Week 2 of An Exact Vertigo: March 11-15

In the second week of the series, we have Benjamin Kamino presenting a talk on Wednesday March 11th at 7pm, and a presentation of his workshop will be a little earlier on Sunday morning, at 11am. This week will also have Deanna Peters in residence, rehearsing semi-publicly behind the windows of the Unit/Pitt Space.

Here is a link to the recorded audio of the talk

Benjamin Kamino is an artist living and working between Montreal and Toronto. His work has been shown in Austria, Brazil, Canada, Mexico and the United States. Through the embodiment of cultural, critical, and philosophical theory, his work is a continuous research into performance as a site where ethical positions can be put into question.

Aside from making choreography, Kamino maintains his practice as a dancer by engaging in contracts with Independent choreographers as well as dance companies most notably, Peggy Baker Dance Projects, Ame Henderson, Michael Trent, Sasha Kleinplatz and Virgil Baruchal.

Kamino holds a BFA in Dance for the Tisch school for the Arts (NYU), and is currently a curator at Dancemakers Centre for Creation (Toronto).

He will also be leading a workshop on Sunday March 15th at 12pm:
Dark Meaningless Touch. Telepathy. Closure

This is a class from dance for life and living.

What is it to touch without feeling? Feelings without touch? [Being together in the dark] Where is the meaningless space?

This class positions the body as a primary source for knowledge production. Engaging in a practice of touching without feeling we will become closer then close. [more-than-] Together we will we search for a closure of feeling beyond feeling, a state beyond empathy. This class will attempt to depart from the actual in honour of the speculative – the potential spaces outside of meaning.

All we can ever do is doing. All we can ever make is noise.

Things begin when you arrive, there will be some literature to browse at your leisure and convenience, documents that have contributed to the language of this work. Eventually you will be asked to engage with an irresponsible cardio warm up; activating the movement of fluid systems in the body and softening the muscle tissue with a meditation on the senses immediately following this activity of intensity.

You will be gently guided through a touching practice that will seduce the arrival of darkness. Proximity, closure, love and pop music will be offered as experiential devices meant to help/hinder a meaningless space – inherently flawed, this class will never bring into question notions of success or failure. After a longtime of touching in the dark, the light will be invited in as a marker of reality and permission to re-enter a becoming individual – a ‘feeling without touch’.

This class resides in many frames. There is no requirements to participate in this work but two particular texts may prove helpful and are worth researching beforehand.

A portion on openness taken from the book “Cyclonopedia” by Reza Negarestani.
An essay entitled “Copoiesis” by Bracha Ettinger, published in Ephemera.
They will also be available in the library at Unit/Pitt Projects.

No prior dance training is necessary for participating in these workshops.

Happening concurrently from March 10-15, Deanna Peters will be in residence at the gallery space.

On Tuesday March 10 and Thursday March 12, there will be professional dance training from 10am to 12pm.

Wednesday through Saturday, she will be hosting a semi-private rehearsal from 12- 5pm.

Join us on Friday March 13th for a Saskatchewan Social at 9pm, which Deanna Peters will be organizing as part of her research.