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17/9/2003

reminiSCENT

FADO, Toronto

Fado is pleased to present FIVE HOLES: reminiSCENT, a series of five performances, curated by Jim Drobnick and Paul Couillard. For this series of site-specific works, audiences may find themselves being chauffeured through the city in a semen-scented limousine, engaging in an intimate aromatic visit in a private home, taking a smell tour of the seven seas while gazing out over Lake Ontario, ordering up their own personalized perfume, or reflecting upon 'cultural stench' beside a downtown fountain.

The title of this project, reminiSCENT, notes the powerful relationship between smell and memory. reminiSCENT focuses on the diverse relationships between smell and memory -- whether personal, cultural, social or historical. How do odours influence the creation of the self and the narrative of one's life? How can scents symbolize or mark political moments and historical eras? In what ways are aromas significant to the transmission of cultural memories and identity? How does the commodification of smell -- perfumes, artificial scents, etc. -- generate nostalgia and affect recollection?

FIVE HOLES is an ongoing Fado series that examines the nature and importance of bodies (performer and audience) in performance art by considering individual senses. Featured artists in this 'smell' component include Millie Chen and Evelyn von Michalofski (Ontario), Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan (Winnipeg), Cheli Nighttraveller (Montreal), Helen Paris and Leslie Hill (UK), and Clara Ursitti (Canadian artist living in the UK).

PROJECT SCHEDULE:

Millie Chen & Evelyn Von Michalofski - THE SEVEN SCENTS
Saturday & Sunday, Sept 20 - 21, 2003, noon - 4 pm
Harbourfront between the pond/rink and Lake Ontario (Queen's Quay W.)

Shawna Dempsey & Lorri Millan - SCENTBAR
Saturday Sept 20, 2003, 6 - 9 pm
Karen Schreiber Gallery (25 Morrow Ave., # 302)

Cheli Nighttraveller - untitled
Saturday Sept 20, noon
Berczy Park (Front St. between Church St. & Scott St.)

Helen Paris & Leslie Hill (with guest artist Lois Weaver) - ON THE SCENT
Thursday - Sunday, Sept 18 - 21
half-hour performances in a private home; call for reservations

Clara Ursitti - PULL UP TO THE BUMPER
Thursday Sept 18, evening (random street intervention)
Saturday, Sept 20, 6 - 9 pm (exhibition)
Karen Schreiber Gallery (25 Morrow Ave., #302)

Public discussion with the artists (and party)
Saturday, Sept 20, 9 - 11 pm
Karen Schreiber Gallery (25 Morrow Ave., #302)
presented in collaboration with BLANK SLATE

About the projects

Inspired by the legendary exoticism and adventure of The Seven Seas, Millie Chen and Evelyn Von Michalofski provide an occasion for virtual travel with THE SEVEN SCENTS. Cruise ship deck chair recliners face the waters of Lake Ontario and invite bystanders to lie back, relax, listen to a series of soundscapes and inhale the ambiance of distant locales. Like spa therapists, the artists will gently facilitate each lounger's sensorial reverie. Distilling together sound and scent, romance and reality, the piece evocatively contemplates the fantasies of escape and the economic actualities of tourism.

Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan's SCENTBAR promises unique, personalized scents scientifically tailored to each client's memories, anxieties and desires. Trained technicians will tally the answers to visitors' scent-questionnaires and concoct custom-made perfumes in their laboratory cum parfumerie. Drawing from a top-secret odour palette, their potions transcend the use of scent for fashion or flirtation. These one-of-a-kind distillations connect the wearer intimately and olfactively to the complexities of the contemporary world - they are fragrances for troubled times.

Cheli Nighttraveller's untitled performance addresses racism operating at the level of the body and hygiene. Since the era of first contact, the so-called "odour of the other" has served as a pernicious means by which European colonizers stigmatized First Nations peoples. Reflecting at the edge of a fountain in Berczy Park, Nighttraveller recalls an episode in the life of Quannah Parker, the last chief of the Comanches, who once caused a stir by bathing in a public fountain. The artist will satirically confront the misconceived but persistent fiction of "cultural stench."

ON THE SCENT, by Helen Paris and Leslie Hill, in collaboration with Lois Weaver, reconfigures an apartment with olfactory performances and interventions. Visitors journey through a series of visceral encounters that infuse the residence with heightened experiential potential. A trail of scents leads to stories and confessions wafting unexpectedly through the space and secreted away in compartments and corners. Reflecting upon the significance of smell in everyday life, this aromatized environment intensifies the role scent plays in identity, emotion, place and memory.

PULL UP TO THE BUMPER by Clara Ursitti occurs in a white stretch limousine, the acme of celebrity display and mobile partying. For selected performance-goers and chance passers-by, an intimate conversation and olfactory experience awaits as they cruise the streets of Toronto. The limo's sensuous, private interior, complete with refreshments and other luxury comforts, is a chamber redolent with the spirit of seduction. In this gender reversal, a woman holds the balance of wealth, status and sexual agency as the artist inquires into the dynamics of stardom and urban prowling.

About the artists

Millie Chen and Evelyn Von Michalofski have collaborated since 1990 while concurrently pursuing individual practices. Their performative interventions - situated in retail stores, an ethnological museum, and sight-seeing meccas - engage olfactory, tactile and gustatory materials in the context of examining notions of history, tourism, the body and cultural difference. Chen has exhibited widely in Canada, the U.S., the Netherlands, Japan and Mexico. She teaches at the State University of New York at Buffalo and explores associations between the sensual and symbolic qualities of common yet potent materials such as bread, hair, rice and spices. Von Michalofski's work has been included in exhibitions throughout Canada as well as the U.S., the Dominican Republic, the Netherlands and Spain. She focuses on the alchemical transmutation of materials, especially in regard to the food, drug and cosmetic industries. She resides in Belleville, ON and curates at the Museum for Textiles.

Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan have collaborated on performances, films, videos, publications and public art projects since 1989. This duo is best known for provocative, humourous pieces such as WE'RE TALKING VULVA, A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A BULL-DYKE, and LESBIAN NATIONAL PARKS AND SERVICES. Twisting traditional mythology and iconography, exploring notions of the lesbian body, and looking at the devolution of modern-day language and democracy, their works combine savvy writing, vivid personae and poignant wit. Based in Winnipeg, they have toured extensively throughout North America, Europe and Japan, and their film and video works have been screened in venues ranging from women's centres in Sri Lanka to the Museum of Modern Art, NYC. Their most recent publication is Lesbian National Parks and Services Field Guide to North America: Flora, Fauna and Survival Skills (Pedlar Press, 2002).

Leslie Hill and Helen Paris are London-based artists working in performance, video and digital arts, known for their edgy, humorous interrogations of contemporary culture and politics. Their company, curious, was formed in 1996 and has been supported by institutions such as the Arts Council of England, the National Endowment for the Arts (USA), the National Center for Biological Sciences, India and the Australia Council. They recently received a Franklin Furnace commission to make three short films in New York in 2004. The company's work has been exhibited internationally and featured in a wide variety of publications. Their book, Guerilla Performance and Multimedia, was published by Continuum in 2001. Lois Weaver has been a performer, director, and writer with the Split Britches Company since 1980. She is currently developing solo work and a guerilla video performance commissioned by Franklin Furnace. She teaches at Queen Mary, University of London, where she is involved in STAGING HUMAN RIGHTS, a project using performance to explore issues of human rights in women's prisons in Brazil and the U.K.

Cheli Nighttraveller, born in Saskatoon, explores her identity as a person of mixed cultural heritage (Métis) through performance and video. She was active in Saskatchewan's contemporary Aboriginal arts community before moving to Montreal in 2001. She has participated in artist residencies and performance festivals across Canada, including the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art (Toronto), Latitude 53's VisualEyez Festival (Edmonton), Sâkêwêwak Artists' Collective (Regina) and grunt Gallery (Vancouver).

A Canadian artist based in Glasgow, Clara Ursitti has worked with organic and synthesized fragrances for the past ten years. Collaborating with Dr. George Dodd, an olfactory scientist and aromatherapist, her series of olfactory portraits, sniffing videos, a dating service based on body odour (PHEROMONE LINK), a performance utilizing smell-tracking police bloodhounds, as well as a number of pungent installations have delved into the psychological and social aspects of scent. Exhibiting throughout Europe and the British Isles, and in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the U.S., her work has been featured at the ICA in London and in the Venice Biennale.

Paul Couillard is Fado's Performance Art Curator. Working as an artist and organizer since 1985, he has created over 100 solo and collaborative performance works. He has been the Performance Art Curator for Fado since its inception in 1993, and recently edited the text/DVD publication La Dragu: The Living Art of Margaret Dragu.

Jim Drobnick is a critic and curator living in Montreal. He teaches at Concordia University and is Assistant Editor at Parachute. He has published in anthologies, catalogues and journals such as Crime and Ornament (2000), Foodculture (2000), Performance Research, Angelaki and High Performance. He is editor of the forthcoming book/CD Aural Cultures (YYZ/Walter Phillips Gallery) and co-editor, with Jennifer Fisher, of Living Display (University of Chicago Press). He is a founding member of the curatorial collaborative DisplayCult, which produced COUNTERPOSES (1998), VITAL SIGNS (2000) and MUSEOPATHY (2001), and is writing a book on the sense of smell in contemporary art and performance.

Karen Schreiber Gallery
25 Morrow Ave #302
Toronto, Ontario
tel (416) 822-3219

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