Yong Soon Min and Allan deSouza - Will **** for Peace Performance / Exhibition Curator : Monika Kin Gagnon May 22 to June 14, 2003 Live webcast on www.oboro.tv Saturday, May 24 from noon to 5:00 p.m. Opening: Thursday, May 22, 2003 at 5:00 p.m. performances on May 23 and 24 from noon to 5:00 p.m. "Will **** for Peace is a performance collaboration between Los Angeles-based artists Yong Soon Min and Allan deSouza. Originally performed in 2002, it resonates in the shadow of the tragedies of September 11 and the ensueing hyper-militarization that now bombards us from the south, touching on war, nationalism, militarization, and complex relations between art activism and peace. Will **** for Peace revisits newlywed Yoko Ono and John Lennon’s week-long Peace Bed-In that began on May 26, 1969 at Montréal’s Queen Elizabeth Hotel, which mobilized their celebrity to publicize peace and love at a critical socio-political moment during the Vietnam War. The group song/chant, Give Peace a Chance (now a mainstay at peace demos) was recorded during the Bed-In. Min and deSouza’s recreation of John and Yoko’s remarkably simple gesture in support of peace has a poignant resonance in the present climate; it is tempered by 21st century sobriety evident in their refashioned title that spins the social desperation of "will work for food." Min and deSouza are seasoned artists and this performance occasions their first visit to Montréal." (M.K.G.) Yong Soon Min is a Los Angeles-based multi-media artist.. Min's works have been exhibited in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, the Philippines, and South Korea, and she was curator for the 4th Gwangju Bienniale, 2002, in South Korea. She is currently Chair of the Department of Studio Art at the University of California, Irvine. Allan deSouza is an artist/writer living in Los Angeles. He was an active participant of the Black Arts movement in Britain during the 1980s and has exhibited extensively in Britain and United States, as well as at the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Third Havana Biennale, Cuba. He is author of The Sikhs in Britain, and his fiction and critical writings have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Monika Kin Gagnon is a Montréal writer, critic, teacher and curator. She is the author of Other Conundrums: Race, Culture and Canadian Art (Arsenal,/Artspeak/KAG, 2000) and 13 Conversations About Art and Cultural Race Politics , co-authored with Toronto video artist, Richard Fung (Arextes Editions, 2002). She teaches Communication Studies at Concordia University.