Articles from:January 2018

• Two new exhibits open at Rodman Hall, including the work of curator and alumna Emma German

  Monday, January 29, 2018 | By dtemprile

  

  Always Vessels, an exhibit by nine contemporary Indigenous artists, runs Jan. 27 to March 11 at Rodman Hall. Pictured is Nadya Kwandibens’ work — Emergence Series: Sugar Bush Sessions.

  (Source: The Brock News | Friday Jan. 26, 2018 by Alison Innes)

  The works of nine Indigenous artists will be featured in one of two new exhibits opening at Rodman Hall Art Centre on Saturday, Jan. 27.

  Curated by Alexandra Kahsenni:io Nehwegahbow, Always Vessels features nine contemporary Anishinaabek and Haudenosaunee artists who express their art through a range of media, from beads to photography.

  Using a blend of traditional and modern approaches, the artists explore the processes of learning, making and analyzing how knowledge is transferred and made. The work, informed by contemporary translation of traditional knowledge, offers insight into the range of skills, techniques and knowledge unique to Anishinaabek and Haudenosaunee cultures.

  The exhibit explores how belongings and possessions are meaningful objects that have the ability to carry, hold and transmit memory across time and space.

  Nahwegahbow will speak about the exhibit Saturday at 2:30 p.m. as part of Rodman’s Hot Talk series.

  Also opening on Saturday is Up close and in motion, an exhibit from Rodman’s permanent collection of nearly 1,000 works dating back three centuries. Curated by Brock alumna Emma German (BA ’14), the year-long, regularly changing exhibit will highlight the collection’s purpose as a tool for research, study and interpretation.

  The first installation of this exhibit focuses on recent acquisitions of contemporary Canadian art, many of which will be displayed for the first time.

  What: New exhibits opening: Always Vessels and Up close and in motion.

  Where: Rodman Hall Art Centre

  When: Saturday, Jan. 27, 2 p.m.

  Tags: Alumna, Brock University, Emma German, Exhibit, exhibition, miwsfpa, rodman hall, Rodman Hall Art Centre, Up close and in motion, VISA, visual arts
  Categories: Alumni, Events, In the Media, News

• Dramatic Arts presents: The State of Our Art: Drama in Education and Applied Theatre in Ontario

  Thursday, January 04, 2018 | By dvivian

  

  The Department of Dramatic Arts, Brock University and the Walker Cultural Leader Series presents:

  The Second Drama in Education and Applied Theatre Symposium.

  January 26 and 27, 2018

  Our world as we know it is rapidly changing, with scholars identifying present events as ‘post-normal’ (O’Connor and Anderson 2015). In this climate of anxiety and political uncertainty, how is the practice of drama in education and applied theatre a means to respond to and attempt to speak back to these times? The lectures and workshops will offer key insights into how our scholars use this practice to grapple with these issues.

  Featuring Julie Salverson (Queens University), Kathleen Gallagher (OISE), and workshops by by Professors: Kathleen Gallagher, Joe Norris (replacing Kathy Lundy as listed in the PDF), Julie Salverson, Larry Schwartz, and Belarie Zatzman.

  for more information download this PDF.    see the article in the Brock News

  Keynote: Friday, January 26 7:30pm
  Professor Julie Salverson, Queens University

  Marilyn I. Walker Theatre at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts

  All of us today, as scholars, artists and citizens, are challenged with listening to and telling forward the story of this home we call Canada. As we consider this task, where are the possibilities for change, for hope, and for honest listening – listening not to consume and extract (what scholar Dylan Robinson calls hungry listening) but to acknowledge and attend? I will talk about ways to think and feel about what it means to witness and respond to calls for justice as whole people who draw upon a rich variety of resources. How do all of us, individually and collectively, honour our own heritage, traditions and teachers? How do we bring these to the table and to how we live, work and attend? What do each of us offer to the conversation? This is about what it means to be “on the ground”, to negotiate the challenge to witness with the alarm and feeling of consequence that entails a meeting with a traumatized environment. I will draw on Karen Barad’s performative metaphysics, Donna Haraway’s “staying with the trouble” and E.V.Walter’s discussion of “places of experience” to re-imagine my ideas of foolish witness.

  Keynote: Saturday, January 27 9:00am
  Professor Kathleen Gallagher, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

  Marilyn I. Walker Theatre at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts

  In this keynote, I will use a case study of one research site in Lucknow, India, in my current multi-sited, applied theatre research, Youth, Theatre, Radical Hope and the Ethical Imaginary: an intercultural investigation of drama pedagogy, performance and civic engagement (2014-2019) to consider how drama can ‘speak back to these times’ if we deem- as some social innovation theorists do- the social world as made and imagined. How have the students in India, and how might we in our various pedagogical and creating contexts, use theatre to understand social systems and imagine a progressive sociality? In India, using drama, performance and critical dialogues, the work is both deeply political and radically hopeful through the ways in which it reorients, redefines and revisions the social world. Their classroom practice follows from a 19th century feminist theatre history, I will argue, that enables a transformative ambition, just what is needed in these harrowing global times. As democracies thin under populist and neoliberal regimes across most nation states, the young people and their teachers in India have long understood the power of collective opposition as a social practice and political resistance, but they have also seized upon drama and performance as the most powerful means to this end. Social innovation scholars have suggested that by harnessing what they are calling “collective intelligence”, it may be possible to dramatically improve societies’ ability to tackle seemingly intractable social problems. The students at Prerna school in India have positioned theatre as a “language of care” and a central tool for understanding the political economy and deconstructing the forces of oppression. It is time for all of us to harness the unimaginable, in our classrooms, on our stages, and in the street.

  Workshops: Saturday, January 27, 2018
  DART Studio A workshops: Julie Salverson (10:30 am-1:00 pm) / Belarie Zatzman (2:30-5:00 pm)
  DART Studio C workshops: Joe Norris (10:30 am-1:00 pm) / David Booth (2:30-5:00 pm)
  DART Studio D workshops: Larry Swartz (10:30 am-1:00 pm) / Kathleen Gallagher (2:30-5:00 pm)

  Julie Salverson, Queens University.
  10:30 – 1:00, Studio A
  Who we are as witnesses
  I have facilitated a few sessions this year based on a Quaker practice of holding a question in the light. The question for this workshop is: how can we live together better? I will speak for a few minutes about the deep preparation I require to enter the thorny territory of witnessing, the heritage, traditions and teachings that inform my work, and what a response to these times means to me. I will then invite people in the room to speak to this. There will be no direct interaction or discussion, this is about witnessing and listening.

  Joe Norris, Department of Dramatic Arts, Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, Brock University.
  10:30 – 1:00 Studio C
  Reexamining Canadian History through Story Circles, Picture Interpretation, Tableaus, Choral Speech and Writing in Role
  Award winner for his publications in his pioneering work in playbuilding as research, duoethnography, a form of dialogic research, and alternative forms of arts-based assessment, Joe also devotes considerable time developing and piloting units of teaching the curriculum through drama. While this workshop will focus specifically on the Klondike, the approaches used can be applied to many curricular topics.

  Larry Swartz, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto.
  10:30 – 1:00 Studio D
  MORE THAN A PLAY
  This practical interactive workshop will demonstrate strategies for using minimal and dialogue scripts to enhance interpretation skills, to build community and to address social justice issues. Handout provided.

  Belarie Zatzman, Department of Theatre, School of Arts, Media, Performance and Design, York University.
  2:30 -5:00 Studio A
  Performing Objects
  In this workshop, we will consider participatory practices that can be used in history, art and drama classes, or in museum / gallery contexts. We will explore applied theatre strategies for examining and interpreting “performing objects” in order to help us construct our encounters with archival objects or artworks, from the present.

  David Booth, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto.
  2:30 -5:00 Studio C
  A Novel Approach to Drama
  This workshop will explore the Young Adult novel as a source and inspiration for improvised role playing leading to dramatic scene building. This genre of contemporary literature is written especially for our students, and explores issues of coming of age, relationships, social justice, and identity. As teachers, we can use the themes and events in these texts as stimuli for interpreting, exploring and inventing situations and scenarios as a whole class, working in groups and partners, as we construct our scenes into a playmaking conclusion.

  Kathleen Gallagher, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.
  2:30 -5:00 Studio D
  Verbatim Theatre: telling other people’s stories
  Physical, ethical, social, and artistic questions converge at the centre of Verbatim Theatre practice. This session will invite participants to explore and examine some of the techniques and practices that are currently in use, in the evolving genre of Verbatim Theatre. Part story-telling, part composite, part-mimicry, part invention, the work will invite critical discussion about the skills, the social value, and the creative impulses connected to this form of theatre-making. Extending its reach beyond theatre and performance, Verbatim has found a place, too, in social science research. Harnessed to ideas about power relations and ‘collaborative’, multi-vocal, qualitative research practices and forms of dissemination, this genre of theatre further opens up discussions about the ever-expanding defi nitions of research methodology.

  Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, Brock University
  A free community event, please register for the workshops:
  the-state-of-our-art-symposium-workshops.eventbrite.com
  (Maximum 20 per session)

  for more information download this PDF.

  Please note that limited parking is available at the MIWSFPA for guests and presenters on a first come, first served basis.

  Due to multiple event programming on the evening of Friday, January 26 please allow ample time to find nearby parking.

  Tags: Applied Theatre, Bellary Zatzman, drama in education, joe norris, Kathleen Gallagher, Larry Swartz, symposium, Walker Cultural Leader Series
  Categories: Department/Centre News, Events, Walker Cultural Leader Series

• MEMORIES KNOWN AND UNKNOWN: exhibition opens Jan 9, 2018 / lecture on Jan 31

  Thursday, January 04, 2018 | By dvivian

  

  William Bell and Grandma, from the Bell-Sloman Collection of the James Gibson Library, Brock University

  A Walker Cultural Leader Series and Canada 150 Exhibition and Public Lecture:

  MEMORIES KNOWN AND UNKNOWN

  Visual Arts faculty have selected photographs and ephemera from the Bell-Sloman Collection of the James Gibson Library, part of a remarkable collection donated to Brock University by Rick Bell in 2010. The collection features more than 300 photos and various papers spanning more than a century that document the Bell and Sloman families, who descended from former slaves in the American south. The exhibition at the Visual Arts gallery will showcase some of the material presented at the Walker Cultural Leader series lecture on January 31, when we are pleased to welcome Dr. Julie Crooks from the Art Gallery of Ontario. Her research situates the Bell-Sloman Collection as a “fugitive archive,’ built with defiance and resistance, in order to preserve, salvage and recover the histories of African Canadian communities whose stories and material artefacts are often left untold or subject to erasure.

  Exhibition: Monday, January 9, 2018 to Friday, February 9, 2018
  Regular visiting hours are Tuesday through Saturday 1 to 5 pm.
  To check viewing times of the exhibition please see the webpage.
  Location of Exhibition: Visa Gallery and Exhibition Space, Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, Brock University

  Note: The date of the exhibition reception is Wednesday, January 31 at 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.
  The lecture follows at 7:00 p.m. A free community event. Please see below for more details.

  THE BELL-SLOMAN COLLECTION AT BROCK UNIVERSITY: A FUGITIVE ARCHIVE

  

  Dr. Julie Crooks of the Art Gallery of Ontario

  Dr. Julie Crooks is our second Walker Cultural Leader in Visual Arts for 2017-18. Her public lecture will draw on current research that examines the ways in which black communities, by the mid to late 19th century, in settlements throughout Southern Ontario, used photography as a critical and powerful tool for self-representation. Crooks’ research situates the Bell-Sloman Collection as a “fugitive archive,” built with defiance and resistance, in order to preserve, salvage and recover the histories of black communities whose stories and material artefacts are often left untold or subject to erasure. The exhibition at the VISA Gallery and Exhibition Space (above) will showcase some of the material presented in the lecture.

  Wednesday, January 31, 2018
  Time: 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Preceded by a reception for the exhibition at the VISA Gallery and Exhibition Space.
  Location: Marilyn I. Walker Theatre, Brock University (second floor, above the VISA Gallery)
  This is a free community event, but tickets are required and are available at wcl-bell-sloman-crooks.eventbrite.com

  Tags: A Fugitve Archive, Bell-Sloman Collection, Dr. Julie Crooks, Memories Known and Unknown, visual arts, Visual Arts Gallery, Walker Cultural Leader Series, WCL
  

• Canadian Author/Artist Daniel H. Dugas delivers public lectures at Brock

  Wednesday, January 03, 2018 | By dvivian

  

  Daniel H. Dugas’ most recent volume, published in 2015.

  The programs Etudes en français (Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures), Interdisciplinary Humanities, Studies in Arts and Culture (Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts) and Studies in Comparative Literatures and Arts of Brock University are pleased to welcome Canadian author/artist Daniel H. Dugas for two public lectures!

  Dugas writes and creates art in a variety of forms. Technology, ecology, and economy are recurrent themes often explored in his work; poetry and video poetry are two favourite platforms. Whether his projects are first accomplished in French or English, Dugas’ motivations remain similar.

  In 2018 Dugas was awarded a major recognition on the Canadian francophone art/literary scene. He is the ‘Artiste de l’année en littérature’, a distinction awarded at the Eloizes 2018 by the ‘Association acadienne des artistes professionnel.le.s du Nouveau Brunswick’. Please see link below:

  ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1099324/les-eloizes-2018-une-celebration-reussie-de-la-culture-acadienne

  Public lecture in English: Thursday January 25, 2018

  Time: 2-3 pm

  Location: MW 156 (Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, 15 Artists’ Common, downtown St. Catharines)

  Dugas will talk about his individual and collaborative practice with a focus on the ecological work created in partnership with Valerie LeBlanc over several years.

  The artist’s talk will be in English.

  —

  

  Canadian Author/Artist Daniel H. Dugas

  Conférence en français : vendredi 26 janvier 2018

  horaire : 1-2 pm

  lieu : PL 410, Campus principal (Brock University)

  Artiste numérique, poète et musicien, Daniel Dugas a participé à des expositions individuelles et de groupe ainsi qu’à plusieurs festivals et événements de poésie en Amérique du Nord, en Europe, au Mexique et en Australie. Son neuvième recueil de poésie L’esprit du temps / The Spirit of the Time vient de paraître aux Éditions Prise de parole.

  La présentation se fera en français.

  This is a free community event.  Tickets are not required.

  For more information contact Professor Catherine Parayre, [email protected]

  Tags: artist talk, Brock University, Canadian Author/Artist, Catherine Parayre, cstac, Daniel Dugas, English, Etudes en français, french, Interdisciplinary Humanities, Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, MLLC, Public Lecture, stac, Studies in Comparative Literatures and Arts
  Categories: Events, In the Media, News