LAB #1: We Could Break Performance A podcast by Vanessa Godden and James Knott
We Could Break Performance is a podcast hosted by artists Vanessa Godden and James Knott investigating the question: âHow do we evaluate the substance of tropes enacted in performance art?â
Each episode of will We Could Break Performance will feature a local performance artist and ourselves in conversation, to help us tackle our dilemma and provide perspective on the values of performance art tropes that we may share or disagree on. Does performance go harder if the performer gets harmed? Or is that negligence in disguise. Is endurance awe-worthy? Or is it sometimes used to unpoetic ends? Does nudity really bare all? Perhaps by the end this seriesâ run, we could break performance.
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 waysâfrom 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, âevent scoresâ 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.
PROGRAM May 12, 2023 @ 7:00pm: James Knott, Tanya Mars May 13, 2023 @ 7:00pm: Keith Cole, Laura Paolini May 18, 2023 @ 7:00pm: Paul Couillard, Holly Timpener May 19, 2023 @ 7:00pm: Mikiki, SA Smythe May 20, 2023 @ 7:00pm: Rita Camacho Lomeli, Abedar Kamgari
James Knott is an emerging, Toronto-based artist. Their performance-based practice employs tactics of self-mythologizing as a means to bridge personal narratives into communal ones. Combining theatre, video, and audio their work places an emphasis on movement/gesture to create immersive and emotionally resonant experiences, exploring themes of queer identity, archetypes of desire, and the commodification of the femme body.
Just as a performance artist uses their body as their medium, this is a fragrance composed entirely of the orange tree: fruit, leaves, bark, roots, and flowers. Artist Orange performs itself.
