2008 Woodie Awards
Art Shmart: Artivistic Canadian Conference
Nikki Sansone
Issue date: 11/1/07 Section: Arts & Features
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This weekend, in that far away land called Canada, tucked away in the lovely city of Montreal, in a remote and sterile abandoned warehouse, Artivistic's conference "Unoccupied Spaces" called together a meeting of the minds between artists and activists alike. Cary Peppermint's ARTS 405 class and select students from Lynette Stephenson's Practice and Theory class made the six hour bus ride up to the land of hockey and Mike Meyers to participate in what was an experience unlike any they had ever encountered before.
Artivistic is an international, trans-disciplinary, three-day gathering that focuses on where art, information and activism all intersect each other. Artists, activists and academics hail from all over the globe and all fields of study to create a diverse network of thinkers and to push themselves, their art, and their activism to new levels.
This weekend's Artvistic conference focused on linking issues of environmentalism, indigenous and migrant struggles and urban practices together as seen through the notion of occupation. The crème de la crème of Colgate's art department along with other conference attendants participated in various roundtables, workshops, exhibitions and performances to tackle the issue of what space means in our increasingly global, 21st century world.
As far as what really went down, your guess is as good as any. In the foreign land of Canada, in the bizarrely bilingual and bicultural city of Montreal, in that remote and sterile abandoned warehouse, the flow of the conference was less cohesive than the Artivistic website would have you believe.
One memorable art presentation included a video by Gina Badger, a senior BFA student at Concordia University. The video was prefaced with the distribution of small packages containing a single garlic clove, the idea being that recipients were to plant this garlic clove in a small part of their city. Garlic was apparently chosen for its medicinal purposes; beyond that the logic of Badger's piece seemed confused.
Artivistic is an international, trans-disciplinary, three-day gathering that focuses on where art, information and activism all intersect each other. Artists, activists and academics hail from all over the globe and all fields of study to create a diverse network of thinkers and to push themselves, their art, and their activism to new levels.
This weekend's Artvistic conference focused on linking issues of environmentalism, indigenous and migrant struggles and urban practices together as seen through the notion of occupation. The crème de la crème of Colgate's art department along with other conference attendants participated in various roundtables, workshops, exhibitions and performances to tackle the issue of what space means in our increasingly global, 21st century world.
As far as what really went down, your guess is as good as any. In the foreign land of Canada, in the bizarrely bilingual and bicultural city of Montreal, in that remote and sterile abandoned warehouse, the flow of the conference was less cohesive than the Artivistic website would have you believe.
One memorable art presentation included a video by Gina Badger, a senior BFA student at Concordia University. The video was prefaced with the distribution of small packages containing a single garlic clove, the idea being that recipients were to plant this garlic clove in a small part of their city. Garlic was apparently chosen for its medicinal purposes; beyond that the logic of Badger's piece seemed confused.
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