Brendan Fernandes, Encomium I, II, III, 2011. View of the performance taken during the exhibition opening. Dancers: David Albert-Toth, Simon-Xavier Lefebvre
Exhibition opening
Wednesday, November 18, 5:30 – 7:30 pm
During the opening
PERFORMANCES
Starting at 5:30 pm: Simon Bertrand
6 pm – 7:30 pm: Brendan Fernandes
Dancers: David Albert-Toth, Simon-Xavier Lefebvre
Brendan Fernandes in conversation with Matthew-Robin Nye
Friday, November 20, 4 pm – 5:30 pm
The conversation is situated within the work Encomium I, II, III by Brendan Fernandes, presently on view at the gallery. Departing from it, the artist and Matthew-Robin Nye reflect on questions of reading as a physical exercise, body and labour within hierarchies in ballet dance, undoing identities, and the language of movement.
Brendan Fernandes is a Canadian artist of Kenyan and Indian descent. He completed the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2007. He earned his MFA from The University of Western Ontario in 2005, and his BFA in 2002 from York University in Toronto. His work has been shown internationally. He is the recipient of a 2014 Robert Rauschenberg Residency Fellowship, and in 2016 he will be artist in residence at Northwestern University in Evanston in the Department of Dance Studies.
More information:
Ways of Thinking
brendanfernandes.ca
After obtaining a degree in Environmental Design at OCAD in Toronto, Matthew-Robin Nye is currently a MFA Candidate in Intermedia at Concordia University, Instructor in ARTX and FFAR, and Research Assistant in the SSHRC partnership grant Immediations directed by Prof. Erin Manning. His current research is concerned with the definition and production of Utopic Queer Architectural Space through oral history projects, performance, video work and installation.
Conversation between Katrie Chagnon and Guylaine Beaudry
Clayton Cubitt, Hysterical Literature, Session 03 – Danielle, 2012. Video still. Courtesy of the artist
Wednesday, November 25, 6 pm
The conversation between Katrie Chagnon, the curator of the exhibition Reading Exercises, and Guylaine Beaudry focused on the transformation of reading practices, their current conditions and the challenges they bring in terms of research and transfer of knowledge within an academic context.
In French
Katrie Chagnon is Max Stern curator of research at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery, Concordia University. A doctoral candidate at Université de Montréal, she is working on a critical, psychoanalytical, and feminist analysis of the role of phantasy in the work of contemporary art historians Michael Fried and Georges Didi-Huberman. She has also been involved in the contemporary art milieu for over ten years as an author, art critic, and curator. Notable publications include the study Phénoménologie et art minimal: une mise à l’épreuve critique de la dialectique œuvre-objet dans l’esthétique phénoménologique (Presses universitaires européennes, 2010), a monograph on Quebec artist Alexandre David (forthcoming in 2016), as well as numerous articles, essays, and exhibition catalogue texts. She lives and works in Montreal.
Guylaine Beaudry has been appointed Concordia University Librarian in May 2014. She joined Concordia University in October 2009 as director of the Webster Library, and she has served as interim university librarian since July 2013. Previously, she was director of the Digital Publishing Centre at Université de Montréal and executive director of Érudit, a publishing platform for scholarly books and journals in the social sciences and humanities.
Simon Bertrand | Retranscription of La Bible – nouvelle traduction
Simon Bertrand, Retranscription of La Bible – nouvelle traduction, 2009-… View of the performance taken during the exhibition opening.
November 21, December 5, January 9 and 16, 2 – 5 pm
On several Saturdays thoughout the exhibition, the artist worked on the transcription and interact with the public.
More information about the artist and the work here.
Events in conjunction with #ReadTheTRCReport
SALON | No Reading After the Internet. Braiding Theory. View of the event
Tuesday, January 19, 7 pm
SALON | No Reading After the Internet
Braiding Theory
No Reading After the Internet is a salon series dealing with cultural texts, which are read aloud by participants. The particular urgency of the project is in reforming publics and experimenting with the act of reading, as its own media form, in our moment.
As part of the Reading Exercises exhibition, the three founding members of No Reading After the Internet—Amy Kazymerchyk, Alex Muir, and cheyanne turions—led a special salon that departs from the #ReadTheTRCReport project entitled Braiding Theory. Braiding Theory is a pedagogical framework coined by Lakota artist Dana Claxton that exercises attention and care in reading, interpretation and synthesis.
Excerpts were drawn from Erica Violet Lee’s “‘Indigenizing the Academy’ without Indigenous people: who can teach our stories?” published on her website Moontime Warrior, Val Napoleon’s “Thinking About Indigenous Legal Orders” published by the National Centre for First Nations Governance and Zoe Todd’s “Rethinking Aesthetics and Ontology through Indigenous Law: On the work of Val Napoleon and Loretta Todd” published by C Magazine.
Erica Violet Lee is a Cree undergraduate student of philosophy at the University of Saskatchewan. She is an Indigenous feminist, and writes at moontimewarrior.com. Since speaking at the first Idle No More teach-in in 2012, Erica has been recognized as an international youth leader with the movement.
Val Napoleon is the Law Foundation Professor of Aboriginal Justice and Governance at the Faculty of Law, University of Victoria. She is from north east British Columbia (Treaty 8) and a member of Saulteau First Nation. She is also an adopted member of the Gitanyow (Gitksan) House of Luuxhon, Ganada (Frog) Clan. Val worked as a community activist and consultant in northwestern BC for over 25 years, specializing in health, education, and justice issues. Her dissertation on Gitksan law and legal theory was awarded the UVIC Governor General’s Gold Medal for best dissertation in 2009.Val’s current research focuses on indigenous legal traditions, indigenous legal theory, indigenous feminism, citizenship, self-determination, and governance.
Zoe Todd (Métis) is from Amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton) in the Treaty Six Area of Alberta, Canada. She writes about Indigeneity, art, architecture, decolonization and healing in urban contexts. She also studies human-animal relations, colonialism and environmental change in northern Canada. Her art practice incorporates writing, spoken word, beading, drawing and film to tell stories about being Métis in the Prairies. She is a lecturer in Anthropology at Carleton University, a PhD Candidate in Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen, and she was a 2011 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholar.
Thursday, January 21, 6 – 8 pm
PUBLIC SEMINAR
Reading as Methodology
At Artexte
2 Sainte-Catherine East, room 301
In French and English
The result of a close collaboration between Artexte and the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, this public seminar aims to deepen reflections on the epistemological, cultural, social, political and ethical issues pertaining to reading as methodology. Presented at Artexte in conjunction with the exhibition Reading Exercises, the seminar will feature several speakers (artists, researchers, curators, authors and activists) for whom the practice of reading is a site of experimentation, inquiry, or essential critical engagement. In bringing together these various perspectives on the act of reading and its methodological implications, the discussion hopes to address the relationship between textuality and orality, the process of reading, its contemporary modes and settings, as well as the exchanges among academic, artistic, cultural and community contexts that reading makes possible.
Main participants:
Katrie Chagnon, Max Stern Curator of Research, Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery, and curator of the exhibition Reading Exercises
Amy Kazymerchyck and cheyanne turions, co-founders of No Reading After the Internet
Alexander Muir, researcher-in-residence at Artexte and co-founder of No Reading After the Internet
Erica Violet Lee, Joseph Murdoch-Flowers and Zoe Todd, creators of the project #ReadtheTRCReport
Chelsea Vowel, inspirer of the #ReadTheTRCReport project
Saturday, January 23, 12 – 5 pm
READING MARATHON
In conjunction with #ReadTheTRCReport
The reading marathon aims to complete the French playlist of the Calls for Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, in order to extend the reading project in English, which is now entirely available on YouTube.
More info on #ReadTheTRCReport in the Ways of Thinking section.
November 19, 2015 – January 23, 2016
Curator: Katrie Chagnon
Fiona Banner, Simon Bertrand, Clayton Cubitt, Ricardo Cuevas, Brendan Fernandes, Gary Hill, Bouchra Khalili, Ève K. Tremblay, Nicoline van Harskamp and #ReadTheTRCReport, an initiative by Erica Violet Lee, Joseph Murdoch-Flowers, and Zoe Todd, presented in collaboration with No Reading After the Internet, a project by Amy Kazymerchyk, Alexander Muir, and cheyanne turions