KANTOR, Istvan

Untitled
Saturday November 2 2 pm
outside Pages Bookstore | 256 Queen St W

An Unseen Selection from the Days of Song and Sex
Thursday November 7 9 pm
Latvian House | 491 College St

Co-presented with Pleasure Dome

The exhaustive program of video and live performance, chosen from over two decades of material, deconstructs Istvan Kantor’s totalitarian assault of machine, sex and militancy. This event introduces his passionate, revolutionary vision, highly experimental video, risk-taking philosophy, and radical ideas on a very personal level. The evening’s multiple-screen barrage will include a performance of the Machine Sex Action Group, early street and club performances, vintage video works, blood, transvestitism, proto-porn, animal and durational experiments, his family, and found footage, as well as a live expanded music/video performance of his ’80s Neoist hits.

Istvan Kantor Monty Cantsin? Amen!’s tumultuous career as an internationally notorious performance artist, videomaker, musician, founder of Neoism (1979, Montreal), and proud recipient of many jail sentences for unwanted blood-x interventions in museums, has seen his work overlooked and rejected by critics and institutions.

Spectacle of Noise

Presented by Vtape

Artist Reception Wednesday November 4 6 pm
Tapes available for viewing during office hours throughout the festival
Vtape, 401 Richmond St W, 4th floor

This program of four videotapes by Istvan KANTOR, aka Monty CANTSIN, aka PUPPET GOVERNMENT, aka AMEN!, features ‘the dated radicalism of Neoist scum’ (quote appropriated from Philip Monk). As the internationally acclaimed ‘bad boy’ of Canadian performance, Kantor’s extensive resume includes frequent performances throughout North America and Europe. His work focuses on the excesses of capitalism and the challenges of 20th Century culture, and also includes extensive and important video documentation of performance work by a wide variety of artists.

Videos in program: Black Flag, Barricades, Red Flag and Jericho.

That’s How I Want to Be Remembered
Saturday, November 7 8 pm
DeLeon White Gallery, 455 King St W

Curated by Paul Couillard and Louise Liliefeldt as part of Pousse-Café
Presented by Mercer Union

Worthless monument of dull muddiness commemorating a disastrous moment of absolute grandeur. Site specific gallery crime.

PO-PO Into the Wasteland
Saturday August 22 10 pm
Front St wasteland (between Spadina Ave & Bathurst St)

PO-PO Samhain in Wasteland
Friday October 30 11 pm
abattoir building wasteland (corner of Niagara St & Wellington St W)

About the PO-PO Wasteland series:

The main intent here is to create an audience participatory event, where the viewer is involved in the work and the space so much so that they are no loner passive but become active participants in the event. To expand the scope of what is thought of as ‘performance art’ by exposing it to, and to it, another audience, a younger, uninitiated audience, more of a ‘general public’. In a temporary unification of disparate communities, the art community and the electronic dance or ‘rave’ world, both will benefit from some new blood, and cross fertilization of energies. To make art fun and exciting and to somehow bridge the gap between art and life and pop and high culture.

These events are similar in theme and practical application to a series of performance events held in Toronto over the winter of 1997-98, organized by Jubal Brown and Stephen Rife. Entitled the Wasteland Series (I, II & III), large, abandoned industrial spaces were used for site-specific performances and installations by roughly 10 artists each time.

My Ass, Your Face
Friday August 1 to  Monday August 11
vernissage Wednesday August 6 8 pm
:JAWA:bot:Machines That Perform RANT Saturday August 9 11 pm
165 John St, 3rd floor (just north of Queen St W)

Curated by the JAWA Collective as part of :JAWA:bot:Machines That Perform

This combination of video installation, performance art and kinetic art can be called a living-machine. The performer’s body is part of the machine, revolving around on a turning table while showing the viewer’s projected face on his/her bare surface of lower body part with the help of a video camera and small video projector attached to the mechanical parts. Audience members are encouraged to participate, project their faces or be the performer. First performed at Symptom Hall, in Toronto on March 27 1997, at a special event dedicated to noise and anarchy, it was also part of the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art, included in :JAWA:bot:Machines That Perform.

AMEN! (of Puppet Government, aka Monty Cantsin/Istvan Kantor)  has been an experimental artist for nearly three decades. His work explores both body and technology (low or high) and challenges the spectators’ creative sensibilities. He has been using video installation as a performance tool for many years. The intent is not to focus on the newness of the technology (closed circuit video is a fairly old method) but to reflect on the immediacy  of  technology’s potential for direct communication on a personal level.