Symposium Report: We, Ourselves and Us
Left to right: Maria Lind, Saara Liinamaa & Janine Marchessault at “We, Ourselves and Us” / photo the Power Plant
This week, pundits puzzled whether Canada’s parliament would be able to agree on a budget, or whether it would dissolve into election-time factions. Though no mention was made of Stephen Harper (or Barack Obama, for that matter) at “We, Ourselves and Us,” a January 24 symposium in Toronto on the idea of community, recent political fissures and hopes for renewal offered a wide backdrop on which to situate such issues. (The symposium was held by the Power Plant in concert with the journal Public and the Goethe-Institut, Toronto.)
Following a keynote lecture on Friday night by New School philospher Simon Critchley, a Saturday session kicked off with a talk by Nina Möntmann, Stockholm-based curator of “If We Can’t Get It Together,” the Power Plant’s winter exhibition on community themes. Möntmann noted she found herself intrigued by “dis/membered communities, communities of people who have no community.” She was also intrigued by the idea that “community and isolation can happen at the same time,” and the possibility that galleries can be a place for transient communities to congregate.
Next up was a talk by New York-based artist Emily Roysdon, whose work is presented in Möntmann’s exhibition. Roysdon shared examples of her own collaborative publication work, LTTR, tracing its six-year history with slides naming every contributor ever involved. She noted that the queer feminist zine/journal grew out of a desire on the part of fellow co-founders K8 Hardy and Ginger Brooks Takahashi to create “not a protest group but rather to build the spaces you wish existed.” Roysdon rounded off her talk with examples of work from other artists she admired in this sense, notably Jeanine Oleson, whose Greater New York Smudge Cleanse brought new age healing rituals to the streets of Manhattan last fall, and Sharon Hayes, whose recent group protest performances at the Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention led to public confrontations with anti-homosexual groups.
Emily Roysdon Strategic Form 2006 Courtesy of the artist / photo Rafael Goldchain
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