Performing Radical Dependency

Performance at Tail of the Junction in Toronto, Canada
as a part of Performing Radical Dependency,
a performance program co-organized with Pumice Raft

20 June 2023

Performing Radical Dependency is a program of performances by Lili Huston-Herterich, Ami Xherro, Fan Wu, Shima Raeesi, and Hannia Cheng.

The impetus for this event is an ongoing and unfolding dialogue that Parker (Pumice Raft) and I have been having around expanded forms of citation in an artistic practice. How do we account for and recognize the influence of personal relationships, lineages, and sociality on artistic production? I have been engaging with these questions in an ongoing project called Ongoing Manifesto of Radical Dependency, and this performance was an iteration of a work originally performed in Zürich in December 2022.

Taking the form of a day-hired Health & Safety instructor, Let Me Tell You About This $hoe positions the presentation of artistic research and work as gift-giving, using humour as a vehicle to recall, reiterate, and propose modes of artistic, learning, and citation practices that challenge the illusion of an untethered individual, enforced by neoliberal mantras for independent labour and success with an origin in colonial exploitation and societal oppression.

You can read that manifesto handout as it was provided to the audience here,

And see the "new money" gifted to the audience, which is an (attempted) full list of financial acknowledgements and linages for the making of this sculpture and performance work, here.