tenant profile

Shannon Cochrane at Performance Art Links in Sweden (April 2012)

FADO Performance Art Centre Studio 445

In a small office on the fourth floor, FADO Performance Art Centres (Studio 445) Artistic and Administrative Director Shannon Cochrane runs the only artist-run centre in English Canada devoted exclusively to performance art. She programs an impressive roster of Canadian and international performance artists in both traditional and unexpected venues throughout Toronto. FADO is actually a centre without a physical centre. They purposefully work without a fixed presentation space so that the projects they produce are not limited by a specific environment. The self-imposed challenge is to find the right fit for each performance and let it inform the overall experience, much like 401 Richmonds open-air courtyard did for Swiss artist Claudia Bucher last September (see photo on Table of Contents page). FADOs exclusive focus on performance art makes it one of the strongest advocates for this often misunderstood and marginal art form. Audiences tend to rely on the conventions of a medium (art on the wall, performance on the stage) to give them cues about how to interact with what they are viewing. Performance art disrupts these conventions, thus creating an intimate space that is temporal, spatial, embodied, and relational. Outside of their year-round programming, which includes partnerships with the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art and many others, FADO also holds artist talks, festivals, residencies, exchanges, and workshops. They have a very busy spring coming up that includes Film: Rope by Francesco Gagliardi at the 26th annual Images Festival (Studio 448) in April. The piece explores the relationship between cinematic space and live performance, highlighting the ways we attempt to translate the staged environment in cinematic space into real space. Starting on March 6, FADO presents Alice De Visscher and Simla Civelek at the Theatre Centre Pop-Up where each artist will present two short performance works in alternating sequence. The format allows the audience to consider the work of two peers from Belgium and Turkey/Toronto respectively, side by side, in real time. Next is the Emerging Artists Series: .sight. specific. curated by Francisco-Fernando Granados that includes live performance projects from Basil AlZeri, Golboo Amani, Cressida Kocienski, and Maryham Taghavi at Xpace Cultural Centre from March 8 to 30. Perhaps what makes performance art most interesting is also what makes it the most uncomfortable: artists and audiences rarely get to interact so intimately, a situation that could be exhilarating, or a little too close for comfort. You wont know until you try it! www.performanceart.ca

Denis Romanovski