Vulnerable Paradoxes
2020
Vulnerable Paradoxes is a series of five artist-driven virtual round tables that opens a space for discussions we so often don’t have. We ask ourselves how and why we make performance today, what makes our artistic desires political, what do we want from the audience and what might they want from us, what can performance do that other art forms can’t. We hope to provoke each other towards a greater understanding of what we do and why.
With Vulnerable Paradoxes, we are thinking of discussions in which artists and performance-makers are brought together to speak and think about their work in different ways then what we are used to. We are interested in speaking about artistic questions (which are, of course, always also political) in ways that reject the conventional “artist talk” with the goal of more fully understanding what we do and why together.
We offered some questions as a starting point: What qualities of performance are you searching for and why? How do form and content co-exist in your work and how does this relate to the ways in which you create and perform? How does the audience exist in your imagination and how does this compare to actual experiences with spectators? What can performance do that other art forms can’t and is this connected to how and why you have chosen it? Rather than being addressed directly during the discussions, they served as a common ground to support the self-moderated conversations.
Vulnerable Paradoxes offered a surprisingly intimate space for exchanges between peers, creating much needed and inspiring dialogue to counterbalance the isolation of the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
With Aisha Sasha John, Dana Michel, Dayna Danger, Elena Stoodley, Kama La Mackerel, Kamissa Ma Koïta, Lara Kramer, Mai thi Bach Ngoc Nguyen, Malik Nashad Sharpe, Milton Lim, nènè myriam konaté, Po B. K. Lomami, Sonia Hughes. Artistic Committee: Burcu Emeç, Kamissa Ma Koïta, Jacob Wren, and the participation of Marilou Craft. Interpretation: Marie Claire Forté. Coordination: Fabien Marcil. Visual Identity: Kamissa Ma Koïta. Production: Sylvie Lachance, Richard Ducharme.
Co-presented with LA SERRE — arts vivants (OFFTA). With the support of the Conseil des arts de Montréal, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and the Canada Council for the Arts.
This “living archive” allows these works to endure over time, enabling other voices to be heard and participate in the continuation of a minor history, not only in the art milieu, but within cultural, social and political worlds as well. Through their work, these artists show a quest for identity through the passing on of memories that are rooted in embodied forms of knowledge, such as songs, spirituals, rituals and stories. Vulnerable Paradoxes produces critical material that contributes to writing the stories of artists, art works and art communities that exist outside of official history. As a whole, this project is an affirmation of voices that are often held on the margins of public discourse, and invites us to be open to others and to ourselves.
– Véronique Hudon, Espace art actuel, Montréal