“I ask the audience to close one eye” is a cartographic coming-into-form of personal/ political latencies of love, questions of genetic pre-dispositions, and animate/inanimate relations. Using live performance tactics of proximity, framing, sensing, pausing and pacing, I introduce several items into the space that do not belong to each other immediately.
I start by introducing the red t-shirt folded in front of me/ I announce it will be my friend O for the time being / I put on the t-shirt/ O’s partner is introduced to the audience / I hug them / They introduce their work / I ask the audience to close one eye / My father will start to dance a small dance / A pause / A 1943 photo of O’s great Uncle Beyrish is shown, and his story told / I scroll through the documents of a sperm donor / My father stands up, O’s partner stands up, and they are asked to shake hands.
I ask the audience to close one eye
Innovation Complex Rotunda
- Presenter
- k.g. Guttman
k.g. is a graduate of Leiden University's PhDArts program, the Netherlands, receiving funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for their work on situated performance in the settler colonial context of Canada.
From the social location of a white settler of Jewish and Irish descent, she works on the complexities of the local, encompassing collaboration, visiting, and radical hospitality. Current research into bodily memory and somatic practices in pedagogy and practice have been informed by circumstances in childhood/ young adulthood of generalized anxiety/ depression and an environment that disavowed emotions.
k.g.’s recent exhibitions, performances and publications were held at TPW Gallery and Blackwood Gallery in Toronto, Verticale, VIVA! Art action, Dazibao Centre Art, and LaCentrale in Tiohtiá:ke/ Mooniyang/ Montréal, Musée d’Art de Joliette, Klupko, Amsterdam, Galerie Khiasma and Palais de Tokyo, Paris. Choreographic residencies and commissions include l’Agora de la Danse and Tangente, Montreal, the Canada Dance Festival, Dancemakers, Toronto, LeGroupe Dance Lab, Ottawa, the University of Sonora, Mexico, BudaKustencentrum, Kortijk and Pointe Ephémère, Paris.
The Blackwood
University of Toronto Mississauga
3359 Mississauga Road
Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6
[email protected]
(905) 828-3789
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The Blackwood is situated on the Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, Seneca, and Huron-Wendat.