Video: STAGES Speaker Series | Artist Talk with FASTWÜRMS

On Tuesday, April 11th at 7pm, Plug In ICA presented an artist talk by Ontario-based collective FASTWÜRMS.

FASTWÜRMS artwork is characterized by a self-described “determined DIY sensibility, Witch Nation identity politics, and a keen allegiance towards working class, queer alliance, and artist collaborations”. They are mainstays within the Canadian art scene and have a long relationship of working with Plug In ICA, including on their 2008 exhibition Donky@Ninja@Witch.

Their Interdisciplinary practice takes on many forms including video, installation, performance and public art. Interweaving punk aesthetics with ancient symbol-ology their immersive installations act as stages for performance and audience interaction. They embrace the lexicon of popular culture witchcraft as a tool to look at issues of identity politics and social interaction.

For their talk, FASTWÜRMS presented their work as it relates to the public art project, STAGES: Drawing The Curtain – a constellation of site-specific public artworks launched through out Winnipeg in August 2017. This large-scale public art project asks artists to locate a site within the city of Winnipeg from which to contemplate the stage – its function as a platform; its meaning as a point of attention; and its physical design. Directed by their individual interests and material preferences, the artists built sculptural ‘stages’ ranging in shape and form, connected as platforms for audiences to occupy, physically engage with, and contemplate.

Formed in 1979 by multidisciplinary artists Kim Kozzi and Dai Skuse, FASTWÜRMS is known for their diverse immersive practice that explores identity, humour, magic and social exchange. Their practice takes the form of public commissions, installation, video, performance, and drawing. Together they teach studio art at the University of Guelph, Ontario. Their work has been shown extensively in North America and Internationally at venues including the Power Plant (Toronto), Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), Ontario Art Gallery (Toronto), CIAC (Montréal), Walter Phillips Gallery (Banff), SEQUENCES Festival (Reykjavik, Iceland), Seoul Museum of Art (Seoul, Korea) Leokonig Projekte (New York) and the 2006 São Paulo Biennial, Brazil. FASTWÜRMS is represented by Paul Petro Contemporary Art, Toronto.