Mots de la fin

Je ne pouvais pas quitter cette plateforme géniale que fut le blogue de VIVA! tout au long du festival sans écrire un dernier billet. C’est l’heure des bilans, les trois performances qui se sont, à mon avis, le plus démarqués lors de ces neufs derniers jours d’art action sont (en ordre alphabétique) : Jean-Pierre Gauthier dans le dock du Fashion plaza, Guillaume Adjutor Provost lors des soirées QuéCan dans’ pool et Dominique Pétrin à la galerie La Centrale.

sp38, claudia and lili

this is sp38 making crepes outside. vive la crise! claudia, his partner, and lili, his daughter were with us for the entire festival as well.

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 as the flash

this is a faked stick figure drawing representing bernadette houde. it is fake because bernie did not stay still long enough for me to « get » her (this stick figure thing is pretty tricky i tell you.) if you showed up at the bain, or came to any viva! art action event you probably saw bernadette houde. however, i won’t hold it against you if you can’t describe what she looks like. i think she was mostly a blur of shining eyes, dark hair, and smiles. catherine bodmer wrote about bernie here

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

joshua schwebel

in my agenda: the name, josh, an arrow, the time, 17:30 – 18:30. then the words, parc bernard – st-viateur hutchison. the times and the names of the street i copied from the lost/found section of the classifieds in the mirroir. joshua schwebel was hiding in public space and he had announced the locations and times in the lost/found sections of the classifieds.

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).

monika gunther and ruedi schill

this post starts backwards. with tonight, the night after the performance. i saw monika, and naturally gave my congratulations for her and ruedi’s performance last night. she replied, « we found the performance in the pool. » at first, not comprehending i thought …she found the stones in the pool? but seeing my expression of non-comprehension monika elaborated, explaining the pool, the site, gave the performance to them. all they had to do was execute it.

* * *

monika and ruedi opened into the intimate of performance.

walking along the black tiles of the pool bottom they stopped at the deep end. deep inside the pool, and looking straight ahead, they, gestured outwards in front of us. gestures from a language of small, close to the body movements. first monika, and then as if responding, ruedi, then as if replying monika. an urgency expressed through the quickness and suddenness of the movements. speaking inside out through the body.

paul couillard and ed johnson

the performance resides between the performer(s) and the receiver. in the performance of paul couillard and ed johnson last night, the space where the performance resided was leveled. there was no hierarchy between the performer and the receiver.

this is a tricky space to establish, this leveled playing field. it is tricky because first off, the spectator often wants to feel the fourth wall to feel « safe. » the leveled playing field is also tricky because it allows, or encourages, a mundane reception. by this i mean the aura of the performer is cast off and the performer becomes « one of us. »

paul couillard and ed johnson skillfully executed this relationship with us, the receivers of their performance. but here, in this space, for me, there was an interesting slippage that took place.

the art world is small. the performance world even smaller, and the performance world within canada even smaller. sooner or later, if you persist in this domain, you are going to establish relationships with other performers that blur the lines of reception. this can certainly enrich the reception of a work, but it can also bring into play all kinds of projections and complications. think here of family members. our relationship with family is often more fraught than our relationship with our friends. there is more at stake for one thing.

jennifer belanger…finishing what you started

jennifer belanger has been searching for, and finding, and finishing the projects you started and then abandoned to the second-hand store. jennifer finds your half finished model car kits with missing parts, your not-yet-completed quilts, your wooden clog-making kit. she takes these in-need-of-completion projects home, (or in this case the gallery) and finishes them for you. once completed she returns the projects to the second hand store box where the « work of art » is re-inserted onto the store shelves.

christian messier

christian messier performed utilizing the colors white and burgundy. white towel, red towel, white flour, red wine, red pepper. he utilized repetition of gesture; rubbing, drinking, licking, hitting. he used fire, flour, wine, wine-glass, pepper plant, towels. he sat in a chair, then he crouched on the floor. he got naked, he vomited, he lit his head (covered in a cloth) on fire.

his body was treated as a material that he acted upon. he drank a bottle of wine, pouring the wine into a wine-glass and then creating that eerie sound that comes from rubbing your wet finger over the rim of the glass. he drank the wine and poured himself another glass, rubbing his wet finger over the rim of the glass, drinking, pouring, rubbing.

then he set his head on fire. a calm fire in comparison to gwendoline blowing her head off, but a fire all the same. then he ate the peppers from the pepper plant and proceeded to vomit.

flutura and besnik haxhillari…holding each other

i love watching people. i love how we move through space, how we encounter each other and the world around us. i really think we are beautiful beings. (not perfect, mind you….) and tonight flutura and besnik were beautiful. not only because they were dressed in beautiful clothes, she in a long sleeveless red dress, red gloves, he in a black suit, white gloves; but because they gave themselves to be seen.

one thing about performance (or life really) is that if you look at one thing, you are not looking at another thing. and tonight i chose to look at flutura and besnik and i chose not to look at the slide show of drawings on the screen. i didn’t even try to be diplomatic about it because flutura and besnik were holding each other.

standing still in each other’s arms. her one hand on his shoulder, his one hand at the small of her back. the other hand placed inside a long tube, his black, hers red, that ran the length of the gallery and ended in what might have been ceramic hands holding a pen before the screen showing the slide show of drawings.

the couple did not move. or so it seemed at first. but over time they altered the direction of their gaze, turning their heads to look in different directions.

chang wan wee, marx kruis and a last minute volunteer performer, janice yan yan wu, who was sent in to the scene by the organizers to help the two other performers…

the guys were the chefs. the girl served. sushi.

this is an aside but i think it kinda fits with the performance. with the notion of privilege and power. most nights the organizers and artists who present at viva! are invited to eat for free. not tonight. but i wasn’t aware of this fact. so there i was, down on the floor watching the performance, executing my exquisitely refined drawings, and hoping to be served sushi. about three quarters through the performance janice informed me i needed to have an « s » on my hand to prove i had paid for the sushi. i’m thinking, « huh, but i don’t have to pay …i’m an Organiser « (i.e., above all the common riff raff who have to pay.) so i went over to catherine and asked her what was up…and sure enough tonight was a special night and even the artists and organizers had to pay. fine, no problem. i went back to the bar to pay. no luck. the sushi had been sold out! so instead of sushi i ate peanut butter on rye bread.