Archipelago
An immersive gathering and living museum of performances, installations, and new creations. Immerse yourself in the visionary pieces created by a select group of ground breaking artists from all over the world.
Info
- Dates: January 11th to 14th, 2018
- Venue: The Rialto Theatre, Montréal, QC
- Box office: Closed
Team
- Amber Hood – Lighting Designer/Production Manager/Technical Director
- Heather Ellen Strain – Assistant Production Manager
- Aurora Torok – Assistant Technical Director
- Naomi Aldrich – Social Media Outreach
- Erin Lindsay – Poster Design
Trace (72)
Naomi Aldrich is a multidisciplinary artist and art educator based in Montréal.
She will present Trace (72): “Evidence or an indication of the former presence or existence of something”, a performance piece based on a ongoing series of works, exploring the expressive and transformative qualities of the most basic forms of mark making.
The result, a physical narrative representing time, transformation, the presence and subsequent absence of the self.
Eighteen
Leslie Baker, Artistic Director of The Bakery, has worked as a director, acting and movement teacher, movement coach and performer in both theatre and performance art; working internationally since the mid-1990’s. She loves working in traditional arenas as well as site-specific performance installations, exploring performance in theatrical contexts while simultaneously working with interventionist experiences. Her specialty is devised physical / visual theatre and performance.
These performances have been presented in Montréal at Espace Tangente, Studio 303’s Edgy Women, Summerworks in Toronto and Centaur Theatre’s Wildside Festival. Her creations have toured to various festivals in Europe and the United States; POW Action Art Festival, Theatre in a Suitcase Festival, NY Fringe Festival and Aquarius Era Festival.
Eighteen, produced by The Bakery, is an installation / performance conceived by Leslie Baker as a reflection on the events of 2017. The piece was created in collaboration with Joseph Shragge, Carina Rose and Michel Richard.
Muttercake
Muttercake is an experimental exploration of mental health and the facets of our society; examined through the female lens using gesture and deconstructed language. An Odd Stumble new collaborative creation by Benita Bailey, Cristina Cugliandro, Kathleen Stavert, and Jen Viens. Costumes conceived by Nalo Soyini.
Perception
As an artist and sensitive observer, Jennifer Cloutier has always been drawn to reflect and document life (or the times in which we are living).
Through painting, photography and writing, such mediums have been her means of creative observation, reflection and expression. She will present a photo installation on the theme of Perception.
Taking a look at how we each uniquely see and experience the world around us.
The Dairy Farmer’s Lament
The Dairy Farmer’s Lament by Gabriel Shultz (actor, writer, creator of Invasive Species) offers a glimpse into the sacred pre-death communion between a manure covered Southern farmer and his spiritual-milk creating Holstein. Dramaturged and directed by Alison Darcy (Co-Artistic Director of Scapegoat Carnivale Theatre, director, actor). Sound design by Devon Bate.–
Tidal Grace
Tidal Grace is a multimedia, performance artist working in Montréal and Berlin. This piece, The Threat of Y: Thoughts, No Presence, occurs within the context of an inundation of media stories highlighting male sexual aggressivity. Tidal explores intimacy, our fears of meeting a male stranger, and our subsequent attempts to diminish threat and allay fear.
This gender-based threat, insurmountable for some, inhibits the formation of physical, intimate and relational possibilities by relegating other-to-male interactions to a virtualized existence behind digital walls. Too threatening to meet physically alone, males have become digitized and contained until a better assessment of their possible threat can be ascertained.
What does this assumption of threat and evil intent do to the psyche of males who receive it? What does this assumption of guilt say about our trust of males? What do we lose and / or gain from these gendered generalizations? How are fear-based digital meetings with males stepping towards, or away from, intimacy?–
Ky∆zMa
Ky∆zMa [kahy-az-muh] offers an experience, bringing the past and future together into the eternal NOW. Mixing powerful classic instrumentation (cello, keys and guitar) with thick yet smooth down-tempo electronic beats, the music has been carefully crafted into enchanting melodic quests, bending the mind with dynamic digital processors and enchanting vocal harmonies. Ky∆zMa offers a blanket of healing presence and a diversity of experience through textures, tempos and energies. Ky∆zMa will keep you grooving into sunrise.
Ky∆zMa [kahy-az-muh] vous offre l’expérience du passé et du futur dans l’éternel instant présent. Un mélange d’instrumentation classique puissante (piano, violon-celle et guitare) avec des beats volumineux mais doux, leur musique est une création minutieuse, une quête mélodique et enchanteresse qui emportera vos pensées à travers processing digital dynamique et harmonies vocales magiques. Ky∆zMa offre une présence régénératrice et une expérience diverse de textures, tempos et énergies qui vous bercera jusqu’au petites heures du matin.
Precipice
Chara LeMarquand is a multidisciplinary artist and environmentalist based in Montréal. In Precipice she explores edge.
In nature, the edge between two systems is the site of greatest diversity. Precipice explores how it feels to inhabit the edge between two eras, while staring into the depths of the Anthropocene.
Ghostly figures meld into their environments to meet with abstraction, holding both ocean and ice, cracked, dry soil and new growth.
Precipice is a piece about mourning, submerging, transforming, cracking, the delicacy of cut paper and fine lines speaking to the delicate balance of our time; we fight to stay below 2°C, not knowing which way the scales will tip.
Archipelago Performances
Erin Lindsay is a feminist writer/creator and performer whose Archipelago performances explore hysteria, gender as performance, archetypes of femininity, love and communication, and the cost of having a female body. Her work explores these themes through theatre, text, voice and sound.
Hysteria 1 – The Apology is an excerpt from a triptych exploring the ways in which the “female condition” of hysteria has controlled, mediated and oppressed women’s lives. The performance explores gender as performance, female sexuality and the repression of anger and aggression.
On Your Knees is a short performance piece of an aria from Dido and Aeneas that explores classical music’s narrow tropes of women as one-dimensional muses, sorceresses and hysterical pining lovers. In it a woman is repeatedly brought to her knees. She continues to rise and walk forward, only to end up where she started; condemned to walk the same path, the same cycle.
Love Songs from Opposite Ends of the Balcony, a collaboration between Cellist / composer Joel Gorrie and Erin Lindsay, is an installation and sonic exploration using cello and voice to explore love, boundaries and communication. They happen to also be in love.
Sana Sana
Carlo Polidoro Lopez, Artist Statement: I extract the essence of the South American spirit through my life experience, which has a complex mix of passion, socio-economical and political experiences. Through this process, I want to express how tragedy can be a hidden blessing to realize that when one survives, there comes a real grasp of the precious gift that is life.
I use many mediums and materials at any given time to create works to move people’s spirits especially, as Andres Manniste (artist/professor) puts it that I “used discarded objects to make elegant works expressing that beautiful things do not necessarily come out of unlimited resources.”
In the end, that is just the visual textures and accents for a deeper hidden meaning which is about an emotional torment – due to a few deaths in the family in a span of 4 years – which dug us into a living darkness. Unlike many, we survived and my work is a reflection of never going back to that place. Sana Sana (Heal, Heal).
Nature from a gay male settler perspective
Michael Martini is a queer playwright and performer who uses techniques of theatre to create performances for various contexts, e.g. the theatre, the gallery, the cabaret.
He has presented individual and collaborative interdisciplinary projects in so-called Montréal for the past four years, including Beep Test at RIPA (Eastern Bloc, 2017) and Ça a l’air synthétique ok bye at Vous Êtes Ici (Théâtre aux Écuries, 2017).
He is currently incubating a new video-interactive performance led by a linguistic exploration of “nature” from a gay male settler perspective.
The Cell Cycle
The Cell Cycle is a performance piece and composition by cellist / composer Joel Gorrie and poet / performer Kyungseo Min where butoh movement and sound interact to explore the microscopic intricacies of human life and the body. Our everyday endings and beginnings. The biological microcosms of life as a cycle of death, regeneration, healing, creation and growth.
MELANKOLYA
MELANKOLYA is the project of Montréal based composer, singer & songwriter Christian Norton. Founded in 2003, it is an evolving journey of the heart, that takes him geographically and spiritually to different places of the world and states of the soul. His music has a strong classical influence and a dark lyrical subtext, creating powerful cinematographic soundscapes, evoking the universe of Peter Greenaway, Masaki Kobayashi, Akira Kurosawa, David Lynch & Julee Cruise.
He has composed for theater, dance, short films, video games and is currently working on his first feature film score. He finds mentors and collaborators along the way, who generously share their craft and passion for the project, such as Peter Murphy (Bauhaus) and Lucas Lanthier (Cinema Strange, Deadfly Ensemble). For Archipelago he shares the stage with dedicated friend and musician David Blouin (Le 4e discours) on drums, Fernando Collazo (Slow Emotion Replay) on bass-guitar and longtime comrade Tania Georgieva on harmonium & keyboards.
MELANKOLYA est un projet de Christian Norton, chanteur, compositeur et interprète de Montréal, crée en 2003. En mouvance constante, il voyage littéralement et figurativement dans l’émotion et dans l’espace pour découvrir des lieux différents, ainsi que des états d’esprit. Sa musique a de fortes influences classiques, avec des notes lyriques sombres, créant des paysages cinématographiques envoûtants, dont l’intensité évoque les univers de Peter Greenaway, Masaki Kobayashi, Akira Kurosawa, David Lynch et Julee Cruise.
Il compose pour le théâtre, la danse, les courts métrages, les jeux vidéo et actuellement travaille sur son premier film-fiction. Il trouve ses guides artistiques et spirituels à travers les cheminements, qui deviennent des collaborateurs précieux, partageant généreusement leur vision et passion pour le projet, comme Peter Murphy (Bauhaus) et Lucas Lanthier (Cinema Strange, Deadfly Ensemble). Pour Archipelago il partage la scène avec son ami et musicien David Blouin (Le 4e discours) à la batterie, Fernando Collazo (Slow Emotion Replay) à la basse et Tania Georgieva à l’harmonium et claviers.
Learning how to Steal
Learning how to Steal: inheriting white settler colonialism in Canada by Jesse Orr – Puppetry & interdisciplinary performance.
This piece is a work-in-progress that uses image, voice, and memory to uncover the way that one woman learned to take part in unresolved colonial theft.
Learning how to Steal is being developed in the Interdisciplinary Writer’s Unit at Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal.
The Green Room
Jessica Rae is a performer and art maker. On stage, she weaves puppetry, tap dance and burlesque to create character-driven acts bursting with energy. As an art maker, she brings her wild ideas to life through puppets and sculpture.
Inspired by old time vaudeville circuits and the absurdity of vintage cartoons, The Green Room is a surreal world inhabited by puppets where everything is slightly askew.
Photo credit: Maxime Tremblay
The Thought Experiment
The Thought Experiment Productions mission is to present a reflection on some important socio-political contemporary themes. Its approach is highly conceptual, experimental and is theoretically grounded in the critical social sciences. One of the main challenges Thought Experiment Productions is concerned with is how to make political art artistically satisfying and how to make aesthetics politically satisfying.
Ülfet Sevdi is a writer, theatre director, dramaturge and Theatre of the Oppressed practitioner. She graduated from the Department of Fine Arts and Theatre at Mersin University, Turkey, in 2001. Her work deals with oral history, social narrative and is theoretically grounded in feminist theory and the social sciences. She was the co-founder and director of nü.kolektif (Istanbul, 2009-2014) and is the co-founder and co-director of Thought Experiment Productions (Montréal, 2015).
She will start an Individualized Program Master at Concordia University in Winter 2018. She is currently working on her next performance Numbers Increase as We Count… and on the project / workshop Social Heterophony, Compulsive Storytelling and the Manipulation of Memory.
Nicolas Royer-Artuso is a composer, musician (loud player, violinist), musicologist, linguist, writer, music teacher, Theatre of the Oppressed practitioner living between Montréal and Istanbul. After studies in classical western music, jazz and electro-acoustic composition, he soon after devoted himself to Maqam music.
He has directed and co-directed many groups devoted to Maqam music. He also is a proficient free improviser and has performed with groups he co-founded and with many different musicians. A key aspect of his musical work is the theoretical and practical use of “heterophony.”
He has written, given talks and published articles on the subject and has released one practical aspect (a CD) of it: Studies in Heterophonics, an album of ‘natural’ generative music. Since 2013, he is the organizer / curator of ‘Dogaçlafest’, an Istanbul based festival devoted to improvised music. He was the co-founder and co-director of nü.kolektif (Istanbul, 2009-2014) and is the co-founder and co-director of Thought Experiment Productions (Montréal, 2015). He also writes and talks about phonology, morphology and their interface.
You are my Disco
Born in the Netherlands in 1958 in Rotterdam, and immigrated in 2005 to Canada, Jacqueline van de Geer masters both a degree in Visual and Performance Art. She is thrilled to be part of Montréal’s eclectic arts community, who generously welcomed her since her big move across the Atlantic.
Besides collaborating with artists like Sophie Gee, Leah. R. Vineberg, Catherine Bourgois, Carole Nadeau and Peter James, she creates her own oeuvre of works, that is often non linear, dada inspired and walks the thin line between realism and absurdism. You are my Disco is a fifteen minute interactive performance using a record player, personal top four 45 records, some storytelling and many dance chores in an intimate setting.
She has performed in Canada, the US and in Europe.
Sit with me
In Sit with me, artist Aquil Virani invites visitors, one at a time, to sit and listen to a related audioscape as he builds on the evolving Celebrate Her project, a feminist portrait series and performance installation to be presented later this year in collaboration with playwright Erin Lindsay, director Micheline Chevrier, and Montréal’s Imago Theatre.
After 12 inspiring, everyday women were selected last year based on a public, online nomination process, these diverse depictions explore the concept of respectful, feminist representation, the ecosystem of activisms that compose different womens’ lives, and the complexities of allyship. As Éric Clément observed in his article for La Presse, Aquil Virani could not be more Canadian.” Prioritizing authenticity and impact, the mixed-race visual artist often uses public participation to inspire his socially-conscious project.
Photo credit: Alex Tran
Wolf Tea
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Wolf Tea by Maggie Winston is an exploration of the mundane entangled with the fantastical and dreamlike.
Using hand made mask and puppets from natural found materials, digital projection with shadow puppetry, physical theatre, and original soundscapes. The material of this piece was created in collaboration with Jesse Grindler, Naomi Moon, and Kaeridwyn Newman at the Lookout Arts Quarry in Bellingham, WA, this November 2017.
Maggie Winston is a puppet based artist and community arts facilitator. Artistic Director of Lost & Found Puppet co.
Gallery
Odd Stumble 