The Drag

Wednesday, September 21 (locations and times as listed below)

Over the past few years, Vancouver has seen a renaissance in which a new generation of artists, curators, critics and culture workers are creating their own DYI aesthetic at temporary and transient galleries, studios and venues across the city.

Frustrated with the status quo, emerging artists and their supporters are inventing their own terms of cultural engagement to build a unique holistic critical base.

LIVE 2011 see this community as vital and invite their talent, input and collaboration.

To enhance 2011 program LIVE is presenting The Drag a showcase of young artists in five emerging galleries, to include the new artists and community. The performances and interventions will be presented in one night with the crowd sequentially migrating from one space to another. This initiative will go into the wee hours and will present opportunity for the new galleries and artists to strut their stuff. Anything can and hopefully will happen.

The Drag: 1 night, 7 young artists, 4 emerging galleries and 1 infamous park!

The Drag has a coordinated DTES guided tour of the evening's performances by the one and only Abigail Maria Fernandes, beginning at 221A, 7pm. For those who can not make the first part of the tour or wish to find their own way please refer to schedule below.

The Drag/Walking Tour Schedule:
(* indicates a performance's duration happening outside of the tour's timeline)
See map below.

221A (221A E. Georgia St.)
Stained
Golboo Amani
7:00pm

DOVA (201- 79 E. Pender St. 2nd Floor)
GOLD RUSH
DRIL
7:45pm
*Performance begins at 6:30pm

Pigeon Park (W. Hastings St. and Carrall St.)
5 Minute Festival
The Cruz Brothers
8:30pm

Shudder Gallery (433 Columbia St.)
Algerian White
Stacey Ho
9:00pm

Playing War Games
Femke van Delft and Dave Chokroun
9:30pm

Gam Gallery (110 E. Hastings St.)
Guandalupe Martinez
10:00pm
*All day performance

The Drag After Party
10:30pm

Artist's Statements and Bios

Cruz Brothers
The Cruz Brothers
5 Minute Festival
Pigeon Park
8:30pm

In dire times of the performative and the institutional, The Cruz brothers perform as curators. With a six year lineage of performance art conflated with performing arts and a seven year concentrated focus on critical assertion partnered with indulgent and excessive varied forms of inebriation, they produce this performance piece. Its idea attempts to frame, question and address the differences, similarities and overlaps of performance art in relation to other practices whose nature is also of the performative.

The Cruz brothers are going to produce a festival inside a festival. The objective is not to critique the pre-determined structure but rather appropriate its governing methodologies. It is a play, a study, an exercise and a composition that conforms and supports notions of the spectacular, the immaculate, the immediate and the delusional. Like a quick and a relaxed smoke break, like a constructed happenstance, like a passing thought, like a gush of heebeegeebees, this piece intervenes within the confines and context of five minutes.

The Cruz Brothers are Francis Cruz and Patrick Cruz; both live and work in Vancouver, Canada. Their collaborations have consistently dealt with identity, displacement, hierarchy and the mediations concerning the spectacle. Their work has been exhibited at VIVO media arts centre, Brow Gallery and 221a Artist Run Centre.

DRIL
DRIL
GOLD RUSH
DOVA
6:30pm-8:30pm

Come down and share the highs and lows as DRIL scratches away their collective artist fee, one dollar at a time. In the lead up to The Drag, DRIL will prospect for kiosks and corner stores, exchanging their artist fees for the always popular scratch & win game: GOLD RUSH.

During The Drag, DRIL will present the performance GOLD RUSH, where they will scratch ticket after ticket as a dubious act of blind faith in an attempt to beat the odds. In a dark room, this game of chance will be displayed on a large screen, through an overhead projector allowing the audience to witness the live play by play action and outcome of each scratch and win.

DRIL is a Vancouver based art collective comprised of Dylan McHugh, Rachel White, Ian Prentice and Leisha O'Donohue. All members of the group received their BFA at NSCAD University in 2006-07. DRIL began officially working together as a collective in 2009. DRIL's Exhibitions include Drifter's Clip at Open Space, Move It On Over at Shudder Gallery, "The Good Old Days[...] When Times Were Bad" a large scale installation at Centre A as a part of the World Tea Party for the Cultural Olympiad and City Hall, a site specific public art project hosted by the Drawn festival.

Dave Chokroun
Femke van Delft
Dave Chokroun & Femke van Delft
Shudder Gallery
9:30pm

A colony of bees built a floor to ceiling hive between two joists of an outside wall in a 1920's miner's hut. In the early 1940's an addition was built that sealed the fate of the colony. When the house was renovated in late 1999 the desiccated remains were given to us. We used them to create this piece, called "War Games". Playing War Games is an interdisciplinary performance that uses sculpture and music to interpret data from the Vancouver real estate market.

Using extended performance techniques from contemporary music practices, Chokroun transforms van Delft's sculpture, "War Games", into an uncanny acoustic instrument. instrument .

Dave Chokroun is a composer and improvising musician. He has been a featured performer at Open Space (Victoria), Western Front, Vancouver Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Calgary, and in the Vancouver Jazz Festival. He holds a B. Mus from the University of Victoria and an MFA from Simon Fraser University. Dave performs with the bands French for Sled Dogs, Robots on Fire, and the Sorrow and the Pity, and co-directs the Institute for the Study of Advanced Musical Research.

Femke van Delft is an award-winning visual and performance artist who is based in Vancouver, BC. She has shown her work nationally in galleries in British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario and internationally in venues in San Francisco and Ireland. Van Delft has a B.Sc (Gen) from the University of Alberta and a BA (Eng. Lit) from the University of Lethbridge. She also works as a professional photographer.

Golboo Amani

Golboo Amani
Stained
221A
7pm

In Iranian culture the use of henna has been documented as far back as the Ghaznavid Empire, which existed from 975 to 1187. Henna is generally applied to the skin in intricate patterns that reference not only the artists own style but also the regional and cultural heritage, personal taste and class, of the person wearing the stain. It is said the more intricate and darker the stain the more wealth and privilege is implied. It is very difficult for one to henna ones self, the stain is generally applied to the body by another person. Often applied in harams or women?s hamams(baths), henna on the body is predominantly a feminine practice of beautifying or making the skin visually and sexually appealing. Many Persian poets and painters have admire the beauty of hennaed hands and. Henna traditionally is meant for younger women with the exception of young babies and sometimes highly valued horses and dogs and very rarely men. Hanna not only has medicinal purposes as a pain killer, anti-inflammatory and natural sunscreen but also acted as a way to ward off the evil eye when painted on before being betrothed, births and even used as part of preparatory ceremonies for war and rebellion. Historically European travelers expressed their distain for the practice describing the stained hands and feet as looking dirty or stained with filth, causing the art form to fall from trend.

My performance will include the preparation of the henna paste and the application of it to my body. The green mud will cover all the areas of my body that I can reach. It will stain my skin. I will then wash the mud off and reapply the mud for a darker stain.

Golboo Amani, a graduate of ECUAD, is an interdisciplinary artist working with photography, installation, and performance. With a focus on process and research, Golboo's practice fits within the discourse of knowledge production and distribution to highlight ways in which language and gestures become dominant tools of informing and imagining the world.

Stacey Ho
Stacey Ho
Algerian White
Shudder Gallery
9pm

A collection of passages around Algeria are written and erased from a wall. Complementing the excerpts and their erasure, gestures and their inversions are performed. These actions reflect the process of recording and losing history. What remains after this nullifying process is as ineffable and impractical as research, remembrance, and other such practices that attempt to find and preserve knowledge.

Stacey Ho dabbles in art-making, art-curating, art-writing, and art-participating, focusing on sound, photography, performance, and printed matter. The research and documentation of written and oral narratives is an integral part of her work. Holding a BFA from NSCAD University, she has recently performed in events through Montreal's Nuit Blanche and the FADO Performance Art Centre, as well as exhibited with the eyelevel gallery and the MacLaren Art Centre.

Guadalupe Martinez
Guadalupe Martinez
The Gam Gallery
All day durational performance.

My work is a constant exploration-of and experimenting-with identity, place and materials. As a recent immigrant to Canada, the interrelationship between body, self and territory has become the main focus in my practice. This interest is stemmed in the desire to understand subject-object relational dynamics within a conceptual framework that comprises otherness, hybridization and deterritorialization as the main concerns. In a world where we are physically and intellectually confronted to diversity and multiculturalism, my work intends to trace the touchstone for understanding that which defines identity and that which creates the sense of difference. I am currently investigating the ways in which ritual may take place as a formal platform for my practice. I consider Performance Art to be the foundation of and Art, which embodies meaning through action and experience and for this reason I devote my practice to cultivating this medium. For LIVE I desire to explore the idea of Pilgrimage as an ongoing search for place and home.

Guadalupe Martinez is an interdisciplinary Argentine artist currently based in Vancouver, B.C. Martinez obtained a BFA from the National University of Arts in Buenos Aires with a major in printmaking. Her interest drove her to research the relationship between art and ritual as her main focus. After actively teaching and exhibiting her work in Argentina she moved to Canada where she settled in 2009. She has attended residencies and had exhibitions at The Hammock Residency, The Banff Centre for the Arts, The STAG and Shudder Gallery. Her work has been shown in Argentina, Mexico, USA and Canada.

The Drag Map

Gallery Bios

221A Artist Run Centre is a non-profit organization that supports and facilitates dialogue between contemporary art and design. Over the past year, the organization has engaged over 5000 public visitors to acquire new knowledge and understanding around historical, social, and intellectual conditions of contemporary society through exhibitions, talks, workshops and publications.

Drop Out Video Arts (DOVA) is a newly-founded non-profit organization motivated toward the promotion of experimental video-art in Vancouver, Canada. Previously a tight-nit group of independent artists residing in the Downtown Eastside, DOVA decided to form a non-profit in late 2010 with a goal of bringing this highly collaborative art-form into larger, more publicly accessible venues.

The Gam is a gallery, boutique and artist studio located in Vancouver's downtown eastside and fronts an artist-only building (ACME Studios) at 110 E Hastings St. The Gam exists because it sees a need to create an inclusive meeting place for artists and community members. It is a place to locate oneself as an important participant and an active agent in fostering a dynamic and thoughtful culture. To accomplish our goal we integrate community events (such as potlucks-FEAST), chess/games nights, open studios, model drawing, theater and music performances with a regular exhibition schedule to create an encompassing space.

Shudder Gallery was established in October 2007 and has run independently for the past four years. Shudder Gallery is located on Columbia Street on the fringe of Chinatown and East Hastings Street. The gallery's primary focus is to exhibit emerging artists works that are experimental, complex and relevant to the current art discourse occurring within Vancouver.

	The Cruz Brothers 5 Minute Festival Pigeon Park 8:30pm In dire times of the performative and the institutional, The Cruz brothers perform as curators. With a six year lineage of performance art conflated with performing arts and a seven year concentrated focus on critical assertion partnered with indulgent and excessive varied forms of inebriation, they produce this performance piece. Its idea attempts to frame, question and address the differences, similarities and overlaps of performance art in relation to other practices whose nature is also of the performative. The Cruz brothers are going to produce a festival inside a festival. The objective is not to critique the pre-determined structure but rather appropriate its governing methodologies. It is a play, a study, an exercise and a composition that conforms and supports notions of the spectacular, the immaculate, the immediate and the delusional. Like a quick and a relaxed smoke break, like a constructed happenstance, like a passing thought, like a gush of heebeegeebees, this piece intervenes within the confines and context of five minutes. The Cruz Brothers are Francis Cruz and Patrick Cruz; both live and work in Vancouver, Canada. Their collaborations have consistently dealt with identity, displacement, hierarchy and the mediations concerning the spectacle. Their work has been exhibited at VIVO media arts centre, Brow Gallery and 221a Artist Run Centre.
	DRIL GOLD RUSH DOVA 6:30pm-8:30pm Come down and share the highs and lows as DRIL scratches away their collective artist fee, one dollar at a time. In the lead up to The Drag, DRIL will prospect for kiosks and corner stores, exchanging their artist fees for the always popular scratch & win game: GOLD RUSH. During The Drag, DRIL will present the performance GOLD RUSH, where they will scratch ticket after ticket as a dubious act of blind faith in an attempt to beat the odds. In a dark room, this game of chance will be displayed on a large screen, through an overhead projector allowing the audience to witness the live play by play action and outcome of each scratch and win. DRIL is a Vancouver based art collective comprised of Dylan McHugh, Rachel White, Ian Prentice and Leisha O'Donohue. All members of the group received their BFA at NSCAD University in 2006-07. DRIL began officially working together as a collective in 2009. DRIL's Exhibitions include Drifter's Clip at Open Space, Move It On Over at Shudder Gallery, "The Good Old Days[...] When Times Were Bad" a large scale installation at Centre A as a part of the World Tea Party for the Cultural Olympiad and City Hall, a site specific public art project hosted by the Drawn festival.
	Dave Chokroun & Femke van Delft Shudder Gallery 9:30pm A colony of bees built a floor to ceiling hive between two joists of an outside wall in a 1920's miner's hut. In the early 1940's an addition was built that sealed the fate of the colony. When the house was renovated in late 1999 the desiccated remains were given to us. We used them to create this piece, called "War Games". Playing War Games is an interdisciplinary performance that uses sculpture and music to interpret data from the Vancouver real estate market. Using extended performance techniques from contemporary music practices, Chokroun transforms van Delft's sculpture, "War Games", into an uncanny acoustic instrument. instrument . Dave Chokroun is a composer and improvising musician. He has been a featured performer at Open Space (Victoria), Western Front, Vancouver Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Calgary, and in the Vancouver Jazz Festival. He holds a B. Mus from the University of Victoria and an MFA from Simon Fraser University. Dave performs with the bands French for Sled Dogs, Robots on Fire, and the Sorrow and the Pity, and co-directs the Institute for the Study of Advanced Musical Research. Femke van Delft is an award-winning visual and performance artist who is based in Vancouver, BC. She has shown her work nationally in galleries in British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario and internationally in venues in San Francisco and Ireland. Van Delft has a B.Sc (Gen) from the University of Alberta and a BA (Eng. Lit) from the University of Lethbridge. She also works as a professional photographer.
	Golboo Amani Stained 221A 7pm In Iranian culture the use of henna has been documented as far back as the Ghaznavid Empire, which existed from 975 to 1187. Henna is generally applied to the skin in intricate patterns that reference not only the artists own style but also the regional and cultural heritage, personal taste and class, of the person wearing the stain. It is said the more intricate and darker the stain the more wealth and privilege is implied. It is very difficult for one to henna ones self, the stain is generally applied to the body by another person. Often applied in harams or women?s hamams(baths), henna on the body is predominantly a feminine practice of beautifying or making the skin visually and sexually appealing. Many Persian poets and painters have admire the beauty of hennaed hands and. Henna traditionally is meant for younger women with the exception of young babies and sometimes highly valued horses and dogs and very rarely men. Hanna not only has medicinal purposes as a pain killer, anti-inflammatory and natural sunscreen but also acted as a way to ward off the evil eye when painted on before being betrothed, births and even used as part of preparatory ceremonies for war and rebellion. Historically European travelers expressed their distain for the practice describing the stained hands and feet as looking dirty or stained with filth, causing the art form to fall from trend. My performance will include the preparation of the henna paste and the application of it to my body. The green mud will cover all the areas of my body that I can reach. It will stain my skin. I will then wash the mud off and reapply the mud for a darker stain. Golboo Amani, a graduate of ECUAD, is an interdisciplinary artist working with photography, installation, and performance. With a focus on process and research, Golboo's practice fits within the discourse of knowledge production and distribution to highlight ways in which language and gestures become dominant tools of informing and imagining the world.
	Stacey Ho Algerian White Shudder Gallery 9pm A collection of passages around Algeria are written and erased from a wall. Complementing the excerpts and their erasure, gestures and their inversions are performed. These actions reflect the process of recording and losing history. What remains after this nullifying process is as ineffable and impractical as research, remembrance, and other such practices that attempt to find and preserve knowledge. Stacey Ho dabbles in art-making, art-curating, art-writing, and art-participating, focusing on sound, photography, performance, and printed matter. The research and documentation of written and oral narratives is an integral part of her work. Holding a BFA from NSCAD University, she has recently performed in events through Montreal's Nuit Blanche and the FADO Performance Art Centre, as well as exhibited with the eyelevel gallery and the MacLaren Art Centre.
	Guadalupe Martinez The Gam Gallery All day durational performance. My work is a constant exploration-of and experimenting-with identity, place and materials. As a recent immigrant to Canada, the interrelationship between body, self and territory has become the main focus in my practice. This interest is stemmed in the desire to understand subject-object relational dynamics within a conceptual framework that comprises otherness, hybridization and deterritorialization as the main concerns. In a world where we are physically and intellectually confronted to diversity and multiculturalism, my work intends to trace the touchstone for understanding that which defines identity and that which creates the sense of difference. I am currently investigating the ways in which ritual may take place as a formal platform for my practice. I consider Performance Art to be the foundation of and Art, which embodies meaning through action and experience and for this reason I devote my practice to cultivating this medium. For LIVE I desire to explore the idea of Pilgrimage as an ongoing search for place and home. Guadalupe Martinez is an interdisciplinary Argentine artist currently based in Vancouver, B.C. Martinez obtained a BFA from the National University of Arts in Buenos Aires with a major in printmaking. Her interest drove her to research the relationship between art and ritual as her main focus. After actively teaching and exhibiting her work in Argentina she moved to Canada where she settled in 2009. She has attended residencies and had exhibitions at The Hammock Residency, The Banff Centre for the Arts, The STAG and Shudder Gallery. Her work has been shown in Argentina, Mexico, USA and Canada.