Artist/re-searcher Ayrah Taerb (aka Beerus) is the founder of Kundalini Kurrency Khansultancy, a collective of creative professionals and administrators who seek to spread the values of self determination and co-operative economics among the global black community. Beerus describes himself an executive producer, creative consultant and embodiment instructor.
Beerus, and collaborators Eric Flow and Matt Somber, presented a charged, energetic performance piece, combining music and martial arts, during a weekend afternoon at Toronto’s busy Yonge and Dundas square. Many people stopped by, excited about the performance taking up space and centering their focus at the chaotic and well known Toronto intersection of Yonge and Dundas Avenues. These young artists boldly lip-synced while improvising movements and interactions for videography. They unabashedly took up prime space on the corner, it was intriguing to watch how people gave them a wide berth to do their work. It was brave place-making in which the artists led courageous activations, confrontations to racial injustice, incorporating meditation, transcendence and mutual care. Some audience members entered the space physically and/or through noisey disruption while the activation was happening. The artists managed this graciously, offering kindness and patience while remaining unwavering in their focus.
The doing of this performance in place enacted a sense of belonging in a very specific way, with codes between artists that audiences didn’t really need to understand. The physical gestures, which were almost sculptural, in unplanned choreography, were understanding enough. The artists animated the space, using their bodies to challenge power and social norms in performance in a lively way, transmitting social knowledge, memory, and identity.
This performance in improvised movement and action asserted embodied freedom and authority, in a space in which commodification and capitalism typically organize the movement of bodies. Yonge and Dundas is often seen as a space within which to disappear amidst crowds of people, or as a tourist attraction representing the life of the city. This glyphing of space (a term introduced by Karyn Recollet) conversely was impossible to ignore, because it stood in stark contrast to these entrenched identifications of this city spot. Beerus and his collaborators, Eric and Matt, asserted their own bold critical presence through a transcendent aesthetic, especially when they sat on yoga mats in meditative practice while pedestrian traffic swirled around them.
Beerus/Ayrah will be continuing this placemaking through a performance installation exploring his “experience in this city at the intersections between poverty and genius: complexity and culture; the speed of capitalism versus the stillness of humanity”. This work is part of the Making with Place Public Art Projects 2021 for ArtworxTO: Toronto Year of Public Art.
