Foils

November 16, 2024 2:00PM-4:00PM
Event Location: Top Top Projects, 165 Geary Avenue (side entrance)

Event Information:
Foils is the second event in the Undercurrents Forum. Building off of our first event—which unpacked the increasing role and reliance on real-estate development and private funds in the arts—this second event focuses on artistic, curatorial, and organizational practices that are both responsive to these conditions and exist despite them. The practices foregrounded all negotiate the present tensions in cultural spaces be it the tightening of public funds/goods, increasing individualism or a lack of communal accountability. In doing so they act as varying foils to the current cultural paradigm.

The event is structured around three panel discussions that each focus on a single question and feature cultural practitioners from across Canada, all of which exist at the intersection of a variety of perspectives and roles within the arts. The first panel—featuring Evan Furness (This Town is Small), Hannah Doucet (Blinkers), Patrick Cruz (the plumb and The Kamias Triennial)—looks at how cultural practitioners build structures of support and belonging across geographies. The second conversation—featuring Lillian O’Brien Davis (The Goldfarb Gallery), Theresa Wang (Mercer Union), Yasmin Nurming-Por (Two Seven Two)—will examine the way curators are rethinking organizational structures and curatorial strategies in and out of institutions. The final panel—featuring Felix Rapp (Le Chauffage), Benjamin de Boer (Hearth), Elise Boudreau Graham (Céline Bureau)—will unpack the effects of professionalization on artists and the institutionalization of organizations emphasizing the importance of collective and collaborative methodologies.

Following the three panel discussions there will be an opportunity for a group Q&A featuring all 9 panelists. This event also doubles as a launch for Le Chauffage’s third issue, an inquiry into the relationship between the practices of artists/ writers and their day jobs.