Photo by Kayley Mackay.

There’s a running joke in the Northwest Territories that you need to travel outside the Arctic to hang out with your neighbours. That was the case for Yellowknife artists Greyson Gritt and Tiffany Ayalik, who first met a few years ago at the Northern Scene festival in Ottawa. Their spontaneous partnership soon became Quantum Tangle—a two-person performance group blending song, storytelling, movement, and spoken word.

The group’s name refers to American blood quantum laws, legislation enacted by settlers that determines who gets Indigenous status, regardless of how people with Indigenous ancestry self-identify. Since both Quantum Tangle’s members come from blended Indigenous backgrounds—Gritt is Ojibway-Métis and Ayalik is half-Inuk—they are affected by similar colonial systems in Canada, including Bill C-31, which designates or denies Indigenous peoples a hierarchy of status depending on their parentage and generation.

Quantum Tangle’s show Blended Background Blues is a tapestry of art forms, dealing with issues of identity, assimilation, and belonging. Gritt shares deeply personal anecdotes about their family history and Ayalik performs traditional Inuit legends she learned from Elders across the Arctic. Quantum Tangle songs harmoniously blend Blues guitar with Gritt’s soulful voice and Ayalik’s throat singing, harmonies, and dance. On the title track of their EP Tiny Hands they sing, “What have you seen in your short long life?/ What has your heart overcome?/ The traditional ways that are hidden away/ Can be revived by the beat of a drum.”

“I definitely see our performance as a release to be able to talk about these difficult or sometimes even political issues in this beautiful manner,” says Gritt. “It’s an amazing way to connect with folks who are either on the same page, or even more importantly, who aren’t on the same page or don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

The tone of Quantum Tangle’s performance is always shifting, wavering between playful and serious, depending on how audience members respond to the subjects being tackled. In one part of the show, the pair uses a loop pedal to overlay their voices repeating all the prejudiced things that have been said to them about their identities. It usually receives a mixed reaction from the crowd: sighs and uncomfortable laughs, or louder laughs of recognition from those audience members who have heard the same comments countless times. The segment also acknowledges the way Indigenous people may have internalized those same thoughts. “I personally have said some very prejudiced things in my life,” says Gritt. “It’s a product of living in a colonized society and of not always knowing your roots.”

This is a big year for Quantum Tangle. Their first record won Indigenous album of the year at the Juno Awards and they released their second album, Shelter as we go…, in July. The group toured Europe in the spring and is playing throughout Ontario and Nunavut in the summer. This fall, Quantum Tangle will be directing the music for a nationwide Canada 150 comedy show with Mary Walsh and touring the country again with other artists from the territories. Ayalik is thrilled Quantum Tangle’s success is coming at what feels like a pivotal moment for Indigenous arts and culture in Canada. “It’s so exciting to be a small part of this huge mosaic across the country where Indigenous people are really letting go of shame and things that have kept them from their cultural practices in the past,” she says. “Whether it’s through a visual medium, dance, theatre, or writing, it’s pretty exciting to see that come through art in a big way.”

The pair hopes their work and success inspires the next generation of artists coming from marginalized backgrounds. “We are walking Venn diagrams of all these identities and experience all these intersecting joys and oppressions,” says Gritt. “It’s important for us to show the world that you can be Indigenous, queer, transgender, and from a small town. People might think they don’t have the right or the resources to do what they want to do, but we just want to keep reminding folks that you can do it, we love you and we believe in you.”

“This isn’t a protest, where we are being aggressive and pushing our views onto people,” explains Jazmine Carr, half of the performing duo. “This is performance art, to make people stop and ask why we are doing this.”

Women’s bodies have long been cause awareness tools; FEMEN’s “sextremism” is a recent example, as is Toronto’s SlutWalk. Whether one is in the camp that these methods show that women are reclaiming their bodies, or are of the belief that the message is lost through women flaunting their bods, it is known that the woman’s body is a guaranteed attention-grabber.

Lace 4 the Race! Was organized by the self-identified Nerdy Stripper, a.k.a. Twiggy. “I wanted to continue the conversation on what is happening to our brothers and sisters in Russia,” Twiggy says, referencing what the Facebook event page describes as, “Putin’s anti-gay, anti-speech, anti-lace panties atrocity to human rights.” The message was, “Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.”

A handful of photographers joined the event, while many a passerby stopped to snap their own shots or ask the gals what they were up to, including a pair of Toronto police officers who seemed to be genuinely concerned for the ladies’ well-being—the temperature outdoors being below zero degrees and all. “I personally think the event went well,” says Twiggy. “I was asking a lot [people to show up in underwear], it was -8 C out.”

After a few whisky shots, and some dancing to lady-vocal tunes such as The Distillers, both performers were warm as they braved through the early afternoon.

A former This intern, Hillary Di Menna writes Gender Block every week and maintains an online feminist resource directory, FIRE- Feminist Internet Resource Exchange.

Terrance Houle. Photo by Jarusha Brown.

In a small bright room in downtown Toronto, a young Aboriginal woman is auditioning for a role she never expected to play. “I’d like to read the part of Billy Jack,” she says. With script in hand, the woman narrows her eyes and begins to read: “It’s my medicine bag. Got some owls feathers, sacred corn, snake teeth …” Behind the camera, looking every bit the director in jeans, baggy T-shirt, and ponytail, sits Terrance Houle — filmmaker, photographer, performance artist, and all-around funny guy. Though he’s only been creating films and art for five or six years, Houle is making waves with his humorous post-modern take on the unique issues facing contemporary Aboriginal Canadians.

On the “set” of Casting Call, his most ambitious project to date, Houle is relaxed and in charge, guiding nervous volunteers through their lines. The piece — part performance art, part film — confronts the stereotype of the “Hollywood Indian” by holding fake auditions for the roles of “Natives playing non-Natives acting in Native roles.” Anyone can audition, and each participant chooses from a selection of scripts from old Hollywood films that originally used Caucasian actors to play Aboriginal characters. “Everybody who auditions pretty much gets in,” Houle explains between readings. For Houle and the participants, it’s about “Natives taking back the roles themselves.”

Houle’s cheeky critique covertly drives his message home, but even when the subject matter is potentially sensitive, he can’t resist a joke. The piece has been staged at festivals and events across Canada, and each time it’s performed Houle posts an ad to attract participants that lists possible qualifications: “Traditional, contemporary, bannock experience; an interest in bingo; braided hair; owners of buckskin loincloth, breach cloth and general hides a bonus.” This playful mocking is Houle’s signature as an artist, an approach he uses intentionally to make his art accessible to a wider audience. “I don’t want to be somebody who’s pointing a finger,” he explains. “I find that, for me, that doesn’t work.”

Evidence of this approach can be observed in his 2005 short film, Metrosexual Indian, in which Houle addresses the conflicting identities that confront males of his generation. Dressed in full 1950s Hollywood-Indian-style regalia overtop metro duds, Houle and his buddies brave the streets armed with cellphones and no-foam cappuccinos. In another piece, Terrance, adorned in (only) a loincloth and moccasins, portages a canoe from public fountain to public fountain in downtown Vancouver. The point is clear: it is near-impossible for Aboriginals to negotiate a meaningful relationship with nature in a world of glass and concrete.

And his work isn’t just getting laughs — it’s getting attention. In 2006 he won Calgary’s Enbridge Emerging Artist Award, and last year he was nominated for the Sobey Award, Canada’s most prestigious award for young artists. While most reactions have been positive, there are still some who find his work confusing. Houle laughs as he explains, “for this piece especially, I’ve had a lot of people email saying, ‘This is racist tripe! Artists should know more about Aboriginal people!'” He chuckles at the irony. “For me I find that funny, that I have to email and say, ‘well, in fact I am Native, and I’m very well versed, and these are actually culled from my experience as an Aboriginal person.'”

In the audition room, though, the mood is jovial. One woman shows up laden with props, wearing a dress with braids sewn on the front; another does a “valley girl” impression. A man reads the entire script with a campy, effeminate affectation. Everyone seems to know the films, and most burst into laughter as soon as they finish reading, along with Houle. “I know all these movies. Everyone kind of associates themselves with them. I loved Billy Jack,” Houle says of the 1971 cult classic. “I was like, ‘A kung-fu Indian! How cool is that!’ And then I found out that he wasn’t Indian and I was like, ‘Oh.'” Casting Call serves to right that Hollywood wrong, and is getting Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals alike laughing-and thinking. No easy trick, but one that Houle has mastered.

"Sitting Bed" (2006) by Life of a Craphead. Photo courtesy the artists.

Amy Lam, left, and Jon McCurley, the "conceptual comedy" duo known as Life of a Craphead.

For Toronto’s “Making Room” art show in 2006, Amy Lam and Jon McCurley—the duo who call themselves Life of a Craphead— erected a bed sitting on a couch. The couch was large and blue and the bed sat as a human would, folded at the waist, with two wooden legs on the ground. It looked comfortable. On a sign nearby, hand-written, as if the bed itself got down on bedposts and springboard to scrawl the words, was the caption “SOMETIMES EVEN I HAVE TO SIT DOWN.”

“It’s supposed to be funny,” Lam says of their work. McCurley nods. “But the first couple of shows, people just didn’t laugh.”

Today, Lam and McCurley are one of Toronto’s most sought-after installation-, performance-, and conceptual-art teams. They have appeared everywhere from rock clubs to abandoned factories, hoity-toity galleries to Hollywood’s Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. In Toronto’s Chinatown, Life of a Craphead offered a “Free Lunch,” giving away everything on the menu; in Montreal they sat in a church basement, selling $40 “laughter-treated” wood.

Life of a Craphead call themselves a “conceptual comedy duo,” but their work by any other name would be as funny. “Someone from a gallery will ask us to perform at it as performance artists or as installation artists,” McCurley explains, “but someone from the comedy world will ask us to perform [as comedians], or someone from the theatre world will ask us to do a play.”

They met at Canzine in 2004, each there with their own projects. The following year, the duo performed their first comedy set together for the Drake Hotel’s Joke Club night. As they chow down on eggplant curry, their chemistry is palpable: conversing in gentle punchlines, a string of sympathetic giggles, and each peeping through enormous granny glasses.

Whereas Lam has lived in Hong Kong, Calgary, Waterloo, and Montreal, McCurley has known only Ontario, growing up in Mississauga before spending a “year of hell” at Queen’s and then OCAD. Life of a Craphead’s first joke involved boxes of books taken from the house of McCurley’s parents, who had recently moved. “We pulled [them] out on stage and then we went offstage and played Beethoven,” McCurley says. “And nobody laughed. After that we brought out a dog on a cinderblock and we let him loose, with Beethoven. And nobody laughed.”

“And that was the first joke ever,” Lam sadly intones. In their earliest routines, they avoided addressing the audience directly—trying “not to do the things that stand-up comedians usually do.” But as they began to do more “fine” art events, the context changed. “The popular notion of performance art is ‘It could be anything! There are no limits,’” Lam says.

“Comedy’s expectations are different and much more clear,” McCurley continues. “You’re going to go in and you’re going to laugh at these jokes.”

"Laughter Treated Wood" (dates vary) from New Thing Travelling Show by Life of a Craphead. Photo courtesy the artists.

Life of a Craphead’s work began to test the relationship between performance art and comedy, artworks and jokes, often while occupying or reshaping public spaces. In 2007, the pair illegally sawed “musical lines” into Yonge Street—trenches that would play “music,” or rather a brief coughing sound, when cars drove over. More recently, they crashed their own gallery show— engineering a fake wedding party that seemed to sabotage a play at its climax. “Wise art people, who have a handle on things, were tricked,” McCurley gloats. “They asked, ‘How did they do that? Why did they do that?’”

But it’s the arbitrary, self-organized events that most tickle Life of a Craphead: their show at an abandoned truck factory; their proposed “stress ramp” for frustrated Torontonians to jump into Lake Ontario; taking a saw to the road outside Future Shop. “It’s more important to do something with people here than to impress people who don’t exist over there,” McCurley says. “If it gets busted by the police, then no one cares. ‘Oh well! Everyone goes home!’ But if it works, it’s like—‘I can’t believe it’s happening! This is amazing!’ Then it’s like heaven. Nothing else matters. This here is the best place to be.”

The project (www.bankofvictoria.com) also archives the artist’s recent group performances, including one in which six couples stood kissing on the sidewalk in front of an Export A factory. “Drug” is about “sublimating addictions while addressing their numerous guises,” Stanton says. “Welcome,” in which four people stood in front of a carpet store holding welcome mats, “tries to create a temporary impact on the urban environment.”

Stanton, a core member of Montreal’s spoken word movement over the past decade, is continually taking on different roles as an artist. In 2001, along with Vincent Tinguely, she co-authored Impure (a massive book about the history of Montreal spoken word). Now, the shift in her craft is physical rather than verbal. “Sometimes I feel like showing with bodies and not telling with words,” she says. Whatever the method, her tableaux still talk about “our relationship to our bodies, food, feminism and sexuality, personal empowerment, obsession/addiction and love.”

A recent public performance consisted of a group of people going to a restaurant for brunch. They ordered their meals and, when the food came, each fed the person sitting across from him. The result was improvised communication, both among the performers and the serving staff.

For Stanton, it’s a matter of finding an audience by sneaking up behind them, instead of waiting for them to come see her on a stage. “These more visual performances are not completely removed from my spoken word works because, through a different means, they tend to address the same issues and themes that I ever did when I was standing up on stage yodelling a story or choking out pseudo-poetic social commentary.”

Stanton is planning a small show of recent material in September at a new Montreal venue called Le Local, before going off to Brussels to perform as part of the “Vollevox—Narration” event later that month.