Sunday July 20, 2008

Most of the artists have gathered at what we affectionately call "women's prison", the student residence of Grant MacEwan. Cement floors and a view of the yard (scrub surrounded by barb-wire topped chain link) lend a penal colony romance to our endeavors.

And it bonds us. We quickly form a pack. Exchanging stories of our lives, making plans for field trips, helping each other with out pieces. We talk of many things: life and art and their intersections. Paul Couillard asks if performance artists getting older, or just us? Certainly we are all of a certain age(thus far - there are two arrivals yet to come). Margaret Dragu wonders about the performance art rules she embraced when she was young. (Yvonne Rainer even made a list - costumes BAD! Do we escape our history, our formative influences, our prototypical definitions of our media?) And Kira O'Rielly asks, "What is Canadianness?"

I think of BJ Snowden's 1970s train-wreck of an anthem, "In Canada, where "they never will be mean".

 A negative positive. And I think of Artuad, of cruelty (at the very least, we performance artists take up peoples' time), of justice, of justice-centred performance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDVDqJ7o8LE
It's funny, all my work with Lorri - all the films and performances and books and installations - have been fueled by a desire for justice. Yet there is something about the word that still trips me up. Do I even believe in justice? How do I remove it from my childish wish for retibution? And in an era of injustice-in-the-name-of-justice (disproportionate incarceration of native peoples, anti-terrorism laws and the racism they engender, surveillance, wiretapping, and general erosion of civil liberties), can too much justice be a bad thing? What do I mean when I work for justice? The idea of a place where no one is mean?

And then there is the other sticky wicket: what exactly are we talking about here? What is performance art? As we come from across the country to create, perform and consider performance art, we probably each carry the same questions: how do we define ourselves relative to this slippery medium? is there a Canadian style of the form? when watching a body in space, whatever it is, however defined, how do we determine if it is good? Was Jason Piche's belly dancing last night at the gallery performance? dance? good dance? good performance? entertainment? good entertainment? What was the intention and was that intention readable? Certainly a young male body enacting a traditional feminine dance form is interesting to watch.

Jason's performance helped kick off Visualize last night. It as a beautiful evening of rooftop conversation and drinking, and two performances in the gallery. Yet even on the first night of the fest, an art lover was heard saying, "Performance art is already starting to bug me." Such is our lot.

For the longest time Lance McLean lays on the floor, a wine galss beside his head, 12 helium balloons extending beyond his body towards the ceiling. we watched, waited, and then noticed: a card beside three open bottles of wine invited us to take a drink, take a pin (provided) and pop a balloon. The first explosion created a gasp of surprize. And then we burst all his bubbles, which did feel cruel (is that the opposite of justice?). Balloonless, Lance rose and chugged his wine. Drowning his sorrows perhaps, and ours.