Monday, March 16, 2015

CONFERENCE SCHEDULE March 27 – 28, 2015

FRIDAY, MARCH 27

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Sarah Thornton

Credibility & Confidence: Behind the Scenes with Artists Today
Francisco-Fernando Granados in conversation with Dr. Sarah Thornton
10:00 - 11:30 AM
Tickets are free with registration: click here
LOCATION: 100 McCaul, Auditorium 190
OCAD University

Keynote Performance: Brendan Fernandes

Encomium - Durational Performance
Opening Reception
6:00-9:00 PM
LOCATION: 230 Richmond St West
The former OnSite Gallery [at] OCAD University
______________________________________________

SATURDAY, MARCH 28

LOCATION: 3rd floor, 205 Richmond St West
OCAD University

8 - 9 AM: Registration
LOCATION: 3rd floor, 205 Richmond St West, OCAD University


Rm 7320
Rm 7301
Rm 7310
9 - 10:30 AM:
Session Group One
PANEL 1
Multiple knowledges: Activating the Gaps between Imagined Totalities
PANEL 2
Performativity
WORKSHOP 1
Doodling in the Margins: Process, Idle Gestures, and Mark-Making
10:30 - 12 Noon: Session Group Two
PANEL 3
Engagement through (re)production & disruption
ROUNDTABLE 1
Places of enunciation: private acts and public gestures
WORKSHOP 2
The Mobile Special Collections and Rare Books Reading Room
12 - 1 PM: LUNCH
1 - 2:30 PM:
Session Group Three
PANEL 4
Glitch Glitch
PANEL 5
(Re)Viewing the Gaze
WORKSHOP 3
Anti-Ekphrasis - Transcribing Images, Picturing Poetry & Rematerializing Art
2:30 - 4 PM:
Session Group Four
ROUNDTABLE 2
Break it down: Sighting/Citing/Siting Performance Art
ROUNDTABLE 3
Service Interruption Due to Interventions

4 - 4:30 PM:
Closing Plenary


PLENARY
Tracing Art’s Edges


SESSION DESCRIPTIONS

9 - 10:30 AM: SESSION GROUP ONE

Rm 7320
PANEL 1
Multiple knowledges: Activating the Gaps between Imagined Totalities
Moderated by Marsya Maharani

Amy Beingessner
Gregory Elgstrand
Soheila Esfahani
Session Description: This panel gathers presentations that seek to destabilize and traverse cultural and disciplinary boundaries from a variety of perspectives. Amy Beingessner points to the construction and reconstruction of the myths of cohesive identities, speaking particularly to question efforts to reproduce notions of authenticity for the making of cultural heritage. Building upon this line of questioning, Soheila Esfahani and Gregory Elgstrand open up the spaces between multiple cultures and disciplines as new sites of knowledge production that are receptive to subjective imagination and improvisation.

Rm 7301
PANEL 2
Performativity
Moderated by Marianne Fenton

Shauna Janssen 
Victoria Mohr-Blakeney
Session Description: This panel considers performativity as a strategy, a method and an outcome through an investigation of specific art and curatorial practices. Shauna Janssen will consider the notion of “performing encounters” through a consideration of her own, situated, curatorial practice.  Victoria Mohr- Blakeney interrogates performance through the medium of dance. Her investigation addresses related concerns of the archive, memory, space and issues around the re-performance of dance.


Rm 7310
WORKSHOP 1
Doodling in the Margins: Process, Idle Gestures, and Mark-Making
FREE with registration: sign-up here

Instructor: Daniel Marrone
Workshop Description: Easily overlooked, the doodle turns up wherever more deliberate marks are made, often finding its home in marginal spaces. It is tempting to classify it as a cousin to the sketch, or a kind of precursor to the cartoon, but the doodle resists comparison to other forms of visual culture, always at the periphery of art, craft and writing.

Combining theory and practice, “Doodling in the Margins” explores the ways in which typically unassuming, marginal, and indistinct marks relate to the well-defined disciplines whose peripheral spaces they often inhabit. A short talk will introduce a series of practical doodling exercises, including:

·         Bad Doodles
·         A Quick Lesson in Simplified Doodling
·         Doodles as Criticism
·         Doodling Toward a Future Project

To contextualize these and other exercises, the workshop will invite participants to consider a wide range of instructive examples, among them: the marginalia in medieval codices, Hokusai’s 1812 manual Quick Lessons in Simplified Drawing, Richard Serra’s preparatory doodles, choreographic diagrams from contemporary dance, and the sketchbook work of cartoonist Kate Beaton.

The hallmark of the doodle is its lack of cultivation, its status as an index of idle gesture and involuntary energy. Though it does not require any training and rarely aspires to art, it is frequently part of an artist’s process. It can be iconic, indexical, symbolic, purely expressive, or some indefinable combination of modes – ultimately, the doodle is an instance of mark-making at its most elemental.

10:30 - 12 Noon: SESSION GROUP TWO

Rm 7320
PANEL 3
Engagement through (re)production & disruption
Moderated by Jenn Snider

Adam Barbu 
Alison Cooley
Anastasia Howe Bukowski
Rebecca Noone
Session Description: The presenters on this panel speak to the questions of process and response when layers and acts of production are engaged. Most especially, they are asking what we do when we encounter whatever it is we encounter when we are in between known practices—when there is an exchange afoot of an indistinguishable quality yet active as an amalgam. A matter of (de)materiality and performance, of objective and reflexive entanglement, of politics and aesthetics, the negotiations are at play with a multiplicity of potentials and the fluid power of interpretability. Of critique, of protocol, of expectation, whether they emerge from institutional settings, ritual, affective response… the analysis of relations of power are inherent to all engagement as a meeting or a blending of forces. To move within a context of autonomy and its implausibility, where co-option is a rule not the exception, to break from power or to at least to disrupt dominance these projects encourage readings and re-readings of a dynamics of differentiation.


Rm 7301
ROUNDTABLE 1
Places of enunciation: private acts and public gestures
Moderated by Marsya Maharani and Melanie Schnidrig

Kendra Ainsworth 
Deborah Margo 
Geneviève Wallen
Session Description: Arriving from various personal and disciplinary perspectives, Kendra Ainsworth, Deborah Margo, and Geneviève Wallen will discuss the roles and responsibilities of participants within and surrounding the contemporary art discourse. Occupying multiple roles that include those of an artist, curator, writer, educator, student, settler, and/or gardener, their interests are centered around the relationship between the identity and positionality of cultural producers and their contribution to the public discourse of art and culture. This open roundtable discussion is aimed at exploring and questioning the place of personal identities within cross-cultural dialogues.


Rm 7310
WORKSHOP 2
The Mobile Special Collections and Rare Books Reading Room
FREE with registration: sign-up here

Instructor: Christian Julien Siroyt
Workshop description:  This workshop presents the Comics History Special Collection and the Donald F. Theall Special Collection as part of Siroyt's project, the Mobile Special Collections and Rare Books Reading Room. The aim of the workshop is to discuss the interplay of disciplines, art forms, and fields of study, using the books in the collection to explore the themes of the conference. The workshop begins with an overview of the scope of the collection, including a display of some of the selected items included in the installation. From the Comics Collection this includes original comic artwork by cartoonists such as Charles Burns, Chris Ware, Seth, Chester Brown, Adrian Tomine, & Marc Bell, and rare & relevant comic books from the Comics History Special Collection, some of which prominently features the town of Strathroy. From the Donald Theall Special Collection this includes Theall's annotated copy of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake and many other relevant titles that demonstrate his devotion to interdisciplinary study. Theall was a professor at University of Toronto, President of Trent University, and a colleague of Marshall McLuhan. His work explored avant-garde media concepts, and he published a book titled “The Virtual Marshall McLuhan” and a book called “James Joyce’s Technopoetics”.

On hand will be cartooning supplies such as pigment liners of varying widths, brush pens, paper, etc. and the workshop will conclude with participants creating comic work under specific parameters responding to the holdings of these collections, pulling images and text from them to generate comic-literary work that demonstrates the themes discussed. This workshop aims to upset the traditional notion of the rare books reading room as a staid space in which the holdings sit dormant. Here it is dynamic and generative, flexible and mobile, and contravenes traditional museum policies by installing a Rare Books and Special Collections Reading Room on-site at the conference.

1 - 2:30 PM: SESSION GROUP THREE

Rm 7320
PANEL 4
Glitch Glitch
Moderated by Sam Strong

Marcin Kedzior
Nick White
Session Description: A glitch disrupts the normal functioning of a code system. Glitch Art embraces the visual style of the glitch for various conceptual and aesthetic reasons. Increasingly, theorists are turning to the analysis of glitch and glitch art as a productive failure that challenges existing systems and strategies of organization in the digital age. This panel, featuring presentations that critique and rework the contemporary study of glitch art, might be thought of as a glitching of glitch. The papers presented here share an interest in rethinking glitch theory and the possibilities that glitch art offer.

Rm 7301
PANEL 5
(Re)Viewing the Gaze
Moderated by Brittany Higgens

Frances Dorenbaum
Julia Havard
Jamie Ranger
Session Description: From the notion of the Lacanian ‘gaze’, this panel aims to explore contemporary mechanisms of reviewing, returning, and subverting this ‘gaze’ in art practice. Frances Dorenbaum, Julia Havard and Jamie Ranger will speak to acts of witnessing and the ethics of spectatorship as audiences are confronted with the marginalized body in contemporary photography and performance art. Their presentations will enable discussion of how artists invite, control, combat, or reflect awareness of the gaze, be it male, colonial, and/or sexualized encounter. 

Rm 7310
WORKSHOP 3
Anti-Ekphrasis - Transcribing Images, Picturing Poetry & Rematerializing Art
FREE with registration: sign-up here

Instructors: Mat Laporte, Sarah Pinder, and Yosefa Raz from the Contemporary Poetry Research Group.
Workshop description: Is there an ekphrastic impulse at the heart of criticism and aesthetic theory, a desire to describe objects of interest and rematerialize art? The Contemporary Poetry Research Group (CPRG) seeks to explore this question in a workshop designed to break down or permeate the relationship between spectators and art objects. In doing so, the project suggests ways that writing might intervene and transform art objects into critical feedback mechanisms. The workshop embraces ekphrasis’ fundamental fusion of writing and art, but also inverts, interrogates and moves beyond this traditional descriptive relationship between art object and textual mediation. Following an introduction of the potential for ekphrasis as a critical mode of engaging with art, the workshop will present a series of practical exercises designed to facilitate collaboration between visual artists and poets/writers. Participants are invited to bring existing material, but will also be encouraged to generate new individual and collaborative work through the exercises.

2:30 - 4 PM: SESSION GROUP FOUR

Rm 7320
ROUNDTABLE 2
Break it down: Sighting/Citing/Siting Performance Art
Moderated by Marianne Fenton and Jenn Snider

with Brendan Fernandes, Keynote Performance presenter and a nationally and internationally recognised Canadian artist of Kenyan and Indian descent.

Alison Cooley
Shauna Janssen
Victoria Mohr-Blakeney 
Session Description: Brendan Fernandes’ interdisciplinary practice considers identity as in-process and transitional.  His more recent works (of which Encomium is an example) continues this investigation, but through the medium of dance. In Encomium, multiple disciplinary practices intersect in the gallery space as text, linguistic devices (morse code), space, dance, performance, and the body all work towards a queering that is activated through a practice of art’s edges. Translation and embodiment as queering methodologies become a part of both the investigative tools and outcomes.  Our three participants will use his work as an anchor from which they will consider the productive overlapping, situating angles of sight and the sensorial, citation and the referential, and the site in space, place, and time as expressed through the medium of performance art.

Rm 7301
ROUNDTABLE 3
Service Interruption Due to Interventions
Moderated by Melanie Girdwood and Sam Strong
Session Description: The panel will open up questions and discussion about the adoption of the unintended, the out-of-place, and the easily overlooked as viable methodological processes for meaningful, productive and perfectly imperfect boundary making. These processes represent interventions into established academic institutions and, often through experimentation and play, disrupt existing conceptions of what it means to do intellectual work.

4 - 4:30 PM: CLOSING PLENARY followed by a Closing Reception (4:30-7pm)

Rm 7310
PLENARY
Tracing Art’s Edges
Moderated by Brittany Higgens and Melanie Schnidrig

Andrea Fatona
Johanna Householder
Vladimir Spicanovic
Session Description: As the final session of Multiple Li(v)es of Art/ists &... we invite all conference participants and attendees to join us for a roundtable plenary. This roundtable will consist of scholars selected from OCAD University’s esteemed Graduate Studies faculty. Faculty members have been chosen for their respective expertise in disciplines including art history, curating, design, performance and new media studies. The roundtable members will respond to the day’s discussions, facilitated by questions and comments collected in a ballot boxes throughout the conference proceedings. This session will act as a concluding discussion on pertinent threads and concerns surrounding “art’s edges” as foregrounded by conference participants and attendees.

Presenter Bios

The CADN Graduate Conference is pleased to welcome the following presenters:

Kendra Ainsworth is an emerging curator and interpretive planner working in the arts and culture sector in the GTA and 905 region. She is currently the Assistant Curator at the Art Gallery of Mississauga. She holds a Masters in Museum Studies from the University of Toronto with a focus on interpretation of contemporary art. Through her practice Kendra aims to remove both intangible and tangible barriers to public engagement with contemporary art, and allow it to serve as a catalyst for community building and intellectual development. Recent projects include Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival Featured exhibition Fausta Facciponte: Six Characters in Search of a Photograph at the AGM, and Infinite Daydreams | Reflections on the Sublime Imaginary, at the Art Gallery of Burlington.

Adam Barbu is a writer and curator based in Ottawa. He has produced exhibitions nationally and internationally that explore themes of displacement and cultural memory. Recently, he was the curator in residence at the Parque Cultural de Valparaíso (Valparaíso, Chile) and currently works for contemporary art space La Petite Mort Gallery. His current research focuses on “post-AIDS” discourses, early minimalist art and Derridian deconstruction. He will be pursuing an M.A. and Ph.D. in Art History at the University of Toronto starting fall 2015.

Amy Beingessner is an MA candidate in the Art History and Visual Culture program at the University of Guelph. During her undergraduate studies in communications at the University of Ottawa Amy also pursued fine art courses at the Ottawa School of Art, design courses in Florence, Italy, and worked at a non-profit organization in Paris, France, dedicated to providing quality publicity to emerging musicians and artists. She completed her degree in 2005, then spent several years travelling and working before deciding to take up the challenge of studying art history full-time. Her primary focus is on the relationships we form to material works of art, especially those we deem to be historically significant, and how these relationships form ideas about cultural identity. Amy hopes to complete her MA this spring and to continue studying our stunning visual world.

Alison Cooley is a critic, curator and educator currently based in Toronto. She holds a BA in Studio Art and Art History from the University of Saskatchewan, and an MA in Art History from York University. Her research deals with art and the nature-culture divide, socially-engaged artistic practice, epistemological tools such as Google search and internet memes, and experimental critical and curatorial practice. She was the 2014 recipient of the Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators. Her writing has recently appeared in FUSE, Canadian Art, Blackflash, and the Journal of Curatorial Studies. She is the host and producer of What it Looks Like, a podcast about art in Canada.

Frances Dorenbaum was born in Toronto. She earned a Combined Honours BA in English and Spanish from the University of King’s College in 2012, and is currently a Master of Arts candidate in the department of Modern and Contemporary Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  She has a special interest in contemporary photography. Her essay, “Images of Hair in John Donne’s Work” can be found in the 2012 issue of Verso, Dalhousie’s journal of literary criticism, and she currently writes for SAIC’s F Newsmagazine.

Gregory Elgstrand has curated and organized numerous exhibitions across Canada and his writings on art and architecture have been published by Canadian Art, C, the Palais de Tokyo, YYZ, the Glenbow Museum, Stride Gallery and the University of Calgary. In 2012, he co-edited with Dave Dyment, One for Me and One to Share, a survey of artist multiples published by YYZBOOKS. Elgstrand is currently Curator at the Art Gallery at Evergreen and founder Editor of Bohart, published in Port Moody, BC. He has served as Director of YYZ, as Director/Curator of the Art Gallery of Calgary (AGC), Director of Truck in Calgary and Coordinator of Struts Gallery in Sackville, New Brunswick. In 1993, he and screenwriter, playwright and director Kris Elgstrand, co-founded AH UM Theatre in Vancouver. Elgstrand studied at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design, Simon Fraser University and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.

Soheila K. Esfahani grew up in Tehran, Iran, and moved to Canada in 1992. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Western Ontario and her BA in Fine Arts from the University of Waterloo. She is a recipient of grants from the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund. As part of the SSHRCC grant, Esfahani participated in a research/creation group entitled Immersion Emergencies and Possible Worlds: Engaging Water as Culture and Resource through Contemporary Art. Esfahani’s work is represented in public and private collections including the Canada Council’s Art Bank. Currently, she is a lecturer at University of Waterloo and works from her studio at Kitchener’s artist–run centre, Globe Studios.

Julia Havard is a PhD student at UC Berkeley in the department of Theater, Dance and Performance studies. She graduate from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts in History of Science and Dance and received a fellowship for health policy research at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City from the Center for Public Interest Careers. Julia worked at Callen-Lorde Center connecting LGBTQ patients with affordable healthcare through the ACA and creating a presentation used to educate communities about access to care, which was also presented at the Lesbian Health Fund’s Annual Conference. She found a dance collective in New York City to explore issues of trauma, body memories, and intimacy through community workshops and performances across New York City and Brooklyn. Her research interests include interpersonal violence, healing and health, and performance as a site of resistance and recovery in queer and gender variant communities.

Anastasia Howe Bukowski is currently pursuing an MA in Art History at McGill University. Previously she has collaborated on public education projects with the City of Toronto and has worked in research positions at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Ryerson University, and Concordia University. Her current research interests include contemporary video art, post-digital media theory, karaoke and forms of radical cultural praxis, theories of re-performance and reenactment, basketball and the visual culture of sports, and feminist and critical race theorizations of globalization and transnationalism. She received an Honours BA in Art History and Book and Media Studies from the University of Toronto.

Shauna Janssen is an urban curator with a background in theatre and interdisciplinary studies. She received her Ph.D in Humanities (2014), Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture at Concordia University, where she has also taught in the Departments of Theatre and Art History. Her current research focuses on the cultural politics of postindustrial spaces and urban ruin in relation to themes of public space, the queer production of space, post-humanism, material and performative practices.  In 2010, she founded Urban Occupations Urbaines, a curatorial platform for artists, communities and the public to creatively and critically engage with cities and urban change. Since 2013, Shauna co-directs Points de vue, a Montreal based urban activist and community arts organization. She has given public lectures and presentations at cultural institutions such as The Canadian Centre for Architecture (Ephemeral City, 2010), Articule (“Would you be my curator?” 2012), and The McCord Museum (City Talks, 2013).

Marcin Kedzior is an educator and journal editor whose artistic practice involves sound, movement, installation, micro-architecture and public space. He received a BFA from Queen’s University, an M. Arch from the University of Toronto and SEED certification from Harvard. As part of AIMToronto, he performed in dozens of experimental sound and movement events. In 2014 he completed several installation projects including “Ground Scraper,” for SPARty at 401 Richmond, “Paper Orbs” for Nuit Blanche Ottawa Gatineau, and “Daniels Spectre,” in the vestibule of the Daniels Spectrum in Regent Park. He is a founding editor of the journal Scapegoat: Architecture | Landscape | Political Economy. He has taught in the Master of Visual Studies program and Architecture Studies at the University of Toronto, is a Faculty Associate at Willowbank School of Restoration Arts, a Professor in the School of Applied Technology at Humber ITAL and occasionally teaches in CS at OCAD U.

Mat Laporte, Sarah Pinder, and Yosefa Raz from the Contemporary Poetry Research Group. Founded in late 2014, CPRG is a loose research collective based in Toronto that is dedicated to creating spaces for engaged dialogue at the intersections of poetry and critical thought.

Deborah Margo was born in Montreal, and now lives in Ottawa.  She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Concordia University and a Master of Fine Arts from Temple University/Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia.   Exhibiting her work frequently in Canada, United States and Mexico, she is a faculty member in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Ottawa where she teaches drawing, painting and sculpture.  When the opportunity arises, she writes and curates exhibitions.   During the spring and summer months she also works as a gardener. Deborah’s work is interdisciplinary and questions the architectural, historical and social contexts of public and private spaces.  Focusing on processes and materials relevant to these different contexts, a conversation takes place between a specific site and the materials she works with.  Her working process is both conceptual and intuitive, based on research yet open to so-called accidents.  Time, change and touch are key preoccupations.

Daniel Marrone holds a PhD in Humanities and Cultural Studies (University of London). In his work on visual culture, he often explores memory, liminal spaces, and the semiotic operation of comics. He lives in Toronto.

Victoria Mohr-Blakeney is an independent curator and writer with a focus on contemporary dance and performance. She has curated a series of performance exhibitions throughout Toronto in theatre, gallery, and site-specific settings. Alongside her curatorial work, she has worked as a Dance Columnist for the Toronto Standard, and co-founded the Toronto-based Nomadic Curatorial Collective. Mohr-Blakeney has worked at the CB Gallery in Toronto and interned at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, as well as the Art Gallery of Ontario where she conducted research into the history of performance at the AGO. She holds an MA from the University of Toronto, and has studied at the University of Havana, Cuba, and the University of Salamanca, Spain, as well as at York University in the Choreography and Dance Dramaturgy program. Mohr-Blakeney is currently earning an MFA in Criticism and Curatorial Practice at OCAD University.

Rebecca Noone  is an artist and a PhD student at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto. Her quiet, humour-filled interventions interrogate the banal futilities and the muted hopes implicit in our everyday encounters and interactions with information, systems, and technologies. In her work, Rebecca has asked theoretical physicists how they cope with the mundane, compiled maps of hand-drawn directions collected from helpful passers-by, archived detritus in demolition-slated homes, built an interactive library cataloguing system, compiled a mail-based analogue Internet from deaccessioned library materials, and bartered the periodic table of elements at art and music shows. She has contributed to spaces and exhibitions in Canada, the USA, and Europe including Elsewhere Living Museum in Greensboro, NC; NES in Skagaströnd Iceland; The Luminary in St. Louis, MO; Wreck City in Calgary, AB; and the Long Winter Takeover at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Jamie Ranger is an emerging curator, art critic and write based in Toronto. She is currently a fourth-year undergraduate student, majoring in the Criticism and Curatorial Practices Program at the Ontario College of Art and Design University. As a curator, Jamie has worked on the following projects: Simplexity, an exhibition to accompany OCAD U’s inaugural TedxTalk of the same title, Bending the Horizon, an exhibition that celebrate the work of OCAD U’s LGBTQ12S community, and Symbology, a solo print show. Her current research focuses on the development of an ethics of spectatorship applicable to the study of disability performance art.

Christian Siroyt is the Exhibits & Programming Coordinator at Museum Strathroy-Caradoc. In 2013 he received his BA from Trinity College in the University of Toronto, where he majored in Book and Media Studies and Literary Studies with German and Cinema Studies. Christian produces films, comics, and literary works from his studio in Strathroy. He is particularly interested in Middle High German literature and the styling of James Joyce. In 2014 Christian established the Comics History Special Collection and the Donald F. Theall Special Collection at Museum Strathroy-Caradoc. He is currently working on two cinematic projects.

Geneviève Wallen is interested in issues of ethnocultural representational spaces as a Curator and art historian. Geneviève is a candidate in the Criticism and Curatorial Practice  program at OCAD University (2015) and holds a BFA in Art History from Concordia University in Montreal (2012). She is particularly concerned about the platforms prescribed to artists of Caribbean and African descent within Canadian art institutions, and the lack of documentation on this subject. She believes that the inner workings of cultural consciousness not only affect daily experiences, but also shape how individuals perceive themselves and how they perform their social interactions. Her awareness of how different systems of marginalization operate in the art world drives her current curatorial practice and academic research.

Nick White is an interdisciplinary scholar and artist whose work interrogates hybrid embodiments, interfaces, and intersections in physical/digital space. He is a Masters student in the Communication & Culture joint program at Ryerson & York Universities and is a Research Associate in McLuhan Studies at St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto.

SESSION MODERATORS


Marianne Fenton received a BA in Fine Arts and then an MFA at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa.   She has exhibited her work in South Africa, London and New York.  Marianne is currently pursuing her MA in Contemporary Art History at OCAD University. Her research is focussed on three artists whose works investigate notions of belonging, identity and ethnicity through an examination of English accents.

Melanie Girdwood-Brunton is from Montreal, where she received her BFA from Concordia University. Thereafter she worked in higher education, props fabrication and styling in diverse areas, including retail and museum exhibitions. Her research at OCAD University concerns the (re) emergence of the designer-maker, as a multi-disciplinary intermediary pursuing craftsmanship as an ideological position towards labour as self-production. Melanie currently teaches at Sheridan College where she endeavors to instill a love of making in her students.

Brittany Higgens is currently an MA candidate in the Contemporary Art, Design and New Media Art Histories Program at OCAD University. Brittany holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts Honors degree from Brandon University with a specialization in painting. Her research investigates questions of representation, the parameters of taste in cultural production and the ideological, philosophical and aesthetic sensibilities of Jeff Koons’ Made in Heaven series within the postmodern and contemporary art eras.

Marsya Maharani received an Honours BA in Art History from the University of Toronto. She has held curatorial assistant and coordinator positions at the newly federated University of Toronto Art Centre / Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, the Toronto International Film Festival, and Telephone Booth Gallery. Marsya is currently pursuing an MA in Contemporary Art History at OCAD University. Her research explores the multidisciplinary practices of itinerant artists Vera Frenkel and Jamelie Hassan within the context of migratory culture.

Melanie Schnidrig completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at The University of the Fraser Valley Abbotsford, B.C. Her studio practice includes photography, painting and print media. She is currently pursuing an MA degree in Contemporary Art, Design and New Media Art Histories at OCAD University. Her research interests center on the multisensorial and synesthetic dimensions of contemporary immersive installation art.

Jenn Snider is currently an MA candidate in the New Media Art Histories section of the CADN Program at OCAD U. Her research, supported by a Graduate Studies SSHRC award in 2014, focuses on art administration within the artist-run centre as a practice of research-creation and institutional critique. Snider explores artist-run culture and organising as performative practice, and as an artist and curator, her work considers the social tensions of collaborative meaning creation and the formation of an ethic of irreverence.

Sam Strong is an artist, writer and media theorist. Despite a background in traditional art and literature, he loves exploring the messages and structural complexities in new media and popular culture. At OCAD U, he is exploring the way in which panel structures in comics influence readers’ responses to visual narrative, both semiotically and emotionally.

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Workshops

Participation is FREE. To sign-up for the workshops offered as part of the conference, reserve your spot today. Space is limited. You will receive confirmation on whether you have secured a spot after completing the sign-up sheet, available by clicking here.

WORKSHOP SIGN-UP SHEET

Workshops (full descriptions below):

Doodling in the Margins: Process, Idle Gestures, and Mark-Making | Saturday, March 28, 9:00am-10:30am | 205 Richmond St W, Rm 7310
The Mobile Special Collections and Rare Books Reading Room | Saturday, March 28, 10:40am-12:10pm | 205 Richmond St W, Rm 7310
Anti-Ekphrasis Workshop: Transcribing Images, Picturing Poetry and Rematerializing Art | Saturday, March 28, 1:00am-2:30pm | 205 Richmond St W, Rm 7310

_______________________________________________

Doodling in the Margins: Process, Idle Gestures, and Mark-Making 
Saturday, March 28, 9:00am-10:30am 205 Richmond St W, Rm 7310

Easily overlooked, the doodle turns up wherever more deliberate marks are made, often finding its home in marginal spaces. It is tempting to classify it as a cousin to the sketch, or a kind of precursor to the cartoon, but the doodle resists comparison to other forms of visual culture, always at the periphery of art, craft and writing.

Combining theory and practice, “Doodling in the Margins” explores the ways in which typically unassuming, marginal, and indistinct marks relate to the well-defined disciplines whose peripheral spaces they often inhabit. A short talk will introduce a series of practical doodling exercises, including:

·         Bad Doodles
·         A Quick Lesson in Simplified Doodling
·         Doodles as Criticism
·         Doodling Toward a Future Project

To contextualize these and other exercises, the workshop will invite participants to consider a wide range of instructive examples, among them: the marginalia in medieval codices, Hokusai’s 1812 manual Quick Lessons in Simplified Drawing, Richard Serra’s preparatory doodles, choreographic diagrams from contemporary dance, and the sketchbook work of cartoonist Kate Beaton.


The hallmark of the doodle is its lack of cultivation, its status as an index of idle gesture and involuntary energy. Though it does not require any training and rarely aspires to art, it is frequently part of an artist’s process. It can be iconic, indexical, symbolic, purely expressive, or some indefinable combination of modes – ultimately, the doodle is an instance of mark-making at its most elemental.

Instructor: Daniel Marrone Marrone holds a PhD in Humanities and Cultural Studies (University of London). In his work on visual culture, he often explores memory, liminal spaces, and the semiotic operation of comics. He lives in Toronto.

_______________________________________________

The Mobile Special Collections and Rare Books Reading Room Saturday, March 28, 10:40am-12:10pm 205 Richmond St W, Rm 7310
This workshop presents the Comics History Special Collection and the Donald F. Theall Special Collection as part of Siroyt's project, the Mobile Special Collections and Rare Books Reading Room.

The aim of the workshop is to discuss the interplay of disciplines, art forms, and fields of study, using the books in the collection to explore the themes of the conference. The workshop begins with an overview of the scope of the collection, including a display of some of the selected items included in the installation. From the Comics Collection this includes original comic artwork by cartoonists such as Charles Burns, Chris Ware, Seth, Chester Brown, Adrian Tomine, & Marc Bell, and rare & relevant comic books from the Comics History Special Collection, some of which prominently features the town of Strathroy. From the Donald Theall Special Collection this includes Theall's annotated copy of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake and many other relevant titles that demonstrate his devotion to interdisciplinary study. Theall was a professor at University of Toronto, President of Trent University, and a colleague of Marshall McLuhan. His work explored avant-garde media concepts, and he published a book titled “The Virtual Marshall McLuhan” and a book called “James Joyce’s Technopoetics”.  On hand will be cartooning supplies such as pigment liners of varying widths, brush pens, paper, etc. and the workshop will conclude with participants creating comic work under specific parameters responding to the holdings of these collections, pulling images and text from them to generate comic-literary work that demonstrates the themes discussed. This workshop aims to upset the traditional notion of the rare books reading room as a staid space in which the holdings sit dormant. Here it is dynamic and generative, flexible and mobile, and contravenes traditional museum policies by installing a Rare Books and Special Collections Reading Room on-site at the conference.

Instructor: Christian Julien Siroyt
Christian Julien Siroyt is the Exhibits & Programming Coordinator at Museum Strathroy-Caradoc. In 2013 he received his BA from Trinity College in the University of Toronto, where he majored in Book and Media Studies and Literary Studies with German and Cinema Studies.
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Anti-Ekphrasis Workshop: Transcribing Images, Picturing Poetry and Rematerializing Art Saturday, March 28, 1:00am-2:30pm 205 Richmond St W, Rm 7310

Is there an ekphrastic impulse at the heart of criticism and aesthetic theory, a desire to describe objects of interest and rematerialize art?

The Contemporary Poetry Research Group (CPRG) will facilitate collaboration between visual artists and poets/writers through a series of exercises designed to re-orient the relationship between spectators and art objects.

The workshop takes ekphrasis as a point of departure, embracing its fundamental fusion of writing and art, but also inverting, interrogating and moving beyond familiar modes of description.

Participants are invited to bring existing material, but will also be encouraged to generate new individual and collaborative work through the exercises.

Instructors: Mat Laporte, Sarah Pinder, and Yosefa Raz from the Contemporary Poetry Research Group. Founded in late 2014, CPRG is a loose research collective based in Toronto that is dedicated to creating spaces for engaged dialogue at the intersections of poetry and critical thought.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Session Types, or, Interventions Into the Conference

One of the goals of Multiple Li(v)es... is to disrupt divisions between artistic production and critical commentary, and to find alternate ways to perform criticism outside of the typical structures of an academic conference. This is most obvious in the decision to host a Keynote Performance piece, but it can also be seen in the range of different presentation types taking place on the day of the conference itself.

The session types are as follows:

PANEL PRESENTATIONS 
●      Aims:
As is tradition, panel presentations give scholars the opportunity to present a sustained inquiry into their particular subject. The presenter should make their work accessible for an interdisciplinary and diverse audience. In each session there will be additional time set aside for questions and for the panelists to discuss their ideas with their peers.

ROUNDTABLE PRESENTATIONS

●      Aims
Roundtables allow for each participant’s work to be discussed in a context where ideas can be debated in more depth than in panel presentations. In the context of Multiple Li(v)es, roundtables serve as a site where makers/scholars can contribute their perspectives on various issues posed by the contemporary domains of art, design, and new media.

The format of the roundtable may be presented using the Socratic Circle: Inner/Outer Circle method. The interest is in breaking with the hierarchical method of presentation to encourage participation by the audience.

In an effort to open up the types of methodologies we engage in as scholars, we invite session participants to contribute to the creation of a collaborative document, via Google Drive, before and after the conference. This document will endeavor to collect preliminary questions, as well as to summarize and respond to the issues raised. This document may be published in Kapsula Magazine along with audio documentation of the discussion.

WORKSHOP SESSIONS

●      Aims
Workshops are a way for scholars and makers to practice critical inquiry in ways that challenge traditional critical methodologies. With the introduction of several workshops that blur the lines between practice and theory we hope to destabilize traditional conceptions of an academic conference and prompt thought about the ways in which theoretical work may be performed.

Monday, March 2, 2015

Keynote Address by Dr. Sarah Thornton

Keynote Speaker

Credibility & Confidence: Behind the Scenes with Artists Today
In conversation with Dr. Sarah Thornton

Friday, March 27
10:00 - 11:30 AM, Auditorium 190
Free Admission with registration: www.eventbrite.com
OCAD University, 100 McCaul

OCAD University is pleased to welcome Dr. Sarah Thornton as the Keynote speaker for the 2015 CADN Graduate Conference.

Thornton is the author of 33 Artists in 3 Acts, published in English last autumn and forthcoming in six translations, as well as Seven Days in the Art World, an international bestseller available in sixteen languages. She is joined in conversation by Francisco-Fernando Granados, a Toronto-based artist, writer, and educator working in performance, drawing, and multidisciplinary critical practices.

In her new book, Thornton asks some of the world’s most influential artists (including Jeff Koons, Ai Weiwei, Cindy Sherman, Maurizio Cattelan, and Andrea Fraser) the question: “What is an artist?” A writer, ethnographer, and sociologist of art, Thornton delivers a hilarious and dazzlingly candid look at a world where the artist persona is often as famous as the work. She implicitly asks how and why myths and mystification feed the intrigue of the artist as act. Researched over five years as Thornton travelled the globe getting to know hundreds of artists, 33 Artists in 3 Acts tells the stories she amassed after spending time with the final 33 in their studios and homes, seeing how their messes and methods, artistic practices and lifestyles combined. Speaking about her experiences researching and writing the book, Thornton will share what it was like to have unprecedented access to these artists, and how they altered her understanding of what artists are, or could be.

On March 27-28, the Multiple Li(v)es of Art/ists &... Conference presents research by artists and scholars that investigates the active destabilization of binaries and the permeability of disciplinary boundaries. Providing opportunities to leverage productive energies and direct forms of critique through discussion about practices and perceptions, the conference engages the need for contradiction in how art and artists are presented and appreciated in the world, and supports fresh methods that (re)ask important questions.

More information on Dr. Sarah Thornton: A Canadian who studied in Britain on a Commonwealth Scholarship, Thornton holds a BA in Art History and a PhD in Sociology. Drawing from Howard Becker and Pierre Bourdieu, her PhD was published as Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. In addition to writing her three books, she has been the chief writer on contemporary art for The Economist and has contributed to many publications, television programs and radio broadcasts. Thornton now lives and writes in San Francisco. Web: sarah-thornton.com. Instagram: @eyesthornton

More information on Francisco-Fernando Granados: As an artist and curator Granados has presented his work in galleries, museums, theatres, artist-run centres, and other sites internationally and across Canada. His writing has been published in magazines and art journals including FUSE, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, and Canadian Theatre Review. He is a member of the 7a*11d International Performance Festival Collective and currently teaches courses in contemporary art theory and practice at OCADU and University of Toronto Scarborough. Web: francisco-fernando-granados.blogspot.ca

More information on Multiple Li(v)es of Art/ists &... Conference
Twitter: @CADNConference 
Facebook: OCADU Art Histories Graduate Conference
cadnconferenceocadu.blogspot.ca

Image: Dr. Sarah Thornton. Photo by Margo Mortiz.

Keynote Performance by Brendan Fernandes

Keynote Performance

Encomium
Durational Performance by Brendan Fernandes

Friday, March 27 - Opening Reception
6:00-9:00 PM, 230 Richmond St West
The Former OnSite Gallery, OCAD University

OCAD University is pleased to welcome Brendan Fernandes to present the Keynote Performance for the 2015 CADN Graduate Conference.

Fernandes is a nationally and internationally recognised Canadian artist of Kenyan and Indian descent. His recent work considers the transitional nature of identity through the complex language of dance.

The work "Encomium" is inspired by Plato's "Symposium", a classical text in which love is examined through speeches of praise. In a display of physicality, endurance and prowess, two men perform a dance as described and instructed by three narrative texts written by the artist that refer specifically to the speech of Phaedrus, in which he describes the asymmetrical love between a man and a younger male lover. In the work, Fernandes explores the way in which codes of language are articulated through classical ballet, and the way dance acts like any other language form, creating barriers that allow for understanding within specific groups and communities.

On March 27, “Encomium” will be performed by Damian Norman and Sky Fairchild-Waller, beginning at 6:00 PM and continuing until 9:00 PM. The opening reception for the conference will occur simultaneous to the performance. Fernandes will briefly speak about his work, at approximately 8:00 PM. The following day, on March 28, Fernandes will participate in a roundtable discussion, 2:30 - 4:00 PM at 205 Richmond St West. Both events are free and open to the public.

The Multiple Li(v)es of Art/ists &... Conference presents research by artists and scholars that investigates the active destabilization of binaries and the permeability of disciplinary boundaries. Providing opportunities to leverage productive energies and direct forms of critique through discussion about practices and perceptions, the conference engages the need for contradiction in how art and artists are presented and appreciated in the world, and supports fresh methods that (re)ask important questions.

More information on Multiple Li(v)es of Art/ists &... Conference
Twitter: @CADNConference
Facebook: OCADU Art Histories Graduate Conference
cadnconferenceocadu.blogspot.ca

image credit: Brendan Fernandes by Laurie Lambrecht, 2014

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