Oyster Bloat

Well, the performance is over and it feels great to have accomplished many of the goals we set out to meet in our collaboration. The audience was terrific and folks were very kind with their feedback and comments. We packed a lot of stuff into one piece because we were just so excited to have the opportunity to perform. One of the other performers said it was very demanding of the audience, which I think is a good thing.

Many of the audience had never seen a performance art piece at Open Space before and quite a few, I suspect were seeing performance for the first time. Victoria is a real student town and I think we had many young students out to the show tonight.

I enjoyed watching the other two performers and I will have photos and thoughts to share on their work. It was a feminist triple bill and I'm so pleased to have been a part of the evening. We went out for oysters afterward and talked some more about the evening. I'm stuffed to the gills. Tonight I met a friend who is a performer I haven't seen for at least 17 years and tomorrow we will meet and catch up. This is just too much fun. I love it.

Here We Go

Well, we're just having a bit of down time after two very intense days getting ready for the show tonight. Thanks for all the good wishes, I seem to be having trouble sending e-mails back to you.
I am very happy to have my Nezza Naturals muscle balm sinking into my aching muscles right now and soothing my stressed nerves. I wish I had coconut water as that is my new grounding liquid of choice and it is not to be found anywhere near us. Anakana is having a nap after running our lines for the last time.

Our technician is fantastic and he has been impressing us with his displays of martial arts. We were very privileged to see the three Irish artists speak on their work and we are inspired to bring them all to Vancouver to perform. They are all very different and gently respectful of their differences which is very inspiring. I will write more about them tomorrow when we are relaxing.

I am very excited to perform with Anakana. She is an amazing woman and I feel we really complement each other's input into this project. She has been a very hardworking and trusting partner, willing to go into the unknown, explore taboos, push boundaries and have a good time along the way. Big Mamas Riding High. That's us.

It's good to be away from home to be taken away from the distractions of daily responsibilities and focus on creating a piece of art. No guilt, just hard graft. We have literally been wined and dined by the curators and they have been very attentive and generous. I hope they still speak to us after the show. Ha!

So pray for us sinners and especially for our technology. I have already broken one ghetto blaster. Let's hope there's not more of that in the cards for tonight. Yikes.

We have cable tv and I have been initiated into the joys of Law and Order UK. Wow. I didn't even know it existed. It's odd to see the American style lighting and writing imposed on the Brits.

So it's just about time for us to head back to the gallery. To quote that MILFy pop star, "Let's get physical." I've got to bring some tea cups to the gallery. My shoes have holes in them and it's been raining so I've been wearing bare feet in my shoes. I need some duct tape or something to seal them up. Tim bits, tea cups, dry socks. Okay, let's go.

On the Nature of Performance

As we get ready to head off tomorrow I must say I am really looking forward to getting away from the daily duties of motherhood. I guess I've begun to realize how narcissistic performing can be. One has to really focus a lot of energy and attention inward. It takes up space and time in one's life and that's a big reason I haven't been doing much of it since I became a mother. On the one hand it feels like an indulgence, but on the other hand, it's a hell of a lot of work. However, it's the kind of work I love.

It's a challenge to fit performing into a mothering life. It's not a sustainable way to make a living. You'd have to have an incredible support system to do it full time, ie child care. I hope I can squeeze more of it into my life again as my son becomes more independent. He shot some of the video we'll use in the piece. Yes, we are so narcissistic we even get our children to work for us! I'm glad he gets to see me as a DIY kind of gal. Hopefully he'll be comfortable with creating his own projects from scratch. He often sketches and writes ideas down on paper. I love when he writes dialogue for video games.

My long-suffering partner is conscripted to burn sound CD's because he's so good at it and I can't be arsed to do it myself. I have lines to learn! I have costumes to wash and pack! I have to wash my hair! It's diva time.

Write, Rehearse, Repeat

So good to be writing and rehearsing again. Feels like I'm getting my mojo back. Mojo, mojo, mojo. (Sorry, private joke. You'll have to see the show to understand.) Repetition features prominently in our piece. As does the MILF.

Checked the bees again with J and gave them varroa mite treatment number two. They are doing all right, but not as vigorous as we'd like them to be. Fingers crossed. There were lots of practice queen cells too, which is odd.

We had a nice little rain shower today which the tomatoes need. I am looking after my neighbor's cat and their plants. I couldn't find the cat anywhere which kind of freaked me out, but finally I checked in a tiny crawlspace under a bed and there she was: pupils dilated and freaked out by a strange woman clomping about her house. She's so shy. Poor thing. Then there's Homer, the other neighbor's cat who is not shy about trying to let me into the house so he can eat all her food. Sorry mate, I'm on to your tricks. He fooled the last cat sitter who let him pig out and then puke all over the floor. Not on MY watch.

Shaktea has upped their game. The girls are now making their own desserts and have added some tea sandwiches to their menu. The chocolate chai pudding is to die for. Ules loves it as much as I do.

3191 Blogs Again

Two friends who live 3191 km apart have been creating a series of diptychs. Last year they did evening photos and the year before it was photos taken in the morning. They are full of mystery and domestic beauty. This year they are blogging. Check out their Valentine's Day post. Those chocolate beet cupcakes look marvelous!

Happy V Day!

Herd Instinct

The following is an entry I wrote in late November, 2008. I needed to sit on it awhile before I posted it. All the photos are from the East Side Cultural Crawl in Lois Klassen's beautiful little studio.

'Tis the herding season, with crowds gathering to stock up on rich delectable foods and shiny pretty things for the holiday season. The East Side Cultural Crawl was a great opportunity to see what magical things artists have been creating in the neighbourhood this year. Lois Klassen generously opened up her studio to some of her colleagues to have a show and sale of a year of activism and art. It was subversive to have Klassen's studio represent work outside the cash and carry model in this context, but at the same time allow for her friends to sell some objetcs that help earn a few loonies to fund more art projects. Some of the public were perplexed, but many came away charmed. Lois also took the opportunity to a launch a project with Pierre Sonolet that acts as a protest to the skyline as it has been purchased and reformed by the Olympic consortia. I can't wait to participate! Let's get together for a photo-shoot party!

'Tis the stampeding season, with crowds enticed by door-crashing deals to get as much as possible for the lowest price, even if that means someone has to die. And they did. And the herd kept shopping. Non-stop shopping. It is this sad event, which occurred at a Walmart recently which coloured my experience as an audience member attending Herd Instinct 360º by performance artist Fia Backstrom. Images grabbed from the internet whirred past as the artist delivered a stream of consciousness sermon on the darker side of the human instinct to form groups. "I don't believe in relational aesthetics..." she declares, wearing her cynicism on her sleeve and flashing us images of distopias from Andy Warhol's factory to Hitler's followers. The trouble with isolating quotes from her performance is that they are part of a web of stream of conscious text that never really settles on a fixed idea.


"We cannot organize, we cannot produce, nor can we define and contain. It has to pass through us. Happening then dissipating, an inoperative experience. That’s why this meeting, like all the others, is a failure instead of a parody, little less than entertainment. An organized staged theatricality, a gathering, a fictive situation we may call art. I titled it HERD INSTINCT 360 degrees. Stay Connected."
--Fia Backstrom, Herd Instinct 360º

Backstrom calls our gathering a meeting of the art cult, and says tonight's gathering is a (planned) failure. She is cool, intellectual, dissecting the decaying corpses of failed utopias. Backstrom tells the story of a right wing Christian sect, a Baptist settlement in Sweden controlled by a so-called "Bride of Christ" with a God-complex. That story ends in infidelity, murder, and the congregation distancing itself from their male minister because he is Norwegian, and therefore suspect.

"I believe I ought to offer something, but I don’t know precisely what that is. Yes who believes in fists anyhow? Maybe it’s about the stomach instead, the gut feeling of being in touch, of in-touchedness."
--Fia Backstrom, Herd Instinct 360º

Some of the more interesting parts of the lecture refer to the changing motifs of the panther, jaguar and tiger images. How they are used emblems of radical groups, but end up co-opted by capitalism in the luxury car industry. I would have been more interested in this process, the morphology of imagery, and the process of a group turning from a utopia to a state of darkness. Calling the performance Herd Instinct 360º suggests a cycling of good to evil and back again, but there was no talk of redemption here. Backstrom's web site contains the script of the performance.

'Tis the season to be cynical, to be sure, when one sees the herd instinct on Black Friday crush the innocent dreams of redemption through the birth of Christ. But surely there is an option for at least avoiding the Christmas rush. Some tips for dealing with the stress of a prolapsed economy and a growing skyline that leaves our city a little darker every day.

Here are my tips:

1) Avoid Walmart at all times.
2) Be crafty. This time of the year to do those dorky or elegant crafts you've always wanted to indulge in.
3) Go to those craft fairs around town even if you don't buy something. Get inspired.
4) Eat rich, delectable foods.
5) Call someone just to hear the sound of their voice--no really, just do it!
6) Buy some shiny sparkly eyeshadow and/or lipstick.
7) Enjoy the herd on your own terms, and be thankful we can gather with friends and family in a peaceful country, even if the political leaders are uber nerds.
8) Say a prayer for the victims of the attack on Mumbai and for the recent victim of Black Friday.

Visualeyez 2008

The 2008 Visualeyez Festival of performance at has begun in Edmonton. This is one of my favorite performance festivals, so I will be checking in on their blog, which I'll put up on my links. There's an excellent line-up this year with many of the usual suspects, so it's definitely one to watch.

"Focusing upon the broad interpretation of Justice, this theme has deliberately been left wide open to the interpretation of artists and collectives. This will include such aspects as social justice, ecological, racial, economical, retributive justice, distributive justice, justice as virtue, and justice as harmony."

--Todd Jaynes