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"

art kills

As I mentioned earlier, there has been insult and injury, theft, physical pain and a fair number of tears. Latest casualities include Mararget's hamstring, Kira's noggin, Alexis' heart.

I've been thinking of Yvonne Rainer's dance rules (as quoted by la Dragu). I figure as the blogger I can be arrogant enough to make a list of my own:

Be nice to yourself, your heart and body (your tools and media).
Only do what you can do.
You are just right exactly as you are (know yourself).
You don't need to make the kind of work other people make.
We all do whatever we can to avoid making/performing art, because it is the hardest thing.
You'll never be rich, you'll always struggle with money, there will always be new ways to get ripped off.
You do it because you must and because we need you to do it.
If you need proof of your importance, remember that the first thing repressive regimes do is silence and kill artists.
You are heroic, you are brave.
Our work is an accumulation of details, carefully considered.

Alexis O'Hara 1 - Friday July 25, 2008

I was anxious about laying my head on Alexis' shoulder and grieving. For starters, I have already dumped so many problems this week: Margaret received my request for justice regarding misogyny; Paul arbitrated on my love life; and Kira weighed my anger and my compassion, my intellect and my emotions. Not that I have a shortage of grievances, but here amidst this bleeding, body and process-oriented group, I was getting tired. "Fuck," I realized. "I guess all that's left to do is vomit up my family."

Alexis' "Sorrow Sponge" has had many incarnations, this iteration being the least theatrical. Simply, an assistant invites you to lay your head on her shoulder and tell her your troubles. A massive shoulder pad plays an audio loop of a lapping lake while recording your grievance. The audio Alexis collects will be cut into fragments and used in Saturday night's concert.

Creating performance is a series of infinite decisions. Some of them fall outside the bounds of the medium. Alexis, like me, is torn between entertainment and art, the presentational and the process-oriented, giving and taking, and, most profoundly, how to listen. Neither of us neatly fit into performance art definitions, but perhaps that is true of everyone. Maybe the strength of the medium (and the confusing, vexing aspect of the medium) is that it is such a catch-all for the diverse images/ideas we each create with our bodies.

Alexis has a long history with improv, and is not so interested in packages or endings. Fun is important, even in approaching a sorrowful subject matter.

What I anticipated would be a confessional space turned into a conversation. She let the interaction unfold. She shared her experiences. We brainstormed strategies. I felt less alone. Now isn't that a good perf outcome? Perhaps it is ultimatly why we all do it and, when all goes well, what we hope to give our audiences.

Paul Couillard 3 - Thursday July 24, 2008

A couple of thoughts and conversations about Paul's piece have come up during the many meals we have shared in the past 15 hours (Latitude and their sponsors have kept us on a rigorous feeding regime - this gastronomical endurance piece is killer! and wonderful!)

Paul said he wonders about whether or not he will continue doing 24-hour pieces. The effects on his body become increasingly marked. Of course I find this a shocking reminder that we have bodies at all (!) and need to be mindful of them as they age and change. As Paul tells his students who wants to leap off bridges or hang themselves in freezers, "Remember, you only have one body." Interestingly, despite the 24-hours without food or sleep, he found his piece to be more emotionally demanding than physically. He said he heard so many painful stories. However, he often had a hard time figuring out what the questions was, what the dilemma he was being asked to rule upon. And the responsibility of reaching a verdict was weighty.



All of us were stunned by the beauty of the images Paul created during this process. He had a few props: gauze bandages; 5,000 pennies (or $50, what one is paid for a day of jury duty); a ladder; 12 clips lights; and 12 chairs. It seemed that Paul created a hundred images over 24 hours, each breath-taking in its simplicity. Sometimes the lights were attached to the performer's head like prosthetic eyes, sometimes the performer wrapped his head in gauze and held a penny between his lips, sometimes lights and pennies formed a trail. The performance ended with the pennies perched atop of the room's baseboards, sending a northern-light-like glow up the walls. Two chairs were attached through a length of bandage, casting a shadow upon the floor along which the performer balanced. Indeed, balance and measure was present in all images, all gestures, all presence: beautifully so.

Kira O'Rielly 1 - Thursday July 24, 2008

Kira is working with different types of engagement here at Visualize, through three different pieces.

Typically her past work has asked, "What is the body?", its traces and extensions, particularly in light of the impact of science and technology. It has explored historic and present-day bleeding practices such as leeches, cupping and cutting, involving the audience in these most intimate, visceral acts. For example, one piece invited audience members to cut her with a scalpel. This one-on-one performance became a discussion about the viewers' willingness to participate, to "perform" what was asked, to be culpable for injury. Sometimes her intents are explicitly political, and sometimes they investigate ambivalence and play, but they almost always explore the ways in which power and subjectivity constantly shift.

Her first performance at Visualize was a "weighing in" by blind justice. A naked and blindfolded Kira held two bowls into which audience members were invited to place objects of significance.

The presence of her body in the space was intense, particularly since it wasn't merely an image: for the performance to function we needed to approach her, to put our offerings into the bowls she held aloft, to be proximate and to engage. Hers is a female body, containing different meaning than the universal male form. Our culture ascribes greater vulnerability to female nakedness (and certainly our histories as the victims of violence reinforces this)

I was astounded by the audience's willingness to play, to bring in thoughtfully considered objects, to engage. Some of the delightful pairings presented for weighing included; a mirror and a "thinking of you" card; pieces of paper upon Israeli soldiers and Palestinian freedom-fighters were named; fish hooks and Disney flashcards to teach children about "time and money"; money and the Bible; water and crushed water bottles. As the three-hour performance evolved, the trail of these props/offering/traces grew in the gallery, a gorgeous trail of resonant objects. Paul Couillard felt that to approach her body respectfully, he, too, needed to become naked, and so he did.

As the performance went on, the rigors of the physical task became more difficult for the performer. The audience metaphorically, psychically held Kira until she could do it no longer. And exactly at 10:00 p.m., when the performance was scheduled to conclude, without signal or timepiece Kira set down her bowls that had contained fire, cement, salt, and everything else we had brought her.

Wednesday July 23, 2008

In some ways it has been a hard few days. David's injury unnerved us all. And then Alexis O'Hara arrived yesterday, only to find half of her gear was purloined from her luggage. Now that's a performance artist's nightmare. Both a violation (someone messed with her most important stuff!) and a huge impediment to getting her job done (she needs that gear for the gig!). So we drown our sorrows in yoga, beer, thrift shopping, and a pilgrimage to the big boot.

Jessica in the fridge. Todd and Alexis on the mighty toe.

Margaret Dragu 2 - Wednesday July 23, 2008

I was fascinated to learn that the piece she is performing this week at Visualize is Margaret Dragu's first one-on-one. She said, "I had no idea it would be so demanding!" No kidding! The only time I have dome a one-on-one performance ("Scentbar"), I fell in love with each and every audience member. Exhausting!

"Love" is a word that has come up many times this week in talking about why we all do what we do. "Faith" is another recurring theme. Somewhat surprisingly, many of us have intensely religious backgrounds and/or current religious practices. Margaret pointed out that "practice" is something performance artists and the faithful have in common. We don't just believe, we do.

La Dragu's background is dance, and I asked her about what I perceived to be her journey away form the form. "Not at all," she told me. "Everything I do is dance."

"Form" is another recurring theme in conversation at Visualize. As Paul Couillard said at the round table discussion, "Form reveals."

And on that formal note.... Margaret and David goofed around befor David's piece, posing as Aboriginal trapper and Euro furtrader (west coast diva and Korean army dude)! Taking the piss out of monumental sculpture and the narrative of nation building, inserting themselves into "form". Making meaning wherever they go!

Paul Couillard 2 - Wednesday July 23, 2008

To hold the pain of injustice is a big job. Paul Couillard is near the end of his 24-hour performance, receiving our dilemmas, our regrets, our hurts. It is one of the most generous performances I have even engaged with, and one of the most physically and mentally demanding I have witnessed. It requires Paul's unflagging presence and open heart. I wept after I sensed he had ruled upon my "case". I was unburdened. Thanks, Paul.

Margaret Dragu 1 - Tuesday July 22, 2008

I had the pleasure of witnessing Margaret Dragu’s piece as performed for Paul Couillard on Sunday, but I didn’t really experience the piece fully until today when I took her to my site of justice/injustice.

I recently reviewed the excellent book about Montreal massacre memorials across Canada entitled “Murdered by Men”. So I knew there was a memorial here in Edmonton, one of the best in the country, one with explicitly feminist content, and I wanted it to be the place I took Margaret.

Every Canadian woman of a certain age remembers where she was when she heard about the massacre. It was so clearly a misogynist act (as framed by the perpetrator) and so clearly impersonal. When we heard about the 13 young women, we knew it could have been any of us, any woman who dared to inhabit the world previously delineated as male territory (which is, like, the ENTIRE world).

Of course the Montreal massacre monument isn’t in the City of Edmonton travel literature. I had to ask around to find it. The young man at the front desk of Grant MacEwan said, “Oh, it’s in the very worst part of town.” A chance meeting with an old friend led me there, and I in turn led Margaret in my quest for justice provided by Lady J.We sat at the foot of a statue dedicated to hope, surrounded by 13 trees each of which is marked with a plaque naming one of the murdered women. Margaret created a ring of salt, spit wine, crushed blossoms, and read cards marked with phrases pertinent to justice. As she enacted the ritual, mightily and with sword aloft, I knew I wouldn’t get anything close to resolution. Injustice marks us. But it nonetheless felt powerful, that SOMETHING was happening.

In the park a man screamed, pursued by his own demons. Another urinated behind us. Various people slept. The injustices of poverty and racism and a culture intolerant to mental illness joined our action/desire for justice for women. It all was very interconnected for a few moments. As Margaret’s card told me, “Justice is just us.”

Paul Couillard 1 - Tuesday July 22, 2008

Paul Couillard considers his work to be the creation of situations. Lately it has involved a keeping of silence, and an exploration of the meanings in silence. Listening is implicit, as are justice-related questions of what it means to speak a silence, to articulate that which is not heard.

Paul has constructed a series of 24-hour works. A calendar day is an arbitrary unit, one that is unnatural for the human body to remain wakeful throughout. The duress that the 24-hour performances create allow Paul to experience time, his site, his body and his interactions in an invested, less comfortable, mindful way.

His set of parameters for “Jury” are a 24-hour duration, the Latitude 53 gallery space, and an invitation for audience members to bring a case, a problem, an injustice to him. As a peer, a juror, he will consider it, rule upon it, pass judgment, but will keep his silence, not voice or otherwise express his conclusion. In doing so he hopes to create a framework that creates equality with his audience, disrupting the traditional hierarchy in which the performer has control.

We spoke over breakfast yesterday morning about the life-and-death nature of performance art. How a Growtowski teacher once described it to Paul as, “A person takes a knife and is ready to stab someone or oneself. However the light catches the blade and s/he thinks, “That’s interesting.’” Form captures our attention and we use it to create meaning. As Paul says, “When you come face-to-face with your neighbour, morality enters in. Proximity creates the potential for love.”

David Khang 2 - Monday July 21, 2008

Before David Khang’s performance a passer-by yelled at David for not placing the Canadian flag above all others. She was obviously of the “you come to this country you learn to play by our rules” school. She wasn’t willing to stay for the performance so she missed the complex interplay of two languages (Korean and English), four national ensigns (Canada, USA, North and South Koreas), photos of two black American leaders of different eras (Martin Luther King and Barak Obama), perhaps the world’s most famous speech about peace (“I have a dream”) and the actions two assassins poised with paint guns. The layering of histories and geographies were so dense that I continue to unravel my own personal readings around the piece beyond an interconnectedness of our struggles for justice, an interconnectedness symbolized by our bodies.

When the speech switched into English, when the content of the text was revealed to most viewers in the Edmonton audience, guns flared, piercing the photos of the black leaders, piercing David’s flesh, spraying all with glowing pink paint.

The audience became alarmed. Something was wrong. David was hurt. When he removed his helmet, a dime-sized wound in his forehead leaked blood down his face. An unexpected performance glitch. Collateral damage. More than an image, a casualty. The line between performance and life blurred once again. The costs of freedom-fighting unwittingly alluded to in most visceral terms.

David Khang 1 - Monday July 21, 2008

David Khang’s path to performance has been as winding as anyone’s, and includes years spent studying dentistry and theology. In describing his practice he talks about using historical moments as readymades, juxtaposing different geo-political flashpoints to explore their commonality and resonance upon our present and future. It is relational work writ large, a conscious employ of his gendered, racialized body to discuss human interconnectedness; to trace a legacy of justice movements, to honour the costs paid by those who have fought for freedom, to humbly perform in solidarity with them.

At one point in his life, David seriously considered ministry (with the United Church of Canada). Not surprisingly his performance work embodies notions of liberation theology and employs citational strategies.

It seems no coincidence that the medium of performance art came of age at a time when the power of “testifying” was prevalent in the civil rights movements, informing feminism’s “the personal is political”. Khang’s performative actions, though not personal narratives, nonetheless follow in this tradition. With his body he bears symbolic witness to injustice, and suggests that through an understanding of common vulnerability, corporeal frailty and love we find grace.

Speaking with David I was struck by his quest to find meaning. He is now considering pursuing studies in town planning or law. At one point in his life he almost did a degree in architecture. He is searcher, as all good artists must be. He described one of his performances to me, a piece of such rich metaphoric image and action that it could hold many meanings. David constructed a large book, “the book”, which, when opened, released monarch butterflies tied by silk threads sewn through his tongue. As they flew out of the tome he cut the strings that bound them to him, releasing them from both the text and his mouth, releasing them from rhetoric. What could be viewed as a non-political work can also hold political resonance. Viewed in the context of David’s practice, our bodies transcend ideology. Our right to freedom is sacred and universal.

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.