 "La Marche de 10 mai 2020" by Kubra Khademi. Photos by Camille Graule, used courtesy of the artist. Kubra Khademi is an Afghan performance artist and a feminist. Through her practice, she explores her life as a refugee and a woman. She studied fine arts at Kabul University, before attending Beaconhouse National University in Lahore, Pakistan thanks to a UMISAA scholarship. In Lahore she began to create public performance, a practice she continued upon her return to Kabul, where her work actively responded to a male dominated society by extreme patriarchal politics. After performing her piece known as Armor in 2015, Khademi was forced to flee her home country. She exhibited her works worldwide, notably at the Museum of History of Immigration, Paris (2017, France), Centre Chorégraphique National in Roubaix (2018, France), Queens Museum & Knockdown Center in New York (2018, USA), Silkroad Gallery in Tehran (2018, Iran). In 2016, she was awarded an MFA Scholarship at Pantheon Sorbonne University and was given the title of Knight of arts and literature (Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres) by the Ministry of French Culture. Since 2017, Kubra Khademi is a member of Atelier of Artists in Exile and is in residency at Cité Internationale des Arts, both in Paris. In 2019, she is selected for the Bourse Révélations Emerige award.
Website
0 Comments
Johanna Schall is a German director, based in the UK. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, she was directing Der Nibelungen Wut - Furor Teutonicus for the Bremer Shakespeare Company. She has recently between working on her own writing and has also been collaborating with BMO Lab at the University of Toronto. Website  Johanna Schall speaking at a demonstration on the Alexanderplatz in Berlin, 1989. Photograph by Hubert Link, courtesy of WikiMedia Commons  A Choir in Demands and Desires of Repeat, in collaboration with Faith Arkorful, Fiona Raye Clarke, Hanan Hazime, Angela Sun, and Rebecca Sweets (Toronto). Photo by Yuula Benivolski © Gardiner Museum 2018. Used with permission of the artist. Annie Wong is a writer and multidisciplinary artist working in performance and installation. Conceptually diverse, her practice explores the intersections between the political and poetic in everyday life, intergenerational feminist anger, the melancholy of ancestral amnesia, and hauntologies of diasporic displacement. Wong has presented across North America including at the Toronto Biennale of Art, Studio XX, SBC Gallery (Montreal, QC), and Third Space Gallery (Saint John, NB). She has been awarded residencies with the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Power Plant (Toronto, ON), The Khyber Centre for the Arts (Halifax, NS), Banff Centre for Creativity and Art (Banff, AL), and the Varley Art Gallery. Her recent literary works in poetry, art writing, and non-fiction can be found in Koffler.Digital, The Shanghai Literary Review, C Magazine, Canadian Art, and MICE Magazine.
Website Alex McLean is a theatre artist based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is a co-artistic director of Halifax’s Zuppa Theatre Co. and has co-written and directed the majority of that company’s shows. With his ad hoc group Surplus Production Unit, he recently directed and wrote (from verbatim sources) A Timed Speed-Read of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Trial Transcript with Additional Notes, slated for touring in 2021. With Ker Wells he was a founding member of Number Eleven Theatre (1998 -2006), and he holds an M.A. from the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies.A specialist in devising, Alex has taught extensively, published scholarly articles, and collaborated with practitioners across multiple disciplines. His work explores the past, the present, and things that are too big or small to contain. Website  Image courtesy of the artist Jonathan Zak is producer of Timbre 4 (Argentina). Led by director Claudio Tolcachir, Timbre 4 is a prestigious Argentine theatre company that has been working for over 20 years. They work creating and producing plays. Some of their most famous works are La omisión de la familia Coleman, Tercer cuerpo, El viento en un violín, Emilia, Próximo y Dínamo, which have been presented in festivals in Latin America, the USA and Europe. In addition, Timbre 4 has its own school, in which they offer a wide variety of workshops and courses for different levels and ages.
Website Dusan Fung is a Peruvian actor, theatre producer and director, whose artistic practice has focused on improvisation. Together with the artists Gabriela Gallegos and Vanessa Geldres, he is one of the directors of Imaginario Colectivo, an independent company that has worked for over five years in cultural and artistic projects, touching upon issues such as human rights, social justice, and sexual dissidence. Besides working on the creation and production of plays, this company has its own school, the Escuela Imaginaria, in which they offer a variety of classes.
Website Anne Sabourin is a director, actor, and scenic designer. She has training in dance and architecture and is currently studying towards a doctorate in performing arts at the Université du Québec à Montréal, looking at the relationship between body and space. She has also trained and taught for Mime Omnibus in Montreal. Currently she is teaching courses at both Concordia University and the Université du Québec à Montréal.
Based in the UK, near Newcastle upon Tyne, Aron de Casmaker is a performer, specializing in clown and physical comedy. Among others, he has performed with Cirque du Soleil, Stufish Entertainment, and Slava’s Snowshow.
Website  Yannos Majestikos in "Bain de sang 2." Photograph by Azgard Itambo. Image courtesy of the artist Born in 1988 in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Yannos Majestikos is a painter and a performer. He graduated from the Fine Arts Institute in Kinshasa and focused his practice on drawing and sculpture. He is the founder of the collective Sakana Na Art, and has performed in public spaces since 2012 (as Super Ekolo), and has appeared in several exhibitions and films. Winner of the “Visa pour la création” (street art) 2018 from the French Institute, he now lives at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. He currently participates in the “Kinshasa chroniques” exhibition at the Musée international des arts modestes (MIAM) in Sète with his project Sapekologie Téléportation, which has had productions in Paris and Brussels. He is a member of the Agency of Artists in Exile.
Website  Image courtesy of Fatimah Jawdat Fatima Jawdat is a performance artist based in Diwaniya, Al Qadisiyah, Iraq. Having trained in theatre and fine art, she has developed an artistic practice photographing her own solo performances about political issues and feminist politics. She displays her work on social media, where they have developed an international following.
Follow her on Twitter or Facebook. ESCRITO POR MATT JONES Traducción por/ translation by Nae Hanashito Avila Lo primero que ha mostrado la ola de pánico que paralizó al país es que nuestra sociedad ya no cree en nada más que la vida desnuda (vida nuda). Es la evidencia de que los italianos están preparados para sacrificar prácticamente todo—condiciones de vida normales, relaciones sociales, trabajo, incluso amistades y creencias religiosas y políticas—para evitar el peligro de enfermarse.
— Giorgio Agamben, 17 de marzo del 2020 En tiempos oscuros, ¿habrá canto? Sí, también habrá canto. Sobre los tiempos oscuros. —Bertolt Brecht, 1939 BY MATT JONES
BY SEBASTIAN SAMUR
As the COVID-19 pandemic has unfolded, the precarity of the performing arts globally has become increasingly highlighted. Despite many cities allowing performance organizations to open, there remain significant limitations. Performance companies cannot open overnight the way many businesses can as they operate with longer timelines that work around programming and rehearsal schedules. These difficulties are compounded by the limitations placed on those companies that may attempt to open - notably requirements to social distance audiences and provide other safety measures. As a result, some companies, such as Canadian Stage in Toronto, have already moved to replace the Fall season with online programming, despite potentially being able to ‘open’. |
