Author: admin

Canada

http://bethanyidesprojects.blogspot.ca/

Bethany Ides sets precarious parameters wherein roles & resources play actors & places as if everything extends itself uncertainly. In 2014, she founded DOORS UNLIMITED, a roving vessel for investigative operatics that proliferates communitarian-collaborative strategies for provisional-conditional experimenting with/in soap opera, encampment opera, opera-within-opera, telephonic inter-drama, dismantlement, dialectics, days & nights & both as neither, near-death, opera in bed, opera in spite of itself, opera in excess of itself, ante-institutional allusions, elations, protrusions, performance, sticks, schools, stone squares, soggy cereal blankets, very long songs, backlog, & tends to tender tendencies like mountains, fake hair, carpet squares, contact paper, play mats, currency, fluidity, emails, &/or all elaborate uncertainties.

Her multi-phasic, month-long opera, Transient’s Theme, premiered at the Knockdown Center in 2014, following a 2-month connective-convective convocation or composition involving 80 participants at a campground in the Catskills. Ides’ performance or installation-as-proposition work has also been presented for/at Mandragoras Art Space (MAAS), Fragmental Museum, St. Marks Poetry Project, Dixon Place, the Brooklyn Museum Sunview Luncheonette & PS122 in New York, CounterPULSE in San Francisco, Tritriangle in Chicago, Worksound & Half/Dozen Gallery in Portland, OR, Concordia University in Montréal, as well as for BOMB Magazine’s Instagram account.

Ides/DOORS UNLIMITED curates festivals or conferences, writes articles or poetry, records songs, builds buildings, makes meals, plans plans, & takes up temporary residence where/when invited.  Ides likewise teaches itinerantly at Pratt Institute, Bard College &/or wherever calls, & currently calls Austin, TX home.

Canada

Stephen is a wandering poet/fool who creates poetic dreamscape odysseys. This year they are working on their multidisciplinary solo piece called Die Phantasie and touring living rooms in Toronto (Do you have a good one?). Stephen has acted in several productions across Canada including Angels in America, Botticelli in the Fire/Sunday in Sodom, The Glass Menagerie and Trout Stanley. Stephen is the poet in the Queer Songbook Orchestra. Stephen’s work explores the inherent power in people, the relationships between us and the unknowns within. They seek to create work that activates the soul and takes us into a world of unleashed imagination. Like Willy Wonka.

Canada

Based in the northern community of Larder Lake, Colette Jacques creates installation and performance works for both gallery and outdoor settings. For the past several years, Colette Jacques’ artistic expression has focused on her aboriginal heritage, which is deeply anchored in Mother Earth and guided by the Great Spirit that is the spirit of sharing, encounters, and love. The artist’s Native roots are evident in her work, whether appearing on the streets of New York City as “Wolf Man” (Homme loup) or offering up a “Cry of the earth” (Cri de la terre) in Brazil. Her performances, with their obsessively recurring sounds and free flowing movements, are hypnotic and lead to a profound spiritual and artistic experience. 

Sweden

www.lovisajohansson.se

Lovisa Johansson is a performance artist based in Stockholm, Sweden. She has been working and exhibiting as an interdisciplinary artist since the beginning of the 90s. Existential themes recur – loneliness, love, birth, death. Lovisa is interested in the interdependence of human beings, and how she, as an artist, can bend the boundaries of normality and thus make our mutual mental space grow. Her work also has a formally structured side, where matter in action elaborates rhythmical patterns. Johansson’s most important collaborator is Wenche Tankred, with whom she forms the WOL performance duo. WOL creates humorous sound acts and living images with multiple meanings, inviting the audience to contribute with their own interpretations. Currently, Lovisa is in the process of organizing PALS – performance art links, an international festival for performance art in Stockholm. Johansson’s daughter is named Klara.

Canada

Ed Johnson is a visual artist who has been creating performance art works since 1996. His solo work has often explored issues of communication/non-communication (Box, Words of Love) and of HIV status (Inquisitive/Inquisitor, Untitled “[sic]”). Currently his focus is on the landscape of male bodies and self-image, including “Pro tanto quid retribaumus” (for so much what shall we repay). Ed Johnson is a founding member of Fado, an artist run centre for performance art located in Toronto.

UK

www.dominicjohnson.co.uk

Dominic Johnson is a Lecturer in the School of English and Drama, Queen Mary, University of London. He has performed at festivals in London at SPILL Festival of Performance, National Portrait Gallery (as part of Gay Icons) and Chelsea Theatre; and also at Fierce! (Birmingham), National Review of Live Art (Glasgow) and Sensitive Skin (Nottingham). He has performed internationally in Austria, Croatia, Denmark, France, Slovenia, and the US. Other performance work has also been shown at clubs including Torture Garden (UK, Italy and France), Duckie, Gay Shame, and elsewhere. In collaboration with Ron Athey, Incorruptible Flesh (Perpetual Wound) was presented at various performance festivals in 2006-2007. He received a Grant for the Arts from Arts Council England to develop Departure (An Experiment in Human Salvage), a touring performance using live tattooing, with Alex Binnie; it premiered at Fierce Festival in Birmingham in April 2011. Johnson is the editor of Franko B: Blinded by Love (2006), and Manuel Vason: Encounters (Performance, Photography, Collaboration) (2007), and publishes widely on performance and visual culture. His forthcoming books include Glorious Catastrophe on the work of Jack Smith (Manchester University Press) and Theatre & the Visual (Palgrave Macmillan).

Canada

www.ursulajohnson.ca

Ursula Johnson holds a BFA (2006) from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, where she studied photography, drawing and textiles. She also studied Theatre at Cape Breton University. Johnson descends from a long line of Mi’kmaw Artists, including her late Great-Grandmother, Caroline Gould, from whom she learned basket making. In 2010 she curated Klokowej: A 30-Year Retrospective commemorating Gould’s contribution to the evolution of Mi’kmaw basketry. Ursula Johnson’s approach to basketry is typical of her transformational practice. Rather than simply imitating traditional Mi’kmaw basket forms she uses traditional techniques to build subtly non-functional forms—objects that are clearly traditionally based yet raised to a metaphorical level of signification, as works of art. Several of her performances, including Elmiet (2010) and Basket Weaving (2011) incorporate basketry as a key element.

Her background in theatre is evident in her public performances. People who attend Johnson’s performances are often surprised to find themselves no longer spectators, but actors in a social situation. Instead of the private, contemplative response we usually expect from the encounter with a work of art, we become participants in collective interpretations and collaborative actions.

Canada

Digital net-artist-poet concentrating on integrating advanced computational techniques (neural nets, VR, and fluid dynamics) into the creation of art installations and spoken word performances that expose and question human-machine symbiosis.

One-half of jAT & jHAVE with Julie Andrée T.

b. 1970, Scotland

Roddy Hunter is an artist, educator and writer based in York, England since 2007 where he is Head of Fine Arts at York St John University. He studied at the University of Glasgow before living and working in Kingston-upon-Hull as a member of Hull Time Based Arts between 1994-98 and in Totnes as Lecturer in Visual Performance and then later Director of Art at Dartington College of Arts between 1998-2007. He gained an MA (Contemporary Arts) from Nottingham Trent University in 1998. He is interested in aesthetics, pedagogy and the art of action, mainly in relation to social and urban realities. 

He works mainly in performance and installation arts practice. His work has featured at CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw; trace: installaction artspace, Cardiff; Sculpture Square, Singapore; Werkleitz Gesselschaft, Törnitz; TENT Centrum Beeldende Kunst Rotterdam; CCA, Tel Aviv; Site Gallery, Sheffield; Centro Galego De Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela; Le Lieu, Québec; CAC, Vilnius; Ludwig Museum, Budapest. He has participated in festivals further throughout Europe as well as in North America, Asia and the Middle East.

Curatorial work includes: Art. What is it good for? (with Tracey Warr, Dartington, 2004), Span2 (with André Stitt, London, 2001) and Rootless ’97: The Nomad Domain (with Hull Time Based Arts, 1997). Critical writings include monograph essays on Alastair MacLennan, John Newling, and André Stitt. Numerous public lectures, talks and workshops have been given internationally. He is also presently Chair of the Turning Point Yorkshire and the Humber Interim Steering Group.

b. 1968, Ireland

Between 2002-2005, Sandra Johnston was awarded an Arts Humanities and Research Council Research Fellowship. During this research the art works were focused around core issues of trauma, in particular the concept of “Trauma of Place” – exploring how artists can make creative interventions within spaces associated in public memory with violent events. This research was instigated initially in response to the post Cease-Fire situation within Northern Ireland, subsequently evolved outwards into many different international contexts, developing the core concept of investigating relationships between processes of art, and issues of territory, trauma and commemoration. Johnston also produces video/audio installations,and durational drawing installations which are made directly onto architectural features. She has produced work at an international level since the early nineties and recently represented Northern Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 2005.

Permanent post: appointed in 2005 Lecturer in Time-Based Art, University of Ulster, Belfast. Currently on a 3-year Leave Of Absence (March 2009/2012) to undertake a PhD project, titled “Beyond Reasonable Doubt”, a cross-disciplinary investigation into concepts of doubt, explored through consideration of improvisational art processes and systems of legal justice.

Additional teaching experience: Guest Professor at the Bauhaus University, Weimar, “Public Art and New Artistic Strategies” programme, Semester based on issues of “ART & COMMEMORATION”.

Professional Activities have included involvement as a co-director with various Artist-run collectives located in Belfast, including  Founding & Co-director of CATALYST ARTS (1993-1995) and Committee Member of BBEYOND (2002-2007). Currently she is developing projects with AGENCY, a collective initiated in January 2007.

Canada

Suzanne Joly lives in the region of Lanaudière, situated north of Montreal. She has been making performances since 1989, and was involved for many years with the artist-run centre Ateliers convertibles. Her practice is concerned with questions of relationship to place and community, using the suburban territory and its particularities as raw material. Her work evolved from an early interest in visual prostheses made from recycled materials and everyday objects to a sustained focus on the use of sound. Recently the phenomenon of urban sprawl and its impact on the soundscape of lake areas has been of particular concern. In 2006, her performance Ça monte du marais (It rises from the swamp), presented after a spring spent gathering the sounds of marsh frogs, was presented at the Musée d’art de Joliette.

Canada

As an artist, curator and writer, Tomas Jonsson is interested in issues of social agency in processes of urban growth and transformation. Tomas is pursuing a Masters in Environmental Studies at York University, with an emphasis on social planning. Tomas recently participated in the Border Cities Kolleg at the Bauhaus Institute in Dessau, Germany, where he developed projects with creative and precarious communities in Tallinn and Helsinki. Tomas has served on the board of Fuse Magazine, and was formally the Programming Coordinator at EMMEDIA Gallery and Production Society in Calgary, Alberta.

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UK

www.leehassall.org

Lee Hassall is a Senior Lecturer and joint course leader in Fine Art at the University of Worcester. He has shown installation, film and performance work nationally and internationally. He studied at The Slade School of Fine Art (BA Hons Sculpture) and at Chelsea School of Art & Design (MA Fine Art). Lee is currently undertaking a practice-led PhD at the University of Aberystwyth, in the Department of Theatre, Film & Television. His starting point for his research is a set of drawings by Thomas Rowlandson made during a tour of Wales in 1797. The main focus of the enquiry is emptiness in relation to the sublime, with thesis chapters on: ‘the sublime’; ‘landscape’; ‘the picturesque site’; and ‘post-colonial absences’. His research proposes reclaiming a sense of the visual within the study of landscape and explores and contextualizes the articulation of the visual in relation to the performative; in part by examining how the figural and two-dimensional are articulated and translated into performances. The underlying aim of the research is to widen the discourse that surrounds performing and inhabiting landscape. Outcomes will be a set of artworks and a developing written thesis whose form will allow for ruptures, breaks and schisms and which, with its jump-cuts and propensity towards montage, transgresses the teleology of conventional academic discourse.

UK

www.victoriagray.co.uk

Victoria Gray is an artist and practice-led researcher. She has presented work in galleries and performance festivals in the UK, USA, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland and Spain. Alongside Nathan Walker, she is co-director of Oui Performance (York, UK), an artist-led organization advocating practice, discourse and education of performance art in the UK. Currently, she is a PhD candidate at Chelsea College of Art and Design, University of the Arts, London. Victoria Gray’s work is supported by the Artists’ International Development Fund, awarded by Arts Council England and the British Council.

1957–2013, USA

In Memoriam: Frank Green by Paul Couillard

Frank Green was an artist and writer living in Cleveland, Ohio. He was a six-time Ohio Arts Council fellowship recipient in the areas of performance art, media arts, interdisciplinary art, and criticism. He performed throughout the U.S. and Canada, including five times as a feature artist in the Cleveland Performance Art Festival, and at Franklin Furnace and Dixon Place in New York, the Lab in San Francisco, 7A11D Performance Festival in Toronto, Wexner Center in Columbus, New Gallery in Calgary and AKA in Saskatoon. He was the art critic for the Cleveland Free Times, an alternative weekly newspaper.

Scotland

www.nicgreen.org.uk

Nic Green is an award-winning performance maker based in Glasgow, Scotland. Her work is varied in style and method, with forms often ‘found’ through collaborative and relational practices with people, place and material.  

Her work has received several awards, commissions and recognitions including A Herald Angel, ‘Best Production’ at Dublin Fringe, The Adrian Howells Award for Intimate Performance, and a Total Theatre Award for Best Physical/Visual Theatre Edinburgh Fringe. She is the recipient of the Inaugural Forced Entertainment Award, in memory of Huw Chadbourn, 2018, and in the same year was one of four artists nominated for the ANTI Festival International Prize For Live Art. She is thrilled to be Artist in Residence at National Theatre Scotland.

Canada

www.fionagriffiths.com

Fiona Griffiths is a teacher, coach, mover, actor, choreographer/creator, nurse and body worker. Fiona studied many movement and acting techniques from Feldenkrais, Alexander, and Kinetic Awareness to clown, bouffon, Theatre of the Oppressed, and Suzuki and Grotowski work. She has performed extensively in dance, theatre, clown and video. Fiona studied and taught with Richard Pochinko and Linda Putnam for many years. She was founder and director of Atelier Pochinko at the Theatre Resource Centre for ten years and became the Artistic Director from 1990-1992. She teaches and coaches actors, dancers and clowns in movement, acting and source work. Fiona has taught in the graduate theatre programs of York and Yale Universities and choreographed and coached for many professional theatre and dance companies. In 2007-2008, during a sabbatical year at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, England, she completed an MA in training and coaching actors. As well as running independent workshops and coaching performers, Fiona also teaches at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre, Hart House, Equity Showcase and the Clown Farm.

USA

The Gyrl Grip is driven by the desire to reveal, and de-veil challenging issues that exist within postmodern life and society. Their goal is not to provide answers, but to expose the difficult questions hidden behind cultural taboos and media spectacle, and to provide a forum for dialogue (internal and external) through the performative act. The core members of the Grip are co-founders of the Portland, Oregon based 2 Gyrlz Performative Arts, Lisa Newman and Llewyn Máire (with their associated Avatars). 

Since forming in 1998, the Gyrl Grip has manifested over 25 public showings. Notable performances include: the Proud to Put Out text-based performance series hosted in Portland by 2 Gyrlz, participation in the 2002 Black Sun Festival in Washington State, Full Nelson 5 in Los Angels (2003), FluXconcert PDX (2003), and street performances throughout the Pacific Northwest. Boot Camp, which explores violence against transpeople through live action and media, was presented in Helsinki and Turku, Finland in 2004 as part of Studio Là-Bas’ Space Contentions festival, as well as in Victoria, BC, Segue was performed at Lewis & Clark College’s annual Gender Symposium in March of 2006.

Canada

www.emmakateguimond.wordpress.com

Emma-Kate Guimond was born in Edmonton and is currently based in Montréal. She works in drawing, video, performance and text. Her work negotiates the real with spectacle while exploring psychosomatics, feminine narrative and body politics. In 2011 she completed her BFA in Contemporary Dance at Concordia University. She has exhibited performances at multiple Montréal galleries and venues including Articule, RATS 9 and the Red Bird. For the last year she has been working on the multi-media performance series i feel sick. Most recently she performed installment 7 in Toronto outside the AGO as part of NXNE Art and installment 8 in Edmonton as part of the Visualeyez Festival. She also works in collaboration with WIVES, an all woman performance-based collective, creating video and experimental theatre works using overhead projection. Their work Sea Foam Blue 2 was recently shown at Festival Phenomena in Montréal.

Philippines / Canada

http://kristinaguison.net

Kristina Guison is a Manila-born, Toronto-based, Filipino-Canadian artist. She works in the realm of sculpture, installation, performance, social practices and tattoos. Her practice is an investigation of themes relating to globalization and transnational identities across geographical spaces and time (Pre-Colonial, Colonial and Post-Colonial) as they culminate in the 21st socio-cultural landscape. She is interested in identifying elements and patterns in this landscape, particularly ones that behave as catalysts and residues that simultaneously extend and limit human experience.

Albania/Canada

Flutura Preka and Besnik Haxhillari (a.k.a The Two Gullivers) are an artist-couple originally from Albania and currently living in Montréal, Canada. In 1997 they began calling themselves ‘The Two Gullivers’ in reference to their nomadic trajectory across Europe. Their work has been exhibited and performed throughout Canada and Europe including The Second Beijing International Art Biennale (2005), Colours of Albania in the World at the National Gallery of Arts in Tirana (2004) and the 48th International Art Exhibition Venice Biennale (1999).

“As an artist couple, as a family, as individuals, we attempt to represent ourselves in a world moving at the speed of information and communication technologies, in a world that constantly redefines the body. We try to produce a work, which through different modes of expression, might activate the space between ourselves and the public, making it an intellectual and physical stimulant between the imaginary and the real, a path that can be followed in different ways, in fiction or reality, offering others the power to feel both here and elsewhere. Art proposes identities to us, and identities enable us to live life otherwise.” ~The Two Gullivers

b. 1944, Germany

Monika Günther was born 1944 in Bad Hersfeld, Germany. She attended the Art Academy in Düsseldorf and has been making performances since 1980. Currently she resides and works in Luzern, Switzerland and Essen, Germany.

Monika Günther and Ruedi Schill (1941–2020) have been working together in Performance Art since 1995. Their performances have been presented in Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, Poland, Mexico, Canada, Belgium, Belarus, Vietnam, Singapore, Italy, Spaing, Chile, Bali, Java and Greece. Since 1995, they have been teaching performance art at several art academies and schools. In 2004, they received the Art Price of the town of Luzern (Switzerland). And since 1998, they have shared the artistic direction of the annual International Performance Art Turbine Giswil (Switzerland).

WIKIPEDIA: Monika Günther & Ruedi Schill

USA

Shannon Harris has been playing his music for the masses in North America traveling to urban areas like Detroit, Atlanta, New Jersey, Toronto and several cities nationwide. Releasing Soul and Jazz on the 1998 Winter Music Conference CD, Shannon is steadily producing material fusing multiple genres and cultural instrumentation. Shannon also plays afrikan percussion behind poets and vocalist at Afrika West located in Chicago. He also frequents the legendary “Bongo Beach” drummer circle on 63rd and Hayes in Chicago. He has hosted his own radio show for 4 years (WIUS 88.3 FM) and has been featured in Thousand Words Magazine, the Western Courier, Chicago Tribune Metromix and Insite Magazine. You can find his in-famed mix compilations, MZIMU, Jazzical Moods, Soul and Jazz and others, posted on several websites from North America to Japan. Shannon founded Urbanicity to introduce to the world his multi-diverse talents through the arts, along with others, focusing on newly cultivated ancestral motivated ideas. Founded in 1999, Urbanicity was formed to promote and instill ethnicity and self-awareness via the arts. The word Urbanicity is defined as, “a derived variable that categorizes a respondent as urban or rural.” The group consist of a kollektive of poets, musicians, graphic artist, writers, singers, producers, discjockey’s, remixers and culture preservationist who reside in large urban areas. He has released his first E.P. on the label in June 2001, Desperado/El Montuno and Black Asiatic Women. The two pieces represent an intellectual musical symphonic orchestration of stories in which Shannon wrote prior to their creation.

Canada

www.weepingtruckers.com

Paige Gratland makes work in video, performance and fabrics. Previous performance projects include Free Dance Lessons: a renegade dance troupe which takes the chance to ask the world to dance; and Tit Pin: a performance production line which produces participants’ tits on a 3-inch pin. She also sings with the Hank Collective and is one part of the dance sensation Raige and Payne.

Canada

www.sherrihay.com

Sherri Hay a Canadian artist who splits her time between NYC, USA and Toronto, Canada. With a wide-ranging practice that includes video and performance, her sculpture and installations have been exhibited internationally, at the Art Gallery of Toronto and the Museum of Canadian Contemporary Art in Toronto. She is also an occasional collaborator in experimental theatre and dance.

Since 2012, her practice has focused on movement and time, relationships and change, exploring the quality and the extent to which she can give over voice as an artist – how she can be the instigator of a process instead of the Creator-from-nothing, proposing a certain kind of sentience for objects as performers.

USA / Canada

Johanna Householder is a multidisciplinary and performance artist. Her interest in how ideas shape and move through bodies and has led her often collaborative practice in performance art, video, dance and other media. As a member of the feminist performance ensemble, The Clichettes (with Louise Garfield and Janice Hladki), throughout the 1980s she helped establish lip sync as a viable medium for political critique. She has performed across Canada and at international venues for 40 years. She is also writes about performance and with Tanya Mars, she co-edited two books: Caught in the Act: an anthology of performance art by Canadian women (2004), and More Caught in the Act (2016). She is one of the founders of the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art, held biannually in Toronto. Householder is professor emeritus at OCADU, where she has taught performance art since 1988.

Singapore

Amanda Heng is a full-time Art Practitioner. She adopts an interdisciplinary approach to her art practice. Her works deal with clashing of eastern and western values, traditions and gender roles in the context of a multi-cultural and fast-changing society of Singapore. Recently she focuses on the issues of communication and human relationships in urban condition, often working in collaboration with people from all fields (art and non art), especially people of different cultural backgrounds. Amanda was involved in founding the Artists’ Village, the first artists-run space in Singapore in 1988. She is also actively involved in conceptualizing, curating, organizing and participating in exhibitions and public forums, conducting workshops and lecturing in contemporary art.

b. 1978, Chile / USA

Alejandra Herrera Silva is a visual and performance artist. Her works are installation and performance based and through the explorations of her own body and gender, reference the inevitable biological implications that the body has as a social and political being. In recent years, she has been working on the issue of maternity and domestic life. Herrera Silva received her BFA from Universidad de Chile and further studied in Valencia, Spain and Belfast, N. Ireland. She is the co-founder of PERFOPUERTO (independent organization of performance art based in Chile, 2002–2007). Her work has been presented in performance exhibitions all over the world including: Buzzcut festival (Glasgow), Trouble (Belgium), ANTI festival (Finland), City of Women (Slovenia), 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art (Canada); and other countries such as Germany, Poland, Japan, Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina, USA, and N. Ireland. She currently lives and works in LA, USA.

Venezuela / Canada

Julian Higuerey Núñez is a visual and performance artist from Caracas, Venezuela. Since 2004, his performance work has been presented in Mexico, Poland, Colombia and Venezuela. His work in photography, video, printmaking and installation has been exhibited in Sweden, Cuba and Venezuela. He’s member of the Laboratorio Digital de Musica (digital music lab) and has composed music for chamber ensembles and contemporary dance. Using a pseudo-scientific approach, his work deals with time, transit and the everyday.

UK

https://archive.iarp.wisc.edu/parishill/about.html

Helen Paris and Leslie Hill are London-based artists working in performance, video and digital arts, known for their edgy, humorous interrogations of contemporary culture and politics. Their company, curious, was formed in 1996 and has been supported by institutions such as the Arts Council of England, the National Endowment for the Arts (USA), the National Center for Biological Sciences, India and the Australia Council. They recently received a Franklin Furnace commission to make three short films in New York in 2004. The company’s work has been exhibited internationally and featured in a wide variety of publications. Their book, Guerilla Performance and Multimedia, was published by Continuum in 2001.

Canada

Stacey Ho dabbles in art-making, art-curating, art-writing, and art-participating, focusing on sound, photography, performance, and printed matter. The research and documentation of written and oral narratives is an integral part of her work. Holding a BFA from NSCAD University, she has recently performed in events through Montreal’s Nuit Blanche and the FADO Performance Art Centre, as well as exhibited with the eyelevel gallery and the MacLaren Art Centre.

Canada

www.marisahoicka.com

Marisa Hoicka is a bilingual performance and multi-media artist who creates video, installations and paintings. In 2016, she will choreograph a solo as part of Singular Bodies at Toronto Dance Theatre, a collaboration of visual art bringing new ideas to contemporary dance. Hoicka’s This is Not a Test (“a pure delight” – Norman Wilner, NOW) was shown on all Air Canada flights as part of the Images Festival’s Stitches in Time. Her videos have also been shown in Berlin’s Galerie Kurt Im Hirsch, San Francisco’s MoMA, Toronto’s Images Festival, and across Canada from Vancouver to St. John’s, Nfld. She mixed performance, installation and painting in her solos Nature Morte at Toronto’s 7a*11d International Performance Art Festival (described as “appropriately, obscenely tempting…perfectly extravagant scene” by Alison Cooley) and Escaping Escapism at the Power Plant’s Quarter-Life Crisis. Her persona “Uncle Wink” took part in The Other Painting Competition at the Art Gallery of Ontario for Nuit Blanche. She was featured in FADO’s 2011 Emerging Artist Series, and has performed at the Feminist Art Gallery and Rhubarb Festival. She has also had a solo show of her paintings at the Department of Canadian Heritage. Hoicka has received awards from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and led an artist residency at Artscape Gibraltar on Toronto Island. She has a Master of Digital Media from Ryerson University and a BFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University. Her video work is distributed by Vtape.

Canada

www.terrancehoule.com

Born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and raised on the Great Plains of North America, Terrance Houle is an internationally recognized interdisciplinary media artist and a proud member of the Kainai Nation (Blood Tribe).

Involved with Aboriginal communities all his life, he has traveled to reservations throughout North America participating in Powwow dancing and native ceremonies. Houle makes use of performance, photography, video & film, music and painting in his work. Likewise, Houle’s practice includes various tools of mass dissemination such as billboards and vinyl bus signage. 

Houle graduated from the Alberta College of Art and Design in 2003 with a BFA Major in Fibre. His groundbreaking art quickly garnered him significant accolades and opportunities. In 2003, Houle received an invitation to participate in the Thematic Residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts. This residency’s focus was on 34 international Indigenous people, exploring issues of colonization and communion. In 2004, his work in short video & film presented was awarded Winner of Best Experimental Film at the Toronto ImagineNATIVE Film Festival. In 2006, Houle received the Enbridge Emerging Artist Award, presented at the mayor’s luncheon for the arts. Houle’s work has been exhibited across Canada, the United States, Australia, the UK and Europe.

Terrance Houle’s first major solo exhibition, GIVN’R, opened at PLUG-IN Institute for Contemporary Art in Winnipeg, Manitoba. GIVN’R is a small retro-exhibition of Terrance’s works in film, video, performance, installation, mixed media, and photography between the years of 2003 to 2009. ​Houle lives and maintains his art practice in Calgary.

Germany

http://janine-eisenaecher.de

Janine Eisenächer is a conceptual performance artist, based in Berlin/Germany, who develops concepts for group/duo/solo performances and site-specific interventions in public space. She works solo and in various constellations (e.g. in the performance art-duo Eisenächer/Harder CLAIMS), mostly on serial and research oriented performance art projects related to the topics of identity, work, gender-specific questions, (post-)colonialism and economic structures in artistic work itself.

In her performance work Eisenächer uses body, objects, text, sound and video, and she currently explores her artistic practice in the field of sound and installation. Eisenächer is a founder member of (e)at_work, a Berlin-based artistic and scientific production platform that explores object and activity related interview methods for the interaction with audiences in public space and within the art context. She is also a founder member of the performance network Emanuelle, founded as Berlin n@work. Eisenächer’s artistic practice includes curatorial and organizational work for Performer Stammtisch, a network for professional performance artists and monthly performance art and Live Art event in Berlin. Herein, she investigates forms of writing and speaking about performance art. In addition to that, Eisenächer is board member and tutor of the art association Flutgraben e.V., where she researches and develops models of organizing artistic work and alternative formats of education with a particular focus on performance art practice. Janine Eisenächer studied Theatre, Comparative Literature and Philosophy at Freie Universität, Berlin.

Turkey / Germany

www.ekici-art.de

Nezaket Ekici is an internationally recognized performance artist. A student of Marina Abramovic (MFA, Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig, 2004) and a member of IPG (Independent Performance Group), Nezaket’s work has been presented at International Festivals, galleries and events around the world including Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Istanbul, Italy, Taiwan, Holland, France. In 2007 she performed at the 5th International Festival of Contemporary Dance & Eros with IPG in an event entitled The Erotic Body at the 52nd Venice Biennale.

The images Ekici creates in her work are from the everyday environment, presented with either a theatrical sensibility or the beauty of minimalist sculpture. The simple act of eating grapes is attacked with intense energy, a hoola hoop (performance video Hullabelly) is given a political spin, and the signals room in the subway is converted into the world’s smallest concert hall for 5 days (Sala dei Concerti, performance installation with 40 musicians).

Iran / Canada

www.rah-eleh.com

Rah Eleh is a video, net and performance artist. Her work focuses on and critiques the visual stereotypes and performative aspects that shape female gender identity and national and ethnic identity. She is interested in how race, gender and nationalism are performed from multiple layered perspectives: exilic, decolonial, queer and diasporic. Rah is a Phd candidate at Die Angewandte in Vienna, and has lectured and exhibited extensively internationally at institutions including: NYU Tisch, The New School, Alfred University, Venice Biennale (ECC, Palazzo Mora), Images Festival (Toronto), Museum London, Carleton University Art Gallery (Ottawa), Williams College Museum of Art (Williamstown, MA), Miami Art Basel, Nieuwe Vide (Haarlem, Netherlands), Pao Festival (Oslo, Norway), and Onassis Cultural Center (Athens, Greece). Rah is represented by VTape, Canada’s leading artist-run distributor for video art. 

Canada

Felipe Diaz is a Regina based artist whose practice includes painting, installation, video and performance. Felipe explores issues of identity as it is formed along political, cultural and social lines. He has worked for a variety of organizations including the Saskatchewan Filmpool, New Dance Horizons and, currently, the Dunlop Art Gallery. Felipe is currently finishing his Masters of Fine Arts at the University of Regina.

Canada

Deanna Ferguson’s collection of poems The Relative Minor was recently published by Tsunami Editions of Vancouver. Her work has also been published in absinthe, Front, hole, Jag, Raddle Moon, Writing, West Coast Line and the anthology East of Main (Pulp Press).

Canada

Keith Fernandes is an arts management student at the University of Toronto, majoring in Drama. His recent credits include an original adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, and an original clown performance entitled The Golden Ball, which was awarded Best Production at the University of Toronto Drama Festival.

b. 1953, Canada

http://margaretdragu.com/

Margaret Dragu is a warm-hearted, fearless and indomitable spirit who has left her mark across disciplines and across the country. Dragu’s astonishing output of work spans back to 1969 and includes forays into theatre, film, video, writing, choreography and above all, performance art. Her performances span relational, durational, interventionist and community-based practices.Margaret Dragu is a 2012 recipient of a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts.

Italy

www.francescafini.com

Francesca Fini is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Rome, Italy. Her live works often address social and political issues, and are a mixture of lo-fi technology, homemade interaction design devices, and live audio and video. Primarily interested in video and live art, she also creates artworks assembling performance art ‘relics’.

“I am basically a performer. The action of a body, generally mine, in space and time is essential in my work. My videos and my tangible works are the chapters of a never-ending story of which I am the protagonist. I believe that all art should be “gesamtkunstwerk”. My body, the ship on which I make this long exploration, has always been a battlefield. Former anorexic, eternal feminist, still and always a lone wolf in search of the moon between the branches of the trees.” ~Francesca Fini

Canada

Artist Alissa Firth-Eagland graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design Integrated Media Dept. in 2003 where her studies focused on curatorial practice, critical writing, performance art and conceptual video art production. Committed to critical analysis and discussion, she is currently exploring the curator’s commission as an artistic practice. She uses curatorial practice to create space for innovative methodologies & fringe trajectories, commissioning experimental works from artists. She’s recently organized exhibitions for Tranz<—>Tech 2003 Toronto International Media Art Biennial, the first annual Toronto Alternative Arts Fair (2004) and The 2004 Junction Arts Festival. The Junction Arts Festival exhibition Sorry for the Inconvenience (co-curated by Firth-Eagland and Emelie Chhangur) was recently nominated for 2004’s Best Curated Exhibition at the Toronto Untitled Art Awards. From April 2005 to March 2006 she will be working and conducting independent research at the Walter Phillips Gallery as she has been invited to participate in a Curatorial Work Study position through the Banff International Curatorial Institute.

Canada

www.theafitzjames.wordpress.com

Anthea Fitz-James is one-part academic, one-part journalist, and one-part theatre maker. She holds a masters degree in Theatre Studies from York University (Toronto), a Bachelor of Journalism from the University of King’s College (Halifax), and a Bachelor of Honours English from McGill University (Montréal). Her work and interests usually have something to do with craft, feminism, and explicit body art. She is interested in how textiles and nudity perform on stage. Her performance work explores alternative feminisms, embodiment, and the place where theory and practice meet. Recent performances including Needle Piece (an endurance piece in which she explored the gendered divide between tailors and seamstresses) and NAKED LADIES (a lecture meets dance-of-the-seven-veils) combined personal narrative, history, and performance theory to question why women get naked on stage.

Canada

https://erinflynn.ca/

Montréal-based dance artist Erin Flynnhas toured across Canada & Europe with Trip Dance and Le Groupe de la Place Royale. She is currently embarking on her fourth season with Corps Secrets. She teaches at the University of Montréal and is a member of the multimedia collective Vertice, which presents the third edition of the Pixel Projects in 2005. Her performance, Alcove, will be featured in April 2005, at Tangente.