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Workshop

Experiments in Criticism: Syrus Marcus Ware

Event Details

Date

4 Nov 2019 - 25 Nov 2019

Location

Toronto

Preparing for the End of Times and the Beginnings of Our Collective Freedom

Guided by Syrus Marcus Ware, with guests Rosina Kazi, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Rodney Diverlus, Jenna Reid, Giselle Dias, Ravyn Wngz & j wallace

Mondays, November 4, 11, 18 & 25
4:00-6:00pm

Location:
Toronto Biennial of Art
259 Lakeshore Blvd East
Toronto, ON M5A 3T7

Join us in a weekly preparation for the end times and the beginnings of our collective freedom. Working with artists, activists and organizers, we will explore food justice, environmental justice, Black justice and the many liberatory struggles that have built strong and vibrant communities. We will assess efforts that aim to critique the political systems that continue to ignore alarms calling for a restructuring of how society functions as a whole, and consider new ones. These activities are a call to action, and will utilize utopianism, Afrofuturism and speculative fiction as literary and live methodologies with which to seize agency in marginalized communities through the creation of future narratives. Through performance, discussion and activities that investigate how to survive together, we will consider how to build the communities we want to live in in our near futures.

EXPERIMENTS IN CRITICISM is a yearlong education program devised by C Magazine to nurture and promote interdisciplinary critical literacy around contemporary art for youth aged 18 to 30. Participants in a series of workshops, developed with, and guided by community leaders, explore unique approaches to art criticism, and a symposium in Spring 2020 offers a forum for presenting forms of experimental criticism.

Syrus Marcus Ware is a Vanier Scholar, visual artist, activist, curator and educator who uses painting, installation and performance to explore social justice frameworks and black activist culture. His work has been shown widely, including in a solo show at grunt gallery, Vancouver, and group shows at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, Art Gallery of York University, the Art Gallery of Windsor and as part of the curated content at Nuit Blanche 2017. His performance works have been part of festivals across Canada, including at Cripping The Stage (Harbourfront Centre, 2016), Complex Social Change (University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, 2015) and Decolonizing and Decriminalizing Trans Genres (University of Winnipeg, 2015). Part of the PDA (Performance Disability Art) Collective and a core-team member of Black Lives Matter- Toronto, Ware is currently a PhD candidate at York University in the Faculty of Environmental Studies.

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