Informed by Ritual and Structured Through Repetition: A Brief Look at VIVA! Art action, 2023 

With a unique mandate that encourages invited artists to challenge their practices – to not necessarily make “safe” work that guarantees known (or “successful”) outcomes – the festival puts tremendous trust in its performers, privileging experimentation. It puts equal faith in its audiences, cultivating a space in which collective discovery becomes the shared domain of presenters and public. 

Discovery, here, also includes the site itself as another material to invest(igate) within the (new) VIVA! environment. Both the inside of the Union Française (its entranceway, kitchen, bathrooms, and grand hall) and the surrounding area (the staircase, sewer drain, and recently relandscaped public square across the street), all otherwise self-referential, contained spaces transformed before our eyes as they were activated by the festival artists. 

Such activations were largely informed by ritual and ceremony, structured through repetition and ephemeral installation. One example was provided by Mai Bach-Ngoc Nguyen, who, after dividing the main hall in two by affixing raw canvas from one end of the hall to the other (thereby inevitably “excluding” half of the audience depending on what side the artist stood), kept a hula hoop in motion, eventually producing a fine line of red welts at her waist – a consequential imprint of the almost imperceptible studded thread that covered the hoop’s otherwise (usually) smooth surface. Anguezomo Mba Bikoro’s work offered another, similarly charged repetition. After an initial majestic entrance into the building wrapped in cloth like a mummified artefact, on a handmade stretcher carried by six volunteers, they ran themselves ragged in circles around the centre of the room, stopping (just barely) to punctuate the back wall with a series of words connected to social justice (or lack thereof), mental states, and physical health – turning from object to be observed into subject to be reckoned with. Mba Bikoro’s accompanying intermittent recording of Martin Luther King Jr.’s motivational incitement to keep moving productively deformed his message from one of hope to one of dire contemplation: Mba Bikoro now physicalizing the labour that Black people are constantly called upon to do (whether through mitigating ubiquitous white fragility, countering archaic negative stereotypes of laziness through “John Henryism,”¹ or doing extra—often unpaid—administrative committee service to deploy equity, diversity, and inclusion policies in the workplace). 

Similarly commanding the subject position, the ritual actions of both Louise Liliefeldt and Paola Martínez Fiterre occurring across the road in the recently revamped Viger Square further complexified an already contentious space. The residue of a years-long controversial proposal (involving initial plans to dismantle a previous art installation that would also displace several unhoused people) inevitably suffused not only the site’s social foundation but also the two artists’ works. Liliefeldt’s thorough apprehension of, and sinking into, the space’s built attributes (via repetitive supple interactions with water, concrete, and cultivated vegetation) produced impermanent traces through black-lined body contours, blood-red footprints, and a near-blood-curdling, triumphant final cry. Martínez Fiterre’s quiet non-action, in contrast, engendered a powerful state of complete immobility. Framed by the remaining elements of the location’s preceding architectural installation, she lay solemnly on an open stretch of grass – her body made still by the large stone (placed carefully by her father at the performance’s outset) pressing against her entire torso. Holding the site’s energetic density, both artists’ bodies carried materialities of weight and time, stifled movement, and sculptural finitude(s) such that even our presence (as audience), though expanding the outward impact (beyond the realm of the park and its spontaneous passersby), could be seen as superfluous. The works would make their mark, regardless. 

Ritual and ceremony were additionally buttressed by atmospheric sonic repetitions, in particular in the works of Wathiq Gzar Al-Ameri, whose five-hour durational performance involved an ongoing loop of the world’s national anthems (selected at random by viewers) as an intermittent backdrop to the resounding echoes of him flagellating a silky white plinth-supported cloth with water-soaked, dye-spotted national flags. Eventually, the white cloth turned a dark maroon – now matching the soggy flags hanging from a clothesline at the back of the room. With homemade transistors, Martín Rodríguez took us to a symbolic beachside locale, where he broadcast sounds of maritime bells, singing birds, and a personalized (decidedly more politicized) land acknowledgment, progressively breaking down his meditative words and field recordings into experimental scratchy noise-scapes. Mathieu Beauséjour, who has a history of dissecting notions of sovereignty and economy via Canadian currency in his practice, reinterpreted the Flying Lizards’ cover of the iconic Beatles number “Money” (itself a cover of the 1959 original by Barrett Strong), alternately throwing coins against a giant gong and hammering it with increasing sized mallets at each looped ending – until the entire audience was throwing change from their seats in a fervent, cacophonous group-participatory ending. Addressing the deaths of children in residential schools via Pope Francis’s apology on a recent visit to Canada, seth cardinal dodginghorse (accompanied by Isabel Vazquez) read aloud propositions for collective, performative exercises as a critical deconstruction of the pope’s public address. The ensuing list, appearing in a rotation of projected slides (and resembling Fluxus event scores), incited decolonial action, care, and observation, ultimately faded into the performance’s own meta-soundtrack: a guitar-vocal duet provoking another kind of deep listening (and witnessing) from the audience-participants. The nightly meal prepared by Diyar Mayil (and team) provided yet another kind of repetitive, sense-arousing action, tying together the four days of festival offerings in convivial epicurean exchange. 

On the whole, the ensemble of festival artists (including those not discussed here) evocatively challenged grand narratives surrounding identity, democracy and creativity, proffering performances that breathe life—and solidarity—into our otherwise pervasively neoliberal age.  

(Performance)

VIVA! Art action

Montréal

September 13–16, 2023

Presenting artists: Wathiq Gzar Al-Ameri (Iraq/Switzerland), Jelili Atiku (Nigeria), Gui B.B (Québec), Mathieu Beauséjour (Québec), Anguezomo Mba Bikoro (Gabon/Germany), Catherine Boivin (Wemotaci/Odanak), seth cardinal dodginghorse (Tsuut’ina nation, accompanied by Isabel Vazquez), Rose de la Riva (Québec), stvn girard (Québec), Kamil Guenatri, (Algeria/FR), Louise Liliefeldt (South Africa/Toronto), Tanya Mars (Québec, Ontario, Nova Scotia), Paola Martínez Fiterre (Cuba/United States), Mai Bach-Ngoc Nguyen (Québec), Martín Rodríguez (Aztlan/Québec), Winnie Superhova (Hong Kong/Canada) and Nien-Tzu Weng (Taiwan/Canada), and VIVA! Kitchen artist Diyar Mayil (Turkey/Québec)