Year: 2013

FADO Performance Art Centre is pleased to be partnering with Art Nomade, International Meeting of Performance Art of Chicoutimi, to present four of the festival’s artists in Toronto. Founded in 2007, Art Nomade takes place once every two years in Saguenay, Québec. Art Nomade also serves as a networking platform that works with partner organizations to present invited artists in regional and provincial artist-run centres, galleries and museums.

PERFORMANCES
October 25 @ 8:00pm: Henri Louis Chalem, Danny Gaudreault
October 26 @ 8:00pm: Lynn Lu, Mathieu Bohet

ARTIST TALK
October 27 @ 3:00pm

Art Nomade is an international meeting of regional, provincial, and international performance artists, showcasing the breadth and depth of contemporary performance art. Founded in 2007 by performance artist and Artistic Director, Francis O’Shaughnessy, the Meeting is produced by the artist-run center Espace Virtuel. Art Nomade takes place every two years in Saguenay, Quebec. The meeting also serves as a networking platform that allows the artists to perform in different artist-run centers, galleries and museums both on the provincial and national levels. Art Nomade is spreading its wings this year by proposing a two-week program in Chicoutimi, doubling the one-week schedule of first two editions, and a networking platform program that will run throughout the month of October. Taking place at the magnificent patrimonial site, the Pulperie de Chicoutimi, the Meeting will present no less than twenty artists from four continents, which will represent the most important international presence that Art Nomade has ever programmed. The Meeting’s new deployment will also take place into the networking platform. Therefore, the 2013 edition proposes to double the number of partners and to perform in 15 to 20 different sites throughout Quebec and Canada.

The 3rd edition of Art Nomade takes place from October 1–31, 2013.

Partners for this edition of Art Nomade include La Pulperie (Chicoutimi), Langage Plus (Alma), Musée amérindien de Mashteuiatsh (Mashteuiatsh), Caravansérail (Rimouski), VIVA! Art Action (Montreal), Praxis Art Actuel (Sainte-Thérèse), Le Lieu (Québec), L’Oeil de Poisson (Québec), Folie/Culture (Quebec), Gallery 101 (Ottawa), AXENEO7 (Gatineau), Galerie SAW Gallery (Ottawa), and FADO Performance Art Centre (Toronto).

© Henri Louis Chalem, Untitled Performance, Art Nomade + FADO, 2013. Photo Henry Chan.

FADO Performance Art Centre presents new solo performance works by Tomasz Szrama (Poland/ Finland) and Macarena Perich Rosas (Chilé):

¿QUÉ SOY? by Macarena Rosas Perich
Enter Through the Emergency Exit by Tomasz Szrama

Macarena Perich Rosas lives and works in Punta Arenas. Located at the southern tip of Patagonia in the Magallanes and Antartica Chilena Region, Punta Arenas is, literally, situated at the end of the world, and Perich Rosas just might be the only performance artist from this part of the world. Macarena’s work is engaged with themes of territory, location and place, often employing materials unique to her region of the world, including skins and fur. Her presence is raw and intense, conjuring the animal world and a deep connection to geography and the uncharted environment. Since 2009, she has been organizing Confl!cta: Contemporary Art at the End of World. Confl!cta is a call to action, based on research and experimentation, providing education for audiences and residencies for performing artists, with a goal to work with structures, difficulties and tendencies that problematize the relationship between people and their environment. Through dialogue between the artist and the audience, the impact between the body and territory is acknowledged.

Tomasz Szrama’s practice shifts between multiple disciplines, including photography and video. Regardless of the medium, a dominate common thread in all of his work is the use of his own body and methods of performance art, such as action, gesture, and the physical manipulation of everyday materials. Szrama’s work is humourous and self-reflexive, often putting his own body into impossible and even ridiculous situations such as attempting to hang himself with helium balloons, covering his entire body in plaster cast making himself immobile and then waiting for hours in a busy tourist street, or attempting to board a plane with his own parachute. His work touches on themes of travel, trust, and the ever present potential for personal failure.

Tomasz Szrama and Macarena Perich Rosas’ appearances in Toronto are in partnership with VIVA! Art Action. Established in 2006, VIVA! Art Action is an international performance and live art festival presented once every two years in Montréal. The festival takes place in the of old bath St. Michel in Mile End, and with the participation of the network of artist-run centres in the city.

Macarena Perich Rosas’ appearance in Toronto is also in partnership with LIVE International Performance Art Biennale. Founded in 1999, LIVE has located Vancouver, Canada as an important and recognized node of local, national, and international performance art activity and critical study. 

© Macarena Perich Rosas, ¿QUÉ SOY?, 2013. Photo Henry Chan.
© Tomasz Szrama, Enter Through the Emergency Exit, 2013. Photo Henry Chan.

In September, FADO Performance Art Centre is pleased to present an instalment of our International Visiting Artists series. We welcome Macarena Perich Rosas from Chile; Tomasz Szrama from Poland, living in Finland; and Gustaf Broms from Sweden. Join us for a casual artist talk with these three amazing artists and hear them talk about their practices and the work they will be presenting during their time in Toronto.

Tomasz Szrama’s appearance in Toronto is in partnership with VIVA! Art Action (Montréal). Macarena Perich Rosas’ appearance in Toronto is in partnership with LIVE International Performance Art Biennale (Vancouver) and VIVA! Art Action.

LIVE International Performance Art Biennale was founded in 1999 and has located Vancouver, Canada as an important and recognized node of local, national, and international performance art activity and critical study.

Established in 2006, VIVA! Art Action is an international performance and live art festival presented once every two years in Montréal. The festival takes place in the of old bath St Michel in Mile End, and with the participation of the network of artist-run centres in the city.

© Tomasz Szrama, Enter Through the Emergency Exit, 2013. Photo Henry Chan.

The complicated relationship 
HuMans and the surroundings
/ natural / human / species /
must be resolved on a psychological level, 
before any real change can take place ?
do I live with identity restricted to the borders of my skin ?
or
do I live with the understanding that this is a construct of mind ?
as the water and air flows through my body
is it at all possible to identify with this vessel ?
The work I am planning for Toronto is my first attempt to
explore the possibilities to aid this change,
using the language of the body as tool.

Gustaf Broms

FADO Performance Art Centre presents a new durational performance work, Pentagram, by Gustaf Broms. From September 23-27, Broms will perform a series of street actions in public spaces throughout Toronto’s downtown core, each day from 9:00am to 5:00pm, mimicking a “typical” work day.

Gustaf Brom’s artistic practice is engaged with the exploration of the nature of consciousness, the dualistic concept of “i”, and the biological reality of the body, in an effort to understand the ‘being mind’ as a direct experience of ‘reality.’ In his practice, he started off working photography and installation, but two work in particular led him to work with the more formless processes of performance. In 1991, Broms burned all of his work, and in doing so realized that the intensity of the action and the remaining ash far outdid anything he had previously made. In 2005, he completed a series of works entitled 5 Faiths for a Brave New World in which he worked with objects that were physically too heavy for the body to move. These two experiences created a longing to explore the formless and led up to the project entitled A Walking Piece made with Trish Littler, in which the two artists spent 18 months walking across Eastern Europe. The result is considered a drawing.

Currently, Broms continues to work with a series of movements that look at concepts of inner/outer and movement/stillness, working with his own body as the tool for examining these processes. The constant question for Broms is, “why are the dancing atoms of this body not merging wit the dancing atoms surrounding it?”

Monday, September 23: Union Station pedestrian path, 65 Front Street West
Tuesday, September 24: Toronto-Dominion Centre, 66 Wellington Street West
Wednesday, September 25: Bay Street, near the old Toronto Stock Exchange
Thursday, September 26: Bay Street, south of Wellington Street
Friday, September 27: Queen’s Park Crescent, south of Bloor Street West

© Gustaf Broms, Pentagram, 2013. Photo Henry Chan.

Quatre re-traités* tiré de ‘”ils” “viennent” : Khédive et Mamelouk, en un seul, sur son patron (work-in progress) is a psychogeo(hörspiel) performance involving radio transmission, narration and action, with a simultaneous translation from French to English and/or Italian. Psychogeo(hörspiel) is a neologism created by combining ‘psychogeography’ meaning an approach to geography that emphasizes playfulness and drifting around urban environments; and the German word ‘hörspiel’ meaning radio-play or radio-drama.

This performance is part of a work-in-progress by Letourneau entitled, “ils” “viennent” : Khédive et Mamelouk, en un seul, sur son patron, which is a 3-hour site-specific text-based science-fiction conceptual performance that can be performed for any media.

This version includes the participation of Toronto performer claude wittmann, and on recorded media by Alice Lafontaine, Alexandre St-Onge, Marie Brassard and Jac Berrocal.

The audience is encouraged to bring portable radios or walkman radios so they can leave the gallery and move around the neighbourhood during the action, picking up snippets of the narrative remotely.

© Eric Létourneau, Quatre re-traités* tiré de ‘”ils” “viennent” : Khédive et Mamelouk, en un seul, sur son patron (work-in progress), 2013. Photo Jordan Tannahill.

Presented by Feminist Art Gallery (F.A.G.) and FADO Performance Art Centre

Conducted by Calgary-based artist Wednesday Lupypciw, QUEER NOISE SOLIDARITY (QNS) is a gigantic experimental noise event. One dozen drummers, each with their own kit, will occupy the space between the baseball field and the wooded area in Christie Pits Park where they raise the racket of their percussional superjam to the outer limits of the stratosphere over 3 different, intense sessions. The drummer’s sound vibrations expand into political/intentional realms, as well as psychic/aesthetic zones, like ripples in a pond.

Inspired by the roles that feminists play in developing community solidarity across many social justice trajectories including the LGBTQI2S, feminist, anti-racist and anti-poverty movements, QUEER NOISE SOLIDARITY also blows the roof off the traditionally dude-dominated art world of rock n’ roll.

QNS is a queer feminist project. QNS is proudly matronized by FADO Performance Art Centre.

THE DRUMMERS [* Not all the drummers identify as female]
Alaska B
Celina Carrol
Heidi Chan
Tyla Crowhurst-Smith
Karen Frostitution
Laura Hartley
Eleanor King
Samara Liu
Rita McKeough
Conny Nowé
Shavonne Tovah Somvong
Simone TB *

The Feminist Art Gallery (F.A.G.) is a response, a process, a site, a protest, an outcry, an exhibition, a performance, an economy, a conceptual framework, a place and an opportunity. We host we fund we advocate we support we claim. The Feminist Art Gallery is run by Allyson Mitchell and Deirdre Logue. F.A.G. does not depend on formal funding sources nor will it ever be tied to one government or corporate controlling purse string. Instead, F.A.G. has created a web of matronage whereby people contribute to a pool of resources insuring that artists will always be paid for exhibiting their work.

Thanks to Johnson Ngo and Heidi Cho for their energy gettin’ it done.

© Wednesday Lupypciw, QUEER NOISE SOLIDARITY, 2013. Photo Henry Chan.

FADO Performance Art Centre, Mercer Union Contemporary and PME-ART present:
The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information (Hospitality 5)

By Caroline Dubois, Claudia Fancello & Jacob Wren
Collaborators: Mathieu Chartrand, Sylvie Lachance & Radwan Ghazi Moumneh

A pile of records and a record player. For every record we have one story at the ready. For each performance we will play different records in a different order and tell the stories that go with them. This creation by PME-ART, part five of the HOSPITALITÉ-HOSPITALITY project series, explores the way music infiltrates our personal and social lives, affecting our ongoing understanding of love, work and how we think society should operate.

Focusing on artistic collaboration, the work of PME-ART is an ongoing process of questioning the world, of finding the courage to say things about the current predicament that are direct and complex, of interrogating the performance situation.

PME-ART’s past works include the installation HOSPITALITY 2: Gradually This Overview, and the performances HOSPITALITY 3: Individualism Was A Mistake and HOSPITALITY 1: The Title Is Constantly Changing, as well as Families Are Formed Through Copulation/La famille se crée en copulant, Le Génie des autres/Unrehearsed Beauty and En français comme en anglais, it’s easy to criticize. PME-ART’s performances have been presented over the last twelve years in thirty-five cities in Quebec, Canada, Europe, Japan and the United States.

In 2012, PME-ART was nominated for the Conseil des arts de Montréal’s Grand-Prix and was short-listed for the first 1% dedicated to performance art (Integration of Art in Artchitecture Program), commissioned by the new building 2-22 art actuel, in Montréal.

A PME-ART creation, in co-production with FFT-Düsseldorf. In collaboration with Studio 303 and the Norderzoon Festival-Groningen. PME-ART would like to thank The Conseil des arts de Montréal, The Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec & The Kunststiftung NRW (Germany).

© PME-ART, The DJ Who Gave Too Much Information, 2013. Photo Shannon Cochrane.

First up in the Golden Book series features Francesco Gagliardi’s performance Film: Rope, presented during Images Festival 2013, with an essay written by Andrew J. Paterson. Film: Rope explores the relationship between cinematic space and the space of live performance, and our ways of interpreting and recollecting the experience of movement within the film frame.

In Dangling that Rope, Andrew James Paterson writes, “In Film: Rope, Gagliardi has accentuated the simultaneous clash and fusion of different disciplines by using as source material a film that has been controversial at a number of different levels: Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948). Rope is something of an anomaly within the Hitchcock canon, as it is directed to appear as if consisting almost entirely of one continuous shot. In this respect it breaks the modernist dictum that film should not appear simply to be recorded theatre. The film eschews montage altogether.”

Golden Book 1: Film; Rope (2013)
Author: Andrew James Paterson
Editor: Chris Gehman
Design: Lisa Kiss
Publisher: FADO Performance Art Centre
Series: Golden Books, 1st
16 pages; 4.24 x 6 inches ; Print Book, English

Film: Rope is curated and produced by FADO Performance Art Centre, and presented in the context of 2013 Images Festival.

Created by Francesco Gagliardi
Performed by Cara Spooner, Francesco Gagliardi, Marcin Kedzior and Michael Caldwell

Film: Rope explores the relationship between cinematic space and the space of live performance, and our ways of interpreting and recollecting the experience of movement within the film frame.

In Dangling that Rope, Andrew James Paterson writes, “In Film: Rope, Gagliardi has accentuated the simultaneous clash and fusion of different disciplines by using as source material a film that has been controversial at a number of different levels: Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948). Rope is something of an anomaly within the Hitchcock canon, as it is directed to appear as if consisting almost entirely of one continuous shot. In this respect it breaks the modernist dictum that film should not appear simply to be recorded theatre. The film eschews montage altogether.”

Rope (1948) is considered one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most experimental films. Containing only four unmasked cuts, it was shot in single 10 minute takes (the length of a camera roll), tracking in an out of black surfaces (the back of a jacket or a piece of furniture) to create the illusion of even longer continuous shots. This virtuoso technique, which required the constant shifting of stage walls, furniture, and props to make way for the camera, was partly developed by the director in order to convey the illusion of theatrical real time and continuous space.

By paradoxically attempting to re-embody and transpose the movements and positions of the characters in the film in relation to a live audience, Film: Rope perversely exposes and explores the discontinuities and incongruities between cinema and live performance.

PERFORMANCES
April 12, 13, 14 @ 3:00pm
April 16 @ 7:00pm & 8:30pm

FADO ARTIST TALK
April 14 @ 4:30pm
Moderated by Andrew James Paterson

IMAGES ARTIST TALK
April 15 @ 4:00pm
Urban Space Gallery, 401 Richmond Street West
Performance and Media Art: Tools with Which to Deconstruct
With Francesco Gagliardi, Tanya Lukin Linklater and Duane Linklater

© Francesco Gagliardi, Film: Rope, 2013. Photo Henry Chan.

ARTISTS
Basil AlZeri
Golboo Amani
Cressida Kocienski
Maryam Taghavi

.sight.specific. proposes performance art as the staging of sight as site: observation as contour, terrain, and architecture for modes of aesthetic embodiment. The project consists of four commissioned live works in search for situated perspectives on the possibilities of performance as a contextual spatial practice. The works situate artists and audience by trading knowledge on the streets, tracing trans-planetary sight-lines, creating home and hospitality in real time through cyberspace, and staging variations on absurdity. The shapes of these relationships brings into focus questions of knowledge and memory, contact and distance, longing and belonging.

.site. specific is co-presented with Xpace Cultural Centre

PROGRAM

Friday and Saturday in March @ 2:00pm–6:00pm
The School of Bartered Knowledge by Golboo Amani

March 8 @ 8:00pm
Planetaria by Cressida Kocienski

March 15 @ 8:00pm
T.M.K.L Presents: beit Suad by Basil AlZeri
Co-presented by FUSE Magazine and Israeli Apartheid Week Toronto

March 16 & 17, 1:00pm
Workshop: T.M.K.L Presents: beit Suad by Basil AlZeri

March 22 @ 8:00pm
Variations on Absurdity by Maryam Taghavi

March 28 @ 7:00pm
Opening of the exhibition of sight.specific exhibition of residue/ephemera

March 30 @ 2:00pm
Panel Discussion: Viewing .sight.specific.
With Basil AlZeri, Golboo Amani, Cressida Kocienski, Maryam Taghavi
Moderated by Johanna Householder with Francisco-Fernando Granados

FADO Performance Art Centre is pleased to present an evening of new solo performance works from Alice De Visscher (Belgium) and Simla Civelek (Turkey / Toronto).

This event invites a local artist and an international artist to present new solo performance works created for the same space on the same evening. The artists and the audience come together to experience side by side the work of peers from different parts of the world. Each artist will present two short works in alternating sequence.

PROGRAM
Sesame Blanc by Alice De Visscher
Untitled One by Simla Civelek
Queue De Cheval II by Alice De Visscher
Untitled Two by Simla Civelek

© Alice De Visscher, Sesame Blanc, 2013. Photo Henry Chan.

FADO Performance Art Centre presents new solo performance works from Andrés Galeano (Spain) and Ieke Trinks (Netherlands):

iPerformance by Andrés Galeano
Sing, Sync, Sink by Ieke Trinks

The performance work of Andrés Galeano and Ieke Trinks share a similar methodology, and sometimes, a desired goal. Developed in situ, Galeano and Trinks create performances which combine everyday and found materials with instruction (scores), observation and live action, resulting in combinations and configurations that are both deeply philosophical and highly absurd.

While in Toronto, in addition to the solo performances listed above, the artists will also be presenting a collaborative performance in the context of the 34th Rhubarb Festival. FADO is pleased to be collaborating with The Rhubarb Festival for the third year in a row with this presentation.

Step by Step by Andrés Galeano and Ieke Trinks

Want to know how to do, well… just about anything? Ask google. In Step by Step, Andrés Galeano and Ieke Trinks spontaneously create a performance score in front of a live audience using seemingly random pieces of instructional information researched on the internet. Using the cut and paste function of their computers, instruction texts and how-to explanations are sorted and compiled into a dance choreography created for, and then performed by two non-dancers. The result is an unsettling and funny live performance that oscillates between conceptual demonstration and structured chaos.

February 27–March 3, 2015 @ 8:00pm (5 performances!)
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, 12 Alexander Street, Toronto

© Andrés Galeano, Ieke Trinks, Step by Step, Rhubarb Festival, 2013. Photo Henry Chan.

Performance Art is often defined as a non-objectual art practice that celebrates proudly its ephemeral character by creating situations that are experienced live. Despite this almost every performance art work can be characterized by the interaction of the artist’s body with objects in concrete time and space. This performance art workshop aims to focus on the different uses, potential interactions and properties regarding this very important performance element: the object. 

Some objects seem to gaze back at us and attract our attention and curiosity. The workshop will explore these “special” objects and our relation to them through the concepts of aura, fetish, relic, symbol, poetic, memories, body, narration, fiction, transformation, function, meaning, (im)materiality, (in)visibility, presence/absence etc. in order to create a performance based on a composition of actions involving objects. 

The workshop will provide each participant with cross-disciplinary artistic instruments (such as text, speech, sound, video, photography, painting, sculpture, installation) and with historical and contemporary examples of different strategies for dealing with objects (including Dadaism, Happenings, Fluxus, Body Art, Minimalism, Conceptual Art, Arte Povera, Visual Poetry, Concrete Music) in order to obtain the necessary theoretical and practical background for developing their own performances. 

Every participant is asked to bring three personal objects to work with during the workshop. These objects will be the starting point for the various tasks and discussions in the workshop. The objects could be personally very resonant, reminding of a specific time or place, or they can be mundane objects that are encountered on a daily basis. In either case they will be treated as propositions for potential actions and conceptual exploration. 

Day 1: Introduction of the participants and of the workshop topics through the presentation of the personal objects. Physical exercises to warm up the body and get confidence in the group and in the space. Exploration of the body as an object: Exercises to be present and neutral. 

Day 2: Some group tasks and improvisations interacting with objects: exploring the meaning, function, use and properties of specific objects. Research around the immateriality and invisibility of objects and our personal memories and stories related to them. Some historical and contemporary examples of art works that approach objects from an interesting point of view. Screening of videos and photos to illustrate each position and open discussion.

Day 3: Some individual tasks and improvisations based on interacting with objects. Preparation of a proposal for an own performance based on the three personal objects. Individual discussion of the proposal with the facilitator and group. 

Day 4: After a period of individual preparation. Workshop culminate in an informal public presentation of the performances. 

PARTICIPATION CRITERIA
The workshop is open to students and professional artists who have a background in contemporary art practice. Although this is a performance art workshop, applicants are welcome from any artistic background, as long as they have a desire to engage with a performative process and tasks. The workshop may be of particular relevance to visual artists or text and sound based artists who have an interest in more conceptual based processes. 

Performance Art Workshop: Interaction with Objects
Workshop: February 20–23, 2013
Performances: February 23, 2019 @ 3:00pm

This workshop is presented in association with The 34th Rhubarb Festival and coincides with the presentation of Step by Step, a performance by Andrés Galeano and Ieke Trinks, taking place at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre from February 23–March 3, 2013.

Interaction with Objects, 2013. Photo Shannon Cochrane.