By Natalie Loveless It is three thousand seven hundred and twenty-three minutes into karen spencer’s sittin’ performance at Union Station. It is cold, and I am not the only one here. I recognize a festival-goer sitting with her. Together they gaze gently into the distance, in roughly the same direction, as if waiting for something …

karen elaine spencer: sittin’, Union Station, Thursday, October 28, 2010 (NL) Read More »

By Natalie Loveless I’m meeting Michael Fernandes at noon at the Toronto Free Gallery. Today is the first of four days that Fernandes will be performing, from noon to 5 pm, locations TBA. As I walk along Bloor, I see him seated on a chain across the entrance to a car dealership. He stares into …

Michael Fernandes: Doing Things with Strangers, Toronto Free Gallery, Wednesday, October 27, 2010 (NL) Read More »

By Daniel Baird Most performance artists insist that what they do is distinct from what is disparagingly termed “mere spectacle.”  I take this to mean something like this: performance is not reducible to the images it might result in, which can be remarkably beautiful or grotesque, but rather consists in the ineluctable series of acts …

Sunday, October 24, 2010 (DB) Read More »

By Daniel Baird Performance art, as it is currently understood, owes a great deal to the spectacle of ritual, which might be roughly defined as a set of disciplined, symbolic acts that activate meaning within, and to some extent define, a sacred space. One thinks of the role of the Catholic mass in performances from …

Friday, October 22 & Saturday, October 23, 2010 (DB) Read More »

By Natalie Loveless The space has chairs on two walls. In the center lies a bolt of red and yellow mottled cloth, three bottles of juice-like liquid (yellow, orange and red), three wine glasses, an orange, apple and banana stacked on three sheets of tissue paper (again, red, orange and yellow), and a long spiral …

The TouVA Collective (Sylvie Tourangeau, Victoria Stanton, and Anne Bérubé): The 7th Sense, Toronto Free Gallery, Tuesday, October 26, 2010 (NL) Read More »

By Natalie Loveless We are less than halfway through karen elaine spencer’s ten-day performance action: sitting for eight hours a day on a set of benches near the Front street entrance of Toronto’s Union Station. I approach the performance site half expecting not to see her. Expecting that at this point she might foil expectations, …

karen elaine spencer: sittin’, Union Station, Sunday, October 24, 2010 / Day Four (NL) Read More »