Going Left

When a global pandemic, political uprisings and natural disasters converge we are faced with a unique set of challenges. Coming to grips with it all is hard enough as individuals; how do we even begin to address things collectively? 

For renowned Canadian artist Brendan Fernandes, the exploration of complex, intersectional moments (and identities) has always been central to his practice. In his new digital commission made for the AGO, The Left Space, Fernandes asks critical questions about protesting, gathering and existing in such precarious times. The Left Space is a major collaborative effort that fuses elements of graphic design, dance and sound for a live performance via Zoom on Friday, November 6 at 7 pm EST. 

We recently reached out to Fernandes for an in-depth perspective on The Left Space, and his practice at large.      

AGOinsider: Facing the intersection of a pandemic and a political uprising is so complex. What are some of the key questions The Left Space raises about our current moment?  

Fernandes: These are precarious times, in which we have had to re-think the ways that we can be together, both socially and politically. The Left Space aims to find ways that we can move forward, while questioning what is left behind. Left can mean many things right now: left in a political sense, or a social sense, like “left the chat” or “left on read”. For many of us, with this being our first pandemic, there has also been a sense of leaving something bigger—like our ordinary and familiar world—behind as well. With the piece, I am trying to provoke the question, “if we’ve left something behind, what is it that we are heading for instead? Is there a left-ist vision of the world that might come to be in all this?”

In my work, I am always trying to imagine what new kinds of collaborations, and if collaborative futures are possible; and always asking what kind of spaces these futures need to come to be. The notion of what a “safe” space means is one that recurs in my work. Our virtual interactions throughout this pandemic happen in a type of safe space. Social technologies are allowing us to gather, to coordinate, to raise funds, to vote and to affect change. Political expressions are taking new forms. In making dance with the Zoom platform, I am hoping to draw our attention to how these platforms can bring groups of people together into something more intimate or meaningful than their daily use. 

In my work, I bring bodies together, because I believe gathering and exchanging between disparate groups is essential for new social formations and new social ideas to emerge. In this sense, dance for me is a political form. In a world where we cannot be or dance together physically, I want to draw attention to other forms that connect us, and that might be the platform on which the next social movements are founded. 

AGOinsider: You’ve said your work is about lived experiences and that the question of “who am I?” is always at play. Can you talk about your intersectional identity, life narrative, and some of the ways they inform your artistic practice? 

Fernandes: Yes, understanding how my identities affect my lived experiences has been a significant factor in developing my practice. For me, my queer body represents a kind of political deviation. Who we love, the ways we behave and where we come from are magnified through our bodies. This is especially true for queer people of colour. Our presence represents an intersection of race, gender and sexual orientation. Because of these embodiments, our bodies are the sites of many struggles.

In my work, I explore the possibility that our bodies can also be the sites of resistance and freedom of expression. Dance is in many ways a perfect medium for this. Dance is fundamentally about movement and change. In dance we can experience different senses of self. We can lapse into a crowd. We can experience a sense of collective identity in moving together. We can feel how fluid identities can be. My unique background as a Kenyan-Indian-Canadian who resides between Canada and the U.S. confronts me with this hybrid and transitional side of identity. That experience compels many aspects of my practice and leads me to an exploration of the thesis that identity is not static, essential or bound to place, but enacted, polyvalent and borderless. Being a multidisciplinary artist is part of this, as crossing disciplinary borders challenges ideas of fixity and reification.

AGOinsider: For The Left Space you’ve collaborated with a graphic designer, a team of dancers and a composer. What was the collaboration process like? How involved were they in the conceptualization of the piece? 

Fernandes: Collaboration is at the core of my work. My aim is always to bring people together to make and think as one. I am forever interested in the new kinds of hybrids that can emerge from this. The Left Space is no different. I am working with people I am familiar with and whose ideas and ways of working I’ve gotten to know, but I am also introducing new collaborators as well. 

My process for this piece began with talks and discussions with Jerome, Karsten, Anisa and Jennifer of Hit and Run Dance Productions. Jerome is the graphic designer involved in the piece. He and I spoke about my ideas about noise—visual noise—as a thing that can hurt the eyes. I shared with him that Massai warriors in Kenya use fabric in bright, contrasting colours to ward off predators, and he brought his sensibility and experience to translating those patterns from my birthplace into what we used as backgrounds in the performance. We also discussed the notion of invisibility vs. hypervisibility and how both have implications in the virtual world.

Karsten, my DJ and composer, created a sound narrative, which we went back and forth listening to until we got the right composition for the movements and tone that were coming out of the dance collaboration. Anisa, Jennifer and I worked together to experiment and play on Zoom after we spoke about the concept of the piece. There was an experimental phase where we played with each other and then began to conceive of a movement vocabulary to interact with the sound and filters. That vocabulary is what we passed on to the dancers during rehearsals and is what they work with in the performance of the live piece. 

This kind of multifaceted, and sometimes simultaneous, collaboration is new and exciting for my work. It brings a sense of play into it, and a nervous edge of not being fully sure of what the end result will be. This keeps the work alive and surprising, for me and for everyone. It levels the playing field in a way—takes out a little bit of what could otherwise be a basic, capitalist hierarchy. Making a dance for a live audience and a physical space is something everyone involved has experienced, but this process of making a live dance for a virtual space was new to us all as well. 

We’re now in rehearsals and are all excited for how much further the dancers will take the choreographed tasks and vocabulary by the time the work debuts on the sixth of November.

Don’t miss AGO Live: Brendan Fernandes — The Left Space, happening Friday, November 6, 7 - 9 pm EST live via Zoom. Register now for free. The performance will be followed by an interview between Fernandes and Bojana Stancic, AGO Assistant Curator, Live Projects and Performance. Register now for free. 

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