Double Double Land, 209 Augusta Ave
2 December 2011
Hosted by John McCurly Gwen Bieniara, and Glenn Macaulay
Performances by Xenia Benivolski, Steve Kado, and Brad Tinmouth
Based on a foundational and oft visited theorization of the relationship between a performance artist and his/her/their audience, the Curtain Show does not unconsciously quote this overworked discussion. Instead, it continues the discussion by laying it bare on the stage and letting it play itself out in a very direct and heavily facilitated manner.
The relationship between an audience and a performance, in the realm of performance art rather than theatre, has been much analyzed as a power dynamic implicit to the craft. It is yet to be determined who indeed is in control. If the audience doesn't exist at all, a performance art work can still exist (unless the audience is a consciously intrinsic part of the accomplishment of the work). In traditional theatre, the audience, and how it changes with repeated performances, is implicit to the identity of the medium. In regards to performance art, the audience is sometimes asked to participate – the fourth wall can be broken and the audience may become part of the artwork being performed. Anticipated audience participation often puts viewers on edge as they are uncertain about how to interact with a piece (whether their actions/lack of actions are correct or not). There is an undeniable presence of tension and negotiation between the audience and a performance art work and both the artist(s) and audience member(s) are dedicating themselves to a participatory act.
This dedication can go awry very often, as I have spoken to many performance art audience members who expressed feelings of being trapped, of wanting to go but feeling unable to leave as to not have to disrupt the performance. Sometimes this is one of the intended goals of the piece, as temporality and duration can be a key component with which the artist chooses to engage; perhaps an antagonistic action towards the audience, an assertion of the power of presence and the social expectations that go along with an audience/performer dynamic at the time of action. It also just really sucks if you have to go to the washroom really badly, but can't.
The Curtain Show amplifies this dynamic between performer and audience, at times reversing the roles, at times reinforcing them. The most obvious gesture of reversal was the placement of the audience seated on the stage at the Double Double Land venue. The curtains were drawn at the beginning of the show, enclosing the audience in a cramped space, just as many chairs as there were visitors, accompanied by one standing documenter with a tripod camera to one side. John McCurly and Glenn Macaulay came to centre stage to set up the context. The Curtain Show is the first event in a larger series, and to celebrate the event, the audience was told that a door prize full of goodies from galleries across the city (including the Art Gallery of Ontario which “our audience will appreciate since the AGO is really at the heart of the Toronto art scene”). Although the promised prizes, including gift certificates to yummy places in Kensington and the odd interesting exhibition catalogues, was false. It's a glamorous teaser not appropriate for such a scuzzy venue: the real 'Toronto art scene' perhaps, administrated by people who wouldn't have enough sway, capital or traditional promotional know-how to get together a donated gift basket (entirely because they don't give a fuck). The fact that this is promoted as the 'first in a series' is also probably just an extension of the artifice.
The entire Curtain Show is a build up, promising art and glamour and excitement revealed over time with the dramatic act of drawing back of the curtain to present three performances by three artists Xenia Benivolski, Brad Tinmouth and Steve Kado.
After much talk and awkward stalling on behalf of the hosts, the first reveal of Benivolski's work, a constructed series of metal pipes supported by strings and wires creating a rudimentary labyrinth throughout the main space, John quickly places his hand in front of the tubing end that faced directly onto the stage. “I think there's supposed to be heat coming out of this tube.....it's not.” The curtains are quickly drawn.
Back to the inane banter of the hosts. It is obvious that they have already run out of their best material and begin to rely on the secondary or even tertiary gags and anecdotes. The audience begins to hear a lot of construction noises. Banging, hammering, scraping of large objects across the hidden space beyond the curtain. A hand saw begins and the smell of sawdust fills the room. The hosts speak above the racket, sometimes fiddling with the curtains to make sure no one can see beyond them through the cracks. What is revealed is Tinmouth standing/fidgeting next to a diminutive table displaying a computer with a shot of his website home page (www.bradtinmouth.com). The room is bare. He talks briefly and un-eloquently about his upcoming event An Evening with Pro Click Dot Biz the following weekend at Double Double Land. The curtains are drawn.
After another intermission-like stall from the hosts that seemed to last longer and contain even worse material than the previous iterations, Steve Kado's presentation began. This third performance insisted more directly on the audience's attention threshold and could be considered as a climax to the evening's program, if only because of its length. Kado stood at a table in front of a bright light bulb casting dramatic shadows into the room. Intermittently (based on his own timing mechanism which sounded a 'ding' to prompt a change) he positioned coloured gels in front of the light to bathe the room. Over top of these transitions he presented a lecture on the history of cinema. This was his own history of cinema, meandering, nonlinear at times, drawn out, with no promise of a conclusion in a summary of post-modern or contemporary film production. At a point, the beers I had purchased as well as the ones I had brought in my purse had worked their dehydrating effect and I was in pain. As the performance droned on, my position in the back row of the crammed stage became urgent. With many people to physically disrupt, with the position of the bathroom behind the performance and as a board member at a performance art organization, I did not know how to interact with the work – at the point of finally siding with my physical demands over my intellectual demands and standing up to begin the process of moving towards the washrooms, the lecture wrapped up. As people applauded and the hosts took the stage, I exited. Possibly as the first person among many who were also desperately hoping to escape.
As a series of performances, which unquestioningly included the stalling hosts, the Curtain Show set up a series of indications about what and who is prioritized in the art gallery system. There was a play between the presenters and the presented which felt uneven yet accurate. The show was advertised as a series of performances with emphasis on Benivolski, Tinmouth and Kado, but was more to do with the context in which they were presented. This is the case with many galleries' initiatives that preserve authority for the facilitators rather than the artists, although in this case at Double Double Land, everyone was knowingly complicit.
