tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37505226268099753872024-03-05T17:02:31.700-08:00Performance Art13 Kate Barrymz.katebarryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04924615214312685445noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750522626809975387.post-10111040222968300712015-06-30T06:41:00.004-07:002021-07-11T09:05:06.156-07:00Performance with Golden Egg by Kate Barry<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMcuAfocYMwzSUby84aNxhTBANNZhyWM4Px8VKwNNyXf03UelzWXDKNK5_oJHyGfsCr3LPNzEz_-A2UvAyStnzsUugNsT3KHIYFcPZT4XbUGe3JsnwPo2SJRKZ6FjHKEMZhHTJl2qbeh5b/s1600/golden-egg-profile.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span face="Verdana, sans-serif"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMcuAfocYMwzSUby84aNxhTBANNZhyWM4Px8VKwNNyXf03UelzWXDKNK5_oJHyGfsCr3LPNzEz_-A2UvAyStnzsUugNsT3KHIYFcPZT4XbUGe3JsnwPo2SJRKZ6FjHKEMZhHTJl2qbeh5b/s1600/golden-egg-profile.jpg" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: arial;"><span face="Verdana, sans-serif">Q:<i> Is the golden egg worth it?</i><br />A: <i>That is always the question...</i></span><br />
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<span face="Verdana, sans-serif">This is part of a conversation I overheard between an audience member and curator Adriana Disman while I was performing <i>Performance with Golden Egg</i> outside the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Saturday June 27, 2015. The performance </span><span face="Verdana, sans-serif" style="text-align: center;">involved pushing a raw egg covered in gold leaf for three and a half hours in the courtyard of the museum. I pushed the egg with my nose, while crawling on my hands and knees.</span><span face="Verdana, sans-serif"> </span><br />
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<span face="Verdana, sans-serif">This performance was part of LINK & PINS' series on labour. <span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">LINK & PIN is a performance art series curated by Adriana Disman and currently housed out of Montreal's RATS 9 gallery. Last </span>weekend seven artists performed six works that related to the theme of labour. The artists included myself, Johannes Zits, Kale Roberts, Nabeela Vega, Danny Gaudreault, LIDS (The Ladies' Invitational Deadbeat Society), <span style="background-color: white;">Golboo Amani and Maggie Flynn.</span> You can read more about these artists and their projects on the website: <a href="https://linkandpinperformance.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">LINK & PIN</a></span><br />
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<span face="Verdana, sans-serif">Needless to say, the idea of labour is a challenging and paradoxical issue for most artists. In </span><i>Performance with Golden Egg</i><span face="Verdana, sans-serif">, I want to</span><i> </i><span face="Verdana, sans-serif">speak to manual labour (pushing the golden egg with my nose) and its relationship to the economy (the golden egg). The piece attempts to emphasizes the dirty, sweaty and thankless position many working poor and working class people find themselves in with manual labour jobs. It also highlights a position many artists face as we try to survive. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's recent and cruel austerity measures have diminished much of the cultural sector in Canada, leaving many of us jobless and poor. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjicsYHujT8MoncjNCk4u2HkqxyE46iJ6PgtKYWvXGMZr3kDYZptl5I9LdcqW1WTJT9poMSBV0YewzIOSVT4SYRUj26nuwG_pMm653yVYtD_Cclc9GKUpUCj4WRRgXlMhGRZ27fuw5hwMnB/s1600/photo-nat-gorry.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjicsYHujT8MoncjNCk4u2HkqxyE46iJ6PgtKYWvXGMZr3kDYZptl5I9LdcqW1WTJT9poMSBV0YewzIOSVT4SYRUj26nuwG_pMm653yVYtD_Cclc9GKUpUCj4WRRgXlMhGRZ27fuw5hwMnB/s400/photo-nat-gorry.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">This is an image of the museum.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbKWCeoTxHYRN9w7gH4DtlpZ4MXcMJDEGNSSuHPfDrk8zMx79WE5n1K9akiTc7bDYs4Z6j-Eok5ZdxSy3neBw_KeH7FEMdz5TK1BQzZ_tSFxUblPDue0Uh1OBIlZqUUGKlUyeJ4zeLGvoA/s1600/egg2.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbKWCeoTxHYRN9w7gH4DtlpZ4MXcMJDEGNSSuHPfDrk8zMx79WE5n1K9akiTc7bDYs4Z6j-Eok5ZdxSy3neBw_KeH7FEMdz5TK1BQzZ_tSFxUblPDue0Uh1OBIlZqUUGKlUyeJ4zeLGvoA/s400/egg2.JPG" width="300" /></span></a><br />This is an image of me pushing the egg after about an hour.</div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span face="Verdana, sans-serif" style="text-align: center;"><span face="Verdana, sans-serif" style="text-align: center;"><i>Performance with Golden Egg</i> is not an easy performance to watch, nor is it easily understood because the extent of its framework in unknown since this is an experimental live art action. </span>This type of artwork, live art, could only be a labour of love, or what Peggy Phelan might refer to as a labour of political resistance. </span><span face="Verdana, sans-serif">What brought me to the LINK & PIN festival is the desire to support, and to be supported by a community of creative people that are willing to create political, endurance work, and are willing to have difficult, messy and emotional conversations about it. Festivals such as LINK & PIN are vital for people like myself who enjoy the freedom of live art and artistic expression and who can see the benefit(s) of locating oneself on the outside of the art museum. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;">In this image I am talking with two women who were sitting on the steps of the museum prior to the performance, and who were wondering what I was up to and why. I did my best to explain my relationship to labour as a performance artist. These two people, who did not know each other before the performance, shared their experiences with exploitation and labour based on their respective gender and race positioning. </span></div>
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mz.katebarryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04924615214312685445noreply@blogger.com0Musée d'Art Contemporain de Montréal, 185 Rue Sainte-Catherine Ouest, Montréal, QC H2X 3X5, Canada45.5078351 -73.56691009999997319.9858006 -114.87550409999997 71.0298696 -32.258316099999973tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750522626809975387.post-40910073659579582662014-06-24T07:05:00.002-07:002021-02-09T11:14:55.156-08:00Interview with Suzanne Carte featuring Heather Cassils, Francisco-Fernando Granados and Rashaad Newsome<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: arial;"><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">By Kate Barry</span><br />
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<span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="text-align: center;">In 1999, I curated an exhibition at Emily
Carr University in the Concourse gallery titled, </span><i style="text-align: center;">Illicit </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Delights </i>to investigate the question, why queer art? I am still
contemplating this question in 2014 since the queer art movement has proven its
ability for expression outside of rigid gender and identity norms of contemporary society, or outside of what Michael
Warner has coined as hetronormativity. This month <i>Performance Art13</i> further discusses the idea of queer art, affect and socially engaged art practices from the
perspective of Toronto based curator Suzanne Carte. Carte joined me in conversation last month </span><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">to discuss artists Heather Cassils as the resident of</span><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> </span><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Creative Campaigning: Performance as Resistance Series, </span><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Francisco-Fernando Granados at World Pride, and Rashaad Newsome’s upcoming spring exhibition at the Art Gallery of York University. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdlixPLSHoIff0kRil2f744Wg14aiIC15Ajrzc1bhoNNTHvVbYxco_obvnN5jMAkwqjAi_Anf4ZH1wHXKG8F3FhKpvgkqfir6VgbiATYQ8bM45fn6GlyYXgU-66p9_9QO3iYFh1haF88ej/s1600/FFG_AGYU_Flag6Stripes6.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdlixPLSHoIff0kRil2f744Wg14aiIC15Ajrzc1bhoNNTHvVbYxco_obvnN5jMAkwqjAi_Anf4ZH1wHXKG8F3FhKpvgkqfir6VgbiATYQ8bM45fn6GlyYXgU-66p9_9QO3iYFh1haF88ej/s1600/FFG_AGYU_Flag6Stripes6.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;">Francisco-Fernando Granados, Study for true colours, 2014</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">KB: <i>I am wondering if you could touch upon what curating queer culture
might mean in terms of your interests in affect and socially engaged art
practice?</i><b style="font-style: italic;"><o:p></o:p></b></span><br />
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<span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;">SC: Queerness is around me. I participate in it, contribute
to it, and am drawn to it. I am dedicated to creating a platform for
discursive, experimental, and performative education for and with artists. That
usually means reimagining and reinterpreting what models are already out there and
manipulating them - essentially queering them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;">Not all of the queer artists that I work with
are solely dedicated to <span lang="EN-CA">LGBTTIQQ2S equity issues, but
do participate in social justice activism. </span>In
working on campus with AGYU, I <span lang="EN-CA">strive to give opportunities
to students to learn from and alongside artists on how to effectively mobilize
and harness anti-oppressive actions and language through art. By making art and
activism synonymous perhaps it can assist to build future leaders who think
creatively and respond innovatively to adversity and conflict. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA"><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;">Art has long been a form of
resistance against oppressive forces. Within moments of great political
upheaval and social change there is a place for artistic intervention to
uncover injustices and discover shared aims. Learning from LGBTTIQQ2A artists’
movements, youth activists can understand how addressing power through cultural
production is a viable means in pursuing a political or social end. I hope that
through collaborative projects students can question and examine what it means
to be an activist and how to communicate to an audience and/or opposition with
new strategies, queer strategies. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: arial;">Heather Cassils Fast Twitch// Slow Twitch, video still, Heather Cassils, 2011</span></i></b></span></div>
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<span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i><br /></i></b></span><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">KB:<i> There are many facets of
art and queer culture for us to discuss here, where to begin... As the
Assistant Curator at AGYU your focus on the role of activism is especially
engaging in light of York University's rule forbidding mass gatherings on
campus (i.e. protesting). Can you tell me about your choice of
artist Heather Cassils for Creative Campaigning: Performance as
Resistance Series and their relationship to politics and socially engaged art? <br />
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<span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></i></b></span><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">SC: When I get excited about an artist the first thing
I think is, “more people need to see this!” That’s what I felt when I saw
Cassils’ <i>Fast Twitch/Slow Twitch</i> in LA during the Pacific Standard Time
exhibitions and immediately knew that I wanted to bring their work to the
students at York. Excited by the strength and physical presence of Cassils, I
was curious to see how a performance could take shape by connecting the direct
engagement of social action with that of corporeal action. Cassils has since
challenged me to think of exertion as both the effort of the body and energy of
an idea. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i><o:p></o:p></i></b></span></span></div>
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<span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;">We are in the construction stage
of the piece now building partnerships with the Department of Fine Arts,
Kinesiology, Dance and Social Work, as well as student organizations under the
umbrella of the York Federation of Students (YFS). The students will be able to
draw on Cassils physically demanding performance methodologies to infiltrate the
public spaces of the Keele campus, thereby creating a place to vocalize
concerns and activate movement. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;">Visiting Artist Heather Cassils, Info Sharing Session with student leaders, Feb 7, 2014 </span></div>
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<span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><span lang="EN-CA">The performance will concentrate on
the areas of the York campus that are still available for mass gathering. We
are still in negotiation as to what the performance can be and how to work in
collaboartion and consultation with the students, but Cassil has expressed
interest in divising an action where participants will run the </span>periphery<span lang="EN-CA"> of the sanctioned space
highlighting its silencing force. Ability to voice concerns through traditional
means of public protest has been removed by the university’s administration
over the past five years. The University’s student paper </span></span><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Excalibur recently published an article lamenting the decline of student activism and suggested that it was in direct correlation to the corporatization of York. It stated that, York University was once an open institution that was used as a safe space to express different views, but unfortunately, the university's administration has made clear their views on protests and the consequences the students will face if participating in such activities. While activism may be dormant on our campus, it isn't dead. Frustrated youth activists will be able to change the administered zone into a positive space through physically moving around it.</span></span></div>
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<span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;">The project is still a work in progress but already
has proven to challenge both of us, which is always the most exciting
part.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;">KB: <i>Heather Cassils</i><i>’ AGYU residency that supports new modes of student mobilization in light of the Draconian laws at York
University is very exciting. Next, can
you tell me what is AGYU doing for World Pride this year? <b><o:p></o:p></b></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br /></span><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">SC: The project that
AGYU is embarking on for WorldPride this year is with Francisco-Fernando Granados. The commissioned piece is asking individuals
coming together to support Pride, “What are your <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">true colours?” </i>Granados invites us to re-imagine the palette of the queer flags
by filling in the stripes with colour combinations of our choice. The
accumulation of the flags will be the basis of a community banner to be seen by
millions on the parade route. Both as a work of abstraction and relational
process the project, <i>true colours</i>, aims to create an open-ended
visual experience that evokes the incalculable multiplicity of queerness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The project was born out of the students’ theme <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">United We Are Different</i> for the York@WorldPride festivities where
is directed Granados to<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>redirect
focus back to the roots of Pride activism. I
invited Granados because he has a history of producing politically aggressive
work and understood that as a professor and community mentor he would be able
to work collectively with multiple student groups. I knew that he would be able
to see beyond the glitter and feather boas (as the usual tropes of Pride) and
push to get at the heart of queer courage and celebration.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The student activists have responded to his
grassroots working methodologies. The LGBTQ+ undergrads on campus and student
leaders are extremely sophisticated in the way in which they present ideas and
form alliances. I have learned a lot from them through the collaboration and
working process. What they need are accomplices, not apathetic allies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With projects such as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Creative Campaigning</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">true
colours</i> I hope to prove that we can be just that.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"></span></b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5CEvsvkFjuL-0xOuZIxk8pFhTCBLGjBccBGAHYkMm30FPpbThhD_ZSi09XI-jNWWYh5fgLtNFieTzCLk5RibYp1EtIZMIjYcM28t4HW5HhzcYwAa9Xlh89HhQED7vMy-OAYpaRRJDcXCF/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-01-29+at+4.55.08+PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5CEvsvkFjuL-0xOuZIxk8pFhTCBLGjBccBGAHYkMm30FPpbThhD_ZSi09XI-jNWWYh5fgLtNFieTzCLk5RibYp1EtIZMIjYcM28t4HW5HhzcYwAa9Xlh89HhQED7vMy-OAYpaRRJDcXCF/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-01-29+at+4.55.08+PM.png" width="640" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;">Rashaad Newsome, still image from Shade Compositions, performance, SFMoMA, 2012.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: arial;"><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i><br /></i></b></span>
<span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i><br /></i></b></span><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">KB: <i>It will be refreshing to see </i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fernando Granados’ activist flags at Pride
this year. </i><i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i></span><br />
<span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lastly, I
would like to touch upon the work of New York City based artist Rashaad
Newsome. I definitely had that ‘more people must see this!’ feeling when I saw
his video </i><i>Shade Compositions.</i> <i>I feel in love with Newsome's work right away, it’s sensuous, playful
and cutting at the same time. Can you
tell me what excites you the most about Newsome’s upcoming spring exhibition at
AGYU?<b><o:p></o:p></b></i></span></span></div>
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<span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;">SC: The endless possibilities
are the most exciting right now. Newsome has so much performance documentation
to review and edit from recent projects at The Drawing Centre (New York) and Headlands
Center for the Arts (California) an upcoming one at steirischer herbst (Graz), a multidisciplinary
festival. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For him the video is a work in
itself not secondary to the performance or acting solely as a document. The
dancers perform for the camera and the audience simultaneously. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;"><i>Shade Compositions</i> is a perfect example of that duality. Featuring a
choir of women and queer men of colour throwing shade, the performance is
choral experience for the live audience and translates (through high production
quality of the documentation) into a cinematic experience for the future
audience. The work exemplifies the distinctive celebratory tone of Newsome’s
practice. Whether it is rejoicing in the Black vernacular or observing queer
African American culture it is done with pride from an insiders prospective. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;">Not afraid to take on new
challenges, Newsome operates seamlessly from the subculture of gay voguing to
the hyper heterosexual world of hip-hop.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><i>The Conductor</i> mixes clips of gesticulating hands and beats from rap
videos with the music of Carl Orff’s epic cantata <i>Carmina Burana.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Newsome
culled a roster of Hip Hop heavyweights, featuring Dr. Dre, </span>Busta
Rhymes, Rick Ross, and the Notorious B.I.G., from<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> the top played hits on New York radio stations. It becomes a
contemporary history document providing a snapshot of a distinct moment in the
ever-fluid and fickle music scene. </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;">The first two parts played in MoMA PS1’s “Greater New York” exhibition in
2010 and he is currently editing another two that utilize the same
crowd-sourcing methodology to identify the artists that are producing popular
hip hop today. We are discussing the full installation potentially for the AGYU
exhibition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It will definitely create a fierce sonic explosion
in the gallery. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Also exciting - It will
be the first time that his work will be shown in Canada too but really the most
thrilling part of any exhibition is getting a chance to meet and learn from
another artist. Rashaad Newsome has
already educated me on the art of the “death drop” as he catalogued moves from
dancers in the New York ballroom scene in <i>Untitled and Untitled (New Way)</i> (2010) and on the techniques of hair
performance with <i>FIVE </i>(2011) so I am really
looking forward to discovering new things with him in Spring 2015!</span><span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">*****</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAz5uP4iUQgFTluonBWZYpIBAfLkdLsQoi1eM3WVb8BVkdehDE0Z6GsANahIdNARRqI6va5WMPiX7BDUsO9cMfMPu23qNhBWxXxZTy-xTvaQ2Nozn2BtxJeZwuta8K7oRnO8YsZmSDvtlG/s1600/headshot_SC-2.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black; font-family: arial;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAz5uP4iUQgFTluonBWZYpIBAfLkdLsQoi1eM3WVb8BVkdehDE0Z6GsANahIdNARRqI6va5WMPiX7BDUsO9cMfMPu23qNhBWxXxZTy-xTvaQ2Nozn2BtxJeZwuta8K7oRnO8YsZmSDvtlG/s1600/headshot_SC-2.jpg" width="138" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: arial;">
Suzanne Carte is a curator and art critic. Her exhibitions have appeared across Canada and Australia, and her critical writing has been published in Magenta Magazine, Art Writ, and Huffington Post. After working for the Blackwood Gallery and the Art Gallery of Mississauga, she joined the Art Gallery of York University (AGYU) in 2008 as Assistant Curator. Within Suzanne’s independent practice, she has curated exhibitions in public spaces, artist-run centres, commercial and public art galleries including All Systems Go!, Under New Management, MOTEL and Man’s Ruin. Suzanne sits on the Board of Directors for Images Festival, the largest festival in North America for experimental and independent moving image culture. She holds an MA in Contemporary Art History from Sotheby’s Art Institute in New York and a BFA from the University of Windsor.<br />
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<b>Links</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></h2>
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<span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;">Heather Cassils<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="color: black; font-family: arial;"><a href="http://www.heathercassils.com/">http://www.heathercassils.com</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;">Francisco-Fernando Granados<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="color: black; font-family: arial;"><a href="http://francisco-fernando-granados.blogspot.com/">http://francisco-fernando-granados.blogspot.com/</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;">Rashaad Newsome<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="color: black; font-family: arial;"><a href="http://rashaadnewsome.com/">http://rashaadnewsome.com</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;">Suzanne Carte<br /><a href="http://www.suzannecarte.com/" target="_blank">http://www.suzannecarte.com</a></span></div>
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<span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;">Art Gallery of York University<br /><a href="http://www.yorku.ca/agyu/" target="_blank">http://www.yorku.ca/agyu/</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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mz.katebarryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04924615214312685445noreply@blogger.com0Toronto, ON, Canada43.653226 -79.38318429999998243.285985999999994 -80.028631299999986 44.020466 -78.737737299999978tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750522626809975387.post-13671152329705723292014-03-15T06:38:00.004-07:002021-02-09T11:15:24.764-08:0011:45PM: FADO Performance Art Centre's Emerging Artist Series. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #666666;">By Kate Barry</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-size: small;"><b>Our culture is not very good at being with time. There is a tendency to ‘kill’ time, or not to be aware of time —a sense that it’s oppressive. We are also fearful of time passing, of the aging process. Of import is attending to what we’re going through rather than hiding from it, escaping from it or seeking diversion from it.</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">How do artists use time as a medium to create live performance? How does long-duration performance affect and change the role of the spectator? Typically an audience will come and go during a long-duration performance, and in spite of the fact that most audience members won’t experience the entirety of the performance, the question for both artist and audience remains the same: what happens when time becomes palatable and visceral?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">For the 2014 installment of FADO’s Emerging Artists Series we have created a framework for the direct exploration of the medium of time by challenging artists to create a durational performance of a minimum of 6-hours and up to 4-days long. The call for submissions brought us the work of five female artists from Toronto, Montréal, and Ottawa: Arkadi Lavoie Lachapelle, Emma-Kate Guimond, Jessica Karuhanga, Anthea Fitz-James and Rah. Their individual practices were loosely knitted together by themes of ritual, repetition, and language.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">As a curator, I am absorbed by the socio-political content of the works of these artists in relation to the female body. In her book, <i>Radical Gestures: Feminism and Performance Art in North America</i> (2006), Jayne Wark referred to a category of literature on performance art that takes the body as its </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">focus. She discusses how issues of subjectivity, identity, gender, and race are explored by female performers as a form of artistic language to express ideas through an in depth communication with their audience. I am concerned with how the female body is negotiated by artists in pop culture, art history, and through performance and live art. I wonder, how is meaning produced through social relations that are marked, or performed, on the body? I am fascinated by how the five artists in <i>11:45PM</i> use their bodies as metaphors for psychic, cultural, and institutional codes and signifiers ranging from race to gender to sexuality, to class and ability.</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZt5lBn1r2BQTLimBlhZrDchtc2MoKNlrWgg1IaGpoOCRa6ItbSez7SrpN1TZpNmbsNx0OGsSMcJC2uo7lxjz6fRAB_SMG_PgOcSthIK_2HXcXMfWX69Pf1d6OhcqkVUrO-IiN5rPWTjFf/s1600/02_Arkadi-l-l.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="color: black; font-family: arial;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZt5lBn1r2BQTLimBlhZrDchtc2MoKNlrWgg1IaGpoOCRa6ItbSez7SrpN1TZpNmbsNx0OGsSMcJC2uo7lxjz6fRAB_SMG_PgOcSthIK_2HXcXMfWX69Pf1d6OhcqkVUrO-IiN5rPWTjFf/s1600/02_Arkadi-l-l.jpg" width="507" /></span></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-size: small;"><b>Arkadi Lavoie Lachapelle</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In her performance <b><i>6hours 6minutes and 6seconds </i></b>Arkadi Lavoie Lachapelle explores the idea of superstition in relation to her body and everyday domestic objects that had been deemed “evil.” During the performance, Lachapelle manipulates the so-called evil objects in a kind of cultural alchemy, transforming each object symbolically through a series of interactive gestures such as balancing them on her body. In doing so, the objects morph from being perceived as inherently evil, to becoming objects with “the right to exist”, as Lachapelle states. She draws from the approach of artists such as Esther Ferrer and Boris Nieslony, whose practices share the desire to mediate between the body, materiality, and the otherworldly. The objects in Lachapelle’s performance have been either anonymously donated by people in Toronto, or have been collected from Montréal addresses with 666 in the street number. Each object is wrapped up and waiting in the gallery space. Not knowing what the objects are prior to the performance infuses each object/body relationship with suspense and curiosity. What is intriguing about Lachapelle’s performance is that her body is implicated in these questions of good and evil. In some religious lore, the human body itself can possess the ‘mark of the devil’. In the height of the Inquisition marks such as moles, scars, birthmarks, skin tags, supernumerary nipples, and blemishes indicated that the individual was a witch. Even today, the derogatory slang </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">for menses is “the curse.” In <i>6 hours 6 minutes 6 seconds</i>, Lachapelle uses a precise measure of time to search for equilibrium between her body and the object, while creating an elaborate ritual of good and evil.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-size: small;"><b><i>Emma-Kate Guimond</i></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-size: small;">In <b><i>digestion/liquidation</i></b>, Guimond formulates task-based actions utilizing the substance of milk to explore the sensations of attraction and repulsion in relation to her body. Audio recordings made during the performance of a single phrase repeated for 60 minutes, create a circular narrative in which meaning is questioned, and then obliterated through repetition. Performing in a dress soaked in milk, Guimond’s investigation brings forth the idea of the abject, specifically with regards to the classic essay, <i>Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection</i> by Julia Kristiva (1980). The abject in Kristiva’s writing refers to the fear patriarchal societies construct in relation to the female body and sexuality. In her essay Kristiva talks about those messy and unpredictable aspects of the female body, its (un)pleasant fluids and substances. Guimond’s washing and wearing of her milk-dress makes reference to the female body’s connection to the abject through its bodily fluids such as breast milk, blood, sweat, and spit. In Guimond’s piece she performs an astute tableau of female subjectivity and bodily being through language, audio-recordings, and repetition.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Over 4-days and with the help of members of the public, Jessica Karuhanga braids herself long hair. Radically long hair. Woven together with her natural hair, the growing trail and physical weight of this new hair will eventually effect and impair Karuhanga’s mobility. She explains, “This gesture will highlight the ritualistic and repetitive aura of braiding hair particularly for women of African descent who have a penchant for actively and passively participating in these transformations.” In <b><i>The trip, and the fall, and the lost heap of longing</i></b> hair is a powerful and forceful metaphor signifying the artist’s experience with the rituals of beauty and consumption. During the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">performance a video plays from a laptop, a home video of Karuhanga’s childhood, showing her mother braiding her sister’s hair. Personal grooming, and hair weaving and braiding, act as a site for female bonding between mother and daughter, and between women. Karuhanga uses hair as a signifier for the socio-political and racial hierarchies formed in personal relationships between family members, friends, as well as the racial hierarchies found in pop culture and in the canon of art history. Karuhanga creates a performance where her own hair is racialized and eroticized in order to call forth the politics and economies of the beauty industry, while she directly confronts issues of body image, gender, sexuality and race.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;">Image credit Henry Chan.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-size: small;">Unraveling the <b><i>Daughter’s Disease: Secrets, Knitting and the Body </i></b>tells the story of Fitz-James’ Great-Aunt Pearl’s incarceration through textile and sound. Throughout the 2-days of her performance, Fitz-James unravels the sweater she is wearing while simultaneously re-knitting the yarn into a new clothing object. This ‘embodied-knitting’, as Fitz-James describes it, is traditionally a domestic act, but in her performance it becomes a radical gesture of resilience and strength. During the performance, audio-recordings played on a loop from speakers scattered throughout the space tell the story from the perspective of different family members. The stories weave together the voices of her mother, her aunt, and her sister as they tell the story of one woman’s incarceration, which still affects the family today. <i>Unraveling the Daughter’s Disease: Secrets, Knitting and the Body </i>attempts to offer insight into how anxiety and trauma is passed on through generations and performed on the body.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6GhZj9XZoSBrnThiWRRkkQaJ0prHieSkD3jj3Q4K8SzTXEyLV0DzqyuLChmUQX2IF1JXpcs6blq-NddcZNvZLOuQD32xj4sYaTCYaUmx2y5TS9FWeJVqh4WV9aOId7rQzd8aygJtErVUP/s1600/2013_WCMA_AT_NIGHT_Cultural_Snapshots_0019.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="color: black; font-family: arial;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6GhZj9XZoSBrnThiWRRkkQaJ0prHieSkD3jj3Q4K8SzTXEyLV0DzqyuLChmUQX2IF1JXpcs6blq-NddcZNvZLOuQD32xj4sYaTCYaUmx2y5TS9FWeJVqh4WV9aOId7rQzd8aygJtErVUP/s1600/2013_WCMA_AT_NIGHT_Cultural_Snapshots_0019.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-size: small;"><b>Rah</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Rah’s performance seeks to demonstrate her confidence in, and personal struggle with her identity as an Iranian-Candian woman. In <i><b>Ululation</b></i>, she responds to the recent political debate and discussion surrounding the province of </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Québec’s latest encroachment on individual rights to religious expression through its attempt to ban religious symbols in the workplace. During her performance, Rah wraps herself in a black Chador, a garment worn by woman from Islamic countries to show religious affiliation. She unravels the Chador as she rolls across the gallery floor in a gesture of physical endurance and political resistance. As she unravels herself from the garment’s cocoon-like enclosure, she reveals herself to be wearing a traditional dress worn by woman in Shomal in the northern regions of Iran. Leaving a trail of clothes throughout the gallery as she dresses and undresses, the artist continuously ululates — a sound created by moving the tongue rapidly back and forth repetitively to make a sharp noise. Ululation represents a celebration, but it can also be expressed during times of mourning and sadness. In <i>Ululation</i> Rah’s gestures of concealment and removal, silence and noise, action and stillness, act as a metaphors for personal agency that respond directly to institutional codes that discriminate against people based on their religion, race and class.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The performance projects in <i>11:45PM </i>explore ritual and temporality, and themes ranging from the supernatural to the transformative. The title of this series refers to a suspended moment in time as a way to highlight the importance of being in the moment and allowing oneself to fully experience a work of art. Or from the perspective of the artist, when creating a performance it refers to the exacting and concentrated focus that is needed to carry out a series of ritualized actions over a long-duration, both suspending and performing the everyday. <i>11:45PM </i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">also draws ones attention to that magical hour of midnight where anything can happen. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-size: small;">****</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">11:45PM: FADO's Performance Art Centre Emerging Artist Series. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-size: small;">Curated by Kate Barry</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><b>MARCH 8 TO 29, 2014 Xpace Cultural Centre, 2-303 Lansdowne Avenue</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i>Unraveling the Daughter’s Disease: Secrets, Knitting and the Body</i> by Anthea Fitz-James, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Saturday March 8, 12—6 PM, Sunday March 9 and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1—5 PM, Sunday March 9. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i>digestion/liquidation</i> by Emma-Kate Guimond, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Sunday March 16, 12—8 PM </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i>The trip, and the fall, and the lost heap of longing </i>by Jessica Karuhanga, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Wednesday March 19 to Saturday March 22, 1—5 PM DAILY </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><i>666</i> by Arkadi Lavoie Lachapelle</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Friday March 28, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">6 PM—12 AM </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><i>Ululation, </i>by Rah, Saturday March 29, 12—6 PM</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><b>OTHER EVENTS</b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Thursday March 13, 7 PM FREE, <i>In Time with a Body: Duration as a Performance Practice </i>Artist talk by Paul Couillard</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">PANEL DISCUSSION: </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Saturday March 29, 6:30 PM FREE, <i>What Happens After Midnight: </i>Artists Panel Moderated by Tanya Mars!</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">For more on the Emerging Artist Series and to read the artists Bios, please visit FADO's website: http://www.performanceart.ca/index.php?m=program&id=272 </span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">All images and photographs are copyright, 2014. </span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.performanceart.ca/" style="background-color: #666666;" target="_blank">For more information on FADO Performance Art Centre, please visit the website: </a></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.performanceart.ca/" style="background-color: #666666;" target="_blank">http://www.performanceart.ca/</a></span></div>
mz.katebarryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04924615214312685445noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750522626809975387.post-18997914831800878872014-01-01T12:00:00.002-08:002021-02-09T11:15:54.470-08:00DROPPING WINEGLASS FALLING DOWN: A tribute to our mothers, grandmothers, sisters and aunts.<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span">By Kate Barry </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Berenicci Hershorn is a Toronto gem. Her recent work DROPPING WINEGLASS FALLING DOWN demonstrated the richness of an artist who has been performing throughout the 1970s, 1980s,
1990s and into the twenty-first century. DROPPING WINEGLASS FALLING DOWN was performed, in November 2013, as part of the
Babble (Babel) Public Performance Event, Hart House, University of Toronto.
Babble (Babel) was a series organized by WIA (Woman in Action) Projects,
curated by Pam Patterson and Leena Raudvee. As Hershorn explained,
"this series was formulated to examine the nature of language and
communication within a feminist framing to reference the immigrant experience
of our female ancestors."</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span">In a recent interview with me, I asked Hershorn to
describe her performance in the once MEN-ONLY Hart House, University of
Toronto:</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">“You climb the stone stairwell to the second floor
and find your way down the hall to a small room. You enter by a door in the
centre of the room; there are two large banks of gothic windows on the opposite
wall. The room is dark, there are no lights on, and it’s an overcast day. I
stand at a lectern in the centre of the room, two long tables stretch towards
the doorway on either side of me. There are chairs placed in clusters against
the walls for the audience to sit on. On one of the windowsills there is a
large silver 'boom-box' with the aerial up and pointed out. The audience might
wonder, is it broadcasting? Or is it receiving? The music that accompanies the
performance is the sounds of a distant thunderstorm overlaid with the sounds a
child intermittently practicing piano scales.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">On the tables are several place settings, each
contains a large empty bowl, a small bowl of salt, a candle, an onion, some
matches and an egg. At another station, at the end of the table and apart from
the place settings, there is a silver bucket full of water, a large knife, a
stack of towels and a pile of soaps of various kinds in white and pink and red.
The scent of these soaps overpowers the room."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Photography credit: Amy Wilson</span></div>
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Photography credit: Amy Wilson</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span">In this two-hour performance art piece, Hershorn took her
rightful place as a woman and an artist in the Hart House study and lecture
room. She created a ritualistic atmosphere in order to remember and pay homage
to her ancestors. She called up memories from her childhood and memories of her
mother, her aunts and her grandmothers. Through an exploration of memory and
its links to body and the sensorial, Hershorn elevated everyday kitchen items
such as bowls, knives and dish towels. S</span><span class="Apple-style-span">he enticed the audience’s senses with the potent mixture of soap and onions and s</span><span class="Apple-style-span">he used the everyday actions of chopping vegetables
and cleaning to create an artistic tableau.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span">DROPPING WINEGLASS FALLING DOWN attempted
to examine how memory functions, how it is formed and most
importantly, how family lore is often based on memory. In the
performance, the artist spent hours cutting spiral ribbons from a
thesaurus. This action of cutting paper was inspired by Hershorn's childhood memory of cutting spirals for the first time from a flat piece of
ordinary paper. This was her first memory of being an artist. It was the first time she
felt that sensation of creating a 3D object, opening
up for her young self a new sense of space and time.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">Photography credit: Miklos LeGrady</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">For this performance Hershorn goes back to that liminal moment of childhood fascination. This time, however, she is investigating memory. Specifically, she examined memory in relationship to information that has been lost, she is curious about the memories that are unspoken and missing from her family history. Hershorn describes her process in detail.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">"At the lectern, I am slowly and painstakingly
cutting long spirals out of pages ripped from a densely worded thesaurus. I am in
deep in concentration and I take what seems like a long time cutting each
spiral, opening up the flat pages into long fragile ribbons and tossing them
over the edge of the lectern. Once I have several paper spirals cut and tossed,
I move around to the other side of the lectern and I stretch out each paper
spiral ribbon and I place them along each of the tables.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">I then pick up the knife and walk to one of the
bowls, I pour the salt into the bowl, and I chop the onion in two, I set the
candle in the salt and I light the candle. I walk with the knife to the water
bucket and I wash it with one of the scented soaps, the scent overwhelms my
face. Then, I dry my hands carefully and I return to the lectern to resume my
paper spiral cutting from the book.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">These actions are repeated over the two hours of
performance until all the soaps have been used, all the candles lit, all the
onions cut. The smells of the fire, the sulphur, the perfume and the
disinfectant creates a physical presence in the room.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">In her performance, the actions of cutting spirals out of
the thesaurus, pouring the salt, lighting the candle, cutting the onions and
washing the knife, symbolized her search for her lost history. Each spiral
she created represented a memory, and it also symbolized the told and untold stories of her family's experience of immigration. The cutting, chopping and
ceremonious placement of items on the tables also represented the spoken and unspoken memories in her family's matrilineage.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span">I am motivated to write about DROPPING WINEGLASS FALLING DOWN because I think it is important to create a</span><span class="Apple-style-span"> form for performance art that shifts away from commodity fetishism and the cult of the celebrity artist. </span><span class="Apple-style-span">I am responding here to a trend in the art world regarding super rich & famous
people taking up precious real estate in museums and galleries as performance artists, curators, or by posing as experts in the field of visual culture. </span><span class="Apple-style-span">The beauty and authenticity of Berenicci Hershorn's performance, DROPPING WINEGLASS FALLING DOWN simply moved and inspired me to celebrate an artwork about </span><span class="Apple-style-span">real imagination, genuine creativity and artistic talent.</span></span></div>
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WIA is a feminist platform run as part of the Centre for
Women’s Studies in Education (CWSE) at the at the Ontario Institute for Studies
in Education (OISE) of the University of Toronto. http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/cwse/Women_in_Action_Group_(WIA)/index.html<o:p></o:p><br />
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<br />
Berenicci Hershorn upcoming performances includes a Performance Installation at Hamilton Artists Inc. The performance is Friday, July 11, 2013, 7-11pm. The installation remains on view until July 31, 2014.<br />
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<!--EndFragment-->mz.katebarryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04924615214312685445noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750522626809975387.post-39209231840410198812013-10-23T06:01:00.002-07:002021-02-09T11:13:00.984-08:00Haunted Lesbians: Allyson Mitchell and Deirdre Logue’s Kill Joy’s Kastle.<h2>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">By Kate Barry</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Having just
completed the </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>Kill Joy’s Kastle: A Lesbian Feminist Haunted House</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span"> tour, it was difficult for me to form a clear
sentence when I was escorted into a small room, and seated on a faux-fur
stool. I was to be a part of a 'processing session' with a <i>Real-Life
Feminist Killjoy,</i> the
fabulous writer Sarah Schulman. The group I was touring with did manage to discuss the artwork with some coherence. Someone asked a critical question, "does this project suggest that lesbian feminism is dead?" The
thing that struck me about this question, in the context of the haunted house,
is that it illustrates the ghosts of lesbian feminist’s past are still keeping
the theory, the activism and the art alive. Being someone who is obsessed with death, I know things never fully die instead they take on new
forms.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span">On opening night, when I first
entered Allyson Mitchell’s </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>Kill Joy’s Kastle</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><i> </i>there were posters
of warning and encouragement from lesbian political organizations and magazines from the
1970s, 1980s and 1990s. There was a graveyard installation dedicated to these organizations
that have now deceased: Queer Nation, The Lesbian Avengers, D.A.R.E.(Dykes Against Racism), Lesbians Against the Right, L.I.A.R (Ladies into Anarchist Readings, On Our Backs, among many others.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span">At the beginning of the tour, our guide from the </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>Demented Women’s Studies Professors</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span"> group,</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">Dainty Box,</span></span> greeted us. Our Professor sternly lectured us on the hellish antidotes of the uber privileged claiming to be feminist but who, in fact, work to propagate the status quo.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">Gravestone for Lesbians Against The Right, Allyson Mitchell, installation, 2013.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">Dainty Box,</span><i>Demented Women's Studies Professor</i><i>, </i>performance, 2013.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">According to
Mitchell, the research for this project included investigating real-life Evangelical
Christian hell houses. Apparently these hell houses are a tradition in the Evangelical religious sect dating back to the 1970s. In fact, in the Niagara Falls region there are FIVE
of these haunted houses. The religious hell houses
are created to put "the fear of God" into you via the fear of death, the
devil, and the punishments associated with the Judeo-Christian act of sin. These so-called sins include: homosexuality, polygamy, abortion and so on. Unlike the tradition of Evangelical hell houses, <i>Kill Joy’s Kastle</i> was a unique feminist performance and installation art space filled with Mitchell's tongue-in-cheek textiles pieces, an assortment of rug-hooked, crocheted, papier mâché and painting constructions. This project was 5-years in the making, and this is clear in its execution. With a team of collaborating artists from various locales, socio-economic backgrounds, race, genders and abilities, Mitchell successfully creates a non-oppressive and inclusive space.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Christina Zeidler as Felice Shays, </span><span class="Apple-style-span">performance, 2013.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span">FASTWÜRMS’ as <i>The Scary Shaft Inhabitors, </i>performance, 2013.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span">What impressed me the most about <i>Kill Joy’s Kastle</i> was its use of parody. For me, it is easy to be angry and OUTRAGED as homophobia, transphobia and 'lezphobia' is still so prevalent worldwide. It is also easy to offer shortsighted and reactionary responses to this complicated art project. If you haven't experienced the installation, or bothered to research Allyson Mitchell extensive body of contemporary artwork you maybe missing her</span><span> educated discourse around ending misogyny.</span><span class="Apple-style-span"> With that said, w</span><span class="Apple-style-span">hat is more difficult to do and what Mitchell does in this artwork is, she thinks creatively, and subversively about ways to respond while having a good and therapeutic laugh.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span">The opening night of </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>Kill Joy’s Kastle </i>was </span><span class="Apple-style-span">a hilarious adventure to undertake. Sometimes its humor was sublime as with FASTWÜRMS’ performance as <i>The Scary Shaft Inhabitors</i>. The FASTWÜRMS’ piece involved a trio of three real-life witches who performed the act of drinking each other’s sperm. At other times the hilarity of <i>Kill Joy</i> is in-your-face, such as <i>The Lesbian Zombie Folk Singers </i>or <i>The Ball Busta.</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span">The highlights of <i>Kill Joy’s Kastle</i> included the
hellish folk singing and some scary ball-busting. There is nothing like a
zombie-lesbian-feminist singing Ani Difranco’s <i>Both Hands</i>
or </span><span class="Apple-style-span">Christina Zeidler as Felice Shays singing </span><span class="Apple-style-span">Valerie Solanas' <i>S.C.U.M Manifesto</i>. <i>The Ball Busta </i>performance
included two dykes at a tool bench smashing plaster castings of Truck-Nuts.
Truck-Nuts are from car and truck culture and are decorative items some people
use to embellish their automobiles; they are often hung under the license plate
of a car or truck between the rear wheels to exhibit the manliness of the
driver via their big balls. Changing the context of Truck-Nuts by casting
them in white plaster is very comical -since they are the ultimate
representation of white patriarchy.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Lorri Millan and MC MacPhee, </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>The Ball Busta, </i>performance<i>,</i> 2013</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span">To backtrack,
and in order to give you some context around Allyson Mitchell’s inspiration, I
want to talk about the feminist reclamation of the term killjoy. Mitchell stated in a radio/podcast
interview with Roy Mitchel on </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>Roynation</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span"> that the idea behind </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>Kill Joy’s Kastle</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span"> comes from Sara Ahmed’s book “The Promise of Happiness.” According to Mitchell,
in Ahmed’s book she used the term killjoy to refer to the prevalent stereotype
of feminists as being humorless. Killjoy is a </span><span class="Apple-style-span">stereotype</span><span class="Apple-style-span"> that represents a societal
preoccupation with the idea of an unhappy feminist/outsider. The concept is
that “real happiness” is rewarded to woman who do everything correctly by
societies definition of a proper woman, that is, she conforms to gender norms,
she marries a man, bares children and lives an upper class or middle class lifestyle but (most importantly) she is anti-feminist.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Historically in Western’s
dominant culture the ideal woman is defined as white, heterosexual, ablebodied
and thin. </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>Kill Joy’s
Kastle: A Lesbian Feminist Haunted House</i>
tells another story as it addresses the truths of real-life. It speaks to gender and queer identities and ways of being outside the norm. <i>Kill Joy’s
Kastle</i> and Allyson
Mitchell’s theory and artistic practice coined Deep Lez is also concerned
with keeping radical art, activism and idea-making alive and relevant to the
21st century. <i>Kill Joy</i>
is about the politics of anti-assimilation surrounding queer practices. In Mitchell’s
interview on <i>Roynation</i>
she asks, what happens when queer identity is appropriated into mainstream
culture such as gay marriage?</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span">Personally, I think that when queer culture is assimilated aspects of queer identity die, </span><span class="Apple-style-span">such as the identity crisis many Canadian queers experienced when gay marriage was legalized. When this happens things change, morph and take on new forms and new ideas. </span><span class="Apple-style-span">To be honest, I am happy when aspects of queer culture die, leaving us with the traces and ghosts of our past. </span><span class="Apple-style-span">E</span><span class="Apple-style-span">ven at the cost of being appropriated by mainstream society and having to endure horrific misrepresentations of lesbian culture. Or having to watch as gays spend exorbitant </span><span class="Apple-style-span">amounts of money on marriage ceremonies. </span><span class="Apple-style-span">A</span><span class="Apple-style-span"> culture </span><span class="Apple-style-span">that does not change would be the most frightening thing ever! </span><span class="Apple-style-span">Despite my gender and class </span><span class="Apple-style-span">angst</span><span class="Apple-style-span">, </span><span class="Apple-style-span">I'm pleased about gay marriage as a victory for human rights.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span">Allyson Mitchell’s <i>Kill Joy’s Kastle: A Lesbian Feminist Haunted House</i> is more than an entertaining event, it is a performance and installation space that carries on feminist discourse from past generations and brings a much needed dialogue around queer feminist performance and installation art into the 21-century. </span><span class="Apple-style-span">By way of example, if in 1972 there was no feminist art installation and
performance spaces such as the woman-only <i>Womenhouse</i> (organized by Judy Chicago and
Miriam Schapiro), would there be a trans positive and queer positive space such as <i>Kill Joy’s Kastle </i>in 2013? No, probably not. </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>Kill Joy’s Kastle</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span"> would not exist if it was not for the discourse and argumentation of past generations? </span><span class="Apple-style-span">There is even a direct reference to <i>Womanhouse </i></span><span class="Apple-style-span">at the entrance of</span><span class="Apple-style-span"> <i>Kill Joy's Kastle</i> in </span><span class="Apple-style-span">a sign </span><span class="Apple-style-span">that reads, <b>"this ain't no woman haus!" </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span">Mitchell’s project </span><span class="Apple-style-span">makes a direct reference the death of old ways and the shifts in theory and practice in the last 41-years. </span><span class="Apple-style-span"> Her project </span><span class="Apple-style-span">furthers lesbian feminist discourse through the death and rebirth dynamic where the ghosts of our ancestors paradoxically inform and keep discourse, art and activism alive.</span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span">Both queer culture and the art world are similar in that artists,
writers, activists and so on, carry on debate from one generation to the next. I think
culture needs things to continuously change and unfortunately that change is
often fuelled by a cultural assimilation or appropriation. I'm not suggesting that the power issues involved in cultural appropriation or assimilation are always
a good thing, or even an ethical one. </span><span class="Apple-style-span">What I am suggesting is, artists</span><span class="Apple-style-span"> require death in order to create.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiuPw173ZhfKT8g9FQt51ds1N6QAaaxMGGwBzOyBaw7QKO2itj1PygvsrXhZZemwP00aZQBfHf6yvHl4aJmlOJS9CDXOnqciM4d2iK14r44QMPL1w9zM6rknQQJGWs-MuqImPfUReBVO8P/s1600/Kill_Joy1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiuPw173ZhfKT8g9FQt51ds1N6QAaaxMGGwBzOyBaw7QKO2itj1PygvsrXhZZemwP00aZQBfHf6yvHl4aJmlOJS9CDXOnqciM4d2iK14r44QMPL1w9zM6rknQQJGWs-MuqImPfUReBVO8P/s400/Kill_Joy1.jpg" width="297" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Allyson Mitchell, 2013.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>Kill Joy </i></span><span class="Apple-style-span">has spawned many questions and there is so much more ghoulish detail to write about! However for the purposes of this blog posting I have </span><span class="Apple-style-span">offered you a sampling of subjective walk through from my opening night adventure. </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><i><br /></i></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><b><i>Kill Joy’s Kastle </i>is open 17-30 October, 4-8 p.m. at 303 Lansdowne Avenue. Fear no art and check it out!</b></span></span></span></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><i>Kill Joy’s Kastle: A Lesbian Feminist Haunted House</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">an presented by Art Gallery of York University (AGYU).</span></span></b></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><b><u>Full list of artists/participants:</u></b></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><b>Felice Shays</b> as Valerie Solanas </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><b>Andrew Harwood</b> as Madame Zsa Zsa </span><br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span">Lee Airton </span></b><br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span">The Jolly Goods</span></b><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><b>Christina Zeidler, and Gretchen Phillips </b>as The "Lesbian" Zombie Folk Singers </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><b>Mo Angelos, Natalie Kouri-Towe, Dainty Smith, Shawna Dempsey, Moynan King and Ponni Arasu</b> as The Demented Women's Studies Professors </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><b>Chelsey Lichtman</b> as The Polyamorous Vampiric Granny </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><b>Eli Campanaro</b> as The Carpet Muncha </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><b>Tracy Tidgwell and Jamie Zarowitz</b> as 2 Adult Women in Love</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><b> LJ Roberts and Silky Shoemaker</b> as The Dank Cave Dweller and Labrys Guillotine Operator</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"> <b>Ginger Brooks Takahashi, Dana Bishop-Root, Jess Dobkin, Trixie & Beever </b>as The Paranormal Consciousness Raisers </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><b>Carolyn Taylor</b> as The Straw Feminist</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span"><b> Lorri Millan and MC MacPhee</b> as The Ball Busta</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span"><b> Golboo Amani, Steph Markowitz, Juli(a) Rivera, and Anni Spadafora</b> as The Gender Studies Professors</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><b> Kalale Dalton, Coral Short, Petra Collins and Shary Boyle</b> as The Riot Ghouls </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><b>FASTWÜRMS</b> as The Scary Shaft Inhabitors </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><b>Rachael Shannon, Jesi the Elder, and Flare Smyth</b> as The Garbage Monsters </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><b>Amy Lockhart </b>as The Bearded Clam Operator and Kitten Midwife </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><b>Aleesa Cohene</b> as Ye Olde Lesbian Feminist Gift Shoppe Keep </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><b> Sarah Schulman, Ann Cvetkovich, Ann Pellegrini, and Kim Crosby</b> as Themselves! (The Real-Life Feminist Killjoys) </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span"> <b>Deirdre Logue, Emelie Chhangur, Philip Monk, Chris Mitchell, Brette Gabel, Johnson Ngo, Suzanne Carte</b></span><br />
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Links:<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span">Allyson Mitchell website:</span><br />
<a href="http://www.allysonmitchell.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span">http://www.allysonmitchell.com</span></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span">Roynation blog:</span><br />
<a href="http://www.blogtalkradio.com/roynation" target="_blank"><span class="Apple-style-span">http://www.blogtalkradio.com/roynation</span></a></span></div>
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mz.katebarryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04924615214312685445noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750522626809975387.post-73562058689358872752013-09-08T15:44:00.003-07:002021-02-09T11:17:04.523-08:00E C O S E X Y: Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens<h2>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">By Kate Barry</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">As a performance artist I once married the planet earth. This is NOT the weirdest thing I have done but it was one of the most memorable.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"> Last summer while visiting the Canadian Rockies, I fell in love all over again and I was reminded of my wedding vows, to love and cherish the earth forever. Or as artist Elizabeth Stephens says, to love and cherish the earth until death brings us closer together. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">Way back in March 2011, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">I met Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens when I married the earth and water, alongside three hundred other people. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">I performed in their </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">seventh wedding <i>White Wedding to the Snow</i>. The performance took place in Ottawa, Canada in a desancified Roman Catholic Church now called Saint Brigid’s Centre for the Arts. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">This last summer I was informed that Stephens and Sprinkle were also having a love affair with the mountains, the Appalachian Mountains in West Virginia. To honour their love </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">Stephens and Sprinkle </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">created a film: </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><i>Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story.</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"> This documentary is heartrending and thought provoking. It is a film that walks us through the big business of mountaintop removal (MTR) mining practices with humor, ecosex performance art and truckloads of scientific data. In the film Stephens sums up her attitude by stating: <b>“Gays and Lesbians can live without getting married, but they won’t survive unless they have drinking water and clean air to breath.”</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><i><b><br /></b></i></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><i><b>Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story </b></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">offers the audience a commitment to compassion and respect for the earth as a feasible alternative to environmental destruction. The film </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">questions business practices that exploit the earth’s resources causing direct harm to us and our communities. The film also offers the audience playful insight into </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">Stephens and Sprinkle's</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"> personal lives as performance artists and social activists. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; line-height: 24px;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy3ke0iB9xDssa7G3K0q6V3sJTHg5vfcJbZYwBEcfoH_4aMiuHtBWs242lat1Ezfh2PC2Dc5KCc1vS2X460TfHASwo5Vh5rLO0xVJlierOUSJDFD0BEEDJrmu_0GqlYU3ZY_gwt0vwRNdH/s1600/mountaintopremovalsit_paulbrown.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy3ke0iB9xDssa7G3K0q6V3sJTHg5vfcJbZYwBEcfoH_4aMiuHtBWs242lat1Ezfh2PC2Dc5KCc1vS2X460TfHASwo5Vh5rLO0xVJlierOUSJDFD0BEEDJrmu_0GqlYU3ZY_gwt0vwRNdH/s640/mountaintopremovalsit_paulbrown.jpg" width="426" /></a></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; line-height: 24px;">Mountain Top Removal Site. Photo by Paul Corbit Brown</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">For Sprinkle and Stephens things really started to heat-up back to 2005 when they performed their first marriage ceremony, <i>Wedding One</i>. This first ceremony was foundation for their future creative life together. Harkening back to 2005, I remember it was still considered radical for a same-sex couples to marry in the U.S.A. and Canada. The politics of Stephens and Sprinkle's “domestic partnership” motivated them to publicly proclaim their love as an alternative to the culture of war and environmental devastation, in which they lived. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">Since that first wedding they have produced fifteen or sixteen performance art weddings as well as a host of other visual art, performance art, video, research and writing projects including <i>The Love Art Laboratory</i> and <i>Sexecological Walking Tours </i>and the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">film, </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><i>Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story.</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"> </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">At this point, I will discuss in greater detail their weddings in order to focus on their history as performance artists within their </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">art & </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">social activism oeuvre. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">In the wedding I participated in, <i>White Wedding to the Snow,</i> I was one of over fifty artists who performed and took part in a ceremony. In the performance we vowed to help protect the earth and its resources. I performed a piece called <i>Snow Painting</i> where I created painting ‘portraits’ as gifts for the other artists and the wedding guests, I used snow on white paper to make the paintings. Prior to performing, I had a conversation with Stephens and Sprinkle about our mutual respect for the FLUXUS art movement. So I wanted to create a performance with a FLUXUS sensibility, I thought a 'snow painting' had this quality since they are paintings that disappeared leaving only a trace or wrinkle on the page. Also, they respond to the over commercialization of art since they are ephemeral.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">For those of you who might not be familiar with FLUXUS, they were that notorious group of Manhattan (NYC ) art radicals from the 1960s whose performance art was often politically motivated. Yoko Ono’ Cut Piece, first performed at Carnegie Hall, in 1965 is possibly the most famous example of a feminist performance art piece created during the heyday of FLUXUS.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">Like all of</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens'</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"> projects</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"> things at their <i>White Wedding to the Snow</i> were hot and steamy. Thing began with a phantasmagoric wedding procession that led us to the main stage. Next there were a series of live performances including the ecosexy wedding vows. During the vow ceremony, as described above, audience members were asked to love and protect the earth and its water. This ritual consisted of Stephens, Sprinkle and over three hundred guests vowing in unison to love and cherish the earth, snow and water forever. For those of you who are not from Ottawa, Canada, getting us to marry the snow is quiet the accomplishment after a long, cold and difficult winter. In fact, I never wanted to see snow again. Regardless almost everyone participated and the vow ceremony. This participation granted the audience members an opportunity to become performers themselves. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">The climax of the ceremony was an intimate personal exchange between Stephens and Sprinkle. Their performance turned things up full volume as Stephens and Sprinkle consummate their love with an ice dildo (brrr). During their lovemaking I heard a collective shutter from the audience as Elizabeth Stephens glided the frozen water into an ecstatic Annie Sprinkle. I think many women in the room vicariously shivered during this holy union. I know I did.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">White Wedding to the Snow, 2011</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">Both their <i>Ecosex Wedding Performances </i>and their new documentary, <i><b>Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story</b></i> marry art and activism in a </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">fun, sexy and diverse way.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"> </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;">As their manifesto explains: WE ARE THE ECOSEXUALS. The Earth is our lover. We are madly, passionately, and fiercely in love, and we are grateful for this relationship each and every day. In order to create a more mutual and sustainable relationship with the Earth, we collaborate with nature. We treat the Earth with kindness, respect and affection.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEkOpm56XV4ZRSnE2RtnqG7paVFaC3zUG8eyuw33t6uaMpmJJhcvIVOtAAB5vIHhGP0xz5aaXGC-_jmfzF86EJVYS16c4yqSVuAsX-WXCQgt3HjhNbH09-eYsxP0ojiOosCOW9COF4UNQP/s1600/13769541542013-08-15-beth_annieprotest_byjordanfreeman.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEkOpm56XV4ZRSnE2RtnqG7paVFaC3zUG8eyuw33t6uaMpmJJhcvIVOtAAB5vIHhGP0xz5aaXGC-_jmfzF86EJVYS16c4yqSVuAsX-WXCQgt3HjhNbH09-eYsxP0ojiOosCOW9COF4UNQP/s640/13769541542013-08-15-beth_annieprotest_byjordanfreeman.jpg" width="640" /></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; line-height: 24px;"></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; line-height: 24px;"><i>Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story, 2013</i></span></div>
</div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; line-height: 24px;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; border-spacing: 2px; color: #222222;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: arial;"><br />
<b><span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></b>
<b><span><span style="font-size: small;">For more information on bookings for Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story, contact Elizabeth Stephens, bethstephens@me.com</span></span></b><br />
<b><span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></b>
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</span><div>
<b><span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><b><span><span style="font-size: small;">LINKS</span></span></b><br />
<b><span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></b>
<b><span><span style="font-size: small;">Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story: <a href="http://goodbyegauleymountain.org/">http://goodbyegauleymountain.org </a></span></span></b><br />
<b><span><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></b>
<b><span><span style="font-size: small;">Sexecology: <a href="http://sexecology.org/">sexecology.org</a></span></span></b> <br />
<br /></span>
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mz.katebarryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04924615214312685445noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750522626809975387.post-49219820334991489462013-08-06T16:56:00.002-07:002021-02-09T11:22:53.876-08:00( )ound, Performance by Coman Poon<h2><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><i>Interview and introduction
by Kate Barry</i></span></h2>
<h2>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">On June 29, I had the
pleasure of performing alongside Toronto artist Coman Poon during the <i>Proud
Voices</i> festival, Glad Day Bookshop and Toronto PRIDE 2013. In Poon’s 45-minute
performance art piece, titled <i>( )ound,</i> he dressed in white underwear and carried around his neck a white
cloth bag full of white power. </span></h2><h2><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">During the performance he slowly walked toward
and around his lover, Brian Smith, who was located underneath a metal
bed. While he walked Poon covered his feet and the feet of audience members in
the white powder. When he reached the bed, he laid down on the bare metal frame
while Smith lay beneath him. For the duration of the performance, the audience
heard faint noises in the background that sounded like various conversations
and some low-fi music. The noise came from a soundscape that
accompanied the performance and installation. </span></h2><h2><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">This haunting performance piece
evoked, for me, deep feelings of entrapment as well as profound feelings of
compassion. Poon’s performance brings to mind what Chicano performance artist Guillermo
Gómez-Peña describes as "boundary crossing" or "border crossing". Poon’s
performance crossed a range of locals and identities including the personal space of the artist's bedroom and
the private space of a prison. It trespasses sexuality as well as race. </span></h2><h2><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">In the following interview with Poon he states <i>“Like
many queer folk of colour, whether I am conscious of it or not, I am and
have been imprisoned even though I have not been in a physical jail per
se.”</i> He speaks to the fact that people are jailed, raped
or beaten for being gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered. As the below
interview illustrates, Poon’s research extended to include the United
States of America’s Prison Industrial Complex (PIC), a system of incarceration
and punishment that exploits prisoners. </span></h2><h2><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">Similar to the work of Gómez-Peña,
Poon’s work is critical of systems of power as well it is critical of mainstream
society’s compliancy toward these abuses of power. Poon’s performance <i>(
)ound </i> successfully addresses these human rights issues that go beyond the four white walls of the
performance space.</span></h2>
<h2>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></b></span></h2>
<h3>
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span">Interview
with Coman Poon by Kate Barry</span></b></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></b></span></h3>
<h3>
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">July
2013</span></b></h3>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><b>KB:</b> What
does the title of your performance <i>( )ound </i>refer to?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><b>CP:</b>
Discovering/being locked up in the space of the ‘in-between.’ Bound. Found.
Ground. Sound. Wound. These were just a few obvious English words that could
emerge from this alphabetical glyph but <i>( )ound</i> also has a conceptual intent.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">I titled
the performance/installation <i>( )ound</i> in the hope that it opens up in the audience the permission
“to not know” as well as an invitation to insert or allow
their own subjectivity to direct their experience...whether through the visual,
embodied, sonic, tactile and/or an olfactory experience.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>(
)ound, </i></span><span class="Apple-style-span">performance
by Coman Poon. Photo credit Henry Chan</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><b>KB:</b> In
your performance I related with feelings of restriction. I felt a great concern
for the other performer (Brian Smith) who was taped to the floor. As an
audience member I became invested in the performance because I was concerned
for Brian’s safety. This experience reinforced for me the larger idea that as
citizens we have a responsibility toward prison’s rights and the abuses that
occur in the so-called “justice system.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> As a queer woman I am able to relate to, or develop compassion toward, people who experience human rights abuse because women and lesbians have not always been considered real citizens. For example, our foremother's had to fight for the right to vote, and more recently we fought for the human right to marriage. </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">On a technical note, can you
tell me about the soundscape used during your
performance?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><b>CP: </b>The ambient soundtrack is found sound from a tour
through Seductions (a four-story mega sex store directly across from Glad Day’s
event space). During my opening stance I inserted myself in one window of the
performance space, beside me was a second window that looks onto an
advertisement for Seductions. At the beginning of the performance I mimic the Seductions’ mannequins that sell sexy underwear and the
male models on posters. The 30-minute soundtrack includes traces of a
conversation with a saleswoman about the various sexy men's underwear that I
tried on. The final 5 minutes of the recording is of the nighttime streetscape
of Yonge Street, between Seductions and the Glad Day Bookshop. It is part of my
strategy to bring inside the outside world as a subtle, everyday sonic anchor and a disruptor of the liminal, or in-between space, of the performance and the city
street.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><b>KB:</b> In a subtle way the sound added a lot to the performance. I had no idea what I
was listening to, however I found myself trying to figure out what the sounds
were as they seemed vaguely familiar. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">For your next
question I am wondering, where does your interest in queer politics and its
relationship with prisoner rights stem from? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><b>CP: </b>Like
many queer folk of colour, whether I am conscious of it or not, I am and
have been imprisoned even though I have not been in a physical jail per
se. I have a natural empathy for those who have been
incarcerated and feel strongly that the Prison Industrial Complex
(PIC) should be dismantled.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">While
living in Chicago in 2008, I became aware of the existence of Tamms,
which housed a Supermax 'correctional' facility where prisoners had been
held in solitary confinement for up to a decade. This prison had no yard and
no cafeteria much less classrooms or a chapel. This prison did
not allow phone calls, any communal activity or visitors and was
designed with the tactic of sensory and social deprivation. So
called ‘disruptive prisoners’ were sent there to 'break them'. Many were
subsequently left at Tamms for years and years, without an appeal. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">In the
shadow of global controversy over solitary confinement and torture at
Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, Tamms Ten Year campaign was launched to
raise awareness about this blatant violation of human rights in southern
Illinois. At the time, I was part of TRADESHOW, a month-long art-activist initiative
in Chicago's East Pilsen neighbourhood that
featured devised performances,
multidisciplinary installation, talks and community-engaged
'anti-sweatshops' to raise awareness around the intersection between
history, labour and social and political injustice. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">In the
United States and increasingly in Canada, the overlapping interests of
government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as
solutions to economic, social and political problems is referred to as the <b>Prison
Industrial Complex</b>
(PIC). As artist-activists, it became an ambition of the TRADESHOW participants
that the dots connect between labour rights and prisoners' rights.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">Lately, I
have been interested in the Roman notion of <i>homo
sacer</i>, which is a banned person
living outside of Roman law, that is deprived of all rights. He or she is
vulnerable to being killed (without the killer being classified as a murderer).
This is considered sacred; by this pre-Christian idea of 'sacred', I mean 'set
apart' which can also include being sacred or accursed. Italian philosopher
Giorgio Agamben talks about this in terms of someone being reduced to
"bare life". Look at what is happening in Russian to queers today and
what oppressed (and continues to oppress) African-Americans/African-Canadians,
Mexican and Indigenous peoples in North America. You see that these groups
share in common the experience of being defined outside the boundaries of
humanity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span">My initial
impulse was to explore the connection and tension between the prison and the
metaphor of the 'closet'. To do this, I combined images and rituals to engage
the audience on a symbolic level. The installation component of <i>( )ound </i>consisted of a seating arrangement
that faced the installation and centered around the lone figure of a male
(Brian Smith) who laid bound to the ground by duct tape echoing the rainbow
flag. Smith is situated beneath a raised white metal bunk bed evocative of the
ones associated with prison beds. There is no mattress above but rather a set
of stark lights that draw a grid pattern of shadows over him. This installation
set the foundation for the ritual / performance experience.</span><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>( )ound, </i></span><span class="Apple-style-span">performance by Coman Poon. Photo
credit Henry Chan</span></span></div>
</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">KB:You mentioned the role of TRADESHOW in the development of </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><i>( )ound,</i> but I also
see a clear connection with artist and political activist Guillermo Gómez-Peña.
Can you describe, if any, the influence he has had?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">CP: As a
writer and a performance artist, Guillermo is a trailblazing artist-activist I
hold in high admiration. After many years of crossing paths in Chicago and
Toronto specifically, I was at last able to work with him during the Winter
Intensive hosted by La Pocha Nostra in Tucson this past February (2013). During
this two-week period, a group of international artists, academics and activists
gathered to participate as well as to witness the US military’s Operation Streamline
firsthand. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span">For those
who are not aware of what the USA military’s Operation Streamline is, a fact
sheet put out by <a href="http://Cultureofcruelty.org/">Cultureofcruelty.org</a>
will be illuminating. I offer the following excerpt from this website because
it touches the heart of what radicalized my training and artistic-activist
experience with </span><span class="Apple-style-span">Guillermo Gómez-Peña</span><span class="Apple-style-span"> and La Pocha Nostra.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span">"By leveling criminal charges for violations of civil
immigration law, Operation Streamline has funneled hundreds of thousands of
unauthorized immigrants directly from Border Patrol custody into the federal
prison system. After sentencing, Operation Streamline defendants are placed in
the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which increasingly holds
immigrant prisoners in for-profit prisons and detention centers run by prison
firms like Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group. Consequently,
Operation Streamline has played a key role in the expansion of private prisons,
including injecting more than $1.2 billion into the largely for-profit
detention system in Texas. Thus, Operation Streamline has not only forced
immigrants into dangerous and utterly unaccountable private prisons, but has
helped reinforce an industry with a direct financial stake in driving the
criminalization and incarceration of immigrants."<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span"></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span">I was aware that Operation Streamline is the end result of the border policing and public arrests made under Arizona SB 1070, but witnessing these 'coached' admissions of guilt had the duo impact of implicating us as helpless while tearing us apart emotionally. We were being held in complete silence by the strict rules of conduct in the court of law. In the context of my performance and installation, I was interested in attempting to translate this experience for the audience.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span">The humiliation of Mexician and Indigenous detainees was a judicial 'show', with men shackled at their wrists and ankles and chained. In place where their families (often living on both sides of the United States-Mexico borders) would have sat were a scattering of public defenders and on this occasion I refer to, 25 artists-activists-witnesses from around the world. Convicted of federal crimes in order to leverage the waiving of heavy state fines, these economic migrants of the globalized world were humiliated and exiled. I did not know it at the time but these men, along with prisoners at Guantanamo, were the USA equivalent of the Roman notion of <i>homo sacer</i>: outside of being human. </span><br />
</span><div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>( )ound, </i></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">performance by Coman Poon. Photo credit Henry Chan</span></span></span></div>
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mz.katebarryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04924615214312685445noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750522626809975387.post-14267382073806584662013-06-07T07:27:00.001-07:002021-02-09T11:40:09.445-08:00Imponderabilia: Re-enacting Abramovic<h1><i style="font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace;">By Kate Barry</i></h1><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><i>Imponderabilia </i>was first performed in 1977 by Marina <span lang="EN">Abramovic</span> and Ulay at Galleria Comunale D’Arte Moderna, in
Bologna, Italy, for the duration of ninety minutes before the police shut it
down. It was first created and performed during the height of second-wave
feminism of 1970s, a time that brought about changes in mainstream society’s
understanding of sexuality. It was a time dubbed <i>the sexual revolution</i>.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">In North America this era
brought feminist consciousness, public nudity, birth control, gay and lesbian
rights, as well as ideas of “free love” (sex outside the institution of
marriage), into a wider consciousness. I am reminded that many
iconic performance pieces from this era employ nudity as a transgressive
strategy, most notably Vito Acconci’s <i>Trademarks</i> (1970), Hannah Wilke’s <i>S.O.S. — Starification
Object Series</i> (1974) and Carolee
Schneemann’s <i>Interior Scroll </i>(1975). </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">In this essay, </span><i>Imponderabilia:
Re-enacting Abramovic</i>,
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share my experience reenacting the performance through a feminist lens that considers the significance of this ground-breaking work.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span lang="EN">Abramovic’s performance </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>Imponderabilia</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span"> is ephemeral — it is about being in the moment and
experiencing live art. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span">In my personal experience, </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>Imponderabilia </i></span><span class="Apple-style-span">is physical and sexy. It’s a performance where two
artists stand naked in the main entrance of the museum, gallery or art-spece facing each other and creating a passageway of uncertainty between the audience and artists. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span">If the
audience wants to enter the gallery space their only option is to pass
sideways through a small space between two naked performance artists.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">In 2010, I reenacted <i>Imponderabilia
</i>during Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, at
Hart House, University of Toronto. The performance was organized by the Justina M.
Barnicke Gallery and presented in conjunction with the exhibition <i>Traffic:
Conceptual Art in Canada 1965-1980, </i>curated
by Barbara Fischer. I performed <i>Imponderabilia</i> for a total of five hours!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span">A <span style="font-weight: normal;">diverse group of six artists of
different genders, ages, shapes, sizes and racial backgrounds reenacted the
piece</span>. During Nuit Blanche we
performed for one-and-a-half-hour segments, from 7 pm until 5 am. I performed <i>Imponderabilia</i>
standing across from <span lang="EN">Gail Zamozniak</span>a, a Toronto-based artist and yoga
instructor. I also performed for three-and-a-half hours
across from Francisco-Fernando Granados, a Guatemalan-born, Toronto artist and performance artist extraordinaire.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">According to </span><span lang="EN">Abramovic</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">, </span>“the
process is much more important than the result in performance art, everything
is about process.”<b> </b><span style="font-weight: normal;">In this spirit, prior to the event, we went
through an intensive two-day training process designed by </span><span lang="EN">Abramovic </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">and led by two
performers, who reenacted the piece during the 2010 Museum of Modern Art
exhibition </span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><i>The Artist is Present</i>. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">The training process was
designed to slow us down and bring us fully into our bodies. In one exercise, we wrote our names for one hour without removing the pencil from
the paper. In another, we sat blindfolded in a park for one hour.</span> <span style="font-weight: normal;">During
the preparation we were also asked to fast during the day. In the evening
we were fed light, wholesome foods like fruits, vegetables, rice, water and
herbal teas in order to purify our bodies. According to the Abromavic, the
preparation for </span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><i>Imponderabilia</i>
trains the artist to be fully present in his or her body in order to
gain a greater sense of interconnectedness with their performance partner(s), and the audience.
</span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3750522626809975387#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[1]<!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-weight: normal;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">What I learned from performing the piece is, <i>Imponderabilia’s</i> <span lang="EN">ability to utilize the artist’s physicality as a medium that allows for a questioning of
patriarchal norms about sexuality. This experience confirmed </span>that nudity is still a subversive and transgressive act! <span lang="EN">Since radical resistance to norms of Patriarchy depend upon destabilizing the status quo</span><span lang="EN"> </span>nudity can still be considered a tool of resistance
and a revolutionary strategy that broadens one's awareness of sexuality, specifically its relationship to gender. <u><o:p></o:p></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span">I think members of the
public — like those at the University of Toronto campus — were more comfortable
with the idea or the fantasy of nudity in relation to the female body. Since we are
socialized to see naked female bodies in art and culture daily. One direct
example of this was when I performed <i>Imponderabilia</i> with a male partner, nine out of ten passers-by
would not face him, but instead faced me while making the passageway between
us. I think this is because they are accustomed to the female nude in art & culture.</span><span> </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">Moreover the
female body has a tradition of being mediated through social hierarchies. In
the canon of art history for example, the female body is framed as an object
to be looked at and consumed. Yet, when
a real naked female body is positioned in a performance space it disrupts expectations and norms around beauty, age, race, ability and the objectification of female bodies. That is, a real body makes folks very uncomfortable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">While performing <i>Imponderabilia</i><i> </i>problems
arose because the female nude is no longer mediated through pop culture or art
history. Instead the female nude is confronted face-to-face. The presence of the nude body in the Hart House performance space transformed the viewing experience from
audience members looking at the body as object, to audience members encountering
it as a real imperfect subject. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">While hundreds of audience
members passed through us many audience members <b>could not</b> bring themselves to pass through at all! Still
others passed through with much hostility! (A woman around my age actually took a photo of my vulvic area! without consent!) This unknown territory of actual
bodies unnerves and disturbs people.<span lang="EN"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Thirty-three
years after <i>Imponderabilia</i> was first performed it continues
to bring the politics of the body to the forefront by illustrating how audience’s relationship to nudity destabilizes the dynamic between artist and
audience. That is, nudity in <i>Imponderabilia </i>is
used as a strategy to disrupt patriarchal norms in mainstream popular culture demonstrating that it could still be used as a feminist and revolutionary
act of resistance.</span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3750522626809975387#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="color: black;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[1]<!--[endif]--></span></span></a> <span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white;">Durng
the training sessions we also created code-words for our safety, so that a
volunteer, coordinator, security guard, or another performance artist who heard
the code-word could intervene. And yes, I was paid and treated well.</span><i style="color: black;"> </i></span></span></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->mz.katebarryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04924615214312685445noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750522626809975387.post-16440261075595995842013-05-25T03:50:00.002-07:002021-02-09T11:41:01.803-08:00QUEER NOISE SOLIDARITY<span style="font-family: arial;">By Kate Barry<br /><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span">Skillfully chosen as the site for <i>QUEER NOISE SOLIDARITY</i>, Christie Pits Park has a long history of resistance after the legendary race riots that took place there in 1933. More recently this beautiful green-space and recreational park has been the location of a number of assaults on women. <i>QUEER NOISE SOLIDARITY</i> descended on Christie Pits on Friday evening as a way to respond to this violence, while linking feminism and the LGBTQI2S (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgenered, Queer, Intersex and Two-Spirited) communities with live art. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span">The performance itself consisted of drumming in the park – not your stereotypical feminist, bongo-style, peace-loving drum circle, but rather it was a loud, experimental, triangulated fury of noise. During the performance, Calgary artist Wednesday Lupypciw acted as the conductor as she stood in the middle of a triangle </span><span class="Apple-style-span">(vulvic) shape</span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span">of twelve all-female drummers: Celina Carroll, Tyla Crowhurst-Smith, Shavonne Tovah Somvong, Eleanor King, Conny Nowe, Karen Frostitution, Samara Liu, Laura Hartley, Rita Mckeough, Heidi Chan, Simone Baril, Alaska B. </span><span class="Apple-style-span">This large, loud, </span><span class="Apple-style-span">all-female ensemble puts</span><span class="Apple-style-span"> the traditionally male-dominated world of rock n’ roll to shame. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Karen Frostitution (left) and <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">Heidi Chan (right)</span>, 2013. </span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span">Born from a small scale, feminist drum circle (with actual drum kits) that Lupypciw originally created for the visual arts component of Calgary’s Sled Island festival, she worked together with FADO performance art centre and the Feminist Art Gallery (FAG) to bring things to the next level. Lupypciw created QUEER NOISE SOLIDARITY specifically for Toronto audiences.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span">By occupying Christie Pits Park QUEER NOISE SOLIDARITY adeptly positions itself as a unifying tour de force. To paraphrase artist Allyison Mitchell, if anyone thinks feminism is dead in Toronto, they couldn’t be more wrong! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Above drum triangle photo credit Coman Poon.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span">All the other photos were taken on my iphone.</span><span class="Apple-style-span"> </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn4vIMEJAYnJDaTo2p8FlcgnxXNtjY9RUd1W8AFqv45W-ywfp-r4KWxypnkbWm34heGTY95apCFJr8dxgoihTv3LvjJLhe0vNmPkho-uuIe42X0rQ3jpsBXybf9L79HGCMkeiEgNVNkO8R/s1600/2013-05-24+19.38.24.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" height="728" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn4vIMEJAYnJDaTo2p8FlcgnxXNtjY9RUd1W8AFqv45W-ywfp-r4KWxypnkbWm34heGTY95apCFJr8dxgoihTv3LvjJLhe0vNmPkho-uuIe42X0rQ3jpsBXybf9L79HGCMkeiEgNVNkO8R/w544-h728/2013-05-24+19.38.24.jpg" width="544" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Wednesday Lupypciw (in red) standing in the middle of the drumming triangle.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span">Weblinks:</span><br />
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<a href="http://www.performanceart.ca/index.php?m=program&id=257" target="_blank"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">FADO Performance Art Centre</span></a></span><br />
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<a href="https://www.facebook.com/FeministArtGallery?fref=ts" target="_blank"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">FAG</span></a></span></span>mz.katebarryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04924615214312685445noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3750522626809975387.post-8789767133870186902013-05-19T08:11:00.002-07:002021-02-09T11:45:07.901-08:00WELCOME!<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><i>Performance Ar13 </i><span style="font-style: normal;">features</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial; font-style: normal;">This Blog is performative as it steams from life and work. It asks, “what is it
like to be a queer-femme artist in the 21-century?. It features artworks that engages in queer and feminist radical dialogue about performance art.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Today for example </span></span><span style="font-family: arial;">May 16, 2013</span><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> I am inspired my some female performance artists in China.</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN76X16jIsYMm2xxlmpqKcHUkJz2mlfYEVCdsEYjAJ5WoWg_MwXMtTyhChKhwNqOF95nw16Xds_ciRbUMra0UnaDO93_dtzVZyY7BH-AAWgbNei9DdJvcag0St88RPBl5WQJ0nTrLDmr5y/s1600/1305170068.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" height="442" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN76X16jIsYMm2xxlmpqKcHUkJz2mlfYEVCdsEYjAJ5WoWg_MwXMtTyhChKhwNqOF95nw16Xds_ciRbUMra0UnaDO93_dtzVZyY7BH-AAWgbNei9DdJvcag0St88RPBl5WQJ0nTrLDmr5y/w664-h442/1305170068.jpg" width="664" /></span></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></span><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span">Three lesbian couples protested against discrimination with performance art staged at Houhai in Beijing on May 16, 2013, in conjunction with the International Day Against Homophobia, which falls on May 17 every year.</span><br />
<span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><a href="http://www.womenofchina.cn/html/womenofchina/report/152453-1.htm">Click here for the link</a></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span">These performers and activists are demanding basic human rights illustrating how performative protest can speak volumes and how news & images can travel so readily over the Internet. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span">This International Day Against Homophobia protest is especially relevant in light of renowed Chinese artist Ai Weiei, and the incredible documentary, "</span><span class="Apple-style-span">Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry" 2012, a film </span><span class="Apple-style-span">directed by American filmmaker Alison Klayman. With a special appearance by one of my </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; border-spacing: 2px;">favorite </span><span class="Apple-style-span">chinese performance artists Tehching Hsieh. </span><span class="Apple-style-span">If you haven't seen it, you should watch it now, click here:<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;"> <a href="http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Ai_Weiwei_Never_Sorry/70229921"><span class="Apple-style-span">Never Sorry</span></a></span></b></span></span></div>
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