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Justine A Chambers and Denise Ferreirada Silva
Tue 02 May 2017 7–9PM
Justine A Chambers & Denise Ferreira da Silva
222 East Georgia Street
Vancouver, BC
A series of informal session of research and knowledge exchange. Join us for these brief presentations followed by discussion:
Justine A. Chambers considers that describing dance as ephemeral calls its value into question. It is not only the erasure of embodied experience as a tool for cognition, but more importantly how it functions as a rich, living archive for personal and cultural history, ritual and resistance.
Denise Ferreira da Silva will comment on what might become possible when thinking reaches beyond the limits of reflection. Reading Octavia E. Butler’s female characters, Dana (Kindred), Lauren Olamina (Parable of the Sower) and Anyanwu (Patternist Series) as black feminist poethical renderings of the Real, she explores the imagination’s capacity to explore the body’s hidden treasure, which is the otherwise of the world as we know it.
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Justine A. Chambers interests lie in collaborative creation, expansively positioning dance performance, and re-imagining the performer/viewer relationship. She is drawn to the movement of all bodies, and focuses on the dances that are already there – the social choreographies present in the everyday. She is associate artist to The Dance Centre and has been creating performance projects throughout Canada since 2000.
Denise Ferreira da Silva , PhD is the Director of The Social Justice Institute (GRSJ) at the University of British Columbia. She is also a Visiting Professor of Law at Birkbeck-University of London (UK) and Adjunct Professor of Curatorial Practice at MADA-Monash University (Australia). Her academic writings and artistic practice address the ethical questions of the global present and target the metaphysical and onto-epistemological dimensions of modern thought. Academic publications include Toward a Global Idea of Race (University of Minnesota Press, 2007) and the edited volume Race, Empire, and The Crisis of the Subprime (with Paula Chakravartty, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013). She has written for publications of the 2016 Liverpool and Sao Paulo Biennials as well as for the 2017 Documenta 14 – Reader and Venice Biennale. Her artistic work includes collaborations, such as the films Serpent Rain (with Arjuna Neuman), 2016 and From Left to Night (with Wendelien van Oldenborgh), 2014 and the play Return of the Vanished Peasant (with Rosalind Martin) as well as events and texts which are part of her Poethical Readings practice (with Valentina Desideri). She was an advisor to Natasha Ginwala, curator of the Contour 8 Biennale (Mechelen, 2017).
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The Foreshore is a year-long collaboration between Access Gallery and Other Sights’ for Artist Projects inspired by the deep influence of the waterways on our cities and societies on the West Coast.
The foreshore is a place of unclear jurisdiction, and thus of contestation, friction, and constant movement. Those who dwell in this zone must continually adapt to a changing environment. The foreshore also conjures histories specific to this region: narratives of trade and exchange, habitation and nourishment, resistance and violent erasure. It might similarly evoke our contemporary lived situation in this place. Considering the potential of this zone as both concept and site, The Foreshore initiative asks the following: how do we generate conditions of emergence? How can we take up space differently? How do we support unruly practices and futures?
Accessibility Info
Front door: width 35 inches. Front door step: height 4 inches. No ramp.
Hallway door: 35 inches. Washroom door: 29 inches width. Toilet: 12 inch clearance on left side, 19 inch clearance from toilet to sink. The washroom has no handrail. Washroom is all genders.
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Other Sights for Artists’ Projects is a non-profit arts organization that develops new and unexpected exhibition platforms outside of the gallery context. Other Sights collaborates and shares resources with organizations and individuals to present artworks that consider the aesthetic, economic and regulatory conditions of public places and public life. For more information visit othersights.ca
Other Sights gratefully acknowledges the support of the British Columbia Arts Council, The Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 15, and private donors without whom this project would not be possible.
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Established as an non-profit artist-run centre in 1991, Access Gallery is platform for emergent and experimental art practices. We enable critical conversations and risk taking through new configurations of audience, artists, and community. For more information visit accessgallery.ca
Access Gallery gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and BC Gaming, the City of Vancouver, the Hamber Foundation, the Burrard Arts Foundation, the Contemporary Art Gallery, NSB Reederei, and our committed donors, members and volunteers.