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| CONTACT
You
can contact Don Bergland at:
redjello@shaw.ca
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| This
project involved two performance activities given in the Faculty
of Education in 1989. At the time, Don Bergland advocated the
expression of creative behavior within the immediate context
one found oneself. As a living example of this type of creative
behavior, Don initiated two faculty performance events that
occupied the MacLaurin Building for a period of 4 weeks. The
first event was called Pearformance and was designed as a live
and continuous action performance piece focused on the topic
of “pears.” The topic was selected as an incongruous
subject that seemed to have no relevance to the immediate academic
concerns of students, faculty, and staff. The event began with
public brainstorming exhibitions and progressed to random blackboard
drawings and messages. This was followed by hallway posters,
newsletters, and large-scale comic strips. The piece lasted
two weeks and involved students, staff, and faculty in a series
of spontaneous and unexpected daily events. The event terminated
with a live action performance piece enacted by 4 performers
in the Wilf Johns gallery. This was accompanied by computer-generated
soundtracks, electric saws, and many pears. The second event
was called The Shame of Having Lips and utilized faculty performance
and videotape. Don wrote a fairly incomprehensible script dealing
with the agony of having lips. He posted this script on an easel
and then asked passers-by to read the script. He videotaped
their lips reading the script and then used the video footage
in a conceptual video. sWhen he had collected enough footage,
he went into the video editing studio and put together a version
of Lips. When this version was complete, he set up a video monitor
and played back the tape in an open hallway exhibition for a
five-day period. Both these events started establishing the
scholarly tone of his future career as an academic. |
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Context |
| The
Context performance consisted of the Pears Performance
event and the Shame of Having Lips videotape.
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