Lets Get Lost A Walking/Reading Group on the Dismantling of Subjects and Spaces
Lets Get Lost A Walking/Reading Group on the Dismantling of Subjects and Spaces
Hosted by Scapegoat: Architecture/Landscape/Political Economy
Tuesday, September 16, 6 to 8 p.m.
Meet at Onsite Gallery, 230 Richmond St. W. To receive the readings please email onsite@ocadu.ca
Responding to the proposition that we get rid of ourselves, this biweekly walking/reading group explores the spatial construction of subjectivity. Discussions focus around selected articles that highlight the contradictory values of individual freedom and private property underpinning the principle of the autonomous modern subject, and their current manifestations under Neoliberalism.
The belief in the free, autonomous subject, which emerged with 19th century Liberalism, produced the two great modern subjects: the proletariat, a worker freed from his or her obligations to the land, and the bourgeois owner who controlled the means and sites of production. While in our contemporary period the clear distinction between these two subjects as been blurred, we call this moment Neoliberalism because it involves of a return to Liberalisms core principles. Contemporary economies emphasize individual creativity and self-reliance, while at the same time privatizing all public assets. It is no wonder that in the face of this contemporary political landscape, we are exploring new ways of dismantling, dissolving and erasing the self.
The journal Scapegoat: Architecture/Landscape/Political Economy has been exploring these ideas for the past four years, through its first eight issues: Property, Service, Materialism, Realism, Currency, Excess, Mexico DF/NAFTA and Incarceration. The reading group, facilitated by Adrian Blackwell and Marcin Kedzior, will examine the relationship between subjectivity and space by reading texts that have appeared in Scapegoat. For the first hour of each meeting, we will walk in the city, discussing the readings in pairs a technique modeled on the Walking / Reading Group on Participation developed in 2013 by Ania Bas and Simone Mair. For the second hour, we will assemble in the gallery on Adrian Blackwells sculpture Circles Describing Spheres to connect the initial conversations.
The group will meet at Onsite Gallery, 230 Richmond St. W. from 6-8pm, every second Tuesday: August 5, August 19, September 2, September 16. Meet at Onsite Gallery, 230 Richmond St. W. To register and receive the readings please email onsite@ocadu.ca
Readings:
August 5 - The Origins of Property in Liberal Individualism
Brett Neilson and Sandro Mezzadra, Fabrica Mundi: Producing the World by Drawing Borders
Shiri Pasternak, Property in Three Registers
August 19 - Precarious Actors of Neoliberal Urbanization
Irmgard Emmelhainz, The Mexican Neoliberal Conversion and Differentiated, Homogenous Lives
AbdouMaliq Simone, Water, Politics and Design in Jakarta
September 2 - Opened by the World
Georges Bataille, The Economy Equal to the Universe
Jane Bennett and Alexander Livingston, Philosophy in the Wild: Listening to Things in Baltimore
Jesse Boon, Kids on Buildings: Echos, Mirrors, and Ghosts
September 16 - Commonism, or Caring With Others
Wendy Jacob and Gina Badger, In the Presence of Another Being
Paige Sarlin, Vulnerable Accumulation: A Practical Guide
Isabelle Stengers and Erik Bordeleau, The Care of the Possible
The reading group will be facilitated by Scapegoats Adrian Blackwell and Marcin Kedzior.
Onsite and OCAD U 100 McCaul has fully accessible entrances and washrooms. There is a single-user, gender neutral, restroom on the ground level that is wheelchair accessible.
The closest accessible subway is Osgoode Station. Exit the subway at Osgoode Station and walk west on Richmond St W towards Simcoe Street. Its a 3 minute walk to the gallery from Osgoode Station.
Exhibition Dates: July 16 to October 11, 2014
Getting Rid of Ourselves presents artists and artistic collaborations whose work in different ways obscures, delegates, withdraws or complicates the conventional signs of authorship and artistic subjectivity. Works in the exhibition question the link between art and self-expression through tactics of anonymity, shared authorship, appropriated identities, delegated production, and financial speculation. Highlighting how subjectivity is treated as a form of living currency to exploit, market and sell to, the exhibition explores the diffusion and distribution of artistic agency and intellectual property.
[Bios]
British artist Becky Beasley explores relationships between photography and objects, the body and interiority in a way that is highly subjective and yet developed through deep immersion in the thoughts and methods of other artists and writers. Literature is particularly generative for the artist, providing her own work with a place to start from and journey into. She graduated with an MFA from the Royal College of Art in 2002 and her recent solo exhibitions include The Walk... in greenat Laura Bartlett Gallery, London 2014; The Outside at Tate Britain 2012 and Francesca Minini Gallery, Milan 2011; and Setting
at Laura Bartlett Gallery, London 2012.
Adrian Blackwell is an artist, designer and urban theorist whose work focuses on the relationship between urban spaces and political/economic forces. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard University and is a full-time faculty member at the University of Waterloo. Blackwell is also a founder and editor of the journal Scapegoat: Architecture / Landscape / Political Economy.
Heath Bunting is a contemporary British artist based in Bristol, U.K. His work focuses on the development of open democratic communication systems and social structures on the Internet and in the public space. He came from the street up, passing through and often revisiting graffiti, performance, intervention, pirate radio, fax /mail art and BBS systems to become an active participant in the explosion of the Internet. He is co-founder of net.art and has created many accredited works. Bunting's work often explores the porosity of borders, both in physical space and online.
Swedish artist Kajsa Dahlberg has exhibited internationally and studied at the Whitney Independent Study Programme. Several of her projects focus on questions of anonymity and collective subjectivities. In Female Fist, 2006, a video about lesbian feminist porn makers, the filmmakers' voices, but not their faces, appear. For A Room of One's Own: A Thousand Diaries, 2006, Dahlberg created a palimpsest from copies of Virginia Wolf's 1929 book in the Swedish library system. By layering the pages on top of one another, Dahlberg almost submerges the printed text with readers' marginal comments and annotations.
London, U.K.-based Jesse Darling works between performance, installation and the Internet. She has made work for Tumblr and Facebook that explores the Internet as a space for self-fashioning, performance and viral proliferation. She has also performed and exhibited in galleries, including a solo show at London's ArcadiaMissa in 2012. She received her MFA from the Slade School of Art.
Claire Fontaine is a Paris-based collective artist, "founded" in 2004. After lifting her name from a popular brand of school notebooks, Claire Fontaine declared herself a "readymade artist." Her practice interrogates the political impotence and the crisis of singularity that seem to define contemporary art today. But if the artist herself is as displaced, deprived of its use value, and exchangeable as the products she makes, there is always the possibility of the "human strike." Claire Fontaine uses her freshness and youth to make herself a whatever-singularity and an existential terrorist in search of subjective emancipation. She grows up among the ruins of the notion of authorship, experimenting with collective protocols of production, dtournements, and the production of various devices for the sharing of intellectual and private property. Recent selected solo exhibitions include Tears, The Jewish Museum, NY 2013; 1493, Espacio 1414, San Juan, Puerto Rico 2013; and Sell Your Debt, Queen's Nails, San Francisco 2013.
GoldinSenneby is a framework for collaboration set up by Swedish artists Simon Goldin and Jakob Senneby. Since 2004 they have deployed forms of performative and delegated activity to examine legal, economic and spatial constructs. They have made projects for institutions including Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm; Kadist Foundation, Paris; and the Power Plant, Toronto. For their Headless project, GoldinSenneby explore the notion of "offsite" in financial, aesthetic and political terms.
Janez Jansa is a conceptual artist, performer and producer living in Ljubljana, Slovenia. In 2007, together with Janez Jansa and Janez Jansa, he changed his name to that of the Slovenian right-wing Prime Minister. The three artists' collective work has strong social connotations and is characterized by an inter-media approach. He is the author of numerous videos, performances, installations and new media works which have been presented in several exhibitions, festivals and lectures around the world. He is the director of the film My Name Is Janez Jansa, co-founder and director of Aksioma - Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana and artistic director of the Aksioma Project Space aksioma.org.
Janez Jansa is an conceptual artist, writer, performer and director of interdisciplinary performances. In 2007, together with Janez Jansa and Janez Jansa, he changed his name to that of the Slovenian right-wing Prime Minister. The three artists' collective work has strong social connotations and is characterized by an inter-media approach. His socio-political work is focused on relationships between art, society and politics. He is author of the book Jan Fabre: La Discipline du chaos, le chaos de la discipline, Armand Colin, Paris 1994; and was editor in chief of Maska: The Performing Arts Journal, from 1999 to 2006. He is the director of Maska, Institute for Publishing, Production and Education based in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Janez Jansa is a visual artist, working in the cross section of traditional visual art practices, conceptual art and new media. In 2007, together with Janez Jansa and Janez Jansa, he changed his name to that of the Slovenian right-wing Prime Minister. The three artists' collective work has strong social connotations and is characterized by an inter-media approach. In 2003 he represented Slovenia at 50th Venice Biennial. Selected exhibitions include the Sao Paolo Biennial, Prague Biennial and Limerick Biennial zigakariz.com.
Kernel is an art collective founded in 2009 by architect Pegy Zali and artists Petros Moris and Theodoros Giannakis. They live and work between Athens and London. Their practice develops at the intersection of critical research, art, architecture and curating. Kernel has presented solo projects at SPACE, London 2013 and XYZ Outlet, Athens 2011. Selected group exhibitions include Afresh, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens; V22 Young London, V22, London; and the 3rd Athens Biennale - Monodrome, Diplareios School, Athens. They have organized curatorial projects such as Word of Mouth for the 3rd Athens Biennale, Athens; THE PUBLIC SCHOOL in Athens; BYOB London, The Woodmill, London; and Full/Operational/Toolbox, M21, Athens kerneloperations.com.
Helena Reckitt is a critic and curator based in London, U.K. She was Senior Curator of Programmes at the Power Plant in Toronto from 2006 to 2010 and since 2011 has been senior lecturer in Curating at Goldsmiths, University of London. Currently Reckitt is co-editing a special issue of the Journal of Curatorial Studies with Jennifer Fisher on Curating and the Affective Turn, and working with art historian Catherine Grant to develop the group exhibition
O Sister, O Shadow.
Please visit our website for a full listing of educational events and workshops!
Onsite [at] OCAD University
230 Richmond Street West, Toronto ON
416-977-6000 ext.265
Gallery Hours
Tuesday to Friday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Saturday, noon to 6 p.m.
Free and Open to the General Public.
MORE EVENTS all begin at Onsite, 230 Richmond St. W.:
Insite Exhibition Tour with Paulette Phillips, OCAD U faculty, Integrated Media
September 24, 6:30 p.m.
Insite Exhibition Tour with Jim Drobnick, OCAD U faculty, Liberal Arts & Sciences
October 1, 6:30 p.m.
