All Day Breakfast (kids menu version)

How do we individually perceive and get into contact with a particular place?
How can we create a space that allows for experiences of encounter and exchange (with human beings, animals, sounds, movements, objects, architecture, and so forth)?
How can we initiate and support collective experiences, producing a shared knowledge that can be collectively discussed, maintained and passed on?

Besides the complex question of what 'public' nowadays is and means, particularly in times of internet-based technologies and social media, performances in public space are mostly considered to take place “outside“ or in non-artistic contexts. There exists a broad variety of performance art practices and approaches for performing in all sorts of environments, all of which having their specific and mostly invisible qualities, dynamics, rules and possibilities.

Invited by the Darling Foundry to curate the final leg of the series Place Publique Performances, Janine Eisenächer chose to present the three powerful artists of Collectif TouVA, which will offer a new performance work for the public to experience, conceived with a high level of commitment and sense of humor, as an endeavor for an honest encounter playfully challenging research and reflection through the act of performing together.

Playing upon the classic All Day Breakfast, in which a customer can be served their favorite diner classic even past the traditional morning hour, TouVA sets up on Place Publique a series of booths offering an unconventional menu of gastronomically tasty activities (and yes, a few food items too):

• Debilitated Dance Floor (Wigged-Out Dress Down Party)
• Lapsus Listening Sessions
• Gold Medal Mental Gymnastics
• Melba Toast Tarot Card Readings
• Sulking Delilah Corner (Le Coin du bouddhage)
• Protest Placards Your Granny Would Be Proud Of
• Confessions Of A Dangerous Tooth Ache Booth (The Doctor Is In)
• Napping With Your Eyes Open (The Artist Is Present)
• Storytelling Backwards
• Opera On the Sly (Chanter en cachette)
• Meditating Watermelon
• Laughing Crying Yawning Shouting (Ça fait du bien)
• Eat It Up Food Counter
• The Fastest Salad

In a festive atmosphere of barely controlled chaos, this collective spur-of-the-moment creation proposes actions that are really about exploring desire; how we give and receive simultaneously and are fed by the occurrence of joyful experiences, as produced by the spontaneous encounter. And although absurd and festive, these playful tasks are also meant to be reflective and grounded – not just entertainment for entertainment’s sake, or distracting – but something that provides a meaningful interpolation into a “simple encounter.” TouVA is opening up a space of unexpected discoveries that hopefully impart “food for thought,” while producing a kind of “contagion” – a collective experience that is fueled by interdependent contact, where we let ourselves be fully invested in the present moment.

Founded in the spring of 2007, the Montreal-based collective TouVA (composed of Sylvie Tourangeau, Victoria Stanton and Anne Bérubé) is a study group on the performative modes. Active in performance art, the trio’s research emphasizes several approaches simultaneously: lectures, performances, blogs, laboratories, dynamic exchanges with artists, "coaching" in a variety of contexts – including international festivals. An interactive vehicle for experimentation, collective TouVA is commited to feeding the debate on the performative. The trio currently benefits from the support of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Canada Arts Council in the creation of a book on the topic (to be published in 2014).

Janine Eisenächer (born in 1983) is a performance artist, theorist and curator, based in Berlin. She develops solo-, duo- and group performances in art and non-art contexts using body, objects, text/language, sound and video. Her research-related performance works deal with subjects like work, collaboration, gender and identity as well as with politics and economies within artistic practice itself.

Place Publique Performances is performance cycle created for an outdoors setting and presented by emerging curators and collectives. This initiative allows the public to discover new practices based on experimentation, research and audience participation.

Place Publique Performances III is made possible by the support of Arrondissement Ville-Marie and the Goethe Institute Montreal.