Tag: Joanne Bristol

Canada

An artist and writer, Joanne Bristol has presented installations, performances and video work across North America for the past 15 years. Current projects include bentaerial.net, a work for the web about technology, obsolescence and invention; and the Institute for Feline & Human Interaction, a matrix for ongoing projects in inter-species communication and cohabitation. In the fall of 2009, Joanne starts a practice-based PhD at the Bartlett School of Architecture (London, UK). Her thesis, titled Performance Spaces for Domestic Animals, combines research in spatial culture with the emergent field of animal studies.

Magpie by Tomas Jonsson
1:00pm–10:00pm @ 3072 Dundas Street West

Magpie builds on a person engagement with a variety store that has been a long time fixture in the Junction District of Toronto, which is increasingly precarious as a result of the rapidly altering the retail identity of the street. Creating a dynamic that resisted the usual flows of investment, speculation (eviction/gentrification) this performance installation piece is an ongoing adjunct redundant economy. By selecting, sorting and taking advice from the seller the collection of items will be built to there after offered them on the streets to the passers-by for exchange. In place of monetary gain, other forms of exchange are favoured. The objects will function more or less as token opportunities for discussion about the economic and material transformations in the neighbourhood / city, the role and ritual of corner store shopping, and the determination of value and exchange.

Calentura by John G. Boehme
8:00pm @ Interaccess

Calentura (first in the series) intends to investigate autobiographical escapist narratives of adolescent disenfranchisement projected through direct akshun.

My Winnipeg Can Be Yours… by Joanne Bristol
8:00pm @ Interaccess

In this twenty-minute slide-lecture performance I will describe the advantages of living in Canada’s low-budget cultural capital. This performance is especially designed for Torontonians who might like to experience the joys of living an in what is arguably North America’s most affordable city… 

Association for Imaginary Architecture by Joanne Bristol
1:00pm–4:00pm @ Interaccess

This performance involves architectural design and touch. I am interested in investigating relationships between our physical experiences of the built world and how we imagine and internalize those spatial experiences. The performance involves a one-on-one exchange between the audience and myself: I will ask audience members to verbally describe an architectural space. It could be a space from memory, a dream, or any kind of space in the built world that is of significance to them. As the space is described, I will draw a ‘plan’ of it on the speaker’s clothed back with my hands. Sessions will last no longer than five minutes. 

Nut your way out! by Rodolphe-Yves Lapointe
8:00pm @ Interaccess

The intensive use of the spoken word, nonverbal languages and the ingenuous manipulation of props is what typically characterises Lapointe’s Performance Art work (“textactions”, in his own words.) But, the thematic of ‘escapism’ induced a restrained use of expressive means and the Quebec-based artist radically reduces his display of objects to a plain hemp rope, and the flow of words to only two, “Pull it!” In Nut your way out!, as he leads the public through productive time-killer activities (knot-tying), social games (tug-of-war) and skills tests (rescue techniques) until he reaches the “highest stage” of escapism. The end of the performance virtually lies in the spectator’s hand.

My First Witch Piece by claude wittmann
8:00pm @ Interaccess

Today, my first witch piece exists as an idea that has to do with my body and with escapist acts, which I see as impulses to avoid or to transform a certain system of beliefs. I am fascinated by myths about 15th century witches, and I allow myself to ossilate between believing and not believing that they had unusual abilities, such as “flying” or temporarily depriving men of their male organs. I wonder what kind of consciousness shift I would need in order to commit to their philosophical view of the world, and to see myself become one of them. What are my embodied psychological walls? Doubt? Fear? Judgment? My relationship with death? My goal with this work is to take my audience on a journey that makes visible our resistance to a shift of consciousness.