QUEER PUBLICS

A Conversation with Paul Couillard, Deirdre Logue, John Paul Ricco and Jason St-Laurent

Part of A Potential Toronto
Initiated by Toronto School of Creativity & Inquiry (TSCI)
More info: www.tsci.ca | tscinquiry@gmail.com

Friday, 9 November
7:30pm

Toronto Free Gallery
660 Queen Street East (w. of Broadview)

In Toronto, queer publics have a powerful creative and political presence. LGBT artists have worked hard to construct counter-publics by working collaboratively, building production networks, and constructing events. These practices challenge regimes of heteronormative identity and capital competition through their emphasis on forms of intersubjectivity beyond couple, family and state, and politics based in desire rather than regulation. How might the codes, protocols, laws and imperatives of heteronormativity, interiority, and the public/private divide be refused and reconfigured?

What creative potentials for redefining intersubjectivity emerge through the formation of queer publics, and counter-publics? How does the production of minor spaces and practices change the life of the city? And when these spaces are subsumed by dominant practices and politics, how can queer publics re-politicize themselves? Local curators, artists and educators Paul Couillard, Deirdre Logue, John Paul Ricco and Jason St-Laurent talk about the erotic, aesthetic, ethical, and political potential of queer publics.

Paul Couillard has been working as an artist, curator, and organizer since 1985, focusing on performance art with forays into video, installation, and holography. He has created well over 100 solo and collaborative performance works in more than a dozen countries, often working with his partner Ed Johnson. Couillard was the Performance Art Curator for Fado from its inception in 1993 until 2007, and is also a founding co-curator of the 7a*11d International Performance Art Festival, both based in Toronto.

Deirdre Logue’s film and videos address how it is that women organize their images and identities for mass consumption, and how this reflects or distracts from our knowledge of the individual. She is interested in both queer and feminist theory, early video and performance art, psychoanalysis and psychosomatic illness. Deirdre was the Executive Director of the Images Festival of Independent Film and Video from 1995-1999, the Executive Director at the Canadian Filmmakers’ Distribution Centre from 2001-2006, and is currently the Development Director at Vtape in Toronto.

John Paul Ricco is a queer theorist, curator, and sometimes performance artist. Author of The Logic of the Lure (2002), his work is dedicated to thinking the ethics, politics and aesthetics of social-sexual space. He is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art History, Media Theory and Criticism at the University of Toronto, and curator of "Queer Here, Queer Now," a three-part exhibition of contemporary queer video, opening in January 2008 at V-Tape, Toronto.

Jason St-Laurent is an artist and curator based in Toronto and currently working as Director of Programming for Inside Out Toronto Lesbian and Gay Film and Video Festival. He has curated more than 50 projects in Canada, Finland, Estonia, South Africa and Mexico.

ORGANIZING STRATEGIES

A Conversation with Anarchist Free University, Multistory Complex and Planning Action

Part of A Potential Toronto
Initiated by Toronto School of Creativity & Inquiry (TSCI)
More info: www.tsci.ca | tscinquiry@gmail.com

Thursday, 1 November
7:30pm

Toronto Free Gallery
660 Queen Street East (w. of Broadview)

Actualizing potential requires practicing the art of organization. How do we do what needs to get done? What strategies for mobilization and community involvement work? What blocks the flows of these strategies and diminishes the potential to get things done? Anarchist Free University, Multistory Complex, and Planning Action talk about how they organize and why they do it the way they do it.

Anarchist Free University is a Toronto based Free University and volunteer-run collective which organizes a variety of courses on arts and sciences. Anarchist U is run using various anarchist principles. These principles include consensus decision-making, decentralized organizing, and a non-hierarchical structure in classes and meetings. Teachers are seen as resources of knowledge rather than as authoritarian figures. There is no single street address for the school; rather different classes and meetings take place in different community centres and homes throughout the city.

Multistory Complex aims to democratize urban planning processes through public education and engagement in urban planning issues and decision-making. Multistory Complex facilitates citizen engagement through education, community-based action research, collaborative policy, planning and design initiatives, and partnership building. Taking an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to these issues, Multistory Complex works with social service agencies and community groups, artists' and other worker collectives, cultural organizations, architects, planners, educators and researchers to encourage innovative planning practice and increase public engagement in planning issues and decision making . Current and recent projects include Street Food Vending Project, Mobile Studios, and condo BOOM!

Planning Action is a group of urban planners, architects and activists who work with diverse communities of Toronto struggling against economic, cultural, and ecological injustice to open spaces for people to imagine, transform, and enjoy the city. Planning Action collaboratively promotes social and environmental justice by planning for affordable housing, food, public transportation, public space, accessible education and recreation for all residents and workers of the city. Most recently, The Amazing Race Place is a collaboration between several community organizations that aims to build a progressive sense of place and cultivate local citizenship in the Kingston-Galloway-Orton Park community. In 2007, its inaugural year, local area residents embarked on one-day scavenger hunt for local history.The event connected the present day community with local social history. It highlighted significant people, places and events in South East Scarborough, and celebrated efforts to build greater equity, justice and environmental sustainability.

MIGRANTS, BORDERS, CITIZENSHIP

Part of 'A Potential Toronto'
Initiated by Toronto School of Creativity & Inquiry (TSCI)

More info: www.tsci.ca | tscinquiry@gmail.com

Tues., 23 Oct. 2007
7:30 pm - 9:30 pm

Toronto Free Gallery
660 Queen Street East (two blocks w. of Broadview)

Fleeing marginality and harm in their native countries, many Torontonians continue to live on the margins in their new one as non-status migrants. At the same time, migrant groups have created and spearheaded myriad safe spaces, deep community networks, and countless cultural initiatives throughout Toronto, transforming established norms of citizenship in the process.

What networks of affinity are emerging between self-organized migrant groups? How are politicized groups of non-status migrants redefining citizenship? How are regularization initiatives addressing human rights and migrant safety? How are legalization campaigns like 'Don't Ask Don't Tell' facilitating new security for Toronto's non-status residents?

Join us on Tues. Oct. 23 as Peter Nyers (McMaster University, Citizenship Studies Media Lab), Cynthia Wright (York University), Patricia Diaz Barrero (Colombian Forced Migration Project), and members of No One Is Illegal (Toronto) open a collective conversation about how citizenship is being rethought within the city's migrant communities.

About Invited Guests

No One is Illegal (Toronto) is a group of immigrants, refugees and allies who fight for the rights of all migrants to live with dignity and respect. NOII believe that granting citizenship to a privileged few is part of racist immigration and border policies designed to exploit and marginalize migrants. NOII work to oppose these policies, as well as the international economic policies that create the conditions of poverty and war that force migration.

Peter Nyers is Assistant Professor of the Politics of Citizenship and Intercultural Relations in the Department of Political Science, McMaster University. He is the author of Rethinking Refugees: Beyond States of Emergency (Routledge 2006) and is the Associate Editor of the journal Citizenship Studies.

Cynthia Wright is an activist, trade unionist, and contract faculty person at York University. She has been involved in diverse campaigns in Toronto including those aimed at challenging the state production of "illegality". Together with other academic activists as well as frontline workers, she has prepared studies on the history of state regularization programs and on the access of non-status people to basic city services. Her articles include: "Against Illegality: New Directions in Organizing by and with Non-Status People in Canada".

Patricia Díaz Barrero is a doctoral candidate in Social and Political Thought at York University. An immigrant from Colombia, she has carried out research with Latin American exotic dancers/stripers and Colombian refugees in Southern Ontario. She is the Ontario coordinator for the international research project “Forced Migration of Colombians: A Comparative Study on Fear, Historical Memory and Public Representations”, and has been an activist in the Latin American women’s community in Toronto. Her latest publication is: “Stripers, erotic and exotic dancers: Immigration and identity in the construction of the Canadian nation-State” published in Cuadernos Pagu, 2005.

About A Potential Toronto
A Potential Toronto is an event series and exhibition spotlighting alternative economies, minor spaces, and organizing strategies. It is a preliminary step in a longer-term counter-cartography project which would render currents of radical energy visible, audible, and tactile.

YOUTH GENERATED AUTONOMOUS SPACES

A Conversation with Catch da Flava, Trans_Fusion Crew and Sue Ruddick

Part of A Potential Toronto
Initiated by Toronto School of Creativity & Inquiry (TSCI)
More info: www.tsci.ca | tscinquiry@gmail.com

Thurs., 18 Oct. 2007
7:30 pm – 9:30 pm

Toronto Free Gallery
660 Queen Street East (w. of Broadview)

Regent Park Focus Youth Media Arts Centre’s Catch da Flava Youth Magazine, Radio show and Regent Park TV, Trans_Fusion Crew (Supporting Our Youth)’s Transmission Zine and Handy Trans are inspiring examples of the creative projects, programs and services created by and for youth in this city. These youth-driven centres are autonomous spaces for racialized and marginalized youth to explore their identities, voice their experiences and create their own narratives of self. Coordinators and participants of these programs will join Sue Ruddick (University of Toronto) to talk about the possibilities and challenges youth encounter in acts of self-representation.

Catch da Flava will launch the September/October Election’s Issue of their Youth Magazine, a bi-monthly publication established in 1995 to give culturally diverse youth living in the Regent Park area a voice on issues that impact their lives. The Elections issue features a variety of articles on the theme of voting. Participants include Emmanuel Kedini, Steve Blair, Adonis Huggins, Tyrone MacLean-Wilson, Iftekhar Chowdhury.

About Catch da Flava (Regent Park Focus Media Arts Centre)
Regent Park Focus Youth Media Arts Centre is a youth driven organization that is motivated by the belief that community based media practices can play a vital role in building and sustaining healthy communities. The organization is founded on an integrated model of leadership development whereby youth are trained to act as mentors to other youth as they work in leadership and decision making positions. Youth are not only the program participants they are also the staff facilitators in the media-making process.

About Trans_Fusion Crew (Supporting Our Youth)
The Trans_Fusion Crew is a project of Supporting Our Youth (SOY), an exciting, dynamic community development project designed to improve the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and transgendered youth in Toronto through the active involvement of youth and adult communities. SOY works to create healthy arts, culture and recreational spaces for young people; to provide supportive housing and employment opportunities; and to increase youth access to adult mentoring and support. The Trans-Fusion Crew is currently working on Handy Trans- a series of skill building workshops on things like carpentry, clothing repair, cooking, and more.

About Sue Ruddick
Sue Ruddick is something of an interdisciplinary scholar. Her initial training was in architecture, followed by a Master’s in Geography and a PhD in Planning. She has practiced as a planner in Montreal (coop housing) and Los Angeles (homelessness) and now teaches in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto. She is fascinated by questions of space, power and political subjectivity, and has written on these questions as they relate to young people, their marginalization and struggles, most recently in a series of articles in Public Culture and Gender, Place and Culture.

About A Potential Toronto
A Potential Toronto is an event series and exhibition spotlighting alternative economies, minor spaces, and organizing strategies. It is a preliminary step in a longer-term counter-cartography project which would render currents of radical energy visible, audible, and tactile.

HOUSING RIGHTS, SAFE SPACES, CREATIVE ACTIONS

A Talk and Film Screening with Women Against Poverty Collective

Part of A Potential Toronto
Initiated by Toronto School of Creativity & Inquiry (TSCI)
More info: www.tsci.ca | tscinquiry@gmail.com

Thurs. 11 Oct. 2007
7:30 pm – 9:30 pm

Toronto Free Gallery
660 Queen Street East (w. of Broadview)

The Women Against Poverty Collective believes that in order for housing to be sustainable, it must be safe, and in order for housing to be safe, it must be controlled by women and for women.

Exposing the connections between poverty, violence and homelessness in women's lives, Shiri Pasternak talks with Jennifer Plyler (WAPC) about their ongoing campaign to create safe, controlled housing for women at risk in Toronto.

Film Screening: 'Women's Housing Takeover' (2007)
The film documents WAPC's 3 Jun. 2007 takeover of an abandoned house in downtown Toronto.

**There will also be an opportunity to make a donation to WAPC.


About Women Against Poverty Collective
WAPC aims to win housing for survivors of violence. WAPC complements their squats and occupations with art in order to be visible/interactive/noisy and gain media attention. Such creative actions include song, clothes-line installations, street theater and interpretive dance. Most recently, WAPC conducted a stencil workshop as part of a new graffiti campaign to identify and draw attention to abandoned buildings in the city that could become housing for women who have experienced violence.

About A Potential Toronto
A Potential Toronto is an event series and exhibition spotlighting alternative economies, minor spaces, and organizing strategies. It is a preliminary step in a longer-term counter-cartography project which would render currents of radical energy visible, audible, and tactile.

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