The Western Front

Saturday, June 7, 2008
7-10pm

The Performance Art program is pleased to announce an evening of art actions addressing the body: as social body, as material body, as ephemeral body, as mediated body. Please join us for an evening of new works by Julie Bacon (UK), John Boehme (Can), Scott Kildall (USA), Cheto Castellano as “Nako Tako” (Chile) and David Khang (Can) with guest appearance by Coco Rico.

WARPOEM II: War(e)house by Julie Bacon: “Following the 2007 presentation of WARPOEM: Almanach in PAIR02 International Performance Event at the Taidepanimo Cultural Centre, Lahti, Finland, Western Front receives WARPOEM II: War(e)house.”

Belonging Networks by ©John G. Boehme: “I will through interaction, make a live physical “Connection” with each audience member.Contact aurally, emotionally, psychically, physically will be made. A belonging network created.”

Dental Drawings is a collaboration between Cheto Castellano and David Khang (guest appearance by Coco Rico) Castellano, a Chilean artist and body hacker, manipulates his corpus through tattoos,incisions, implants, etc., while Khang, who experiments with organs of language, is informed by clinical training in dentistry. This collaboration is a unique marriage of practices, where live dentistry will be performed on Castellano’s teeth by Khang, creating dental decorations in traditional Mayan designs that are reminiscent of Latin America’s pre-colonial heritage. The artists de-naturalize their quotidian identities by bringing avatars into the performance scenario, Khang (aka Dr. DK/decay) uses his dental training to create a corporal intervention that exceeds normative dental practice, while Castellano assumes the patient position through an entity he calls, “Nako Tako,” a hybrid clown that assumes the features of both Ronald McDonald and a Latin American Lucha Libre wrestler. This performance will happen in two stages in the two cities the artists call home – Vancouver (The Western Front) and Santiago de Chile.

Video Portraits by Scott Kildall: “I ask a stranger for a photograph and instead I shoot video with my digital camera. Each person strikes a distinctive pose with a fixed smile and stares directly at the viewer, tapping into a universal experience of anticipation. Subjects range from gay men at a pride parade, surfers in California, taxi drivers in Brazil, shoppers at a flea market and drunk people dressed in Santa outfits. Like conventional photographs, these serve as travel souvenirs. The videos grant duration to the photographic instant. The camera acts as a human eye, reflecting the complete shift to a documentation-based culture.”