This is the closing event for the Flow Symposium, presented by Out of Site, April 22-May 9, 2021. For more information about the symposium, click here: https://www.flowsymposium.org/

＊ Welcome to the Lunchtime Event from 10 to 4 am ＊ shows 4 performance art pieces created by the artists, specially for this online purpose. All of them are used to create performances with a live audience looking for interaction and connection. For some of them, this setup will be a challenge, but for others, it will be a play and interaction with the medium, the video streaming technology, itself. While it is lunchtime in Chicago, it will be far in the night in Tokyo for the Midnight Trio, and evening in Poland for Kamila Wolszczak, afternoon for Fernando Ribeiro in Curitiba Brazil, and close to lunchtime for Leila Ghasempor in Seattle.

Artist Line-up:

Midnight Trio (Yamaoka Sakiko, Shimizu Megumi, Takahashi Riko, Japan)
Kamila Wolszczak (Netherlands/Poland)
Fernando Ribeiro (Brazil)
Leila Ghasempor (Seattle, USA/Iran)

Curatorial Statement from Ieke Trinks:

When watching live stream performances, we could talk about giving up the dimensions that make a performance so multisensory. We could dwell on that strange form of togetherness, while not being physically together. To attend live stream performances is in some respect giving up space. This online format for performance might be even more about absence, the absence of tactility, and the other senses, such as smell. We have to imagine the sweat of a performer, and as a performer, you have to imagine your audience presence by looking into the camera. Online performance also presents us with new dimensions, it bridges physical distance with digital intimacy while asking for greater empathy. And it brings different time zones together. While being in the ‘here and now,’ for some it will be lunchtime and for another a nighttime adventure.

In this time of reduced freedom of movement and travel (which for some people already has been part of their daily reality because of political or economic reasons), the online site has become an opportunity to grasp. This is the time to explore how live actions can survive through the internet. Even though I personally favor the analog experience above the digital, it is worth looking for human contact, and other vital entities, in the digital realm.

In their previous works, the invited artists for this event are all looking to connect, whether by implementing actions that invite for participation or by responding to their site. Kamila Wolszczak is an artist who triggered my interest in her collection of dust using sticky tape as the medium for documenting and recording traces of human activities. Newly introduced to me is Leila Ghasempor. In her work, Leila deals with loaded subjects such as war and trauma, images that I’m familiar with through television and media. How will such a subject imbued with trauma through Leila’s action speak to us on that same screen that also has numbed our sensitivity?

I was lucky to meet Sakiko Yamaoka 10 years ago. Most of her performances that I know have a beautiful simplicity and that are etched into my memory. One of her performances that comes to mind is the simultaneously ticking metronomes in the different tempos of the heartbeats from participating audience members. For this event Sakiko invited the two artists Megumi Shimizu and Riko Takahashi, to collaborate with her. Both artists are actively engaged in performance. Another artist that I met 10 years ago is Fernando Ribeiro. He is one of the most hospitable artists that I know. Video tech in his performance is not new. In Effort (2012) he wears a helmet with a built-in smartphone in which the phone’s display replaces his “original” sight while being in action. At the same time the smartphone’s capturing was streamed over the internet, making spectators witness Fernando’s mediated sight.

For everyone who is going to attend this event, open up your senses and imagine what is absent.

Artist Bios:

Midnight Trio: The three artists, SHIMIZU Megumi and TAKAHASHI Riko and YAMAOKA Sakiko, are based in Tokyo, and the suburbs. They come from different backgrounds and generations. They have performed in some of the same performance art events, such as Saitama International Triennial of last October 2020, in Japan. This “lunchtime nighttime” event will be their first collaboration as Midnight Trio.

Kamila Wolszczak is a multidisciplinary artist based in The Hague, the Netherlands. She explores the body and its residue through performance and object-based practice. The territory where she is creating is called performance and socially engaged art. She believes in the power of communities and art as a tool for twists.

Fernando Ribeiro is a performance artist and curator from Curitiba, Brazil. He developed performances in cities as Curitiba, São Paulo, Chicago, New York, Boston, Berlin, Cologne, and others. He created and runs the p.ARTE — performance art platform in 2012 and was performance art curator for the Curitiba Biennale (2013, 2015, 2017, 2019).

Leila Ghasempor is a Kurdish-Iranian performance artist whose work draws from her experiences growing up in the midst of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), during which time her family was displaced. Her expressive and emotional works reference both universal and culturally specific symbols of human pain, displacement, trauma, loss, and the conflicts of ethics vs. politics. Currently, she is an MFA candidate in Performance at SAIC. She would love to be an art professor as she pursues her goal.