Puisque c’est la dernière fois que je prends la parole sur cette tribune publique, je considère important de remercier toute l’équipe de coordination de l’événement, les commissaires ainsi que toute l’équipe des six centres d’artistes qui ont permis ces festivités.

sp38 organized a crepe lottery in support of dairy producers of europe – each crepe sold = one happy cow.

for 200 crepes :

48 eggs

2-3 k flour

6 litres milk

.5 litre of water

2 beers

and lots of time because you can only make one crepe at a time, just like cows can only produce so much milk in one day.

http://www.sp38.com

bernadette houde (aka bernie bankrupt): http://bernadettehoude.com

the locations were announced with the dates, time and place. no “thing” or “person” was listed as “lost.” this was not a game of hide and seek. but on the day i went looking for josh (as an informed “insider” as to the nature of what the lost/found referred to) i did not know if i would find josh, or indeed if he was even hiding. i set off on my bike looking for parc bernard, somewhere between st-viateur and hutchison. after doing the turn of the block i decided to ask a young girl if she knew where parc bernard was. or if there was even a park nearby. she informed me (with an air of exasperation) that parc was the name of a street and so was bernard, and no…there was no parc bernard nearby. (uh..huh adomished by a twelve-year old).

so now on the right path and no longer looking for a park i set out searching for josh, paying attention to door-wells and spaces between buildings and little nooks. my eye caught a movement, i looked up, and …there was josh! i was completely unprepared for the joy finding josh gave me. i was like a kid who had found a lost treasure, or had won the race. i didn’t say, “you’re it” and tag josh, but that was about how mature i felt at that moment. grinning like an idiot i went over and i think i asked josh if he would come down (so i could take him for a coffee and we could have a serious chat about the implications of his project…) luckily for me, josh said no, he still had forty minutes or so to go.

so i went over to the other side of the street and “spied” on josh to see if anyone else would take note of him.

this account, of me looking for, and finding josh doesn’t really give you an idea of his true work. the goal is not to be found by a grinning “insider.” in fact, the work functions for, or is aimed towards those, who are “not in the know.”

it is about performing an action that stands outside the “norm,” but just enough so the line demarcating acceptability and non acceptability is shaken.

on this day (every day was unique) i observed one person, a man locking his bike to the sign post, noticing josh’s presence. i thought he spoke to josh, but apparently (i learned later) this was not true. other than this man, josh told me one other person, a young child, noticed him. this lack of interaction was probably because of the location…above eye-level.

you could judge this work as ineffective, as futile. the performer announces the work, but no-one knows “what” he is announcing. he hides, but on certain days, “no-one” sees him, and if people do take note, they don’t know the “true nature” of what it is he is doing. he then takes a photo of the location he was hiding in and encloses the photo in a white envelope and pins the envelope onto a wall in a gallery, but no-one knows what the photo refers to. he doesn’t point out the location of his hiding “spot.”

the “futility” of the work seems pretty apparent. i am sure the twelve year-old girl who told me parc was a street would pick up on this right away, and she would be right. this futility is the work. the impossibility of producing a result. the signs and the actions point but do not lead beyond the pure “fact” of what it is they are pointing to. this is the name of a street in the lost/found section of the weekly paper. period. this is a body hiding on the ledge above the awning to a store. period. this is a photo of a place in an envelope pinned to a gallery wall. period.

but performing futility? working to produce the futile? no. lets shake those lines of demarcation between what we consider useful and what we don’t, what we consider proper and what we don’t, what we spend out time doing and what we don’t even dare to consider.

http://www.joshuaschwebel.com

it was nice to just hang out, to be physically close to people and to enjoy the corn (and butter.) i like it when people get to a place in their relationships when you can just sit back, not say much and be.

catherine bodmer: http://catherinebodmer.com

kit malo: http://www.lambsamongwolves.com

La dernière série de causerie a eu lieu en après-midi. Articule a offert la chance au public d’entendre les propos des artistes de sa programmation du festival. Le duo composé de Paul Couillard et Ed Johnson sont les présentateurs qui se sont le plus démarqués de cette matinée de artist-talk. Ces derniers – très généreux dans leur exposé – ont très éloquemment parlé de leur pratique en couple. Leurs discours étaient remplis de précieux conseils pour les performeurs en herbe.  Leurs allocutions étaient plus intéressantes que leur performance qu’ils ont livré le jeudi précédent au Bain Saint-Michel.

La dernière soirée du programme QuéCan Dans’pool clôturait la 2^e édition de VIVA. Celle-ci débutait de manière expéditive avec le très court numéro de Theo Pelmus. Ce dernier reprit, à sa façon, le légendaire plan-séquence de l’œil coupé dans le film Le chien andalou [1929, Dali, Bunuel]. Suivit l’intervention de Patrice Duchesne. Son action, où étaient employés beaucoup d’accessoires de construction, m’a beaucoup séduit. En combinant des images fortes avec des éléments plus poétiques, Duchesne nous a livré l’un des meilleurs spectacles du festival. Enfin, la performance sonore de Mieminemine terminait la séance. Le collectif est composé d’Alexandre St-Onge, Magali Babin, Éric Létourneau et sa chienne. Cette dernière a ajouté beaucoup de sourires dans l’assistance.

for instance, christian stood in front of us the whole time and did not have any visual presentation. he reminded me of gwendoline robin, the other artist who also worked in a very direct way with the element of risk. as gwendoline worked with the colours white and black, christian worked with the colours burgundy and white. both artists spoke of the pleasure of knowing and mastering a skill, or rather, their material. both artists vacated any kind of social, political, or personal meaning from their work, and rather spoke of their work through a visual language. the poetics of the image, of the confrontation between this violent gesture and the beauty of the image created.

christian presented his work in a thoughtful and searching manner. we could feel him trying to find the words to express something he could not put into words. this “why?” of the specifics of violence meeting with poetry. what was very clear though, was that he is in his work. he is deeply engaged with what it is he is creating. his work is highly crafted and controlled and he is very much in the performance.

there is a point of connect, as well, between the approach of monika and ruedi to christian. all three artists seem to come to their work from a very grounded, almost physical “it is this” approach. although monika and ruedi did not feel the need to find “justifications” for their work in the same way as christian, the manner of describing the work was very much, this happened, we did this.

monika started the presentation with describing their day-to-day life. the fact that they live in a small apartment, they have no studio, the kitchen table is where they work on things… and the most common question asked to them, “what is performance,” to which they reply, “come see.” the next question, can you survive on this? to which they reply, we have a very nice life (that is a paraphrase, i can’t remember the exact words.) they showed us photographs and spoke of some of their most recent performances. they spoke of liking performance festivals, of liking being asked to perform at a festival by another performer (the museum experience has not been so great for them.)

there was a strong feeling of self acceptance to be found in the presentation, which i found to be very comforting. the matter-of-fact and humble manner in which monika and ruedi spoke of their work and their life evoked an atmosphere that acted as a kind of “granting of permission” to those of us who are perhaps somewhat younger and perhaps struggling with the whys and the justifications we feel necessary to give to the world and to ourselves, in order to continue with our own practices.

and then as a gift at the end monika gave us a “performance” because, as she said, “i like to do it.”

paul couillard and ed johnson also obviously “like to do it,” however for them the work, the material used, the actions performed, are “holders” for significance that point beyond the source. the performances created are to lead the receiver of the “image” somewhere. both ed and paul speak of the performance as an image. they are creating images which are then imprinted into the receivers mind. their work is politically and socially engaged…and engaged with each other.

even in their presentation the collaborative, the working with each other, was “performed” with paul jumping up every once in a while and acting out a particular scene with his body that ed was trying to explain verbally. the sense of an equal partnership that worked in a back and forth style of negotiation, with strengths of each being used for the duo work, was strong.

the dynamics of the couple seemed to echo the dynamic that they themselves want to evoke in the reception of their images. the images they create are to be negotiated, worked through, and engaged with.

christian messier: http://www.pejucommunication.com/christianmessier.html

monika gunther and ruedi schill: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfxS8H8NB7Q

ed johnson and paul couillard: http://www.artspace-arc.org/exhibits/duorama/couillard_johnson

gwendoline robin: http://www.gwendolinerobin.be

1) how, through doing their performances an unforeseen aspect of endurance kept cropping up. body endurance. whether it be the endurance of standing for an hour and holding one’s arm stretched out, or the endurance of turning a rope over and over and over while waiting for the technical apparatus to kick in. this is the difference between “imagining” and “doing,” kinda like the difference between theory and practice. even actions that seem super banal can cause stress on the body when repeated and held over time.

2) the other aspect that struck me was how, through speaking of their relationship to embodying the work of the couple ambramovich and ulay, the artists again stressed the difference between “seeing” an image of the work, and actually physically “embodying” the work. how to “know” the work through the body is a very different experience.

this relationship to the body, as a tool for experiencing, for gaining knowledge is central to approaching the work of flutura and besnik. the body in all it’s manifestations is explored through this couple: the body as interrelated to family, the body as in relation to the other, the body as voyager, the body as political expression, the body as mask, the body as artist.

flutura and besnik haxhallari: http://www.sitec.fr/users/akenatondocks/…/BESENIK.html