0:08

>> So, my name is Elyse Longair. I’m an artist, curator and image theorist
currently pursuing my PhD here at Queens

0:14

in the Screen Cultures and
Curatorial Studies Program. I’ve had some several really
incredible opportunities here

0:23

at Agnes that I wanted to share with you. I’ve been doing an internship with Alicia where
I’ve been looking at collage in the collection.

0:31

I’ve spent over a hundred hours in the vault. And I’m really thankful.

0:38

Part of my final output is having
the privilege to curate an exhibition

0:44

for Count and Care in September.

0:49

Participating in Sunny’s hands-on
curatorial class has been really important. We developed our own curatorial encounters with
mentorship, support and resources here at Agnes.

1:00

Playfully haunting the Etherington House with
Neven’s Paranormal Playgroup has been really fun,

1:07

and being a research assistant
for the institute as well.

1:13

I found that I’ve been learning and growing
from the whole team and community here at Agnes.

1:18

And I mentioned this to not only to thank and acknowledge everybody
which I’m really grateful for.

1:24

Thank you. But also primarily because today we’re going
to be talking about curatorial education

1:29

and that’s been my experience
here in a year at Queen’s.

1:35

This panel embraces the timely
opportunity of Agnes Reimagined

1:40

to critically re-examine the potentials
of curatorial pedagogy and practice

1:45

within our institution’s social and cultural
contexts and curatorial partnerships. Among different considerations, curatorial
pedagogy and practice focuses on the positioning

1:58

for curatorial methodologies, the roles of
curatorial practice as research creation, the educational turn in the curatorial, and the
changing studies of the curatorial in academia.

2:11

This session is an opportunity both to reflect
on the potential of curatorial pedagogy

2:18

and practice and to look forward
to future transformations. Today we have four incredible
curators here with us.

2:26

Vince Ha, Paige Van Tassel,
Neven Lochhead and Toby Lawrence.

2:33

Vince is going to begin our conversation today. He is a writer and director who captures
fragmentary moments and uses them

2:41

to challenge issues of race,
class, gender, and representation. He’s currently pursuing his PhD in
Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies

2:50

at Queen’s University, investigating
transnational media and its relationship

2:56

with queer diasporate sociality
with special attention to homoerotic representations in Asian cinema.

3:05

>> Good afternoon, everyone. Before I begin, I would just to thank Elyse,
Alicia, and Agnes for giving me this opportunity

3:12

to share my work and stories of the
communities that I am involved with. I’m sorry, I’m a little bit nervous.

3:20

So, I do apologize for my wavering voice. The Canadian Asian communities
especially the Queer Asian diaspora

3:27

in Toronto embrace many disparate
individuals who come from diverse cultures, religions, and political backgrounds.

3:34

What binds us together is a common
experience as immigrant subjects. An experience that is continuously tethered
to Asia, an imagined object we are often asked

3:42

to reject in order to assimilate. Many second generation immigrants and those afterwards must learn a
difficult lesson, particularly with the rise

3:52

of Asian phobia during the COVID-19
pandemic, that their social and cultural standings would not
protect them from racial discrimination,

4:00

that as Asian bodies they
are perpetually foreign. The mobility in diaspora, as some scholars
like Mel Y Chen have observed, can reverberate

4:09

to Queerness which can also be read as a
mobile category disrupting the stability of fixed identities.

4:15

It is precisely this concept, the
slippage between diaspora and Queer,

4:20

that can intervene our understanding
of an imagined Asian diaspora community or Queer Asian diaspora communities.

4:27

With the increased rate of globalization,
this movement can be seen as liberatory

4:32

or restrictive, frequently bringing forth
fissures and cracks between Queer and diaspora,

4:37

between those who were born in Canada
and newcomers, between the old guards of Queer liberation and the
young Queer cultural shakers.

4:44

What is unavoidable is that these conflicts
often result in a sense of hurting.

4:50

Why I also celebrate joy, fantasy, and futurity, this theme of Queer hurting is
most frequently found in my work.

4:58

I refer to Queer hurting as our capacity
to hurt ourselves, to hurt others, and for other Queer bodies to hurt us.

5:05

Here, I’m not referring to the physical
harm but will focus on the psychological and emotional residue that reside in us.

5:12

It’s imperative to observe why we feel the
greater emotional pain when we are hurt

5:17

by another person of colour or
community to which we think we belong.

5:22

For many Queers, it might be a second or
third time being hurt by a social institution, the first being our biological families.

5:30

When we cannot find comfort in our
blood relations, we hope that the at large

5:36

Queer community can be our
unconditional wish fulfilling refuge. And when that proves untrue some of us glance
further finding Queer diaspora communities.

5:45

We expect these members to understand the
challenges of what it means to be Asian —

5:50

to be Asian in Queer spaces and
to be Queer in Asian spaces. That this shared experience will make
us more seen, heard, and accepted.

6:00

When reality fails to meet our expectations,
we feel that we have made the wrong choice by putting our faith in the wrong people.

6:08

In late 2015, I was told by a prominent
white Queer artist reviewing my filmic work

6:13

that no one wanted to talk about race anymore. That the topic has the stale air of 1980s.

6:20

The comment prompted me partially
out of frustration to bring the Invisible Footprints
project to life.

6:26

The idea of intergenerational experiment within
the Queer Asian communities was burrowed In me since 2013 but at the time I did
not have the necessary relationship

6:35

to realize my aspirations. Motivated by the work of Queer
artists of colour such as Naomi Zack,

6:41

I was yearning to inspect fault lines and
blind spots within my own communities. In that same, year along with a close
friend I started Rice Roll Productions,

6:50

a light-hearted media initiative that
prioritizes socially engaged art.

6:55

It was through Rice Roll, with a few short
well-received undertakings, that we were able

7:00

to build trust in our communities and find
the necessary funding for the project. It was also through these interactions that
I met Alan Li, a well-respected figure

7:10

in the queer Asian community, a long time
HIV activist, and a gifted community leader.

7:16

In the early 1980s, he and a few friends started
a community newspaper called Celebration.

7:23

So, they start a newspaper called Celebration, in addition to other seminal projects, recording
and archiving Queer Asian lives in Toronto.

7:32

Along with novelists like Wayson Choy,
Paul Yee, filmmakers like Richard Fung, and organizer like Nito Marquez and Tony Souza,

7:40

he and his cohort represent the first wave of
documented Queer Asian heritage in the city.

7:46

Alan is also dazzling meticulous. Many of the artifacts that were
shown in Invisible Footprint 0.1 came

7:55

from his closet, including an original copy
of Gerald Chan’s article Out of the Shadows

8:00

from 1979, and Jonas Ma multimedia
project Invisible Visible from 1983.

8:06

If a Queer Asian community
archive is ever to be created in Toronto, it will be greatly indebted to him.

8:12

His experience and activism undoubtedly informed
the way he wishes the Queer Asian communities

8:18

to operate. When he participated as an advisory committee
member and was later assigned to be a mentor

8:25

to the young participating artist, I
could see hints of his frustrations. Mainly his disappointment that many young
artists do not understand the context

8:33

of the artifacts and events, lacking
the needed nuance to interpret them. During a potluck, another advisory member
added that the young Queers can see further

8:42

into the future but with a
limited view of the past. That it is the older generation who
has an extended view of history.

8:49

While I partially agree with
this generalization, I want to extract the underlining
assumption that is the unstated expectation

8:56

of the younger generations to
understand a history strapped to the queer liberation movement.

9:02

Scholars like Kadji Amin have noted this hum of
Queer liberalist ideology on Queer spaces.

9:08

It ranges from a gentle background vibration
to a dense bellow, muffling other voices.

9:15

In 2005, the special issue of Social Text
the editor David Eng, Judith Halberstam, and José Esteban Moñoz asked what’s queer

9:21

about Queer Studies Now?” implying a constantly recalibration
of not only our historical

9:29

but also our political understanding. This repeated nowness in Queer cultures feel
obligated to include social justice, tinged

9:37

by its historical echo and one that must
effectively outperform previous generations.

9:42

These restrictive expectations
are often time unmet. In the case of Invisible Footprints, many

9:49

of the young artists find it extremely
hard to access Queer Asian material. When they do, the material is often or the
material is commonly presented by institutions

9:58

and individual that are not part of the
Queer Asian diaspora, habitually missing the necessary contexts.

10:05

Young Queer of colours finds it
challenging to identify a lineage when much

10:10

of a community history might not be recorded,
or in some instances, recorded work of

10:16

and artifacts are embedded with biases that
are daunting for young folks to unravel.

10:25

Now these barriers are precisely
why projects similar to Invisible Footprint can help bridge the gaps.

10:30

Our goal was to present submerged voices,
voices of Queer elders’, transgender members,

10:35

and people of nationality that were
not previously given a platform. Mindful of the myriad expression
that Queer Asia can take,

10:43

we cautiously label the iteration
0.1, 0.2, and 0.3 from 2017 to 2020.

10:52

The work that you see here is from Heidi Cho. This was presented in 2017 at
the OCAD Open Space Gallery.

11:05

Though Invisible Footprint is regularly viewed
as a disruption to white heteronormative culture

11:10

and archival practices, at the heart
of the project is our intention to foreground the lacking within our
own communities, excavating the social

11:18

and economic factors that contribute to
queer asian collective distortions.

11:23

I met Yoichi Haruta two years prior to
working on the Invisible Footprint Project.

11:28

During our first meeting, he
shared that while he was part of the Queer Asian community during
the early 1980s, as a new immigrant,

11:35

he felt that he did not have the same
experiences as others, especially those who grew up in Canada, or came to
further their education.

11:43

He was constrained by financial
obligations, hindering him from social and political enrichment.

11:49

In the mid-2010, when it was time for
him to care for his ageing mother,

11:54

he sponsored her to come to Canada. At the beginning, he established two
apartments on the same floor allowing him

12:00

to slip away and retain some privacy. When her health declined, he moved her into his
unit, sold the other and they lived together

12:09

for many years in that arrangement. He had little to no contact during this period

12:15

with the Queer community and an
almost barren dating life. When his mother passed away, he felt
haunted by her wrinkle, ashy hands.

12:22

He spends most of his day
in retirement painting them. He tried reaching out to Queer spaces
but felt ostracized, constantly needing

12:32

to filter what he says at the
risk of offending young activists. He felt isolated from the
community that he was once part of.

12:40

[Inaudible] story present only a small sliver of the intergenerational
conflict happening in Toronto.

12:47

The older generation bemoaning
that the younger generation fails to understand the hardship of the past,

12:53

while younger generation feels
frustrated that the elders are uncritical of their own privileges, not questioning the
conditions that supported certain voices.

13:02

My curatorial work, especially in the Invisible
Footprint project, invite artists to engage with other community members, for
community members to examine how mobility

13:11

and other economic factors contribute to
their collective distortions, and for cultural and economic institution to consider
the people and spaces around them.

13:20

Before I conclude, I would to add a few
thoughts about working with organizations. While funding and institutional
support are helpful, not everything

13:28

that comes knocking is an opportunity. Sometimes it’s a Trojan horse. Sharing collective stories and institutional
spaces can be simmered down to reductive images

13:38

of community harmony, which can later
develop into it further hurtful dynamics. I’m not endorsing an over emphasis of
disunity or espousing a false dichotomy,

13:47

but we must make room for conflict. It is a
natural and vital element of our growth.

13:53

While my talk might lead you to believe that
I am against the commodification of care,

13:58

a phrase that many cultural
institutions will shrink from, good care and commodification of
care do not preclude each other.

14:05

Instead, a sweeping of these cultural and
economic conflicts under the proverbial rug,

14:11

we can reduce feelings of resentment by publicly
examining what it means to conceptually, ethically, and practically while not shirking
away from issues of extraction and exploitation,

14:22

for institution to commodify care, and to use
it under the right conditions to support others.

14:28

[ Applause ]

14:38

>> Thanks Vince. Next, we’re going to hear from Paige.

14:43

Paige Van Tassel is Anishinaabe
Ojibwe and Cree from Timmins, Ontario. She’s currently a PhD candidate in
Art History at Queen’s University.

14:58

She’s a member of the Indigenous Advisory
Circle here at Agnes Etherington Art Centre.

15:05

Her interests include storytelling through the
presentation and engagement with indigenous art

15:11

and artifacts to facilitate knowledge transfer. >> Yes, so, Elyse stated I’m Anishinaabe
Ojibwe from my mom’s side and I’m Cree

15:22

from my dad’s side who was
born in Thompson, Manitoba.

15:27

As you might have noticed I
guess we’re all academics. We all have scripts in our hands [chuckle]. I have mine on my phone.

15:33

And I’m currently doing my PhD in Art History. Recently defended my field, so I
guess that makes me a candidate now. Yay [chuckle]. [ Applause ]

15:40

And throughout my fields I kind of had this idea
to develop the show Land Protectors in response

15:48

to the experiential learning that I
wanted to have with the fields rather

15:55

than just writing an essay defending
it and then move on to the next thing.

16:01

So, I’m going to share with you some
excerpts from one of my fields titled Museums

16:08

in First Peoples is about
exploring that relationship between Indigenous communities
and museums across Canada.

16:16

And first thing I want to notice
is that in the title of my slide,

16:23

it’s Challenging the museum-goer
experience, Being comfortable with discomfort.

16:30

And that discomfort for me is a two-way street. It’s discomfort for me being one of the only
visible Indigenous people in my program,

16:42

and navigating walking in two worlds, the
academic and the spiritual emotional way of life

16:50

that I often encounter when
dealing with Indigenous topics.

16:57

Because, for me, it’s mostly
learning it for the first time.

17:02

You know, I didn’t have that experience growing up. Both my grandmas were in residential school.

17:09

My mother was a part of the 60s Scoop,
and I was in foster care growing up.

17:17

So, it’s very intergenerational and ingrained,
and it’s something that I always have

17:23

to face when dealing with this content.

17:31

The other discomfort is the
audience’s experience because they also have never maybe not
been taught this growing up either.

17:43

Or they just don’t know about it. And they would rather live an
easier life not knowing about it.

17:54

So, that is the other discomfort that we’re
that Land Protectors tries to sort of engage with.

18:02

From the early 1960s onwards,
there was a huge political shift

18:09

in indigenous self-representation, in tandem
with the American Civil Rights Movement

18:16

that was mentioned before, how Pamela mentioned
earlier in the first panel this morning.

18:26

A lot of activist rights movements have been
inspired by Black people and their movement.

18:36

And so Indigenous self-representation
and activism, I would argue, was inspired

18:44

by what was happening in the 60s. So, in the late 1970s there was a huge political
shift for Indigenous self-representation.

19:02

One of them being in response to The Spirit
Sings exhibition at the Glenbow Museum.

19:09

There, you see on the screen, is a performance
by Rebecca Belmore in response to what went

19:17

down at The Spirit Sings, and
for those who don’t know, Shell Corporation funded the exhibition
even though they were illegally drilling

19:29

on Lubicon Cree unceded territory. So, many people, many institutions
during this time were still unsure how

19:36

to respectfully engage and honour
telling Indigenous stories.

19:44

It didn’t fit within the framework
that they had at the time.

19:49

There’s also Into the Heart of Africa at
the ROM that happened and that was 1989,

19:58

had a huge backlash from the Black
communities there in Toronto, because of the large misrepresentation that
happened, and completely ignored the troubles

20:11

that they were having contemporarily in Toronto. On a positive note, coming into the 90s,

20:22

we have really powerful Indigenous-led
exhibitions that occur. So, INDIGENA and Land, Spirit,
Power both in Ottawa I think

20:32

and Anong Beam who was presenting on Monday. She mentioned that.

20:38

So, those were very influential in how
Indigenous-led shows are vastly different

20:47

from non-indigenous shows, like
what happened at The Spirit Sings.

20:53

And so, I just want to, I know I’m coming
up on my time, but I just want to end

20:59

with a quote by Daniel Heath Justice. Something that really moved
me and really inspired,

21:06

partly inspired the Land
Protector’s exhibition, is

21:14

in his book Why Indigenous Literatures
Matter points out that “stories

21:20

that will make a difference aren’t easy ones. If they don’t challenge us, confound us, or
make us uncomfortable, or uncertain, or humble,

21:30

then I’m not sure what they
offer us in the long term.” Miigwech. [ Applause ]

21:44

>> Thank you, Paige. Our third presenter is Neven Lochhead.

21:49

He’s an artist curator and PhD student in the
Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies Program.

22:01

From 2017 to 2019 he worked as director
of programming at SAW Video Media Art

22:10

where he founded and operated
Knot Project Space, a discursive venue through which he engaged
artists in the presentation of a series of interrelated exhibitions,
performances, lectures, learning contexts,

22:15

residency platforms, and
offsite public art projects. >> Thank you.

22:20

Hi. Yes, I’m Neven. I’m a local artist here. And want to thank Elyse and everyone
at Agnes for keeping this afloat.

22:33

I also have a text I’m just
going to read to stay on time.

22:38

And I have one of these dreaded
artist-led educational projects to share

22:45

which I happened this past winter out of the
Etherington House called Paranormal Curation.

22:55

So, I’m just going to start by describing
the formal structure of this initiative,

23:02

and then if I have time, I’m going to share
a bit of collaborative writing that happened

23:08

on either side of it which remixed
and purposed some of its methods.

23:14

So, Paranormal Curation is a
project that was produced adjacent to an exhibition called A Guest +
a Host = a Ghost

23:25

which took place earlier this
year in the Etherington House, and on which I worked as its Shadow curator.

23:33

Shadow curating is a concept that was originally
proposed by the Scottish curator Nuno Sacramento

23:39

in 2011 on a long-term project
called The Town is the Venue.

23:44

So, the Shadow Curator is a
figure who Sacramento describes as constantly proposing a layer of inquiry and
analysis with regard to all aspects of a project

23:55

in order to contribute to a
consolidation of the methodology.

24:01

My own use of shadow curating
for the Agnes exhibition tried to push Sacramento’s idea a bit
further and evolve or mutate the figure

24:09

of the shadow into that of the ghost. Throughout my process the figure of the
ghost became a key avatar and collaborator

24:18

on the program’s design as well as on the
stated themes of the proposed activities.

24:24

So, with the ghost in mind I
initiated a learning platform for collaborative paranormal
curatorial experimentation which took

24:33

up the Etherington House’s Broom
Closet as its headquarters. The closet-based projects that emerged involved
12 Kingston based artists curators and writers

24:43

over the course of four months, who were
ushered into the exhibition through the portal

24:49

of Paranormal Curations Dusty Micro Institute.

24:54

Over time, the Broom Closet experienced its own
reimaginings with the humble nook functioning

24:59

for us as a writing room, a book, and
PDF repository, an amplification system,

25:05

a recording studio, and a radio station. The organizational structure for
paranormal curation tried to shape itself

25:13

around the complicated relationship
that ghosts have with their publics. I wanted to develop a program that, like the ghost, had
the ability to modulate and play with its forms

25:24

of publicness, operating on different
levels of visibility and legibility.

25:31

So, this resulted in the stacking of
three scales of collaborative activities, a micro activity, a meso activity,
and a macro activity with each

25:40

of these having their parameter of publicness
dialled up or down in specific ways.

25:46

So, first there’s the micro activity. This is called the shadow library.

25:51

And this functions within a relatively
closed guild of practitioners with members of the Shadow library acting
as one another’s public.

26:00

The activity explores the production of
handwritten marginalia and material alterations

26:05

of books and PDFs as ghostly acts of
mediation, haunting a texts future reader.

26:14

With the shadow librarians
Hillary and Peggy, various haunted and overgrown publications were
produced and some selections

26:22

from the Shadow Library are here
for you to peruse afterwards.

26:28

Secondly, there was the meso
activity. This was called House Band. This activity functioned more publicly
in the space of the exhibition itself.

26:37

Its aim was to covertly embed sound
into the Etherington House, haunting it from its own architectural margins.

26:45

Sound was explored as a tool through which
to alter the way in which a site is navigated and sensed by a visitor, sometimes imperceptibly.

26:54

This activity culminated in the
production of a collaborative soundscape with band mates Bojana, Jung-Ah, Mo, Brandon and Elyse
which builds around a deconstructed cover

27:04

of Madonna’s Country Dance Hit Don’t Tell Me. This was embedded into the staircase of the
Etherington House near the end of the exhibition

27:13

and will soon be released on other formats. Lastly was the macro activity
called Phantom Market.

27:21

This activity’s still ongoing and
has yet to really properly emerge.

27:27

But it has the highest publicness
parameter of the platform. So, in considering the aims of Agnes Reimagined
to return the Etherington House into a home,

27:38

the phantom merchants proposed to take
this idea to a somewhat absurdist point by placing the Etherington House
on the local real estate market

27:45

through the form of a Kijiji advertisement. So, the small working group that formed
around this idea with Bojana, Andrei,

27:53

and me together discuss the ethics, humour,
and performativity of this proposed gesture.

28:01

And we’re still in the process of determining if and how it could circulate
publicly as a good joke.

28:07

So, one last structural element to
note about paranormal curation is that the program is meant to haunt itself.

28:15

Each activity is intended to run at least
twice back-to-back and with different groups

28:20

when there’s enough committed participants. This creates a crease or fold in the platform
which becomes a point of translation.

28:29

So, in other words when one round of paranormal
curation ends, and another begins, the guild

28:34

that has previously formed around a
specific activity inducts its new members through the codification and
teaching of its shared craft.

28:44

With this translation aspect of the platform,
participants in paranormal curation are required

28:49

to become paragoges or “peeragoges” of their
own workshop environment, externalizing their otherwise ephemeral
homegrown methods in a way that allows for them

28:59

to be taught and used by the activity’s
future practitioners and beyond.

29:04

This is the closet in question. So, to make a slight pivot now on either end

29:13

of paranormal curation there were two critical
reflexive writing practices that took place.

29:20

The first was taken up by
myself through the production of what I called the infra ordinary journal.

29:26

This journal simply contains daily
entries of descriptive writing, inspired by Georges Perec’s An Attempt at Exhausting
a Place in Paris, capturing a steady flow

29:36

of minuscule events and sounds that
take place in the Etherington house over the first two weeks of the exhibition.

29:43

The other writing practice emerged
collaboratively near the end of the project between me, and the writer,
and curator Dylan Robinson.

29:52

So, I had been in conversation with Dylan
over the course of the project going on walks

29:57

when I would give updates on the exhibition
and the related learning platform.

30:03

We had discussions about the turning away
from a site as a site-specific response,

30:09

about the colonial loudness of the Etherington
House and about finding ways to break down

30:14

and interrupt insistent architectural ambiances. On one of those walks an affinity was generated
when discussing the marginalia relay method

30:25

that had been invented by the shadow librarians. Their activity was discussed as a haunted
interpretation of book thickening.

30:33

So, book thickening is an 18th century
material reading practice which results not in a reduction of a given text but rather its
wholesale transformation through amplification.

30:46

Significantly thickened books
and volumes often deranged rather than reiterated the conceptual
trajectory and goals of the printed text.

30:54

And I’m paraphrasing here from
The Multigraph Collective. So, on our walk a connection was made
between the shadow library’s practices

31:03

of haunted thickening with Dylan’s own
exploration of the dramaturgical tradition

31:08

of Regietheater, an act at radical adaptation
of an existing opera or play which doesn’t seek

31:16

to centre that which is being derived from. Following this, Dylan and I devised our own
altered process for the thinning, thickening,

31:25

and redirecting of text, building through this-
building this through remixing the dynamics

31:31

that were produced and tested
out in the shadow library. Our modified structure for
thickening was then applied to derange

31:38

and fully transform the infra ordinary
journal’s descriptive portraits of the Etherington House and its ambiances.

31:46

So, I wanted to end my presentation
today by reading first an excerpt from the original infra ordinary journal
followed by an excerpt of the altered text

31:55

that Dylan and I produced through this method. This is meant to highlight a unique
capacity of Paranormal Curations invented

32:03

and translated methods to be reapplied
and remixed in different contexts

32:09

and different scales where they can
mobilize sets of adjacent practices.

32:15

So, first, we’ll hear the infra ordinary
journal, describing a moment in the home in its early empty state, and then we’ll
hear the same entry after it’s passed through

32:24

and been haunted by the shadow librarian’s
paranormal process or a version of it.

32:34

Infra ordinary journal February 10th. There’s knocking on a door upstairs.

32:39

No one answers. Then a door opens, likely Agnes staff. Frost on the glass.

32:46

Bird sounds bleeding into the home. Someone has heard whistling a tune. Footsteps then enter the house.

32:52

A person wearing a long white parka. I emerge and say hi. They say nothing back.

32:59

They walk to the staircase as if
they’re looking for something. They peer up the stairs pausing for
about five seconds, looking and waiting.

33:08

They seem to see nothing, or
they see what they want to see. Then they turn around and walk in the
other direction without saying a word.

33:15

Now they’re walking away from the house. I hear them leaving through the atrium, the sound
of their wet boots on the polished concrete.

33:23

And so now to close is the same entry after
passing through the thickening method.

33:29

An open door opens to an open
door, to another open door.

33:35

This one has a view of more open doors and the
still chandelier and the frost on the glass,

33:41

flake scene through thick curtains. And the sound of a door opening
to another open door.

33:47

A handwritten note on the door
reads a score for a visitor. Approach the house and then suddenly walk away.

33:55

Then enter the house and then walk away. Then walk away again. Down the ramp hear wet boots on
polished concrete Terrazzo composite.

34:03

If you can leave and then do
leave and then see leaves, you’ve left it. And you can leave
the house again, just like this,

34:12

leaving it again, and again, and again. That’s all I have.

34:18

[ Applause ]

34:24

>> Thank you, Neven. Dr. Toby Lawrence is our final presenter today.

34:29

She is a settler Canadian curator
of mixed European ancestry. She’s a curator at Open Space in Lekwungen
territory where her work centres anti-racist,

34:38

decolonial, and intersectional
feminist methodologies, grounded through intuitive
and relational processes.

34:45

She holds an MA in Art History and Theory and
a PhD in Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies

34:50

from the University of British Columbia. >> Hello. So, I also want to extend
a really warm and grateful thank you.

35:03

A grateful thank you [laughing] to Elyse,
and Alicia, and Emelie, and the other folks

35:10

at the Agnes for putting this program
together, and building space to talk

35:17

about curatorial practice in a
really more or in an expanded way.

35:24

So, yeah thank you. What I’m going to do today is actually read.

35:30

I’m going to read some stories. I’m going to read four excerpts
from various publications.

35:41

So, Excerpt 1. I begin where I began in Secwepemcúecw.

35:48

I was born at the Royal Inland Hospital
Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc now Kamloops, British Columbia.

35:58

Although I have no familial ties to this
region, and I only lived there for a handful

36:03

of years before age six, the land has shaped me. The dry air, rolling hills and
unique cliff formations modelled

36:12

by sage brush cradled the city of Kamloops. I took my first breath there.

36:20

Yet it was not until adulthood that I realized
precisely why I am so elated and comforted

36:26

to come across landscapes resembling this place. To my surprise at the time, but somewhat
obvious now, a similar experience occurred

36:34

when I visited Toronto for
the first time as an adult. I had not been there since I was three or four,
but I immediately felt the same familiar comfort

36:44

and elation activated by
dry hills and sage brush.

36:50

Projecting into my own wanderings and
the memories of my father’s many stories

36:56

about growing up and as a young adult
in Toronto, I imagined my ancestors,

37:01

six generations in my paternal line born in
Toronto to the current extent of my knowledge.

37:08

I imagined these ancestors in the streets
of Toronto throughout the city’s history and wondered how they understood their own
relationships to the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe

37:17

and Mississauga territories on which
they lived, and their connections

37:22

to their own ancestral homelands in
Europe by way of these links are broken.

37:29

How did they enact these relationships?

37:34

Did they know about the pre-colonial
histories of trails converging at Tkaronto near the Lake
Shore traverse for over 10,000 years

37:43

by the many Indigenous peoples and non-human
inhabitants for resources and trade?

37:49

The main trail from the harbour front of Lake Ontario ran north to
Lake Simcoe, now Yonge Street,

37:55

like many others encased
under concrete roadways. Did my ancestors walk through those
trails too before they were paved over?

38:13

Excerpt 2. For mothers, grandmothers, weavers or radicals. My earliest memory of an art museum is
visiting an installation of art making machines

38:24

with my mother at the Kamloops Art Gallery
in the early 1980s at its previous location.

38:31

At least this is what I recall
I was 4, perhaps 5.

38:36

In first year of art history, I
came to learn about Jean Tinguely’s, Metamatics drawing machines
and made the connection.

38:44

I don’t know what the exhibition
was exactly but the association through this memory is real
enough to have influenced the way

38:52

that I understand embodied experiences of art. Recently my mother told me that, as a child,
I used to make artworks and build exhibitions

39:03

in discarded fridge boxes standing in
for what I imagined a gallery to be.

39:09

She confessed that she did not know then
how she could make this a reality for me.

39:14

What my mother didn’t realize, my mother
one of the first eight women allowed to take woodworking in high school in British
Columbia, allowed to take woodworking,

39:25

was that she was already teaching me
to work from intuition and imagination,

39:31

and to consider how one might build a gallery
differently based on circumstance and need.

39:39

Excerpt Three from Architecture of the
Bush, first published in C Magazine.

39:48

The teepee has been an ever-present
feature of Bush Gallery but it does not stand as the gallery.

39:55

Erected in 2015, the structure
has weathered, presented, and housed many of the actions of BUSH Gallery.

40:04

At the BUSH Gallery Writer’s Union Retreat
in August 2017, the structure was dismantled,

40:11

the canvas too brittle to maintain its
architectural function after having ripped apart

40:16

in a windstorm earlier that summer.

40:21

Following a Sunday afternoon
convergence of friends and colleagues at the annual Kamloops powwow, Tarah
Hogue, Tania Willard, Peter Morin,

40:30

Ashok Mathur
and I gathered at Quaaout Lodge on little Shuswap Lake
which is now sadly burnt down.

40:38

And then at BUSH Gallery
the next day. The Powwow,

40:43

as a shared point of departure, centred
indigene and located experience as material

40:49

for making, performing and thinking together. At dinner, Tara expressed her need to
utilize acts of labour to connect to place

40:58

to land performance situation as she and Tania had done the night before
while dismantling the teepee.

41:06

At breakfast, Peter asked what
is it that we want to build?

41:12

Monday, we cut up the teepee. We laid out the teepee canvas.

41:17

We intuitively assumed roles. We marked the circumference of the
canvas, staking pink survey flags.

41:27

Peter, with a blue raven rattle,
and Tania, with tin can rattle, circumnavigated the canvas as Peter sang.

41:39

The canvas ripped easily apart along its
weave, and we made cuts to direct the tearing.

41:45

The canvas pulled by two of our bodies
to arrive at segments large enough for specific repurposed functions.

41:53

The largest uncompromised section was kept
being suspended in the trees as a movie screen.

41:59

Smaller segments were used to produce
solar prints and their edges finished with pinking shears; the
excess made into ribbons.

42:10

Crouched within the teepee’s flag outline and
then shrouded by the dense forest fire smoke

42:17

that permeated the region, we cut ribbons and
produced a series of solar prints out of rope,

42:23

rattles, rock, ribbon, collective writing,
laser cut citation text, and toys.

42:29

Ashok prepared meat bison meatballs,
shish kabobs and Chilliwack corn.

42:36

By Wednesday, the flags had been removed. The activities were now concentrated
around the forested area and the trees

42:43

that supported the large
piece of repurposed canvas. The screen became the conversational teepee.

42:51

The location shifted along with
the reference. Now in segments, the canvas marks as it is marked.

42:59

Material for objects, and surface for solar
prints, Lunar experiments, backdrop for movies,

43:05

foreground for shadow play,
hunting ground for insects. In one of my trips back and forth from
Kelowna to BUSH Gallery, I was charged

43:14

with transporting 12 large Mylar panels
produced for Ashok’s 2019 exhibition

43:21

of A Little Distillery in Nowgong. Together, we hung them to weather and to
remain in the trees at the edge of the forest

43:30

with cord coloured the same
pink as the survey flags. A twofold final installation.

43:37

The final action of the BUSH Gallery
Writer’s Union retreat took shape through our collective curation
of Ashok’s panels

43:45

and a collaborative performance
by Ashok and Peter. Backed by the layering of A Little Distillery
in Nowgong and the teepee illuminated

43:55

by a work light, Ashok read aloud accompanied
by strategically timed drumming by Peter.

44:02

The text from one of the Mylar panels was
incidentally visible through the canvas.

44:08

So, I’ll leave this up for visuals. Excerpt 4. From Plant Stories are Love Stories Too.

44:17

These words are not solely mine. I share them with Michelle Jacques. And to be honest I don’t actually
know whose words are whose anymore.

44:26

We’ve mixed them up so many times. So, in 2020, after a year of dreaming,
Michelle Jakes and I officially embarked

44:36

on the development of Moss Projects, an
itinerant educational platform that aims

44:42

to create knowledge and relationship building
opportunities for curatorial thinkers committed

44:47

to peeling away the colonial
layers of the art museum. As an alternative or parallel program
to academic curatorial training,

44:56

Moss Project supports inquiry and
learning by and with underrepresented and racialized curators alongside
allied practitioners

45:04

through peer-to-peer learning and mentorship. Central to this program is the
valuing of knowledge systems and modes

45:11

of organization beyond and in dialogue
with dominant parameters of curation.

45:18

And the recognition of the
urgency with which we must learn to work otherwise in the museum field.

45:25

As white settler, and Black Canadian curators, Michelle and I utilize our professional
resources for curatorial incubation

45:35

and to establish spaces and
mechanisms for sharing cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary methodologies.

45:42

By engaging with our own ancestral histories
and by respecting cultural knowledges shared

45:48

with us, we are learning how our histories
fit within the places that we reside and work

45:53

to better advocate for and walk
alongside in support of Indigenous and non-Indigenous methodologies.

46:00

At a moment when the colonial foundations of
mainstream museums are being rocked in protest,

46:06

how do we prepare to build something new. In the Canadian context, curators continue to be
trained predominantly through settler colonial

46:17

and academic art, art historical and
curatorial paradigms which shapes and influences the historical narrative.

46:25

By inviting and compensating collaborators
with a range of experiences, ideas,

46:30

and worldviews to participate, we aim to create a
platform that promotes multidimensional readings

46:38

of the museum’s potential, countering it’s
legacy as a space devoted to a singular canon.

46:48

Similarly, Moss Projects is not
institutionally bound but presently operates

46:54

through the network supports and institutional
relationships that we hold and actively foster.

47:00

Our first host the Art Gallery of Greater
Victoria where Michelle was chief curator when we started, stands as an important
point of departure a public art museum

47:11

with a developing openness to examining its
own structure, and at the same time an example

47:17

of residual and prevailing legacies of
colonial systems throughout the arts in Canada.

47:24

Applying pressure, Moss projects nurtures
practices that require the art system to flex

47:30

to accommodate the needs of historically
underrepresented practitioners and communities rather than
the need to flex to a system

47:38

that is an uncomfortable
and sometimes unsafe fit.

47:43

We are co-learners in this process. Thank you. [ Applause ]

47:56

>> Thank you all for presenting and
sharing your knowledge with us today. Looks like we have about 35 minutes.

48:02

So, we’ll start off with a little bit
of a round table and then we’ll open it up for the last 20 minutes for a
conversation with the audience.

48:10

One of the questions I’ve been curious about,
as a student, and I know we’re all students

48:21

or recent graduates, is that within the
institutions where we research and study,

48:26

what practices already exist that
can help generate critical dialogue? So, feel free to just jump in
and respond as you as you feel. >> Apologies for anyone that is
a professor in Art History here

48:34

but I’m going to speak honestly here. There’s not really any form of critical space
for dialogues in Art History from my perspective

48:48

as one of the BIPOC students in Art History. I’m sorry, but it just doesn’t
exist in Art History, at least.

48:57

But I will say that one way
that we can create spaces

49:04

for critical dialogues is invite more elders in
our classrooms, because the courses that I took,

49:16

it was coming from a singular perspective. And I feel experience that
the elders have is a form

49:24

of research, and a form of critical inquiry. Miigwech.

49:30

[ Silence ]

49:41

>> Actually we’re in the same
program, the Curatorial Studies, and- Cinema Studies and Curatorial
Studies Program.

49:51

And it was actually the curatorial side of the
program that really drew me to come to Queen’s.

50:00

And during my time here, I’ve seen
so many people with the expertise

50:06

and things that I can learn from. There’s actually so much
resources in our department.

50:13

And so many knowledgeable folks that we can try
to utilize to kind of start these conversations.

50:23

But one of the things that I wasn’t
prepared for was the emotional labour

50:31

that I was asked to do when I’m in this program.

50:36

Because it’s usually, especially Queer Asian
students, undergrads, they would pull me aside,

50:44

and they’ll share stories and they feel very
frustrated, or they want to leave Kingston, or they’re facing a lot of issues.

50:51

And for me, I don’t think, I think
people in our faculty is overworked.

50:57

They’re trying their best. They’re limited by resources and there’s
perspective I don’t know on the other side.

51:03

But then I also feel the student’s
frustration, especially students of colour,

51:09

or if they’re international students. And then there’s expectations from both sides,
both from the student, both from the faculty.

51:17

But I feel at times, we’re not
sitting down to talk to each other. And there’s a lot of friction that I feel that
could be easily solved, if we just sit down

51:26

and have an honest conversation with each other. And I think that hopefully this
conversation can then start,

51:33

and we can have those kinds of dialogues. >> This is a hard question.

51:39

>> They’re all hard questions, Toby. They’re big questions. >> I would agree with Paige.

51:46

Art History is an unforgiving discipline.

51:51

[Chuckle] It is — I do not call myself an Art
Historian even though I have two Art History

52:00

Degrees because it doesn’t fit.

52:05

And I don’t, I haven’t seen expansive
criticality in the way that it needs

52:13

to happen within the field of Art History.

52:21

I did my PhD at UBC at the Okanagan campus. And when I was there, Ashok Mathur
was the Dean of the Department

52:32

of the Creative and Critical Studies Department. I believe — now totally blanking
on what his actual title was

52:41

or what actual department he was. The department I was in anyways.

52:49

And much like this gathering although more
expansive, he worked alongside a number

52:58

of other faculty and graduate students to build a summer residency
space wherein courses were tied

53:09

to artist residencies and public panels. And there was a lot of space for conversation
and dialogue, and space for just being together,

53:22

and thinking through things
together and experiencing together. And I think that was a really
important space for a lot of people.

53:34

And people still talk about it. And it’s still running. It’s now running under the
direction of Tania Willard.

53:44

All that being said though, that space doesn’t
necessarily translate into the main school year,

53:56

the September to spring kind of school year. It really does, is really is
centralized within the summer months.

54:04

It’s called the Indigenous Art Intensive. I just realized, I probably didn’t say that yet.

54:11

So, there’s there are glimmers,
but for the most part, as a whole,

54:21

a program that really has the
appropriate kind of critical dialogue —

54:26

I don’t know if I’ve ever come across one yet. This is precisely why Michelle and I have
been trying to build alternative spaces

54:36

for discourse and learning within curation.

54:44

>> Yeah. I’ll try to say something positive.

54:53

In regard to our program, we have tethered
to our department this gallery called Agnes.

55:02

And so that’s available to
us obviously as an audience, you know.

55:09

I think about sites of critical dialogue
for me often happen within art scenes in the sort of informal clusters of friendship
that form through being part of a scene.

55:23

And so, the Agnes is here
doing great programming and activating those kinds of informal spaces.

55:32

And then there’s actual efforts
within the curatorial staff here

55:39

to create these playgroup structures which at least you participated
in my little thing was sort of a riff on.

55:46

So, Michelle and Sunny have been trying to
continue building these playgroups around each

55:52

of their exhibitions, which are kind of named
sites of where dialogue is meant to happen.

56:01

And I believe in that approach, I think. Like, that’s kind of why I like the shadow curator approach
is that it names, this is the place

56:10

where critique is going to happen, or some
kind of outside perspective is going to emerge.

56:15

And sometimes that’s necessary
to give a nudge in that way. I don’t know — do you have
anything to say about that.

56:23

Yeah, so, we have those things going at least. >> Yeah. Does anybody want to share?

56:29

I know we’ve started touching base
on it but is there any other thoughts about what areas might need re-imagining

56:36

or how we can care a little bit more
for our role in the institution?

56:41

[ Silence ]

56:53

>> I have like a thing that I’m working
on that I want to really reimagine which should present a resource
for curatorial education.

57:02

And that’s re-imagining the
afterlife of exhibitions.

57:07

I seem to have a kind of ghost afterlife thing,
but it’s something that I’ve been working

57:14

on in relation to the Guest +
a Host = a Ghost Project. And this paranormal curation thing which is to
recast learning programs or exhibition projects

57:26

as open educational resources, and think about
what that would mean to recodify an exhibition

57:35

in a way that it could be become a
resource to teach what actually goes down

57:41

or what goes on in exhibition cultures. And so, this could involve things like writing
scores about how a project came to fruition

57:53

or telling stories about this kind
of otherwise hidden informal context

58:00

where curating happens and things like that.

58:05

And so, I’m excited about that idea. I keep bugging Sunny about this. And it helps that we can explore it.

58:11

And another thing that I think this opens up, or another thing that I’m excited
about with that approach is

58:16

that it would also reimagine the
way that exhibitions get toured. And this is something I haven’t
talked to Sunny about,

58:23

but if you could codify an exhibition as
an open access resource, then you can share

58:30

that with other institutions of the same
scale and create this kind of opportunity for institutional remix where you’re playing
out a score for an exhibition or something

58:43

in your own way, and then modifying the
resource as you go and things like that.

58:49

So, those are some tangents that I wanted
to just share just stuff I’m thinking about.

58:57

>> Thanks, Neven.

59:03

>> Open-Source exhibition is a really compelling
and I imagine somewhat terrifying proposal.

59:12

I think what that really touches on for me
is this idea of authorship and expertise

59:21

that gets really tied into
the field of curation. I work collaboratively a lot and I think

59:31

within public art museums particularly
I mean that’s my experience —

59:42

the idea of collaboration is still
something that is a little bit,

59:49

it’s not as common perhaps as you would think. So, I mean there are organizations
that work together on exhibitions

59:58

but what does that actually mean? So, what does it actually
mean to be in collaboration or in dialogue in order to build an exhibition?

1:00:07

And, at times, in my own experience I’ve
found that I think that there is an assumption

1:00:13

that a collaboration indicates that
everyone is either doing the same thing,

1:00:25

or that somebody loses control
of their own authorship.

1:00:31

And so that’s why I think what Neven’s
proposing becomes a really compelling,

1:00:39

but potentially terrifying,
idea for a lot of people. But perhaps it’s a way to
really open up the space

1:00:52

of discussion around where ideas come from. So, ideation is never uniquely
within one person.

1:01:11

>> Hello. Okay. I feel I have to check every time now.

1:01:16

I’m thinking about something that was said in
the previous panel by Emelie about the way that architecture
plays to construct this narrative.

1:01:28

And I’m thinking about because I was in
a few meetings about Agnes Reimagined,

1:01:34

and they were consulting Indigenous students
about what kind of space you would want when you do engage with sacred, ceremonial
Indigenous objects within the Agnes collection.

1:01:45

And on the flip side of that, I was
also in meetings with the conservation

1:01:51

because I have a Master’s
in Conservation at Queen’s. And they wanted my experience as
a student being in that program.

1:02:02

And so now that I’m seven years here,
seven or eight years, and I’m very familiar

1:02:08

with the space, I would like to see a space, and
I’ve mentioned this in other meetings, [chuckle]

1:02:19

but I’m just going to make it public, a space that is more open and integrated
between conservation and curatorship

1:02:31

because I’ve worked in, interned
at a number of institutions

1:02:37

where the conservation work is dependant
upon what the curator and the show is on,

1:02:47

and has no respect for the
object that we’re working on.

1:02:52

Because there’s been a lot of times
were working with a senior conservator,

1:02:58

and they voiced their issues to a
curator, and the curator is like, “well,

1:03:04

it needs to be done, so, figure out a way.” And that’s just not healthy [chuckle] at all.

1:03:10

And I see it in this space. Conservation building is a completely
separate building from the Agnes,

1:03:19

and I feel like it would be really cool
if you had offices where both staff

1:03:26

and students are working more
collaboratively together. And the same with curatorial studies.

1:03:33

I am just finding out today that
there is curatorial studies. I had no idea [laughing]. I’m like there’s curator studies here.

1:03:41

What? I was very shocked. Anyway, that’s what I would like
to reimagine: our relationships

1:03:48

between the people within the museum field.

1:03:55

>> I guess I have to up myself. I did not come from an arts background.

1:04:02

I started doing this work before I started
reaching out for an arts education.

1:04:08

Most of these works are done prior to,
so I always feel I’m in a constant mode

1:04:13

of catching up, and try to educate myself.

1:04:19

I think for me, at the moment, it’s a very
privileged place to think about re-imagining.

1:04:27

You need to have the resources, and the
capacity to be able to think about re-imagining.

1:04:34

I’m also involved with the Vietnamese community. And we’re trying to build the
first elders care in Ontario.

1:04:42

And the sad fact is the task is
so momentous that by the time that we get it done we’re not going to be able

1:04:48

to serve the generation that
it’s meant to serve. So, in the meantime we’re thinking of ways
how can we still help them while we’re trying

1:04:56

to set this up. So, in the Queer communities, I also find that
so many of my peers are in survival mode.

1:05:06

So, I guess at the moment, I’m more
interested in this kind of working

1:05:13

in that mode, more so than re-imagining.

1:05:21

But I find that there are a wide
spectrum of what the now can look like,

1:05:34

and that I feel like it just it resonates
with me more than this kind of reimagining.

1:05:49

>>Thank you for generously
sharing with us your thoughts.

1:05:54

I’m going to open it up to the
audience while we think about the future

1:06:05

and reimagining for the last 20 minutes.

1:06:11

There’s the microphone that you can come,
ask your questions and converse with us.

1:06:19

>> While people are contemplating
their questions. I wanted to add an example thinking about
Vince’s, the work that you just shared.

1:06:25

I think one thing that I really desire when
I’m in these kinds of conferences or spaces

1:06:31

of dialogue is specific strategies. And I’ve been working with
modelling, not modelling,

1:06:38

but looking at different
models quite extensively

1:06:44

as thinking about the offering of precedent. And not necessarily as ways to replicate
these models but as just suggestions or pushes

1:06:55

into certain directions that maybe
hadn’t otherwise been thought through In the current exhibition that I
co-curated with Eli Hirtle at Open Space

1:07:05

which just opened a couple weeks
ago called for Love, Loss, and Land,

1:07:12

there is one artwork that is a fairly large
installation, and it’s called Laying Flowers

1:07:22

and it’s by a Michif
artist named Rain Cabana-Boucher.

1:07:28

And what it is is an installation of a tiny,
beaded orange flower for every single grave

1:07:38

that has been uncovered on residential school
sites across Canada, what’s now known as Canada.

1:07:46

And in thinking about installing this
work within the exhibition space,

1:07:53

Eli and I had extensive conversation
between ourselves as well as with our Elder

1:07:59

In Residence which Open Space
is really a privilege to have.

1:08:04

And Rain and the other artist Jinny Yu
whose work is paired with Rain’s work

1:08:10

in the exhibition space, about what
it means to support people coming

1:08:16

into the exhibition space
to experience this work. So, not only are we thinking about what
it means to support the general visitor

1:08:31

but also what does it mean to support the
staff going into that space every day,

1:08:37

our Indigenous staff, the non-Indigenous staff. What does it mean to support survivors
that are going into that space?

1:08:46

What does it mean to support the general public
who have knowledge to some degree I mean that

1:08:54

or the knowledge and understanding
of residential school and the history of Canada varies across every demographic.

1:09:03

And then how do we support people
in learning or learning further.

1:09:09

And one of the things that we actually built into the exhibition space was
a respite and resource room.

1:09:18

So, we have this funny little
mezzanine and a little resource room

1:09:23

space that we’ve been using it
as a resource room underneath it. And what we’ve done is curtain off one
section and we use soft white curtains.

1:09:35

We use curtains instead of doors because
curtains are something that most people are used

1:09:40

to using and touching, and so that people
wouldn’t feel uncomfortable opening

1:09:46

or closing the curtains. There’s a couch in there. There’re some reading materials.

1:09:51

There’s also some sage for
smudging and a smudge bowl.

1:09:57

And we separated it off because there are
people who have offices on the mezzanine,

1:10:03

but then they won’t have to pass
through this reading resource area.

1:10:08

And this idea actually came from another
colleague of mine in Victoria who works

1:10:14

at the Legacy Art Gallery Lorilee Wastasecoot,
who had organized a number of years ago

1:10:21

with Andrea Walsh in exhibition on
artworks by residential school survivors.

1:10:27

And one thing that she had said, while we
were converging in a gathering of curators

1:10:34

on Vancouver Island, was that she had wished
that there had been a space for people

1:10:39

to just step out for a minute and kind of catch
their breath, and have a little bit of a place

1:10:47

to be with their thoughts, or to regather
themselves but not have to leave the exhibition.

1:10:52

And so, what we did was we adopted and adapted
this idea that Lorilee had presented in order

1:10:59

to make this space within our gallery. So, thinking back to Emelie’s point about
architecture, and somebody else mentioned that,

1:11:10

about architecture, to think more about,
again, this flexing to what the exhibition

1:11:19

and the artist need, as opposed to what
is convention within an art museum.

1:11:25

So, it’s not really, I imagine that a lot
of spaces wouldn’t be able to do smudge,

1:11:33

we’re an artist-run centre, we
have a little bit more freedom. Plus we own that, Open Space owns its own
building, so there’s different parameters there.

1:11:46

But just adding these elements that
essentially are elements of care

1:11:53

within the exhibition space can make
a quite a significant difference,

1:12:01

and then can lead to other changes [chuckle]. [ Silence ]

1:12:12

>> Paige, I wonder if that’s an opportunity for you to talk
about the spaces you created in your exhibition.

1:12:19

>> Okay. [Laughter] Yeah, I wasn’t
sure if you had an actual question

1:12:24

because I was going to fill the silence. So, I didn’t really talk about my exhibition
layout in my talk, just what led up to that.

1:12:35

But yeah, the other part of the inspiration
for my exhibition was I participated

1:12:44

in the Wet’suwet’en March led by students
and faculty, and staff here at Queen’s.

1:12:51

And that was really powerful
for me because I was one of the drummers who was leading the march.

1:12:58

And then following that march, we
ended up at a talk with Ellen Gabriel

1:13:04

who is art and activist from Kanehsatake.

1:13:09

And she was one of the main
focuses in.

1:13:16

Alanis Obomsawin’s 270 Years of Resistance.

1:13:22

So, I got to meet her, and I
was wearing my full regalia. I had my drum. And then I just got up to
talk to her after her talk.

1:13:31

And I just I froze. I didn’t know what to say [chuckle].
And I was like hi

1:13:36

And then she was very natural,
and she reminded me of my auntie.

1:13:42

So, then we got to talking and it’s like
okay, you’re amazing, awesome.

1:13:47

And so, that really inspired me to create and
honour these indigenous people who are sometimes

1:14:00

at the face of extreme opposition, and
military violence, and racial bigotry.

1:14:11

Like I know a lot of Indigenous
students, not myself personally, but a lot of Indigenous students during the
Tyendinaga rail blockades were yelled at;

1:14:24

they were cursed at. They had a bunch of racial slurs
that were said to them in passing.

1:14:35

And so, it was a really tense time and,
obviously, it was mostly privileged people from Toronto who were inconvenienced
that the via rail was down.

1:14:43

And they couldn’t take the train
to from Kingston to Toronto. And they were complaining
that they had to take the bus.

1:14:54

So, I just wanted a space where we could
uplift these inspiring Indigenous people again,

1:15:04

and be proud of who we are. You know Because it was during that time, it was
really tense, and we were really down.

1:15:12

And there was another incident in Fall of 2019
in a residence in first year where they put

1:15:20

up on a bulletin board, a bunch of
god-awful things that I’m dare not repeat.

1:15:28

And so, I needed a way for
myself and to uplift others.

1:15:38

And so, I created this space. And the main aspect of this space was healing.

1:15:46

Because it’s not just, it wasn’t me
personally, but it was a lot of my friends.

1:15:52

And the only safe space that they had
to talk about that was Four Directions. There’s not really any other
Indigenous space on campus.

1:16:00

So, we came together, talked about
it, and then after those few weeks

1:16:07

of chaos, pandemic hits [chuckle]. And then I was isolated, and it
gave me a lot of time to think,

1:16:15

and I was ruminating for a long time. And then I realized I need an outlet
to uplift these people, my people,

1:16:31

Like just all friends that are
completely traumatized by this event.

1:16:37

So, it was really important for me
to have an ancestor, the water drum,

1:16:44

along with the sacred medicines because it
confronts you with a space of contemplation,

1:16:52

and reflection, and healing, first and foremost. A space where you can just breathe, and be
in the presence of those sacred medicines

1:17:03

and feel the energy that’s coming off of them. So, that when you enter that space, and when
you exit that space, it offers a way to,

1:17:15

like Jan Hill said in the welcoming reception, just release the burdens
that you have at the door.

1:17:25

You’re going to take on those burdens
when you go through the exhibition. You’re going to be confronted with those burdens.

1:17:30

But when you come back out, you leave it
at the door, or you can take it with you.

1:17:40

It’s your choice. Yeah. Miigwech.

1:17:46

Any other questions? >> Maybe that’s a nice place to end, and to
think about going into the next workshops.

1:17:55

And, tomorrow, as we move outside the
institution to FAR what that means

1:18:01

in this dialogue and conversation. So, thank you, for sharing your time
and knowledge, and your hearts with us.

1:18:10

[ Applause ]

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