Tag: Shawna Dempsey & Lorri Millan

A Performance Conversation with Jess Dobkin
Featuring the DEMPSEY AND MILLAN TALIXMXN

In 2018–2019, Jess Dobkin received a Chalmers Art Fellowship in support of her current on-going research project looking at the performance art archive—her own personal archive and the archives of notable organizations and artists in the USA, UK, Mexico, Hong Kong and Canada.

Jess Dobkin approaches the archive as both site and material to investigate the lifespan and spirit life of performance art. Building on her ongoing research in international performance archives, she interrogates the relationship between live performance and documentation to explore the dynamic ways that performance can exist before and beyond the live event.

This performance conversation, Conjuring the Archive, will invite the audience to create a DEMPSEY AND MILLAN TALIXMXN, an energetic archive of the performances and projects of Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan. On July 22, 2019 a fire destroyed a warehouse in Winnipeg that housed the studios of more than two dozen artists. Shawna and Lorri lost 30 years of artwork, costumes, ephemera, books, equipment and materials. This TALIXMXN is an honouring of Shawna and Lorri’s archive and an offering of archival magic.

© Jess Dobkin, Conjuring the Archive, 2019. Photo Henry Chan.

MONOMYTHS is conceived and curated by Shannon Cochrane and Jess Dobkin.
The series is presented by FADO in the context of Progress.

MONOMYTHS invites a diverse collection of artists, scholars, and activists to revise Joseph Campbell’s conception of the hero’s journey through performance art, lectures, workshops, and other offerings. This new assemblage of non-linear un-narratives proposes a cultural, political and social feminist re-visioning of the world. The MONOMYTHS perception of the universal journey dispels the notion of the lone patriarchal figure on a conquest to vanquish his demons—both inner and outer—in consideration of community, collectivity, and collaboration.

MONOMYTHS Stage 2: Refusal of the Call
What is Being Refused or Your Local Sky Tonight
By Shawna Dempsey & Lorri Millan

What is Being Refused or Your Local Sky Tonight is a new performance turn by Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan. Part planetarium show, part rumination on Alice in Wonderland, the nature of rabbits and heroes, Dempsey and Millan deliver an off-kilter guide to the stars tonight. Collaborators since 1989, Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan were catapulted into the international spotlight with their performance and film We’re Talking Vulva (1986/1990). Their humorous, feminist, and provocative works work has been exhibited in diverse venues as far ranging as women’s centres in Sri Lanka to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. To most, however, they are known simply as the Lesbian Rangers of Lesbian National Parks and Services.

This performance will be ASL interpreted by Sage Willow.

SummerWorks, in partnership with The Theatre Centre and a roster of Toronto theatre and performance organizations/presenters and companies including Aluna Theatre, Dancemakers, FADO Performance Art Centre, Summerworks, The Theatre Centre and Volcano Theatre brings the world to Toronto with Progress, an international festival of performance and ideas from January 14–February 7, 2016. 

© Shawna Dempsey & Lorri Millan, What is Being Refused or Your Local Sky Tonight, 2016. Photo Henry Chan.

Curated by Jim Drobnick and Paul Couillard

ARTISTS
Cheli Nighttraveller
Clara Ursitti
Helen Paris & Leslie Hill
Millie Chen & Evelyn Von Michalofski
Shawna Dempsey & Lorri Millan

reminiSCENT, is the third instalment in FADO’s performance series, Five Holes, which examines the significance of the body and the senses. 

WORKS INCLUDED IN THE SERIES:

Pull Up To The Bumper by Clara Ursitti
Street intervention: September 18, no set times
Exhibition and limo tour: September 20 @ 6:00-9:00pm
Karen Schreiber Gallery, 302-25 Morrow Avenue, Toronto

On The Scent by Helen Paris & Leslie Hill (with guest artist Lois Weaver)
September 19–21, please register to experience this performance
168 Simcoe Street, Toronto

Untitled by Cheli Nighttraveller
September 20 @ 12:00pm
Berczy Park, Front Street, Toronto

The Seven Scents by Millie Chen & Evelyn Von Michalofski
September 20–21 @ 12:00pm–4:00pm
Harbourfront Centre, 235 Queens Quay West, Toronto

Scentbar by Shawna Dempsey & Lorri Millan
September 20 @ 6:00pm
Karen Schreiber Gallery, 302-25 Morrow Avenue, Toronto

Co-sponsored by A Space and The Music Gallery

In Arborite Housedress, the pro/antagonist defends herself against racial and economic difference by clothing herself in the domestic architecture of the times: the house/dress is her shimmering, clean fortress and her prison. Throughout the piece, she reveals her fears (such as gravity, or the fear that “parts of my dangerously sagging self might end up in bad neighbourhoods”) and her fantasies (border town romances, getting down with dirt, and the elimination of her family, so she will have time to devote herself more fully to being a homemaker). The wearable sculpture/costume has been exhibited at many art galleries and has been purchased by The Winnipeg Art Gallery as part of their permanent collection.

“Have you ever noticed that if you wash the floor in the morning, by nightfall it looks just the same as before you started? That you can do all of the dishes, and in a matter of hours someone has gone and dirtied them again? That children are little grime magnets, picking up all manner of stubborn stains and bringing them home again? Well, I’ve been thinking. If I could get rid of my family, it would effectively cut my workload by 60%.”

Arborite Housedress is one performance from The Dress Series (1989–1996), a group of performances that explore the dress as the female ceremonial costume and icon of femininity. In these pieces, cloth is replaced by unlikely materials, creating juxtaposition, new meanings and upending expectations. All costumes fabricated by Dempsey and Millan.

For more information on this performance and the series, visit Dempsey and Millan’s website.

MONOMYTHS artist portrait, 2016. Photo by Henry Chan.

Canada
www.shawnadempseyandlorrimillan.net

Collaborators since 1989, Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan are among Canada’s best-known performance artists. They were catapulted into the international spotlight in their 20s with the performance and film We’re Talking Vulva. Since then, their live work and videos have been exhibited in diverse venues as far-ranging as women’s centres in Sri Lanka to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. This Winnipeg-based duo has created installations (such as Archaeology and You for the Royal Ontario Museum) and books (such as Bedtime Stories for the Edge of the World, Arbeiter Ring Press). To most, however, they are known simply as the Lesbian Rangers of Lesbian National Parks and Services. Their humourous, feminist and provocative works have been acclaimed as “one of the high-points of contemporary Canadian artistic production” (Border Crossings Magazine). Performance documentation and artifacts are held in the collections including the National Gallery of Canada, the Canadian History Museum, the DIA Centre and numerous university libraries across North America.