Jenn Goodwin

Thunderstruck: Physical Landscapes, curated by Jenn Goodwin, investigates the landscape in which contemporary dance is created, presented and received. Thunderstruck examines and questions the power that an exhibition bestows on its objects through collection, display and archival activities. It also considers the traces left behind in any physical or performance practice. In the process, this exhibition poses the question: is dance truly ephemeral, or does it stay with us long after a performance has ended?

This group exhibition is composed of works of art, film-based works, installations and dance related materials from the following artists: Shary Boyle, Francesca Chudnoff, Ella Cooper, Mario Côté, Aganetha Dyck, Brendan Fernandes, Angela Miracle Gladue, Deepti Gupta, La calq, Michelle Latimer, Brandy Leary, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Zab Maboungou, Lola MacLaughlin, Freya Björg Olafson , Omar Rivero, aka Driftnote, Tedd Robinson, Brian Solomon, Laura Taler, Rosanna Terracciano and Anne Troake.

Dance in Canada today is politically, critically and artistically vibrant. Through a choreographic lens, artists, curators, and scholars propose unique perspectives and exchanges which continue to expand the landscape of dance.

Thunderstruck: Physical Landscapes presents the landscapes and layers of multiple dance communities, art practices and dancers from across Canada. It is a look at bodies, movements and dances within landscapes, as well as the body and dance as landscape. It also investigates the landscape in which dance is created, presented and received.

The exhibition title is twofold. In the literal sense, to be thunderstruck is to be struck by a major short-lived sonic explosion. Thunder is sound accompanied by lightning—like dance it is seemingly ephemeral and can have an immense impact. In the colloquial sense, to be thunderstruck is to be astonished, surprised and speechless. This exhibition presents the spirit of both meanings with a deep respect and passion for dance and its practitioners.

https://canadacouncil.ca/about/ajagemo/thunderstruck

https://canadacouncil.ca/about/ajagemo/thunderstruck/curatorial-statement

https://canadacouncil.ca/spotlight/2018/09/thunderstruck-behind-the-scenes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUiaxlW0XXU&feature=youtu.be

Thunderstruck

Aganetha Dyck, Brendan Fernandes, Angela Miracle Gladue, Jillian Groening, La calq, Michelle Latimer

Exhibition runs November 21 2019 - December 18 2019

Curated by: Jenn Goodwin

Opening night performance of Reverence by Brendan Fernandes- November 21, 2019. 7:00pm

Reverence is a performance by Brendan Fernandes that intervenes at cultural events and in public spaces where the dynamic of watching and being watched take place. Breaking the fourth wall and leveling the performer and the viewer, the work invites the tension and awkwardness of gratitude into the audience's space by subjecting them to a corps of dancers bowing in procession. The work incorporates this gesture repetitively to question its relation to class, privilege and hegemony.

THUNDERSTRUCK

The works of six artists are brought together to explore ideas of presence through movement, repetition, and landscape, employing the undercurrent of dance. Through these corporeal and material gestures the exhibition also considers the traces left behind in a physical practice.

Through repetition of a gesture or action, greater resonance and impact results through the recurrence; a dance move to a pulsing rhythm, a hand threading beads over and over again, a list of names cycling iteratively to create a community, a visual that is greater than the sum of its parts. Each piece creates an alternative focal point to the exhibit, and together, the works on display emphasize that physical and lived intelligence, somatic storytelling, body to body transmissions and connections, are not fleeting or ephemeral, but hold their own immense place and power.

Special thanks to the Art Bank for their support of this exhibition, as it is a redacted version of the exhibition at the Âjagemô in Ottawa.

BIOGRAPHIES

Aganetha Dyck, born 1937, is an acclaimed artist known internationally for her collaborations with live honeybees and her transformation of domestic objects and processes. Since the late seventies, her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions across Canada, in the U.S., England, France and in the Netherlands and is held in collections of major galleries including The Vancouver Art Gallery, The Winnipeg Art Gallery and The National Gallery of Canada. A selection of awards include The Manitoba Arts Council Award of Distinction (2007), Canada's Gorvernor General's Award for Visual and Media Arts (2007). Winnipeg Art City's Award (2013). Winnipeg Arts Council's Making a Mark Award (2014).

Brendan Fernandes is a Canadian artist of Kenyan and Indian descent who creates installations, images and performance at the intersection of dance and visual art. He completed the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum (2007), earned his MFA from the University of Western Ontario (2005) and his BFA from York University (2002). Fernandes has exhibited widely, including at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), MoMA (New York), the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles), MAC (Montreal) and the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa).

Angela Miracle Gladue (Cree name Iskoces (Little Fire/Spark) and b-girl name "Lunacee") began fancy shawl and Metis dancing at age six. By 17, she learned the traditional art of beadwork to make powwow regalia and gifts for people. At 18, Angela met a group of Indigenous b-boys in Edmonton and became a student of hip-hop culture and break dancing. She has trained under several teachers and trailblazers and has battled and performed at countless events worldwide. Most recently, she's performed as a lead dancer with A Tribe Called Red.

Jillian Groening's work explores care, resilience, and embodied memory while shifting in and through transdisciplinary methods of movement scoring. Her performance work has been presented through MAWA (Mentoring Artists for Women's Art), Jazz Winnipeg, and Plug In ICA's Summer Institute, and her art writing has been supported by The Dance Current, Dance International, and Young Lungs Dance Exchange. Groening holds a BA(Hons) in Dance from the School of Contemporary Dancers in affiliation with the University of Winnipeg and is currently pursuing a Masters in Theatre and Performance Studies at York University.

La calq is an anonymous artist, as well as a minor dance institution. Taking its name from the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Quebec (CALQ), it uses the feminine to highlight and challenge the hegemonic political structures embedded in cultural heritage institutions. La calq's choreographic works, writings, and installations aim to undo cultural objectivity by insisting that dance institutions be minor, loose, ever in motion and risk disappearing.

Michelle Latimer (Metis/Algonquin) is the showrunner, director and writer of the Viceland series RISE, which premiered at the Sundance Festival and won Best Documentary Program at the 2018 Canadian Screen Awards. While filming RISE, Michelle spent 9 months documenting the Standing Rock occupation in North Dakota. Her short film NUUCA, explores the relationship between extractive industries and violence perpetrated on Indigenous women and girls. Her films have screened internationally including at Sundance, TIFF, Berlin, and Cannes.

Jenn Goodwin is a graduate of the Master of Visual Studies - Curatorial Studies program at the University of Toronto. She received a BFA from Concordia University in Contemporary Dance with a minor in video. She is a dance artist, curator, and producer. Over the last 20 years her dance work and short films have been shown across Canada and internationally from St. John's Newfoundland, The Canada Dance Festival in Ottawa, Tangente and Studio 303 in Montreal, The Next Wave in Melbourne, Australia, Brussels, Amsterdam, New York City, Vancouver and extensively in Toronto. Goodwin is one half of the art band MORTIFIED with Camilla Singh which is a band that uses choreography, drum kits, tap dancing, and cheerleading as its instruments. Goodwin has worked with Toronto's Nuit Blanche since it's inception in 2006 and has curated performance and exhibitions for Summerworks Festival (2016), The Drake Hotel, and Harbourfront Centre. She has written for the Journal for Curatorial Studies, Canadian Theatre Review and The Dance Current. She lives in Toronto with her husband and their two sons.

Rosé Porn
Zoja Smutny- In collaboration with artists Victoria Cheong, Florian Kowatz, Ilektra Almetidu, Aundrea Bell, Stanja Polivkova, Beata, Zusana Selingorova, Sarah Doucet & Guntar Kravis July 13 to August 10, 2019

Guest curated by Jenn Goodwin

at Zalucky Contemporary

Opening Reception: Saturday July 13, 3 - 5PM
*Zoja Smutny will deliver a performance at 4PM

SPECIAL PROGRAMMING
Thursday July 18, 6 - 8PM
A conversation with artist Zoja Smutny and curator Jenn Goodwin

Rosé Porn is a series of works created or commissioned by Greek-Czech-Canadian choreographer Zoja Smutny. It is best described as a concept album that takes form through live performance, music, dance and installations. In response to the original performance (and by invitation), other artists have contributed to the project by creating merchandise (jewellery, bags, fragrances, clothes, etc.), artworks, as well as the design and re-mix of the vinyl album. First presented in 2015 at Dancemakers Centre for Creation in Toronto, it has since been staged at the Darling Foundry in Montreal, Night Gallery in Los Angeles, and in Athens as an off-site project during Documenta 14.

Rosé Porn toys with notions of pleasure, seduction and the commodification of aesthetics. In Smutny’s choreography, dancers get close to the audience and, as alluded in the title, voyeurism becomes entwined with intimacy. At the same time however, the project also explores the ephemerality of performance and its perceived worth. Blurring the boundaries between art and object, liveness and trace, gallery and gift shop, the works in the exhibition were created out of the desire to explore what forms could manifest out of the artist’s dance. In the process, Smutny extends the life of a performance through the responses, traces and records of what once was.

The album itself attempts to address the listener directly on a “one to one” basis, softening the divide between personal and public space. Taking cues from deep house, ambient music, beat tapes and instructional audio, theRosé Porn album is a soundtrack representing musical moments from the live performances of Rosé Porn from 2015 - 2017. The album’s sonic world includes samples of conversations, a guided meditation, lyrical pop references, atmospheric instrumentals and original love song material. Following the logic of the performance, the record scores moments of connection and separation, riffing on memories and fantasies, articulating the collective presence of live performance while playing with the conventions of pop songs.

Through the fantastical, multi-layered framework that is Rosé Porn, the audience is invited into a dance that reverberates long after the performance is over, and the gallery doors are closed.

- Jenn Goodwin


Zoja Smutny is an interdisciplinary artist that uses choreography and liveness as an entry point into making artworks. For the last several years, her practice has laboured over the questions - "How will we spend time together?" and "How can dance make an object?" Through this line of inquiry, the concept album Rosé Porn, a collaboration with music producer/artist Victoria Cheong, came to be. Zoja was born in Czechoslovakia to a Greek mother and Czech father during the time of the Russian occupation. In 1977, her family was forced to escape and moved to Canada. Smutny’s work is influenced by her personal history of displacement, desire to belong, finding ways of communicating, movement, music, fashion, pop, images, and fantasy. Smutny is deeply devoted to collaboration, and it informs the core of her practice. Her main body of work has been produced alongside photographer Guntar Kravis (CDN), and visual artist Athina Stamati (GR).

"School" is an ongoing experiment in informal theoretical education, interested in lateral translations between specialized languages of theoretical and critical work and other forms of expression and social experience. Founded in 2014 by Jonathan Adjemian and Xenia Benivolski, it has operated sporadically since under Jonathan's guidance, running seminars on conceptualism, practice, phenomenology, food, citizenship, and poetry, at Toronto art institutions including Gallery TPW, Erin Stump Projects, the MOCCA, Videofag, Double Double Land, and 8/11.

This “School” will embark on a sharing of knowledge, questions and conversations based in and around the body and its choreographic disposition as a place and source for information and insight. Our focus will be on the expanding exchange between dance and visual art. Each week readings will be provided to be read prior to “class.” We will go through each assigned piece together and discuss, consider and debate. Full details further down.

Jenn Goodwin is a dance artist, curator, producer, a film maker. She is recent graduate of the Master of Visual Studies - Curatorial Studies program at the University of Toronto, and holds a BFA from Concordia University in Contemporary Dance with a minor in video. Over the last 20 years her dance work and short films have been shown across Canada and internationally. She has worked as a curator for Nuit Blanche, Summerworks Festival, the Drake Hotel, and Harbourfront Centre, and published in the Journal for Curatorial Studies and the Dance Current.



To sign up, please email quoteschool@gmail.com
Photo credit- Guntar Kravis. Dancer: Kristy Kennedy (at Gallery TPW R&D)

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Proposal:

Contemporary performance - and dance in particular - is currently engaged in an active and broad dialogue about its position in the art world (past, present, and future). With a resurgence of interest in dance and choreography in visual art galleries and institutions, we are seeing an expansion of the practice of choreography, and a new-found prominence of liveness in exhibitions. 

This might be explained in part by the demand for galleries, under pressure to produce new forms of the contemporary, to consistently forge out into new terrain. But the intersection of dance and visual art also raises significant questions of both sides. Performance in a gallery setting destabilizes the idea of an art object, its permanence, and the types of care it demands. And for the dance artist, a visual art setting problematizes what it is to perform, the why and how of what in another context might seem the simple definition of their art.

In this series we will explore presence and power of live art, assessing why this convergence between visual and live embodied art is occurring, and why is it important now. We will treat practical, logistical concerns, such as how to care for bodies and related works in spaces made for stasis, and note examples of choreographic works that go beyond “event,” to exhibition. We will also touch on ideas around collection, archives, and legacy-challenging notions of ephemerality, looking towards an enduring and productive relationship between dance and visual art. 

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Week 1: CHOREOPOLITICS
More and more visual artists are exploring choreographic work, gesture, and the materiality of the body, and more and more choreographers are working in visual art-based galleries and institutions. Why is this resurgence occurring and why is it important now? We may find some answers in considering how the body exists in relation to time and space, and how we relate to and engage with each other. As Jenn Joy, author of The Choreographic, has noted, “choreography invites a rethinking of orientation in relationship to space, to language, to composition, to articulation and to ethics. To engage choreographically is to position oneself in relation to another, to participate in a scene of address that anticipates and requires a particular mode of attention, even at times against our will” (Joy.1).

Week 2: EPHEMERALITY
Here we will explore the endurance and transmission of the ephemeral and its transmission as a critical aspect of performance, and the creation of information and data that extend and enhance performative experiences. The gap between live performance itself and the physical traces of its movements draws attention to the presence and absence of the body, the question of “how performance comes off the body.” 

Week 3: ARCHIVE
Thinking the relation between the body in performance and the traces left behind its absence calls for a reworking of the idea of the archive. The categorization, preservation, and historicization of performed works challenges us to rethink issues of objecthood, ownership, and transmission, while raising questions as the to limits and limitations of archives and archiving.

Week 4: CARE [& choreography in the cube]
Presenting dance and live art provides artists, curators, and programmers with distinctive challenges around care-related issues. Questions of value, labour, and payment for time spent/presence can and should be raised; however, if this questioning can be undertaken with resourcefulness, equity, and clarity of means, it need not necessarily be an obstacle. While conversation, information sharing, and advocacy addressing labour and compensation in the are becoming more frequent, more and more thoughtful approaches are needed.

https://www.toronto.ca/explore-enjoy/festivals-events/nuitblanche/nuit-history/

https://torontobiennial.org/team/jenn-goodwin/

https://torontobiennial.org/