Defining 'Rosé Porn' defeats its purpose — everyone will experience the art project differently

Defining dancer and choreographer Zoja Smutny's project Rosé Porn isn't easy. Made in collaboration with Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist Victoria Cheong, it's a concept album and a live performance about "articulating the moments of presence," mixing elements of dance, cinema, installation, merchandising, music and environmental design.

"As a choreographer or as performance artist, I'm now mainly interested in how I'm going to spend an hour with you," Smutny tells CBC Arts of the concept. "Or how are we going to spend an hour together. Because I'm not really interested in show and tell — like this idea that you make something, and then you show it. But how do you use the conditions and set up to make something together?"

According to Amelia Ehrhardt, the curator at Toronto's Dancemakers (where Smutny's creation originated last year), Rosé Porn can be "walked through, photographed, watched directly or glanced at through a sideways look."

"As a generator of multiple objects through the choreographic event, Rosé Porn can also be smelled, worn, listened to, taken home," she says.

As you may have got the sense by now, Rosé Porn is really something someone has to experience to understand. But this will be the case for anyone attending this month's First Thursdays party at the Art Gallery of Ontario, where it will make its fourth configuration after its initial Toronto debut and stints in Los Angeles and Montreal.

For Smutny, it all comes down to the idea of creating a space where people can come together for one moment and actually celebrate.

"I was thinking about where does art belong right now in a moment where real life gives you so many intense emotions," Smutny says. "All those things that art hopes to do: to be transformative and make you think about something. It's already happening in the real world. So what are you going to do? You're going to go the museum and see a picture of what's happening? So I thought, okay, Rosé Porn has to become this space where at least there's some kind of joy that happens. I feel like that's the privilege of living in a first world country and making art in this context. That we can still have the privilege to make whatever we want."

I was thinking about where does art belong right now in a moment where real life gives you so many intense emotions.- Zoja Smutny

The only thing that's actually set with each edition of Rosé Porn is the music, something Smutny had always been fascinated by but had never made herself. 

"I'm very interested in that whole manipulative language of music," she says. "And the amount of time a song is, in relation to the amount of time, say, a film is. I've always been intrigued by the three or four minutes of a song. It's like, your whole life could be in that three or four minutes. But all other forms are a much lengthier amount of time. So I asked Victoria Chong, a musician I've collaborated with forever, if she would be into doing this project with me. I write these songs and she makes the music and sings it — because I can't sing. Basically, I wanted to make an album but I don't make albums. Rosé Porn represented this space where I could make a concept album as a choreographer, through a musician."

So while these songs are consistent for everyone who experiences Rosé Porn, everything else is different — even for Smutny.

"The whole premise is that you will miss something," Smutny says. "You're going to have to make a choice and know that you are going to miss seeing something. I never know what's going to happen next because it depends on who is there. Every show is different, and everybody will have something different to say about their experience. I don't think there's one person that can have the same experience with that show."

The AGO version will be no different. 

"It's going to be crazy," she says. "It's a huge room at the AGO. Normally, people come in from the show and aren't roaming in and out of it. You can leave, but usually it's been you come in and the doors are closed. This time, it's open. I don't know how many people are going to come and go. So I think that this is going to be very interesting and challenging for me as a performer."

And the same goes for us as spectators, since with Rosé Porn, our experience is Smutny's art.

Rosé Porn. Created and performed by Zoja Smutny. April 6, 7-11:30pm. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. www.ago.net