Inviting Fiona I have known and worked closely with Fiona Griffiths over many years, benefitting from her contributions as an artist, a teacher, and a health and fitness trainer-practitioner. We are good friends as well as colleagues, and she was instrumental in assisting my recovery from a series of catastrophic illnesses, in particular providing craniosacral …
Fiona Griffiths’ body wilderness project took place over the course of a week, offering a total of five guided walks in Toronto’s Cedarvale Park for groups of up to 10 participants. Participants were asked to register in advance for a daytime experience lasting approximately 90 minutes. Cedarvale Park is one of Toronto’s larger green spaces, …
14. Fiona Griffiths’ body wilderness : Description and video recording Read More »
As noted in the previous post, the KinesTHESES project included a series of negotiated interactions that paired local and non-local artists. Distinct from the artists’ individual projects, these events were an opportunity for the invited artists to contextualize—on their own terms and in dialogue with each other rather than with me as the curator—their artistic …
It is common for art exhibitions to include animating events such as artist talks, where audiences can discover more about the artist and their working methods, the thinking and doing behind the project, the various challenges and discoveries involved in developing the work, and so forth. Often these artist talks take the form of a …
One of my favourite ways to talk with someone is while walking together. The shared forward momentum almost automatically generates an intimate connection between the walkers, attuning their moving bodies in a rhythm of complicity. That same momentum can also propel the conversation, contributing a sense of flow. Walking together is often an important part …
—Sent via email to the curator, November 2, 2021. For me, the most important aspect of Body Maintenance is the rhythm. That is why I dribbled the ball in the room.The calm and well-paced sounds from the ball always made me relax and feel “sane. Also having relations and conversation with people is the second …
As the KinesTHESES curator, I am interested in the tactile-kinesthetic propositions Body Maintenance offers for an audience of thinking bodies, and how these propositions activate and influence participants’ self-conception. This entry of the Toolkit offers some background information on why I invited Sakiko to be a part of KinesTHESES, and how, having experienced Body Maintenance, …
Sakiko Yamaoka prefaced her KinesTHESES project, Body Maintenance, with these words: “I, personally, don’t like to do or watch any sports, but we can use the tools of sport for other intentions. For example, art performances.” Consequently, her project for KinesTHESES took place at a downtown Toronto basketball gymnasium on a sunny summer Sunday afternoon. …
8. Sakiko Yamaoka’s Body Maintenance : Description, digital photos and video recordings Read More »
I recently attended a free conference (hosted on Zoom and livestreamed on YouTube) examining the conservation of performance works. “Performance: The Ethics and the Politics of Care — # 1. Mapping the Field” was addressed primarily toward the art conservation community, and expressly aimed at locating the discourse of conservation within a broader field of the …
The name of this curatorial project is a play on the term “kinestheses,” which comes from the phenomenologist philosopher Edmund Husserl. Husserl was deeply attuned to the close connection between life and movement. He described living beings first and foremost as animate organisms, and accorded a foundational importance for human consciousness in what he called …