The Oxford Dictionary defines the word “coalesce” as to “come together to form one mass or whole.” The Coalesce Performance Art Festival used this unique idea to celebrate the medium of performance art.
“Currently there are only two other performance art festivals that happen in Canada,” said Jaclyn Meloche, curator of the exhibition.
The festival was spread out over four locations to support the 14 performances. Carleton University Art Gallery (CUAG), which is underground in St. Patrick’s building, served as a site for five artists and their work.
Meloche said each performance relied on some element of setting. She explained that an “institutional gallery like CUAG versus a commercial space . . . those relationships have really become an interesting and transformative platform for what performance can be and how it can be shown, represented, and experienced.”
Brendan de Montigny, the owner of PDA Projects and co-presenter of Coalesce, said, “there has been this sort of, an interesting cut that has taken place with regards to what can and cannot or has not, [and] has been chosen in commercial spaces.”
“The performance festival is a way to disrupt maybe some binaries, [or] a binary that happens. A relationship that has occurred in Canada where we see commercial galleries being one thing and [artistic] centres being others, and the performance festival, is in a way, me being able to play with these sort of issues,” de Montigny said.
Two artists who performed were Cara Tierney with “Melt I” and Stephanie Nadeau’s “I know you believe you understand what you think I said.”
Tierney’s piece lasted two hours and forty minutes and was set up as a sculptural gallery installation with a sound artist.
“I stood on plinth, with a chain around my neck, with two ice breasts hanging from the chain. So it touches on a surgical procedure I had about two or three years ago now,” Tierney said, referring to her mastectomy. “You could just see my two scars, I think that was a very confrontational image . . . and I think it sort of links up to this battle that I feel like I have taken on, having this body now that is non-normative.”
Nadeau’s five-hour art piece touched on the idea of communication and collaboration between people. Her performance consisted of Nadeau and an audience member facing away from each other and making art, while talking to one another.
“It’s really about the collaboration and communication, so the idea is like interacting with someone that I can’t see but I can hear and we are working out making something together though giving and taking directions,” Nadeau said.
“I’ve always also been interested in how people communicate, and the layers of communication, and the disjuncture or the disjointedness between what someone says and what someone hears, and I thought it would just be a really cool exercise to make art in this way,” Nadeau said.
Coalesce has officially ended now, but Brendan de Montigny said he hopes this festival sparks a new interest in Ottawa for the medium.
“You always hope that there will be another reiteration and I hope that there will be. Whether it will be Coalesce or another name, that has yet to be seen, but I hope that if it’s not us then its another organization that will put the next foot forward in terms of bringing this type of artistic expression to the Ottawa community and public,” de Montigny said.
