The studio’s 2017 symposium DIRT: Intersectional Approaches to Messiness opened with a screening of the rarely-screened and controversial National Film Board documentary Passiflora (1985, Canada, 85 min.) on 16mm. Passiflora is an experimental documentary ostensibly about the time Pope John Paul II and Michael Jackson visited Montreal within a week of each other in 1984. Produced […]
The event featured the screening of the documentary “Sol”, which examines youth suicide in the North that was produced by Inuit women’s media production collective, Arnait Productions. The screening was followed by a Skype discussion with filmmakers Marie-Hélène Cousineau(Montreal) and Susan Avingaq(Igloolik), moderated by Toronto-based Arnait member Blandina Makkik. Marie-Hélène Cousineau is an award-winning filmmaker and co-founder of Arnait. […]
This special lunchtime talk by visiting scholar Dr. Elena Marchevska was focused on the self-organized Macedonian protest choir Raspeani Skopjani, which enacts flash mobs to critique gentrification in the city of Skopje. The choir shows up unannounced, at specific politically pertinent locations in Skopje (like the Central Orthodox Church, Parliament, or City Museum): its’ participants […]
Mapping Safe Crip Spaces is an interactive workshop by disability activist and artist Maayan Ziv, who uses digital software to crowdsource and pinpoint accessible spaces across Toronto. Maayan explores with participants the role that media plays in creating accessible communities and shared her thoughts on how such a cultural shift can happen. Workshop participants were […]
This event brings together local activists and artists, Abdi Osman, Syrus Marcus Ware, Hibaq Gelle, and Hawa Y. Mire together to speak out about their perspectives on creative resistance against Black erasure and anti-Black violence, collective activism, media, art and race in a panel moderated by artist, educator and activist Deanna Bowen.
This one-day symposium offers activists, artists, and scholars a chance to interrogate the affective relationship between materiality, archives, and Canadian cultural practice. Within Canada, much of the archival material documenting the voices of marginalized groups is dematerial(iz-ed/ing) – this event asks us to consider both why this is occurring and how we can create/have created […]
Digital activism isn’t just about technology. It’s also about the people who use it. In an age when we’re online all the time, communicating with people on the ground continues to be a crucial way to create change. This event features anti-poverty activist Penny Goldsmith who presents her compelling graphic book about the hard-scrabble anti-poverty […]
Crashing after Pride? Marvellous Grounds has you covered… Marvellous Grounds is a QTBIPOC (queer and trans Black, Indigenous and people of colour) archive that explores how QTBIPOC create communities, make space and foster connections within Toronto/Three Fires Territories and beyond. This collection brings together art, writing and research that is in the service of community […]
Our director Marusya Bociurkiw launches her film “This Is Gay Propaganda: LGBT Rights & the War in Ukraine” at an event moderated by Dr. Rachel Epstein. The event also included a report by an LGBT activist on the situation in Kenya.
From Ferguson to Toronto, Black lives have become targets of violence, racism and misrepresentation. In this lecture/workshop co-presented with Black Lives Matter Toronto, acclaimed Toronto-based interdisciplinary artist Deanna Bowen presents her recent work using archives to discuss representations of Blackness and narrative omissions in Canadian & US history. Deanna Bowen is a descendant of the […]