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  • Denise Ferreira Da Silva

    Professor and Director of the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia, Da Silva studies colonial/racial subjugation by attending to the centrality of violence in the metaphysical, ontoepistemological, and ethical dimensions of modern thought. Her writings include Toward a Global Idea of Race (Minnesota, 2017), “No-Bodies” (GLR, 2009), “To be Announced” (Social Text, 2013) and texts for 2016 Liverpool and Sao Paulo Biennials, the 2017 Venice Biennale, and Documenta 14 – Reader. Her collaborations include Serpent Rain (film with Arjuna Neuman) and Return of the Vanishing Peasant (play with Rosalind Martin), and Poethical Readings and the Sensing Salon (events with Valentina Desideri).

     

  • Valentina Desideri

    Based in Amsterdam, Desideri trained in contemporary dance at the Laban Centre in London (2003–2006) and completed her MA in Fine Arts at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam (2011–13). She does Fake Therapy and Political Therapy, and is one of the co-organizers of Performing Arts Forum in France, she speculates in writing with Stefano Harney, she engages in Poethical Readings with Denise Ferreira da Silva, she is part of the Oficina de Imaginação Política, she reads and writes.

  • Amalle Dublon

    Dublon received her PhD in 2017 from the Program in Literature at Duke University, and teaches at NYU and the New School. Her writing on performance, art, sound, and other questions is published in GLQ Gay and Lesbian Quarterly, TDR The Drama Review (forthcoming), and Lateral, the journal of the Cultural Studies Association.

  • STEFANO HARNEY

    Harney teaches at Singapore Management University, and was Artistic Co-Director with the collective freethought of the 2016 Bergen Assembly triennial in Norway where he curated the show ‘Shipping and the Shipped.’  He is co-author with Fred Moten of The Undercommons: fugitive planning and black study, and the forthcoming All Incomplete, both with Minor Compositions/Autonomedia.

  • Mariana Marcassa

    Currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the SenseLab at Concordia University, Montreal, Marcassa works with the affects of sound through her practice in performance art and Sound Therapy. She works from the assumption that it is with and through the voice where it becomes possible for us to break free from meaning, communication and dialogue, opening up different paths, other modes of existence, expression, sense and contact with the forces of the world.

  • Byron Peters

    An artist and writer based in Vancouver, unceded Coast Salish Territories, Peters’ practice critically engages labour and materiality in the context of emerging technologies, economic imaginaries, prison education, and the effects of gentrification and displacement. Peters’ solo and collaborative works have been exhibited at The Darling Foundry, Montreal; Para Site, Hong Kong; ICA Miami; The White Building, London; The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York; The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, and others. His writings have appeared in Continent, SFMOMA Open Space, Cesura//Accesso, and Fillip.

  • CONSTANTINA ZAVITSANOS

    Working in sculpture, performance, text, and sound, and on issues of debt, dependency, and means beyond measure, Zavitsanos has exhibited works at the New Museum in New York; at Arika in Glasgow, Scotland; at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York, and at Wysing Arts Centre in Cambridge, UK. With Park McArthur, they co-authored “Other Forms of Conviviality,” in Women & Performance, a journal of feminist theory, and “The Guild of the Brave Poor Things,” forthcoming in Trap Door, MIT Press. Zavitsanos lives in New York and teaches at the New School.

  • Bopha Chhay

    Director/Curator 2016–2022.

Exhibitions

Sensing Salon

VALENTINA DESIDERI, DENISE FERREIRA DA SILVA
November 24–December 16, 2017

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Sensing_Salon-1-2

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with
JUSTINE A. CHAMBERS, AMALLE DUBLON, STEFANO HARNEY, MARIANA MARCASSA, BYRON PETERS, AND CONSTANTINA ZAVITSANOS

Healing, as much as art, is a praxis. It is something to do and it does something: it restores. In their collaborative work, Valentina Desideri and Denise Ferreira da Silva explore healing as an art form, a praxis of sensing and making sense that includes studying, thinking, reading and restoring experiments that reach for the deepest level of our entangled existence. Ferreira da Silva and Desideri will host a Sensing Salon at Artspeak—a studio for the practice of healing arts—where different reading and healing tools will be shared and available for use, such as Tarots, medicinal plants, Fake Therapy cards, books, Astrology, Reiki, etc.

The Salon will also host sessions of Poethical Readings, a study group dedicated to experiments in entangled existence. Invited artists Constantina Zavitsanos and Amalle Dublon will share their practice of Astrology through a public reading and a workshop. Valentina Desideri will lead a one-day workshop to share her practices of Fake Therapy and Political Therapy. Invited artist Justine A. Chambers will host Rest to Move to Rest a workshop that will consider the space between rest and simple repetitive movements adapted from social dance, somatic practice and western contemporary dance.

In partnership with the Critical + Creative Social Justice Studies Research Program, UBC Social Justice Institute, during the Sensing Salon, Artspeak will also host an iteration of the Elemental Panel: AIRWAVES: Anti-Colonial Methods. The Elemental Panels program assembles academics, artists, and activists whose contributions to critical racial, anti-colonial, and feminist thought and practice draw from the signifying richness of the elements—air, water, fire, and earth.

The Salon will be open and available for use Thursday to Saturday, 12–5pm punctuated by weekly contributions and events by the invited guests and artists.

* SCHEDULE *

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 8PM

Introduction to the Sensing Salon with Valentina Desideri and Denise Ferreira da Silva
GPS Reading with Constantina Zavitsanos and Amalle Dublon

Constantina Zavitsanos and Amalle Dublon will introduce their approach to Astrology as alternative time keeping (and time spending) device by conducting a public reading for Artspeak’s natal chart.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2PM

GPS Workshop with Constantina Zavitsanos and Amalle Dublon

Constantina Zavitsanos and Amalle Dublon will give an introductory workshop on the speculative planning practice of astrology. They will explain some of the basic structures and elements that compose an astrological chart, focusing on the vocabulary they employ for reading.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30 and
THURSDAY DECEMBER 14, by Appointment

Poethical Readings sessions with Ferreira da Silva and Desideri

What if, instead of providing a resolution, a direct answer, or a definite interpretation, a reading helped us to navigate the complex reality, its different positions, relationships and layers that also constitute us? Every reading exposes possibilities, reveals blockages and shifts perspectives. Beyond the principles of non-contradiction and identity, readings design a space where multiple articulations of situations and events coexist without the imposition of a single meaning or direction.

Drawing from each other’s practices Denise Ferreira da Silva and Valentina Desideri come together for experimental readings. They experiment with ‘reading tools’ inspired by well-known and newly-designed practices—such as the Tarots, Political Therapy, Palmistry, Fake Therapy as well as Reiki, Astrology and Philosophy. Relying on the kind of knowing that Walter Benjamin calls mimetic (intuitive) faculty and Carl G Jung associative thinking, these tools assemble a reading or an image. Reading as imaging, in their practice, consists of an assembling that exposes and navigates the complex context constituting the situation, event or problem that concerns a person or collective at a given moment and place. As such, it aims at expanding the horizon of interpretation, that is, to open up possibilities and unsettle realities.

How does it work? Each session, attended by an individual or small group (5 people maximum), will last for about 45 minutes. There is no need to come with a well-defined question. For ‘the question’ can also come up during an initial reading and it can be further narrowed or expanded when addressed by other tools.

Please call Artspeak to book an appointment at (604) 688-0051. November 30: 3pm, 4pm, and 5pm; December 14: 4pm, 5pm, and 6pm

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2PM

Elemental Panel: AIRWAVES: Anti-Colonial Methods with Stefano Harney, Mariana Marcassa + Byron Peters

Presented in partnership with the Critical + Creative Social Justice Studies Research Program, UBC Social Justice Institute.

Artspeak and UBC’s Social Justice Institute invite you to a conversation inspired by the element air. This conversation is part of Anti-colonial Methods, which is a series of events—panels, workshops, screenings, performances, conversation, writings—in which we would like to explore the synergies and tensions between critical and creative work that engage ongoing colonial and racial violence in their various (total, symbolic, subtle, overt, unexpected, quotidian, casual, official, … ) modes of actualisation. Inspired by four elements (air, fire, water, and earth) we hope to create space for and support conversations that spark our imagination and both sustain the anti-colonial practices in which we are already involved and the ones yet to be unleashed.

The Critical + Creative Social Justice Studies Research Program offers learning, research, and practice opportunities to students interested in creating artistic work that engage with critical tools and formulations developed in critical, racial and anti-colonial, feminist, queer, and trans* scholarship. Focusing on the potential of the creative work to disrupt ingrained ideas and representations through affecting the senses and the imagination, this research program sits at the intersection of art, activism, and academic work.

TUESDAY DECEMBER 5, 7PM

Sound Journeys with Mariana Marcassa

In this workshop individual participants will travel through the various sound landscapes created by Mariana Marcassa’s intuitive curation of  instruments. As a collective they will also be guided to experiment with their own as well as with the voices of others.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7, 7PM

Study Group: Experiments in Entangled Co-Existence I with Denise Ferreira da Silva and Valentina Desideri

In these sessions, we will read and discuss texts in philosophy, and art & political theory as well as experiment with practices of entanglement. Anybody taking part in the study group is invited to bring in further texts, practices, exercises, side-thoughts and intuitions that could potentially contribute to our study.

We will be starting with Stefano Harney and Fred Moten’s text Improvement and Preservation, or, Usufruct and Use

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2PM

Fake Therapy and Political Therapy with Valentina Desideri

Valentina Desideri will share and transmit her practice of Fake Therapy and Political Therapy. Fake Therapy is a practice between two persons that stimulates and reactivates the sometimes hidden capacities of anyone to heal anyone (or anything) else. It is a practice autonomous of disciplinary origins and refuses expertise or any form of knowledge-authority. While Political Therapy is a one-to one performative format that creates the condition for conversation and some speculative thinking around political issues, via the body.

Appointments can be made for the 15th. Available time slots are 12, 1:30, 3 and 4:30pm. Please call the gallery to book an appointment. 604.688.0051

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 14, 7PM

Study Group: Experiments in Entangled Co-Existence II with Denise Ferreira da Silva and Valentina Desideri

In these sessions, we will read and discuss texts in philosophy, and art & political theory as well as experiment with practices of entanglement. Anybody taking part in the study group is invited to bring in further texts, practices, exercises, side-thoughts and intuitions that could potentially contribute to our study.

Starting with Stefano Harney and Fred Moten’s text Improvement and Preservation, or, Usufruct and Use
and notes from the previous group Entangled Socialities II – Pursuing the Question of Value

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2PM

“Rest to Move to Rest” with Justine A. Chambers

In this workshop participants will alternate between rest and simple repetitive movements adapted from social dance, somatic practice and western contemporary dance. By practicing individually while together, participants will work with a gentle awareness on the transmission of felt information between bodies. We will practice movement to rest our minds, and return to rest to feel the perpetual movements of our bodies.

Thank you to our partners University of British Columbia Community Engagement and
the Critical + Creative Social Justice Studies Research Program, UBC Social Justice Institute.

Postscript 72: Sebastiaan Boersma on Sensing Salon

Publications

  • Slow, incremental, non-linear

     

    Title: Slow, incremental, non-linear
    Series Title: Beacon – a series in ten issues
    Author: Bopha Chhay
    Artist: Laiwan
    Series Editor: Bopha Chhay
    Design: Vicky Lum
    Copyeditor: Alexandra Bischoff
    Publisher: Artspeak
    Printed by: Metropolitan Fine Printers
    Year Published: 2023
    Cover: soft
    Binding: staples
    Dimensions: 15.2 x 22.9 cm
    Edition of 100
    ISBN: 978-1-927630-23-5
    Cost: $12
    Subscription: $100


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    BEACON Subscription (Ten Issues) – Choose Shipping Option



     

    ‘BEACON – a pamphlet series in ten issues’ focuses on how the commitment of artists’ to wider social movements informs contemporary artistic practice. The series will feature texts by artists whose practices engage with language and visual arts.

    Current issues:
    01 – Ruth Buchanan
    02 – Hong-Kai Wang
    03 – Christina Battle
    04 – Justine A. Chambers
    05 – Sameer Farooq and
    Jared Stanley

    06 – Gelare Khoshgozaran
    07 – Lana Lopsei
    08 – Be Oakley
    09 – Bopha Chhay
    10 – Nasrin Himada