You can read it on The Power Plant website – here.

Hannah and I will be in residence at the Nida Artist Colony in Lithuania for November & December to work on our queer ecology project – The Beaver Mat & The Fagot Shack.

As part of Cinenova: All Hands on the Archive, a collaboration between the Feminist Art Gallery, the AGYU, and the Powerplant, Hannah & I will be presenting Veronica 4 Rose, a 1983 documentary by Melanie Chait.

“Produced for the then newly launched Channel 4, Veronica 4 Rose is one of the key early documentaries that the channel helped to produce. The film’s broadcast in January 1983 was a milestone in the discussion of homosexuality on British TV. The film consists of interviews, conversations and discussions with young lesbians from Newcastle, Liverpool and London who talk about their lives and in particular the challenges of coming out in Britain in the late 1970s and 80s. Communication is the key subject of the film, which involves its participant in discussions about how they are represented and what they feel is important or interesting about their own experiences. Rather than a series of ‘talking heads’ the film presents the women through various forms of address to the camera and in exchanges with each other, from talking in smaller groups or with their lovers, to reading selections of each other’s testimonies and conversations about how best to present themselves (which one participant discusses as she customises her leather jacket).”

- George Clark, Cinenova: Reproductive Labor, Afterall Online

http://www.afterall.org/online/cinenova

This film was selected from the Cinenova film archive. Cinenova is a non-profit womens’ film/video distributor based in London, UK. Cinenova is a source of very specific knowledge, a network and cultural community that engages directly with feminist film and video practice, and with the question of how to make this knowledge more publicly accessible

All Hands on the Archive activates and animates the Cinenova collection here in Toronto.

Veronica 4 Rose screens at 3pm.

come earlier (1pm) and catch a film selected by filmmaker Michèle Pearson Clarke!

We’re back in Toronto, and it feels great!

Currently we’re working with Dr. Stephanie Springgay at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto on Stephanie’s SSHRCC-funded research project entitled The Pedagogical Impulse.

“The Pedagogical Impulse is a platform for research-creation concerned with contemporary art’s paradigmatic re-orientation towards the educational. The project will orient itself around a series of artist residencies that will take place across a number of educational sites (K-12 classrooms, teacher education programs, graduate programs, and community spaces) in order to examine how artists are engaging with educational concepts as spaces for the development of new critical practices, and the potential transformative engagements that occur when such art practices are located in schools…”

We have been meeting with some really exciting schools (& teachers), and are looking forward to the coming months of our residency.

Also, our dear friend Hazel Meyer is working with us on this project. Check out her inspirational aesthetics (& athletics) here.

Hannah and I are thrilled to be working with Cinenova, the FAG, the AGYU & The Powerplant on this exciting project!

All Hands on the Archive

Cinenova is a non-profit womens’ film/video distributor based in London, UK. Cinenova is a source of very specific knowledge, a network and cultural community that engages directly with feminist film and video practice, and with the question of how to make this knowledge more publicly accessible. We are very pleased to present a series of events that access, activate and animate the Cinenova collection here in Toronto under the banner of Cinenova: All Hands on the Archive.

Join us twice every Saturday afternoon in February at the Feminist Art Gallery in Parkdale as local artists, activists, thinkers, and educators select work from the collection for small-group presentation, viewing and facilitated discussion. The enablers are: Michele Clarke, Hannah Jickling & Helen Reed, Chase Joynt, Natalie Kouri-Towe, Logan MacDonald & Hazel Meyer, Midi Onodera, Lisa Steele, and Syrus Marcus Ware, and the full schedule will be announced shortly.

We re-presented a project that we originally developed with our friend Jen Kovach called Mystic Pizza.

“Pizza crusts are often discarded, but these everyday castaways contain vast potential for magic. Mystic Pizza invites you to bring your concerns to the table – chew through your questions while eating a slab or two…”

We worked with 6 incredible diviners, astrologers, amateur magicians & tarot card readers to devise a method for reading the signs in pizza crust, crumbs & grease. These readers gave free 10-minute crust readings at the Mystic Pizza Artist Soup Kitchen.

The soup kitchen was a lot of fun, and running for the next 4 weeks, with some great artists hosting… details below:

FREE hot lunch for artists A different menu each week
Mondays from 12-3pm
January 9 – February 13
The Raging Spoon Cafe
761 Queen Street West, Toronto
Wheelchair accessible space

January 9 – February 13, 2012: For six Monday afternoons this winter, artists are invited to a FREE HOT LUNCH at the ARTISTS’ SOUP KITCHEN. Each week is hosted by different artists who will bring their creative practices to The ARTISTS’ SOUP KITCHEN. Lunches include a Dr. Seuss homage by artist Ulysses Castellanos offering green eggs and ham on January 9 and Mystic Pizza crust divination readings by Helen Reed and Hannah Jickling on January 16. Documentation from the ARTISTS’ SOUP KITCHEN will be used to create a printed catalogue/recipe book that includes recipes, images from participating artists and critical writing about the project. The ARTISTS’ SOUP KITCHEN is presented by the Starving Artists Collective: Catherine Clarke, Jess Dobkin and Stephanie Springgay.

Monday, January 9: Ulysses Castellanos
Monday, January 16: Helen Reed and Hannah Jickling
Monday, January 23: Tobaron Waxman
Monday, January 30: Naty Tremblay
Monday, February 6: Annie Onyi Cheung
Monday, February 13: Swintak

Hannah and I are dreaming of a project that encompasses queer architecture/queer naturalism. A monument to queer wildness. Where can we build our fagot shack?

The exhibition includes work by 18 artists from Portland, San Francisco, Calgary, Belgrade, and Montreal working in video, print, paint, sculpture, embroidery, photography, and publication; it will be accompanied by a catalogue with an essay from Anne Marie Oliver and a poem by David Abel.

Opening reception on August 5; panel discussion, “Reading Art, Writing Art” on Saturday, August 13,  1pm; curator talk on Sunday, August 28 at noon (part of the regular Research Club Brunch) and a poetry reading with David Abel, Rodney Koeneke, James Yeary and Lisa Radon on September 1 at 7pm.

galleryHOMELAND, 2505 SE 11th Ave. #136
Portland, OR 97202, Friday – Monday 12pm-6pm