The 7th Sense

Made up of essays, a lexicon, and testimonials from some thirty contemporary artists in performance art, Le 7e Sens thinks the performative in, with and through language. It explores the vocabulary to name, to say what happens before, during and after a performative action, to talk about the experiences of those who propose the work, as well as those who receive it.

The TouVA collective presents a reflection that has developed and is to be understood in interaction with its works, with the workshops that Sylvie Tourangeau, Victoria Stanton and Anne Bérubé attended or facilitated. Three practising voices offer choral perspectives, plural and singular, to consider the performative as an art form or as a way of life; they mark out a kind of path, to better see or bring out an increased sensitivity to this living and fleeting performative : a 7th Sense.

- Simon Lanctôt

Collectif TouVA

Sylvie Tourangeau is considered a pioneer of performance art in Canada. Since 1978, her actions, group workshops and individual coaching have created an active space for the experimentation of performative consciousness through minimal actions that enhance the quality of presence, support intensity and personalize the connection with the spectator. In 2017, she will set up an artist's residence in the heart of Quebec's built heritage, La maison aux volets jaunes, dedicated to the performing arts (workshops, self-residencies, coaching and collective laboratories).

Victoria Stanton's interdisciplinary practice, based on the notions of presence and performative consciousness, reflects the complexity of an approach in which negotiation with the other is both a fundamental issue and a source of potential for reciprocal transformation. Considered one of the pioneers of transactional practices in Quebec, her interdisciplinary works (interventions, performative actions and conferences, publications, photos, lms, videos) have already been presented in Quebec, Canada, the United States, Europe, Australia, Japan and Mexico.

Trained in arts studies and literature, Anne Bérubé works in both fields as a researcher and practitioner. She is a frequent speaker and moderator, and has also produced several texts on local artists for various exhibition catalogues. She is a member of several reflection and creation groups involving art and social justice. For more than twenty years, she has integrated a performative component to her teaching practice in literature at the college level.

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