THE CENTRE FOR INCIDENTAL ACTIVISMS at the Art Gallery of York University (Accolade East, 4700 Keele), to March 13. 416-736-5169, theAGYUisOutThere.org. Rating: NNN
A door labelled cia leads to the Centre for Incidental Activisms, the boardroom HQ of an ongoing AGYU project. Don’t expect the usual art-viewing experience: the CIA focuses on artists’ research rather than finished products.
Check the website for a schedule of worthy events: artists discuss their opening-night performances G20 stories get recorded for a graphic novel Jane-Finch youth participate in an artist-led forum and photography project an online hookup links to the U.S. National Youth Summit celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides.
For those like me who searched in vain for flaming police car projections and kettling experiments at Nuit Blanche, the art world finally meets the G20. In Eugenio Salas’s opening-night performance, “police” herded us into one end of the room, gave us black balaclavas and intimidatingly bashed a chair against a faux window until it shattered. The stakes are low here, but at least Salas is beginning the conversation.
Public Studio‘s (Elle Flanders, Eshrat Erfanian and Tamira Sawatzky) Kino Pravda is a video mashup of protest, from Soviet-era black-and-white footage through the London education cuts demos, that VJs spun at the opening with a staticky winds-of-change soundtrack.
Deanna Bowen, whose work on black history includes a genealogical project that’s connected her with African-American relatives in Alabama, explores the 1965 Toronto sit-in at the U.S. Consulate in support of the Selma freedom marchers. Photocopies of news photos and excerpts from York’s student newspaper calling the protest “undignified and in poor taste” are available at the gallery. Her opening-night karaoke performance, in which a beer-and-pizza-fuelled white guy sang Neil Young’s Alabama and Southern Man, comments on the struggle’s impact on Canadians.
If you crave more conventional viewing, there’s also Revolutionary Sundays, photos by Cuba’s Gilberto Ante. Some show Fidel or Che addressing or interacting with the public, but most charmingly portray casual, intimate scenes of work and play, obviously shot by a trusted compatriot.
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