Has the Community Been Fed?
Workshop Series presented by Noor Bhangu
Throughout the Month of December
Has the Community Been Fed? is a workshop series centered on hospitality as a mode of public engagement between artists and their communities. Throughout the month of December, artists will host film screenings, workshops, and artist talks that traverse diverse points of research and interest, which will culminate with food and conversation. The aim of this workshop series is to engage the public through events while opening channels for exchange through food, outside the mediated boundaries of artist and public.
Has the Community Been Fed? is presented by Noor Bhangu, an emerging curator and scholar based between Winnipeg, Treaty 1 and Toronto/Tkaronto, whose practice employs cross-cultural encounters to interrogate issues of diaspora and indigeneity in post- and settler-colonial contexts. Bhangu was the curator-in-residence at Latitude 53 from July-September 2019, and will return to curate an exhibition in early 2020.
December 5: Lauren Lavery | 6pm - 8pm
Lauren Lavery’s writing-focused workshop endeavours to bring together and analyze the ways that traditional and experimental critical art writing has been effective in further engaging art viewing, whether provocation and harsh criticality is beneficial, as well as the general use-value for readers and artists alike. Using works from writers such as Maria Fusco, Chris Krauss, Helene Cixous, Lisa Robertson, and Maggie Nelson as a starting point, participants will be lead through excerpts and asked to respond through discussions, written responses and group workshopping. The workshop has a strong focus on developing writing about fine art, and will also include a segment on ways to effectively interpret artwork.
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Lauren Lavery is a visual artist, writer and the founder and editor of Peripheral Review, a Toronto-based platform of exhibition reviews featuring Canadian emerging artists and spaces. Her writing has been published in Nacre Journal, Public Parking, Luma Quarterly and Peripheral Review, and in exhibition texts for Xpace Cultural Centre and Y+ Contemporary in Toronto. She holds a BFA with honours from Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts in Vancouver, BC.
December 11: Christina Battle | 6pm - 8pm
Postcards for a better budget: reimagining the cut
Release of the Alberta government’s recent austerity budget has raised a lot of concern, anger and frustration among artists within Edmonton who are left wondering how to support one another and take action. Such times call for a re-centering of the role of the artist and a reminder of the myriad of the ways that artists contribute to shaping and facilitating community. I see the role of the artist as one who not only reflects the world back to us, but also helps us to imagine alternative ways forward—one who can help usher us into a world that is healthier, more caring and more just.
The evening will begin with a screening of short videos made by contemporary artists whose works remind us that formal investigations can also contribute to the recognition and dismantling of unjust systems. Following the short screening, a new mail-art project will be revealed, offering participants a chance to take part in the spreading of ideas as to how our province might look otherwise into the public sphere. Treats and desserts will be served as we think through these complex issues together in a space of comfort and care.
Featuring work by Christopher Harris and Lydia Moyer.
Screening Program
Christopher Harris (USA), still/here (excerpt from 60 minute film), 2000, 6.07 minutes
Lydia Moyer (USA), The Forcing (no. 1), 2015, 9.46 minutes
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Christina Battle (Edmonton, Canada) has a B.Sc. with specialization in Environmental Biology from the University of Alberta, a certificate in Film Studies from Ryerson University, an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, and is currently working toward a PhD in Art & Visual Culture at the University of Western Ontario. Her research and artistic work consider the parameters of disaster; looking to it as action, as more than mere event and instead as a framework operating within larger systems of power. Through this research she imagines how disaster could be utilized as a tactic for social change and as a tool for reimagining how dominant systems might radically shift. She is a contributing editor to INCITE Journal of Experimental Media, and collaborates with Serena Lee as SHATTERED MOON ALLIANCE. She has exhibited internationally in festivals and galleries, most recently at: Capture Photography Festival (Vancouver), Forum Expanded at the Berlinale (Berlin), Blackwood Gallery (Missisauga), Trinity Square Video (Toronto), Untitled Art Society (Calgary), 8-11 (Toronto), Nuit Blanche Toronto, Galveston Artist Residency (Texas), Studio XX (Montreal), Le Centre des arts actuels Skol as part of Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal (Montreal), Thames Art Gallery (Chatham, ON), Casa Maauad (Mexico City), and SOMArts (San Francisco).
December 12: Riaz Mehmood | 6pm - 8pm
Riaz Mehmood’s workshop will focus on his projects and ideas that are influenced by the Pashtun region of Pakistan (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), the place of his birth. In his presentation, he will share information about his experiences, ideas, history, and popular culture along with the visual culture from that region.
Mehmood is currently working on a project about the Khudai Khidmatgar movement (‘servants of God’, which also means to serve people selflessly). This socio-political movement was started by a Pashtun man known as Ghaffar Khan (1890-1988) during the 1920s-30s. In 2014, another Pashtun-led, social justice movement called the Pashtun Taful Movement (PTM) arose in Pakistan and has increasingly gained traction with young Pashtun people. This group is not associated with any political party. One of their primary goals is to raise awareness about missing people during the recent, ‘war on terror’ military and intelligent agencies raids in Pashtun dominant regions. The state has completely censored the PTM, however the group is successfully using social media to spread its message.
Mehmood will prepare food for the participants and share stories about the food items and dishes that are of significance to him. For him, this evening will be about sharing and exchanging ideas.
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Riaz Mehmood is a multidisciplinary artist who mostly uses video, photography and computer programming as his primary means of expression. He immigrated to Canada in 2000 as a professional engineer and decided to pursue a career in arts. Riaz obtained an MFA from the University of Windsor (2012) and completed the Integrated Media program at the Ontario College of Art and Design (2005). He has participated in several international and national artist residencies and workshops, and has earned a number of grants, scholarships, and awards over the years. Riaz has also been involved with a number of artist-run centers and served on the boards of SAVAC (Toronto) and articule (Montréal). His works have been shown nationally and internationally. He is currently based in Edmonton, Canada.
December 19: aiya啊呀! | 6pm - 9pm
Making Tong Yun and Birdwatching in Chinatown: a Dongzhi 冬節 Celebration
Members of aiya啊呀! would like to invite you to gather and reflect with us to celebrate Dongzhi 冬節 (the Winter Solstice). This will be a shared experience of making and eating sweet and savoury dumplings, and sharing conversation. Aiya Collective members will share field notes from a birdwatching experience in Chinatown. All are welcome.
Dongzhi is one of the traditional Chinese festivals and also one of the 24 solar terms. The festival is both a time of darkness and hope. The shortest day and darkest day of the year, every day will get longer and lighter from here. As the last festival of the year, some believe that it marks a turning point.
Traditions vary by region. In some of our families, we eat tang yuan (Mandarin) or tong yun (Cantonese) to celebrate Dongzhi, in some of our families we eat dumplings, wontons and mutton. Some of us grew up celebrating this festival at home, some of us learned about it later in life, some of us do not celebrate this tradition. Tong yun are round glutinous rice balls filled with sweet sesame or red bean paste, served in a ginger broth, which symbolize family togetherness, unity and reunion. Tong yun sounds like tyun yun in cantonese (tuan yuan in mandarin) which means to have a reunion 團圓.
We wonder...is there healing in celebrating traditional festivals, in practicing rituals more commonly practiced in the privacy of diasporic household units in a semi-public space, and inviting others in? What happens when we invite collective learning about how to practice these rituals? Will this bring us towards “more political and inclusive futures”?
We wonder…what happens when we look at Chinatown (a space/place/idea Aiya Collective has been preoccupied with for some time) through the eyes of its winged and feathered inhabitants? What questions, themes, thoughts does birdwatching in Chinatown bring up for us?
The December 19 workshop will be convened by aiya啊呀! member Kathryn Gwun-Yeen Lennon.
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aiya啊呀! is an intergenerational and multi-disciplinary group of Asian diasporic identifying artists, Chinatown community members, academics, and organizers who together are making work that uses arts and culture to address the displacement, cultural erasure, gentrification, racial and economic oppression that is now happening in amiskwacîwâskahikan/Edmonton’s Chinatown. We come together to dream and make new futures for our community.