wittmann, claude

drop in and i will pay you $15/hour:
we will build bicycle wheels together to fundraise money for a lawyer
Monday November 18 2 – 4 pm
land acknowledgment through a reading from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s final report (2015)
Tuesday November 19 and  Thursday November 21 to Saturday November 23 2 – 5 pm
drop-in (ASL interpretation available on Thursday November 21)*

at Tangled Art + Disability basement space
401 Richmond Street West, Suite S30, basement level (accessible space)***

Cosponsored by Tangled Art + Disability with additional support from bikechain, Switchback Cyclery and Urbane Cyclist Workers Co-op

what will happen?
– anybody is invited to come at anytime for any amount of time
– i will guide you for choosing a task and doing it (lace a wheel, true a wheel, record sounds from a wheel, clean the space, learn about social assistance and write a letter, do some accounting, etc.). when you are done, i will pay you and you will give me a receipt
– after the week is over, the bicycle wheels will be sold and the profit will go toward hiring a lawyer to consider what legal action could be done to improve the lives of ODSP recipients
– our accounting book will be the only documentation

this project emerges from the insights of a crisis time experienced in 2017, more particularly from the realization that it is personally and politically troubling (for me) to create art as labs of a parallel life. in crisis, our kinesthetic sense informs us that the body can vanish from consciousness, not because of a pathology but because of systemic erasure. there, there is no entitlement. there is no energy or time for art. any experiments about life can add to erasure. your crisis might be different, but in the end, it might not be different. so what’s next when there is enough of a body attached to consciousness and substantial support to participate in KinesTHESES? to appropriate a space for doing what feels urgent? to invent a lab of failing which starts with accepting to write a description and a bio?

as a bio, i will offer this: i do not know how to construct a narrative about myself at the moment. please feel free to visit claudewittmann.ca.

*Although this project is generally operating on a drop-in basis, claude has advised that due to the presence of ASL interpreters and confirmed participants, the workroom will be fully booked and unable to accommodate additional visitors on November 21. Regular drop-in hours will resume for November 22 and 23.

***accessibility: Follow this link for a pdf version of the ACCESS GUIDE for Tangled’s main gallery space. Note that S30 is in the basement, so if you are arriving via Entrance #1, you will need to go to the basement level (there is an elevator). If you are arriving via Entrance #2, you will be on the basement level already, so you do not need to change floors. There will be signage guiding visitors to s30 from both entrances.

claude wittmann’s writing about the project (on the artist’s website)

Artist talk/negotiated interaction with Barak adé Soleil and claude wittmann
Saturday November 9 2 pm
Wychwood Theatre (Wychwood Barns) 601 Christie St., Studio 176
FREE

Artists Barak adé Soleil and claude wittmann engage in a public discussion about their practices and how their works are situated within TPAC’s KinesTHESES project.

Radio Equals
Wednesday October 29 to Saturday November 1 3 pm
Artscape Youngplace

Landsgemeinde
Sunday November 2 4 pm
Artscape Youngplace

“Practicing” says something about what i do; “face” and “meet” say something about what i am trying to do; “equality” says something about what i am now exploring. As if i had landed in the horizontal plane after spending quite a bit of time in the vertical planes of genders and selves. Low-powered narrow-casted radio and sometimes online streaming are my current partners. And i am not finished there. Radio Equals will be a daily hour of narrow-casted and internet streamed one-on-one conversations during which i will collect examples of egalitarian actions. Landsgemeinde will present the list of collected ideas and we will engage in a democratic process to choose one single action that we will individually commit to do after the festival.

claude wittmann was born in Switzerland and now lives in Toronto. He works as a bicycle mechanic and as a performance artist, mostly in Toronto. He is grateful for the influences of SU-EN, Paul Couillard, Sylvie Tourangeau and Eric Létourneau.

Radio Equals internet streamed through New Adventures in Sound Art.

Alison Coooley’s first eyewitness account of Radio Equals
Alison Coooley’s second eyewitness account of Radio Equals
Alison Coooley’s third eyewitness account of Radio Equals
Alison Coooley’s fourth eyewitness account of Radio Equals
Alison Cooley’s eyewitness account of Landsgemeinde