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Art Art & Books

25 acres, 30 shows

LAND/SLIDE: POSSIBLE FUTURES (9350 Markham Road, Markham), to October 14. 905-294-4576. landslide-possiblefutures.com. Rating: NNNN


For this ambitious project, curator Janine Marchessault moves from downtown (City Hall at 2012’s Nuit Blanche) and the inner burbs (2009’s Leona Drive Project) to Markham’s heritage museum.

Thirty installations in and around the barns, homes and other rural structures on the 25-acre site explore the intersections of the colonial and agricultural past, the suburban present and our uncertain future. Collaborations with Gendai Gallery highlight the area’s Asian presence.

Workshop buildings house multimedia meditations on their previous functions: knotholes in the closed slaughterhouse offer a peek at Phil Hoffman’s historical videos and projections in the print shop, Aron Louis Cohen documents his process of growing flax and making paper for his Almanac.

Allyson Mitchell’s house is haunted by cobweb-crocheting lesbian ghosts, while Terrance Houle’s eerie barn holds artifacts of a bloody encounter. The aboriginal past confronts us in Julie Nagam’s wigwam in a tool shed and Jeff Thomas’s railroad photographs.

Architectural investigations include Frank Havermans’s graceful wood and rope sculpture that riffs on a barn’s hay-lifting pulleys and Adrian Blackwell and Jane Hutton’s tented installation about the earth displaced by the site’s buildings.

Jennie Suddick charmingly relives recent history by recreating her teenage Markham bedroom and screening friends’ videotaped reminiscences about the town, while Duke and Battersby set a disturbing present-day scene of tween-age mannequins enacting a drunken sexual assault in a pioneer log house.

Choices for the future can be made in performance installations like the Department of Unusual Certainties’ wacky presentation centre selling residences in world cities from Kabul to Malmo, Sweden, and Angel Chen’s dim sum restaurant with a menu of urban improvements.

There are many more installations, some operating only during evening hours, plus panel discussions, performances and community events. Augmented-reality content is available via a phone app, and buses run on weekends from MOCCA.

A multi-layered concept in a beautiful outdoor setting makes Land/Slide a unique and fascinating art experience.

art@nowtoronto.com

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