyrl Grip
Irene Loughlin
Jess Dobkin
Tejpal S. Ajji

Curated by Paul Couillard

FADO presents four performance environments dealing with the sense of taste in this final ‘gustatotry’ component of the Five Holes series.

Taste is perhaps the most ‘personal’ of all the senses. It is both primal—providing the impulses that drive consumption—and individualized: one person’s desire is another’s poison. While the word ‘taste’ is often associated with the concept of aesthetic discernment, Matters of Taste places its emphasis on a specific, visceral definition of taste: the perception of flavour and texture that takes place inside our mouths.

This series explores the implications of a sense that operates through the placement of foreign material inside one’s body. Matters of Taste is not concerned with the familiar social terrain of banquets and dinner parties so much as the links between physical sensation, unconscious/conscious drives, and our mouths as a point of contact with the external world. How does one orchestrate a performance for another’s mouth? What are the dynamics that seduce, persuade or convince others to put things in their mouths? What are we or aren’t we willing to put in our mouths? What intentions are bound up in the impulse to stimulate one’s taste buds? What does our sense of taste reveal about our internal desires and external projections?

PROGRAM INCLUDES

Kobe by Gyrl Grip
Liquid Skyline by Irene Loughlin
Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar by Jess Dobkin
The Oral Projects by Tejpal S. Ajji