Artist
Michelle Lacombe

© Michelle Lacombe, 2022. Photo Henry Chan.

Canada

Michelle Lacombe lives and works in Montréal. Since obtaining her BFA from Concordia University in 2006 she has developed a unique body-based practice that is located at the intersection of visual arts and performance. Her work has been shown in Canada, the USA, and Europe in the context of performance events, exhibitions, and colloquiums. She is the recipient of the 2015 Bourse Plein Sud and exhibited her work in the 2017 edition of Art Encounters Contemporary Art Biennial.

Her practice as an artist is paralleled by a commitment to supporting action art and other undisciplined practices. She is currently the director of VIVA! Art Action.

Artist
Henry Adam Svec

Canada
www.henryadamsvec.ca

Henry Adam Svec is a songwriter, actor, and folklorist. His interdisciplinary work has also spanned performance, music, theatre, criticism, and game design. He was raised on a cherry farm near Blenheim, Ontario, and has lived in New Brunswick and Mississippi. He has traveled extensively across Canada and the United States on his many song-catching expeditions, trips on which he has documented authentic folk music and rituals. From 2006-2008 he was the resident folklorist at The National Archives of Canada; it was while working in Ottawa that he famously discovered The CFL Sessions, songs written and recorded by Canadian football players in the 1970s. He has also recorded music from the other side of the microphone, in the bands Peter Mansbridge and the CBCs and The Boy from ET. He is the author of American Folk Music as Tactical Media, a scholarly monograph, and Life Is Like Canadian Football and Other Authentic Folk Songs, a novel. He currently teaches at the University of Waterloo.

Artist
Joshua Schwebel

Canada
https://joshuaschwebel.com

Is it still legitimate to question forms such as artists’ bios that contextualize illegitimate actions within a constellation of reputable organizations, international affiliations and other legitimized attempts to escape? Inappropriate entries such as this one invite overlooking, dismissive glances, but does one really care that the artist’s work has been shown or not shown elsewhere? There is text entered under the heading of bio, which provides information that is relevant or irrelevant to the career of the artist and/or the reader’s interest in said career. More useful yet would be a list of influences for the project. This network would show that I, the artist, have no original ideas, and could provide a list of contacts/connections that inform but support the singularity of the work in response to its particular site, time and coincidental trajectory.

Artist
Guillaume Adjutor Provost

Canada
www.guillaumeadjutorprovost.com

Guillaume Adjutor Provost is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher and educator who experiments with forms of exhibition, collections, text, and curation. His artistic practice is motivated by a desire to update what has long existed on the periphery of dominant historical discourses: class consciousness, counter-culture, vernacular imagery – notably folklore and Quebec applied arts – and experiences of queerness. Guillaume Adjutor sees creation as a tool for ideation and projection; creating works – material or immaterial – reminds us of the humanist ideal of a life marked by experimentation, freedom, and critical thinking.

Recipient of grants from the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du QuĂ©bec, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Claudine and Stephen Bronfman scholarship, as well as a finalist for the Pierre-Ayot prize of the city of Montreal in 2016 and in 2019, the projects of Guillaume Adjutor Provost have been presented in individual and group exhibitions, notably at the MusĂ©e d’art contemporain de MontrĂ©al (2020/2021), at CaravansĂ©rail, Rimouski (2019), at the Fonderie Darling, Montreal (2019), at the Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, Montreal (2019/2018), at Bikini, Lyon (2018), at Diagonale, Montreal (2017), at Bolit Center Art Contemporani, Girona, Catalunya (2017), at Center Clark, Montreal (2016), at Galerie de la rue des Étables, Bordeaux (2015), at the Christoph Merian Foundation, Basel, Switzerland (2015). at Ve.Sch, Vienna, Austria (2014), at the Couvent des RĂ©collets, Paris (2012).

Artist
Julia Mensink

Canada

Julia Mensink is an emerging artist who lives in Toronto and works as a high school English and art teacher. Her artwork includes sculpture, collaborative performance, sound/musical installation and other mixed media works that explore memory and its muddy parts, loss, the archaeology of language, lies and the determination of truth. She is currently interested in the space we give ourselves – in all its forms – cosmogony, pecan pie, zines, synthesizers, typewriters, your garbage and ugly art.

Artist
Corina Kennedy

b. 1984, Canada

Corina Kennedy lives and works in Montréal. She studied Fine Arts at Dawson College and received her BFA from Concordia University in 2007 with a major in Studio Arts and a minor in Art History. The same year she co-founded Room and Board Gallery, an artist-run centre showcasing the work of emerging artists for which she curated a year’s programming. She has exhibited in group shows at the Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery, Art Mur and La Centrale, and in the spring of 2009 her work was included in the Montréal Biennale.

Artist
Stacey Ho

Canada

Stacey Ho dabbles in art-making, art-curating, art-writing, and art-participating, focusing on sound, photography, performance, and printed matter. The research and documentation of written and oral narratives are an integral part of her work. Holding a BFA from NSCAD University, she has recently performed in events through Montreal’s Nuit Blanche and the FADO Performance Art Centre, as well as exhibited with the Eyelevel Gallery and the MacLaren Art Centre.

Artist
Sophie Castonguay

Canada
www.sophiecastonguay.ca

Sophie Castonguay studies the subjectivation of gazes and cultural conditioning. She creates devices using the voice of the artist as an outside voice for the piece. Using narrative modes she attempts to create interference in the reception of the work and forces the spectator to question their position. Her work has been shown in Europe (Paris, Cologne, Basel) and in Quebec (L’œil de Poisson, Axe NĂ©o-7, La Centrale, Dare-Dare, Dazibao). She holds a master’s degree in creation from UQĂ€M’s École des arts visuels et mĂ©diatiques (2007).

Artist
Lisa Visser

Lisa Visser, 2009. Photo Henry Chan.

Canada

August 31, 1983 – August 11, 2013

www.lisavisser.ca

Lisa Visser was a visual artist and curator based in Toronto, Canada. Visser’s work focused on sculpture, performance, textiles and printmaking. She held a Master’s of Art, Media and Design from OCAD University, and a BFA from Queens University.

Performance
Misinformed Informants curated by Lisa Visser

ARTISTS
Corina Kennedy
Guillaume Adjutor Provost
Henry Adam Svec
Joshua Schwebel (cancelled)
Julia Mensink
Michelle Lacombe
Sophie Castonguay
Stacey Ho

Misinformed Informants: Preface to the Performance
By Lisa Visser

Fragments, fleeting words, fights. You’re not listening to me

Misinformed Informants invites emerging artists to answer to the idea of miscommunication, misunderstanding, misplaced lines of agreement. Responses range from antiquated expressions of communication to suggestions, covert signals, mis-remembrance and the unapologetically false. Diverse interpretation converges into an overhead problem of mistrust. In trusting the informant (who may be misinformed) misinformation is communicated as true information. Truth and reality negate the very premise of this performance event. I begin to doubt the truth I communicated. And yet: I would never lie to you. But: this is about lies.

This curatorial premise acknowledges the complicated boundaries of curator-performer-audience relationships and pushes past them. These tensions are apparent in the work of Misinformed Informants, and can be as subtle as a gesture, as apparent as a role-reversal, or as confrontational as a slap in the face.    

Julia Mensink’s maybe it was nothing brings a tension to the audience/performer role by inviting her ex-boyfriend to be a participant. Both Julia and her ex tell a lecture-style story, based on their own experiences of the same event. Through the development of the story, what becomes clear is the absence of synchronicity in memories, the highlighting of the fuzzy parts and the uncomfortable inclusion of audience members into a breakup. The audience can choose between listening to Julia or her-ex’s side of the story: a literal choosing of sides. How terrible to be brought in to this. I would like us not to fight.

Joshua Schwebel’s piece deliberately misses the mark, or so it was meant to. Relying on the accuracy of Canada Post, Joshua mis-addressed his application to the call for submissions. However, a glitch delivered the package to the correct address in a sensible amount of time. In following Joshua’s instructions, I rejected the dossier. Joshua’s cheeky approach to the premise has yet to play itself out, but his deliberate determination to accepting and then rejecting causes me to question my role as curator. What have I done in creating these intentionally missed formations of informants?

In a similar farce, Henry Adam Svec plays with the role of the lecturer and delivers a performance rooted in fiction. Stompin’ Tom Connors never wrote The Lost Stompin’ Tom Song. Did he? Henry engages the audience in an experiment that questions and abuses the influence of authority and the audiences’ desire to be patient, active and honest listeners.

Sophie Castonguay toes the line between performer and director, creating a confusion that arises from the conditioned reverence of the audience for the performer and the space of performance art. You took the words right out of my mouth puts audience members under the direction of the performer. The audience wants to know what is happening. The performer is in control. Is this the performance? Sophie withholds the one thing the audience wants: clear communication about what will happen next. Going beyond the unexpected is also the under-expected, the under-performed and the under-communicated. 

Stacey Ho invites additional participants in her GROOP MEDITEHSHUNS, a three-part piece that draws attention to breathing, blinks and beats. Each performance will have the participants respond to one another’s bodies with a gesture, a sound, or a slap in the face. By drawing attention to the subtleties of the bodies’ motions, Stacey is over-communicating in a way that is delicate and absurd, respectful and brutal.  

The obsessive nature of this over-observant performance is present in Corina Kennedy’s cheer sir or madam, a durational performance in which letters are typed out on a typewriter, only to be immediately rendered unreadable. Letters of love, protest, and rejection are destroyed upon their completion. What remains are mounds of lonely letters of the alphabet, without a structure or form. Both antiquated forms of communication and obsession elevates these letters until they are objectified and displayed, nearly fetishized.  

Guillaume Adjutor Provost’s fetishization comes into play in a different form, a covert and suggestive gestural work. Guillaume claims a subjective reinterpretation of historical moments, changing meanings and communicating a new history. SLOW READERS, argument no.1 is based on a song meant to inspire spirituality. Through the performance, the song and it’s intent is broken down in subtle movements, hidden meanings and secrets only the performer knows. The secret is there. But we stopped understanding each other long before that. 

The performances in Misinformed Informants break down communication—reducing it to an elemental approach. What results is a step-by-step guide on how to mis-communicate and a deliberate delivery of misinformation. Each artist claims a unique response, playing with issues of trust, structure, defined roles, tensions and obsessions. These are common-place issues. Every moment we are faced with the authority of being an informant and of being the informed. Sweet lies for protection, small in nature, keep us from personal disaster. The authority of the speaker is consistently abused in a way that is difficult to place and even more difficult to accuse.

Your word against mine. But I know you’re lying. I would never lie to you.

Special thanks to Clive Robertson for the hook-ups, Johanna Householder for the coffee and advice, and Shannon Cochrane for a being a model of enthusiasm, dedicated support, and superior decision-making skills, to which I aspire. Also thanks to Sarah E.K. Smith for listening to all my lies. Big thanks to Matthew Williamson and all the staff at XPACE for their help and support.

Exhibition Hours
December 17–19: 12:00pm–8:00pm
Friday & Saturdays: 12:00pm–6:00pm

Series
Emerging Artists

Initiated in 2003 by Tanya Mars, FADO’s Emerging Artists series was created to provide a professional platform for emerging artists to develop and present a performance piece, working within a curatorial framework. FADO’s intention with this series was to nurture new work and ideas, provide direction and mentorship, and showcase the work of the city’s newest perspectives in performance art.

FADO’s Emerging Artists series was initiated in 2003 by Canada’s own performance art matriarch and educator Tanya Mars, who recognized that the best way to encourage young artists was by offering them a professional presentation opportunity. Her vision was one of mentorship, targeting an interesting mix of new and emerging artists, many of them former students, whom she commissioned to develop new works responding to a thematic context. The first event, curated by Mars, included ambient, conceptual and cabaret-style performance art gestures. This event later developed into FADO’s on-going Emerging Artists series which was designed to highlighting the work of Toronto-based emerging performance artists.

As the series developed, it became clear that this was an opportunity to nurture not only emerging performance artists, but also emerging curators, allowing FADO to encourage new curatorial voices in performance art, and introducing FADO to new communities of artists (and new artists to FADO). The series has continued to develop and change, later including the work of artists not just from Toronto, but regionally as well. This way, the series exposes local audiences to the range of performance work happening in the emerging performance scene across Canada.

The Emerging Artists series was a staple of FADO’s programming year from 2003 to 2014, and was always one of the most popular events in FADO’s performance art calendar.

2014: 11:45 P.M. | curated by Kate Barry
2013: .sight specific. | curated by Francisco-Fernando Granados
2011: Extra-Rational | curated by Gale Allen
2009: Misinformed Informants | curated by Lisa Visser
2008: Vivência Poética | curated by Erika DeFreitas
2007: Enter-gration | curated by Nahed Mansour
2005: Open Airway | curated by Elle McLaughlin
2005: Feats, might | curated by Alissa Firth-Eagland
2004: Home Repair by One Night Only
2004: Game City | curated by Craig Leonard
2003: Gestures | curated by Tanya Mars

In 2024 and 2025, the Emerging Artist series returns! Stay tuned for details.

Series Purple

An ode to FADO's history, Series Purple is composed of a collection of purple fragrance materials dating back to the Roman Empire. Dense, intense, and meandering, this fragrance tells us non-linear stories.

Top Notes

huckleberry, violet

Middle Notes

cassis, lilac, heliotrope

Base Notes

orris root, purple sage, labdanum