The Power Plant

Creative Time Summit: The Curriculum

Tue Aug 11 – Thu Aug 13 2015

6:00 AM – 7:00 PM

Teatro alle Tese, 56th International Art Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia, Italy

Photo: Creative Time, 2015

The Power Plant has been invited by Creative Time to participate in its annual Summit, an international conference dedicated to the intersection of art and social justice. Integrated into one of the world’s most prestigious art events, this year’s Summit will take place August 11-13 as an official offering of the 56th Venice Biennale - curated by Okwui Enwezor.

Thanks to this unique partnership, The Power Plant has been able to provide travel stipends for the 10 Canadian artists invited to participate. Artists selected to represent Canada in this international forum include:

• Adrian Blackwell (Ontario)
• Deana Bowen (Ontario)
• Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge (Ontario)
• Jen Delos Reyes (Manitoba)
• Elle Flanders and Tamira Sawatzky, of Public Studio (Ontario)
• Justin Langlois (British Colombia)
• Duane Linklater (Ontario)
• Nadiya Myre (Quebec)

Each of these artists will share their distinct perspectives on the relationship between art and social change, either by delivering Summit-style presentations on their work, or by leading roundtable discussion groups exploring issues central to their practices. Additionally, a number of Canadian curators will be joining the delegation in order to lend their voices to this global forum.

About the Summit

Creative Time has been producing groundbreaking artist projects for more than 40 years with a belief that art has the power to influence society and inspire global change. Every year it brings together thought-provoking artists, activists, curators, scholars, and policymakers who operate at the intersection of art and politics to intervene in the critical issues of our time.

This year’s Summit will focus on the topic of Curriculum by engaging a broad range of thinkers, artists, researchers and activists. In a series of plenary sessions, they will address what it means to produce, transform and transmit knowledge across the conflicted terrain of the world today. The Summit will consist of presentations, keynote speakers, performances, screenings, panel discussions, artist commissions, and workshops. All participating artists will be able to join their global colleagues in a collective effort to share issues, learn, debate and initiate new collaborations.

An extraordinary moment in contemporary art, this Summit will mark the first conference of artists to be held at the Venice Biennale in its over 100 years of history. By putting artists’ efforts in social justice into the international spotlight, this forum will create unprecedented opportunities to showcase how artists are alleviating real social problems around the world.

ARTIST DELEGATES

Adrian Blackwell
Adrian Blackwell is an artist and architectural designer whose work examines the relation between physical space and political/economic forces. Further to his artistic practice, Blackwell is an assistant professor at the School of Architecture, University of Waterloo.

Deanna Bowen
Deanna Bowen is a descendant of the Alabama and Kentucky-born Black Prairie pioneers who settled in Alberta. In her work as a Toronto-based interdisciplinary artist, she draws upon interrogations of genealogical research, local and international ‘domestic’ histories, American slavery, and African Diaspora.

Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge
Dedicated to improving cultural consciousness, Toronto-based artists Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge have been working collaboratively with various trade unions and community organizations to produce staged photographic work since the late 1970s.

Jen Delos Reyes
Jen Delos Reyes is a creative labourer, educator, writer and radical community arts organizer who champions both institutional collaboration and artist-run culture. She is the director and founder of Open Engagement, an international annual conference on socially engaged art.

Elle Flanders and Tamira Sawatzky
Public Studio is the collective art practice of filmmaker Elle Flanders and architect Tamira Sawatzky. They enlist a range of media in constructing large-scale public art works, films, immersive installations, and lens-based pieces that explore the intersection of art and architecture.

Justin A. Langlois
Currently an Assistant Professor at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Justin A. Langlois is an artist, educator and organizer. He is the co-founder and research director of Broken City Lab, an artist-led interdisciplinary research collective focused on issues of locality, infrastructure and civic engagement.

Duane Linklater
Duane Linklater is Omaskêko Cree, from the Moose Cree First Nation, and is currently based in North Bay, Ontario. Often founded on cooperative and collaborative gestures, Duane’s work includes video and film installation, performance and sculptural objects.

Nadia Myre
Nadia Myre is a visual artist from Quebec and an Algonquin member of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation. Winner of the 2014 Sobey’s Art Award, Myre has developed a practice inspired by participant involvement as well as recurring themes of identity, language, longing and loss.


Click here for the complete schedule to the Creative Time Summit: The Curriculum.