Last night, I was warmly welcomed onto the board of directors for Pi Theatre’s. Pi produces bold, uncompromising plays that explore modern life. They also have a fantastic staff and a dedicated, enthusiastic board. I’m thrilled to be collaborating with such a talented group of people. Beyond a shared interest
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Art Threat: Do grassroots archives have a future? – Exhibition from archive of activist histories
About 30 people gathered in Toronto last night to discuss what many hope will grow into a movement for archiving grassroots histories. The public meeting was organized by Ulli Diemer of the Connexions Archive as a way to bring like-minded activists and scholars together to find strategies for preserving the heritage of social movements and marginalized communities in Toronto and across Canada. (Check out #Connexions for the twitter feed from the event.)
Continue readingArt Threat: Breaching the foreclosure of critique – Like art, critical acts generate unexpected insights and outcomes
The contemporary political moment is inflected with both optimism and collapse, unexpected insurrections and brutal repressions. In Greece, Russia, the United States, Canada, Mexico, China, Spain, and elsewhere, the current historical crisis of our economic and political order has given rise to political and aesthetic movements that have produced a multitude of ruptures and solidarities. […]
Continue readingArt Threat: Femininity, fantasy, and fever dreams – Book review: The Lava in My Bones by Barry Webster
In a delirious, hallucinogenic voice, author Barry Webster turns directly toward the place and experience of femininity in a queer life dominated by masculine desires.
Continue readingArt Threat: How Many Gallons per Hour? – Water Portraits brings water usage closer to home
In the excitement at finally convincing his father to be the first subject of his water portraits, Peter Holmes poured cold water over his father’s head. A surprise to both of them. Since the initial portrait, 16 have been taken over a two year period in North America, Europe, Morocco,
Continue readingArt Threat: Una Noche a beautiful story of a challenging life
It’s rare to see depictions of Havana that don’t consist of the stereotypes: people playing music, someone sitting on the street smoking a cigar, old American cars, stunning old buildings. In fact, many films set in Havana (such as Our Man in Havana and even Die Another Day) are filmed
Continue readingArt Threat: Privatizing creativity: the ruse of creative capitalism
Ties by Henry Gepfer (henrygepfer.carbonmade.com) 1. The new hype about creativity Who can hate creativity? Who would want less of it? No one, obviously. But something profound has happened to the idea of creative expression in the past 20-30 years that should give us pause. For one, it’s become big
Continue readingArt Threat: Art in the age of political absurdity
“The strength of our American-ness lies in our ability to question, to look frankly at the nation’s past and present, and to ask if we are living up to our own best selves.” – Eleanor Heartney, Party Headquarters curator The US Presidential election season is upon us, and with it, the
Continue readingArt Threat: Finding (Queer) Time – Book review: First Spring Grass Fire by Rae Spoon
Rae Spoon (Photo: JJ Levine) In his remarkable 2009 text, Cruising Utopia, José Esteban Muñoz fixates on the ways in which queer bodies exist outside of and subvert what he calls “straight time.” Straight time, for Muñoz, is what tells queers that “there is no future but the here and
Continue readingArt Threat: Duets for Abdelrazik help keep human rights abuses in spotlight
Sam Shalabi joins Stefan Christoff on stage at the June 16 launch of Duets for Abdelrazik. To understand the grotesque, inhuman and criminal depths to which the Canadian government will go in order to deny one of its own citizen’s legal rights, one need look no further than the case
Continue readingArt Threat: Funding drive for award-winning public art – ATSA asks for public support
One of the most remarkable public art collectives in Canada needs your support. ATSA (the collective name for artists Annie Roy and Pierre Allard) have created some of the most striking public art interventions. They have won numerous international awards.* Last year, the federal government cut their funding. They need
Continue readingArt Threat: Root sculptures celebrate local activists – Pierre Leichner’s Grassroots Project
Pierre Leichner uses grass to make sculptures — for The Grassroots Project, in the shape of faces of community workers and activists from Vancouver’s East Side. The living sculptures, pictured above, are beautiful and haunting. “The Grassroots Project” was featured at Britannia Community Centre (Vancouver). I recently caught up to
Continue readingArt Threat: Pioneer Ladies [of the Evening] – Photos of incarcerated women are transformed
An exhibition at PLATFORM Centre for Photographic + Digital Arts in Winnipeg is testing the sexualized and gendered boundaries of our Canadian history. Curator Dr. Laurie K. Bertram has taken archival mugshots of Western Canadian female sex trade workers, taken from the Winnipeg Police Museum Archive, and reworked them into
Continue readingArt Threat: Call for participation – Convergence 2012: The geo/body politics of emancipation
The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics Graduate Student Initiative is inviting graduate students from the humanities, arts, and social sciences to come together to discuss contemporary notions of emancipation, liberation, revolution, occupation, geopolitics, “artivism,” and militant research, and to consider the lived tensions of these concepts in bodies, knowledge,
Continue readingArt Threat: City of Vancouver launches Arts & Culture Policy Council
The City of Vancouver is now home to an Arts and Culture Policy Council which will advise City Council on civic programs relating to arts and culture. The creation of the council was announced back in February, but last week members of the council were finally announced. The 15-member council
Continue readingArt Threat: VOINA calls for activist art, Berlin Biennale – Deadline for outsider exhibition July 1
The Russian activist political art collective Voina Group, is inviting artists to participate in the 7th Berlin Biennale. Rejecting what they describe as “limitation in age, education, nationality, political views etc. for participants of the Biennale”, Voina wants history to decide what is great art. The group will mount an
Continue readingArt Threat: Wild At Heart: Keep Wildlife In The Wild – New Contemporary artists paint the endangered and beloved
Animals inspire, intrigue, and move people in a way nothing else can. Andrew Hosner and Amanda Erlandson gathered together a group of incredible ‘new contemporary’ artists for “Wild at Heart – Keep Wildlife in the Wild”, to touch on that connection while raising awareness about wild creatures around the world.
Continue readingArt Threat: How the West Was Won – Art of Nicola Verlato
Nicola Verlato’s “How the West Was One” is a visually striking series of oil on canvas that tells the tale of the culture clash between monotheism and polytheism throughout human history. Depictions of wild west cowboys versus natives, depictions of the sacred heart and more flare with brilliance in his
Continue readingArt Threat: Quebec’s red square hits Cannes’ red carpet
The team behind 'Laurence Anyways' attends the film's premiere in Cannes, France. (Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images.) Although Québécois filmmaker and actor Xavier Dolan may be across the Atlantic at the Cannes Film Festival, the government crackdown on civil liberties taking place in his home province doesn’t seem to be out of
Continue readingArt Threat: Improvising statehood at the Berlin Biennale – Khaled Jarrar issues postage stamp for State of Palestine
It is a postage stamp for a nation that exists somewhere between memory’s twilight, international conflict and the aurora of hope. Palestinian artist Khaled Jarrar has designed a postage stamp for Palestine for the Berlin Biennale (which opens April 27). The stamp pictures the Palestinian Sun Bird and the words
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