Western Front Performance Art is pleased to present Participatory Dissent: Debates in Performance (October 18-22, 2007, Vancouver), an encounter between traditional forms of performance art (endurance/duration) and new forms of social practice and intervention. Produced in conjunction with the LIVE Biennial of Performance Art, the program looks to the overlaps between practices, modes of thinking, and opinions about contemporary performance. Viewers are invited to participate, enjoy and intervene in four days of individual performance art, social intervention, and discussion surrounding performance art practices that forge new relationships between artists, site and community. Facilitating the creation of new work by artists from across Europe and North America, Participatory Dissent: Debates in Performance will consist of individual and collaborative works (situated at the Western Front, online, and in various outdoor locations in Vancouver), online discussions, a round-table discussion event at the Western Front and a panel discussion at Emily Carr Institute. Works will address public intervention, alternative economies, the limits of the body, and cultures of fear in the post 9/11 era. This series of events is organised by Western Front Performance Art. Guest Curator Natalie Loveless.

Participating artists include: Artur Tajber (Poland), Jeff Huckleberry (US), Kevin Hamilton (US), iKATUN (US and Montenegro), Marilyn Arsem (USA), Michael Morris (Canada), Naufus Figueroa (Canada), Paul Couillard (Canada), Roddy Hunter (UK), Sal Randolph (US), The National Bitter Melon Council (US and Japan), Vassya Vassileva (Bulgaria), and Vincent Trasov (US and Germany), as well as a co-curated online performance-intervention event produced with Jeremy Turner of The Second Front, Skawennati Tricia Fragnito (xox Voyager) and James Morgan of Ars Virtua. The Western Front will provide the physical home for screenings of online intervention performances: Second LIVE in Second Life.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS:

SOCIAL PRACTICES / INTERVENTIONS
Curated by Natalie Loveless (iKatun and the National Bitter Melon Council)
and Kanarinka and Pirun of iKatun (Kevin Hamilton and Sal Randolph)

The National Bitter Melon Council
Better Living Through Bitterness
Time: Thursday, October 18 & Friday, 19 1-5PM
Location: various locations on the streets of Vancouver

Hiroko Kikuchi and Andi Sutton of the National Bitter Melon Council will push a mobile Bitter Melon information cart through various neighborhoods in Vancouver. They will invite passers-by to take the NBMC Meyers-Bitter Survey, a performance documentation strategy that determines the bitterness level of each survey site. Community members will also be asked to share a bitter story and on Sunday, October 21st, the submissions will be judged by a panel of bitterness experts. The top 5 bitterest stories win a prize!

iKatun
Free Fear from the U.S.A. (If You Take It) by the Institute for Infinitely Small Things
Time: Thursday, October 18 & Friday, 19 1-5PM
Location: departing from the Western Front at 1pm (or call (617) 501-2441 to find out where they are and join up with them!)

Over two days iKatun’s Institute for Infinitely Small Things will lead a massive shop-dropping experiment with the Institute’s latest publication about the culture of fear: “The New American Dictionary: Fear/Security Edition”. You are invited to “shopdrop” 150 copies of the dictionary into book stores, public libraries, schools and museum shops. Each expedition aims to become a kind of shopdropping workshop and a micro-forum for conversation about war, U.S. foreign policy and the new security regulations that keep public spaces and private citizens toeing the party line on the domestic front. The book will be on sale at the WF gallery (for $13USD), but free if you can shoplift it from somewhere else.

Sal Randolph
Free Money
Time: Thursday, October 18 & Friday, 19 1-5PM
Location: local cafés around the Western Front

“Meet with me, and I will give you a sum of money, and a choice,” says artist Sal Randolph. As part of her Free Money project, Randolph will be making appointments for one on one interaction events, offering each person cash and a question over coffee. To set up a time write to freemoney@freemoneyrelease.org. Half-hour meetings will take place Oct 18 & 19th between 1pm and 5pm at local cafés around the Western Front. Free Money is an ongoing series of situations in which the artist gives away money in various settings. http://freemoneyrelease.org.

Kevin Hamilton
Radio Timeline: Live Reports From the Past and Future
Time: Thursday, October 18 & Friday, 19 1-5PM
Location: Western Front

Over two days Hamilton will be running a base station at the Western Front by assembling remote reports about other places, present (both days), past (on Thursday) and future (on Friday). Visitors to the Front are invited to make their own contributions to the TIMELINE via calls to people of their choosing, using station gear and/ or listen in on all conversations, and see a large wall assembly of notes from these reports.

BODY ART // DURATION: ENDURANCE
Curated by Natalie Loveless (Paul Couillard, Jeff Huckleberry)
and Paul Couillard (Marilyn Arsem, Naufus Figueroa)

Jeff Huckleberry
Time: Friday, October 19 8-10PM
Location: Western Front gallery

Huckleberry’s work addresses the production and labor of art at the intersection of performance art, the theatre, and the art gallery. Visitors are invited to observe the last hour of a three hour performance that invokes aspects of collaboratory processes that are often effaced: frustration, aggression, threat.

Marilyn Arsem
Time: Friday, October 19 2-10PM
Location: Western Front guestroom

Marilyn Arsem will be performing a durational piece at the Western Front, designed for audiences of a single person.

“My work has increasingly moved into more intimate formats, often leading to events created for a single viewer. From the beginning, I have been concerned with the unique properties of live performance – the possibility of direct interaction between performer and audience; the opportunity to engage the audience’s other senses of taste, touch and smell; and the question of how meaning is constructed from the memory of an ephemeral event. tics of art is an intellectual effort and deep personal engagement in some area, or simply creating this area.” -Marilyn Arsem

Paul Couillard
Activations
Time: Friday, October 19 2-10PM
Location: Western Front

Paul Couillard will perform Activations, an 8-hour, installation-based performance work that temporarily inhabits some of the Western Front’s nooks and crannies. The piece will unfold as a series of “stutters,” building situational rhythms out of fragments, repetitions, and anticipatory silences. Through a “stuttering” of live presence, Couillard will work on site for an hour creating situations with objects that will then play themselves out over the following hour without his live presence. A video document of the first hour will replay on site (while the artist’s body is off somewhere else), integrated into the overall mise-en-scène. At the conclusion of the second hour this process will repeat itself with a different action. Activations will explore the tension between live and recorded presences, contrasting spaces, objects and moments animated by human intervention with those same elements as acted upon by everyday forces (such as gravity) and informed by a conscious absence. This performance will be occuring at the lobby, stairwell, washroom, hallway, vestibule, and parts of the Luxe. The activations will be designed to take into account the architecture and to blend with external sound.

Paul Couillard schedule:
2-3PM Activation Part One (with artist’s presence as part of the image)
3-4PM Activation Part One (w/o artist’s presence as part of the image)
4-5PM Activation Part Two (with artist’s presence as part of the image)
5-6PM Activation Part Two (w/o artist’s presence as part of the image)
6-7PM Activation Part Three (with artist’s presence as part of the image)
7-8PM Activation Part Three (w/o artist’s presence as part of the image)
8-9PM Activation Part Four (with artist’s presence as part of the image)
9-10PM Activation Part Four (w/o artist’s presence as part of the image)

Naufus Figeuroa
Time: Saturday, October 20 2-3PM
Locaton: Vanier Park Beach

Naufus Figueroa will be performing a process-based piece inspired by the stories of his grandfather, Simeon de la Cruz, who was a ceremonial dancer and active figure in the life of the Quiche and Ladino community of Joyabaj, Guatemala.

TIMED EVENTS // TIME: SPACE
Curated by Natalie Loveless (Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov)
and Vassya Vassileva (Roddy Hunter and Artur Tajber)

Roddy Hunter
Time: Thursday, October 18 & Friday, October 19 2-5PM
Location: Western Front gallery

In Hunter’s performance. one projection will show a loop of digital images taken once an hour every hour during the artist’s journey and arrival in Vancouver including during the performances themselves. The other will show another loop digital images taken once an hour every hour by the artist’s partner during her journey and arrival in their new home and city of York. Each image will change every 7.5 minutes, providing documentation of 24-hour periods in each three-hour section of the performance. The images reveal a disorientation of journeying through new spaces and contexts. Hunter’s performance will be to sit between the screens motionless.

Artur Tajber
Timemit
Time: Saturday, October 20 9:30-10PM
Location: Western Front Grand Luxe

Artur Tajber will be performing Timemit, a series that investigates changing receptions to time and human imagination and its relationship with physical space.

“Although I accept the autonomy of art, I do not accept tautological artistic practice, locked in fixed definitions where a definite function generates and justifies the categories of behavior, agitating the public opinion, provoking situations, generating social metaphors, clichés, scandals, etc. A model of an artist as a guinea pig or white rat is beyond my scope of interests. A prerequisite for the emergence of the characteristics of art is an intellectual effort and deep personal engagement in some area, or simply creating this area. Thus my work consist mainly in carrying observation, constructing experiences, documenting them, and finally – presenting my observations and conclusions to others.” -Arthur Tajber

Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov
The Great Learning
Time: Saturday, October 20 8-9pm
Location: Western Front Grand Luxe

The Great Learning is a “live-archive” performance with material from The Morris/Trasov Archive, an extensive collection related to the art practices of Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov (predominantly from 1969-74) consisting of mail art, documents and ephemera related to Mr. Peanut, Colour Bars, Babyland, Art’s Birthday, Decca Dance, Robert Filliou, Ray Johnson, Image Bank, Fluxus, and General Idea. The archive is Morris’ and Trasov’s life work that continues to expand and evolve its own network. This live performance will incorporate sound, video, computer and spoken words. The performance will use items from the archive such as the “sharkfin bathing cap” and “the hand of the spirit” to illustrate the ideas of a shared mythology and altered persona and will explore strategies with media and the captivation of the mass media in the ”Mr. Peanut Mayoralty Campaign 1974”.

VIRTUAL FLUX: TWO AFTERNOONS OF INTERVENTIONS IN SECOND LIFE
Curated by Jeremy Turner of Second Front and James Morgan of Ars Virtua
& invited by Natalie Loveless

Second LIVE
Time: Friday, October 19 & Saturday, October 20 2-5PM
Location: Western Front

Second LIVE’s Avatar Performance Stream will be performed entirely in the online virtual world of Second Life, showcasing 10 performances by artists who are exploring virtual reality as a new medium for performance art. Broadcast live at the Western Front, the Avatar Performance Stream has been developed by LIVE Director of Avatar Development Jeremy Turner (Wirxli Flimflam), in partnership with James Morgan (Rubiayat Shatner) [Ars Virtua] and Natalie Loveless (Loveless Finsbury). A special curatorial initiative by Skawennati Tricia Fragnito (xox Voyager) is being developed with the 2007 LIVE Per formance Art Biennale support of Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC). Taking their influences from numerous sources, including Dada, Fluxus, Futurist Syntesi, the Situationist International and contemporary performance artists, Second Front creates a 21st century Theatre of the Absurd that challenge notions of virtual embodiment, online performance and the formation of virtual narrative.

Second LIVE performance schedule:
October 19
2PM: All nOObs are Sailors/: The Siren Act 2 // Fau Ferdinand
2:30PM: You want a piece of me? // Bea Box (Bea Parsons)
3PM: Bonnie Quaite (iheart Kura)
4:00-5:00PM: Skin Relations 1 // Tagny Duff

October 20
2:00-2:30PM: Wow! Tran Spire visits World of Warcraft // Tran Spire
2:30-3:00PM: RGB (Events, 3 color score) // Man Michinaga
3PM: Second Front (new Ars Virtua sim)
3:45PM: Nyko Nakamura
4:15-5:00PM: PERFORMOLOGY REMIX #2 // Tagny Duff/Margaret Dragu

ROUND-TABLE DISCUSSIONS

Debates in Performance Practice and Curation
Time: Sunday, October 21 2-5PM
Location: Western Front
Participants: Natalie Loveless, Paul Couillard, Vassya Vassileva, Kanarinka and Pirun of iKatun, Randy Gledhill, Hiroko Kikuchi and Andi Sutton of the National Bitter Melon Project, Kevin Hamilton, Sal Randolph, Roddy Hunter, Maralyn Arse, Jeff Huckleberry, Naufus Figueroa

On Relational Aesthetics / Participatory Politics
Time: Monday, October 22 7PM
Location: Emily Carr Institute Room, main lecture hall
Panelists: Natalie Loveless, Paul Couillard, Vassya Vassileva, Roddy Hunter, Marilyn Arsem, Artur Tajber