all our days are full of breath: a record of momentum
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Partners
Jenn Goodwin, Curator
Visual Studies, University of Toronto (Graduate Curatorial Program)
Art Museum, Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, University of Toronto
Jessica Karuhanga, Visual/Performance Artist
Brandy Leary, Choreographer/Dance Artist
Premier Date
March 24th 2017
all our days are full of breath: a record of momentum was originally presented at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto as Jenn Goodwin’s masters thesis exhibition. The exhibition brought together two artists who foreground the body and movement as material in evolving choreographic and installation-based works. Through interpretations of Goodwin's proposal, Jessica Karuhanga and Brandy Leary each transformed the gallery into a place of kinesthetic field work: part performance, part laboratory, part choreographed sculpture. The result was two unique works: Jessica Karuhanga's Through a Brass Channel performed by Karuhanga, Jazmine V Carr, Ahlam Mohammed, Maandeeq Mohamed, Kimberley Wint and Brandy Leary's Ephemeral Artifacts performed by Leary, Mafa Makhubalo, Supriya Nayak, Travis Knights, Nikola Steer.The artists utilized bodies, gestures and reciprocal objects as their materials. The work strived to mine personal, cultural, ancestral, and corporeal archives. The exhibition explored endurance of the ephemeral and its transmission as a critical aspect of performance, and shows the subsequent creation of information and data that extend and enhance the experience.
Excerpt from: Ephemeral Artifacts
Choreography and Installation: Brandy Leary
Performed by: Mafa Makhubalo
I have always been deeply struck by the energetic traces and transmissions left in spaces; between the performer and an audience, between bodies and objects/architectures/landscapes, or in the mind scape long after the initial encounter has passed. Ephemeral Artifacts attempts to unsettle notions of dance’s ephemerality; the perception that it is momentary and fleeting, through the presence and absence of bodies, sculpture and a sonic field. Examining the friction between ephemerality and tangibility this work unfolds as a collaborative examination of accumulated practice and accumulated presence through the material of the body. Bodies archive dance, history, ancestors and shared practices, collapsing time to render them always present and always contemporary through channeling and summoning. These bodies and gestures do not disappear the moment after they are performed, they transform into other things, holding a politic, a record, a resistance, and a discourse that continues to work on us long after the moment of contact. – Brandy Leary
Jenn Goodwin is completing her Masters 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, producer, and filmmaker. Over the last 20 years her dance work and short films have been shown across Canada and internationally. 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 and The Dance Current. She lives in Toronto with her husband and their two sons.
Brandy Leary creates contemporary performances through the body: active as a dancer, choreographer, aerialist, writer, arts advocate, community cultivator, space maker, Artistic Director, educator and curator. Her performance works have been produced and performed in Canada, Europe, India, South Africa and the USA in theatres, urban environments, festivals, museums, art galleries and isolated landscapes. www.anandam.ca
Mafa Makhubalo started dancing at the age of five and continued his training with Tony Campbell, founder and director of ZAPAC (Zamdela Performing Arts Centre) in South Africa. Mafa obtain a three-year National Diploma in dance at Tshwane University of Technology. After moving to Toronto, he completed a two-year training program at Ballet Creole School of Arts. Mafa in Toronto had the opportunity to work with choreographers like Milton Myers, Danny Grossman, Debbie Wilson, Gabby Kamino, and also company member of, Collective OF Black Artist, Ballet Creole, OMO Dance Company, Nyata-nyata in Montreal and Mafa Dance Village. Mafa has presented his works in varies events, Ontario Dance Weekend, International Association of Blacks in Dance (IABD) in Toronto, Body Percussion Festival, Dance Immersion Show Case. He was invited for the 2008 Choreographers Lab program at the school of Jacob’s Pillow (Lee, Ma, USA), 2009 apprenticeship program Stagecraft and Six Weeks Dance program at American Dance Festival (Durham, NC, USA. When not on stage Mafa is actively involved in community outreach programs that help youth realize their potential goals through the arts and has Jury for Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts Council. He has been invited by Canada Ballet Jorgen as a choreographer for Solos & Duets and Summer Intensive program annual series from 2013-2016 and also Toronto Rhythm Initiative Summer Youth Intensive workshop.
Nick Storring is a Toronto-based composer, musician and writer. Winner of the Canadian Music Centre's 2011 Toronto Emerging Composer Award, he also placed first in the 2008 Jeux De Temps competition for electroacoustic composition. His music has been presented and performed by the Esprit Orchestra, Eve Egoyan (a 24-minute commissioned solo work) Quatuor Bozzini, Beijing's Musicacoustica Festival, and Vancouver New Music. An avid collaborator, Storring has composed for films by Terrance Odette, Ingrid Veninger and, in collaboration with Dafydd Hughes, for the National Film Board's award-winning web documentary High Rise : Universe Within directed by Katerina Cizek. He's also scored productions by Litmus Theatre and MT Space, worked with celebrated choreographers, Yvonne Ng, Marie-Josée Chartier, Brandy Leary, and Deepti Gupta, and created music for 'ambient gaming environment' Tentacle which was mounted at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 2011. Tiny Mix Tapes recently said of his 2016 album Exaptations "Storring HAS IT, his compositional prowess only eclipsed by his sense of atmosphere and space." Storring has written for a number of different publications including Exclaim!, the Wire, and AUX.tv. He's the Contributing Editor for Musicworks Magazine and has written for them since 2008. In 2017 one of his pieces for them was nominated for a National Magazine Award. He also contributed liner notes to Alga Marghen's reissue of 1960's pioneers Intersystems' entire catalogue, Syrinx's triple LP reissue Tumblers from the Vault on RVNG Intl and UK label Another Timbre's Canadian Series.
www.nickstorring.ca
Thanks to: Buddies in Bad Times, Ontario Arts Council, Anandam Dancetheatre, Toronto Arts Council, Collective Space, Goutam Gupta, Soraya Peerbaye, Metcalf Foundation and the Art Museum team and staff.
Photos by Omer Yukseker of Mafa Makhubalo
