UTM ART Festival 2007 – March 19th – 23rd

The Blackwood Gallery is very happy to collaborate with the organizers of UTM ART Festival. Here's the scoop:

The Artistic Resource Team (ART) in Student Housing and Residence Life at University of Toronto, Mississauga is a newly formed team of students who are committed to enhancing the presence of and access to the creative arts in our community. ART holds primary responsibility for the development and presentation of the annual UTM ART Festival. This is the 6th year for the ART Festival and it shaping up to be its biggest year yet. The Festival has been expanded into a week-long event which includes daytime work-shops where students can explore a new form of art, and evening events to promote the art that already exists on our campus. The main event is the ART Festival Showcase which offers two major artistic categories: visual arts, and the performing arts. Professionals within their respective fields adjudicate these artistic demonstrations and financial awards are offered to the winning participants in each category. Over the past five years the ART Festival has offered more than $20 000.00 in awards to aspiring young artists.

The ART Festival 2007 – March 19th – 23rd

Monday, March 19th
11-1 PM Staging Shakespeare with Holger Syme (Student Centre Upstairs)
1-2 PM Highland Dance with Laura MacDonald (Student Centre Upstairs)
8-10 PM ART Opening Coffee House (Student Centre Presentation Room), $2

Tuesday, March 20th
1-2 PM Cape Breton Fiddling with Barry Green (Student Centre Upstairs)
8 PM UTM Drama Club Presents “Me and My Asian Mother” (MiST CCT 150)
9 PM UTM Drama Club Presents “Cousins of Corsica” (MiST CCT 150)

Wednesday, March 21st
11-1 PM Story Telling for Actors, Film-Makers and Artists with David How (Student Centre)
1-2 PM Beginner Hula with Estelle Oliva (Student Centre Upstairs)
7-9 PM Graduate Student Exhibit (Blackwood Gallery) [With reception]

Thursday, March 22nd
8:30 PM – 10:30 PM UTM Film Festival (Kaneff 137)

Friday, March 23rd
12-2PM Creativity Workshop with Jackie Osmond Patrick (Student Centre Upstairs)
THE ART FESTIVAL SHOWCASE (CC1080)
6 PM Visual Arts, 7 PM Performance, $10 Admission
Tickets on Sale March12th - 23rd in the Student Centre and Roy Ivor Hall

Check out our website:
www.utm.utoronto.ca/residence/art

Workshop for Emerging Arts Professionals

Ontario Association of Art Galleries
in collaboration with Blackwood Gallery

--Workshop for Emerging Arts Professionals--

Troublemaking and Troubleshooting:
Exhibition Organization for Emerging Curators
March 20th, 2007, 12:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Multimedia Studio Theatre (MiST), Ground Floor, CCIT Building
University of Toronto at Mississauga
3359 Mississauga Road
Mississauga ON L5L 1C6

Registration fee - University of Toronto students: $40, General: $45
Register at: www.oaag.org/programs/index.html by Friday, March 16, 2007
Email: programs@oaag.org for more information.

Through case studies and presentations by established professionals, the series creates professional development and network opportunities for recently graduated and underemployed emerging arts professionals. Troublemaking and Troubleshooting is a half-day workshop that will introduce the main components of exhibition organization, by identifying the resources, tools and methods of contemporary curatorial practice. Professional visual art curators Rhonda Corvese and Alissa Firth-Eagland will share expertise and provide insight into how to make curatorial projects happen from the ground up.

Rhonda Corvese will address:
- The Artist Curator relationship
- Negotiation and communication
- Production as a curatorial model
- Research strategies
- Networking: local, national, and international

Alissa Firth-Eagland will address:
- Pitching proposals and Calls For Submissions
- The Artist/Curator model
- Funding opportunities, partnerships and grants
- Making contact with galleries, artist-run centres and alternative venues
- Cultivating impact: promotion, publication, documentation

Getting There:
Participants are responsible for their own travel to and from Mississauga. Tickets for the intercampus shuttle bus can be purchased by non-students at Hart House, University of Toronto, 7 Hart House Circle. Shuttle schedule available at www.utm.utoronto.ca/shuttle.

The program has been generously supported by the Ontario Trillium Foundation and Canadian Heritage.

Rhonda Corvese is a Toronto-based independent curator and an Assistant Curator at the Art Gallery of York University (AGYU). Her curatorial projects often evolve in response to situations, where she strives to challenge the role of the curator, artist and audience in the presentation and engagement of contemporary art. She is fundamentally interested in exploring the dialogue between curator and artist in the creation of new work that exists beyond the gallery space and in the examination of contemporary Canadian art within an international framework. Recent projects include: The Idea of North, a sound art group exhibition in Norway, Iceland and Halifax (2005/2006); Iris Haeussler’s site-specific installation The Legacy of Joseph Wagenbach (2006); a special project Berlin booth Berlin Constructions: Emergent Practices Today at the Toronto International Art Fair (2004); and the Berlin/Toronto Gallery Exchange (2004/2005). Three upcoming Toronto projects include: British artist Shona Illingworth’s The Watch Man, a video and sound installation at InterAccess (April 6-May 12, 2007) as part of Images Festival 2007; 25sec.-Toronto a video portrait of cultural mediators by Berlin-based German artists Angelika Middendorf and Andreas Schimanski at Prefix ICA (June/July 2007); and an AGYU project “in there”, a one-night performance event on April 4/2007 in the Accolade East Building (AGYU), a series of process-based collaborative projects between Diane Borsato, Daniel Cockburn, Kristan Horton and the dance, music and theatre students at York University.

Toronto-based curator Alissa Firth-Eagland publishes, produces events, curates exhibitions and programs time-based works. Her multi-faceted approach sparks projects across a range of communities, institutions, and disciplines: single-evening performances, video screenings, multiple location shows; interventions in public spaces; and gallery exhibitions. She has coordinated projects for organizations like the TRANZ ßà TECH 2003 Toronto International Media Biennial, Cultural Human Resources Canada, the Banff Centre, the Toronto Alternative Arts Fair International 2004, YYZ Artists Outlet and MUU Gallery (Helsinki, Finland). Through her practice, she champions creative experimentation with media. In 2005 she commissioned video artists who use their own presence in their works to perform live for the first time with her project, Feats, might. In 2006 she was awarded an Ontario Arts Council Chalmers Fellowship for independent research into print as a distinct forum for contemporary art. The inaugural issue of her curatorial publication project ALMANAC exhibited in Halifax, Nova Scotia; Melbourne, Australia; Stockholm, Sweden; Amsterdam, the Netherlands; and in Cambridge, UK. In summer 2006 she was curator-in-residence at the Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art where she researched Nordic artists creating works that defy traditional artistic categories. In 2008 she will be presenting the first solo exhibition of Canadian video artist Gareth Long’s work at Oakville Galleries. Currently she’s commissioning new works for Sleepwalker Projects, her experimental window gallery on Queen St West in Toronto.

Experience the experience of viewing the monochrom performance online!

Or, at least a one-minute teaser clip of it ;-)

You have three lovely web-friendly formats to choose from…

Windows Media Player, Real Player, or QuickTime



Of course, there's also the ePresence directory.

Enjoy!

Everyone, including a few self-proclaimed claustrophobes, wanted to get buried!

And why not? It’s definitely an uncommon opportunity to chill out in a cozy box for 15 minutes and then resurface for a fanfare greeting. Besides, who can resist the chance to acquire such a fantastic party story?

Premature Burial as a Field Trial for Near-Death Activities shook the Blackwood Gallery from 4:00 to nearly 10:00 pm. The event opened with a fascinating talk filled with intriguing facts about the history of burial rituals and of course, the phenomenon of [accidental] live burials. Who would have guessed that we didn’t always know it was necessary to check a still body for breathing before interment.

And then the burials began!

Students, professors, journalists, and art-loving thrill-seekers of all kinds clamored for the chance to experience the experience of being buried alive. At some point in the evening there was even a waiting list to get onto the waiting list!

Efforts were made to reduce the duration of each burial as a way for more people to participate, but there came a point when it simply would not have sufficed for either the growing crowd or the quality of each individual experience. Eventually it all had to come to a close.

Or did it?

Rumor has it that monochrom has offered the Blackwood Gallery a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to walk in their shoes and bury willing participants on their collective behalf.

Please enjoy these photos while we work out the details. More news coming soon!

Two articles in the Toronto Star

How to be buried alive
EDITORIAL
TheStar.com - http://www.thestar.com/article/178430


TARA WALTON / TORONTO STAR
The coffin closes on reporter Erin Kobayashi, who immediately channels
Uma Thurman in Kill Bill: Part II, in order to stay strong.

First, you have to sign a waiver. And then someone else does the shovelling as you just sit back and contemplate life for the next 15 minutes

Feb 06, 2007 04:30 AM
Erin Kobayashi

It's not often that you get to shake the hand of the person who buries your coffin.

Johannes Grenzfurthner, one of nine members of an Austrian art collective called monochrom, greets me at the Blackwood Gallery on the campus of the University of Toronto at Mississauga.

His first words: "I am going to bury you today."

As I enter the exhibition, I immediately see the coffin and hear Austrian funeral music.

For 15 minutes, I have volunteered to participate in monochrom's performance piece "#2: Premature Burial as a Field Trial for Near Death Activities."

Essentially, I am required to lie in a pitch black coffin beneath soil. The experience will hopefully inspire me to think more critically about my relationship with death, urban legends and TV carnage like Fear Factor.

The gravediggers are Grenzfurthner, 31, and fellow monochrom member Daniel Fabry, 27. Two other members of monochrom, Gunther Friesinger, 34, and Anika Kronberger, 25, as well as Blackwood Gallery curator Seamus Kealy, are also present for my burial. Not exactly who I imagined would attend this momentous occasion.

Kealy is adamant that I sign the waiver that reads: "I hereby agree to accept any and all risks of property damage, personal injury, post-traumatic stress, or death."

As I sign on the line, I hear Grenzfurthner's voice pop into my head, "Many, many people in medieval times were buried alive because they didn't know that you had to check for breathing. Premature burials happen."

Grenzfurthner's voice morbidly continues and he talks about how the piece was inspired by 19th-century German newspapers that sensationalized premature burials, claiming that every 10th person was buried alive.

"Of course, it was wrong," he says. "It was just media hype, because people love to read the creepy things in newspapers about people being buried alive."

Still reading?

With all of this information, one would think I would prepare for my burial with an oxygen tank. Instead I've brought a tape recorder, flashlight, iPod, digital camera and cellphone. But I decide to leave it all behind as monochrom recommends participants have a puritanical relationship with their premature burial.

The coffin is then ceremoniously closed (if you've ever had a door slammed in your face, the emotional impact of having a coffin shut over your head is 100 times harsher).

The last words I hear are from Kealy: "So the Irish beat the Welsh ..."

And with that, a load of soil is heaved onto the coffin and crashes onto the lid like thunder. All light and nearly all sound are sealed out. Once you are dead, life and rugby go on apparently.

Inside the coffin, a closed-circuit video camera monitors participants. After awhile, I feel like a victim in a demented X-Files episode. And then it hits me. Boredom.

Counting down, as minutes turn into seconds, I become more relaxed (perhaps it is the carbon monoxide) and hear scraping and see light overhead.

I am being excavated. Fame and death are overrated I decide, happy that my 15 minutes are finally up.

ID@thestar.ca

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Alarm raised over burial performance
http://www.thestar.com/Article/178428
Feb 06, 2007 04:30 AM

A University of Toronto staff member is protesting that the experience of Austrian art collective monochrom's performance piece "#2: Premature Burial as a Field Trial for Near Death Activities" may be too extreme for some volunteer participants.

The live art piece, to be performed tomorrow at the University of Toronto at Mississauga's Blackwood Gallery, buries volunteers in a coffin for up to 15 minutes.

Elizabeth Olszewska, community outreach co-ordinator in UTM's psychology department, says she was shocked when she received an email from the gallery inviting faculty, staff and students to get buried alive.

"I am totally against it," she says. "I would not go through it for the cheap thrill and then suffer consequences. Take it somewhere else. I am against doing it on the college grounds."


Olszewska is concerned that students could suffer claustrophobia, a mental breakdown, or panic and anxiety attacks during or after they have experienced being buried in the coffin.

"They better have psychologists and paramedics waiting," she warns.

The coffin in monochrom's gallery piece is above ground with fluffy, porous soil being used to bury it. The Austrian art collective claims that in these conditions, someone would be able to last in the coffin for days.

But without an oxygen supply, Olszewska fears the worst.

"There is art and garbage. Everything that brings me down is garbage, it's not the type of art I would like to be involved in," she says.

Blackwood Gallery curator Seamus Kealy was surprised by Olszewska's negative reaction. The performance piece, formerly titled "Being Buried Alive" during a 2005 Canada-U.S. tour, has never been received negatively before when it appeared in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Vancouver. In previous exhibitions, some participants had immediate reactions and refused to be buried.

Compared to bungee jumping, skydiving and extreme sports, Kealy thinks the physical risks are extremely low.

"It's a parody and a critique of the North American drive for extreme experience," he says.

"It's a worldwide tendency to want to experience everything."

Volunteers must also sign a waiver and cannot be under the influence of drugs or alcohol if they participate in the burial.

"Her main concern was that this was a spectacular event that was exploiting something that was a serious phenomenon, traumatizing the students and shouldn't be done because in terms of her opinion as a psychologist, the effect it would have on students would be too dangerous for the psyche," Kealy says of a 45-minute conversation he had with Olszewska.

"She didn't think it was funny. She was wondering what kind of monsters would be making this kind of a project."

Despite Olszewska's protests, the Blackwood Gallery is continuing with the planned performance. Kealy says that the majority of participants signed up for the event are students and that space is limited for the live burials.

He hopes that monochrom's live burials will make participants think about the political and philosophical undertones of the piece and how it makes an ironic and morbid reference to Viennese identity and culture.

ERIN KOBAYASHI

David Balzer Reports: "FUN FOR GOTHS: Get dirty with monochrom"

FUN FOR GOTHS
Get dirty with monochrom
Eye Weekly -- February 1, 2007 -- Volume 16, Issue 18

In the annals of performance art, perhaps few figures are as notorious as Hermann Nitsch and Gunter Brus, key members of the Vienna-based Actionist collective, who staged a panoply of days-long happenings in the '60s and '70s involving animal guts, defecation, crucifixion, feathers and a whole lot of writhing.

Johannes Grenzfurthner of the contemporary Viennese collective monochrom uses the Actionists as a reference point, “but only,” he says, “because it's impossible not to if you're a performance artist working after 1965.” Contributors to Blackwood Gallery's “Unterspiel” exhibit of emerging Viennese artists, monochrom perform their own pseudo-Actionist Premature Burial as a Field Trial for Near Death Activities Feb. 7, for which they will ask a handful of volunteers to be buried alive for 15 minutes each – in a real coffin, in real dirt, with a eulogy detailing the history of body-snatching and forensics.

Grenzfurthner's trepidation about the Actionists' influence may have something to do with monochrom's political bent (he describes the group as “postmodern leftists”) and, more specifically, with his contention that performance art as the Actionists understood it – to wit, as a transformative, taboo-breaking thing – is impotent, or at least in need of an overhaul.

“In the Actionists' day, it was easy to get arrested in Vienna doing what they did in public spaces,” Grenzfurthner says. “Nowadays, you'd be lucky to have someone put a picture of the event on Flickr. And, of course, most of the Actionists' performances are far less hardcore than anything on, say, Jackass.”

The problem, according to Grenzfurthner, is the widely held notion in the West that all oppressive hierarchies have been shattered: no longer under the palpable shadow of institutions like the church, we assume we're free agents, and thus stop caring. The monochrom collective's response is to become what Grenzfurthner calls “an experimental lab” whose purpose is to “find out what potential [i.e., for radicalism, for mobilization] still exists.”

A quick glance at monochrom's long list of projects and performances (the collective was founded in 1993 and, to date, has instigated well over 100 of them) evinces a variety of strategies, some hare-brained, some brilliant. Many involve the internet: their computer game Soviet Unterzoegersdorf – The Adventure Game, in part a parody of the post-WWII Russian occupation of Austria, was listed as internet game of the month for Nov. 2005 by Edge magazine; their own website (http://www.monochrom.at/) functions as a busy, enthusiastic chronicle of their own and others' art projects.

"Premature Burial as a Field Trial for Near Death Activities" broaches many things, such as the still-firm grip of religion on a presumedly secular society and our increasingly paranoid-cum-sanitized view of the body. To date, monochrom have staged Premature Burial in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Vancouver, and never, by the way, finds it hard to muster up volunteers – though, true to the Actionist spirit, usually manages to ruffle a few.

“We tend to get goths,” says Grenzfurthner. “In Vancouver, they were afraid and didn't want to do it. Maybe we confronted them with the real side of their death-based youth culture. Who knows? Capitalism's great at absorbing and remodelling pretty much anything you can imagine. There's a lot to be discovered by digging a hole.”

DAVID BALZER

Monochrom's “Premature Burial as a Field Trial for Near Death Activities” begins 4-6pm and 7-9pm, Feb 7. Shuttle bus departs from 7 hart house circle at 3pm and returns at 6pm. Blackwood Gallery, Kaneff Centre, University of Toronto at Mississauga, 3359 Mississauga Rd N. 905-828-3789.



http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_02.01.07/arts/artsweek_1.php

Today: monochrom @ Sheridan College, Oakville

Art and Art History Presents

monochrom

Tuesday, February 6, 2007
12:30 – 1:30 p.m.

Sheridan College, B125

Among their projects, monochrom has released a leftist retro-gaming project, established a one baud semaphore line through the streets of San Francisco, started an illegal space race through Los Angeles, buried people alive in Vancouver, and cracked the hierarchies of the art system with the Thomann Project. In Austria they ate blood sausages made from their own blood in order to criticize the grotesque neoliberal formation of the world economy. Sometimes they compose melancholic pop songs about dying media and they have hosted the first annual festival concerned with cocktail robotics. At the moment they're planning a conference about pornography as one of the driving forces of technological innovation. They also do international soul trade, propaganda camps, epic puppet theater, aesthetic pregnancy counseling, food catering, and - sorry to mention - modern dance.

Experience the Experience of Being Buried Alive!!

Yes, that was definitely worthy of two exclamation points because we're very, very serious!

The Austrian collective monochrom invites you to be buried alive in a private graveyard at the Blackwood Gallery on Wednesday February 7, 2007 from 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm, and again from 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm.

Will you chose to be buried alive or stand idly by?

Premature Burial as a Field Trial for Near Death Activities will offer participants an opportunity to be buried alive in a coffin for up to fifteen minutes. Volunteers will be able to experience a semi-traumatic situation and possibly get in close contact with various gods and/or afterlives. People buried alive not only populate the horror stories of past centuries, but also countless reports in specialized medical literature. The theme of unintentional resurrection by grave robbers also runs through forensic protocols. Even in the 19th century it was said that every tenth person was buried alive.

The "International Year of Polytheism" (powered by monochrom) is an attempt at conquering the self-destructive monotheistic world-view (and its derivatives such as "The West" and "The Arab World") through the reconstruction of a polytheistic multiplicity in which countless gods and goddesses are free to neutralize each other. Polytheism is democracy, Monotheism a dictatorship, even in its pseudo-secular form.

Click on the image for a larger version:



Free shuttle buses

#1) Hart House University of Toronto, 7 Hart House Circle, Toronto
departing at 3:00 pm (returning at 6:00 pm)

#2) Gladstone Hotel, 1214 Queen Street West, Toronto
departing at 6:00 pm (returning at 9:00 pm)

We hope to see you there!

Photos from the opening reception for Unterspiel

Whew! Finally, a chance to share photos taken during the opening reception for Unterspiel =-)

On January 17, 2007 beginning at 6:00 pm, the City of Mississauga, and numerous guests from Toronto, were introduced to Unterspiel, an exhibition of work by contemporary Viennese Artists.

Catrin Bolt, who had just finished installing her audio work in an entrance of the CCT building was in attendance, as was Marlene Haring, who performed Secret Service for the duration of the reception.

Curious about what Secret Service entailed?

Well, it was essentially a one-on-one private conversation held between Haring and a participant that was framed by the mutual signing of a non-disclosure agreement. The purpose of the agreement was to give each speaker the complete freedom to share his/her mind. As described by Haring, the motivation of the performance was to give time and space to sincere interaction, which is especially relevant during events such as exhibition openings, when it is sometimes difficult to engage in meaningful conversation given the amount of activity taking place.

Various members of the audience and staff members of the BWG engaged in Secret Service with Haring, but of course, we are all obligated to keep further details confidential.

Enjoy these pictures, and plan to attend our next event: a performance by the collective, monochrom, on Wednesday, February 7, 2007.

Details will be posted to this blog very soon!

Secret Service - A Performance by Marlene Haring

During the opening of Unterspiel (January 17, 2007 from 6 – 9 p.m.), Marlene Haring will perform “Secret Service”. What this entails exactly is, well, a secret! If you’d like to know more, or if you’d like to participate, the best thing to do is come to the opening!

Remember: A free shuttle bus to the Blackwood Gallery departs from the Gladstone Hotel (1214 Queen St. W.) at 6:00 pm. It couldn’t be easier to get here and join us!


Here’s a little more info about Marlene’s work, as provided by the website of the Vargas Organisation, London:

Marlene Haring
b. 1978, lives and works currently in New York.
From 1999 to 2003 she was mainly working with Catrin Bolt in the collaboration Halt+Boring.

The citation for the 2005 Birgit Jürgenssen Prize states: 'The deciding factor [in awarding the prize to Marlene Haring] was that the young artist does not rely on any formalist approaches in her work or limit herself to one medium, but rather employs performance, happening, photography, video, etc., reflecting trends, contents and strategies of today’s art world and in translating these into her own works after endowing them with a new and subversive dimension. [...She] has developed an independent position evincing a great degree of attention for the rules of art and the everyday world and an aesthetic competence focusing on the crucial questions concerning the criteria for social closeness and distance, body and mind, sex and gender.'


Check this blog regularly: More info about other artists coming soon!

Emerging Viennese artists rewrite their cultural history in Canada, again

Unterspiel opens January 17, 2007...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Unterspiel

An exhibition (and related performances) by contemporary Viennese artists:

Patrick Baumüller & Severin Hofmann, Catrin Bolt, Marlene Haring, monochrom, and Hans Schabus

Opening Reception: Wednesday, January 17, 2007 from 6 – 9 p.m. -- Artists in attendance

A free shuttle bus departs the Gladstone Hotel --- 1214 Queen St. W., Toronto at 6 pm (returning 9 pm)

Exhibition runs January 18 to February 25, 2007
monochrom Performance: Wednesday February 7, 2007



Hans Schabus, Western, 2000
video documentation, 2002. Courtesy of the artist


This is the second, much anticipated installment of Unterspiel after its inaugural exhibition at Vancouver’s Contemporary Art Gallery in 2005.

Featuring the work of five contemporary Viennese artists/artist groups, Unterspiel explores the problematics of contemporary art production in Vienna. The works in this exhibition demonstrate a specific, sometimes belated relation to a tradition of avant-gardism that has its origins in fin de siecle Vienna. At the same time, they sometimes paradoxically take issue with the provocative actions of the Viennese Actionists (1960s). In the wake of the Actionists’ inherently political and violent work, contemporary Viennese art often engages in socio-political issues concerning notions of Austrian identity, or in confrontation to political and/or art institutions. A catalogue with a text by Séamus Kealy accompanies the exhibition.

Hans Schabus, who represented Austria at the 2005 Venice Biennale, presents the video installation Western, a complex work that questions post-war Viennese identity. In this work, Schabus boats through the famous catacomb sewers beneath Vienna, where Orson Welles had evaded authorities in the 1949 film, The Third Man.

Severin Hofmann & Patrick Baumüller transplant a clichéd image of Austrian culture with their ongoing Würstlstand project, shown in the gallery on video. These artists set up mobile traditional Viennese hotdog stands as a site of intersecting cultural identities.

Catrin Bolt & Marlene Haring present individual installations that follow on their collaborative work. These young artists have made provocative video and performance work, such as the 2003 video, Call Boys, involving male prostitutes, and recent performances in politically-charged contexts such as government buildings.

monochrom invites volunteers drawn from the audience to be buried alive. With a small, private graveyard set up in the gallery, willing individuals may come to experience their own mortality. Events scheduled for Wednesday, February 7. A monochrom installation is also part of the exhibition.

IMAGE BAR programming alongside the exhibition includes: The Third Man, contemporary Austrian film, and films selected by the participating artists.

Gallery hours are Monday through Friday 11 to 5 pm and Sunday 1 to 5 pm.

For more information, please contact Curatorial Assistant, Milena Placentile, at the Blackwood Gallery (905.828.3789 / m.placentile [at] utoronto.ca) or visit the website: http://www.blackwoodgallery.ca.

The Blackwood Gallery gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Trillium Foundation, the Austrian Cultural Forum in Ottawa, Simple Alternative Funeral Centres, and the Gladstone Hotel.

Beckett: A Symposium -- Photos

Approximately one month ago, the Blackwood Gallery and the University of Toronto at Mississauga hosted a symposium on the subject of Samuel Beckett, his work, and his legacy. The symposium featured presentations by international speakers, a new-media performance, and it was followed by a film and video presentation at the Goethe-Institut (King Street W., Toronto).

There has been a tremendous amount of activity at the gallery over the past few weeks, particularly in preparation for our next exhibition, Unterspiel. For that reason, it’s taken a little longer than expected to get these pictures loaded. Hopefully, in the time that has passed, readers of this blog [you!] who attended the symposium will have had a chance to reflect on the various issues and ideas presented. We welcome your comments and captions as accompaniment to these pictures, and the symposium itself!

Ride the Beckett Bus from downtown Toronto!

We’ve just added another Beckett Bus! Now there’s no excuse to miss this fantastic exhibition ;-)

BUS SCHEDULE #2
(Serving downtown Toronto)

2:30 pm pick up -- Gladstone Hotel
...........................1214 Queen Street West, Toronto
3:00 pm drop off -- Blackwood Gallery (Kaneff Centre)
...........................University of Toronto at Mississauga
...........................3359 Mississauga Rd N
4:30 pm pick up .-- Blackwood Gallery (Kaneff Centre)
...........................University of Toronto at Mississauga
...........................3359 Mississauga Rd N
5:00 pm drop off -- Gladstone Hotel
...........................1214 Queen Street West, Toronto

To accommodate what we hope will be a bus load of people [make that TWO bus loads of people!], Seamus will offer two tours. The first will take place from 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm, and the second will take place from 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm.

All of this is happening on Sunday, December 17, so mark it down on your calendars and plan to join us!

Ride the Beckett Bus!

What are you doing on Sunday, December 17, 2006?

We’ve coordinated a FREE Mississauga shuttle bus to the Blackwood Gallery because we’d love for you to enjoy a tour of 18:Beckett led by gallery curator, Seamus Kealy.

This will be the last weekend 18:Beckett is available before it closes on Thursday, December 21, so if you haven't already had a chance to view this innovative exhibition of contemporary art inspired by the work of Samuel Beckett, this is the perfect opportunity!

We’ve arranged three pick up and drop off points throughout Mississauga -- all you need to do is meet us, and we’ll do the rest!


BUS SCHEDULE

12:00 pm pick up -- Cawthra Community Centre (front doors)
.............................1399 Cawthra Road
12:20 pm pick up -- Square One - Go station terminal
.............................100 City Centre Dr. (Rathburn Rd. & Duke of York Blvd)
12:40 pm pick up -- South Common Mall (bus terminal)
.............................2126 Burnhamthrope Rd W.
1:00 pm drop off .-- Blackwood Gallery (Kaneff Centre)
.............................University of Toronto at Mississauga
.............................3359 Mississauga Rd N
3:00 pm pick up .-- Blackwood Gallery (Kaneff Centre)
.............................University of Toronto at Mississauga
.............................3359 Mississauga Rd N
3:20 pm drop off. -- South Common Mall (bus terminal)
.............................2126 Burnhamthrope Rd W.
3:40 pm drop off .-- Square One - Go station terminal
.............................100 City Centre Dr. (Rathburn Rd. & Duke of York Blvd)
4:00 pm drop off .-- Cawthra Community Centre (front doors)
.............................1399 Cawthra Road


The tour will take place between 1:00 – 2:30 pm. Admission to the gallery is always free.

For further information, please visit http://www.blackwoodgallery.ca or call 905.828.3789.

Dorothy Cross, Chiasm
(video stills), 1999

18:Beckett tour

Have you been wondering about those strange sounds emanating from the former UTM library? Have the strobe lights flashing from behind the curtain of the e-Gallery stimulated your curiosity?

Join curator Séamus Kealy for a tour of the exhibition 18:Beckett!

The tour starts at 12:00 pm on November 22, 2006. To join in, meet Séamus at the Martin Arnold space of the eGallery, and from there you’ll move on to see works at the Blackwood Gallery, the former UTM library, and affixed to the exterior of the South Building.

This tour is taking place as part of a symposium featuring presentations by international and local guest speakers.

Remember: all students, staff, faculty, and visitors are welcome to attend both the tour and the symposium, which is taking place in CCT 0150 from 10 am – 5 pm.

We look forward to seeing you there!

18:Beckett

Opening Lecture (followed by Opening Reception):
Wednesday November 8th, 4 pm
A free bus leaves the Hart House (U of T Downtown) at 3 pm for the lecture
A free bus leaves the Gladstone Hotel (1214 Queen St. W, Toronto) at 6 pm for the opening

Exhibition runs from November 9 – December 21, 2006

18:Beckett is an interdisciplinary exhibition project marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of Nobel Prize-winning Irish writer Samuel Beckett. The title refers to the eighteen years since Beckett’s death and the eighteen sites where this project will take place in Mississauga and Toronto. These sites and events are an artist’s lecture, eight artist projects, six weekly film/video art events, a film screening evening, a symposium and performance, and a publication; all of which arise out of Beckett’s legacy.

Events are free of admission and have free shuttle service to and from venues.


Wednesday November 8th
1) Artist Talk with Gary Hill: Kaneff Centre 137, University of Toronto at Mississauga (adjacent to the Blackwood Gallery); 4 to 5 pm.

Participating artist Gary Hill discusses his work with curator Séamus Kealy.

2) Exhibition opens to the public, Blackwood Gallery (and satellite locations); 6 to 10 pm

Eight international artists will present their work in and around the Blackwood Gallery, as well as at the Goethe Institut Toronto. The exhibition highlights formal and conceptual strategies that artists are exploring in relation to Beckett’s work and includes a catalogue with essays by Séamus Kealy and Terry Eagleton. Artists:

Martin Arnold (Austria), Dorothy Cross (Ireland), Stan Douglas (Canada), Gary Hill (USA), Bruce Nauman (USA), Gregor Schneider (Germany), Ann-Sofi Siden (Sweden), Zin Taylor/Allison Hrabluik (Canada)

Contemporary Video Art Program including Stephane Gilot (Canada), Kelly Mark (Canada), Nikos Navridis (Greece), Daniel Olson (Canada), Hans Op de Beeck (Belgium), Michal Rovner (Israel), Anri Sala (Albania), Magdalena Szczepaniak (Poland)


Wednesday November 22nd
1) Symposium: CCT Building, Room 1050, University of Toronto at Mississauga, 10 am to 5 pm

International and local scholars discuss Beckett’s experiments with new media and the use of Beckettian formal strategies within contemporary visual arts and film. Includes new media performance.

2) Film Screenings and Lecture Evening: Goethe Institut, 163 King St. W, Toronto, 7 to 9 pm

Screenings of Beckett-related films hosted by Walter Asmus and Linda Ben-Zvi.

Funding by the Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council, Humanities Centre U of T, Culture Ireland, Connaught Fund (University of Toronto), The University of Toronto at Mississauga, Foreign Affairs Canada, The Centre for US Studies, The Department of English and Drama (UTM), The Gladstone Hotel, Goethe Institut Toronto, Irish Embassy (Ottawa)

Isuma Events

still from Atarnarjuat (The Fast Runner) @ Norman Cohn/Igloolik IsumaProductions Inc.


Sunday, October 1, 2006 12:30 pm to late afternoon
CONTEMPORARY ART BUS TOUR SUNDAY
A free bus departs the Textile Museum (55 Centre Ave.,Toronto) at 12:30 pm to the Blackwood Gallery, Koffler Gallery and Doris McCarthy Gallery UTSC. To reserve a seat, please call the Doris McCarthy Gallery at 416-287-7007 by September 29. This event is FREE.


Thursday, October 12, 2006 3-5pm
RECORDS IN OUR HEADS: WOMEN'S VOICE AND VIDEO
Screening of video by Arnait Video Productions
Followed by a Panel Discussion with Marrie Mumford, Kass Banning, Peggy Gale and Marie-Helene Cousineau. Moderated by Joan Simalchik
Co-Presented with the Study of Women and Gender Program at UTM

MIST Studio Theatre, CCT Building, University of Toronto at Mississauga Admission: FREE

Arnait Video Productions (Women’s Video Workshop of Igloolik) voices concerns, beliefs and experiences of Inuit women in debates of interest to all Canadians. Arnait shares oral traditions (songs and stories), re-enacts traditional activities, history and legends, and celebrates the specificity of the culture of women in Igloolik.


Saturday, October 21, 2006 5 pm to 6:30 pm
RECORDS IN OUR HEADS: MEMORY, MEDIA AND THE TELLING OF HISTORY
Panel discussion co-presented with Toronto’s ImagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival, with filmmakers Zacharias Kunuk, Merata Mita, and Alanis Obomsawin

To be followed by a screening of Isuma's new feature film The Journals of Knud Rasmussen at 7 pmAl Green Theatre (750 Spadina, downtown Toronto)


Sunday, October 22, 12 noon to 2 pm
CLOSING RECEPTION for Isuma -- to have an idea
co-presented with Toronto’s ImagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts FestivalArtist Talk and Reception with Isuma filmmakers Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto at Mississauga FREE bus transportation will be provided from downtown Toronto to the reception at the Mississauga campus. Buses will leave Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre (Bloor and Spadina) at 11:00am and will return at 1:30pm.


BLACKWOOD GALLERY WRITING AWARD
$150 Juried Prize for winning entry for a critical review (750-1000 words) of the film(s) featured in ISUMA - to have an idea Drop off a printed copy at the Blackwood Gallery, E-gallery or Curatorial Office (CCT Room 3019) Deadline: Oct 23rd 2006, 5pm

monochrom

The Blackwood Gallery and Mercer Union present

monochrom:
"We're great together, the liberal society and it's enemies"

A lecture/event at Mercer Union, 8pm, Thursday July 13th, 2006

Free Admission

monochrom from Vienna is a collective, operating worldwide, that deals with technology, art, context hacking and philosophy and was founded in 1993. monochrom is an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science and political activism. Their mission is conducted everywhere, but first and foremost in culture-archeological digs into the seats (and pockets) of ideology and entertainment.

monochrom has released a leftist retro-gaming project, established a 1 baud semaphore line through the streets of San Francisco, started an illegal space race through Los Angeles, buried people alive in Vancouver, and cracked the hierarchies of the art system with The Thomann Project. In Austria they ate blood sausages made from their own blood in order to criticize the grotesque neoliberal formation of the world economy. Sometimes they compose melancholic pop songs about dying media and hosted the first annual and inevitably leading festival concerned with cocktail robotics. At the moment they're planning a conference about pornography as one of the driving forces of technological innovation. Also they do international soul trade, propaganda camps, epic puppet theatre, aesthetic pregnancy counseling, food catering and -- sorry to mention -- modern dance.

monochrom’s medley at Mercer Union is a little tour-de-farce about their projects and political motivation. The evening also features a teaser for the Blackwood Gallery’s upcoming project “18:Beckett”. Altogether, this evening will be a joyful bucket full of good clean fanaticism, crisis, language, culture, self-content, identity, utopia, mania and despair, condensed into the well known cultural technique of a gala show. Powernapping highly welcome.

www.monochrom.at/english

http://www.blackwoodgallery.ca

http://www.mercerunion.org

For further information please contact cvictor@utm.utoronto.ca or dave@mercerunion.org

PREVIEW: future graduates

Video screening in Kaneff building, across from Blackwood Gallery
Shown in conjunction with the third set of Graduating Exhibitions from the Art & Art History program

Opening: Wednesday April 19, 5:30 - 7:30
runs until Sunday May 7 during Blackwood Gallery hours

Videos selected by Ashley Andrews

PREVIEW: future graduates brings together a number of videos from students that are still continuing their studies at U of T. The work is chosen from both the Art & Art History Program and the Visual Studies Program at the St. George campus.

Video one (April 20-28)

1. taint. Donna Lee 3:25 min

2. Kali Yuga. Gintas Trillis 0:58 min

3. dream. Enya Hou 4:30 min

4. untitled. Darcie Kennedy 1:24 min



Video Two (April 30- May 7)

1. untitled (yellow). Olha Fihol 1:00 min

2. A foot’s existence. Patricia Tsastos & Melanie Bracey 1:07 min

3. Egg. Maurice Lam 1:00 min

4. untitled(red). Olha Fihol 1:00 min

The Darker Side of Black

On the Image Bar, CCIT Building, UTM
18 - 21 April, 2006


Directed by Issac Julien

Gangsta chic, violence and nihilism, the hard edge of Rap and Reggae increasingly dominates the image of black popular culture. This is an intelligent and provocative investigation of the complex issues raised by the genre, such as ritualized machismo, misogyny, homophobia, and gun glorification. Noted experts on black history, such as Cornel West of Princeton University, and Michael Manly, former prime minister of Jamaica, analyze the phenomenon and give insights into its development and meaning.

Filmed in dance halls, hip hop clubs, and using interviews and music video clips, The Darker Side of Black takes us to London, Jamaica and the USA. The film brings together diverse musicians as Buju Banton, Shabba Ranks, and Britain's Moni Love. It is a long overdue examination of the "darker" side of contemporary black music.