Telepathic Drawing Session

Performance Thursday, March 25th
in Montreal at articule from 4:00 to 6:00pm (EDT)
in Sackville from 5:00 to 7:00pm (ADT)
Exhibition: Friday, March 26 and Saturday, March 27

I'd say I'm transmitting it. If someone picks it up, then that's communication. Someone might pick it up a thousand years from now. Someone might pick it up five minutes before I've thought about it. You see, because that sort of transcends time and space, and these things sort of exist for all time, so to speak.
-Robert Barry. May 30th, 1969

Telepathic Drawing Session is a modest (if not largely invisible) performance project that links experiments in extra-sensory perception with conceptual art precedents to create a DIY drawing laboratory that spans 1,000 kilometres. In an attempt to overcome the pesky distance that so often separates Canadian collaborators, Telepathic Drawing Session places the simple technologies of telepathy and radio in the service of a complex plan to bring three artists together from Montreal and Sackville for two hours of drawing pleasure.

 

Three booths, two cities, one new drawing every 15 minutes.

 

At the appointed time, Donna Akrey and Jon Knowles will take up their positions in separate drawing booths at articule (Montreal). Simultaneously seated in a radio booth in Sackville NB, Leah Garnett tunes listeners into a special edition of her CHMA show, "Drawing on Air." The experiment begins. Akrey telepathically sends her drawings to Garnett. Garnett's telepathic reception and re-composition of Akrey's drawing is vocalised and broadcast back to articule. Knowles receives Garnett's transmission and re-draws Akrey's original composition as described by Garnett. In this performance, Garnett acts as the telepathic apex of a triangle linking the drawings of Akrey and Knowles who are blind to each other's hand while being exposed to each other's mind. The telepathic experiment and radio broadcast will be performed live in Montreal and Sackville with the resulting pairs of "sent" and "received" drawings publicly exhibited at articule for two days following the experimental event.

Jon Knowles is an artist who works across artistic disciplines, materials and methods and has developed an idiosyncratic approach to artistic research. Knowles was included in Rien ne se perd, rien ne se cree, tous se transforme at the Musée d'art Contemporain de Montréal; The Perception of Ideas leads to new ideas at the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen Düsseldorf; OFF BNL MTL Pavilion Projects; Exalted Beings: Animal Relationships and Actual both at Dalhousie Art Gallery; and Converse without leaving home at Cooper Gallery, Dundee, Scotland. He also works with Michael Eddy and Robert Knowles in the collaborative group Knowles Eddy Knowles.

 

Donna Akrey is a Montréal artist and educator currently teaching at Concordia University. Her work is multi-disciplinary and ruminates on the beauty and banality of the everyday, amongst other things. She has created books, video, sculpture, small and large installation and performance. She is a member of the Ministry of Walking. Donna's blog is http://mobiusstripmall.blogspot.com/

 

Leah Garnett's drawings and installations have been exhibited in Canada, the US, and Germany and she has attended numerous residences including the Banff Centre and the MacDowell Colony. Currently, she teaches at Mount Allison University in the fine arts department and hosts a weekly radio show Drawing on Air on CHMA radio where she travels into the hearts and homes of many.

Rebecca Duclos is a Montreal-based curator, researcher, and writer as well as Director of the MFA in Studio Arts at Maine College of Art. She has recently curated Voir/Noir at the Musée d'art de Joliette, As Much as Possible Given the Time and Space Allotted with David K. Ross at the Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery, and Magnify with Lauren Fensterstock at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Portland Maine. She received her PhD in Art History and Visual Culture from the University of Manchester (UK) in 2008 and currently holds a research fellowship at the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art at Concordia University in Montréal. Her solo and collaborative projects (with David K. Ross) are detailed at http://graphicstandards.org.__