Session 10: EREHWON/NOWHERE

A panel discussion with with: Anne Bertrand (ARCA), Biljana Ciric, Ola Khalidi and Diala Khasawnih (Makan), Jonathan Middleton (Bodgers’ and Kludgers’ Co-operative Art Parlour and Or Gallery) Jonathan Middleton (Canada) is an artist and curator based in Vancouver. His practice employs methodologies of comedy and institutional practices to explore interests in language and politics. In 2007 he became the director/curator of the Or Gallery. Biljana Ciric is an independent curator based in Shanghai. She was formerly the director of the Curatorial Department at the Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art. Her project Institution for the Future (2011) at the Asia Triennial (Manchester) showcased artists’ collectives and small, independent, para-institutions from various Asian countries actively engaged with their local arts scenes and who contribute to the development of an arts infrastructure in their regions. Anne Bertrand (Canada) is currently director of ARCA, and has been active in the not-for-profit art world for the past twenty years. From 2004 to 2012, she was the artistic coordinator of Skol, a Montréal based artist-run centre that supports emerging and research-driven artistic practices. Ola Khalidi and Diala Khasawinh (Jordan)
 Along with Samah Hijawi they are core members of the collective Makan, an independent contemporary art space based in Amman, Jordan. Founded in 2003 by Khalidi, Makan encourages experimentation in concepts and production. Among its projects are an artist exchange and residency program, local and international workshops, exhibitions, performances, and screenings. Bastien Gilbert is the Executive Director of the Regroupement des centres d’artistes autogérés du Québec (RCAAQ) and has worked as a cultural administrator for more than 25 years, after having been a paleontologist and a teacher. He was instrumental in the founding of the Conseil de la culture de la région du Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean in 1978. In 1986, he cofounded the RCAAQ. It represents an interest community of over 2,250 professional artists and cultural workers. Each year, this network produces over 900 activities including exhibitions, performances, publications, symposiums, and so on. See rcaaq.org. Virginija Januškeviciute is currently a curator at the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC) in Vilnius, Lithuania. She is also one of the founders of the Baltic Notebooks of Anthony Blunt, an editorial initiative aimed to mediate, generate and suggest real events; the contributions by artists and writers are mainly published online at www.blunt.cc and in an accumulating paper edition. Brad Butler and Karen Mirza organize The Museum of Non Participation in the UK. It proposes a museum as a conceptual (geo)political construct of gesture, image, and thresholds of language. The Museum of Non Participation was conceived during the Pakistani Lawyers movement in Islamabad – protests Mirza and Butler witnessed through the windows of the National Art Gallery – and developed over an eighteen-month period. As part of the project, the artists have worked with street vendors, Urdu translators, architects, estate agents, housing activists, lawyers, hairdressers, filmmakers, wedding photographers, newspaper printers, artists, and writers to create spaces for dialogue and exchange. The project has taken the form of various media. Claire Tancons (USA)
and Christopher Cozier (Trinidad). Tancons is a curator, writer, and researcher whose work focuses on carnival, public ceremonial culture, and protest movements. Christopher Cozier is an artist, writer, and curator living and working in Trinidad. Cozier co-directs Alice Yard at once a physical space, a collaborative network, and an ongoing conversation about contemporary art and creativity in the Caribbean.