Brochures for The Ecology of an Art Scene on November 9 at Toronto City Hall
This conversation, Innovation: Curating Contexts, was part of The Ecology of an Art Scene, a Toronto symposium that brought together experts from Paris and Toronto to discuss what makes art communities tick on November 8 and 9, 2013.
On November 8, Part I of the symposium took place at Harbourfront Centre, and on November 9, Part II took place in Toronto City Hall Council Chambers.
Innovation: Curating Contexts was moderated by Christine Shaw, program and outreach manager, Canadian Art Foundation, and it addressed innovative curatorial initiatives that can take art out of traditional gallery spaces and exhibitions into publications, film series, research projects, public art activities and more.
The conversation participants included François Aubart, writer, curator and co-founding Editor of ∆⅄⎈, Paris; Mélanie Bouteloup, director, Bétonsalon: centre for art & research, Paris; Chris Lee and Maiko Tanaka, co-curators, Model Minority, Gendai Gallery, Toronto; Christof Migone, director/curator, Blackwood Gallery and lecturer, visual studies, University of Toronto Mississauga; and Janine Marchessault, director, visible city project, York University and curator, Land/Slide, Toronto.
The Ecology of an Art Scene was part of the Canadian Art Foundation International Speaker Series and was presented in partnership with the Consulate General of France in Toronto as part of Paris-Toronto, a 10-month series highlighting contemporary art from France in the Greater Toronto Area. The symposium was sponsored by BMO Financial Group, with support from the Institut français.
The introductory text for this particular conversation was as follows: Contemporary art provides a complex mechanism for opening an exploratory public forum. What is required is context. Context is a reservoir of knowledge that can come to the fore with a curatorial practice capable of acknowledging complex layers of social, political and cultural narratives without falling into the trap of trying to extract the essence of a locality. Curators in Paris and Toronto are creating projects not as site-specific adornments or displays of local discoveries, but to activate contexts and subsequently to change how we think about them. They are experimenting with new forms of exhibition, new interdisciplinary frameworks, and new methodologies for sharing space, social experience and aesthetic antagonism. To do so, curators are animating and activating geographies (urban and rural; centre and suburb); audiences (local and non-local; expert and non-expert); and artists (local and international; emerging and established). Speakers will share recent projects and will address the intentions and expectations of curating contexts.
For more information, please visit canadianart.ca/paristoronto.
