Lulu Series: Eric and Mia
Eric & Mia
Mapping, Napping, and Overlapping: Performance with and in Communities
Thursday, May 4, 2017
7:00 pm | Richmond City Hall
Seating is limited
RSVP to lulu@richmond.ca
Having a conversation with a stranger, eating a popsicle made of foraged ingredients, skateboarding in concert, or sleeping at the base of a public monument are lived actions—experiences that can precipitate dialogue and affect social or spatial change. The city, and in turn people, animals and plants are shaped by different ecologies and relationships. Intervening into these processes opens up spaces for rehearsing new forms of citizenship. Using their collaborative practice as a case study, Calgary-based artists Eric Moschopedia and Mia Ruston will share the different ways in which they create community through performance.
Eric & Mia are award-winning interdisciplinary visual artists, facilitators and community organizers. By combining the playfulness of childhood chums with the scrutiny of ethnographers, they create community-specific, relational and participatory works that invite audiences to become active agents in the creation of community. Throughout the last eight years, they have developed a collaborative practice that operates in both a gallery and post-gallery context. Their projects, workshops, artist talks and lectures have been presented in formal and DIY festivals, galleries and post-secondary institutions throughout North America and in Europe.
As visual artists, their work crosses disciplinary boundaries and utilizes a number of materials and processes. They bring together elements of craft, performance, printmaking and cultural geography, to create playful, but highly critical projects. Thematically, their work is concerned with mapping communities, collecting and processing overlooked “information,” and investigating everyday systems of organization—those things that structure citizens’ experience of urban environments. The projects they create are strategically ephemeral and designed to have resonating effects within temporary or established communities. Learn more at ericandmia.ca.
This talk will be preceded by a short performance by spoken word poet, Dia Davina. Dia’s moving, earnest and dynamic performance style has made her a sought-after poet and arts educator whose work exhibits vulnerability, candor and humour.