Keynote Presentation as part of La Centrale-Galerie Powerhouse’s symposium “How to Protect a Radical Idea?”
Date: May 31
Time: 2-3:30 pm
Location: 4296, St-Laurent blvd
Tiohtiá:ke / Montreal (Quebec) H2W 1Z3
Places limited to 30 people
REGISTER HERE
The current (neoliberal) state of socio-economic affairs increasingly pressures artists and arts programs to adopt the same language and attitudes as business models do. Art as business means applying an entrepreneurial mentality and in today’s climate of growth, efficiency, and acceleration, that mentality is to always be “on”: always available, always working, and always productive (even when resting).
What happens when we say “no?”
My artistic and academic practice investigates the pedagogical, and revolutionary, role of rest, pause, slowness, and idleness (or “doing nothing”) within contemporary artists’ works (specifically performance artists or adjacent forms that happen in live or time-based ways), and the parallel social justice implications of integrating moments of pause and rest in the post-secondary studio art classroom. Time for rest, just for the sake of resting (and not returning to work refreshed), is a primordial need, and not something generally taught—or talked about—in school. It is certainly not rewarded in our ableist, colonial, capitalist culture.
In the context of La Centrale’s How to Protect a Radical Idea, this keynote addresses various kinds and qualities of “no” that both serve to empower and to consider the role of barriers as boundaries: limits to be acknowledged and respected. No is liberatory and no is also grief. No is scary and no is firm clarity: an inverted yes that’s not always comfortable to hold. No as an assertion of rest, (however complex), is a lifeline to a more sustainable way forward.
The Sanctimonious Sect of Nothing Is Sacred 