Brian Fuata is an artist working in the improvisation of performance, text, language, film and installation who has garnered international acclaim for his innovative interpolation of media. His work is underscored by a political ethos of horizontalism—a system of non-hierarchical relations—where objects and ephemera, and both real and imagined personal and public histories, are given equal value in producing content. He is trained in post-dramatic theatre, a fusion of performance art and experimental theatre characterized by a non-linear narrative; the performer as theme and protagonist; multiple registers of presentation and points of reception; reflexivity, accumulation and self-referentiality. Working with ad hoc scores, Fuata employs these properties and concepts to orchestrate performance and consequently his physical environment to produce objects and visual ephemera.
During the Belkin’s Image Bank exhibition, the Belkin is collaborating with artist Brian Fuata and Western Front in an online residency project to develop new work that enters into correspondence with Image Bank’s history and archive. Image Bank was a project initiated in 1970 by two of Western Front’s founders, Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov, and the artist Gary Lee-Nova, as a method for personal exchange of ideas, images and information between artists through the postal system.
Brian Fuata is a performance artist who employs the properties and concepts of post-dramatic theatre for his live works, physical environments, objects and visual ephemera. Since 2012, Fuata has been producing a new form of mail art. In his “email performances,” Fuata appropriates the everyday format of the email as the site for an event. The body of the email becomes the stage, the scroll bar the rise and fall of a curtain, and the to: and bcc: fields rows for audience members to be seated with varying proximity and sight lines to the action. Through his email performances, Fuata brings together fragmentary references to trace an affective network of artistic communities, friends, and institutions. To receive email performances sent during Fuata’s residency, please register to sit in the to: or bcc: field below. By selecting the to: field participants agree that they may be called to the stage and will be visible via name and email address to all audience members. Those who select the bcc: field will remain out of the cast of the theatrical light. The residency will conclude with a new live-streamed improvisational performance, in which Fuata will use the form of the ghost as a structural device.
To register to receive email performances, visit Western Front.
Brian Fuata’s residency at Western Front is a partnership between the Belkin and Western Front.
Brian Fuata is an artist working in the improvisation of performance, text, language, film and installation who has garnered international acclaim for his innovative interpolation of media. His work is underscored by a political ethos of horizontalism—a system of non-hierarchical relations—where objects and ephemera, and both real and imagined personal and public histories, are given equal value in producing content. He is trained in post-dramatic theatre, a fusion of performance art and experimental theatre characterized by a non-linear narrative; the performer as theme and protagonist; multiple registers of presentation and points of reception; reflexivity, accumulation and self-referentiality. Working with ad hoc scores, Fuata employs these properties and concepts to orchestrate performance and consequently his physical environment to produce objects and visual ephemera.
The International Image Exchange Directory (1972) and the Image Request Lists published in General Idea’s FILE Megazine (1974) are Image Bank’s most consequential works in the eyes of Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov. These directories established an international network for the exchange of mail as artworks.
[more]Image Bank explores the artistic collaboration of Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov with others, including their most spectacular works – extended performances with props, such as Colour Bar Research (1970-78) and Mr. Peanut’s mayoralty campaign (1974) – alongside their extensive mail-art exchanges with other networkers such as Robert Filliou, Ant Farm and Ray Johnson’s New York Correspondence School. Director and co-curator Scott Watson walks through the exhibition and offers insight into some of the key works and themes, including collaborations with the artists involved in the newly founded artist-run centre, the Western Front (est. 1973) (Martin Bartlett, Hank Bull, Kate Craig, General Idea, Gary Lee-Nova, Glenn Lewis, Eric Metcalfe, John Mitchell and others).
[more]Image Bank explores the artistic collaboration of Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov with others, including their most spectacular works – extended performances with props, such as Colour Bar Research (1970-78) and Mr. Peanut’s mayoralty campaign (1974) – alongside their extensive mail-art exchanges with other networkers such as Robert Filliou, Ant Farm and Ray Johnson’s New York Correspondence School. The Peanut campaign, in which Vincent Trasov as Mr. Peanut ran for mayor of Vancouver, mobilized the artists associated with the newly founded artist-run centre, the Western Front (est. 1973) and the exhibition includes many collaborations with and amongst these artists (Martin Bartlett, Hank Bull, Kate Craig, General Idea, Gary Lee-Nova, Glenn Lewis, Eric Metcalfe, John Mitchell and others). The exhibition pulls films, photographs, drawings, collages and other ephemera from the Belkin’s Morris/Trasov Archive to track the collaborative history of Image Bank. Founded in 1970 and lasting to 1978, Image Bank was a project initiated by Michael Morris, Vincent Trasov and Gary Lee-Nova that originated when they were all associated with the legendary Vancouver artist-run centre Intermedia. The exhibition reflects on a period of optimism where artists envisioned a non-hierarchical alternative to the world of art galleries and museums, where images and ideas could be freely exchanged through the international postal system thereby creating an open-ended and decentralized method of networking that presages social media.
[more]Image Bank explores the artistic collaboration of Michael Morris, Vincent Trasov and originally Gary Lee-Nova, including their most spectacular works – extended performances with props, such as Colour Bar Research (1970-78) and Mr. Peanut’s mayoralty campaign (1974) in which Vincent Trasov as Mr. Peanut ran for mayor of Vancouver – alongside their extensive mail-art exchanges with other networkers such as Robert Filliou, General Idea, Ant Farm and Ray Johnson’s New York Correspondence School.
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