Possible Awakenings #5 proposes a series of artistic interventions inspired by disciplines located at the margins of creation: art history, research, archiving, and the use of educational strategies in art practices. Through open discourse, this iteration of Possible Awakenings will activate group conversation and knowledge-sharing in which all are invited to question how performance exists and takes shape. This evening aims to begin a reflection on the role of art and its impact on our daily experiences while allowing the public to appropriate the language codes of performance art.
6 PM: Steve Giasson - A Conference About Ian Wilson's Discussions
Steve Giasson presents a performance-conference in the form of a tribute to Ian Wilson, a South African artist amongst the first generation of 1960s New York conceptual art. He explores a radical art which privileged the “concept” over the materialized object and used language to produce art: group discussions and oral communications are the content of the work. The only trace that remains is a certificate indicating that an artwork happened. Steve Giasson explores this practice in a reading that addresses three topics: the legacy of Ian Wilson for relational art, Wilson’s work, and the question of the absolute, an eminent subject for the artist. Without seeking to disseminate his knowledge, Steve Giasson proposes a discursive reading that raises the question of participants' interest and audience reception. (This conference will be in French.)
Steve Giasson is a conceptual artist. Using a wide range of media (conceptual writing, performance art, sculptural micro-intervention, video, photography ...), his idea-based works are characterized by a great economy of means that affirms his strong rejection of the spectacular and decorative. In addition, his committed and tongue-in-cheek practice is generally based on preexisting works, historical or daily fragments, which he appropriates more or less openly and in different ways, between tribute and outrage. He seeks to undermine the romantic notions of authenticity and originality and demystify the creative process and the figure of the artist.
7 PM: An Annotated Bibliography in Real Time: Performance Art in Quebec and Canada
Considering the meeting between performance and writing as an extended form, the performances presented by An Annotated Bibliography aim to reveal the different mechanisms at work in the creation of knowledge and discourses. The Place Publique becomes an opportunity to activate the margins of archival work, while behind the annotated bibliography lies the accumulation of human and artistic trajectories through which performance takes shape over time. Gestures and personal narratives thus participate in the writing of the performance, whose archive is also built according to the different relational and performative forms of storytelling, fiction, poetry, and orality. In creating a space for reflection, the research group invited the artists Sophie Castonguay and Francys Chenier to propose a performance or an intervention that responds to this context.
The research group An Annotated Bibliography in Real Time: Performance Art in Quebec and Canada, under the direction of Barbara Clausen, was initiated by the art history department of UQAM in 2015. This university research project, in collaboration with the UQAM Arts Library and Artexte, funded by the FRQSC, undertakes to draw up an inventory of texts and works that theorists, critics, artists, curators, and other authors have written in advance, in reaction to or in response to performative art.
A member of the research group since 2015, Jade Boivin is a cultural worker, currently editor-in-chief of the Vie des Arts magazine. Her research envisions queer writing of the history of the art of performance at the intersection of affect and fiction. Camille Richard, a member of the research group since 2018, is interested in the relationships between conceptual art practices, museum architecture and institutional functions.
Sophie Castonguay develops performative devices in which she stages the speech of the spectators. These stagings are generally held in exhibition venues or in public spaces allowing the development of stories specific to the place. Through the use of narrative modalities, she tries to create interference in the reception of the work and / or in the perception of the place. She thus works in the interval between the tangible image and the projected one, and questions the relations between the visible and what is said.
Francys Chenier observes a singular interdisciplinary practice that interweaves literary, visual and performative worlds, making a personal collection, a public library, a bookstore or a notepad; a potential polyphony to be revealed. Building on the heritage of the avant-garde and the modernity of the twentieth century, his research feeds as much on the graphic and typographic dimensions of writing, the materiality of the book object and the printing arts, as the musical and metrics of poetry.
Starting at 5:30 PM, come and enjoy the local craft beer from our generous sponsor, the microbrewery 4 Origins Brewing Co.'s and delicious tacos (cash only)!
DJ set by Jérôme Nadeau.
