e-fagia organization

Texts by Lindsey Catherine Cornum, David Garneau, Francisco-Fernando Granados, Heather Hermant, Nasrin Himada, Tarah Hogue, Yaniya Lee, Jessica MacCormack, Farrah Miranda, Wanda Nanibush, Gregory Volk.

Presented by e-fagia

Made possible with the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council

Co-presented by ImagineNative.

Opening Reception: Friday September 18, 6 - 9 pm

In this exhibition, e-fagia presents eight inter-media art projects that have been adapted for display in an online publication platform produced by e-fagia organization. Both the exhibition and the publication bring into relief the embodied experiences of Indigenous people and non-Indigenous racialized im/migrants across the political and geographical borders of North America. In reference to the French expression vis-à-vis, meaning face to face or in relation to, the exhibition voz-à-voz/voice-à-voice provides a space for the articulation of different voices in the context of creative narratives and the frameworks enabled by new media and digital technologies.

In these artists' projects, the relationships between land/geography and bodies are animated, while both technology and tradition materialize as ways of knowing that describe the histories of coloniality. At work is the refinement of a vocabulary of solidarity that articulates the complexities and contradictions of moving within a contemporary colonial landscape and the relationship between indigeneity and immigration in this region. The exhibition features artwork by Micha Cárdenas, Tings Chak, Alexandra Gelis, Gita Hashemi, Cheryl L'Hirondelle, Julie Nagam, and Skawennati.

Curated by Julieta Maria and Maria Coates. Edited by Gina Badger and e-fagia.

PROGRAMMING

Friday 16 October, 2015 at 7:30pm: Publication Launch
Featuring a special performance by Cheryl L'Hirondelle and Joseph Naytowhow as part of the imagineNATIVE Art Crawl, October 16, 2015, 5:00 – 8:30pm, 401 Richmond Building. Visit www.imaginenative.org for full details.

October 8th, 2015 @ 6:30pm: Performance by Micha Cárdenas - Redshift and Portalmetal

October 20th @ 6:00pm: Screening and Artist Talk by Skawennati

October 23rd, 6:30 -8:30 pm & October 24th, 2015 @ 10:00am- 2:00pm: Workshop by Dylan AT Miner: Lowriding as Indigenous Ontology
In this two-day workshop, participants will explore the similarities and tensions between decolonial Latina/o-Latin American theories and Indigenous ontologies. As has been noted, there remain many unspoken antagonisms between emancipatory Latina/o epistemologies and Indigenous ways of being in the Global North. This workshop – using the metaphor and practice of lowriding – will directly engage these tensions and, hopefully, work through them.
RSVP to Maria Coates sending an email to alecoates@gmail.com

October 29th, 6:30pm: Screening and Conversation with artists: Inhabiting the North

For full details of above programming please go to:

vozavoz.ca

Gita Hashemi
With guest readers Sarah Abu-Sharar and Zainab Amadahy

Food artists Salma Al-Atassi, Claude Awad, Azar Masoumi, women of Regent Park Catering Collective, Johl Ringuette (Nishdish), and Nicole Tanguay

Presented by e-fagia

Sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council

When Sayyida Salme bint Said (a.k.a. Emily Said Ruete, 1844-1924) published her memoirs in German in 1886, Germany was only fifteen years old and Canada was nineteen. A daughter of the king of Zanzibar and Oman with a Circassian woman, Salme had left Zanzibar of her own volition at age nineteen following a love affair with a German merchant with whom she later married and had three children. She wrote her memoirs so that her children who were growing up in Hamburg would learn about their mother's culture of origin in the South and ideas about life in the North.

We will gather for a rich feast (alcohol-free, vegan and gluten-free) prepared by indigenous and treaty artists, activists and community groups during which Zainab and Sarah will read and discuss selections from Sayyida Salme's memoirs. We hope you will join us to share food and participate in a good conversation and collective broadcast. (Yes, we really want you to take pictures and videos and write tweets and comments for posting to social media networks.)

Inhabiting the North is the second performance in Passages. It is presented by e-fagia collective to launch our Decolonial Aesthetics Online Publication.

enter here to learn more about Inhabiting the North

IDRC at OCAD University, 49 McCaul Street

micha cárdenas
With guest facilitators, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, and Eddie Ndopu

Presented by e-fagia and co-presented by the Inclusive Design Research Centre at OCAD University

e-fagia is sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts.

What carries us through the city? Urban environments are highly designed with layers of technology. As we move through them, we bring our own technologies that assist us in travel, from canes and wheelchairs to lipstick and hormones to objects with spiritual significance to mobile media and wearable electronics. Inspired by the work of the Gloria Anzaldúa, a gender non-conforming, sick and disabled chicana poet, this two part workshop series brings together together trans people, disabled people, people of color and allies to share our knowledge of moving though the city, in order to build trans and disabled solidarity through our shared need for safe movement.

enter here to learn more

Special issue of FUSE Magazine - September 2013

Organized by e-fagia organization in collaboration with FUSE Magazine, and Justina M. Barnicke Gallery / Hart House.
Gallery partnership: Unpack Studio (11 Willison Square)

Sponsored by Canada Council for the Arts.

Decolonial Aesthetics From The Americas is a multidisciplinary and collaborative symposium for artists and scholars of the Americas and the Caribbean. Featuring papers, workshops and performances, the symposium will provide an unparalleled opportunity to engage the diversity of contemporary aesthetic practices informed by decolonial thought. A special issue of FUSE Magazine, to be published in September 2013, will serve as a reader.

PROGRAMME INFORMATION

Arlan Londono, co-founder and curator of e-Fagia, suddenly passed away last Friday, May 24. Arlan has been one of the pillars of our organization and will be immensely missed. Arlan was an inspiration to all of us, always in solidarity with different struggles against oppresive structures of power and coloniality.

He believed in art as a site of change and in the necessity of being socially and politically committed, both as an artist and as a person. He was interested in collaborations and multidisciplinary projects, always pushing people around him to do more and better because he knew our time on this planet was limited. He was an enthusiast, always imagining new projects at an impossible rate.

Our dear friend has left us without saying goodbye, like he did many times when he would disappear from social gatherings without a trace. We will miss his enthusiasm, committment and generosity. It is a huge loss to our organization, to the people who knew him and to the artworld in general. Our thoughts go to his family and friends.

e-Fagia would like to thank the community of artists and friends for all the support received during this time.

e_fagia organization in collaboration with FUSE Magazine and Unpack Studio Gallery is pleased to present:

In conjunction with an upcoming symposium this fall entitled Decolonial Aesthetics From The Americas, a multidisciplinary and collaborative symposium for artists and scholars of the Americas and the Caribbean, this salon will feature texts related to the general framework of the symposium, as selected by the symposium organizers e-fagia Collective and FUSE Magazine, and salon hosts Unpack Studio Gallery.

no reading after internet

e_fagia organization in collaboration with Unpack Studio Gallery, are pleased to present:

Artist Talk
Adriano Alves Pinto
CESC VideoBrasil Festival
Executive Director

Date: Monday April 15th at 7 pm.

Place: Unpack Studio Gallery / Web
11 Willison Square / Map
(Main Intersection: Dundas & Spadina)

The International Contemporary Art Festival SESC_Videobrasil is the main artistic meeting of the geopolitical South, held every two years in Brazil. It aims to map, disseminate and discuss the emerging production in that circuit, and it also plays an important role in dialogue with consolidated Brazilian and international productions and artists. Among its main segments are the Southern Panoramas exhibition and related curatorships-initiatives from which it has created an active world-wide network of exchange and cooperation. The festival will celebrate its 30th anniversary this year, as it holds its 18th edition from November 5, 2013 to February 2, 2014.

e-fagia organization is pleased to present digital event'13:

This year’s digital event Dystopias on Art and Technology is the latest project within an investigation on dystopian or anti-utopian visions of contemporary culture, started last year by e-fagia collective. Digital event’13 deals with the way artists respond to social unrest and dystopian feelings, from their own poetics and aesthetics. Digital event’13 will feature: a gallery exhibition at Gallery1313, with the participation of Mario Opazo, Alexandra Gelis, and Alexandra Majerus; and a contemporary Sound Art performance at CineCycle with the participation of Brunette Collective, Edgardo Moreno, and Sarah Decarlo.

The projects presented in e-fagia’s exhibition Dystopias on Art and Technology relate to memory, migration, delusion, politics and poetics. Mario Opazo, Alexandra Gelis and Alexandra Majerus use technology to register what they believe is their reflection on the actual state of reality. We could state that their impressions stem from some kind of utopian perspective of the self and move towards a deep reflection on society, which results in dystopian visions of the contemporary world. These artists have in common the way they use memory, in an attempt to establish a relationship between contradictory ideas like their self-reflection and their reference to different cultures and countries and their political problems; finally, the beauty of the images creates a mirage that speaks to delusion or dystopia.

Mario Opazo is a Chilean-born media artist who lives in Colombia and has represented that country during the previous versions of Havana and Venice Biennials. Mario’s project, Solo de Violin / Violin Solo, is a video installation created as a tribute to the disappeared. This video consists of a minimalistic action performed by Mario during one of his visits to southern Chile, where he faced the extreme conditions of the landscape. Mario intervened the landscape with a violin attached to a rod, while the extreme wind blows and the violin is hit by the bow. Violin Solo is powerful metaphor for remembrance and disappearance.

Local artist Alexandra Gelis is presenting a two channel video installationentitled Casiteros. The word Casiteros refers to young kids who play "to make little houses" but it is also a term used to label little kids who, in order to get protection, are sexually abused by an older kid. The video consists of a stationary shot of a boy who lives in a disadvantaged neighbourhood called The Woods in Cartagena, Colombia. In this project, Alexandra uses the video like a photographic moment extended in time, where the sound evocates the space, the neighbourhood and the proximity of the others, while serving as an index for the action. This is a contemplative video where feelings of delusion and danger arise at the end.

The exhibition is completed with Alexandra Majerus’s video installation Remapping (Orion's Belt). Alexandra is a Canadian-born artist who grew up in the Caribbean island of Barbados. The reference to Orion's Belt relates to her life in different places, where the sky turns, for her, into the common reference. In this video, Alexandra does a single shot of three melting ice stars. Remapping (Orion's Belt) is a beautiful metaphor about the multiple perceptions of reality and the fragility of the memory.

Contemporary Sound Art Presentation

at CineCycle
March 9th from 8 to 11 pm

Another important component of our Digital Event’13 is the contemporary music presentation. This event will include the presentation of Binaural Beats by Brunette, a sound art collective based in Toronto, including VJ and DJ performances; Nightmare by Edgardo Moreno, a performance with live-generated sound and video, where the artist will be manipulating audio from a video in real time in order to express his ideas about a dystopian world. Finally, we will present DystoRpian Soundsby Sarah Decarlo, a filmmaker, musician, singer/songwriter of Ojibwa and Italian ancestry living in Peterborough, ON. This piece will explore the integration of the Spanish and English connection expressed in the neologism DystoRpia.

Edgardo Moreno at La Cupula Media Lab, Cordoba, Argentina

8th Encuentro
Cities | Bodies | Action:
The Politics of Passion in the Americas

Date:January 12 to19 of 2013
Place: Universidade de São Paulo / SESC Vila Mariana
Sao Paulo, Brazil
Hemispheric Institute of Performance & Politics, Web

DystoRpia Performance Project
DystoRpia is an interdisciplinary performance that can be presented as an intervention in public space or as a gallery installation. It features a performance and live streaming presentations including Sound art, Literature, Video, and VJing. The focus of our proposals is to work with the concept of performance of power manifested through the communication technology.

No_Media Collective was created as a collective of artists, curators and media researchers, to produce and develop contemporary art projects. As a trans-cultural and trans-disciplinary collective, we engage in practices that stand at the end of disciplinary art.

Entre Activa Collective

Dates: November 15 to December 15 of 2012
Place: El Parqueadero Gallery,
Bogotá, Colombia. Web

Error 404: Origin Not Found
Artists: Julieta Maria, Jorge Lozano, Alexandra Gelis, Ulysses Castellanos, Theo Pelmus, Hector Centeno and Arlan Londoño.

Error 404: Origin Not Found is a contemporary new media art exhibition created by a multicultural collective of artists that lives literally between different worlds or cultures: North America, in most of their cases their country of origin, and the multicultural and diverse Latin American context. These characteristics allow this collective to travel or navigate through cultural barriers or confront them by using strategies from one culture in other, or work in different disciplines using the same metaphoric strategy by crossing platforms and finding errors and problems of origin in the systems and discourses.

Fase4 Encuentro Art & Technology
Post ecology
Toward Cultural and Environmental Sustainability

October 11 to 14 of 2012
Place: Recoleta Cultural Center,
Buenos Aires Argentina Web

Error 404: Origin Not Found
Artists: Julieta Maria, Jorge Lozano, Alexandra Gelis, and Arlan Londoño.

During the social protests in Greek of last May, one of the most popular slogans was "Error 404: Democracy not found”; Error 404 as a metaphor, could show us a different theoretical path in the contemporary world, imbued of efficiency and perfection. In other words, Error 404 points to the importance of the error and the not-found object, concept or sphere. This aspect of Error 404 could drive us to the critical perspective opposite to the main theories in the technological sphere dominated by efficiency and control.

e-fagia organization is pleased to present:

Kika Nicolela is a Brazilian artist, filmmaker and independent curator, currently doing an art-residency at LIFT – Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto. ACTING OUT presents a selection of her single-channel pieces, followed by a Q&A with the artist mediated by Jorge Lozano. In this discussion, Nicolela will drawn from her own experience and approach topics like the relationship between the practice of the artist and her insertion in the international art scene, the artist as a curator and instigator, and the nomadic experience of the artist in the context of art-residencies. She will also give a brief overview of the exciting art scene in Brazil and its opportunities for international artists.

e-fagia organization is pleased to present:

Through the darkness skies are gonna show
- Obituary-Dead Silence

What we know about dark matter, is that it is a new kind of unseen particle that falls readily into galaxies and clusters. The fact that it is dark means that it is neutral, rather than electrically charged; in general, charged particles interact readily with light, and would not be dark. The fact that the dark matter is concentrated in galaxies and clusters indicates that it is slowly moving; particles of this form are referred to as "cold." What could the cold dark matter be made of ? We are not at all sure, although numerous theories have been proposed.

There are so many possibilities that we can reach. We would be doing ourselves injustice were we to kill our curiosity. Why should we feel sufficient; why should we fear the dark. Why should we walk on bright, smooth roads when there are so many other roads to choose which, despite being far from comfort, offer various possibilities? Culture, art, science and technology are not merely to consume, but to lead us towards various other possibilities. If our body could not reach them, should our mind too cease to do so? Let our abilities and knowledge roam the dark realms. Let our body walk on the dark side. Let us understand the dark and turn it into light. Because if art and science were dead, only will and knowledge remain.

In 6th edition of CELLSBUTTON, all participants and programs were selected through Open Call application and hand - picked selection process. Selection process were made from dialogues between HONF members and surrounding creative communities to determine suitable artists and programs that are representative to Education Focus Program [EFP] vision and objectives.

The 2012 edition of the Havana Biennial will be developed in international circumstances where debates regarding the scenarios of contemporary art have been substantially modified and have acquired new meanings for artists as well as for the institutions and the different audiences... + go