the end - Monday July 28, 2008

I'm back in Winnipeg now, with post-summer-camp sadness.

Kira, Robin and I shared the equivalent of the last supper - the last breakfast - yesterday in my room. Margaret and Alexis had left way earlier (some inhumane hour) and Karen and David remained fused to their beds. So the three of us had a wrap-up (and mass emptying of our refrigerators).

What did we say about Visualize 2008? Simply that meeting each other was great. Performance artists can be so isolated. Talk about a much-maligned art form! What a relief to not have to justify or explain our very beings, and to be able to get down to talking about the work.

The dearth of audience makes Visualize more of an art lab than a series of shows. I, of course, love audience and need it for my work, so am biased. But through the week I did wish for larger viewership.

It would be so healthy for performance to get out of its ghetto, for people to see the best of the medium instead of the pop culture parody as seen in comedy and film. And so much rigorous, interesting work was presented this year at Visualize. My mind was blown - why not blow more people's?

But that is my only quibble. Through the participating artists I have learned a lot about the form I have practiced for 25 years. And I have asked myself questions that will engage me for some time (or at least until Lorri Millan answers them.)

Thanks to all the staff at Latitude, especially the head cheese, Todd. Thanks to all the artists, who I hope to see again soon. And thanks to new Edmonton friends. It feels like we lived through something together.

Tanya Lukin-Linklater - Sunday July 27, 2008

This is sort of a P.S. to the Saturday night post, because of course Tanya performed then too, a song dedicated to the over 500 Canadian Aboriginal women who have gone missing. With her child on her hips, throat singing and melody or her lips, she sang, "Grandmother" over and over again in Tlingit. She used this song again in a performance in front of City Hall Sunday afternoon.



Part dance piece, part ritual, part political statement, Tanya danced around a star blanket on the lawn and swam in the fountain. She then invited the audience to wade into the water, where she held them and sang to them in what my Christian upbringing could only frame as a baptism of sorts. The we returned to the lawn and were each given a present: a blanket. A most generous gift, my white self thought, in light of history. Of course smallpox-infected blankets were one of the many "gifts" my people brought from Europe to perpetuate genocide. And the numbers of missing Native women suggests that genocide is still on the agenda.

Although this piece wasn't officially part of Visualize, those of us from the festival were glad the timing worked out and we could see it. Its mix of visual elements, movement and song were presented so cleanly. And Tanya had been very much a part of our week, our experience here in Edmonton. Visualize artists got very competitive around who would hold her baby next!

One of many interesting about watching Tanya perform is the way in which her children are integrated into the pieces. Not separate. Art as just part of life.

Karen Elaine Spencer - Sunday July 27, 2008

Karen Elaine Spencer, like many artists at Visualize this year, works in many media. Apparently she was even reluctant to come to Visualize, not wanting the pressures of a performance festival to hijack her process.

She was the first to arrive and will be the last to leave. Most of you won't see her perform, but you might run into her chalk texts on city sidewalks or find the odd tangerine. I did. They brought me up short as I wandered. What is this message writ large in chalk? I was so excited to stumble upon Karen's words that I began to watch for them and found, as a result, a hopscotch and "Darcy loves Anita", other artifacts by other urban writers.

Karen's pice is beautifully archived in her own blog,
likewritingwithwater.wordpress.com
(I'm sorry I'm not giving you a hyper-link. Your humble blogger is techno-doltish. Only through the graces of Amy Fung could I figure out how to attach pictures. Too bad there isn't an Amy Fung key command. Then I would have been able to give you weblinks and video.)



For over a week Karen has performed public writing that embodies the pain of colonization from the colonizer's perspective. Her texts have been written in English and Cree (which she has been studying while in Edmonton.) In this project she is attempting to acknowledge our history, not to lay blame or attempt undo what cannot be undone, but to own up.

She describes her work as "trying to sculpt social consciousness". She is concerned about the erosion of public space, and the politics regarding who is excluded by privatization. Ultimately, she wants her work to appear easy: for people to feel that they can make it too, and ideally, that they will.

Karen's Edmonton project, i dreamt i ran away from home, concluded on Sunday with a performance for invited guests. The litany of bad dreams ("I dreamt filled your mouth with stones. I dreamt I wrapped you in my skin. I dreamt I cut your children's hair...." was followed by a keening poem. Then Karen led us from the gallery to her final site, a slab of sidewalk near the gallery, upon which she wrote the final "dream": "I dreamt I awoke to hear your voice."

Watch for the next iteration of this performance action in Saskatoon in the summer of 2009.

Saturday night, July 26, 2008

There is nothing I love more than a cabaret. In fact I was having so much fun at the closing performances at Latitude 53, I entirely missed Julianna Barabas' performance. (We'll just need to bring her to Winnipeg.) From what I could see, in the small gallery she washed peoples' hands and sang to them. Everyone came out looking soft and stoned.

I was busy in the main room, watching TL Cowan bear our sartorial secrets and Alexis O'Hara riff on her experiences of sorrow in Edmonton and beyond.

TL assigned us each a number and had us stand up, one-by-one, to hear the fashion crime of which we had been changed. She then gave us license to trade offenses with other audience members. Somehow, her 1980s fashion-fascist persona didn't humiliate but brought us together. We all mingled, strangers and friends, to talk about the accusations against us. I ditched my first change (dressing to look skinny) and acquired another (changing clothes many times to look like I don't care how I look). At one point I also had the dreaded camel-toe accusation, but a group of us decided to embrace big-labial pride and rip up the charge. One audience member from France wondered aloud about how the sentencing might proceed. We discussed the guillotine possibility. But instead TL listened to our confessions, gave us shiny stickers whether we were absolved or guilty, and authoritatively told us, "Don't worry. It's just fashion." It was lovely to have a litany of insecurity spoken aloud, and then have all those private fears so cooly dismissed. Do I smell? Can everyone tell I buy sweatshop fashion? Is there some bodily fluid on my skirt? Quite possibly, but the same could be true of all us us. And anyway, "It's only fashion".

Alexis then performed a brilliant audio piece about her Sorrow Sponge project, sorrow itself, and the particulars sorrows of collecting audio source material in Edmonton. A stream of consciousness musing was beautifully written (?)/improvised(?) and manipulated live through a panoply of audio gizmos.

Listening to Alexis' text I thought of how alone we all are - definitely loneliness has been something that has come up many times in conversations during the festival. And how paradoxical performance art is to bring us together to think about it.

And the togetherness kept coming as Alexis DJed an impromptu dance party. It was one of those magic evenings where everyone danced together, unselfconsciously, as if the night would never end. Break-meister David Khang taught us some dancing moves before hurting himself once again. We educated Kira O'Reilly about proper Canadian winter apparel (fur AND feathers!). Grapes were eaten and downlow lemonade drank. Finally, despite many complaints, Todd cast us out into the night.

Margaret Dragu 3 - Saturday July 26, 2008

Damn these performance artists with their multiple iterations! Not content to do one piece, they create many. The blogger's work is never done!

And as the blogger, it is increasingly tempting to say to you, dear reader, "If you missed it, that's your tough luck." I know my descriptions don't do "justice" to the work. It's gotta be experienced. That said, we're on the home stretch here. And I will try to keep up this breakneck blogging pace, especially for those of you who are too far away to come see what's shaking here in the town formerly known as City of Champions.

Poor Margaret was laid low by injury this week, which was a tragedy for us all. Our yoga master was taken out at the hamstring. From a performance point of view, this meant that many one-on-one appointments with Lady Justice had to be cancelled. However, Margaret decided to stage a revised, group performance this afternoon, for everyone who hadn't had the opportunity to witness her scales and sword in action, and even some of us who had.


Margaret repeated many of the same actions (the spilling of salt, the spitting of wine) but also added new elements: an introductory section in which each audience member offered up tales and images of justice or injustice; video footage of beds made and unmade and the people who inhabit them; ironing; music; group yoga moves (the actions she would have performed if she could - performance by proxy!;) and, finally, a twirling dance with each audience member. The generosity of the performer was met by the generosity of the audience. We shared what can only be described as a ritual. And generally ritual performance just isn't my bag, but we all left smiling, lighter and closer to each other, closer to Margaret, and feeling some sense of justice/relief.

OK, I will say it..."You should have been there." And see you tonight at 8:00.
Don't miss David Khang's new line for fall - hot pink fatigues! And TL and Alexis' performances ce soir (they seen here in post-bacon rapture.)

Robin Brass - Saturday July 26, 2008

Robin Brass doesn't call herself a performance artist. She lets the content (what she wants to say) determine both the media and the form of a work.

She began working with text in 1999, creating a highway sign in Cree syllabics in the Qu'appelle Valley In Saskatchewan. She later employed the syllabics of her own language, Soto, in 4 photo-based works superimposing images of text written on the body with traditional medicinal plants.

Her performance work started integrating spoken language in 2005. Two things came together at that point: frustration with the arrogance and ignorance with which Native culture was being tidily packaged (reduced) and a longing to hear her own language out loud. As she says, "I got sick of speaking English, my only language. I got very quiet." She asked herself what was needed, what was necessary, and concluded, "Our own language, spoken from the heart."

Robin's piece last night involved, "A simultaneous cleaning up and making meaning using an age-old female gesture," (and here I quote the brilliantly succinct words of my roommate, Margaret Dragu). With pucks of red paint and water, Robin scrubbed the floor and wrote upon it (syllabics again). Verbally Robin asked us in Soto, "Do you understand?" and told us (among other things), "You are standing in my way." And we were! The creation of a spiral on the floor moved us away from the walls into the centre of the room. ("Ahh, that's nice," I thought, "she wants us all together!") But as the spiral twisted inwards, it was clear that we were in the way and needed to step aside. Two Aboriginal women in the room, MJ and Robyn, often nodded in agreement, moved their lips, and vocalized an echoed response. The rest of us could only "read" the emotional content of the text. Like David Khang's piece, Robin's use of Soto raised questions of power: Who is included? Who is excluded?

After the performance, Robin provided a translation of the Soto text. As well as the perviously cited phrases, her words repeatedly spoke of reconciliation: "the root of love...", "I am grateful in the biggest way", "restore this" and "come back". Robin works with more than polarized positions, exploring inter-Aboriginal schisms as well as relationships between Native and non-Native peoples. Most importantly, her gestures, text and images suggest that deep respect and understanding are not easy, but necessary. Her phrase,"Do you understand?" asks about more than linguistic facility. Over breakfast this morning she talked about other embedded questions, like, "Do you understand the complexity? The beauty? The stakes?"

Her spiral made me think of traditional winter count hides and land art of the 1970s. She said she was referencing the prevalence of the shape in nature (the way our hair grows, the way water drains, shells, the galaxy).

I wished that the pigment she had used was deeper, more vibrant, more present. And I wondered about the emotional tremor in voice. Robin explained this morning that she prefers to reach an emotional pitch and pull back, to control it, to ride that edge. Last night that didn't happen. It was a day of tears all around. Such is the nature of the medium. What we intend doesn't always happen thanks to the collision of our ever-changing hearts, bodies and audience. But what happens, IS. And what WAS (Robin's piece) was a powerful, graphic and meditative experience, raising essential questions we all need to grapple with as the evils of colonization continue to unfold.

I asked Robin what's next. This was her third performance on her knees. She says she wants to get up off the ground!P.S. I write this post on my father's 89th birthday, which seems fitting as I consider Robin's performance last night. My father taught me the language of my ancestors (and so much more). I thank him.

Kira O'Reilly 2 - Friday July 25, 2008

There are no expletives strong enough to begin this post. Holy shit? Stop the blog presses? They just don't do it justice.


I saw Kira's third and final performance and left unsure whether I would laugh, cry or vomit, it was that good.

Now keep in mind I live in Manitoba, land of Mennonites (pacifists), NDPers (soft socialists) and friendliness (as espoused on our license plates). I am such a baby. And Kira is full-on, one of those performance artists who really uses and stretches the limits of a body. This piece contained all the intensity, all the endurance required of her previous two- and three-hour performances, condensed into 20 minutes. I don't even know whether I can or should attempt to describe it.

Just to back up bit.... On Thursday night Kira performed her second piece, a response to objects collected in the first. From two half-collapsed and collided tables the object-offerings cascaded onto the floor. Kira sat facing them, hooded, her feet in bowls. At three different times she stood (wobbly in the stainless vessel/shoes) and then inverted her body into a headstand, one hand or each of two bathroom weighing scales.

Tonight's performance was a movement-based. Like the previous two, it was performed almost naked, costumed merely with a couple of things that were present among the original object set. Kira wore silver pumps and a green feathered headdress (echoing the green blindfold and green Abu-Ghraib-like hood of the previous pieces, but in contrast VERY Showgirls).

Kira is a lovely looking person and has amazing physical skills. She can easily create an image of "beauty". But her body is marked with what seems like hundreds of cut marks. It is as if all of the scars most of us bury inside are manifest upon her. So even standing still she presents a complex image. This tension was magnified by her actions: smiling genuinely at each of us audience members through a reflection in a hand mirror; walking on her knees, clutching her ultra-femme high-heel clad feet in a grotesque hobble; alternately moving as if to take flight and smacking her flank until hand-shaped welts appeared; repeatedly falling from a headstand, with her full weight. Throughout it all she was completely present, completely herself, and completely dedicated to performing the tasks which she had set for herself.

I honestly don't know what to make of it except to say it rattled my insides the way only performance can. I would read the piece as implicitly feminist but that's me. As the young folks say on facebook,"It's complicated." Like, so complicated I feel as if I'm going to lose control of my bowels. Hair-raising. I will remember it into the next lifetime.

As David Khang said, "Beautiful. And brutal"