Collaborations in Spain Málaga October 2024 and May 2025

Collaborations in Spain: Performance, Drawing, Objects and Live Feed Projection

Málaga, Spain, October 2024 and May 2025

During October 2024 and May 2025, I developed a series of collaborative experiments in southern Spain combining improvised performance, drawing, objects and other materials with live feed projection. Much of this work took place during two residencies at Bajo El Olivo near Alhaurín el Grande, with another collaboration taking place in Málaga during May 2025.

In October 2024, I collaborated with the performance duo GU!ATARI, Alejandro Benito and Laura Maillo, and separately with performance artist Niche Ramírez. I worked with Ramírez again during my May 2025 residency, when musician Daniel Blacksmith joined the collaboration. During May I also collaborated in Málaga with the multi-media duo Random Visuals, Javier Lopez and Luqproject.

The collaborations were unscripted and developed differently with each group of artists. Live feed cameras recorded improvised drawings, objects and other materials, which were projected onto performers and surrounding surfaces in real time. Drawing, movement, sound, shadows, projected imagery and the physical environment became materials that we could respond to while the collaborations were taking place.

I am continuing to edit and work through the video documentation from these collaborations. Unlike some of my other recent residency projects, the Spain material remains an evolving body of work, with the relationships between the individual collaborations and the final form of the edited videos still being worked through because of the different approaches and contributions of the four groups of collaborators.

Video Documentation:
View the Collaborations in Spain playlist for edited and in-progress video documentation from the October 2024 and May 2025 collaborations: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLP7kBVFd05EZcycf3i3Srrd-JTKvIdMd5

Performance duo GU!ATARI, Alejandro Benito and Laura Maillo

 

Multimedia Duo Random Visuals, Javier Lopez and Luqproject.

Niche Ramírez (and Daniel Blacksmith)

Niche Ramírez and I used translation apps on our phones to communicate during the collaboration, as he spoke limited English and I spoke limited Spanish.

Cris Savage

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Open Studio: Exhibition and Participatory Event AllArtNow Stockholm, Sweden November 6, 2024

Open Studio: exhibition and participatory event

AllArtNow, Stockholm, Sweden — November 6-9, 2024

For this exhibition, I transformed the AllArtNow gallery into an open studio and public art laboratory. The space included drawing stations, cameras, overlapping live-feed projections, video, monitors, drawing materials, and works and materials from my ongoing art practice. Visitors could watch me work while also moving through and participating in the installation.

Audience members were invited to draw and write at the drawing stations while cameras recorded their activity and projected it live onto the gallery walls. The overlapping projections combined drawings, writing, hands, objects, and other activity taking place in the space. At another station, I showed and discussed video material I had been developing from recent residencies in Toronto and southern Spain. The exhibition continued to change as people entered the space, made drawings, watched the projections, talked with me and one another, and became part of the activity taking place in the gallery.

The Open Studio continued an approach to exhibitions that I have explored off and on since Live Drawings at Plug In ICA in 1998 and Theatre Paint at Ace Art in 2000, where the exhibition space also becomes a place for making, experimentation, performance, and interaction with the public. In September 2025, I expanded on the overlapping drawing stations and live-feed projections from the AllArtNow exhibition for a School of Art Homecoming event in the Soundstage at the University of Manitoba, using multiple drawing stations, cameras, and overlapping projections.

 

Luminous Bodies Art Residency - Participatory Studio Performance - Gibraltar Arts Centre, Toronto Island Sept 28, 2024

Luminous Bodies Residency

Gibraltar Point Arts Centre, Toronto Island — September 16–29, 2024

In September 2024, I participated in the Luminous Bodies artist residency at Gibraltar Point Arts Centre on Toronto Island, directed by artist and educator Teresa Ascencao. During the two-week residency, I worked in my studio while also participating in discussions, studio visits, and exchanges with the other artists in residence.

During the residency I developed a studio installation as a space for experimenting with live-feed video, projection, physical objects, drawing and performance. Cameras recorded activity taking place within the studio and returned it to the space as projected imagery. I was interested in the relationships that could develop between a physical action, the person or object being recorded, and its simultaneous appearance elsewhere in the studio through live video.

I also experimented with making the projectors themselves mobile. I placed projectors on swivel chairs and attached ropes to the chairs so that I could pull and rotate them during the performance. As the chairs swivelled, the projected images moved in arcs along the walls and through the installation. This allowed the position and movement of the projections to become another improvised element within the performance.

For the final public event on September 29, I turned the installation into a collaborative and participatory performance involving one planned participant and three people who joined the performance spontaneously.The collaborative performance itself was entirely improvised. Each participant seemed to have their own informal score, entering the projection environment individually and allowing the other performers their own space and time.

At different moments I interacted with individual participants, while at other times I remained in the background as they progressed through their own actions with the materials and objects. There was no predetermined sequence, but an understanding seemed to emerge among the participants about when to enter, when to wait, and when to allow another person to perform. During the final closing performance, the studio became a temporary public laboratory for experimenting with bodies, objects, live-feed video, moving projections, and improvisation.

The project continued my ongoing work with collaborative performance and live-feed projection and became part of the development that continued during my subsequent residency at Bajo El Olivo in southern Spain and my Open Studioexhibition at AllArtNow in Stockholm later in 2024. 

Video Documentation: View the Luminous Bodies playlist of edited videos documenting the final performance, rehearsals, and installation experiments during the residency: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLImia5qLiBr0