PERFform 25
The PERFform 25 tour had five participating artists from across the province. Mario Cormier (Edmundston), Holly Timpener (Saint John), Lucas Morneau (Sackville), Mathieu Léger (Moncton) and Linda Rae Dornan (Sackville). Their performances provided discussions about nostalgia, presence, ecology, respect, language, community, resistance, charm, sound and much more. As with every performance art tour, there was much to learn and to share in the moment, and as we continue to hold these images in our minds and hearts. Thank you especially to our partner organizations and to all the enthusiastic audiences we have met and shared with.
Untitled, Sans Titre
Mathieu Léger laid out a series of objects in a line on the floor for his performance. A bouquet of flowers, garlic bulbs, a package of green thyme, a cabbage, slim candles, dried chicken wish bones, a package of Windsor pickling salt, a box of long matches, and a set of inset brass gongs.
Léger stood silently for a few moments behind the objects, calm with a sprig of thyme in his mouth. His first action was to suspend the brass gongs from his ear with a string. In subsequent actions, he broke a garlic bulb, offering a clove for audience members to smell, poured salt on the floor and placed a flower into it (preserving it while killing it), and offered the thyme to audience members to smell. Maintaining the gongs balance from his ear determined the pace and approach of Léger’s movements, slow and rhythmic. Every now and then, he swayed them into a hard surface, sounding the passage of time.
A playful interaction with some audience members was offering a wish bone to someone with his pinkie finger then the two of them pulling until it broke. It was a quiet gesture re-enacting a childhood memory many of us have experienced, a joy to watch, and probably to participate in!
The whole performance was quiet and contemplative, falling into a rhythm of dreamlike constancy similar to slow breathing interspersed with the clanging of the three nested gong set which was an echo, a wakeup and a touchstone to his own music practice.
This work offered re-awakenings of associations experienced with family and friends, sense-based experiences we have all had, memories of daily life lived at home with loved ones, and the gift of sharing. As the tour progressed, the performance became more dreamy, like time was suspended in the world Léger created. As with most of Léger’s performance art work, objects and actions surfaced from previous performances, recreated into this new one; a nod to continuity and memory built from one to the other, as experienced in the arc of each of our lives.
http://www.mathieuleger.ca/
Heels and Faces
In their first performance since the pandemic, Lucas Morneau approached their performance as an aggressive wrestler, albeit in a drag persona informed by the mythologies of wrestler culture. They were inspired to create this performance by their grandfather and great-uncles’ history as wrestlers. The performance explored the entertainment, language terminology, and marketing of the wrestling world colliding with Morneau’s personal experiences as a queer man. They played off wrestling culture while wearing their own distinctive handmade knitted clothing, which has become his trademark art.
Morneau first came strutting out into the space wearing short shorts, an open vest and a painted red mask on their face. They aggressively gazed at the audience. Their monologue challenged an invisible opponent, taunting them with a sexualized discourse lifted from wrestling culture, daring their future opponent to grab ahold of them and feel them get bigger. They swaggered through the space, eventually challenging people in the audience with their eyes and posturing, their energy forceful and demanding. This was performative male ego-baiting so dominant in wrestling traditions, an erotic provocation which Morneau has woven into aspects of his own queer performative art practice. Morneau blended the two in this work seamlessly, leaving the audience entertained, somewhat disturbed/aroused (?) with the blatant sexual challenge and enjoying the unusual, colourful art costume.
www.lucasmorneau.com
Untitled, Sans Titre
Holly Timpener works with themes of resistance, failure, and community. In their performance in at the Charlotte Street Centre in Fredericton they first removed their shirt, then unwound a rolled red cloth band. They bound their wrists with it, a long process using their mouth when necessary. Holding their bound hands above their head, they immersed their head under water, holding their breath until they came up gasping. In a continuous flow of actions, Timpener then crawled around the room on their knees, circling the audience several times, with their hands bound above their head, long wet hair dripping. It was difficult and exhausting for them. They eventually stopped in front of a sheet of paper on the wall and drew a circular target on it. On their feet, a distance from the wall, they aimed a dart gun (darts with suction cups), and fired repeatedly at the target, unsuccessfully.
Positioning themselves in front of the paper target facing the audience, they then drew the target onto their own chest in chalk, picked up the darts and tried to affix them to their skin/chest. Some stayed, some fell off, maybe like hurtful barbs sent their way for their gender choice—some stick, some not. They then tried to project them one by one from their mouth, landing nowhere.
When Timpener took off their shirt, they revealed the scars where their breasts had been removed, announcing themselves with both confidence and trepidation. Feeling like they were drowning under water, binding their wrists as if restrained, crawling for survival around and around the audience, isolated, and being a target of dangerous negativity are the images of trauma and resistance. The strength of the human spirit came through strongly in the attempt to describe their personal experiences, to assert their individual rights. By enacting these actions, Timpener shared experiences and fears but also as a non-binary performance artist, their desire shone forth to reach for dialogue, be visible, and create understanding and positive change.
https://www.instagram.com/hollytimpener/?hl=en
Keep Trying & Aaa has many sounds
How can art raise awareness of the importance of water security to the survival of all life? As part of the performance, Keep Trying, Linda Rae Dornan moved extremely slowly (10 minutes to walk three feet), carrying water in her hands to water a plant she had been observing and painting on a paper scroll. It felt like a quiet capsule of time standing still. The desire to water the plant, to give/share was mainly futile as most of the water filtered through her hands to the floor, making the action resemble so many good intentions humanity has which arrive late +/or have a negative result for Nature.
The plant was represented on paper, first using brushes with watercolour then with the
touch of fingers and splashes of water with the hope that watering the facsimile would
activate awareness through art, or maybe to say that all actions, artmaking and activism,
can make a difference. Dornan used a ten foot long scroll, and added one plant image during each performance (four), a surviving document to record the actions.
Aaa has many sounds was Dornan’s other performance work. She first held a large tangle of thin nylon wire, trying to untangle it like a puzzle until it became obvious this could not happen. She pulled it apart enough to hang around her neck, an unsolved mystery. From a black mini suitcase, she withdrew handfuls of small laser-cut letters which then dropped through her fingers onto the floor, sometimes throwing them across the space. Then on her knees she began brushing the letters into piles of varying sizes, before dropping lines of mini alphabet dices to connect the letter piles. Taking a small package out of her pocket, she unwrapped a chocolate tongue, placing it in her mouth for everyone to see. She then began to eat the tongue, revealing first pearls then a razor in the chocolate, displaying each on her tongue before laying each on one of the letter piles. The message was that language is sweet, valued and also sharp/dangerous, and connects us to each other in efforts to communicate, with patience and respect, especially in this time of misinformation and division.
https://lindaraedornan.ca/.
Keep Trying
filum
Annie France Noel created a performance of gentle actions which was visually stunning, thematically ritualistic, and slightly unsettling. Dressed in a floor length, deep royal blue dress, Noel sat in an old style carved wood chair facing the audience. At her feet was a burlap bag of unprocessed wool. She slowly pulled blue woollen threads from a fold of her dress, all below the waist, one after the other, as if her veins, her tissue, her insides were being exposed. Threads in various blues tangled together. Simultaneously, the use of woollen thread inspired memories of women knitting, crocheting together, teaching the younger family members skills. It was also evocative of family togetherness (particularly women), of creating blankets/clothing, birthing a child, or pulling out memories all wound up together in the never ending cycle of life—the inheritances of culture and social behaviour we are all given. She sang a work song, a lullaby as she worked. Her calm and gentle movements revealed care....
This was Noel’s first foray into public performance art. The blue of her dress and the woollen threads refer to “the baby blues,” she says—a description of the post-birth experience of hormonal imbalance leading to sadness, depression and other mental issues. Blue is the colour of calm and also sorrow Noel says, referencing the hospital gown, the medical pads, the glow of the baby monitor. At the end of the performance, there was a large tangle of knotted threads, impossible to unravel which she held up to regard. The many post-birth experiences of learning to care for herself and her little one? Her patience and focus throughout this performance leaves us to believe that caring is primary for her, despite any struggles.
https://anniefrancenoel.com/
Sans Titre, Untitled
As a musician, this was Mario Cormier’s first foray into performance art after years of live music performances. He carried a backpack to a long table set up in the Galerie Colline space which he then methodically unpacked. Two paper sheets, a glass container, dice, scissors, and a microphone. He attached the microphone to a sound speaker already on the table. Also on the table was a xylophone with a wooden mallet. With the scissors Cormier cut strips of one of the papers, folding each in half before dropping it into the glass container. We soon understood that there was a word on each strip of paper.
Cormier set his watch then shook the glass container before a paper was selected. He read to himself, placed it on the table, rolled the dice, and spoke the word into the microphone. Words such as, “when,” “art,” “you,” “happen” and others. He then picked up the wooden mallet and struck a note on the xylophone. The dice determined the length of the sound which Cormier gently ended when necessary. He repeated this approximately twelve times.
The end of the performance was left to the speaker which had also live recorded the session. Cormier remained facing the audience as the text and xylophone recording was broadcast to us with some arbitrary editing. “You making what other life are happen busy is when, You making what other life are happen, other life, other life.” Cormier picked up his backpack, slung it over his shoulder and walked away.
The performance was whimsical and playful, the sound of both Cormier’s
voice and the xylophone notes captivated the audience as we waited for
each “forecast” as if he was a magician casting spells of sound on us. The random selection of the paper strips determined the message though how Cormier initially chose those words is unknown. The nonsensical sentence structure still conveyed meaning. An element of chance was mixed within the structure of pre-determined actions. The composer, John Cage, once said about music/sound that it was "an affirmation of life – not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we're living." You making what other life are happen is when...
