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“Bridget Moser is a Toronto-based artist who works predominantly in performance and video. Her work occupies the territory between prop comedy, experimental theatre, absurd literature, existential anxiety, intuitive dance, Dr. Phil transcripts, the internet, etc.”

Moser began at a very young age with dance lessons and drama classes

“Acting from an intersection of performance art, stand-up comedy, experimental dance and theatre, Moser’s gestures are a potent blend of funny and anxious.” – Canadian Art

Moser did a little bit of performance art while still in school but really began afterwards when she attended an experimental comedy course in her residency at The Banff Centre. She now does performances both live and on video. She has performed at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Mercer Union, 8-11, Artspace, and Doored, as well as other galleries and at some universities.

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Her performances are seemingly random scenes and clips taken out of different contexts, using different props, costumes, characters, and audio to signify a change in the story. Each performance has a different visual aesthetic, achieved through different props, costumes, and setting. Her performances involve various forms of audio, such as: voiceovers, ambient sounds, pop songs, and other sound effects. While performing, Moser interacts with objects using her body in different variations, permutations, and combinations. Moser will take an object that we associate with a certain action or use and subtly change the interaction between her body and the object, which subsequently and  temporarily changes our relationship with the object.

“The artist’s performance refused fixity, moving frenetically between different vignettes and voices on stage, all the while straddling the divide between comedy and art.” – Loreta Lamargese in The Editorial Magazine 

Almost every performance stands on the boarder between absurd comedy and profound thought. Moser plays into the fact that comedy is typically seen as frivolous and disengaged with conceptual themes. Despite this generalized view, she sees comedy and conceptual art looking to achieve similar goals; taking an expectation or conventional idea, and turning it on it’s head.

“Moser uses [conventions] as tools; she uses them to stabilize her slippery semiotic shifts even as she turns them back on themselves, slicing the bonds between signifier and signified with the ease of a practiced shoplifter removing a security tag. Moser does not defy or reject popular culture, but her performances do undermine the unified significations on which it relies, offering instead a thicket of signification so rich with distraction, dazzle and reflection that we forget the habits we came in with, forget, as it were, how to walk. In her activation of this dialectic of known and unknown, familiar and unfamiliar, Moser is less a young artist trying to define herself against the masters who precede her, than one in a long line of meaning-makers, outclassed but clever, sparring playfully with the behemoth of mass culture.” – Sarah Hollenberg 

Moser’s work ethic is based upon her trying to understand her interests and attraction to certain items or ideologies and the process she takes in trying to figure them out. For example, a topic that comes up a lot in her work is the idea of self-help. Moser finds this notion interesting as it has been made into a commercialized process that you can make yourself OK if you follow steps x, y, and z. She amplifies this in her performances, as she rehearses, she changes and rearranges scenes as she grapples with intriguing concepts, such as self-help.

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References:

http://bridgetmoser.com/

The strange new world of Bridget Moser

Bridget Moser & The Art of Self-Improvement

http://www.hwy-mag.com/features/2015/3/6/tender-offer

http://the-editorialmagazine.com/?p=4459

VSVSVS – Party Art

VSVSVS is a seven-person artist collective who formed in 2010. They work out of a warehouse in Toronto, Ontario and engage in collaborative art production. They create works in areas of: multiples, drawings, video, sculpture, installations, and performance.  The Members of VSVSVS include: Anthony Cooper, James Gardner, Laura Simon, Miles Stemp, Ryan Clayton, Stephen McLeod and Wallis Cheung.

I Interviewed Miles Stemp, he spoke on behalf of VSVSVS.  We discussed where the collective stood in terms of what party art was and where their works fit in.

The collective VSVSVS began their career making party art. Party art is categorised as event based interactive art, which requires some form of play with the viewer.  The main focus of party art was the fact that people had to interact with people, which created one on one connection and experiences. Another form of party art is the sceptical. The sceptical goes against the event planning interaction.  There is a tension created in these types of works.  Usually, in some form the artist is on display and the re-actions that occur as a result of the intervention in a space become the piece.

The first piece of party art created by the group was in 2011, titled Ghost Hole III. This work was framed as a Halloween party taking place in a three-day art festival located in Toronto’s Kensington Market. They built a giant pyramid bar where viewers could get a psychic reading by a VSVSVS member while getting a drink. Alcoholic drinks were specifically given out tailored to the personality of the individual getting their fortune read. The work allowed for a one on one interaction between the audience and the artists. This created a relationship with the viewer and the artist’s that most artworks tend to lack.

Another work that follows the party art aesthetic is VSVSVS 2O15 work titled Vibration Station. This piece was made for the 2015 Wayhome Festival. They constructed a geometric plywood platform that vibrated with the music of the festival. VS’s wanted to create a space that had a focus on rest and conversation. People were encouraged to hang out on the platforms. This created a relationship between the viewers, the music and the art.

This work is what VSVSVS’s made for the 2O15 Edmonton’s nuit Blanche, its titled Make It Flat. It was an event that lasted the whole night. It included temporarily building a hockey rink and having a steamroller replaces the Zamboni, which indiscriminately levels any object placed in its path. Items selected by the artists range from ramps, ceramics, lightbulbs, yoga balls, air-mattresses, toothpaste tubes and bubble wrap etc., are continually arranged, destroyed and rearranged over the course of the night. The project aims to use the act of destruction as a generative gesture and as an aesthetic spectacle. Over the course of the night the audience continued to participate in cheering on the performance. This created a high level of energy which fueled the VS’s members making for an exciting show.

Everyone should consider submitting their party art piece to Nuit Rose, described as “a queer contemporary art event” that takes place annually in Toronto’s Church-Wellesley and Queen West neighbourhoods. This years is happening on June 25, 2016.

A link to their submission guidelines and more information below:

http://nuitrose.ca/call-for-expressions-of-interest/

Submissions are due March 10th!