On December 1, join Canadian Art for the launch of our Winter 2017 issue and a series of talks at the AGO’s First Thursday, which asks “What Now?”
Has 2016 been the worst year of our lives? From the untimely deaths of too many icons to the rise of nationalism, xenophobia and oppression across the world, for many, the answer is clearly yes. So, how to move forward? How to find hope? How to heal? The December First Thursday brings a group of artists and speakers together to think and feel our way toward new realities and new beginnings. After the deluge, let’s come together and move.
Headlined by Brooklyn-based artist, rapper and producer Zebra Katz, the night features artist projects by Lisa Smolkin, who will offer a tour through the AGO designed to share coping strategies and boost self-esteem; ReBaie by Rebée (Buzz, and Cameron Lee), who will present the Sprée by Rebée Mood Lounge, a salt lamp–lit, nature sound–filled, lie-down dance-womb nap party; and Yuula Benivolski, who will screen her video work Conversations, a series of video collaborations that activate Internet chat transcripts to narrate experiences with systemic discrimination.
Canadian Art presents a series of talks related to the Winter 2017 issue, which is themed on “Futures.” Writer, performer and clinical social worker Kai Cheng Thom, who has contributed a piece to the issue on the renaissance in trans literature, reads from her recently published first novel, Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir. Artist Erdem Taşdelen, who has written for the issue on the self-tracking movement Quantified Self, presents a related piece on how he has used the Emotion Sense app to collaborate with a poet. Artist, academic and activist Syrus Marcus Ware discusses science-fiction writer Octavia E. Butler’s concept of Earthseed, the philosophy at the centre of Butler’s dystopian books Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. Critic, editor and Canadian Art’s 2016 editorial resident Merray Gerges, whose work also appears in “Futures,” will give a guided tour of a section of the exhibition, “Toronto: Tributes + Tributaries, 1971–1989.” Wanda Nanibush, assistant curator, Canadian and Indigenous art, presents a pop-up talk on the work of late artist Annie Pootoogook as part of the one-night-only exhibition “Out of the Vaults.”
Tickets are available now at ago.net/firstthursdays.
