May 21, 2025 - Radicalities and transformations

Performance workshop by Holly Timpener & Sylvie Tourangeau, curated by Mila Figuet

Date: May 21
Time: 1-5 pm (4-6 hours, depending on participants’ needs)
Language: Frenglish
Places available: 12

**Participants are encouraged to wear comfortable clothing that allows them to move on the floor. We invite them to bring an object, an image, or a word that extends their practice of radicality.

Where does our radicality lie?
In what form(s) does it manifest?
How can we identify, embody, activate and nurture it?
How can it circulate, take place and be passed on?
In what ways can our own radical impulses, and those of others, enrich us?

Led by artists Holly Timpener and Sylvie Tourangeau, this performative workshop invites participants to reconnect with their inner radicality and explore its transformative potential—both individual and collective—to generate new forms of resistance.

Often perceived as a stance of strength, excessive or even threatening, radicality can instead be a powerful driver of change. Many struggles once deemed too radical have led to major social and political progress. Far from rigidity, and inspired by notions of radical pleasure, joy, and care, this workshop explores radicality embodied through tenderness and sensitivity—a radicality that soothes, supports, and connects.

Through guided explorations, performative exercises and collaborative practices, participants will, in resonance with their lived experiences and personal expression, develop tools to channel this energy into new forms of action and build a shared vocabulary of resistance.

Radical spaces and practices pave the way for new hopes and alternative realities. This workshop offers a moment to reimagine our ways of being and doing together, strengthen solidarity, and nurture enthusiasm for life, others, and the future to come.

We thank Art Volte of Concordia University, who made possible this workshop and La Centrale's cultural mediation internship.

Since 1978, Sylvie Tourangeau (artist, workshop facilitator, author, and curator) has been actively involved in performance art and is considered a pioneer of the medium in Canada. Her practice spans performative actions, relational art, and circumstantial rituals. She has published artist books and written over sixty articles on a wide range of performers. In 2017, she co-published the bilingual book Le 7e Sens with the TouVA collective, which explores the concept and practice of performativity. Since 1995, she has created and facilitated artist residencies in diverse settings. She also brings expertise in individual and group coaching, supporting practitioners who are expanding the field of performance art, while teaching as a lecturer at the University of Sherbrooke.

Holly Timpener is a queer, non-binary performance artist working in-depth with themes of queer resistance and transformation. They use performance to challenge and understand their place in this world while investigating how queer people and communities are connected. Performance allows them to confront issues related to gender, intimacy, trauma, and the body by engaging themes of trust, power, control, and resistance. Timpener approaches themes from a personal perspective and with research collected from within queer communities. One-on-one performances allow them to receive stories and experiences of other queer folks, which they reflect on and respond to through their performance works. Balancing their personal experience, knowledge, and memories with insight gained through queer community research, Timpener embodies “The Personal Is Political” in a modern sociopolitical context. Within their works, they claim ownership of their own body and reflect on the lived and intermingled experiences of being queer. Timpener’s work communicates identity, sexuality, gender, and community and creates strong images that transmute the space, public, and themself into a new awareness.