Weather to Store

FADO Performance Art Centre and SAVAC co-present
Weather to Store by Kristina Guison

Precarity renders the acquisition, care and disposal of an object into an emotionally loaded, calculative problem. The lifecycle of an object depends on its size, utility, affective potential and value. Where do you store grandma’s fine china in a tiny rented apartment? How long do you hold on to the unique piece of metal that you dumpstered for an art project ten years ago? Does your sculpture have more value sitting on a plinth in gallery, or on a shelf in storage?

Weather to Store is a durational performance in three acts, purposely presented in no particular order. In each act a collection of objects is arranged and manipulated in a different way, and in three distinct spaces: a gallery, the outdoors and a self-storage container. The sequence of time, the utility of the objects and the designated spaces that these objects and actions occupy are displaced and dis-jointed, mediating on and revealing how context influences their shifting and impermanent value.

ACT 2: Storage

In the second act of Weather to Store, a gallery space is reframed as a typical storage locker. The artist and her exhibition take up residence in the gallery and perform ‘storing’ in situ. The artist stacks, re-orders and rearranges the art objects in the gallery-turned-storage over the course of the residency. The various configurations reveal the process through which objects are ascribed value in storage. Audience is invited to come and go during gallery hours.

Venue: Bachir/Yerex Presentation Space, 401 Richmond (Suite 440)
Date: May 14–23, 2018
Time: 12pm–5pm (Monday–Friday)

ACT 1: Gallery

Weather to Store continues outside. The artist converts a patch of space outdoors into a gallery and mounts an exhibition, delineated by tape lines drawn on the ground.The dimension of the designated space corresponds to a typical medium sized self-storage space. The exhibition is comprised of unfinished, raw materials presented and sold as art objects along with functional objects hindered from exercising their potential utility.

Venue: 70 Geary Avenue, Toronto, ON
Date: May 24, 2018
Time: 6-8pm (Thursday)

ACT 3: Outside

Weather to Store ends in a self-storage facility. The artist moves her objects for the last time into a storage locker. Opting out of preservationist logics of climate-controlled storage spaces, the artist performs the laborious process of weathering them artificially as an additive and depreciating performative gesture. See performances times below.

On October 21, 2018 from 4:30 – 5:30pm, Aaditya Aggarwal will read out the exhibition text he wrote for Act 2, placing it within the Indigenous and recent historical context of the Junction Triangle: a neighbourhood historically immersed in trade, industry, capital and hence, storage. The Junction is situated along an ancient Indigenous trade route from—what is now known as—Detroit to Montreal, covering the shoreline of what was once Lake Iroquois. Following the early 1800s, the area became home to taverns for colonial merchants-in-transit, making short-term accommodation a prime industry in the region. Echoing the absurd mysticism of bodily sensitivity, objecthood, class and gender, as seen in late Danish fabulist Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale romance The Princess and the Pea, Aaditya’s text will consider Kristina’s final act of tending to weathered objects as a meditation on this urban space, storage and capital.

Venue: Planet Storage (presented in partnership with Art Spin)
Address: 1655 Dupont St, Toronto, ON M6P 3T1

Exhibition Dates: October 12 – 21, 2018 (Closed on October 15-16)
Exhibition Hours: 3pm – 9pm on weekdays, 12-6pm on Saturday and Sunday

Opening Reception: October 11, 2018 from 6pm – Midnight
Additional Performance Times: 11 October 2018 from 12-6pm, 13 October 2018 from 12-6pm, 20 October 2018 from 12-6pm, 21 October 2018 from 12-4pm
Reading by Aaditya Aggarwal: 21 October 2018 from 4:30pm – 5:30pm

Kristina Guison is a Manila-born, Toronto-based, Filipino-Canadian artist. She works in the realm of sculpture, installation, performance, social practices and tattoos. Her practice is an investigation of themes relating to globalization and transnational identities across geographical spaces and time (Pre-Colonial, Colonial and Post-Colonial) as they culminate in the 21st socio-cultural landscape. She is interested in identifying elements and patterns in this landscape, particularly ones that behave as catalysts and residues that simultaneously extend and limit human experience. She holds a BFA, major in Sculpture/Installation with a minor in Integrated Media, from OCAD University (2016). After moving to Canada in 2007, she has developed her practice by experiential research, artist residencies and shows in The Philippines, Andalucía and Toronto.

kristinaguison.net

Aaditya Aggarwal is the festival programmer at Regent Park Film Festival. He was the 2016 Online Editorial Intern at Canadian Art and the Sid Adilman Mentee at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival and Screen Daily, an industry news publication. Aaditya has also contributed writing to online publications like The New Inquiry, The Review and The Ethnic Aisle.

Established in 1993, FADO Performance Art Centre is a not-for-profit artist-run centre based in Toronto, Canada. FADO provides a stage and on-going forum in support of the research and development of contemporary performance art practices in Canada and internationally. As a year-round presentation platform, FADO exists nomadically, working with partner organizations and presenters, and utilizing venues and sites that are appropriate to individual projects. FADO presents the work of local, national and international artists who have chosen performance art as a primary medium to create and communicate provocative new images and perspectives. FADO is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council and the Department of Canadian Heritage.

performanceart.ca