Artist
Kirsten Forkert

© Kirsten Forkert, Walking and Getting Rid of Something, 2003. Photo Miklos Legrady.

Canada

Kirsten Forkert is a performance artist, writer, and teacher at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. A graduate of the Fine Art Masters Program at Simon Fraser University, Forkert has produced a number of performances and installations across Canada, working solo or in collaboration with other artists, including Peter Conlin and John Dummett. Her work, which is often site-specific, explores our relationship to larger social and economic structures, especially as they get played out in urban space. She is also interested in exploring alternative conceptions of community. Audience participation is an important part of her work.

Performance
Walking and Getting Rid of Something by Kirsten Forkert

Kirsten Forkert’s Walking and Getting Rid of Something is the final performance project in FADO’s three year long Public Places / Private Spaces series. This performance considers the problems of living in a consumer culture, juxtaposing two situational questions: what to do with unwanted material goods; and how to work through a collaborative or community decision-making process.

SEEKING: participants for collaborative performance action on March 1, 2003.
You are invited to come along for a walk. Bring an object you would like to get rid of. 

This could be:
for personal reasons
because it’s broken or useless or just takes up space
for other reasons, you just don’t need it anymore
because it can be easy, or difficult, to give something up

We are going to meet on March 1 and go for a walk together. During this walk, we will each find a way to get rid of the object, without simply throwing it away or selling it. We will help each other to do this. We will all decide together on the directions the walk will take, depending on where people want to go and how well we know the area. The walk will be over once everyone has rid themselves of their objects.

This project developed out of a collaboration with Peter Conlin. It is inspired by questions of what defines a collective experience: Why did you come here? Why are we here together? What kinds of relationships and dialogues could develop out of a group of people brought together, absurdly, by what we don’t need? Could this be thought of as community, however brief? Is this utopian? Maybe.

Artist Talk with Kirsten Forkert and Sylvie Cotton
February 26, 2003 @ 8:00pm
WARC (Women’s Art Resource Centre), 122–401 Richmond Street West, Toronto

Series
Public Spaces / Private Places

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.

Top Notes

huckleberry, violet

Middle Notes

cassis, lilac, heliotrope

Base Notes

orris root, purple sage, labdanum