International Visiting Artists: Liina Kuittinen

Presented in collaboration with VIVA! Art Action

I am on my four. I am next to the ground. I see the surface from very close distance, the small particles and the space between them. I have to move my whole body closer to the object if I want to see it more clearly. I can not take the object in my hand and bring it closer to my eye. As an artist I am on my four and my hands are not swinging freely.

I am eating ice-cream while writing this text. I am eating ice-cream for real, not just writing about it. I am eating it and it gives me great pleasure. Ice-cream goes through my digestion and my body knows how to turn the sugar into energy and to use the proteins and to get rid of the leftovers. Digestion is process that involves the body with other processes, one point in the circle of matter. Performance operates on the same plain with digestion. Performance and process of digesting are equally real. They are meeting points for material flows, actual events transforming material into other.

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A new performance by Liina Kuittinen will be presented on the same evening with a performance by Marita Bullmann (Germany) and Ignacio Pérez Pérez (Venezuela/Finland).

Please join us on Saturday, September 21 for artists talks by Ignacio Pérez Pérez and Marita Bullman. 

Liina Kuittinen's appearance in Toronto is in collaboration with VIVA! Art Action, one of FADO's enduring partners. FADO and VIVA! have partnered several times (2013: Tomasz Szrama / Poland, Macarena Perich Rosas / Chile; 2015: Victoria Gray / UK, Dorothea Rust / Switzerland) over the years to share the presentation of international artists to both platforms in order to bring exceptional artists and their work to audiences in both cities; in addition to giving visiting artists the unique opportunity of engaging with performance communities in both Toronto and Montreal.

ABOUT VIVA! ART ACTION

Initiated by Patrick Lacasse and Alexis Bellavance, VIVA! was founded in 2006 by six artist-run centres from Greater Montreal to support the production of events dedicated to the presentation and advancement of action art practices and knowledge. The organiZation’s energies are primarily focused on VIVA! Art Action, an international biennial whose sixth edition took place in October 2017. Currently the fruit of a partnership with nine artist-centred organisations, the festival provides the public with an accessible and convivial context in which to encounter performance art in its most striking and avant-garde forms.

www.vivamontreal.org