Montreal-based artist Sylvie Cotton will undertake a residency project as part of Fado's ongoing Public Spaces/Private Places series. Promenades is a socio-artistic experiment featuring one-one meetings between the artist and selected participants. Participants will agree to spend between 3 - 8 hours with the artist, either in silence, or looking after the artist while she is temporarily blindfolded.
PROMENADES
Interactive performance art actions
TORONTO, Canada ... From February 19 - March 1, Montreal-based artist
Sylvie Cotton will undertake a residency project as part of Fado's ongoing
PUBLIC SPACES/ PRIVATE PLACES series. PROMENADES is a socio-artistic
experiment featuring one-one meetings between the artist and selected
participants. Participants will agree to spend between 3 - 8 hours with the
artist, either in silence, or looking after the artist while she is
temporarily blindfolded. A call for participants is included below.
In addition to these intimate performance actions, Sylvie Cotton will join
with Vancouver artist Kirsten Forkert for an artist talk on Wednesday,
February 26 at the Women's Art Resource Centre. Come learn more about the
social, political and philosophical underpinnings of these two artists'
gentle, thoughtful and provocative public interventions.
Sylvie Cotton is a French Canadian multidisciplinary artist living and
working in Montreal. She has studied literature, arts and museology. Her
work, which includes installation/situation and performance, focuses on the
relation between social and individual identities, and between public and
private spheres. Her projects take place in the street or other public
spaces, including galleries and festivals. Sylvie Cotton is also an author
of narrative texts and critical articles. She has a column in ESSE Arts +
Opinions, a Quebec art magazine.
PUBLIC SPACES/PRIVATE PLACES is a three-year long international performance
art series featuring over 25 artists from Canada, the US, Europe, the
Middle East and Asia. The series explores the elements that turn neutral
'space' into meaningful 'place' through performances that examine the
degrees of intimacy, connection and interaction that mark the dividing line
between public and private. The series is particularly focused on
performances created for intimate audiences. Some projects feature
site-specific or installational environments that invite participants into
a sensory or experiential journey. Others are process-oriented, involving
public intervention, intimate gestures, or actions that may, by their
nature, be nearly invisible. Above all, the series explores the points
where identity and geography intersect to generate meaning.
Fado Performance Inc. is pleased to acknowledge the Canada Council, the
Ontario Arts Council, the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council,
and the Department of Canadian Heritage for their support of our ongoing
activities.
__________
CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS: PROMENADES
SEEKING VOLUNTEERS FOR INTERACTIVE PERFORMANCE ART ACTION
SYLVIE COTTON, Art Action and Performance Artist, seeks participants to
share with her (individually) in a day of either silence or blindness.
Apart from maintaining a mutual respect for the moral and physical
integrity of the other, each meeting will have only one condition:
to be together in silence; or
to be responsible for the temporarily blindfolded artist, or vice versa.
Each meeting will be unique. The activities that unfold will be decided in
advance or as the day goes on according to an agreement reached by the
artist and participant together in a preliminary telephone conversation.
The project will be documented by drawings made by the artist after each
meeting. An evening bringing together all the participants will take place
at the end of the project so that they can exchange their impressions of
this socio-artistic experience based on trust, instinct and intuition, a
divergence form our normal methods of communication, and also on chance.
Proposed schedule: 3 - 8 consecutive hours per meeting
The project will take place in Toronto February 19 - March 1 as part of
Fado's Public Spaces/Private Places series, curated by Paul Couillard.
For information or to register, contact Paul Couillard at (416) 822-3219 or
via email.
Image: Sylvie Cotton at Exit 3.3.2001
(Photo: Sami Väätänen)
February 19 - March 1, 2003
PLUS: February 26, 2003, 8 pm
Artist Talk (with Kirsten Forkert)
"Art is the demonstrated wish and will to resolve conflict through action,
be it spiritual, religious, political, personal, social or cultural."
Alastair MacLennan
WARC (Women's Art Resource Centre)
401 Richmond St. W., Suite 122 - Toronto
Free