ECU X Mount Pleasant: A Performance Series

In tandem with Emily Carr University’s centennial celebrations, we’re moving out into the neighbourhood! Celebrating students, alumni and members of the ECU community, ECU x Mount Pleasant highlights collaborations with some of our favourite institutions, artists and venues.  

100 Years in the Making | This series has been curated in support of ECU 100, Emily Carr University of Art + Design’s centennial anniversary.

ECU x MP: Craftsmanship
Organized by Peter Bussigel and Susan Gibb  
Working with Western Front visiting artist Itziar Okariz, ECU students will share insights from Craftsmanship, a workshop that reflects on performance both in its specificity and at the limits that define it. The workshop engages practical exercises that consider the body as a sign and language in its positional and performative dimensions. 
Western Front
Thursday, November 20, 7:30 PM    

ECU x MP: Boots ‘n’  Cats
Curated by Katria Phothong-McKinnon (BMA ‘25)
Merging performance, sound/music and installation to bridge the vibrant local communities of Ballroom and Hip Hop/Street Dance. This evening brings these forms into dialogue, the event highlights their shared spirit of resilience, artistry and community, calling in future, present and past Emily Carr alumni alongside the wider community, the event expands what performance can be within thee contemporary art context. Positional Ballroom and Street Dance as not only cultural practices but as vital, living art forms that challenge and reimagine how performance enters and transforms institutional spaces.  
The Birdhouse
Friday, January 9, 7 PM

ECU x MP: Storefront
Curated by Maiko Yamamoto (MAA, ‘14)
ECU alum and artistic director of Theatre Replacement, Maiko Yamamoto, will showcase experimental performance, music and installation. More details to come!
Spring 2026 – Dates and Venue forthcoming

Itziar Okariz is an artist based between Bilbao and New York. Her work revolves within the framework of action and performance, questioning the ways of regulating language and the production of signs that define us. Her work –vocal performances, instant acts, videos, installations and text pieces– examines the ties between architecture, territory, body, ritual, sexuality, and semiotics. Often associated with feminist practices, punk-rock and the queer critique of normative gender constructs. 

Katria Phothong McKinnon is a Thai-Canadian artist, dancer, and curator working across new media, sound, sculpture and performance. Her practice explores embodiment, transcultural identity, and the intersections of tradition and technology, drawing from Thai dance and Street styles such as Voguing, W*acking, Campbellocking, Popping, House and Hip Hop. A recipient of the inaugural New Media Curation Award at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, where she completed a BMA in New Media + Sound Arts with a minor in Curatorial Practices. She is currently an artist-in-residence with the Festival of Recorded Movement in their Technology + Interaction program.  

Maiko Yamamoto is a Vancouver-based artist who creates new, experimental and intercultural works of performance. Many of these works are built through a career-long practice of collaboration and include theatre projects, public art works, and performance installations. In 2003, Maiko co-founded the Vancouver-based performance company, Theatre Replacement. For TR she has created over 20 new works, many of which have toured to festivals and venues around the world. These include: BIOBOXES: Artifiacting Human Experience, Yu-Fo, Train, Sexual Practices of the Japanese, Dress me up in your love, Town Choir, MINE and Best Life. She also curates and produces the PushOFF platform, and in 2018 began a new project-based artist residency program for experimental makers, COLLIDER.