On June 3, 2006, La Centrale Powerhouse invites you to a launch, artist talk and reception for Vigilantes: The Dream of Reason. This artist monograph documents a key series of works by Cuban artist Tania Bruguera. The artist will be in attendance.

Between October and November 2004, Tania Bruguera performed various actions aboard United Airlines flights between the US and Canada as part of a Fado residency project and Mois de la Performance entitled TIME ZONES, curated by Tagny Duff. Bruguera explains, "The airplane in motion is the site of these pieces, one with clear restrictions for passengers. Choosing this specific site acknowledges the way planes have become an icon of fear in collective memory in the United States of America." During these flights passengers were invited to both contribute to the form of the actions and to videotape them.

Vigilantes: The Dream of Reason is printed in the form of an airplane ticket. The publication contents include an introductory text and descriptions of the actions by Tania Bruguera. Erin Manning explores the implications of time and suspension in The Weight of Suspension: Tania Bruguera's "Vigilantes" Performances. In the essay Performing Lag Time, Tagny Duff suggests that the inflight actions and their traces produce a lag between movement and stasis, generating an excess that exceeds representation.
The launch will also feature videos taken by passengers during the flights.

Tania Bruguera produces political artworks through installations and performances. Recently she has incorporated the idea of behavior and social conduct as an artistic media. In January 2003 she opened Arte de Conducta, an artistic-pedagogical project in Havana. Currently she is part of the faculty at University of Chicago. Her work has been shown at several international exhibitions including Documenta XI, the 49th and 51st editions of the Venice Biennale, the V and VII Havana Biennale, and the 23rd Sao Paolo Biennale, among others. She has had solo shows at the Kunsthalle Wien, Casa de las Americas, and Museo de Bellas Artes. In 1998 she was a Guggenheim fellow.

Erin Manning is assistant professor in studio art and film studies at Concordia University where she teaches courses at the intersection of philosophy and art practice. Recent publications include Ephemeral Territories: Representing Nation, Home and Identity in Canada (Minnesota UP, 2003) and Politics of Touch: Sense, Movement, Sovereignty (forthcoming 2006, Minnesota UP).

Tagny Duff is an artist, curator, producer, and PhD candidate in the Interdisciplinary Humanities Program at Concordia University. Recent published texts include "FFWD, RWND and Play: Performance art, video, and feminisms in Vancouver" in Caught in the Act: an anthology of performance art by Canadian Women (Ed Tanya Mars and Johanna Householder, YYZ Books) and "Codpieces: Phallic Paraphernalia Revisited" a forthcoming essay included in Fado Inc. Performance Art Legends book series on Canadian artist Tanya Mars.

Fado is pleased to acknowledge the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council, the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council, and the Department of Canadian Heritage for their support of our ongoing activities. Fado and the curator would also like to thank The Art Gallery of Hamilton and Art Metrople for their generous support.

La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse would like to thank its members, artists and public, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts de Montréal and Les Brasseries GMT for their support of our ongoing activites, as well as the Interarts Office at the Canada Council and the CALQ's Promotion et Diffusion-soutien aux manifestations artistiques program for their generous support of the 6th edition of the Mois de la performance (2004).