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Plural

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Mackenzie

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Workman 1

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Letter

Maandeeq Mohamed is a writer and researcher. Engaging Black Studies and related cultural production, her writing is featured in _Real Life_, _C Magazine_, and _Canadian Art_. 

Ginger Carlson is a writer and curator based in Mohkinstsis/Calgary, on Treaty 7 territory.

Natasha Chaykowski is a writer and curator based on Treaty 7 Territory in Calgary. Currently, she is the Director of Untitled Art Society.

##### Dear C,

I am fascinated by Erika DeFreitas’s encounters with Jeanne Duval’s spectre in _arriver avant moi devant moi_. How to approach Duval at all, when she is largely canonized as Baudelaire’s “Black mistress”? She was also a dancer, an actor and, by way of Haiti, she deeply influenced Baudelaire’s writing. DeFreitas is careful not to “recover” or “recuperate” Duval (her marginalia, so caring, rightfully asks: “What does it mean to tell the story (tale?) of someone who hasn’t told it themselves?”). Instead, we see DeFreitas inhabiting and dwelling in Duval’s few traces. At one point, Duval  
is superimposed onto the figure of the Black maid from Manet’s _Olympia_ (the maid, too, offers another Black spectre in the canon). I am compelled by how DeFreitas refuses recuperation, and instead sits with the complicated place of Blackness in art historical canons; consider the translation of her title: come before me before me.

DeFreitas’s project immediately brings to mind Charmaine Nelson’s writing on histories of Modernist art in Canada—histories that at once disavow and rely on Blackness. Nelson engages the Art Gallery of Toronto’s (the precursor to today’s Art Gallery of Ontario \[AGO\]) 1927 censoring of Max Weber’s paintings, for referencing the Hottentot Venus in representations of white women, writing: “To acknowledge this censorship as a racially motivated action within a colonial cultural framework calls for an understanding of the conservatism of early-20th-century Canadian figure painting, the simultaneous politics of representation and censorship, and the historical pathologization of Blackness.” Nelson’s observation on Blackness in Canadian art historical canons resonates. Almost a century after the AGO’s censoring of Weber, Andrea Fatona and Liz Ikiriko hold an urgent conversation in “Speaking Ourselves Into Being,” on the continued lack of sustained critical engagement with Black art exhibited in institutions like the AGO. And so, I am thankful for interventions like DeFreitas’s.

##### Maandeeq Mohamed

##### Dear C Magazine,

Lately I have been thinking about listening and the varying ways we listen or do not listen, reflect, remember. For me, much of this thinking swirls around my relationship to depression, which has a bad habit of forgetting: forgetting the good, forgetting the learned, forgetting to remember, forgetting to listen. Sometimes the forgetting gets confused for dreaming and I am left in a state of re-remembering that which did or did not happen in my waking life. Déjà vu is like that too. It’s a feeling that, for me, contains a sense of dreamy urgency, a sense of what has been, in dialogue with what is or what might be.

Part of my preoccupation with listening comes from a recent equity training session, during which we practised looping as a technique for active listening. In looping, the speaker speaks, and the active listener listens, responding only to invite and acknowledge information. According to Larissa Crawford, founder of Future Ancestors Services, who facilitated this session: using looping as a listening tool aims to establish trust, encourage the speaker, clarify and reflect key points and feelings, and avoid communication blockers. Looping is both an echoing and an affirmation of the speaker’s account. Looping can also act as a tool for remembering, for making and re-making visibilities, for amplifying voices.

Here, I am remembering the oscillating sways of an interview, echoes and amplifications that prioritize speaking for oneself (Andrea Fatona and Liz Ikiriko, “Speaking Ourselves Into Being”). Here, I am remembering how buried histories are resurfaced and their imprints reclaimed, reasserted (Jaclyn Bruneau and Aamna Muzaffar, “Trajet: An Interview with Dean Baldwin and Caroline Monnet”). Here, I am remembering the centrifugal and relational weight of rubble passing from hand to hand to hand (Areum Kim, “We Relate, Therefore We Are: Relation-Making in Jin-me Yoon’s Practice”). Here, I am remembering the orthography of writing and its potential for discursively centring voice (Godfre Leung, “Composition: Writing About Douglas Writing About Douglas Writing”).

In urging for a more earnest practice of listening through looping in our labour as cultural workers and critics—especially and necessarily for those of us who hold privileges and levels of power in many possible forms—I am dreaming of us, collectively looping a string around the centre of those cycles of amnesia that _C Mag_’s issue 144 recalls, and closing it with a knot. An imaginary lemniscate for resisting forgetting and insisting on remembering.

##### Ginger Carlson

##### Dear C,

I recently read an article about a group of scientists who, in 2014, found 13,000-year-old footprints fossilized on Calvert Island, a small island south-east of Haida Gwaii, west of Penrose Island, south of the Hakai Protected Area and the traditional and unceded territory of the Heiltsuk and the Wuikinuxv First Nations. While these fossils are some of the oldest _known_ by science, they’re likely not the oldest in North America.

The story starts: “Evidence of what could be the oldest family camping trip in North America has been discovered below the shoreline of a remote British Columbia island,” and I can’t help but cringe in the face of the misguidance it takes to liken these early resilient traces of first peoples to wonder-bread-white family camping, colonial leisure. The footprints were made in grey clay, covered and preserved by black sand; the charcoal from a nearby fire speaks to a kind of resourcefulness science cannot articulate. The article tells me that the child would have worn a size seven shoe.

I was reminded of these footprints when reading Jaclyn Bruneau and Aamna Muzaffar’s interview with Dean Baldwin and Caroline Monnet, whose project _Trajet_ is as critical as it is generous. It is devastating but not surprising that the municipality of Toronto would heedlessly destroy these many-millennia-old traces—the project of colonialism has relied perennially on such destruction.

Yet, here is a project wherein the hopeful aspects of history’s circular nature are highlighted, for time is a circle, not a line. And when we complete a revolution, perhaps déjà vu is always inevitable. I find solace in the knowledge that footsteps—the ones of those who have descended and thrived from the walkers of time immemorial—will once again grace the shores of what we now call Lake Ontario.

Perhaps they will still be visible upon our arrival at this same place in the next revolution. Perhaps it’s more true to say that those who honour the future know that no one can own history.

##### Natasha Chaykowski

##### Dear C,

Over the past year I’ve noted a recurrence of the subject of futurity, re-visitation and archiving in essays, exhibitions and other art programming; I wouldn’t call this a trend so much as an effect.

Recently, I was talking to a curator about archiving, and their position was to question the value of archiving anything when climate change is going to realize total planetary destruction in 50 years. In some ways this sentiment has some validity; what is the point of building an archive in the age of the Anthropocene? Why make plans for the future when there may not be one?

When the future feels off limits, I understand the impulse to configure the present as the past’s future in creative thought and practice; digging back to project forward. But I wouldn’t have thought to articulate this moment as déjà vu. After reading issue 144, I feel differently. The universal déjà vu experience of the mind speaking to itself automatically and unexpectedly singles out the individual—in the sense of both their responsibility, and presence in their own life—and identifies them as the future of their past’s present.  
Here, the phrase déjà vu links the temporal questions of futurity and re-visitation to a time that thinks seriously about the end of time. It’s smart in its subtlety, and a rewarding lens through which to read issue 144.

##### Helen Lee

Writer

Criticism, Again

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Letters

Review

**Justice Walz** is an interdisciplinary artist based in Toronto whose work explores notions of self-care, identity and intersectional feminism. She uses her artistic practice as a way to both articulate and make peace with her experience as a queer, mad and chronically ill woman of colour. 

My experience with Workman Arts’s annual festival, Rendezvous with Madness (RWM), began at the opening reception. I arrived anxious, on account of anticipation and a generalized anxiety disorder, still shaking with palms sweating from the panic attack I’d experienced on the way over. Upon entering, I stole a nervous glance at my phone to see if my eyes were still puffy from the involuntary tears that had fallen mid-panic. I cringed at the incongruity of hiding evidence of my mental illness while attending the world’s largest, longest-running mad-positive arts festival—and yet, I took a minute to compose myself before joining the crowd. Shirking potential social interaction, I made my way down a quieter hallway. Here, I came across Alison Crouse’s _Devastation Portraits_ (2019) and realized I was exactly where I needed to be. Each portrait featured the same subject, lying face down, in an overt display of grief amidst a backdrop of bystanders unfazed by her public collapse—their apathy humorously juxtaposing the clear distress and vulnerability of her position. I couldn’t help but empathize with these images. Crouse’s performance portraits candidly capture the prevailing attitude toward mental illness from the public sphere—chary of engaging with madness, the bystanders lean away from the situation.

In capitalist society, where one’s success or failure is deemed the onus of the individual, precarity is often seen as a personal failing and is thus met with disdain. Dominant discourse pathologizes madness as a dysfunction within the individual, conveniently dismissing the overarching social, political and economic issues that marginalize the affected. Mainstream coverage of mental illness, such as the trending commoditization of self-care and brand-first corporate activism of campaigns like #BellLetsTalk, remains deluged by liberal empathy and void of any actual social or systemic change. In contrast to these surface-level discussions, RWM delivered refreshing narratives divergent from the stigma-based tropes and clinical textbook definitions that litter our collective understanding of madness. Comprised of films, artworks and live performances, the festival created a space for validation and communal healing through intersectional works that effectively inform and humanize perceptions of mental illness and addiction.

The spotlight film of RWM, _Bedlam_ (2019), challenges the institutional systemization of mental illness by examining the effects of deinstitutionalization in America. Directed by psychiatrist Kenneth Paul Rosenberg, the documentary follows a group of individuals living with chronic mental illness as they navigate the lacunae of resources and accessible long-term aid that vanished alongside their in-patient care. Rosenberg casts a light on vastly under-resourced psychiatric emergency rooms—where overwhelmed staff are only able to provide quick-fix care to those in need of lifelong treatment—and jails, packed with prisoners who should be patients. Through intimate insights spanning five years of each subject’s life, _Bedlam_ humanizes madness, and breaks down a faulty, sanist system that continues to discriminate against and oppress those who never chose to be ill.

Trista Suke’s quirky part-fiction, part-autobiography, part-documentary _Foxy_ (2018) addressed another facet of the vulnerability attached to being othered, and expressed the strength that comes from reclaiming one’s narrative. Suke, who wrote, directed and starred in the film, effectively uses _Foxy_ as a way to publicly come out with her alopecia, and explores the impact of chronic illness on mental health. After years of hiding her hair loss from the world, Suke flaunts her story with this original, whimsical piece while also making room for others to share experiences of living with baldness through direct-to-camera interviews. In doing so, Suke enacts community support as an empowering and healing force for a group of people who have experience with baldness and its associated social stigma.

By showcasing stories that come from such diverse communities and lived perspectives, this festival controverts the stigma-generated alienation and anxiety that isolates those in need of human connection. But the true success of RWM might be measured by Workman Arts’s equal commitment to the diverse needs of their audience as to their programming. Attending the events, it was clear inclusivity and accessibility were at the forefront of each decision. Despite my debilitating anxiety, I felt safe in a space that recognized and validated my existence; not only could I view relatable works from mad makers with intersectional identities, I was able to do so within an environment that encouraged my being there. Alongside accessibility measures such as pay-what-you-wish tickets, open captions and ASL interpreters, each event had a relaxed viewing policy that allowed audience members to leave the theatres as needed. Further, RWM provided a Held Space at each location, which functioned as a quiet refuge outside the event with an active listener and material for stimming.

By creating a safe space to meet with madness and precarity head on, RWM allowed for a larger, more rounded discussion of the entanglement of these issues. Each artwork and Q&A panel was an expression of vulnerability, which innately provoked that of myself and others; after screenings and performances, I found myself speaking candidly about my own experiences with mental illness. Within the 10-day span of the festival, I felt able to disclose my social anxiety in conversations and let go of my incessant need to appear neurotypical in public spaces. With an awareness that stigma leads to discrimination, which begets further systemic oppression, RWM productively challenges the pervasive ableism of mainstream narratives with trauma-informed lived experiences.

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Justice Walz reviews the _Rendezvous with Madness Festival_ held at Workman Arts in Toronto (October 10–20, 2019).

#GetMad: Rendezvous with Madness Festival