La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse Presents:
the PRIX POWERHOUSE PRIZE 2018
•••Residency/Exhibition: Nov 9 – Dec 7, 2018
•••Award Ceremony & Opening: November 16, 6pm to 9pm
•••Performance Series: Several dates, see details below
La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse
4296 blvd. St-Laurent, Montreal
– more information –

I am thrilled and filled with gratitude to have been selected as one of two recipients of the PRIX POWERHOUSE PRIZE 2018 – an award being shared with the amazing artist, Helena Martin Franco.

From the La Centrale website:
“The winners of the 2018 Powerhouse Award were chosen through consensus by members of the jury following animated deliberations on the thirty-four nomination files under consideration. The discussions were guided by a genuine spirit of openness and sharing of diverse perspectives, grounded in the dedication of its members. This openness of process and dialogue needs to be highlighted, thanks to the diversity of perspectives and practices within the jury. Our choice fell on two ambitious artists who, while being active in their community for a long time, contribute decisively to an art form still marginalized by institutions. In this respect, we have not opted for obscure artists, but rather for true fighters of a certain caliber whose commitment to their artistic practice and community is without question and deserves today to be honored. Let us also mention that this process of deliberation has, over the years, allowed us to discover artists with extraordinarily rich practices and expand our knowledge of the work of several others. It is safe to say that our critical reflections in choosing the artists for this award will have an impact on the direction of future programming in contexts other than this one, the La Centrale Powerhouse initiative being fundamental to the ecology of Montreal’s visual arts community.”

With this wonderful award comes the opportunity to have an exhibition. In thinking about the work I would like to show in the gallery I came to the conclusion that what would align the most with my practice would be to undertake a performative/relational/durational engagement with the space. And to do so through honouring the people who have been instrumental in some form or other for having helped me to become an artist and devote my life’s work to my performance art/life practice: mentors, influences, inspirations, collaborators (or a combination of all of these). The list is long but I have narrowed it down. The result will be a series of public presentations in the gallery (address above) over the course of the exhibition: individual performative encounters in the form of one-on-one exchanges – whether performances, conversations, silences, participatory actions, or an interweaving thereof.

I am delighted then, to welcome these special guests on the following dates:

• Tues, Nov 20: 5 to 7 in performance with Louise Dubreuil
• Thurs, Nov 22: 5 to 7 in performative dialogue with Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood
• Sun, Nov 25: 3 to 5 in performance with Sylvie Tourangeau
• Wed, Nov 28: 5 to 7 in dialogic performance with Jacob Wren
• Fri, Nov 30: 5 to 7 in performative dialogue with Kathryn Presner & Bob Presner
• Sun, Dec 2: 3 to 5 in performative process with Sylvie Cotton
• Tues, Dec 4: 5 to 7 in performance with Nathalie Derome
• Thurs, Dec 6: 5 to 7 in walking performance with karen elaine spencer (starting at gallery)
• Nov 16 – Dec 7: (ongoing) performance instructions with Linda Mary Montano

AND

Helena Martin Franco and I will be occupying the gallery for the entirety of this time and so will plan to perform collaborative actions and engage in performative dialogues as well. More dates to be announced but basically you can come by the gallery anytime during opening hours over the course of our creative residency starting Nov 9 right through to the end of the expo and likely find us there!

Studio 303 Presents:
Boundaries of the Everyday Body: a post-studio performative intensive
Les frontières du corps quotidien : pratiques performatives post-studio

A bilingual (EN+FR) workshop offered by Victoria Stanton through Studio 303 in Montreal.

October 8 – 12, 2018
9:30am – 12:30pm daily
Fee: $75
Open to artists of all disciplines
To register or for more info: contact Studio 303 at (514) 393-3771 or info@studio303.ca

Description (version française ci-dessous)
This workshop intensive will specifically locate our process in public settings, surrounded by elements of the “everyday.” An opportunity to deepen our explorations about how we consider, construct, and witness performance in public (non-art) contexts, participants will be invited to experiment with in-situ and in-socius performative practices as we move from one location to the next on a daily basis. How does place inform our behaviour? How do we move, walk, relate, receive – depending on where we are? How do weather, air, walls, others inform our performative choices? With an emphasis on post-studio methodologies, and infiltrating practices (i.e.: more invisible, liminal actions that subtly imprint themselves into the fabric of daily life), through embodied research we will also examine the im/practicalities (challenges, surprises, joys, unpredictability of dynamics) of making/showing work literally “outside the box.”

***

Description
Cet atelier intensif situera nos pratiques dans l’espace public, entouré d’éléments du quotidien. Il s’agit d’une opportunité pour explorer et approfondir comment nous considérons, construisons et témoignons de la performance dans un contexte public (non artistique). Les participant-es seront invité-es à expérimenter avec des pratiques performatives in-situ et in-socius au cours de déplacements à chaque jour. Comment est-ce qu’un lieu informe notre comportement? Comment est-ce qu’on bouge, marche, interagit, reçoit – dépendamment d’où nous sommes situé-es? Comment est-ce que la météo, l’air, les murs, et les autres informent nos choix performatifs? En mettant l’accent sur les méthodologies post-studio et les pratiques d’infiltration (actions invisibles et liminales qui affectent subtilement le tissu de la vie quotidienne), et à travers une recherche incarnée, nous allons également examiner les aspects pratiques (et non-pratiques) liés à la création et à la présentation en dehors du cadre traditionnel.

I am thrilled to announce that an interview I did with pioneering American performance artist, Linda Mary Montano (originally in Ascent magazine) is being republished in anthology and retrospective publication celebrating her life and her work. Linda Mary Montano: 14 YEARS OF LIVING ART is being launched this Sunday May 27, 2018, 1pm, at The Golden Notebook, 29 Tinker St., Woodstock, NY.

This 220-page portable archive published by C.X. Silver Gallery Press in Brattleboro, Vermont, features Montano’s journal writings during 1984-1998, 18 of her ecstatic tantric tales, 52 of her drawings, 119 photo documents related to her performances, and 13 essays and interviews by art historians, curators and writers. Via Montano’s instructions, an Art/Life recipe is made available for the reader to practice making life a work of art. Preview book or order a copy.

Contact: C. X. Silver Gallery Press
Adam Silver, Publisher
Voicemail: 802-257-7898
Email: info@cxsilvergallery.com

La Galerie UQO Presents:
tout contexte est art

From May 2 – June 9, 2018
Opening reception May 2, 2018, 5 – 7pm
Galerie UQO, 101 Saint-Jean-Bosco, Gatineau, QC
– more information –

In a whole other context – where tout contexte est art – I am again revisiting a piece from almost a decade ago (Roadside Attractions, Hull), to reconsider the gallery space as another kind of “art work.” This text, written by curator Jean-Michel Quirion, explains it best:  “La Galerie UQO est art. Le contexte de cette exposition — circonscrit d’instants performatifs, d’interventions intrusives, furtives ou duratives, d’actions comme d’inactions imperceptibles et quasi invisibles, qui s’immiscent et se disséminent à même la structure institutionnelle de la galerie — est tout. Certaines propositions sont spécifiquement élaborées pour le contexte, alors que d’autres sont itérées et remaniées afin d’intégrer momentanément et spontanément les fonctions de la galerie (son espace de diffusion, son organisation, sa gestion) et de son milieu (l’université, son quartier et sa communauté diversifiée). Dès lors, le contexte de la Galerie UQO est un tout dans lequel tout est art.” …Coming back to the Roadside Attractions series in which micro-interventions were placed around the city of Gatineau (formerly Hull), the gallery will become a site of play where past actions are reactualized on screen and in “real time” – through the intermingling of video and durational performative actions this time inside the walls of the gallery. This piece appears alongside works by Steve Giasson, François Rioux, Jon Sasaki and La fatigue culturelle.

L’institut culturel du Mexique à Montréal Presents:
Historias de Fantasmas / Histoires de fantômes/ Ghost Stories

From April  28 – May 24, 2018
Opening reception May 3, 2018, 5 – 7pm
Instituto Cultural de México Montreal / Galerie Espacio México
2055 Peel St., Montreal, QC

My performative practice – predicated upon human interaction and our relationship to place – comes into the realm of the gallery, proposing a series of ephemeral images in an exhibition curated by César Damián. Emerging from a residency in Real del Monte, a former mining town in Hidalgo, Mexico, floating filmy surfaces poetically render various experiences of “unexpected” meetings; elements of being in place/being in relationship that often sit at the intersection of im/perception. How to depict the un/knowable? Wishing to not name it specifically but instead to invoke via the residue of these encounters, printed and projected portrayals become the trace of a trace – the revisiting of performative engagements now being mined to reveal this space between space, where what we see in front of our eyes might not tell the entire story, and where what we feel (beyond our five senses) might contain valuable information that our body imperceptibly receives.

Live Art Denmark Presents:
What Goes Around Comes Around

April 19 & 22, 2018, 5pm – 8pm
Brandts Museum, Odense, Denmark
– more information –

For the 2018 edition of Live Art Denmark’s Live Art for Kids festival, I’ve been invited to reenact my “people feeding each other” performance. This time: it’s the kids that get to feed the adults in reworked version called What Goes Around Comes Around. The backstory: I have struggled with food and eating for years. Food is a complex system and I am convinced that how we relate to it as adults largely comes from our experiences in childhood. My mother, for example, being from a poor family had very little of it growing up. Now her fridge and cupboards are always full to bursting. I, on the other hand, had abundance but was surrounded by people who constantly “needed to go on a diet.” Food is there but is always threatening to do harm (or disappear). You can see where all this tangled spaghetti comes from. My stage-based and relational performance art practice has therefore visited this theme in various ways over many years. Inspired by a previous piece in which guests in a restaurant were invited to feed each other for the duration of a meal (the ESSEN performances which took place in several cities with several iterations), in Live Art for Kids I am coming back to this work, moreover to the “ground zero” of the time in our lives when this complication starts to flourish. Asking kids how they feel about food (and eating), our conversation will give them the floor – but will happen while they spoon-feed their parents (and any other amenable, friendly adults who happen to come by…).

The P. Lantz Initiative for Excellence in Education & the Arts, along with the McGill Institute for Human Development and Well-Being and the McGill Art Hive Present:

Resting, Walking, Place-Making: How Do We Talk About Invisible, Liminal Spaces in Art?

March 23, 2018, 10am – 6pm
Art Hive, McGill University, 3700 McTavish, (1^st floor) Montreal
Free and open to the public
For more information and complete schedule

Sitting at the foot of Mount-Royal, the Faculty of Education overlooks the incredibly lush terrain of one of this city’s most important landmarks. The Weekly Walk takes advantage of this proximity, inviting students, faculty and staff to come join me every Friday to journey up the steps and onto the trails from 3 – 4pm. The Weekly Walk is a moment to reflect, recharge, or to reconnect (with oneself, with nature); to problem-solve, zone out or just get outside for an hour… It is generally a silent walk, but exceptions can be made to have a Walk & Talk if this is specially requested by a participant.

I am delighted to announce that I will be presenting a durational and site-specific performance piece during the New Performance Turku Festival this October 2017: Canadian Silence (yes, indeed, as part of the current iteration of the Doing Nothing project!)

New Performance Turku Festival is an international festival for performance and live art, organized annually around Turku, Finland – this year between October 6-8th.

The festival showcases the most interesting phenomena in performance and Live Art. This year the themes are political performance and site-specifity – in the beginning of October a range of top artists will take over the urban city space, as well as performance spaces and galleries. The programme consists of site specific performances, performances for video, festival clubs, seminars and workshops. Within the festival there’s also Kiertoliike forum and event for Finnish dance professionals, organized by the Dance House Finland and Regional Centres for Dance.

Artists for New Performance Turku Festival 2017 are:

Rachel Echenberg (CAN)
Victoria Stanton (CAN)
Scottee (UK)
Tomasz Szrama (FIN/PL)
Kurt Johannessen (NO)
Irma Optimist (FIN)
John Court (FIN)
Denis Romanovski (SWE)
Hiroko Tsuchimoto (SWE/JP)
Sandrina Lindgren & Antti Tolvi (SWE/FIN)
AKU (FIN/GER)
Fake is fabulous inc. (FIN/CH)
Ignacio Pérez Pérez (FIN/VE)
Maija Hirvanen (FIN)
Pilvi Porkola (FIN)
Eero Yli-Vakkuri (FIN)

– Read more about the festival here –