Join us for drinks and discussion at Tinto Coffee House
89 Roncesvalles Ave., Toronto
Tuesday February 24, 4:30-6:30pm
“Site-Specific Screening and the Projection of National Memory”
Bruno Lessard
SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Film / Communication and Culture, York University
This paper explores the projection of history and memory in Quebec City through Robert Lepage’s 2008 outdoor moving image installation, “Le Moulin à images” [The Image Mill]. The talk seeks to lay bare the work’s historiographic strategies which intriguingly “de-problematize” Quebec’s politically charged past.
Monday March 9, 4:30-6:30pm
“The Socialist City as Theater of the New Man”
Bojana Videkanic
PhD candidate in Social and Political Thought, York University
This paper will look at a number of cities in former Socialist Yugoslavia and how they became a stage for reinvention, or recreation of the so-called ‘new man.’ The socialist city was a place for the state to exercise its full political and military/police power, but also a space where the state reorganized the city as a theater stage in which a variety of spectacles took place.
Monday March 23, 4:30-6:30pm
“Markets in Transition”
Tomas Jonsson
MES candidate, York University
This paper concerns two sites of urban transformation: Makasiinit market in Helsinki and Baltijaam market in Tallinn. Both markets grew out of local initiatives, desires and necessities, and became important sites of cultural enactment. This paper examines how these markets have negotiated recent changes and new initiatives in an effort to preserve their unique spatial and cultural qualities.
Monday April 6, 4:30-6:30pm
“Systems Art: Technology, Gesture and the Everyday”
Michael Graham
PhD candidate, Communication and Culture, York/Ryerson Universities
This paper examines intersections between theories of technology and systems art in the 1960s and 70s. It will consider how the use of repeated actions and gestures in the works of Bas Jan Ader, John Baldessari, Bruce Nauman and Adrian Piper might inform understandings of our relationship to technology.
