Mountain Standard Time Festival Blog

October 25, 2010 - Caitlind r.c. Brown

2010-10-27T11:31:00.002-06:00

Over since last Friday, adequate time has passed for me to begin to reflect on this year’s Mountain Standard Time, affirming a number of things:

1. Keith Murray is my dream girl.

2. Performance Art is not an impenetrable genre.

3. Wednesday Lupypciw is a fantastic gateway into the possibilities of silly and fun (but not effortless or redundant) performative craft.

4. I appreciate the toils of the body in pursuit of art. I appreciate accumulations, collections: patient pieces.

5. I definitely appreciate two French men wandering across an unknown city in period dress in search of video shots that will ultimately be masked away!

a) Also known as: sometimes the documentation is the idea. (see: Donald Abad
and Thierry Marceau)

6. Not all Performance Art is easy, but some of it is funny, (see Istvan Kantor)

7. Kids have the right idea! From now on, people should interact with art as children
do: Touch the Artwork, get confused, laugh, explore, climb on things, ask lots of questions, touch some more, stare, and then not remember until they’re older that this was a pivotal moment in their life. (see: Mark Lowe and Co.’s Bin 15)

8. During unique festivals like this, it’s worth going out of your way to see things, especially Artist Talks. Make time, especially if you’re feeling uninspired.

9. The most effective Performance Art must be seen in context. It is intimate when it needs to be, installational when it sees fit, exhibitionist, loud, painful, unofficial. It can be anywhere, anytime (like the woman who screams at people on the C-train and takes pictures with her cell phone camera).

a) “Life=Art=Life” (Istvan Kantor)

10. Performance Art appears to necessitate some degree of ego: one’s body is representational and charged with responsibility. Is this self-exploitive?

11. Interesting to consider the diversity of performances within M:ST – those in which the act of performing is essential (all the Gala performances) versus those in which the result is the motivator (almost everything craft-based; Suzen Green and Ryan Statz’s knitted business suit).

12. As anything, performance art has a vocabulary, a detailed language, and I would like to become more proficient at this language, to understand, and maybe even learn to participate.

13. Seriously, Keith Murray in a sequined lady-suit, full body glitter and a giant pink wig and beard is the closest I’ve recently come to enlightenment. Oh yeah, and he’s FROM THE FUTURE, YO!

Mountain Standard Time 2010 was an educational experience and a great success. One can only hope that, over the next two years between this festival and the next, we shall continue to expand our repertoire of performance art and go into M:ST 2012 with fuller minds and even higher expectations: for myself at least, the bar has been raised.

Manjello by Jay Crocker and Joe Kelly (Oct. 16th, 2010) -Jordan Baylon

2010-10-25T16:07:00.017-06:00

I wonder how the others felt. I wonder what boundaries other people set for scope of the experience, whether they let it blink with the finality of a light bulb, or let it bleed into all other moments, past and present, re-contextualizing all other experiences. As I ask this question I come to startling realization that for Jay Crocker and Joe Kelly’s Manjello, I did both.

I have been thinking about this performance for a week now, and narrating it there are some aspects that I can speak to easily. There were two sources, one apparatus with knobs and keys that produced sound, and another with a looped measure of transparent film that produced images. The sound was immersive, soaking the space, steadying us. Pure light was treated in the projector to reveal previously hidden frequencies of colour, throwing them through the portal called a lens to dance on the white wall. We were all oriented to the tapered base of that triangle of light, some sitting and some standing. I vaguely remember spending the first half kneeling and the second half cross-legged, the posture of my upper body and the focus it represented anchored to the ascetic ache of both poses. The sound and the images layered steadily, building in intensity, and every so often one of us would crane our necks back to make sure Jay and Joe still existed. It finished, and after the applause I noted that everyone seemed as genuinely edified as I was. So much is clear to me.

But all the things that I can express for myself only point sublimely to something ineffable; something hiding in the vanishing point that I will never reach. In one sense the performance is an aesthetic experience complete in itself; there is nothing more I could ask of it. In another sense, as my senses were being inundated with greater and greater intensity, my sense of self began to fall away from me. A week later I think of Bodhidharma staring at a wall for nine years. I was hearing but not hearing, seeing but not seeing, and travelling without moving.
I think I will spend my whole life trying to go there again, and in that sense this performance will never be finished for me. If you were there did you feel something similar? Did we share something? Because this is all that I can say.

And the tiger dances away from me…

The Ladies' 500-Metre Challenge by Samuel Garrigó Meza

2010-10-22T14:32:00.005-06:00

Wednesday Lupypciw’s, The Ladies’ 500-Metre Challenge involves two looms threaded together, the stage for a competitive weaving event. Two teams, Pink and Purple, dressed in togas and ribbon, are pitted against each other over the course of three hours to determine who the better weavers are. A referee, with the help of a dutiful assistant, carefully moderates proceedings, distributes penalties, and ensures proper sports-womanship.

I get there 15 minutes into the performance – a significant amount of weaving has already taken place. Bleachers are set up to divide each team’s supporters (I sit with team Purple – they’re closest to the entrance). Teams call each other names for a little while (“stinky pinky” and “purple nurple” come up once or twice) and the audience joins in on the taunting. It’s a three-hour event, so the enthusiasm for trash talk ebbs and flows. The seriousness of the competitors, however, is steady – even when exchanging verbal jibes both teams continue to weave. I want to have a closer look at the weaving, looms are magical, foreign machines, but I’m not sure how to close to the playing field I’m allowed to go. After half an hour, I leave to check out the other performances in the Craft Off Series.

Back for the final stages of the competition, free-style weaving; the looms are stretched several metres apart; both teams continue to work meticulously. Team Pink is penalized for moving their loom back without permission – they’re instructed to look guilty and crestfallen for 90 seconds. I get distracted for a few seconds, and when I look back a member of team Purple is getting spanked by the referee’s assistant. After furious last minutes of weaving, the referee dons the spirit of impartial justice (a blindfold) and, surprisingly (Pink’s weave is, in my non-expert opinion, better looking), crowns team Purple winners. A two-step podium is brought and celebrations ensue. One of the contenders reveals to me later on that, despite knowing that the “competition” was not “competitive,” per se, it took her a few moments after the winner was announced to cool down and be friendly with her friends on the opposing team. I went up to inspect the weaving, afterwards, and heard other audience members seriously discussing, and questioning, the final outcome.

Lupypciw’s work sustains a palpable playfulness and irreverence (an irreverence aided by the chosen venue, the Glenbow Museum). The Ladies’ 500-Metre Challenge adopts sporting norms with seriousness and blends them carefully with “lady-ness.” Frivolous costumes, ambiguous rules, “unbiased” judgement, controversial outcomes, even rowdy audiences with loosely formed allegiances, were all incorporated into the event. The referee, played by Lupypciw, delivered all instructions and penalties with the certainty and assurance required of authority figures – though humorous, neither “lady-stretch” times nor 90 second penalties for using the word, “taint,” felt out of place – absurdity goes down easier with a good dose of authority.

Bin 15 by Mark Lowe (Oct. 15th, 2010) by Jordan Baylon

2010-10-20T21:54:00.002-06:00

The air outside of Eau Claire Market was cold, bracing, and charged; I could feel it keening with a potential that I couldn’t hear, drawing people to gather around a strange site/sight. It was a grain bin, but it wasn’t. To me it looked more like a battery, with two polarized ends. There was an anode connected to the earth via wooden pilings, and a yellow capped aperture, opened to the night air, which constituted a cathode. What was basically a projection of my imagination took the force of reality when I peeked inside the bin door and saw a variety of instruments, both utilitarian and musical, and three men enter the space at the clanging an iron triangle, ready to vibrate the air around them. Practical consideration for the possibility that the bin was suspended on a wooden frame and opened at the top to enhance the acoustic qualities of the space could no longer matter to me: there was the earth, the air, the medium, itself composed of a “casing” (the bin) and the “voltaic pile” (the performers), and us watching of course.

As the performance began, the entire crowd was shuffled away from the tiny doorway to the broad side of the bin, where the there was a sound board for mixing and a projector feeding video taken of the inside against the metal exterior. The first notes were like those of a tuning fork, sonar pings pulsing over the vicinity to find resonance with us. The sound entered my ears, danced through my bones, and set my feet to tapping. I could see others begin to sway unconsciously, entranced. We passed our vibrations along through the earth, through the wood, back into bin, and out through the top into the air again. After awhile, I was no longer conscious of the projection of either my imagination or the image from within. Instead, the light emanating from the side of the bin was formed by our circuit with the men inside, our potential for connection singing in colour and shining in sound.

In time the men stopped, left their tools behind, and came out to greet us: when the work is done it’s done. We received each other warmly, thanked them for their labour, and went about our business, each of us carrying those vibrations with us.

Glossolalia: Speaking in Tongues by Samuel Garrigó Meza

2010-10-20T11:26:00.003-06:00

Reona Brass, in a long sleeved shirt and thick grey pants, sits with a roll of barbed wired resting between her feet. With only gardening gloves to protect her hands she begins to unravel strands of steel and thorns. She proceeds slowly, making all contact with the wire deliberate. The weight of the roll is magnified. After a moment, she pays attention to the sheets on the music stand beside her. She begins to read from the Indian Act (this is mentioned in the M:ST program guide; yet, it would be easy to discern the nature of the text from listening to it). Brass reads details about how to identify and “Indian.” She reads rights and restrictions, and manners in which these may be modified or limited to suit the desires of non-Indians. She reads of jurisdictions, management, and segregation of Indians, her voice calm and monotone, and all along she continues to unravel wire. The wire grows in volume on the floor, a tangled mess. Brass continues working wire with the same slow, deliberate motions she started with. At times, wire threatens to scratch her face. When she finishes a page of the act, she slips it off the music stand lets it fall to interact freely with the wire. Many pages are flown off the stand unread.
Brass stops unwinding, and stops reading. She stands and slips on a pantyhose mask with braided legs. Then she falls to the floor and begins to struggle into the barbed wire. Thorns snag on her clothes and mask, and scratches soon appear on her hands (the gloves are off). Images of soldiers come to mind – barbed wired across enemy lines intended to immobilize personnel, to disturb and disorient, to set up targets for snipers. Brass moves with difficulty, trying to get involved with as much wire as possible. Once she has crawled into the mess, she tries to crawl out. As she makes her slow, laborious exit she flattens the barbed wire with her hands and knees, reducing its volume. When she finally emerges, and is able to stand on her feet again, Brass reads once more, this time in her Native tongue, with more purpose this time, as though stating a manifesto. She lifts up the wire mass, drops it to the ground, and exits. The event spans about 25 minutes.
The directness of the comparison, between crawling through barbed wire and the Indian Act, is not shocking, and the physical pain endured does not elicit a great deal of wincing – the metaphor is not particularly imaginative nor captivating. But perhaps that is the point – the Indian Act exists much like Brass’ crawling through barbed wire; the faces that suffer from it, those pained expressions, are obscured just enough for observers not to feel the requisite dose of sympathy that would prompt an intervention. Suffering is obvious, and blood visible, but the face is hidden just enough to prevent discomfort from flourishing.

October 17, 2010 Caitlind r.c. Brown

2010-10-18T09:17:00.002-06:00

I am a sucker for experimental cinema. It changes the way we look at the world – at documentation and story, at time and frame and medium. The most beautiful experimental cinema I’ve seen questions perception, how we look, what we see, and whether we are seeing independently, through our own eyes, or letting the artist guide us, catch and hold our point of view. Janet Cardiff’s stereophonic cinema springs to mind (Paradise Institute), and Stan Douglas’ multi-projector images (Der Sandmann). I think also of “expanded cinema,” that movement in the 60s and 70s exploring “the relationship between reality and apparatus and the reconceptualisation of film’s inherent illusionism and the material of film,” (Leighton 14). There are those who speak about the passing of analog film technology into redundancy, and the freedom this “obsolescence” grants the artist, (Leighton 31). With video an era of cheap and effective immediacy began, but the physicality of film remains a tactile treat, especially for those interested in the origins of the moving image.

Within my own memory, this has been a good year for live cinema manipulations: Amanda Dawn Christie, a Sackville based artist, performed at this January’s $100 Film Festival, using crystals, prisms, mirrors and disco balls to manipulate multiple 16mm film loops. In March, Mia Makela, a Finnish live cinema artist taught workshops and performed at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery at ACAD, using digital programs and sounds to affect video. Locally, there are constantly projects with live soundtracks in the works, (Calgary Cinematheque has the Alloy Orchestra accompanying 1927 silent science fiction film Metropolis in November), and I am a salivating idiot for all of these things. And so, when I heard Joe Kelly was going to be performing at M:ST with live 16mm animations and an improvised soundtrack by Jay Crocker, I was there like a hot streak, excited and ready to watch.

Manjello was performed by Joe and Jay last night at Truck Gallery, and we the audience were not disappointed. Jay’s ambient, reverberating, at times wet, and growingly frantic soundscape was delicious to listen to. Joe Kelly was fascinating. I’ve seen similar works by Joe in theatre spaces, but the gallery space, sans rows or seats, served as a disclaimer inviting the audience to explore, to shift their attention from front to back, to roam if they want to. We watched the images transform on the wall; we observed Joe dipping cylindrical stamps in acrylic ink and rolling it onto sections of 16mm; we listened to Jay Crocker fill the gallery with sound.

For me, projects like Manjello re-invigorate a lust towards the medium of film. At several points during the performance, the film caught in the projector, smearing the image across the wall: a testament to the mechanics of projected movement. Delivered with an animators respect towards the physicality of the moving image, the simplicity of this performance recalled the origins of cinema: and I, for one, certainly enjoy a good bit of celluloid.

Citation: Leighton, Tanya. Art and the Moving Image: A Critical Reader. London: Tate Publishing, 2008.

October 16, 2010 Caitlind r.c. Brown

2010-10-18T09:16:00.000-06:00

I arrived to watch Mark Lowe packing ladders into Bin 15, seal the top and lock the door, and having officially missed my third M:ST performance for the day by mere minutes, I sat back on my haunches to contemplate the detritus left behind by performance art: the “residue.”

Earlier this evening I managed to miss Reona Brass’ Glossolalia: Speaking in Tongues. Disappointed in myself (and making the usual excuse about suburbia), I examined her leftovers: a tangle of barbed wire, ripped pages of The Indian Act strewn around a back corner of Truck’s basement space, work gloves, a pantyhose face-mask with braided legs. The fluorescent lights were on in the gallery. Was this what the performance looked like? I searched the remains as a detective would, mapping out the location of the perpetrator, the defendant, the act of violence. There was no blood – none that I could see, although there must have been some – and the artist herself was nowhere to be found.

While Reona has performed Glossolalia before, and Mark Lowe has previously banged on grain bins for various onlookers, these Calgary performances were new (as each performance is new: new audience, new space, new improvisations, new reactions, new materials…) I imagine re-performance as musicians see it: hitting notes, recalling melodies, re-creating something recognizable, and finding something new.

Several years ago, I chanced upon documentation of Mark Lowe’s original grain bin performance being screened at the Hop ‘n’ Brew. An honest to goodness farm boy, I imagine this performance was happening un-documented for ages before he managed to round up a bin and re-assemble it with a crew in the plaza outside Eau Claire Market. The space surrounding Bin 15 has changed into an urban landscape, just as Reona Brass has never unraveled barbed wire in the particular confines of Truck Gallery before. Has the detritus remained consistent? The sounds? The songs? And how did these acts begin? How will they end?

Having missed the flesh and blood performances today (until Mark’s performance again later this week) I am left with various documents of their passing: word-of-mouth accounts, photographs, videos, and leftover objects. Curiously, I’m enjoying the task of working backwards, piecing through evidence towards imaginary origins.

Although I will go out of my way to see Bin 15 live and in person during Mark Lowe (and Co.) performance on Thursday night… or at least, arrive in time to watch them pack up again.

October 15, 2010 Caitlind r.c. Brown

2010-10-18T09:14:00.000-06:00

We use our skin to separate us from the world around us – or connect us. We use language in the same way. When we can’t understand one another’s language, we read each other’s bodies, or the tone of each other’s voices… we grasp for the familiar in the unfamiliar. We find access points and connect as best we can. Resilient creatures, when all else fails, we humans build our own language.

“I began in performance art because it gave me the complete freedom to say whatever I wanted, and say it however I wanted to say it,” said Reona Brass last night during the M:ST panel discussion entitled Performative Art and Documentation. “Language is a critical component to why I do performance art,” Brass said, telling us a story about her family, about residential schools and losing language, about how her grandmother had 8 children, and all of them but her father were stolen, ferried away from their families and towards a different sort of education. A generation later, she builds on the trauma of her aunts and uncles to create a performative language, one of barbed wire and plastic, of confrontation and escape. In a sense, she documents vicariously experiences of First Nations people, tied by blood and stories, a desire to educate and use her body to instigate thought, and who knows? Maybe even change.

“I am a robot, a zombie and a vampire,” said Istvan Kantor, referring, in his own language, to his performance art practice – one involving decadence and blood. Sitting beside Reona Brass on the Performative Art and Documentation panel, Kantor could not have been more dissimilar from Brass: narrow sunglasses, pinstriped suit, chrome-plated teeth, a red arm-band and carefully whisped white hair. As a man obviously dealing in visual language, his appearance must be mentioned – an artist steeped in spectacle. “I really like revolutions,” he said, “I like blood, I like fire… I’ve committed lots of crimes,” he grinned and let the crowd laugh. Kantor has been creating performance art for decades, and Brass credits him with her early inclination towards the medium. We the audience, privately pondering the two Performance Artists before us – an earnest educator and a pleasantly demented “subvertainer” – could only rectify these outward appearances through the language of their work.

“Life is Art,” said Brass; Kantor scrawled “Life = Art = Life” across the whiteboard. “As artists we’re trying to make connections between things for other people to see,” Brass said, and for a moment we connected the two artists in their desire to create new languages, channeled through their bodies and out into the space between us: between you and me.

Can we understand? This is our first language: the language of our bodies. Maybe we don’t need to understand perfectly.

“In the beginning I felt that language was coming through me,” said Brass, “often I didn’t understand what it meant.” She smiled reassuringly, “don’t worry if you don’t understand everything. Just trust it.” Istvan Kantor reiterated, “it’s very important to confuse,” after all, “clarity is boring.”

Bug Incision with Rossanna Terracciano (Oct 8th, 2010) Jordan Baylon

2010-10-18T09:12:00.000-06:00

I must admit that prior to seeing Bug Incision perform at Koi café, whenever I heard the term “purely improvised” applied to music I immediately relegated it to the category of “cacophonous noisemaking” (though I arrived at the pejorative independently, I’m sure that many crotchety old bigots have thought of the exact phrase or something similar). While I did not deny its validity as a form of expression and I certainly approved of it conceptually, my dislike was purely aesthetic: I believed that improvisation was the most beautiful when contextualized by a regular, determined framework. I would think of how dizzying and alienating it was to hear for the first time the aural textures weaved by Ornette Coleman’s “free jazz” and his (in)famous plastic alto saxophone. Thankfully I now know that I was missing the point entirely: listening and reacting to Chris Dadge (percussion) play with Rosanna Terracciano (flamenco dance), and then with Jay Crocker (strings)*, my ears, mind, and heart opened to a new world.
Even before the first performance began, my interest was piqued by Chris’ kit: it is a Frankenstein of drums, cymbals, and doohickies, augmented at times by synthesized effects. What was even more impressive was watching it evolve over the course of each performance, every newly adapted facet simply another appendage of the beautiful creature of sound Chris becomes when he plays. And seeing all of this complicated, inorganic machinery interact with Rosanna’s own instrument, namely her powerful and sensuous body, the experience became synergistically greater than its parts.
It quickly became clear that this performance was about searching, about the sending and receiving of signals, and about the mutual acknowledgment of two people. You could see it in the spectacle: Rosanna marking a space with deliberate masterful gestures before erupting into a fury of steps, and Chris steadily and constantly rediscovering, tinkering, and recreating to complete the circuit of exchange. You could hear it in the sound: Rosanna made it clear that she speaks alternating between moments of silent potential and staccato explosion, Chris answering this excitedly with insistent chatter and subtle texture. So when Jay joined Chris for the second set, his unshod foot pressing pedals while coaxing a variety of stringed instruments to both sing sonorously and pulse rhythmically, I was swooning in the audience.
I feel grateful that this was my introduction to M:ST and to this kind of art in general , and that I could awaken to such an intense awareness of presence and connection. I’m told the former is the defining quality of performative art, and I believe that the latter is the goal of all art. Thus primed, I’m ready to discover what other epiphanies the festival has in store…
-Jordan Baylon
*(Many thanks to Jhernelyn Parinas for helpfully pointing out that Jay Crocker had to fill in for Thom Golub at the last minute, contrary to what this post’s first version indicated: my sincere apologies to the artists as well. In my defence I can only say that I was so affected by the experience that I must have missed Claudina’s introduction! Sorry!)

M:ST 5 Oct 08 - 22/2010

2010-10-14T15:53:00.000-06:00

It's already been 7 days of jam-packed performative art!?! Today marks the middle of the festival, and if you have already seen some of M:ST 5 then be sure to take the time to pick up a festival guide or visit www.mstfestival.org for up to the minute updates on festival events.

Art that makes we want to be a better artist, or, we should all be this good, all the time.

2009-08-08T22:15:00.001-06:00

Merce Cunningham passed away earlier this month, and I found myself feeling very sad. I had never met him, I’m not a dancer, nor do I follow contemporary dance – the sadness, I think came from the simple fact that a photo of his piece, Antic Meet was the most recent piece to completely and totally blow my mind.

I was in the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh in June and was wandering through the display cases holding letters, album covers, catalogues and other ephemera, and suddenly, there it was.

Antic Meet / Ett Nummer was first performed in 1958 at the American Dance Festival, Connecticut College. In the piece, which was accompanied by John Cage’s Concert for piano and orchestra, Sometimes: Solo for Piano, and Fontana Mix, Cunningham and others wore chairs strapped to their backs. The photos documented a series of gestures with the chairs, of Cunningham bending over, sitting and leaping. The costumes, which were designed by Robert Rauschenberg, perfectly illustrated the relationship between the body of the performer and the utility of the object.

During my residency at CAMPER I have been working on what I call a mobile performance device, which is an umbrella that generates sound in response to body capacitance. It has been a difficult piece to do – a number of similar projects have happened in the past decade, so a lot of my time has been spent working on Arduino code and trying to figure out why, in spite of the similarities between these pieces and my own, and I completely and totally compelled to continue with it.

Here is a sampling of some of the projects that use umbrellas as a starting point:

Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Katherine Moriwaki's UMBRELLA.NET is a series of umbrellas that form ad hoc networks in public spaces. The umbrellas emit light in response to network activity and their proximity with other umbrellas the network, examining how "how shared, yet disconnected activities can be harnessed into collective experiences."

Joo Youn Paek's Polite Umbrella uses a simple drawstring to reduce the size of the umbrella's perimeter, reflecting both the agency of the user-performer and forming a dome-shaped sculptural beacon.

Mark Shepard's CCD-Me-Not Umbrella is an umbrella housing infrared LEDs, whose light is detectable only by CCD surveillance cameras. When the umbrellas are activated, the light forms a visual barrier that interferes with the detection system.

Sang-Kyun Park's Light Drops is an umbrella that generates light in response to rain. The umbrellas are constructed from responsive fabric that generates electricity when it is hit by raindrops, which in turn power a network of LEDs lining the inside of the umbrella. The more rain that hits the umbrella, the more light that is generated.

Electric Umbrella by sockmaster, distributed via instructables.com.

I think the answer may lie with how one thinks about one’s work, and the lessons I’ve learned from the SOUNDBIKE. The piece was conceived in 2004, and finished in 2005, and I had many conversations with David McCallum as I was developing it. David was working on what would end up being WarBike, and had figured out a way for pD to work from a PDA. It was weird to talk with someone who was doing a piece that on one hand was very different, but was also very similar, but David was helpful and generous, and in 2007 we showed our respective pieces at InterAccess, side by side.

Shortly after the piece was completed, it was included in a show in Cambridge, and then ended up at Art Basel Miami Beach. The piece was extremely popular and it ended up in design, technology and gear type blogs almost instantaneously. I found this extremely unnerving – I was often described as an inventor, a designer and a project developer, and the soundbikes, which I considered a device to facilitate a performance, were described as almost a product.

From that experience, I decided to create work that examined the relationship between the object, the performance and the audience – the Freestyle SoundKit was cheap, easy-to-replicate, and wholly unpredictable, Give it Up was literally a framework, and Freestyle SoundHack was a performance where I gave up the SoundKit. (more info is at jessicathompson.ca)

So with this umbrella, on one hand, I’m treading down well-worn territory, and on the other, I’m obsessed with the performative situations that can emerge from such a device. There is tension here, between object and experience, gesture and performance, and artwork and commodity. Instead of focusing on the useful, the intuitive or the applicable, what can we learn from the awkward, the complicated and the uncomfortable?

Below are three other artworks that I’ve been thinking about lately in the context of this piece:

Rebecca Horn

Finger Gloves (1972)

Rebecca Horn’s Finger Gloves were two glove like devices that extended the artist’s fingers to reach the floor. The finger-gloves were used to facilitate performances small-scale performances in which the artist used the devices to perform a series of actions. The artist describes the work as an “instrument to extend manual sensibility:

The finger-gloves are light – I can move them without any effort – feel, touch, grasp anything, but keeping a certain distance from the objects. The lever-action of the lengthened fingers intensifies the various sense data of the hand. The manual activity is experienced in a new operational mode: I feel myself grasping, I control the distance between me and the objects.

Vergine, Lea. (2000) Body Art and Performance: The Body as Language. Milan: Skia p. 115

Danel Buren

Seven Ballets in Manhattan (1975)

Daniel Buren’s Seven Ballets in Manhattan was a series of choreographed actions that took place in various neighbourhoods between May 27 and June 2, 1975. In the piece, five people walked through the different neighbourhoods carrying signs painted in vertical stripes in different colours. The configurations of dancers and signs were choreographed in advance by the artist. The vertical stripes, a repeated motif in Buren’s work, reflected the surrounding architecture while at the same time reducing architecture into neutral patterns.

Allora & Calzadilla’s

Chalk (2002)

In Chalk, Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla placed large, human-scale pieces of chalk in a public plaza outside the Parliament buildings and president’s mansion in Lima, Peru. Passersby could use the chalk to draw, write, or mark territory. As the day wore on, protesters used the chalk to express themselves politically. What is interesting to me about Allora & Calzadilla’s piece is the way in which the scale of the object informs the action taken with the object, which remains in spite of the inevitable destruction of the pieces. The large pieces of chalk, which are heavier and more fragile than the smaller pieces, became fragmented very quickly, and participants, started to use the smaller pieces to draw and write. In spite of this, the lines, text and images created still reflected the size of the chalk, and of the bodies making them.

This post marks the end of my participation in M:ST 4.5 and CAMPER.

Thank so much to Nicole Burisch and Keltie Duncan from M:ST, Renato Vitic, Suzanne Piechotta, and Byron Rich from TRUCK.

What Bike Hacks teach me about cities

2009-07-30T23:07:00.000-06:00

As I mentioned in my previous post, the Bike Hack + Soundride was first performed in Cambridge. We started at Art Interactive, and rode off in the drizzling rain, through the streets, and onto the Harvard campus, where Parents’ Day was in full swing. We split up, and then spent the next 15 minutes whizzing, loudly, around well dressed students, parents, professors, and grandparents.

In Cambridge, like Boston, you have to engage in extremely defensive cycling. For example, you don’t stop at intersections unless you can absolutely not help it. If you do, a car will cut you off. Critical Masses are less a celebration of cycling culture and more (at least they were in 2005) a defiant stand against the cops.

In Toronto, you can generally expect not to get cut off at intersections, and when I did the Bike Hack at InterAccess during the 2007 Nuit Blanche, we were the envy of most of the revelers trapped on Queen West. The festival had decided that year to host events throughout the gallery district, which caused mayhem for blocks. Cars full of excited visitors attempted to get to the spaces. The streetcars were like landlocked whales. And we, led by a guy in a mask that arrived to “guide us through” (I heart relational art) clattered along the street, between the cars, and around to Kensington Market.

In Copenhagen, cycling is a way of life and as a Toronto-based, living-in-Buffalo commuter cyclist, I kind of suck by comparison. The area where I am the most inept is when I am being passed. In Toronto, we ring, we give room, and we pass. Ring, Room, Pass. In Copenhagen, they pass you so closely, that they brush you. This would automatically set me into absolute, wheel wiggling, bell ringing alarm every time it happened. I was concerned when I did the Bike Hack that it wouldn’t really be well received – if everyone cycles, would playing cards, mikes and amps not be kind of ordinary? It turns out that it was very well received, which was good, and we attracted a lot of attention from confused passersby. A short video of that performance is here:

In Sibiu, Romania, cycling is perceived in completely the opposite way. Cycling is what you do when you don’t have a car, and if you don’t have a car, you must be hovering near the poverty line. I did the Bike Hack as part of a residency at artlabs, and I was laughed at, from cars, as I rode around the city. There is no biking for the sake of the planet, there are no beautiful people biking along in nice outfits, and I seriously got laughed at, more than once. This being said, the cyclists that do ride, do so with absolute conviction. When we took to the streets after the workshop, it was almost as if we were engaging in an act of political activism. It was awesome.

In Calgary, cycling is interesting. There were a few things I didn’t get at the beginning, and I was lucky enough to get few observations/survival tips, which I will share, for the sake of fellow visitors, who may be used to doing things slightly differently:

1. Bikes and pedestrians share the trails. I have never seen more people running, or walking along shared trails at all times of the day in my life. There is a speed limit for cyclists of 10 km per hour, which seems painfully slow, but at the same time, given the number of people around, is probably quite necessary. Everyone seems to work together, more or less, and parts of the trail are less crowded than other parts.

2. A lot of cyclists ride on the sidewalk, and sometimes you get honked at when you’re not on the sidewalk. This was weird for me, as I almost never ride on the sidewalk unless I’m about to park, or someone is threatening to run me over. Motorists here seem genuinely surprised to see a cyclist, especially on bridges and overpasses, which I like to ride on because a) going into downtown is downhill and fast; b) the sidewalks are full of pedestrians, so riding around them while going downhill seems inconsiderate and dangerous; and c) I like riding down hills.

3. You have to really be careful not to get doored. Motorists who park just don’t seem to look before they open their doors. In Toronto, this is also a problem, which is made worse by the fact that we have more cyclists, we have bike lanes, and many people get doored by people who park illegally in the bike lanes. On the upside, we have a Cyclists’ Union.

Tonight’s Bike Hack + Soundride was fantastic – the Good Life Bike Shop was packed, and in spite of the persistent drizzle, we took off for a short ride through Chinatown. There were lots and lots of photos being taken and there will be video somewhere on the Fast Forward website in the next few days. Thanks to all who attended – see you @ Critical Mass tomorrow.

I also wanted to send a big thank you to the folks at the Good Life Bike Shop, who, in addition to hosting noisy, chaotic workshops, has been signing out the SOUNDBIKE all month. Everyone is really nice, and they have a ton of workshops. For more info, visit them online.

BetaTest | Virtual Cocktail | Bike Hack

2009-07-29T20:57:00.000-06:00

When Justin and I met three (four) weeks ago we discussed using our blog posts to engage in some sort of Dialogue, with the idea that one of us would post, the other would respond, and so it would go. Justin and I met each other sometime in the early 2000’s, most likely through Powell, Director of p|m Gallery in Toronto, so we both kind of figured that between our shared interests, our mutual acquaintances and our tendency to be a bit chatty, that it wouldn’t be a problem. But, I dropped the ball, and this post is an attempt to fill you in on what I have been up to this past month in Calgary.

I was brought here by both M:ST and Truck Gallery, to show SOUNDBIKE and Bike Hack + SoundRide, (described by the deservedly-smug Keltie, who, on her first try, could solder more neatly than I can) but also to take part in CAMPER, the Contemporary Art Mobile Public Exhibition Rig, hosted by TRUCK and taking place, literally in a camper. I’ve soldered and programmed, reprogrammed and chatted, made runs to HWV Tech (best electronic supplier ever! just up the street!) and instigated a few things.

The advantage to being in a place for a month is the opportunities to make meaningful connections with the community. By “meaningful connections” I mean (in my own too-many-years-in-arts-administratrivy) way, that you can actually get to know people, hang out, learn things and also share things. I’ve been very lucky to have had the opportunity to show my work all over, but usually, I arrive, install or perform, and then have to leave. And while most local artists I meet are very welcoming, you do feel a bit like an alien, you’re a part of things because you’re part of whatever thing goes on, but really, your kind of not – people ask you questions, you try to meet people, but ultimately time constraints get in the way.

So when I was asked to make a residency proposal, I decided to use CAMPER as a platform in which I could facilitate collaborative events involving local artists. Here is what we have been up to:

BetaTest (Open Lab + Potluck)

July 11, 2009

BetaTest was a public event where I invited other media artists to present completed works or works-in-progress. The event featured presentations by Leah Rodgers, (on the newly-formed Dorkbot-Calgary and her awesome DeVoweler project) Ken Buera, (on his performance based videos using surveillance cameras) Byron Rich (on way too many projects to count) and myself. (on my mobile performance device, an umbrella that emits sound in response to the actions of the user)

Virtual Cocktail (Calgary and Toronto)

July 17, 2009, hosted by Emmedia

July 29, 2009, hosted by The New Gallery (12 noon! Come!)

William Huffman and I have been having what we call “Virtual Cocktails” for about a year. William is arts administrator, curator, educator and writer is currently the Associate Director of the Toronto Arts Council. The setup isn’t that elaborate (Skype + webcam + speakers + alcohol) but they are a lot of fun, and a great way for people from different areas to meet each other. Our first cocktail, which was sometime in early 2007, brought together William, myself, Cheryl Rondeau, Marie Legault and Rene Rivoire. William, Cheryl, and Marie were in Toronto, I was in Buffalo, and Rene was in Marseilles, France.

When I arrived in Calgary, one of the things that struck me right away was the degree to which the artist-run-centres here collaborate with each other. Staff members often serve on boards of other galleries. They co-produce residencies. They borrow gear. They share staff members. They scheme about buying buildings. Toronto ARC’s also collaborate, but I wasn’t sure to what extent, and I’m not always in the loop. So I thought that since William spent quite a few years working at A Space, that perhaps it would be interesting to have an informal dialogue on the state of artist-run-culture in the two cities. The first cocktail was interesting and enlightening for all of us, I think – we discussed HR practices, board structure, disaster plans and some of the similarities and differences of the state of arts funding in our cities.

Tomorrow, we’re continuing the discussion at noon at The New Gallery, and at the TAC in Toronto. After all, it will be cocktail hour somewhere.

Bike Hack + Soundride

Workshop 1: July 25, 2009

Workshop 2: July 30, 2009 (7 PM! Come!)

Critical Mass Infiltration: July 31, 2009

Bike Hack + Soundride was first performed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as part of Glowlab Open Lab. This show was also the first exhibition of the SOUNDBIKE. In the performance, I invite members of the public to make simple bike-mounted microphones, which are connected to small amplifiers and attached to your bike. We then ride through the city en masse, we become a very loud mobile sound piece, which changes according to the number of riders, our speed and our location. I’ll write more about this after tomorrow, but if you’re near the Good Life Bike Shop @ Eau Claire tomorrow, feel free to join us.

Fun, Sun and a Soldering Iron

2009-07-29T14:20:00.000-06:00

Jessica Thompson's Bike Hack + Soundride

Last Saturday, TRUCK TR:AFICC Resident Jessica Thompson gave the first of two Bike Hack + Soundride workshops outside of CAMPER's temporary Eau Claire home. It was the perfect day to hang around outside and tinker with electronics, not only weather-wise, beautiful as it was, but also because it was right in the thick of Folk Fest. What better time to draw attention to yourself with noisy bikes?

For those that haven't already seen the info floating around in cyberland, Bike Hack is a workshop in building bicycle-mounted noisemakers out of handmade contact microphones stuck to playing cards. The cards then go into the spokes of your bike and are hooked into a small guitar amp mounted on the bike frame. Simple and genius, the resulting Soundride is a fun and dynamic way to engage crowds of hippies as a smug-performative-art-participant-and-environmental-champion. Or perhaps I'll just speak for myself.

Jessica started off with a demo in soldering, something I personally had never done but something which turned out to be much easier and more straightforward than I would have thought. It probably had a lot to do with Jessica's easy and clear instruction since she was able to warn me about the dangers that come with soldering without making me too nervous to try it. There isn't much soldering to do though, so even if I had been nervous about it, the step up to the plate was a small one. It was small enough, in fact, that the hard-work to ego-boost ratio weighed heavily on the ego boost side. I'm starting to see where my smugness was born.

Finally, once the contact mic was all mounted up it was an easy road to the Soundride; all there was left to do was to tape the mic to a playing card (Jack of hearts for me) and string that, along with the amp, to my bike frame with a series of bright yellow zip ties. After that, we were off on the ride sounding like a traveling bee hive. The small amps actually pack a surprising punch, they were much louder than their size led me to believe they could be.

The Soundride itself kept to the bike trails just behind Eau Claire and drew many amused (and confused) looks from people out enjoying the day. It left me feeling excited to do this workshop again on Thursday night with Ride On!, and to take my noisemakered bicycle out to the Critical Mass ride on Friday. I'm looking forward to a few of the bikes shouting louder than the cars. There will be no curbing my smugness then.

Bike Hack + Soundride
Thursday, July 30th at 7 PM
Good Life Community Bike Shop, Eau Claire Market
Call (403) 837-6678 to register

Rain, Rain go Away...

2009-07-14T12:32:00.000-06:00

Well, for those of you in Calgary the past few days, you're well aware that it has been raining pretty much around the clock. Not exactly the best weather for a bike ride. I did however get to go out on a tour of The Tender Mountain Clan's favorite street art spots before the rain last Saturday. Here are some pics from the tour:

The tour included wildflowers, community gardens, back alleyways, identification of both illegal and legal graffiti, tags, murals, dumpster diving, flyers, leaflets, posters, some relaxing in a field, and some good conversation. I was at first apprehensive about a tour of local street art spots as I really wanted to avoid the topic of what is and isn't art or what could be and what couldn't be art. That topic is so boring I can't even begin to talk about it, much less write about it. Luckily, once we were on our third stop somewhere in a back alley of Sunnyside, it was obviously not going to be brought up. Breaks at community gardens, where people were busy tending to their crops as well as personal anecdotes from our tour guide about specific neighbourhoods, kept the conversation enjoyable and creative. We stopped to appreciate everything from junk piles to well manicured yards. It seemed as though our group was mostly interested in seeing the city from a different perspective with different people.

On a bit of a side note, I've been spending more time with cycling people than art people lately and I must admit, I am rather happy avoiding artists altogether. Don't get me wrong, bike people have their issues (just try to walk into a LBS and ask for help without feeling like a total fool afterward) but they are no worse than record store people or electronic store people or comic book people or coffee people that prefer to be called barristas. I've actually been impressed by how cyclists come out to events just to be around people and just for the community. There is no "networking," no "making connections," no guilt involved if you decide to not go, no attempt to be "seen," or to "make an appearance," or to "be professional." When the Movement Movement ran the Glenbow Museum with M:ST 4 back in October 2008, I was excited to see so many people who were there to run... not just participate in an artwork as a "collaborator" but to actually RUN. It was the people running that made it interesting for me... by that I mean NOT the artists running but the people running.

The act of doing, in that case running and in this case cycling, allowed for a subtle shift in perception that was less pretentious. The motivation for looking and experiencing was different, if not prior to the ride then definitely during and after the ride. It sounds like a simple shift and in fact it is... I guess my point is just that some art is better experienced in the periphery of vision... at that point just before it's washed away by something else.

True Love is Riding Bikes
Guided bike tours/self-guided map
Saturday, July 18 2009, meet at 1:30PM
Leaving from The Good Life Community Bike Shop

Stretching is required

2009-07-12T19:07:00.000-06:00

With a little confusion about the official start date for Ride On! (was it the 4th of July or was it the 6th)... either way, this first post is a little late. I met with Jessica Thompson for some drinks and food amid the Stampede crowds to talk about what we thought we might post, what we might cover, and if we plan to use any kind of format (we are both going to be blogging for M:ST throughout the month). After our meeting, we both said we'd post that night or early the next day... and neither of us did.

I did however find myself at the Flying Lotus show at the Hifi on the 8th.

Flying Lotus - GNG BNG from Ryan Paterson on Vimeo.

This video is pretty great and seems kinda relevant (kinda). I think that Flying Lotus will be the soundtrack to most of my posts for the month. Plus, I ran into the Tender Mountain Clan at the end of the show... so I think that they would agree (and it means I wasn't procrastinating).

First post done.
Next: True Love is Riding Bikes, the TMC report.

M:ST 4.5: Ride On!, it's on.

2009-07-10T15:36:00.000-06:00

During the month of July 2009, M:ST presents Ride On!, a series of bicycle-based artworks appearing throughout locations in Calgary. Presented in conjunction with TRUCK’s new TR:AFFIC residency program and The Good Life Community Bike Shop, Ride On! invites you to interact with the work of various artists through hands-on workshops, art installations, and participatory bike rides.

Currently, TR:AFFIC resident Jessica Thompson's SOUNDBIKE is available for sign out now through the end of July at Good Life. The bike laughs the faster you go! Also check out her Bike Hack + Soundride workshop on July 30th, 7 PM at Good Life. Create soundmaker devices for your bike and take them out en masse for a group bicycle exclaimation! Take your noise makers to the Critical Mass ride the next day, meeting 5:30 PM on July 31st in the Eau Claire plaza.

Marc Dulude's video The Invisible Bike is showing at Good Life along with a polaroid installation courtesy of Calgary's Tender Mountain Clan.

Speaking of the TMC, they will be leading guided bike tours of their favorite street art spots in Calgary's core. The tours leave from Good Life tomorrow, Saturday July 11th, and Saturday July 18th at 1:30 PM each day. Find a map of more street art routes available at Good Life for a self-guided adventure anytime.

Between July 28st and 31st, visit Lethbridge artist Kelly Jaclynn Andres at Eau Claire and around town with her Urban Habitat Lab. Sign up for her urban sustainability workshops conducted out of the lab by calling the M:ST Office, (403) 837-6678. Sign out Kelly's Songbike, a tandem bicycle that records the auditory environment of your trip.

Stay tuned here for more event details and commentary on the multitude of bicycle-based art reactions and interactions by M:ST guest artists and special friends.

See you out there!

Keltie Duncan
M:ST Summer Programming Coordinator

Cheryl L'Hirondelle's êkâya-pâhkaci (don't freeze up)

2008-10-27T18:21:00.000-06:00

Storytelling is a metaphorical expression that bridges language and cultural barriers. In her performance êkâya-pâhkaci (don't freeze up), Cheryl L’Hirondelle develops a lexicon using her body, linguistic rhythm, and evocative visual imagery to transmit intrinsic understandings of hospitality, narrative and sexuality.

The performance began with an offering of bread and tea as an invitation for the audience to join L’Hirondelle on the woven blankets in front of her temporary residence, a large white tent located in the Epcor Centre. As spectators gathered on the blankets, she began to engage viewers in conversation but because L’Hirondelle was speaking in Cree, a language in which very few Calgarians are fluent, she was greeted with a wavering ‘yes’ or an unsure nod. So she began to teach us Cree by pointing at the bread then saying the word in Cree. After that, she went around the circle gesturing towards the Cree syllabics that were neatly written on her hands, wrists, and upper thighs , using them as a means to investigate similar marks on the spectators bodies. When someone would show her their tattoo, L’Hirondelle would write the Cree word for the image on their body with a make-up crayon. Then she entered her tent and stitched the opening shut.

The tent lit up and the raucous but vaguely melodic sound of a car horn bellowed through the PA system. As the shadows showed L’Hirondelle removing her clothing, recorded voices of Cree Elder storytellers were heard over the horns. L’Hirondelle began to chant to the tempo of the story. The silhouette of her gyrating hips danced across the illuminated tent in perfect cadence to the rhythmic chanting that resonated through the black speakers. At moments, the shadow would sharpen, revealing a belt of jingling keys or long tubular shapes that emitted a haunting whir when spun through the air. She looped the sound with an effects pedal, layering the Cree chanting with various sounds derived from instruments and plastic toys. Far from cacophony, the harmonious congregation of sound filled the circular balcony near The One Yellow Rabbit Theatre box office, attracting Motel theatre patrons as well as spectators in passing.

As the elaborate sound collage developed into a solid rhythmic repetition,L’Hirondelle began to push coils of ribbon through several slits that were cut into the front of the tent at head level. Starting from the viewers right side, the dark colored ribbon slipped through the slits then flowed to the ground. After all the ribbon had unfurled L’Hirondelle’s voice belted out over the echoing chant in melodic undulation. The orange of her skin glowed against the surface as her palms pushed against the face of the tent, causing the surface to vibrate and pulse.

She opened the tent, unveiling a plethora of brightly colored plastic toys, wires, microphones, and other sound equipment. Dressed in a revealing nude colored leotard with protruding plastic red nipples and a little red leaf shape in the pubic area, L’Hirondelle poked her leg out of the tent and gave it a flirtatious twist. Microphone in hand, she engaged the audience with an interactive chant (“I say ‘Shagga’ you say ‘Nappi’”) followed with more flirtatious and sexually charged gestures towards members of the audience.

Cheryl L’Hirondelle’s practice and lifestyle incorporates the Cree worldview (nêhiyawin). As a musician and an artist, her way of life is nomadic. Having explored the tent motif with performance in the 90s, L’Hirondelle is revisiting it with further travels and an increased knowledge. “Performance has always been a means to articulate something that does not have a language,” said L’Hirondelle. Aesthetic and harmony became the elliptic metaphor that bridged the cultural and language barriers in new media story-telling.

Photos Courtesy of Noel Begin and Erica Brisson, 2008.

Slow Listening with Kelly Andres and The Urban Habitat Laboritory

2008-10-27T17:09:00.000-06:00

Photo Courtesy of Noel Begin, 2008.

On the last day of the festival (Friday, October 17, 2008) Mireille Perron’s art history class including myself, ventured down the hill from the Alberta College of Art + Design to the 809 Car Port in Sunnyside where artist/ environmental programmer Kelly Andres was stationed with The Urban Habitat Laboratory. The UHL is a self-sufficient, sustainable and mobile apparatus from which Andres collects sound specimens from trees and plants in urban environments.

Moving slowly through the neighborhood streets, Andres gathers audio samples with her laptop, powered by a solar panel on the back of the mobile laboratory unit. After the samples have been obtained, she constructs them into a map. “An artist’s job is to be critical of [their] space,” says Andres, who spends her days steadily observing a single location in plant time (which is much slower than people time). By practicing audio cartography Andres creates new and innovative ways for the audience to not only reconsider how urban space is constructed, but also causes them to re-evaluate their relationship with plants.

As she was explaining the process of collecting the noises and voices of the trees, we became increasingly curious to find out exactly what sort of noises a tree could make. Andres led us into the back ally behind 809 to find a tree but surprisingly, there were very few large enough so we settled on a dead tree stump protruding from the cracked black pavement of an apartment building parking lot. Andres gently placed the contact microphone on the side of the tree stump and carefully wrapped an elastic bandage around the stump to secure the microphone. She then passed around headphones so each one of us could take a listen.

While one woman described it as sounding “like [her] husband’s stomach,” I maintain that a dead tree stump sounds like organic static with a pulse. The static very well could have been blamed on microphone interference however it was difficult to decipher if the low pulsing sound beneath the static was coming from the tree or from Andre’s fingers that were firmly pressed against the contact mic.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this experiment was not just listening to the rest of the world through a deceased stump but the fact that such large group was gathered around the stump, fully willing to listen.

Stalking Cindy Baker

2008-10-24T16:50:00.000-06:00

After flipping through the festival program, one of the performances that I was most anxious to see was Cindy Baker performing Cindy Baker.

As a child raised by fast paced digital simulacra, I have developed quite a keen taste for cartoons, camp and hyperbole. Having the opportunity to meet a real life cartoon, or rather, an amplified mascot version of a real stranger was similar to a comic book enthusiast/avid collector of super hero paraphernalia suddenly becoming Citizen Justice. When the festival began, so did my quest to find Cindy Baker.

Every day, I dressed in my super secret espionage ensemble (which happens to bear an uncanny resemblance to my everyday attire). Every morning as I left my apartment to embark upon my daily adventures, I approached my final destination in my super secret espionage walk that I like to call the panoptic strut (which involves walking and spinning in full circles simultaneously). It was imperative that I didn’t blink as I anticipated that at some point I would spot Cindy Baker out and about, performing ordinary Cindy Baker activities... whatever those may be.

Then finally it happened!

I was sitting on the floor in the EPCOR Center, deeply engaged in Cheryl L’Hirondelle’s êkâya-pâhkaci (don't freeze up), when suddenly out of the corner of my non-blinking eye, there she was. In all of her disproportionately important grandeur, Cindy Baker made her appearance and then... she just stood there... as a spectator.

Photo Credit: Erica Brisson, 2008

This merging of the spectacular with the anti-spectacular may seem anticlimactic after days of suspense and waiting. However, I will admit that I did not realize that I had been gawking at Cindy Baker in all her glory for a relatively long period of time until a flying insect decided to make a cave out of my mouth, snapping me back into reality. It was at this exact moment that the five year old child inside of me began to comprehend the problem with staring. I began to make connections to the suit representing the actual person inside the suit. While her felted eyeballs behind the oversized glasses were not looking into mine, her wide grinning mouth was pointing right at me. Could Cindy Baker see me staring at Cindy Baker through the black mesh of her open mouth? I finally blinked and refocused my gaze on L'Hirondelle's ethereal tent in front of me. Perhaps this was the purpose and antithesis of Baker’s performance.

Performing the self, especially an exaggerated representation of the self, brings issues of body politics to the forefront. The active spectator isn’t asked to just critique a work of art but also to critique the body of the artist. While the mascot costume of the artist evokes jovial laughter and pointing at the absurd, it discreetly calls attention to the way some people interact with human beings whose bodies do not represent popular culture’s notion of a normal body.

Prairie Artsters - Getting M:STy Down South*

2008-10-16T19:21:00.001-06:00

Photo credit: Erica Brisson, 2008

As a festival blogger for the fourth biennial Mountain Standard Time Performance Art Festival, I spent the last two weekends traveling the QE2 down to Lethbridge and Calgary, respectively. Living in a festival city where the peak of festivities has just finally come to a lull, I find myself in yet another festival, but one of an entirely different atmosphere.

Down in Lethbridge, where the new media reputation precedes its windy coulee corridors, the festival included in its programming the world premiere of local artist David Hoffos’ Scenes From a House Dream. Taking up both floors of the Southern Alberta Art Gallery and maximizing a full three weeks of install after five years in the making, the exhibition drew out the close-knit arts community and plenty of visiting onlookers wanting a sneak peak before its national tour kicks off at the National Art Gallery of Canada.

Nothing seen during the day on a dead walk through the town would prepare for the night. While walking around looking for the elusive Trap\door artist-run centre, I eventually stumbled upon it in the basement of the Trianon Gallery, where emerging Canadian artist Andrew Taggart opened his latest exhibition. Taggart, who is currently completing a unique joint MFA in Norway with his wife (who as it turns out I knew from a stint during an arts festival in Edmonton), was surrounded by friends and family who drove down from Calgary. Although not part of M:ST programming, but just serendipitous timing, they shared similar minded audiences who would otherwise remain alien to one another.

The other two performances that night included Calgary-based Angela Silver, who punched the carbon-paper-lined entrance corridor with red Everlast boxing gloves customed with an electric typewriter set across its knuckles. The corporeal execution of imprinting text has been an ongoing investigation for Silver, especially in terms of text and its function in society and the evolution of tools used in the creation of text. Although the performance itself was quite nonplus, the marks left by the carbon paper created a hieroglyphic chart in the liminal space between the gallery and the street.

The other performance took place in the Parlour Window space, the front window display/gallery of Hoffos’ studio space that sits on top of an original opium den just a few blocks off the main street. Performed and arranged by Calgary-based Wednesday Lupypciw, whose family tree traces itself back to Lethbridge, she pays homage to her mother in the form of a living tableau as she plays out a teenage scenario filled with Ouija board spooks and mimed telephone conversations that echo back on a video loop.

I would next run into Lupypciw during the Adrian Stimson performance in Calgary and again at the Glenbow, where she was volunteering for the Movement Movement’s “Run the Glenbow Museum.” I also ran into Cindy Baker, Renato Vitic and others, as the festival rolled on over a course of two weeks and two cities. Artists and administrators turned volunteers and spectators, as expected, but the audience throughout both weekends grew beyond the same handful of consistent faces, with many new individuals trailing in and out for each event and performance regardless of the overall umbrella festival mentality.

Part of my personal burnout for festivals is the excuse it has to show weaker works alongside one or two headliners, simply spanning both time and space as encouraged by the recent increases to festival funding that privileges the idea of presenting culture rather than its creation. Each M:ST event, unique on its own and strong enough to draw a respectable audience—which may have been happenstance, with several other arts conferences on the go—nevertheless pulled audiences from across the board. The festival did not boast itself before the work or its artists, but emphasized each work in its own rightful merit and critical context that can and should proudly stand on its own and be discussed within a consciously programmed festive atmosphere.

*First published in Vue Weekly, October 16 - 22, 2008

security, ballots and blisters

2008-10-16T09:31:00.000-06:00

so as (less than half of) Canada voted, i walked the core, trailed by attentive audiences. I found myself fighting against the frustration of the grid system, attempting to walk a circle in the city but failing to find many possibilities to curve. Easy as it is to navigate, I definitely found myself missing the grace of arcing roads and bulbous pedestrian zones. Saying that, I thoroughly enjoyed the walks, each time finding a new richness to the sound environment here, each time learning a new way to reshape it with my kit.. yes my kit, that small backpack, trailing wires out of it wrapped around my chest, mobile phone in hand, black beanie on my head.. i was pretty much modelling this seasons suicide bomber look.. wouldn't normally have crossed my mind but it turned out that on election day my route took me through the conservative party conference hosting a certain Stephen Harper. Reaching the top of the steps into the Telus centre I found myself confronted by about 7 armed security guards (and judging by their size, possibly ex-ice hockey players) .. luckily i managed to get past unscathed, save for a few stern stares and some nervous walkie-talkie action.
at this point i should also say thanks to kari mcqueen from emmedia, who ushered all the walks, herding participants with grace and avoiding blisters along the way.

(photos courtesy of Noel Begin)

ghost town

2008-10-13T11:50:00.000-06:00

now i've never really thought of myself as a misanthrope, but i love to see empty cities. Those cinematic shots of deserted streets make me love both good ( 28 days later, the last man on earth ) and barely passable ( Vanilla Sky, I am legend ) movies. Right now i feel like I'm living the dream and it's not the best timing!

I've arrived in Calgary to perform 'sounds from above the ground'.. a work that asks how we deal with urban sound environment, how we place ourselves when the sounds we make are drowned out by the city noise... unfortunately i've arrived on a sunday followed by thanksgiving monday, so there is a real absence of noise and it's making it hard to rehearse the work. On a personal level I love it though, the lack of heavy traffic and busy restaurants make it possible to hear further than usual, and my ears are constantly alerted to things that i probably would have missed. I hear cans being thrown out from a half open garage door as someone searches through bins.. shopping carts trundle past on every street, weighed down with all those things that we threw away or abandoned.. it's like watching a melancholy recycling service.
i imagine tomorrow the streets will refill, and so today i'm heading out again to grab those last moments of hearing the often missed details.

Walking Tour, Saturday, October 11, 2008

2008-10-12T16:25:00.000-06:00

As I walked over to the Grand Theatre from the hotel just after 5 o'clock on a Saturday early evening in downtown Calgary, I could not find one single coffee shop open. Less a gripe than it is an indicator of the street life in the city, the walk over echoed the advice from the desk clerk that shared, "Oh, that's too far to walk. It could take half an hour. You should drive." Walking is a void mentality in Calgary as it is in many other centres, but time and time again, I find that a city without pedestrians is simply not a city at all, but a spectre of activity with little heart or heed. And so to walk, especially in such a city, becomes a constant intervention.

A small troupe of individuals gathered before artists Renato Vitic and Kay Burns as the tour got underway. Looking like he fell out of the Looking Glass, Vitic and a traffic vested Burns led us around downtown Calgary--which was not so ironically deserted save for the participants of a Zombie Walk, where one of them shouted, "That's great of you guys!" and in doing so confirmed the fact that ordinary walking is actually odder practice than pretending to be a walking zombie.

Walking in a procession, whether we were tied together (as we were at several points) or as individuals traversing the city grid, shocked stares from faces inside of cars and restaurants gawked at the spectacle of people actually walking along the city streets. Save for Vitic and Burns who were visibly different in attire, I believe it was the sheer number (which was maybe 20 - 30) that caused the perplexed faces that made me feel like an alien. With walkable streets, even Stephen Avenue where the street is shut down from traffic on the weekends, almost barely anyone walked with or against us through the core of Calgary. As discussions of walking unfolded over public spaces, enforced structures, and exercises in socializing the act of urban walking, what I feel was lost was the premise that walking in any urban centre is by its very nature a solitary act. It is hard to decipher in a deserted downtown that urban walking's greatest pleasure is to lose one's self in the anonymity of the city, and that strung together with a bunch of strangers, we are still very much alone in the guise as a spectacle. But highlights from the walk included:

- a run-in up in the plus 15's with dance choreographer Melanie Kloetzel's troupe of dancers that cleaned and alienated our interactions with liminal spaces

- Citizen Justice (aka Morgan Sea) sling shooting gummi bears at us from above Milestone's restaurant

Photo credit: Erica Brisson, 2008

- And standing in the far side of the bowl in Millenial Park as Vitic and his spray painted gold bullhorn read aloud Cindy Baker's essay/manifesto about the isolation of regional contemporary art practices to our diminishing group of shivering walkers, often drowned out by the rolling slide and heavy landing of a few skateboarders in the otherwise empty park.

Walk on!

Amy Fung is the author of www.prairieartsters.com. Even though she lives in Edmonton, she remains a flaneur at heart and in practice.

Buffalo Boy, The Battle of Little Big Horny, Boris Roubakine Recital Hall, U of C, October 11, 2008

2008-10-12T15:38:00.000-06:00

As the alter ego of Saskatoon-based performance artist Adrian Stimson, Buffalo Boy has played up the postcolonial identity of Aboriginal culture by sending up an over the top sexual parody of Buffalo Bill (Cody)'s Wild West show.

Dressed from head to toe in a crude mixture of flamboyant Western wear from a silver sequined cowboy hat to heavy rouge, fishnet stockings and traditional hides, Buffalo Boy subverts his sexuality as the one desiring. The comparison to Kent Monkman's Princess Eagle Testickle is inevitable in concept, but their respective executions are entirely different.

Photo credit: Erica Brisson, 2008

Meant as an end to the character of Buffalo Boy (2004 - 2008), The Battle of Little Big Horny begins with a Procession, with six pallbearers bringing in Buffalo Boy's coffin. An Irish Wake follows with shared shots of Bushmills along with an abridged version of James Joyce's "The Dead" printed on the back of the funeral programme. The clustering of cultures and aesthetics does not end or explain itself as Civil war songs, disco, world techno, and June Carter play out over a video montage of suspects who may have led to the death of Buffalo Bill. From a headmistress with nipple tassles to Belle Savage (collaborator Lori Blondeau) to other characters that Buffalo Boy speaks back to in an exchange of stage to screen, the performance as a whole lacked an affect for the death of Buffalo Boy. There was neither awe or sadness as Buffalo Boy played out his part and transgressed his prairie earth. The body moved in a stiffness that did not appear as either ironic or intentional. Whether indifference was actually intended, right up to the ceremonial hammering in the nail of the coffin, the piece can only be best described as a transitional work that was neither here nor there in the life and death of Buffalo Boy.

Run the Glenbow Museum, Sunday, October 12, 2008

2008-10-12T14:47:00.000-06:00

The Movement Movement, aka Jenn Goodwin and Jessica Rose, in their power lycra onesies led a swarm of collaborators through four laps of the four floors in the Glenbow Museum.

Somewhere between a marathon with cheering supporters in tow and the act of herding sheep through the moraines, running the Glenbow over the course of 45 minutes situated itself as a live work of art amongst the walls and rooms of contemporary and historic objects on display.

As the swarm stretched itself out in the lobby, mostly dressed in full running gear, rules were established to follow the lead of the person in front as the route was carefully pre-planned with respect to the exhibitions. With first aid standing by, the group of close to 100, twisted and turned through the museum and ran up and down the flights of stairs with passersby often trapped against the walls waiting for the train of smiling joggers to roll by. The circular flow of the Glenbow lent itself to a vortex of sorts, as turning each corner you once again saw and heard the troop come stomping by in a consistent pace that was probably more akin to a brisk walk than a run.

Creating temporary public art works, or sculptural formations as they call it, Goodwin and Rose have led packs of public participants through the Royal Ontario Museum and the Toronto Alternative Art Fair as exercises in social change. (A film will be made about the ROM run). Their impetus is not just a double entendre on "running" a major art institution, but public empowerment through socialization: mobilizing a collective of ordinary citizens to be both the subject and the concept--if even temporarily--of our cultural institutions.

The question they consistently pose is: if we can run a museum together what else can we run as a social body? The general public is discouraged from running in public spaces such as museums, or libraries, or other formal, but inherently social spaces meant for use by and for the public. As we are socialized to "behave" in public spaces, do these spaces still remain as public domains and what is to be public versus private? Although this was carefully planned and executed with the Glenbow's full cooperation, The Movement Movement idea can certainly grow to intervene itself into various spaces that equally need the presence and participation of a conscious and active social body.

All photo credits: Noel Begin, 2008.

Amy Fung is the author of www.prairieartsters.com and although she did walk briskly through the Glenbow, it was only by happenstance.

David Hoffos, Scenes from the House Dream, SAAG until November 30, 2008

2008-10-05T09:52:00.000-06:00

David Hoffos is a wizard. After walking through the darkened corridors containing the completed Scenes from the House Dream (a series spanning five years of dreams and construction), after becoming implicit in the master illusionist’s reflective theatrics, I can only surmise that Hoffos is nothing short of a man in touch with a wholly other realm of being and consciousness.

In the perpetual night time of Hoffos’ world, in the recesses of dream time, abbreviated narratives unfold and repeat in estranged landscapes and familiar actions. A young man wheels his bicycle down a deserted suburban street, away from the distant fireworks that loom and dissipate over this sleepy hamlet of a town.

Framed within tiny enclosures, the narrative within the scene are the boy and the fireworks, which both are projected onto the elaborate 3D infinite diorama from monitors just behind the viewing audience. The projection of light, or arguably the carefully measured refraction of light, creates a ghostly holographic effect. Only the strangest and most confounding illusion is the containment of light within the double-sided mirrors within most of the dioramas. In the ship dock scene, where a handful of docks turn into an endless mirage, a single yacht appears floating in an endless lap of water, while a man (coming from another screen) appears restless on the deck of the vessel. The overall affect creates a terrible soothing rhythm of awe and speculation -- a tumble down the rabbit hole of optical logic and finding yourself beyond the comfort of anything you know.

Revealing nothing by revealing all, there is one frame that lets you see the man behind the curtain, so to speak. The back of all the dioramas are revealed with each of their specific sound and light set ups. That in itself is already a stellar peek into the workings of the illusion, but down on the ground directly opposite of the space, there lies a subtle hologram cutout of a white cat. Resting on all fours with a slight turning of its head and swish of its tail, it can only be presumed that the cat is Hoffos' own, a fixture behind all of illusions and a constant mate in the studio. Cutouts of a woman also appear throughout the show, often in corners, appearing as a life size shadow with sporadic movements that perpetually startle the passing viewer.

Turning the concept of a voyeur inside out, the highlight for me personally was the live feed at work in one of the last scenes. Peering into a decadent house, with a slightly ajar bedroom door that makes you crane your neck to see more (and what you find is a another door with a mysterious stair case leading elsewhere), you look through this highly decorative room only to see moving figures milling about outside its large French window. They are standing in a small group, huddled to see into something, and suddenly you recognize one of their jackets as something you recently saw within this very space. Is it one of the artist’s friends who wore the same jacket and came for the opening night? Only being there with a friend, who turned around to look, I could see her face behind the French window. I ask her to wave away from the scene, and she is suddenly waving at me through the window. In this Lynchian moment of time collapsing space, or space collapsing time, there is only a horror-fueled glee running through my veins in this darkness.

Revolving around the intimate dream-filled nooks of a house, a Bachelardian concept of the poetics of space, particularly of the house and home, this presentation is a feat of decentering both the viewer and the work of art until they are fully realized as one participatory interaction of being.

As a practicing artist for over 17 years and a graduate of the University of Lethbridge’s BFA program, Hoffos’ world premiere in his home town marks a significant moment in his career. Scenes from a House Dream will begin a national tour starting next fall at the National Art Gallery in Ottawa.

All images from David Hoffos Scenes From a House Dream, 2008

Amy Fung is the author of www.prairieartsters.com

Welcome to the official M:ST 4 Festival blog!

2008-08-27T16:49:00.000-06:00

In the spirit of creating exciting relationships between artists, organizations, and communities, the fourth edition of the Mountain Standard Time Festival will take place from October 3rd to 17th 2008. Alberta’s only biennial of performative art, M:ST celebrates innovative and critically engaged performative art in the southern Alberta region.

The M:ST 4 Festival will take place in galleries, public spaces, and surprise locations throughout Calgary and Lethbridge, and will feature over 30 local, national, and international artists in over 25 events. For information about all things M:ST, visit www.mstfestival.org.

This year, we are pleased to have M:ST audiences join in the discussion by visiting this new interactive M:ST Festival Blog. The Festival Blog will be the official online forum for response and dialogue about the Festival, in a style particularly suited to the live, time-based, and performative artworks that are M:ST’s hallmark. Participating performers, artists, panelists, and audience members are welcome to post reviews, thoughts, and responses about their experiences of M:ST, alongside up-to-the-minute reports from our official festival bloggers.

Read! Write! Subscribe!