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I WiLL MiSS THiS CLaSS!

Thank You Margaret! You Rock!
And Thanks Everybody! I learned so much from ALL of you!

Connie Freitas

Daily/Ongoing Intermittent Practice

Performance entails having two chairs and a small table in my truck.
I take a drink, such as a refreshing iced tea in hot weather or hot chocolate in cold weather, to a public location, and I invite random people to join me as I sit with them and participate in a discourse that includes us sharing our lives, past histories, wishes and plans.
I document our random meeting by taking a photograph, and giving them the address to a blog (that shall be put up this summer).

This piece is inspired by the negotiation of private and public boundaries in contemporary urban life, and also affirms the individual experience among the anonymous.

C.V.

Connie Freitas
connie_freitas@hotmail.com

Education

2009-present Emily Carr University
Film Video and Integrated Media Program
Bachelors Degree

2006-2009 Capilano University
Studio Arts Program
Diploma

2000-2003 College of New Caledonia
University Transfer Liberal Arts

Film/Video

Porque (2010) - Performance Installation
Emily Carr University

Transference (2010) - Performance
Emily Carr University

Vessel (2010) - Performer
Director: Celia Goodwin-Cobb
Emily Carr University

Diverge (2010) - Director
Emily Carr University

Fred (2009) - Co-Director/Camera
Co-Director: Celia Goodwin-Cobb
Emily Carr University

Confluence (2009) - Director


Volunteer/Assistant

2008-present Recurring summer position
as assistant to artist Toni Latour

editing video/sound/photoshop
photographer, studio assistant
framing assistant
seemstress

Broken / Intervals Festival

Included roundtable performance/discussion about performance concerns and festival plans.
During discussion internet chat took place. Intermittant pauses in speech and subsequent switching of chairs took place. Discussions of performances to take place, inspired by fragility of time and space.

Performances by Molly Kreppel, Emilio Rojas, Connie Freitas, Tomorrow Rising, Genesis y. m.,
and G Amani.

Molly danced with agression to a children's song that was looped and double time.
Emilio addressed recording and perception of time by wrapping and guiding audiences with cassette tape.

I performed in a video installation that involved the wrapping/unwrapping of an alarm clock/facsimile. I attempted to comment on wasted time, and the intangible nature of memory and time.

Tomorrow Rising painted a gallery wall white for the entire length of the Festival. She covered spatial elements of architecture thereby "covering history".

Genesis sanded a 24 by 42 cm rectangle on a white wall and implemented a shutter light in her performance. She dealt with time relative to sun as light source, and the passage of time.

G read feminist literature while dressed in underwear and a long veil, as audience members threw, dripped, smashed tomatoes on her. She comments on patriarchy and suppression in a variety of forms.

Dumb Type

While I studied at Capilano University (2006-2009), I learned of a performance group based out of Kyoto Japan. My instructor told us of the privilege it was to interview the groups' founder, Teiji Furuhashi, who has since passed away. My instructor had video footage of one of their performances and they were very impressive. They address the issues of information/misinformation, technology and our place within those ever changing worlds.

Dumb Type Wikipedia Info:

Founded in 1984, the artist collective Dumb Type is based in Kyoto, Japan.

Members are trained in varied disciplines, including visual arts, theatre, dance, architecture, music composition and computer programming. Their work ranges across such diverse media as art exhibitions, performances, audiovisuals and publications.

Dumb Type is known for portraying a dark, cynical, and humorous world in which technology is a way of life--if not necessarily a welcome one. In a 1990 interview in High Performance, the late Teiji Furuhashi, one of Dumb Type's founding members, described their work as political in nature. "Something Japanese theater never does. Japanese audiences don't want to see that. They want to avoid it. They just want entertainment. Yes, I think we should always have a political view. We should represent that this is Japan." Notable in a country plagued by political apathy, the group has played the unpopular role of AIDS activist, organizing symposia and other events, motivated in part by the fact that Furuhashi died of AIDS in 1995.

While based in Kyoto, Japan's ancient capital, Dumb Type is oriented more to the global than the local, the contemporary over the traditional. Dumb Type members claim that Japanese art movements have had little influence on their work. Furuhashi explained that the core group--Furuhashi, Toru Koyamada, Yukihiro Hozumi, Shiro Takatani, Takayuki Fujimoto and Hiromasa Tomari--began working together in 1982, while still students at Kyoto University of Art and Design. "We were frustrated artists, and wanted to start creating something new with our skills. Most of the time we spent discussing society or whatever, not specific art things. When someone had an idea it would be presented on a piece of paper. If the group was interested, we made it come true. At first the idea would be really open, then gradually it became something very specific. In that way, we're really democratic. Dumb Type is a collaborative group; we don't want a king."

Their work has been exhibited and performed at notable venues internationally.

Here are some youtube links to some of their works:

Or, 1997
True
Memorandom part 1
Memorandom part 2

Performances (Durational/Relational/Ritual)

Molly Carney - patriotic pride vs. condolence (relational).
Cale - audience binds/unbinds his wrists as he is crouched down. (duration/relation)
Katie - sings (beautifully) a prayer for Haiti
water in vessels
stones thrown
washes/cleansing
Genesis - spills milk down grid staircase as Tomorrow runs down it.
impromptu - addresses performative happenstance in daily life.

Silhouette/Shadow

Students were organized into groups and each group did a silhouette/shadow presentation.

Katie did a slide/hand gesture presentation using colourful slides and a mixture of happy, active, and profane gestures. Audience was not only viewing slide/shadow presentation, but also her shifting movements on the grounds as she adjusted for each gesture's meaning/performance.

Emilio, Genesis, Tomorrow, and Pierce:
cooing, cahing,
luxurious - sensuous
enveloping confining smothering white sheet
bound performers
candlelight - strong handheld light/shadows
audience bound/covered
sanctity - instinct.

Cale, Molly K, G:
large silky screen - theatrical
beatings frail victim survival
evaporation unrecognizable alien-like
Sssssilencing - staning tall!
G - Air Guitar Masturbator!
Bold - Struggle - Voice

Quan, Molly C, Lisa:
Moon inspired shifting light - life giving!
Orb - Chasing light/life - Whirling, stirring, Life.
Little death - delicate - playful fantasy

My performance work often addresses the myriad ways of identification through life's experiences and the process of subconcious expression.

Performance Proposals

Durational -

I sing It Feels Like Home to Me for 6 hours straight, dressed in rags and holding a sign that requests a donation, in the downtown east side.

Relational -

I disrobe and allow others to label my body using a sharpie pen with any labels that come to mind, as they read the label out loud.

Ritual -

I start out with 10 cups of black tea.
I lay out a very large sheet of paper and drop a cup of black tea on it, shattering it.
I smear the tea as much as possible. I repeat the process with 9 more cups of tea, but each
time I smear the tea I pick up shards of tea cup, that I put into subsequent cups of tea I break upon the floor.

Archival Performances:

Stelarc's Suspension performances took place from 1976 to 1988, in Japan (where he was living at the time), Europe, the United States, and Australia (where he's from).

His aim was to introduce the concept of the body as a structural object (sculpture), and as an evolutionary architecture that could be manipulated to expand human experience.

He began his performances using ropes and harnesses to support his body, but soon discovered Hindu Indian piercings as a means of elegantly suspending the body, using his own skin as the support structure for his performances

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In Painting Face Down - White Line (1972).

Paul McCarthy lies, face down, and gradually spills the contents of a paint can filled with white paint on the floor of the gallery space. He drags his body through the paint he spills, creating a white line.

In this work, he not only comments on what might be considered the process of abstract painting, but also on the relationship between consumerism, consumption, and it's effects on society.

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photo by Leslie Hasbim

In Loving Care (1992), Janine Antoni performs at Anthony D' Offay Gallery in London. She submerges her long dark wavy hair into a bucket of Loving Care hair dye. She then mops the floor with her hair, writhing and twisting her body, to cover the gallery's floor. Gradually, as she marks her territory with a beauty product that women use to appear more youthful and attractive to men, within a space that is traditionally dominated by men's work, she executes great feminist power by pushing gallery visitors out of the room, that now inhabits her "women's work".