If the Viva Art Action festival began with the ceremonial entrance of performance art royalty, it ended with feats of the spectacular by one of one its super-heros. Polish artist, Arti Grabowski is a consummate performer, part carnival huckster, part silent film heart throb, part b-boy hunk, part suave master of the Texas two-step, part used-car salesman and part poète maudit. For last Saturday night’s performance he blew some serious performative smoke for the capacity crowd at the Atelier Jean-Brillant.

Guy Debord in his 1955 Critique of Urban Geography defined psychogeography as “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.” Though the Debord and the Lettristes never actualized their ideas, these concepts were later developed by the Situationists, the Neoists and others. On the concluding night of the Viva festival, Jacquelin van de Geer’s and Jean-Phillippe Luckhurst-Cartier ventured into this realm with their performance re-searching the social history of the urban area surrounding the performance space at the Atelier Jean-Brillant.

Few people were able to experience Dana Michel’s relational piece which took place off to the side of the evening’s events on Saturday night. Sitting in an infant’s inflatable bed, Michel involved participants in a long intimate conversation. When I stopped by to look at the work in the intermission after the action of Jacquelin van de Geer and Jean-Phillippe Luckhurst-Cartier, the line of those waiting to talk with Michel stretched back twenty or thirty people deep. Of these only a tiny handful experienced the meeting with Michel even after waiting an hour or more.

Sylvie Cotton concluded her series of interventions at the Viva festival with a reading of text devised from one of her many one-day artist residencies, which have taken place in the homes of her friends and acquaintances. The text she read for the capacity crowd on Saturday night listed in alphabetical order all the names in the Montreal telephone book which signify something in the French language. These could be objects like Perron (exterior steps leading to the entrance of a building) or Marteau (hammer), or states of being like Léveillé (the awakened) or compounds like Beaulieu or Beaupré (pretty place and pretty field).

For the last action of Day 3, Singapore artist, Jason Lim built a vast and imposing silence that encompassed the studio Jean-Brillant and enveloped the spirits of the public. Bringing together a few simple elements, he constructed this experience upon the open plain of the room’s collective consciousness, holding it together with feathers, a candle and the sense of fragile equilibrium of a physical world precariously balanced upon the mind.

To kick-off night three of Viva, Swiss-based dancer and performance artist, Dorthea Rust, presented a sometimes playful exploration of vulnerability and trust that occasionally threatened to cause someone or something real damage. She entered the space tentatively, wearing what appeared to be an expensive branded polar anorak whose front zipper went from the waist up past the neck continuing to the top of the hood.* With the zipper closed, the fleece enclosed Rust’s torso and head completely, leaving her blind.

For the concluding act of day 2 of the festival, Bulgarian artist, Boryana Rossa, provided a sly, droll and intelligent (re) presentation of Carollee Schneemann’s 1975 iconic feminist performance « Interior Scroll ». Photographs of Schneemann’s performance, show her naked, standing on a table, reading a long scroll of text that she has pulled from out of her vagina. Partial and incomplete news of this performance reached Rossa as a young woman studying art in Bulgaria. She immediately recognized the performance as an important and radical feminist critique and an affirmation of the body, just the things she needed to hear in one of the Soviet socialist republics.

In interpreting the oft-times private gestures, rituals and actions of performance art, the public relies in part on the mien of the performer to find meaning and engage with the performance. During the performance of Sandra Johnston, an artist from Northern Ireland, the public at Viva sat enthralled as she invested her action with the intensity of a spiritual conversion.

The Quebec-based performance duo, Hélène Doyon et Jean-Pierre Demers, opened the 5^th Edition of the Viva Art Action festival with all the pomp and circumstance of performance art royalty. With the measured steps and rigid postures of those born to high office, they entered the Ateliers Jean-Brillant to the canned cheers of multitudes and the expectant silence of the public in the studio.