Artist Talks with Marita Bullmann & Ignacio PĂ©rez PĂ©rez

FADO is pleased to welcome Marita Bullman (Germany) and Ignacio PĂ©rez PĂ©rez (Venezuela/Finland) to the International Visiting Artists series, along with Liina Kuittinen (Finland). This series seeks to bring exceptional artists from the global performance art scene to Toronto, to present a new work and give an artist talk about their own practices and the contemporary performance art ecologies of their home cities/countries.

In addition to presenting new solo performance works, both Marita Bullmann and Ignacio PĂ©rez PĂ©rez will engage audiences in talks about their individual practices.

Marita Bullman and Ignacio PĂ©rez PĂ©rez’s appearance in Toronto is in collaboration with VIVA! Art Action, one of FADO’s enduring partners. FADO and VIVA! have partnered several times [Tomasz Szrama (Poland) and Macarena Perich Rosas (ChilĂ©), 2013; Victoria Gray (UK) and Dorothea Rust (Switzerland), 2015] over the years to share the presentation of international artists to both platforms in order to bring exceptional artists and their work to audiences in both cities; in addition to giving visiting artists the unique opportunity of engaging with performance communities in both Toronto and MontrĂ©al.

© Marita Bullman, untitled (another small matter), 2017. Photo by Rebekah Dahlia.

Artist
Marita Bullmann

© Marita Bullmanm, untitled (crossings), 2019. Photo Svetlana Lopato.

Germany
www.maritabullmann.de

Marita Bullmann lives and works in Essen, Germany. She is a performance, installation and photographic artist. She studied photography at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen and performance art at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem with Adina Bar-On. She graduated with distinction in 2011. Since 2006 Marita Bullmann has shown her artistic works throughout Europe, Israel, Russia, Singapore, Thailand, USA, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Bangladesh, Macau, the Philippines and China. Together with Boris Nieslony (Black Market International) and other artists* she founded PAErsche in 2011, an action laboratory that focuses on encounter and networking as a gift and cooperation. Since 2013 she has been the organizer of the performance art platform INTERVAL.

Performance
Performances by Marita Bullmann, Liina Kuittinen, Ignacio PĂ©rez PĂ©rez

Marita Bullmann, Liina Kuittinen and Ignacio PĂ©rez PĂ©rez’s appearances in Toronto are in collaboration with VIVA! Art Action, one of FADO’s enduring partners. FADO and VIVA! have partnered several times over the years [Tomasz Szrama (Poland) and Macarena Perich Rosas (ChilĂ©), 2013; Victoria Gray (UK) and Dorothea Rust (Switzerland), 2015] to share the presentation of international artists to both platforms in order to bring exceptional artists and their work to audiences in both cities; in addition to giving visiting artists the unique opportunity of engaging with performance communities in both Toronto and Montreal.

Marita Bullmann’s (Germany) works are engagements with everyday objects: familiar materials, actions, spaces and places. In her performances, she seeks a direct encounter between body and space. Her working method can be understood as a temporally ephemeral, site- and situation-specific process. With her actions she creates her own realities and scenarios, which strengthen the awareness for object, material, body and space. Visual, temporal, haptic or acoustic elements determine the effect and perception of her performance. The way she creates abstract interpretations allows us to perceive and observe the things around us in a new way. The interpretation takes place through experience. The objects and materials she uses are by no means neutral, but connect with our sensual and emotional world of experience. Bullmann’s intention is to influence the usual mechanisms of seeing and perceiving far away from cultural imprints and to create a new ‘space’ that lets us become aware of the act of seeing. She combines the constructed experiences with a search for images and actions that make the phenomena of curiosity and peculiarity visible.

Liina Kuittinen (Finland): I am on my four. I am next to the ground. I see the surface from very close distance, the small particles and the space between them. I have to move my whole body closer to the object if I want to see it more clearly. I can not take the object in my hand and bring it closer to my eye. As an artist I am on my four and my hands are not swinging freely. I am eating ice-cream while writing this text. I am eating ice-cream for real, not just writing about it. I am eating it and it gives me great pleasure. Ice-cream goes through my digestion and my body knows how to turn the sugar into energy and to use the proteins and to get rid of the leftovers. Digestion is process that involves the body with other processes, one point in the circle of matter. Performance operates on the same plain with digestion. Performance and process of digesting are equally real. They are meeting points for material flows, actual events transforming material into other.

Ignacio PĂ©rez PĂ©rez (Venezuela / Finland) is a visual nomad. His work explores phenomenal reality as a journey, like the poet Mosche Benarrosch wrote: “the longest journey / is arriving / at the place / where you are.” He creates experiences of ritualistic playfulness and worldly contemplation to observe and encounter otherness and its permanent state of transformation in the realm of everyday life. His practice crosses diverse fields as performance art, walking, street photography and networking. “We are together in this. Now or never. Now or never. Now or never.”

Initiated by Patrick Lacasse and Alexis Bellavance, VIVA! Art Action was founded in 2006 by six artist-run centres from Greater Montreal to support the production of events dedicated to the presentation and advancement of action art practices and knowledge. The organization’s energies are primarily focused on VIVA! Art Action, an international biennial whose sixth edition took place in October 2017. Currently the fruit of a partnership with nine artist-centred organizations, the festival provides the public with an accessible and convivial context in which to encounter performance art in its most striking and avant-garde forms.

© Marita Bullmann, 2019. Photo Henry Chan.

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