fofa_072011

An artist talk with the Imagined Spaces, Lost Objects’ artists:

 image: Amalie Atkins: 3 Minute Miracle; Tracking the Wolf

Amalie Atkins
Julianna Barabas
Janine Eisenäecher
Laura Margita

Moderated by Victoria Stanton.

Presented in collaboration with La Centrale and EDGY WOMEN FESTIVAL

and supported by the Studio Arts Visiting Artists Program (SAVAP) - Concordia,

ARTX, Fibres and MFA Studio Art.

March 24th 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Location: FOFA Gallery (1515 St.Catherine W.)
FREE

Curator/Moderator Victoria Stanton is a performance artist, video-maker, and published author. Investing a performative presence within multiple spaces/times, her work investigates the ability (and the desire) to hold a space, to appropriate and disrupt the quotidian, to court risk & vulnerability. As an artist curating time-based work she is drawn to practices that embody some form of personal challenge as transformative revelation. She has presented performances, interventions, exhibitions, and videos in Canada, the U.S., Europe, the U.K., Australia and Japan. http://www.bankofvictoria.com  

 

ARTISTS

 

Amelie Atkins: Three Minute Miracle: Tracking the Wolf

Within the context of a fictional world, my work investigates aspects of loss, isolation,
transformation, and ritual to create a mythology both awkward and spectacular. Over the past few
years I have been working in film, performance, fibres and photography, using these mediums in
ways that at once inform one another and contribute to the creation of these fantastical
environments.

Fusing these separate entities together, Imagined Spaces, Lost Objects marks the first appearance
of my cinematic work in the context of performance. Initially made as a 16mm film, for this event,
Three Minute Miracle will be presented as a live performance, incorporating a live audio
component and additional performative elements that tie into key events and objects in the film.

Bio:
Amalie Atkins (Saskatook, SK) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work hop-scotches from
filmmaking to fabric-based sculpture to performance. Her work is inspired by the repetitive tasks
related to her textiles work, such as cutting and stitching, during which subconscious ideas emerge
into stories and eventually story lines. Having studied at the Alberta College of Art and Design,
Atkins currently lives and works in Saskatoon. Her work has been exhibited across Canada, the
US, and in 2009 debuted in New York City and Berlin, Germany.

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Julianna Barabas – Antidote

'Antidote' is a series of performance actions designed to break down social norms around touch,
gestures of care, vulnerability and public intimacy. Using hand washing and then massage of the
hands of the audience participants, I offer them an opportunity to use the time spent engaged in
the performance to metaphorically cleanse or alleviate tensions they may have in relation to their
identities. Throughout the massaging of the hands, I also sing to the person receiving the
massage, further heightening the intimacy of the gesture and interaction between us.

Bio:

Julianna Barabas (Calgary, AB) is a performance and video artist based in western Canada. Her
work explores embodied experiences of gender, identity and spirituality, as informed by feminist
concerns and theory. A central theme in her work is the dynamic of exchange between performer
and audience and the politics of care and attention it implies. Recent works include: Gorilla Jane, a
feminist tour of the exhibition PAINT at the Vancouver Art Gallery (2006), Antidote, a ritual hand
washing first shown at Latitude 53 Visual Contemporary Culture as part of Visualeyez, then again
at the ‘Bathhouse’ as part of Exposure Festival (2008), and Reframed Refrain, a live nude
interaction and extension of the Alberta Art Gallery’s Leaving Olympia exhibition detailing the use
of the nude in contemporary art. Her video works have been shown at the Victoria International
Film Festival and Out on Screen Queer Film and Video Festival in Vancouver.
Her most extensive project is an ongoing performance called ‘seamline’. Beginning in May of 2003,
she invited audiences to witness her process of having a line tattooed around the full lateral
circumference of her body. These public events continued once a month for a year, evolving into a
truly contemporary ritual. Since the physical completion of the work, Barabas has positioned the
ongoing conversations that result from living with a full body tattoo as a life time performance,
cataloguing the interactions which will be released in an exhibition catalogue/artist’s book in 2010.
Barabas received a Bachelor of Political Science from the University of Western Ontario in 1991
and Bachelor of Media Arts from Emily Carr Institute in 2006.

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Janine Eisenaecher – Eat Your Enemy #3 I am the Coca-Cola of the art

   

In her solo performance-series Eat Your Enemy, Janine Eisenaecher basically works with the
Brazilian cultural concept of Antropofagia (cannibalism) and by that explores its potential of being
an alternative subversive strategy. Focusing on processes of incorporation and transformation, the
performance artist discusses matters of identity in relation to work and gender-specific questions,
the (post)colonial discourse of “the other”, and the economic structures in the field of artistic work
itself. By using text, objects, body and sound in a ritualistic structure, Eisenaecher each time
undertakes a new self-experiment of an imaginary voyage to overcome felt dependencies and to
follow her own desires.

The starting point for Eat Your Enemy #3 is a quote by the female performance art-legend Marina
Abramovic, mentioned in the German art magazine monopol: “I am the Coca-Cola of the art.” For
Eisenaecher researches on and works with Coca-Cola as material in her performance work since
2006, this claim by Abramovic, that addresses all aspects Eisenaecher is interested in, is the
perfect basis for a new anthropophagic investigation… this time Eisenaecher eats Abramovic, and
transforms into Coca-Cola herself.

Duration: 15-20 minutes
Language: English/German/French
Special info: floor might get wet, maybe glass will break

Bio:

Janine Eisenaecher (Berlin, Germany) works in various constellations as performance artist,
mostly on serial performance art projects on certain topics using body, objects, text, sound and
video. She develops concepts for group/duo/solo performances and site-specific interventions in
public space. Eisenaecher is a founding 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 founding
member of the performance network Emanuelle, founded as Berlin n@work. Eisenaecher’s artistic
practice includes curatorial and organizational work for Performer Stammtisch, the network for
professional performance artists and monthly performance art and live art event in Berlin. Herein,
she investigates different forms of writing and talking about performance art. She studied theatre,
comparative literature and philosophy at Freie Universität Berlin.

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Laura Margita – Madame Blanche Serves Hors D’oeuvres From the Underworld

 

Madame Blanche Hears Your Confessions was a serious, heartfelt performance with all the things
that make a performance professional like invitations, assistants, a videographer, a sculpture
technician and a location in an artist run centre with a highly educated audience. The
audience/participants were horrified, amused and afraid for me and the documentation of the
events is one of the most embarrassing and distressing displays of loss of control that I have ever
seen recorded on video. I may have lost the tape on purpose or not. I will try to find it or recreate it
for this performance and take what I can learn from it in the service of my search for

1. meaning
2. self awareness
3. forgiveness
4. love
5. power
6. artistic expression for a community of people that is
a. beautiful
b. nourishing
c. scary
d. sad
e. funny

Bio:
Laura Margita (Saskatoon, SK) began her artistic career in Ottawa receiving a BFA from the
University of Ottawa in 1991. She began her studio practice at the EBA in visual and new media
projects. While in Ottawa, Laura worked as a Sculpture technician, teaching assistant and building
manager at the University of Ottawa Visual Art Department, founded the Enriched Bread Artists
Coop, taught visual art in the Light house program at the Ottawa Board of Education, curated at
Creative Outlet/Gallery CO, was the administrator at SAW Gallery for seven years, and then taught
as a teacher and outreach coordinator at the Ottawa School of Art. She is currently serving in
Saskatoon as the Executive Director at PAVED Arts.
In her studio practice Laura works with fuzzy fabric, both heavy and light objects, paint, media and
performance. She is a community activist fighting for social justice, nudity and culture for all with
critical feedback. PerformanceSalad and Madame Blanche.