Image source: Pro Radio Antic, Romania

AT OUR ARTIEST: PEDAGOGICAL EXPLORATIONS INTO THE ITHYPHALLIC RUMINATIONS OF KEVIN HAINEY

YYZ is pleased to announce the launch of our newly improved Membership Program. To celebrate, YYZ is hosting a special event featuring some of Toronto’s most creative sound artists: FORKTINE, GASTRIC FEMALE REFLEX, and M.STACTOR.

SATURDAY 21 APRIL 2012
DOORS OPEN | 7:00PM
ADMISSION | FREE
* One-night only: Receive a free limited edition t-shirt designed by Jacob Horwood with the purchase of a YYZMEMBERSHIP.

Twenty-first century experimental composition. Both hat and hatless performance. Instrument building and the act of dropping it on the way to the gig. The spirit of forgetting your sheet music only to call it indeterminism. Crash course in clown sounds, by the graduating class of the BBC Radiophonic workshop of non-unionized plagiarists. Presented by Old MacDonald Had A Farm at half speed.

FORKTINE | 8:00PM
FORKTINE is a noise/musique concrte project based in Toronto, Canada. Though not exclusively a solo project, Forktine was instigated and organized by Colin Hinz. The project formed as an outgrowth from Hinz’ history of building unusual, one-of-a-kind musical instruments that began in the late 1980s. These instruments have various forms, borrowing from historic mechanical musical instruments, junkyard or toy parodies of contemporary instruments, circuit-bending, mechanical gadgetry, and plain-old electronics engineering. In addition to the Forktine project, Hinz has used these instruments in numerous performances with the improvisational ensembles Six Heads and The Urban Refuse Group, and has documented their construction in the journal Experimental Musical Instruments.

GASTRIC FEMALE REFLEX | 8:45PM
GASTRIC FEMALE REFLEX was started out of necessity to punctuate awkward expanses and embarrassed silences pecking at them with lugubrious beaks and soft spit marmalade, the sound of shitty winds through dildo trees. It began under strenuous circumstances near strangers in cramped subterranean dwellings, nowhere to sit but the bed (on top of the sheets) groping, bewildered in the sonic darkness of a monolithic uncertainty, and admittedly, inadequacy. Though, for all their shortcomings as musicians, they still succeeded in producing over 30 albums worth of manic, rollicking, often insufferable gesticulations on a host of international labels. Once upon a time they had toured Europe extensively and performed at several festivals where they were unilaterally ignored. These days, every show is their last. Once every couple of months Jacob Horwood and Andrew Zukerman will rise from their convalescent beds, dust off their reel to reels and subject themselves to the torture of being in a band that sounds like shit. Eventually it will die a quiet death, be buried with its stupid name and nobody will be the wiser. RIP GFR.

M.STACTOR | 9:30PM
M.STACTOR (W.A.Davison) is a multi-disciplinary artist originally from Nova Scotia. He studied fine art at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and experimental music at Dalhousie University. His work has been exhibited, performed, and presented at numerous Canadian and International festivals. As a musician, composer, improviser, and instrument-builder, Davison has appeared in hundreds of performances as both a solo artist and in various groups and ad hoc collectives. His recorded work spans close to thirty years and has been distributed on small labels, through informal networks around the world. He remains a true experimentalist and a stalwart proponent of independent/DIY music production and dissemination. Davison has been a prominent member of Toronto’s improvising, noise, and experimental music communities since the early 90’s. He has received support from the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts. Davison has been living and working in Toronto since 1989.

YYZ IS PLEASE TO HOST IN CONVERSATION | THE CURATOR’S IMAGE
FRIDAY 20 APRIL 2012
7:00PM-9:00PM
ADMISSION | FREE

Christopher Regimbal | Exhibition Coordinator, Justina M. Barnicke Gallery
cheyanne turions | Independent Curator
Leah Turner | Associate, Jessica Bradley Art + Projects
Yan Wu | Programme Director, Gendai Gallery
Moderated by:
Lucas Soi | Director/Curator, Soi Fischer

Recent public dialogues such as The Curatorial Today, Art Basel (2011); Are Curators Unprofessional?, The Banff Centre (2010); and Curators In Context, ARCCO (2005) have established national and international conversations around the practical, theoretical and conceptual approaches to contemporary curatorial practice. The Curator’s Image seeks to do the same on a local level, providing a vehicle for conversation between emerging professionals who curate contemporary art in Toronto as part of institutional, commercial, artist-run and independent platforms.

Location | 140-401 Richmond Street W. Toronto, ON M5V 3A8
Gallery Hours | Tuesday-Saturday, 11:00 AM 5:00 PM