After meeting the BBeyond group in Belfast, Judith Price, John G. Boehme and Grace Salez initiated Open Action, a loose-knit collective who have been doing monthly performances in Victoria since 2010.

OPEN ACTION is a collective of performance artists based in Victoria, BC, Canada, dedicated to site-specific actions performed in public spaces. The first action was in June, 2010.

OPEN ACTION is comprised of an event that occurs once a month at a randomly selected location for a determined amount of time in and around the Capital Regional District (CRD) of Victoria, British Columbia.

OPEN ACTION is a free laboratory and all are welcome to participate.

JOHN G. BOEHME identifies as a cisgender white male from the Kumeyaay territory what is now La Jolla, California and currently is a settler on the Lekwungen speaking /Songhees W̱SÁNEĆ territory what is known as Victoria BC. His early art practice included painting, sculpture, performance video and digital technology, installation and photography. Boehme describes recent work as "trans-disciplinary" often employing performance, video, audio and objects in a number pieces simultaneously, Boehme is not constrained to any particular creative mode and therefore utilizes integrated approaches to realize the work. John continues to have exhibitions, screenings and festivals across Canada, the Americas, United Kingdom, Europe and China. John is an Artist and Educator teaching Performance Art, Ceramics and sculpture as a continuing faculty of the Visual Arts Department at Camosun College. MFA, University of Victoria, BFA Emily Carr University (VAL), Diploma Camosun College.

BRENDA PETAYS, ARTIST/TEACHER: I am a performance artist with 20 years practice, most interested in making objects and materials to interact within performance. I choose to make objects for performances to be used with movement, with sound and interactions with other performers. Memory and time are conductive threads in my work. I often use books, writing and words as materials in performance. I think of performance as research, done live – documenting with the camera the actions, phenomena, sounds and the landscapes, streetscapes, and nature landscapes we perform in.

DOUG JARVIS is an artist and curator based in Victoria, BC. He is a founding member of the avatar performance art group Second Front (www.secondfront.org) and the Noxious Sector Art Collective (www.noxioussector.net) and participates in Open Actions in public spaces. His individual and collective work explores absurdity, care, non-material entities and technology as a human attribute. His projects have been presented at artist-run centres, galleries, museums and festivals across Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia. Jarvis is an active member of the Victoria arts community and participates through a variety of non-profit and artist-run centre boards. He is the Administrator for the ProArt Alliance of Greater Victoria, a Guest Curator at Open Space Arts Society, and the Board Chair of the Ministry of Casual Living. Jarvis received an MFA in studio from the University of Guelph, ON and is a sessional instructor in the Visual Arts Department at UVic.

JUDITH PRICE combines a 30+ year transdisciplinary art practice with a 30+ year background in modern dance. Her body of work includes performances (site- specific street actions, interventions, and collaborative, durational works), performative videos, video installations, and short films. Price’s solo performances in galleries and festival events have included still images,video projections, and sculpture. Over the past two decades, much of her film and video work has focused on the ephemeral, transitory nature of memory and the
vicissitudes of the act of remembering. Price lives in Victoria, Canada and is retired from post-secondary teaching (time-based art and visual culture).

JAYNE STORY is an artist, elementary school teacher and mother of 4 in Victoria, BC. Performing regularly with Open Actions since 2014, and maintaining a mixed-media art practice, Story's work draws on observations of contradiction and prejudiced assumption inherent in societal living. What are all these many roles that a single individual may inhabit and exhibit? Story earned her Diploma of Visual Arts from Camosun College, Victoria.

GRACE SALEZ graduated from Emily Carr University of Art & Design in Vancouver, Canada (BFA 1998). Her preliminary works focused on short personal narrative films & videos which lead her to be a founding member and past president of MediaNet/Flux Gallery (Victoria, BC) and founder and past director of Dance for Camera Victoria. For the past ten years Grace has been a core member of OPEN ACTIONS PERFOMANCE ART (OAPA) who perform in public spaces once a month. She approaches specific public sites with a curiosity about its history, materiality, and the human demographics that utilize the space. Grace and the entire OAPA performance group expect the unexpected while out in public and often incorporate public response or non-responses. The OAPA performances are video documented and Grace is the editor. She has also done more intentional performance art works with Judith Price at indoor and outdoor events. Both her performances and video documentation of her performances have been exhibited at Victoria artist-run centers which includes The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, at Vancouver artist-run centers, and been presented at video art festivals throughout Canada, USA, and Europe. !! Dr. Lycia Trouton is a current Associate Fellow of the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society, University of Victoria. Her work often references her original hometown where she was born: Belfast, Northern Ireland, during the period of the Troubles; she immigrated to Vancouver, Canada, in 1970— Since then she has lived/worked and exhibited in the USA, Asia and Australia. An award-winning contemporary artist and generalist art historian whose work spans from the performative and site-specific.