Tagny Duff is an artist, curator, producer, writer and researcher. She holds a PhD from the Humanities Program at Concordia University. Her background is in media art with a focus on video, performance, biological art, net art, social sculpture and installation. Her research/creation interests focus on visual culture, viral media, interdisciplinarity, art/sci production and collaboration, post-studio art practice, and the relation between art, science and technology. Topics of interest include surveillance and biopolitics; queer(ing) culture and temporality; posthumanisms and changing perceptions of bodies; waste creation and ecology; scale, duration and spacetime; performance, liveness and documentation.
Recent published texts include, FFWD, RWND and Play: Performance art, video, and feminisms in Vancouver, published in Caught in the Act: an anthology of performance art by Canadian Women (co-edited by Tanya Mars and Johanna Householder, YYZ Books); and an essay entitled Codpieces: Phallic Paraphernalia Revisited published in From Ironic to Iconic: The Performance Works of Tanya Mars (2008), a book in FADO Performance Art’s Canadian Performance Art Legends series (edited by Paul Couillard). Duff’s installations, web based and networked projects, offsite performance and video works have been presented in artist-run centres, performance and media art festivals, and universities across Canada, the United States, Cuba, Costa Rica, Germany and Finland.
FADO is pleased to present << Public Web >>, a new performance project by Tagny Duff, as part of the Public Spaces / Private Places series.
<< Public Web >> is a performance provocation and interactive audio tour that places the audience in the role of performer and explorer. Wearing portable headphones and guided by the transmitted voice of the artist, participants will tour various destinations in the downtown core. A sculptural apparatus will connect a group of up to ten participants together for an intimate journey exploring various physical and virtual entry points into the space between the public and private.
<< Public Web >> is an interactive tour based on the model of constructive hypertext, offering the possibility for the audience/participant to create, change and recover particular encounters with the developing body of knowledge. Participants are given the opportunity to navigate through the city landscape while co-authoring a performance experience.
Wearing headsets with mics, individuals in the tour group communicate via a single-channel radio transmitter. The tour group is held together by an apparatus consisting of nylon straps and plastic snaps allowing for participants to detach from the group at any moment, if they so choose. Performative gestures and conversations are undertaken by the group that in turn prompt the tour to navigate through one site to the next, resulting in a unique narrative/experience for every tour.
The artist’s voice offers the participants a variety of destination points and actions to be selected by the tour group. The artist follows the group unseen, wearing camouflaged radio surveillance gear. Ultimately, the tension between the artist’s ability to remote control the tour and the group’s decision-making ability (or inability) exposes the subtle complexities and agencies of influence inherent in the notions of “navigation,” “consensus” and “interactivity.”
Tagny Duff writes of the project:
“<< Public Web >> is an interactive tour that navigates through downtown Toronto. The performance tour is designed as a constructive hypertext model, offering the possibility for the audience/participant to create, change and recover particular encounters with a developing body of knowledge. In << Public Web >> participants are given the opportunity to navigate through the city landscape while co-authoring a performance experience. This performance questions both the limitations and possibilities of “interactive” navigation in the physical realm. Some other questions raised are: is consensus an effective model of decision making when groups are presented with multiple “options” for action? how is our experience and perception of the city and the body changed by utilizing a constructive model of navigation? and finally, how does the apparatus affect and transform the behaviour of the individual, the group and the incidental audience?”
Thanks to Jen Small, Paul Couillard, FADO, Tim and Peter, The Scadding Community Cafe, 7a*11d, Samantha and Elyps, volunteers and participants.
Public Spaces / Private Places was a 3-year long international performance art series featuring 22 projects, created by 26 artists, from Canada, the US, Europe and Asia. The series explored the elements that turn neutral ‘space’ into meaningful ‘place’ through performances that examined the degrees of intimacy, connection and interaction that mark the dividing line between public and private. The series was particularly focused on performances created for intimate audiences. Some projects featured site-specific or installational environments that invited participants into a sensory or experiential journey. Others were process-oriented, involving public intervention, intimate gestures, or actions that were, by their nature, nearly invisible. Above all, the series explored the points where identity and geography intersect to generate meaning.
2002–2003 Walking and Getting Rid of Something by Kirsten Forkert Promenades by Sylvie Cotton The Rootless Man by Iwan Wijono Disposition by Adina Bar-On
2001–2002 Talking to my Horse by Archer Pechawis A Gathering for Her by Reona Brass Mettachine (Sequence 1) by Louise McKissick Feu de Joie by Randy & Berenicci Open Surgery by Oreet Ashery & Svar Simpson Remembrance Day by Johanna Householder Disclosure by Undo Meridian by Marilyn Arsem One Stitch in Time by Devora Newmark
2000–2001 The Addmore Session by Istvan Kantor spoken house by Otiose Public Web by Tagny Duff Numb/Hum: A Subterranean Metropolitan Opera by Christine Carson Between Us by Jerzy Onuch Ethel: Bloodline by Louise Liliefeldt where do I go from here? by Stefanie Marshall Urban Disco Trailer by Jinhan Ko Evanescent Rumour by Tony Romano
The Public Spaces / Private Places series presented 22 performance projects between 2000–2003, and was curated by Paul Couillard.
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.