Two wooden folding chairs sit abreast and encircled by a collection of six space heaters. An audience faces them, waiting.
Kai Villneff and Sarah OrmandyāPest Controlāenter upstage left. They each turn on three heaters before taking their seats, Ormandy on our right and Villneff our left. A low, barely audible hum drones out of the now-energized heating coils, and several fans innocuously whirr. The reflector of the centremost heater glows a pale orange, but its heat does not quite reach the back rows of the audience. The artists both wear blue jeans and boots, and Villneff has a grey sweater while Ormandy wears a blue blouse with white polka dots. They sit placidly facing us, hands folded quietly in their laps or placed on their thighs, with glasses of water resting on the floor next to their feet. We wait.
Michael Wolley continues his writing on Visualeyez 2017. Read the rest of Michael Wolley's reflection on Pest Control here
The whining buzz of quivering needles penetrates the air. It reverberates in my skull someplace behind my eyes and between my ears. Meanwhile, fall leaves, impelled by a cool wind, skitter across the concrete in a staccato arrhythmic rush, and the warmish sun cuts between the surrounding buildings and projects lengthening shadows. People around, passing by, waiting for busses, or maybe eating a hotdog, seem to pretend not to notice. This scene, unfolding before them on that wooden park bench, might as well be the most banal thing theyāve seen. But, some people do take care to notice, sit down, perplexed, intrigued, or curious, and start asking questions or telling stories of their own.
Michael Wolley continues his writing on Visualeyez 2017. Read the rest of Michael Wolley's reflection on Ivan Lupi here
Festival Animator Michael Woolley continues his reflections on this September's Visualeyez with Ray Fenwick's āHow to talk to plantsā:
Ray Fenwick is that human. He stands, hands clasped around the microphone he holds close to his mouth, staring at one of the houseplants sitting in front of him. The sound of his breath rushing over the microphone distorts and shudders through the space like indecisive gusts of wind. It is a wet and meaty sound, accentuated by other noises escaping his mouth: lips clapping together or tongue sliding around, along, and between his teeth and gums. Meanwhile, the microphone doesnāt register anything at all from his plant compatriots.
āHello, I am a kind of meat, and I have feelings and sometimes I try to share those feelings.ā
Still, the plants do not seem to care enough to respond.
Julianne Chapple sits in the blue chair. But āsitsā isnāt the right word. Chapple is sprawled across the chair, her limbs hanging toward the floor, in a way that carefully toes the line between languid and luxuriating. She is wearing high-waist tweed slacks and a loose-fitting white blouse. Her mousey hair completely obscures her face. Picking up the tumbler, Chapple pours it several fingers full of whiskey and takes a long sip. Her fingers take delicate purchase on the glass, and it seems rather that her hand and arm dangle from it instead.
An indeterminate amount of time passes, but at least one or two songs play that seem to long for less complicated times or the elusive love of a coy woman. Chapple sips at her whiskey from underneath her long hair, and we all sit and stare at her and each other. With nearly imperceptible slowness, the artist falls from the chair and onto the floor. But āfallsā isnāt the right word. Chapple slumps, almost melting, moving like a glob of treacle pouring itself onto and across the floor. There is a wallowing, indulgent viscosity to her movement as she makes her way around the space, whiskey ever in hand and face rarely seen.
Michael Woolley writes on Julianne Chapple's performance at this year's Visualeyez.
Michael Woolley continues to publish reflections on this September's Visualeyez festival. Todayāread his take on Cameron Pickering's Pass Altruistic Panic, Changing Form.
Folamh is first up in a series of reviews of Visualeyez 2017. Festival animator Michael Wooley will review all performances from the festival celebrating Awkwardness this year. Find them on the Visualeyez 2017 blog.
"The process is labourious, but the dread which welled up in my throat when I first heard those seemingly unintelligible syllables fades as I begin to enjoy the collaborative process of learning and understanding something new."
āA woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herselfā¦ Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another.... One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.āĀ
In āWays of Seeingā art critic John Berger captured what would later be defined as the male gaze. Sympathetic to the feminist movement and its second wave Berger managed to encapsulate not just a lack of representation but an objectification and subjugation. And its message remains relevant today.Ā
BC artist Julianne Chapple takes inspiration from the message and creates a performance piece that explores the idea of self-image and the perception of women.Ā
Women Appear (and sometimes they learn how to disappear) will be performed at Visualeyez 2017Ā on Wednesday and Saturday.Ā
Latitude 53 chatted with Chapple about her work and inspiration.Ā
L53: How has this performance evolved?Ā
JC: It started with a series of self-portraits in my home. Being a performance artist and coming from a dance background these photos were an attempt to capture these micro performances I was doing alone. I had a chance to perform in a series here in Vancouver where I brought the living room into a theatre and performed them for an audience. It will be an extension from a domestic space and move through these movement phrases from the history of images of women. It explores the baggage that comes with the way women are portrayed and how they have been created by men.Ā
Iām really excited about this performance as it will be set up as an installation because the viewers will be in the same environment. Iām hoping to create a dynamic where everyone in the space can inhabit the role of watcher and watched throughout the evening. I think that will open up new possibilities for me.Ā
L53: Why is this piece important to you?Ā
JC: For me as a performer itās all kind of an exploration of attempting to take control of a viewers perception and trying to use all the baggage that comes with representing a female body in a playful way. It looks at utilizing things like depersonalization and objectification and how you could maybe move in and out of this state of objecthood and take control of that transformation of the subject with an audience.Ā
L53: How does the performance express the curatorial theme of awkwardness?
JC: As soon as I saw it I thought this is the festival for me. In a lot of my work Iām working with subject-object dichotomy. I often work as a performer covering my face and creating this, playing with this voyeuristic difference between performer and audience. Iām hoping to move in and out of that and to make the disconnect palatable. That will be very awkward for everyone, myself included.Ā
L53: Has creating and performing this piece affected your views of feminism?Ā
JC: Itās been interesting. Iāve been reading a lot about second wave feminist stuff from the early 70s, so I have a soundtrack from that time period. There was a lot of talk about treating young children in a gender neutral way and there was a lot more restrictions to advertising to kids. Capitalism and tv sort of overtook that, by the time I was growing up. In the 80s gender roles had doubled down. And being sexualized was repackaged as empowering even though itās forced upon you. Itās been really interesting to look at things through that lens of history and how the good intentions of the progress of the early 70s got repackaged in advertisements that put women in a different box. I think that this idea of being able to move through this state of objecthood could be something that is quite powerful for people who have experienced it.
Check the Visualeyez site for a full schedule of performances.Ā
Visualeyez 2017 explores awkwardness. The works presented reflect on our interactions with situations where we feel uncomfortable or marginalized and how we react in these changing environments, according to the festivalās curatorial statement.Ā
American theatre artist Josh Clendenin explores the awkwardness of language in his performance Folamh. The American theatre artist speaks multiple languages, and often feels uncomfortable using each one, especially when in conversation with a native speaker. To heighten the situation Clendenin has centered his performance as a date.Ā
āIām fascinated by the potential of connection and the awkwardness that is a date and meeting people and to up that ante in a multilingual situation,ā says Clendenin.Ā
Latitude 53 spoke to Clendenin about his show Folamh, which translates to āblankā or āemptyā in Irish.Ā
Clendenin will perform Folamh Thursday at 3pm and Friday at 8pm as part of Visualeyez.Ā
L53: What prompted the exploration of language as a form of awkwardness?Ā
JC: I speak multiple languages, but I have this anxiety when I need to speak to a native speaker. English is my native language but thereās always a space where if Iām speaking French or Irish for a native speaker, I canāt seem to express myself. I wanted to show that the human brain, as youāre trying to find those words, theyāre all stored in the same place in the brain, so if youāre trying to access one word in one language you have to access them all at once. Youāre literally trying to filter through all of the words that you know.Ā
L53: How did the curatorial theme of awkwardness affect the idea of the performance?Ā
JC: So many times with different travels and different experiences awkward interactions with language can occur or awkward translations where things get misinterpreted. Iām hoping some of that will come about. If someone speaks French, I want to see if I use the wrong word or translate something awkwardly. Or we stumble over the similarities and differences of languages. I learned my French in France, so for French Canadians there are differences. I still to this day remember someone saying, the word for kiss, which is close to the word for āto fuck.ā I was like āWhat! Hold on a minute.ā And thatās within the same language.Ā
L53: You cite yoga as an influence in your art and language expression. How does that manifest?Ā
JC: Yoga has been a strong grounding point for me. It focuses me and forces me to pay attention to my body. It has come about to see how the sound exists in your body and how your mouth has to move to create that sound. A lot of my other projects deal with language identity, interpretive in the body. Language is the platform for movement. My thesis project was based on that. We use language as music where we use our bodies to express it. My background is in language instruction. Total physical response immersion technique in languages, I have to try and act it out in the show if people donāt understand what Iām saying, so there is a physical response.Ā
Participate in Folamh, or just view the awkwardness, at Visualeyez 2017. Check the schedule for times and locations.
