Saturday, November 22, 2:00 pm, 3:00 pm and 4:00 pm
Bachir/Yerex Presentation Space, 4th floor, 401 Richmond St. West

Join us for a joyful day of video-art BINGE WATCHING. Two different screenings of new work by Margaret Dragu sandwich a guided movement practice for artists. Wear your jammies, drink ginger ale and eat popcorn ALL DAY!!!

FADO Performance Art Centre and V tape are thrilled to present Your New Normal: An Afternoon With Margaret Dragu, as part of FADO’s on-going Walk-And-Talk performance series.

2:00 pm: screening, NEW NORMAL: an embodied novel

3:00 pm: supportTHEsupport (movement practice) w/ snacks & chats & PAJAMAS!

4:00 pm: screening, TICK AND TALK OF COMMON TIME

PROGRAMME

2:00 pm: NEW NORMAL: an embodied novel (2025, 45:00)
“An embodied novel is a 13-part multi-modal project documenting Dragu’s experiences on public transit while waiting for/recovering from two hip replacement surgeries. This series of poetic-prose stories are articulated in the body as short videos produced by Dragu alongside her collaborators, Justine A. Chambers (choreography) and E. Kage (score), as well as in text in her publication by the same name.” (Yasmine Whaley-Kalaora, C.L.A.M.)

3:00 pm: supportTHEsupport (TORONTO VERSION)
supportTHEsupport is an art experiment that began September 2019 during the LIVE! Biennale in Vancouver. supportTHEsupport appears to be dance/fitness classes (live-in-person and live-on-ZOOM ) with members in Vancouver, Montréal, Toronto, Berlin, Hanover and Copenhagen. But it is actually a living studio of amazing and creative artists who help each other make art happen.
***Feel free to bring your own yoga mat, towel, blocks.***

4:00 pm: TICK AND TALK OF COMMON TIME (video, 33 min)
“An opus of five variations and five entr’actes. Playing with the idea of TikTok dance trends, the variations feature fifteen live Vancouver-based dancers, three Toronto-based performers and many more [of whom are] dancing over Zoom, as well as several TikTok dance videos. Each variation presents a new choreography set to compositions from five different Canadian composers. The videos of the dancers are often in split screen or overlapping one another in the mainframe. The entr’actes feature improvisational dance by Dragu and Justine A. Chambers set to the sounds of live improvised vocal transcription.” (Nathaniel Marchand, Western Front)

 

Image credits: home page, NEW NORMAL: an embodied novel, by Margaret Dragu (2025); above, photo of Margaret Dragu by Dorte Burmester Wium.

Co-presented with FADO Performance Art Centre

 

VIDEO OF THE MONTH: Public Disturbance HB Series, Take 1, Take 2, Take 3 (2010), by Kelly Mark

 

Vtape is one of nine Toronto sites presenting work by the late Canadian neo-conceptualist Kelly Mark (1967 – 2025) to celebrate her work and life during October and November. Beginning November 1st, you can watch her video Public Disturbance HB Series, Take 1, Take 2, Take 3 right here. The video documents parts of a notorious four-hour public performance, for which Mark hired professional actors to pose as couples and reenact various domestic-based arguments from movie scripts in a public setting. The actual performance included three separate actor-couples each performing different fight scenes. In this video version of the work Mark focuses on just one couple, following their recurring argument in various locations, over the course of the evening.

Information on all of the exhibitions and events making up the multi-site Everything & Nothing programming can be found here. Don’t miss the rare opportunity to take in a survey of Kelly’s work in many media and formats!

Kelly Mark’s media works are now in distribution with Vtape.

 

Kelly Mark (1967-2025) was a Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist born in Welland, Ontario. Holding a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design and an art diploma from Dundas Valley Art School, she developed a wide-ranging practice spanning video, performance, installation, sculpture, drawing, and more. Infused with irony and a characteristic dry sense of humor, Mark’s conceptual work sought to uncover meaning in the everyday and highlight the labor of artmaking. Rebellious yet regimented, she described her work ethic as such: “I tend to show up late. I usually leave early. I take long breaks. I have issues with authority. I don’t follow instructions. I don’t work well with others. I drink on the job. I complain a lot. But I’m always working.”

While widely known for her installation and sculpture work (particularly in neon tubing), video remained a cornerstone of Mark’s practice. Found footage works like REM, Horroridor, and Prime Time speak to her interest in pop culture, as clips from movies and late night broadcasts are repurposed into sensorial experiences ranging from hypnotic to visceral. In Glow House, an installation series in which entire houses are lit from within by the flicker of TV sets all tuned to the same channel, Mark transforms the banality of late night TV into a surreal experience of viewership in which image is withheld. But at the centre of Mark’s work is Mark herself, exemplified in works like 108 Leyton Ave., a splitscreen where she sits across the table from herself, playing Solitaire, one Kelly beginning statements with “Everything,” the other with “Nothing.” Dialogue like “Everything in moderation” and “Nothing tastes as sweet as what you can’t have” shows the duality of Mark’s personality and the clearest glimpse at her inner world.

 

Image credits: home page: Public Disturbance HB Series, Take 1, Take 2, Take 3, by Kelly Mark (2010); above: 33 Minute Stare, by Kellly Mark (1996)