A workshop with Charles Stankievech

Intelligence is Knowledge with a Shelf Life

Wednesday February 19, 2014 7:00 – 10:00pm
Gallery TPW,
1256 Dundas Street West

With a shared commitment to discursive programming on current debates in contemporary art, Blackwood Gallery and Gallery TPW are pleased to partner with Justina M. Barnicke Gallery to think out loud about curatorial experimentation on the occasion of Charles Stankievech’s curatorial debut in Toronto.

Intelligence is Knowledge with a Shelf Life is a participatory workshop on curatorial methodologies and the contemporary role of the exhibition. In dialogue with his exhibition project CounterIntelligence at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, Stankievech will lead a discussion on recent developments in the field of archival exhibitions, cultures of display and the entanglement of art and theory. The workshop will explore the conditions—disciplinary, institutional, and political—under which new methodologies might emerge. Can the contemporary role of the exhibition escape the “no man’s land between the didactic museum and the conceptual gesture”? How can we engage with art and artefact on the same level without flattening everything as information? Can an archival exhibition avoid the reduction of content to an indexical function and instead be configured as a manifestation capable of generating an affective, immersive experience? What kinds of structures can allow us to imagine different forms of engagement?

PARTICIPATION REQUIREMENTS

1. See the exhibition CounterIntelligence on view at Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, Hart House, University of Toronto
2. Register with Kim Simon at Gallery TPW (kim@gallerytpw.ca). The workshop is free. Space is limited to 16 people.
3. Read the designated texts in advance of the workshop. Once registered, participants will be sent the readings.

Required Readings:
F. M. Begoum (CIA), “Observations on the Double Agent” in Studies in Intelligence Journal, 1962
Paul Virilio, “The Monolith” in Bunker Archeology, 1975
Celine Conderelli, Support Structures (excerpt), 2009
Boris Groys, Google: Grammar Without Words, 2012

Recommend Readings:
Eyal Weizman, “Walking Through Walls” Ch.7 in Hollow Land, 2007
Alexander Galloway, “Edges” in The Exploit: A Theory of Networks, 2007

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Artist Biography

Charles Stankievech is a Canadian artist who has lectured, performed and exhibited at dOCUMENTA13 (Kassel), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Copenhagen), International Symposium on Electronic Arts (ISEA2010, Germany), Xth Biennale of Architecture (Venice), ISSUE Project Room (New York), Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Canadian Centre for Architecture ( Montréal) and MASSMoCA. He has curated such unorthodox exhibitions as Magnetic Norths, A Wake For St. Kippenberger’s MetroNet, and the series OVER THE WIRE with Lawrence Weiner, Gary Hill, Center for Land Use Interpretation, Shary Boyle and others. His writings range from academic journals for MIT Press to experimental texts for art publications. His images have been published in a range of fields from the specialised NASA to the popular WIRED. Stankievech holds an MFA in Open Media and a previous critical theory thesis on Slavoj Žižek and Franz Kafka. He has participated in residencies with the Department of National Defense, Banff Centre for the Arts and Fieldwork in Marfa, Texas. He was a founding faculty member of the Yukon School of Visual Arts in Dawson City, Canada. Since 2011, he is co-director of the art and theory press K. located in Berlin.