 |
 |
 |
 |
|
[Image Description: A photograph that of a close up of the artist, Cindy Baker, laying on her stomach on a small mattress on the floor of a glass-walled gallery. Her face is pointed towards the camera, eyes closed and she is embracing a blue and white comforter. Photo by Henry Chan.]
Performance Academy 3 Good Bodies With Cindy Baker
Date/Time:
Saturday, December 16, 2017
2:00–4:00pm
Location:
The Commons @ 401 Richmond
401 Richmond Street West, Suite 440 (fourth floor), Toronto
To register your interest in attending, please visit our eventbrite:
FADO Performance Art Centre's newest recurring performance series, Performance Academy, takes on the abstract form of a school, a university, a workshop, a class or a course, in the form of our own homemade academy. Performance: Academy is not a workshop and it’s not a school either. It's best understood as a public engagement opportunity with an artist who is invested in inverting notions of authority in practice, research, and pedagogy.
In partnership with Tangled Art + Disability, FADO welcomes Cindy Baker to Performance Academy for a one-time engagement on December 16 in conjunction with "Home: Body", a performance series presented by Tangled Art + Disability. For information on this series, please visit http://tangledarts.org
Good Bodies
With Cindy Baker
What can your body do? What CAN’T your body do? The history of performance prioritizes movement that “pushes the limits” of our bodies and capabilities, creating points of tension between ease and difficulty. As artists with disabilities, our limits often seem like failings and if we can’t push as “far” as able-bodied people, we are seen as or feel like our work is less interesting; less advanced. We are also often inclined to make work that pushes our own limits in a way that is harmful to our well-being, using our work to prove our value and ability beyond our disabilities. Conversely, as able-bodied artists, we are usually blissfully unaware of the privilege of having a mechanically proficient body. We may want to make work that is sensitive to the notion of ability and limitations, or to proactively make work that acknowledges that our bodies will eventually begin to fail and that this does not mark an end to our practices.
How do we make work that respects the limits of our bodies and exploits and highlights our abilities and strengths, without making that work be “about” disability? How do we make work that talks about other ideas that we are interested in while remaining sensitive to our own abilities?
This will be a collaborative session in which we brainstorm ideas for new work and tease out ideas for fresh approaches to our practices. Baker will pose a series of questions and lead a discussion on the ideas generated. Attendees may be asked to participate in movement exercises based on their own ideas.
Bring pens and paper or your preferred recording implements and any supportive or assistive props that you personally use and feel comfortable bringing.
INFORMATION:
Admission is FREE.
Snacks will be provided.
ASL interpretation and attendant care provided.
This academy is open to all participants of all levels of study and/or experience, including the just plain curious.
For more information about the event or for accessibility concerns, please email us at: info@performanceart.ca
+++
ABOUT TANGLED ART + DISABILITY Tangled Art + Disability is boldly redefining how the world experiences art and those who create it. We are a not for profit art + disability organization dedicated to connecting professional and emerging artists, the arts community and a diverse public through creative passion and artistic excellence. Our mandate is to support Deaf, Mad and disability-identified artists, to cultivate Deaf, Mad and disability arts in Canada, and to enhance access to the arts for artists and audiences of all abilities.
Home: Body Alberta-based Cindy Baker develops a new iteration of her noted performance work "Crash Pad”, within the confines of the gallery space. Crash Pad centralizes the artist’s “failing,” disabled, or otherwise socially taboo body as a part of the work. Central to the performance is a large sculptural object, which functions as a bed, modeled after a single-pill blister pack. The precarious balance offered by the pseudo-resting place in this quiet performance exaggerates the difficulty in going to bed and getting up, and the unease of finding a comfortable resting position.
December 14 & 15, 2017 1:00–4:00pm Tangled Art + Disability, 401 Richmond Street West, suite 122, Toronto
+++
ABOUT Performance Academy Performance Academy is a platform in which artists constitute their own school of learning–performing pedagogy–for an audience in the form of peer-to-peer academia, where self-organizing and personal experience as knowledge is valued over institutionalized frameworks. Artists, writers and creative thinkers from the performance art milieu as well as adjacent practices such as curation, social practice, film/video and more, develop and offer mini-courses (of 3 or more sessions dissmeinted over several weeks) presenting ideas and covering a range of topics and that each facilitator is already an expert in (however one might define "expert"). A workshop in the form of a performance; a performance in the form of a school.
Through a sustained commitment to collective learning, Performance: Academy transforms the concept of a course into a group performance.
Performance Academy: 2017–2018
INCONSOLABLE SOLVENCY Bethany Ides / DOOR UNLIMITED September 2017
Performing the Critique Dino Dinco October 2017
Performance Academy 3 Good Bodies Cindy Baker December 2017
Moynan King Spring 2018
[ Performance Academy ] + Performance Academy |
|
