Judy Price. White Oil, 2014. Image still from the video, 65 min.

The Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery and DHC/ART present:

Thursday, February 19

5:30 pm: a talk by artist Ursula Biemann, including a screening of her work Black Sea Files and a conversation between the artist and Emily Scott (in English)

7:00 pm: Screening of White Oil by Judy Price (in Arabic with English subtitles)

Location:
Maxwell Cummings Auditorium
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
1379, rue Sherbrooke Ouest (corner Avenue du Musée)
Free admission
Metro: Guy-Concordia
Bus: 24

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Symposium
February 20 – 21
World of Matter: Extractive Ecologies and Unceded Terrains

Co-organized by Krista Lynes (Canada Research Chair in Feminist Media Studies, Associate Professor in Communication Studies, Concordia University) and Darin Barney (Canada Research Chair in Technology & Citizenship, Associate Professor in Communication Studies, McGill University)

Panelists:
Darin Barney, Mabe Bethônico, Ursula Biemann, Amanda Boetzkes, Heather Davis, Alain Deneault, Adam Dickinson, Eduardo Kohn, Brenda Longfellow, Helge Mooshammer, Scott Morgensen, Peter Mortenböck, Shirley Roburn, Rafico Ruiz, Emily Scott, Audra Simpson, Nicole Starosielski, Imre Szeman, Zoe Todd, Gisèle Trudel, Lonnie van Brummelen, Peter von Tiesenhauen

Location:
Concordia University
EV 7.735,
1515 St-Catherine St. W.

The world of matter has been forcefully sculpted in the last several centuries by the twin projects of colonialism and capitalism. The very movement of human activity under modernity has rested on the formation of a standing reserve of nature, a category whose flexibility has variously expanded and contracted to include both humans and non-human others as targets for exploitation and extractive energy. Carbon industries, forestry, mining, agri-business, construction, mega-farming and fishing participate in worlding the world as mere matter, asserting deep and unforgiving property rights in dispersed territories around the globe. Nevertheless, at each point in this cartography of extraction one finds committed points of resistance and unceded terrains, both material and symbolic. This symposium asks how the fields of contemporary art and media studies, indigenous studies and resistance movements, critical environmental studies, new ethnography and science and technology studies might bring into focus the globalizing dynamics of extractive ecologies. It seeks to build substantive discursive grounds for resisting incursions into sovereign land, denials of the rights of nature, and the persistent dispossession of indigenous and First Nation peoples. It asks, What unceded terrains precede and interrupt the excavatory depths of imperial ecologies? What interventions ensure the defense of land, labour, survival and species diversity in the globalized present?

The symposium can be watched online:
Friday, Feb 20
Saturday, Feb 21

More information on the symposium programme here.

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Talk

Caroline Desbiens
Power from the North: culture, colonialism and the landscape of hydroelectricity in Quebec

Thursday, March 12 at 6 pm

6th Floor, LB-619
J. W. McConnell / Library Building
1400 De Maisonneuve Blvd. West

In the 1970s, Hydro-Québec declared “We Are Hydro-Québécois.” The publicity campaign slogan symbolized the extent to which hydroelectric development in the North was an expression of Québécois identity, territoriality and aspiration to modernity.

Analyzing the cultural forces that contributed to the transformation of the La Grande River into a hydroelectric complex, Caroline Desbiens explores how this “culture of hydroelectricity” shaped the material landscape of James Bay/Eeyou Istchee in the latter part of the 20th century. Policy makers and Quebecers did not, she argues, view those who built the dams as mere workers. They saw them as pioneers in a largely uninhabited landscape – despite the Eeyouch’s presence – now inscribed with the codes of technology, progress, and spectacle. Drawing power from the North has involved more than economic development: it has also contributed to the production of distinct Québécois cultural landscapes that have shifted ways of viewing, and therefore knowing, the region.

Caroline Desbiens is a professor of geography at Laval University. She holds the Canada Research Chair in Historical Geography of the North. She is the author of Power from the North: Territory, Identity, and the Culture of Hydroelectricity in Quebec.

In English
Free admission

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Screening

Sunday, March 15 at 3 pm

Down the Mighty River (2010), Ernest Webb and Lisa M. Roth
A six-part documentary series about the Rupert River.
132 minutes, Cree and English

Down the Mighty River is an environmental, scientific, and cultural journey down the Rupert River for the last time, the summer before it was diverted for a hydroelectric project.

The river’s story – its people, land and wildlife, and the construction now changing it forever – is seen through the eyes of Ernest Webb, a Cree who witnessed the creation of Quebec’s first James Bay hydro project in his community of Chisasibi, thirty years before.

J.A. de Sève Cinema
J. W. McConnell / Library Building
1400 De Maisonneuve Blvd. West
Ground floor, LB-125

Free admission

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Talk

Joshua Iserhoff, Youth Grand Chief of the Cree Nation Youth Council

Saturday, March 21 at 3 pm

On November 23, 2014, a group of 20 Cree youths embarked on a 3-week, 850-kilometre walk from Mistissini to Montréal, protesting against uranium exploration and mining in northern Québec. Joshua Iserhoff, Youth Grand Chief of the Cree Nation Youth Council, participated in this walk and joins us to talk about his community and uranium mining.

Room EV 1.605
1515 Ste-Catherine West, Ground Floor
Metro Guy-Concordia

Presentation in English
Free admission

Additional sources of information:
creenationyouthcouncil.ca
standagainsturanium.com
standagainsturanium.com/march