Via Akimbo:

"Sleepwalker is a contemporary art space which encounters the viewer at night. Sleepwalker presents newly commissioned artworks to the evening public of Toronto, through an experimental window space on Queen St. West. Since November 2006, Sleepwalker has connected late-night wanderers with emergent Canadian and international artists like Fedora Romita, Jen Hutton, Oscar Guermouche and Karl Larsson.

For the final Sleepwalker exhibition, the window space will host a guest curated group show entitled Private Viewing, calling into question the location and role of the window itself. After dark, storefronts are transformed into theatrically lit consumer narratives for people to push their noses up against, without risk of being seen. Mannequins, signage, multi-media display, and props both domestic and industrial, collide in a competition to gather our attention. The commercial strip along Queen St. West becomes a window shopper’s dream: a comfortable space from which to gaze. Strolling along the darkened streets, pedestrians have an excess of solitary space and time among shop windows, intensifying their fantasies.

Private Viewing is scheduled to run nightly from May 4th – May 25th, 2007. We are inviting artists to submit ideas for site-specific gestures, experimental projects, small works, process pieces and unusual initiatives in any media.

Sleepwalker is a space for creative exploration that operates with no funding. Sleepwalker events and programming are publicized, installed and documented by a staff entirely of volunteers: artists, educators, programmers, curators and designers with diverse experience with experimental projects. Artists are encouraged to consider that we cannot provide artist fees, shipping or materials when formulating their proposals.

Proposed works must fit in the window, which measures 18” wide by 9’ tall by 2’ deep. The window is outfitted with one light (anchored at the top in the centre) and one standard electrical outlet. We also welcome performance or sound pieces that may happen in front of or around the window space."

Proposal for Sleepwalker, 2007

I am an independent Vancouver-based curator, critic and photographer who has never previously exhibited work in a gallery. I am currently making and presenting an interlinked series of digital photographs of recorded lived experience in the form of portraits of trees, street debris, and urban details at www.vananodyne.blogspot.com.

I propose a two-night performance titled, Nomad, 2007. I will travel to Toronto at my own expense with a single backpack full of clothes, reading material, in-process critical writing, & etc. On the first night, I will arrive in front of the window at dusk with my backpack, dressed in ordinary street clothes, and will carry out my usual evening routine – reading; writing; eventually packing up, settling in for the night and falling asleep – on the street in front of the window. I will not directly engage with passerby, but I hope that the sight of me on the street (slightly disheveled, inwardly-turned) will cause bystanders to question my presence there.

My photographs are made with a small digital pocket camera, which I will provide to one of Sleepwalker’s organizers, or another individual of their choice. This individual will make a number of photographs of me over the course of the evening as surripticiously as possible. It is essential to the performance’s success that I not be overtly aware of the photographer’s presence, and that bystanders not be conscious of me “performing” for the camera. The digital camera will be returned to me by the photographer on the morning following the performance. I will select a single image from those taken by the photographer, and produce an approximately 11” x 14” black and white print from it. This photograph will be exhibited unframed and unattributed in the window on the second night of the performance.

Christopher Brayshaw
Vancouver, 2007

- posted by cjb @ 12:12 PM