Ming Wong, Persona Performa - work-in-progress - 2011. Courtesy of the artist. Photo copyright Carlos Vasquez.
Performa will initiate its fourth international biennial on November 1 with a month long festival of performances through the city, with a premiere on opening night of live performances by the artists Elmgreen & Dragset.
The events calendar will be choc-a-bloc with films, live street performances, and theatrical events at art spaces through the city. Ming Wong will create a site-specific piece for the Museum of the Moving Image, inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 masterpiece Persona, and Spartacus Chetwynd’s Lion Tamer will be inspired in part by the Mae West film in which she tames the beasts on stage as well as ’society swells’ offstage.
Filmmaker Guy Maddin will create a live cinematic, musical event, based on his 1988 cult film, Tales from the Gimli Hospital: Reframed, which will be scored by an array of talented musicians including a superstar band of Icelandic composers. The original film, one of Maddin’s early cult successes, is a dreamlike tale of jealousy and intrigue between two men sharing a hospital room.
Guy Maddin, film still from Tales of the Gimli Hospital, 1988. Photo courtesy Guy Maddin. Performa 2011
