Viva! Art Action 2011

Performance

October 4 – October 9, 2011

Project Description

Marc Giloux (FRA/Bologne)

Marc Giloux, who lives in Italy, will present an enigmatic performance under the name Frank Jacson.The proximity of persona, name and character is patiently questioned in Giloux’s precise performances. Giloux enacts banal activities in social public spaces. These include sitting, drinking espresso, reading the newspaper, listening to the radio, checking the time, all the while accompanied by a sign bearing an obscure name. What is the relationship between Giloux and this name? Is it a reference to a persona that he is subtly enacting? Or perhaps he is waiting to encounter the bearer of this name? Giloux leaves these questions unanswered. Each of these names has a specific and unpublicized narrative that links the site at which he is performing with fictional, political and artistic events. Notably, Frank Jacson is the alias given to a Spanish-Communist operative famous for murdering Leon Trotsky in 1940. Under this name, carrying a Canadian passport, Mercader, alias Jacson, befriended Trotsky, only to brutally murder him with an ice-axe. Giloux’s performance, which is a subtle occupation of public space, where anonymity is common place, summons us, as his unknowing public, to locate or ignore these cryptic references.

Frank Jacson
Daily 1 hour long public intervention, starting at 3pm, in the following locations :
Wednesday October 5 : north quadrant of Place Ville-Marie, in the lounge under the lounge located by the red and yellow Marcel St-Pierre abstract paintings.
Thursday October 6 : in the Foyer culturel of Place-des-arts (at the intersection of the wine bar and entrance to the MACM).
Friday October 7 : the black granite counter just outside the FOFA gallery, on the ground floor of the EV building, Concordia.
Saturday October 8 : the lobby of the Belgo building.
Sunday October 9: TBA.

Martine Viale (Montréal)

Martine Viale will present The Imprint Series, a performance presented in two times : House, a three day durational work in the gallery space at Skol in August, and House II, a performance that will be presented at Bain St-Michel during the festival. Viale’s House performance will gradually accumulate meaning as she builds up successive actions, marks, traces and transfers, to gradually transform the gallery space into a sketch book. Using simple drawing materials, Viale incorporates her own body, movement, and time to present a patient, poetic work. Her persistent approach suggests multiple stages of working, rather than a completed action or product, while the materials and methods remain minimal, ephemeral and poetic. In House II, Viale intends to pursue unresolved threads from the first performance held at Skol. Beyond the physical transfer from one space/time to another, the artist will explore a new dimension of the transformation by “displacing herself”.

The Imprint Series: House II
Saturday October 8 at 8pm
Performance (40 min.) at Bain St-Michel

Andres Galeano (ESP/Berlin)

A Spanish artist currently active in Berlin, Galeano will present a programmatic work derived from the complex communication patterns of the Goldfinch (carduelis carduelis). The precise sequence of activities performed by Galeano is a sophisticated interpretation of the bird’s extensive song. Galeano uses the nuanced call of the bird as a score to be performed, much as fluxus artists notated the everyday through musical scoring. The activation of props, rhythmic repetition and unaffected single-mindedness of Galeano’s performance marks his work as decidedly untheatrical, although the serious resolve through which he enacts his performance belies the absurdity of his actions.

Carduelis Carduelis
Friday October 7 at 8pm
Performance (45 min.) at Bain St-Michel

For more information, please visit vivamontreal.org.