2020

SEPTEMBER:
Marilyn Arsem

NOVEMBER:
Dylan Robinson

 
 

Our 2020-2023 research theme is Art, Activism, and Global Crisis (developed in collaboration with the SPAR²C (Shifting Praxis in Artistic-Research / Research-Creation) Faculty of Arts Signature Area of Research and Creative Collaboration).

Artistic practices and forms have a critical role to play in times of crisis. Art seeds the critical and speculative imaginations needed to trouble our current ways of living and dying; it prioritizes aesthetic and affective spaces within which we not only reflect on what is so, but work on imagining and modelling things otherwise in ways that are both integrative, in terms of transforming the materiality of daily life, and excessive, in terms of reaching beyond what we currently know to be possible. During the 2020-2023 thematic arc, the CoLAB will address the theme of Art, Activism, and Global Crisis through a series of outreach events that include public-facing presentations, masterclass workshops (held virtually), an eColloquium accompanied by an online exhibition, and an open-access online publication. Nurturing critical thinking on art, activism, and social/ecological justice, these outreach events will increase knowledge of artistic forms, theories, and methods informed by ecological, decolonial, and anti-capitalist ethics at a moment of global crisis.

This theme follows and builds on our 2016-2020 research theme: Art(s) and the Anthropocene, the central questions for which were: (1) how does debate on the Anthropocene (and related though not equivalent concerns with climate change) shift how one engages in meaningful arts practice and theory today? (2) how might a non-­human exceptionalist/multi-­species approach to our environment offer a particularly potent way forward in the face of anthropogenic climate change + how do the insights of feminist, decolonial, and critical disability studies reshape Anthropocene discourse? (3) what can research-­creation, as an epistemological and methodological intervention into traditional scholarly research practices, contribute to these debates within and without the academy?

Artistic practices and forms have a critical role to play at times of crisis. Art seeds the critical and speculative imaginations needed to trouble our current ways of living and dying; it prioritizes aesthetic and affective spaces within which we not only reflect on what is so, but to work on imagining and modelling things otherwise in ways that both integrative, in terms of transforming the materiality of daily life, and excessive, in terms of reaching beyond what we currently know to be possible. 

Art, Activism, and Global Crisis is a series of outreach events that include public-facing presentations, masterclass workshops (held virtually), and an eColloquium accompanied by an online exhibition and publication. Highlighting and nurturing crucial thinking on art, activism, and social justice at a moment of global crisis, the speaker series, masterclass workshops, and eColloquium will bring together an interdisciplinary and international roster of voices (artistic and academic) on art, social justice, ecology, performance, and politics that, perhaps counterintuitively, given the urgency that generally attends the terms of crisis, work through "slow" practices like durational performance, deep listening, and sensory attunement. All events will focus on the need for a complex understanding of ecological, de-colonial, and anti-capitalist ethics in contemporary debate on the role of art and global crisis. 

In the context of COVID-19, how we do our research is necessarily changing. Art, Activism, and Global Crisis is deeply collaborative and organized by adapting forms and methods that traditionally took place in person. However, more than a stop-gap initiative intended to maintain research until things can return to "normal", this project will move methods with a proven track record on the ground into the virtual realm, experimenting to extend the limits of what we heretofore imagined feasible online. This series of outreach events will build research-creation capacity and political agency by bringing local practitioners, researchers, and students into conversations with scholars, artists and activists from across the country and abroad, thinking through what it means to make art informed by social and ecological justice politics responsive to the demands of planetary crisis. 

 
logo_all.jpg

Supported by the President’s Grants for the Creative and Performing Arts from the Killam Research Fund at the University of Alberta, and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.