International Performance Art Festival
4th
International
Performance Art Festival
Oct. 31 - Nov. 10, 2002
schedule
map
d2d Screening
supporting institutions
ARAI, Shin-Ichi's "unofficial" website of the 4th 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art
4th International
Performance Art Festival
Featured Events
All events
at Art System, 327 Spadina Avenue, 2nd Floor (Toronto)
unless otherwise noted
Phone festival hotline 416-822-3219 for TBA event locations, updated daily
Tari Ito
(Japan)
Where Is The Fear
Curated by Rochelle Holt. Presented by A Space
Opening Performance/Reception
Saturday, October 26, 7 - 9 pm
Exhibition runs October 26 - November 23
at A Space, 401 Richmond St. W., Suite 110 (Toronto)
The performance relates experiences of isolation, empowerment and personal identity as Ito navigates the psychology of fear in society. Where is the fear? is the third in a trilogy of performance/installation pieces and has recently toured in Kyoto and Osaka. The series presents a specific focus on lesbian identity and the oppression of gays and lesbians in Japan.
Born and educated in Tokyo, Tari Ito began to explore performance art in 1986. She has since travelled her work extensively in Asia, Europe and North America. In addition to her performance practice, Ito appears as a lecturer, workshop and action organizer. As the founder of WAN (Women’s Art Network, 1994) Ito works from a feminist perspective. Tari is on the panel at Queerish Talk panel Discussion Tuesday October 29, 7 - 9pm at the Cameron House. For information call 416 979 9633
André-Philip
Lemke (Germany)
The Ten Commandments (live in Toronto)
October 31 - November 10 (with "commercial break" November 5), 2 pm
The ten performances that will occur on ten different days are dedicated to the ten commandments. The idea is based on a dream I had where god was preaching about what is not allowed. His angels were there to illustrate the things that are not allowed by performing them. You can imagine that it was a quite amazing and colourful atmosphere in the church, a bit like a fun fair. I want to create a similar atmosphere by making little actions that are dedicated to each commandment.
The events will begin daily at 2 pm at Art System. If I need to go somewhere else, everybody will still meet there and come with me to another place. The performances will last between two and five hours, but like all my performances they will work with repetitive actions (like feeding a meat-eating plant twenty-seven insects - dedicated to the sixth commandment: Thou Shall Not Kill).
André Lemke was born in Wiesbaden, Germany, in 1970. In 1999 he received an MFA from the Academy of Art in Munster. Working in the public sphere, Lemke installs himself in site-specific locations as a salesman in the context of the everyday marketplace. He creates object or interactions, drawing the viewer or consumer into the work. Through his personal souvenirs, Lemke's work extends itself inextricably into life.
Chris
Wildrick (United States)
Who Is That Unmasked Man?
October 31
Chris will spend his day at home in southern Illinois as the secret identity of a superhero. While people here know of his covert identity but are spatially removed from him, none of the people in physical proximity to him in Illinois will be apprised or aware of Chris’ sub-rosa double life.
"The
Correspondence Cube of Ostensible Epistemological Systems &
Polling
and Ostended Ontological Nomination & Gestation" (A.K.A.
"The
Ballot Box")
October 31 - November 10
A white cube will be put on display with instructions and forms for many free projects, tests, and surveys. Just fill out a form and drop it in the hole! In as little as 30 seconds, you can participate in such projects as “Do I Know You?”, decide once and for all whether Chris is better than you are in “Am I Better Than You Are?”, take part in Chris’ attempt to number the entire population of the earth in the “Wildrick World Numbering System,” ditch your old identity and assume Chris’ in “Reproduction,” or find out whether fishes really are wishes in “If Fishes Were Wishes.”
Chris grew up in Pennsylvania, went to college in western Massachusetts, did his graduate tour in Madison, Wisconsin, and subsequently moved on through Chicago and Las Vegas. He is now an Assistant Professor of Foundations at Southern Illinois University.
Daniel
Barrow (Manitoba)
The Face Of Everything
October 31, 8 pm
Daniel's most recent performance unfolds in the form of visual and emotional, cartoon vignettes, with speech balloons depicting all dialogue. "The Face of Everything" traces and develops the internal dialogue of a melancholic teenager and various meditations on the relationship between beauty and sadness, and a romantic view of pain. A nostalgic, electronic score, composed by Matthew Adam Hart, of the Russian Futurists, parallels this monologue, and the sentimental, sometimes absurdly fancy, piano playing of Liberace.
Daniel Barrow is a Winnipeg-based media artist. Since 1993, Daniel Barrow has used an overhead projector to relay ideas and short narratives.
|
Fado's International Visiting Artists Mimi Nakajima and Shin-Ichi Arai are part of a recent trend in Japanese performance art toward a rawer, more direct style, eschewing the formalism and romanticism of an earlier generation of Japanese artists. While traces of the poetic influence remain, these artists' works reveal their interest in casting an unblinking eye on our bodies as a site of social tension. This presentation partially funded through the Japan-Canada Fund of the Canada Council. 
Mimi Nakajima
(Japan) My performances develop from problems in my daily life, which I try to observe in an optimistic way. As I start to find the truth of a question, my thinking moves toward philosophic conclusion, the territory of 'reason'. If I bring my conclusions back to reality, it creates a funny gap. That is what I want to express in performance. There is always some 'vagueness' in trying to clarify truth. It is quite difficult to express the vagueness itself, but I find performance a useful means of accepting it. In performance art, people experience discovery through sharing time and place. Mimi Nakajima is based in Tokyo. A graduate of the Tokyo National University of Fine Art, she has presented her work in Europe and Asia. This is her first performance in North America.
Shin-Ichi
Arai (Japan) In Happy Japan!, Shin-Ichi Arai calls attention to some of the contradictions of his native country. Critical of the political system and alarmed by conservative and xenophobic cultural tendencies, Arai makes his own patriotic statement through a bold art action. "Here in Japan, which is said to be rich, to be mature democracy, to have freedom of expression, all I can do is cry; 'Happy Japan! Happy Japan!'" Shin-Ichi Arai has been doing performance actions for 20 years. He has performed extensively in Asia as well as appearing at the Exit Festival in Helsinki, Finland. Ten years ago he spent two years teaching at Nyumba ya Sanaa Art school, Zanzibar, Tanzania. |
Cheli
Nighttraveller (Quebec)
HalfbreedLand, Admission: Dirt Cheap!
November 2, 3 pm
What land can a halfbreed person lay claim to? When claiming one's culture feels at times like thievery, perhaps it is time to develop new skills for acquiring cultural value. The halfbreed, in her role of cultural scave nger is more than happy to make others' useless dirt her own.
Cheli Nighttraveller (Cree/Saulteaux/Caucasian) is a person of mixed ancestry. Mentored by women in the Aboriginal arts community in Saskatchewan, she has learned to explore & expand upon her hybrid cultural identity through video, installation and performance.
Diane
Landry (Quebec)
La morue/The cod
November 2, 8 pm
Working instinctively she places everyday objects -a teapot, an ice skate, a rat, a pair of sling-back shoes, a trophy- on a pair of turntables, and watches the shadows they cast on the wall in front of her. These shadows, which rotate and swirl to a soundscape of exaggerated rumbles and scratches from the turntable, are utterly captivating; Shakespeare would have called them wondrous strange. (from a text by Robert Enright.)
Diane Landry lives and works in Quebec City. Since 1987, she has performed and exhibited in Canada, the United States, Mexico, France, Austria and Germany. The first monograph devoted to her work «Diane Landry, Oeuvres Mouvelles» was published by the Centre de diffusion et de production de la photographie VU in 1998. Her recent solo exhibition, Les sédentaires clandestins presented at the Musée du Québec in 2001, was also accompanied by a catalogue and audio CD.
Clive
Robertson (Ontario)
Turning the page (2002)
November 2, 8 pm
An audience-participatory work, Turning the page 2002 reworks a mid-sixties Robin Page Fluxus event. An introductory narrative plays to the mixed emotional responses possible when specific materials become extensions of our bodies in the executions of our work.
Since 1970 media artist and cultural critic, Clive Robertson has presented actions and performances in Canada, Wales, England, Holland, Germany, Poland and Japan. He is a member of the Group Therapy collective and annually organizes the student performance event, ARTHappens. Clive teaches contemporary art history and policy studies at Queen's University.
|
Public Spaces/Private Places is a three-year long international series exploring the elements that turn neutral 'space' into meaningful 'place' through performances that examine the degrees of intimacy, connection and interaction that mark the dividing line between public and private. The series explores the points where identity and geography intersect to generate meaning  Iwan Wijono
(Indonesia) "We live on the earth, we need the earth; we need food and water from the earth. But modern people little by little have distanced themselves from the earth; they want to conquer the earth, benefit and profit form the earth without having to take care of it properly. Most modern people from morning til night do not even touch the earth, everybody wants to be a businessman or millionaire, nobody wants to be a labourer or farmer, nobody wants to get their hands dirty. Forests have been felled in the name of industry, villages increasingly become cities or ghost towns, where villagers move to the cities When the earth is plagued by disease, there are no longer any forests or clean water, dollars can buy nothing!" Iwan Wijono was born in 1971 in Central Java. While studying international law in Jogjakarta he became active in the pro-democracy movement against the Suharto regime. He eventually enrolled in the ISI (Indonesian Art Institute), where he began looking for a practical form of art that would express his political ideals. His early performance art activities on the street have evolved to include arts events both locally and internationally. This is his first performance in Canada. Toy truck created with Jompet (Ag.Widananto) |
Pierre
Beaudoin (Quebec)
And...
November 3, 2 pm
Lors de mes performances, je m'impose toujours un défi en me plaçant dans une situation d'inconfort. Je dois travailler avec une certaine dualité liée à la notion de stabilité versus celle d'instabilité. Il s'installe alors une forme de déchirement qui introduit une démarche soutenant un déracinement corporel afin de confronter mes peurs aux normes du maintien physique et psychique. Un semblant de dérisoire s'instaure dans un contexte dénué de technologie où la simple présence corporelle imprègne le performatif.
My performances involve the challenge of placing myself in physically uncomfortable situations. I work with a certain duality: the tension between stability and instability. This duality manifests as an uprooting of the body; a confrontation of physical and psychological fears. The performances combine ironic and seemingly absurd elements, charged with simple physical presence and stripped of technology.
After having been a cowboy, a social worker, a gardener and a waiter, Pierre Beaudoin found himself roaming around the artist-run milieu for over a decade. His performances have been shown in Montreal, across Quebec and Canada, in Italy and in Poland. He is also a writer and last year published a book entitled La piscine/The Pool through Cube Editors, which he co-founded with François Dion in 1996.
Skip Arnold
(United States)
November 3, 6 & 9
Locations TBA
The emphasis is on space and how/what my body does or can do. The work ranges from being extremely physical to extremely passive. To explore the relationships between self, place, and particular time. To explore fundamental gestures and concepts. My interest is the image and nothing else. I work in media that are evanescent, transient, consumed in passing, not collected. What is common to all my work is “Skip”. Skip is the artwork. The act of doing my actions.
Skip will be presenting an ongoing video work throughout the festival. Skip Arnold’s bookworks are available at Art Metropole throughout the festival.
John Beagles
and Graham Ramsay (Britain)
Burgerheaven: The True Taste of Stardom
Presented by YYZ. Opening reception November 6, 7-9pm
November 6 - December 14
at YYZ, 401 Richmond St. W., Suite 140 (Toronto)
Burgerheaven explores aspects of consumer culture and desire, focussing on the cult of celebrity and fast food. At YYZ, Beagles and Ramsay will construct an installation that resembles a fully operational fast food restaurant with a video component. The opening night will feature a performance by Beagles and Ramsay. Beagles and Ramsay will present an artist talk discussing their practice with specific reference to contemporary Scottish and British artists.
Iwan Wijono
(Indonesia)
Body for Rent / Body for Auction
November 7 - 9, 3 pm
Body for Rent / Body for Auction will take place at Art System. On Thursday and Friday, Wijono's body will be on display. Then, on Saturday, members of the public are invited to auction or rent Iwan Wijono's body according to negotiated terms. This intervention considers the consumer world, and the trend to connect all communication to commercial relationships.
Istvan
Kantor Monty Cantsin? Amen! (Ontario)
An Unseen Selection from the Days of Song and Sex
A co-presentation with Pleasure Dome
November 7, 9 pm
at The Latvian House, 491 College St. (Toronto)
The exhaustive program of video and live performance, chosen from over two decades of material, deconstructs Istvan Kantor’s totalitarian assault of machine, sex and militancy. Kantor’s tumultuous career as an internationally notorious performance artist, videomaker, musician, founder of Neoism (1979, Montreal), and proud recipient of many jail sentences for unwanted blood-x interventions in museums, has seen his work overlooked and rejected by critics and institutions.
This event introduces his passionate, revolutionary vision, highly experimental video, risk-taking philosophy, and radical ideas on a very personal level. The evenings multiple-screen barrage will include a performance of the Machine Sex Action Group, early street and club performances, vintage video works, blood, transvestitism, proto-porn, animal and durational experiments, his family, and found footage, as well as a live expanded music/video performance of his 80s Neoist hits.
Bruce
Barber (Nova Scotia)
Diddly Squat (three performances about money)
November 8, 2 pm - November 9, 8 pm (30 hrs)
The first will consist of me Performing 30 hours of community work.
The second will consist of my public nomination of a vacant building in the city as an official squat by placing the internationally recognized squat sign on the door and/or a window of the building.
The third will be at the conclusion of my community work.
Bruce Barber was born in Auckland, New Zealand and currently lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He received an M.F.A. from the University of Auckland and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD). He went on to teach at NSCAD, Simon Fraser University, and The Banff Center. He has shown his work in solo and group exhibitions worldwide and publishes regularly in Fuse and Parachute with major essays in Performance by Artists (1980), Performance Documents and Text(e)s (1982), A Book Working (1980-82), and Living Art (1979).
http://www.wizya.net/bruce.htm
Shin-Ichi Arai (Japan)
Tourist: For E. H. Norman
November 8, 8 pm
This piece offers a personal reflection on Canada-Japan relations, with reference to the life and work of E. Herbert Norman, a Canadian scholar and diplomat who wrote the seminal book Japan's Emergence as a Modern State - Political and Economic Problems of the Meiji Period (recently republished in a 60th anniversary edition). E. Herbert Norman committed suicide in the 1950s after being accused of being a communist spy.
Anita
Ponton (Britain)
Company
November 8, 8 pm
This work is a combination of live performance with video projection. The live body of the artist takes center stage, alongside her video double who commences a dialogue that tells of burgeoning hunger and desire. This projected persona performs an enactment of perpetual devouring and re-emergence as both the live and video bodies sway to the repeating rhythm of the soundtrack - they enact a dance, in which their forms never quite separate.
Anita Ponton is a graduate of Central St. Martins in London, and is currently undertaking practice as research doctorate at Goldsmiths College. For the last 10 years she has been working in time based and performative practices.
Roi
Vaara
(Finland)
Shit Happens
November 8, 8 pm
The events of Sept. 11th and the global news have been the starting points to this work. The words heard throughout the performance are identified with champagne glasses piled on the table and falling from the table. The duration of the performance is about 50 minutes.
Vaara has been most active in Finland becoming the country's most internationally recognised performance artist. His work emphasises an aesthetic discourse between the artwork and its specific place or situation, rejecting the objectification of art destined for a vacuum. His work in performance art since 1982 has been conceptual, absurd and humorous. Since 1988, he has been part of Black Market International, an international, collaborative, occasional meeting of performance artists whose work proposes performance art as a simultaneous form of communication. During the last decade Vaara has exhibited his work extensively throughout Europe, as well as in Canada, Mexico, South Korea, USA, Japan and China.
Emmanuelle
Waeckerle (Britain)
Slow March In Toronto (the making of a second road movie)
November 9, 8 pm
The artist makes her own road movie. A live video relay allows the audience to witness simultaneously the process as well as the finished thing - a hypnotic time-based melody with built-in suspense. This performance concludes the idea of a roadwork I have been developing since 1996 - a journey paradoxically spent endlessly carrying the "baggage" of the road of life that we wander. The idea of fluidity and flux in identity and space has been central to modernity and has, overtly or covertly, found its way into my multidisciplinary art practice.
Waeckerle
is a senior lecturer in visual art at Surrey institute of Art and
Design
in Farnham. http://www.ewaeckerle.com/
Project developed with financial support from London Arts. Travel
to Toronto
funded by Surrey Institute of Art and Design.
_badpacket_
(Ontario)
(Mike Steventon & Michelle Kasprzak) w/Sarah Peebles
interrupt_7
November 9, 8 pm
Our bodies have become the site for a battle between corporations in tandem with governments for corporate and political power. With interrupt_7, we question why biotechnology is being seen as a solution to all of our ailments, both physical and emotional. It is possible that the cure is worse than the disease.
ReciproCity/RéciproCité
Collective
(Shannon Cochrane, Paul Couillard, Margaret Dragu, Tagny Duff, Kirsten
Forkert, Benjamin Muon, Songs of the New Erotics, Victoria Stanton,
Josée
Tremblay)
November 9, 8 pm
An experiment in simultaneous performance (inter)activities. The ReciproCity/RéciproCité collective began as an invited collaboration of artists from Vancouver, Montréal and Toronto interested in site-specific performance actions. Since presenting initial projects in Montréal and Toronto (2001), the group continues to explore formats for collaboration while responding to the elements of time, space, experience and relationship that unite and separate us.
La
Dragu
Book Launch
November 10, 1 pm
Fado, in cooperation with the Art Gallery of Hamilton, is pleased to launch the first book in the Canadian Performance Art Legends series. La Dragu looks at the life and work of Margaret Dragu, with essays by Glenn Alteen, Paul Couillard, Andy Fabo, Debbie O'Rourke, Sarah Sheard, a chronology by Brice Canyon, and a DVD featuring two videos by Dragu. Edited by Paul Couillard. Margaret Dragu will be in attendance.
"This first comprehensive survey of a Canadian performance artist contributes immeasurably to the literature. Must reading for scholars and aficionados of performance art everywhere." -Tanya Mars
PANEL:
Images versus Iconoclasms
or shooting sacred cows from a train of thought
Panel and Discussion at Art System
moderated by Johanna Householder
November 10, 2 pm
We are like Benjamin's angel being blown backward - looking at the debris piling up from five decades of performance (art). As much as we struggle against the idea of lineage, we waver between the peddling of an iconoclastic oneupmanship, feminist autonomy and the autodidact enfant sauvage. Artists, curators, critics, pedagoges - how do we differently manipulate the history of what we do, and what is at stake? Who does performance art history belong to? Did Paul McCarthy beget The Osbournes? Are images of political action, political action? Is history fatal? (with apologies to Clive)
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