Presented by the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto, the annual MVS Proseminar offers visual studies graduate students in curatorial studies and studio art the opportunity to connect and exchange with field-leading international and local artists, curators, writers, theorists, and other creative scholarly practitioners and researchers.

The 2023-2024 MVS Proseminar series is organized by Zach Blas and Jean-Paul Kelly.

All events take place in Main Hall at the Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent (unless otherwise noted) and are free and open to the public. View or download the series poster.

Winter 2024

January 16, 6:30 p.m. ET
Hearth 
Curatorial collective

Hearth seeks to provide a site to present projects by a diverse range of emerging collaborators within a context that values experimentation and community. Hearth works towards an anti-oppressive, queer-positive environment and welcomes marginalized and racialized folks through programming that celebrates the work of a diverse range of emerging collaborators.

February 13, 6:30 p.m. ET
Corina L. Apostol
Curator, art historian, and editor

Dr. Corina L. Apostol curates and researches at the intersection of art and politics, focusing on artists who create long-term, pedagogical, community-based projects to empower their audiences. Dr. Apostol is the co-founder of the seminal activist art and publishing collective ArtLeaks and editor-in-chief of the ArtLeaks Gazette. Dr. Apostol is an Assistant Professor in Social Practice in Contemporary Art and Culture in the Faculty of the Humanities at the University of Amsterdam.

February 27, 6:30 p.m. ET
P. Staff
Artist

P. Staff is a filmmaker, installation artist, and poet, whose interdisciplinary practice explores necropolitics, affect theory, the transpoetics of writers, modern dance, astrology, and end of life care to emphasise the processes by which bodies––especially those of people who are queer, trans, or disabled––are interpreted, regulated, and disciplined in a rigorously controlled society. This event is part of the Daniels Faculty's Fall 2023 Public Program in association with MVS Proseminar. Please register in advance.

March 5, 6:30 p.m.
Cassils
Artist

Cassils, Associate Professor of Visual Studies in the Daniels Faculty at U of T, is a transgender artist who makes their own body the material and protagonist of their performances. Their art contemplates the history(s) of LGBTQI+ violence, representation, struggle and survival. Drawing from the idea that bodies are formed in relation to forces of power and social expectations, Cassils’s work investigates historical contexts to examine the present moment.

March 26, 6:30 p.m. ET
Elisa Giardina Papa
Artist

Elisa Giardina Papa is a research-based artist whose practice, employing discarded AI training datasets, censored cinema repositories, factitious colonial travel accounts, or fabricated heretical accusations, seeks forms of knowledge and desire that have been lost or forgotten, disqualified, and rendered nonsensical by hegemonic demands for order and legibility. Papa is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University.

All images courtesy of the artists. Image captions: (1.) P. Staff's In Ekstase, (Kunsthalle Basel, 2023). Photo by Philipp Hänger. (2.) Cassils-Tiresias, Performance Still No. 3 (ANTI Festival, Kupio, Finland, 2012). Photo by Cassils with Pekka Mekinen.

The John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto is excited to present its Winter 2024 Public Program. 

Our program this semester addresses a range of pertinent issues concerning the natural and built environments, continuing the Faculty’s tradition of fostering dialogue and exchanging knowledge through a curated series of exhibitions, lectures, book talks, panel discussions and symposia. 

Through these events, we aim to engage our local and international communities on the important social, political and environmental challenges confronting our disciplines and the world today. Topics addressed include design and ecology, space and social justice, urbanization and housing, art and biopolitics, and architecture land sovereignty. 

All of the events in our program are free and open to the public. Register in advance through Eventbrite and consult the calendar for up-to-date details at daniels.utoronto.ca/events. 

January 23, 6:30 p.m. ET 
Jeffrey Cook Memorial Lecture: HEALING
Featuring Võ Trọng Nghĩa (VTN Architects)

RSVP

February 1, 6:30 p.m. ET
I heard you were looking for me
Featuring Germane Barnes (School of Architecture, University of Miami)

RSVP

February 8, 6:30 p.m. ET
Michael Hough/OALA Visiting Critic in Landscape Architecture Lecture: Design and the Just Public Realm
Featuring Chelina Odbert (Kounkuey Design Initiative) 

RSVP

February 15, 6:30 p.m. ET
Black Diasporas Tkaronto-Toronto
Featuring Kholisile Dhliwayo (afrOURban Inc.)

RSVP

February 27, 6:30 p.m. ET
MVS Proseminar: In Ekstase
Featuring P. Staff (visual and performance artist)

RSVP

February 29, 6:30 p.m. ET
Architecture’s 21st-Century Promise: Spatial Justice Practices
Featuring Dana Cuff (UCLA Architecture and Urban Design) 

RSVP

March 7, 6:30 p.m. ET
Designing Delivery: An Examination of the Intersection of Design and Birth
Featuring Kim Holden (School of Architecture, Yale University) 

RSVP

March 21, 6:30 p.m. ET 
Architecture and the Right to Housing
Generously Supported by the Irving Grossman Fund in Affordable Housing
Featuring Leilani Farha (The Shift) and  Paul Karakusevic (Karakusevic Carson Architects) with Karen Kubey (Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto)

RSVP

March 28, 6:30 p.m. ET 
CANCELLED: Cabin as Tactic and Strategy
Featuring John Bass (School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, University of British Columbia) and Snxakila Clyde Michael Tallio (Cultural Director, Nuxalk First Nation)

Events will be livestreamed and available to view on the Daniels Faculty’s YouTube channel. 

EXHIBITIONS ON VIEW

October 25, 2023-March 22, 2024
ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home
Organized by the Canadian Centre for Architecture with the Daniels Faculty

December 11, 2023-February 26, 2024
USING TREES AS THEY ARE
Curated by Zachary Mollica (Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto) 
Public Lecture: USING TREES AS THEY ARE, February 26, 6:00 p.m. ET 

RSVP

March 6-May 14, 2024
How to Steal a Country
Curated by Lukas Pauer (Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto)
Exhibition Opening: March 6, 5:30 p.m. ET

RSVP

Public Lecture: Recognizing Facts on the Ground: Deconstructing Power in the Built Environment, March 14, 6:30 p.m. ET 

RSVP

“Berlin is a food you have to marinate carefully.”

With this metaphor, the writer, musician and podcaster Musa Okwonga (pictured at centre below) welcomed a group of 18 Daniels Faculty students on their first morning in Berlin as part of a unique global studio led by Assistant Professor Peter Sealy.

Having read Okwonga’s Berlin memoir In The End, It Was All About Love (Rough Trade Books, 2021) before travelling there, the students engaged in a lively discussion about his creative process, why he left Britain for Berlin, and what life is like as a Black, bisexual man in Germany’s capital.

“Musa is a wonderfully generous person whom the students were thrilled to meet,” says Sealy. “His writing captures Berlin’s essence: It’s a city that requires patience to discover in all its complex flavours; you have to find your own way in.”

For Sealy, that “way in” to learning about Berlin is through films. He titled his iteration of ARC 300/2016 “Berlin, A City in Film,” and designed the course to reflect cinema’s powerful role in the construction of Berlin’s image as a modern metropolis. “Berlin’s unique status as a place where movies are made, whether that was in the 1920s or today, makes film an ideal lens for deciphering this huge city,” according to Sealy.

As a historian of media such as film and photography, Sealy himself has studied the Berlin Wall as it has appeared in films. “I believe film is a uniquely accessible medium for students to learn about new places,” he says. “As a society, we constantly consume moving pictures, which often show how people inhabit urban spaces.”

Prior to travelling to Germany, the students watched a series of films set in Berlin, beginning with Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire (1987). Their spectatorship continued with a series of nightly screenings during their three-week stay in Berlin. Highlights included seeing Walter Ruttmann’s Berlin—Symphony for a Metropolis (1927) at a freiluftkino (open-air cinema) in one of Berlin’s ubiquitous courtyards. The film was accompanied by a live performance by the electronic music group Tronthaim. Other films watched included Roberto Rosseillini’s Germany Year Zero (1948), Heiner Carow’s The Legend of Paul and Paula (1973), Cynthia Beatt’s Cycling the Frame (1988) and Sebastien Schipper’s Victoria (2018).

By day, the students explored the city through an intensive schedule of guided tours, site visits, meetings with local experts, and workshops. Among the highlights was an emotionally moving tour of the archives of the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police: a repository showcasing the banal bureaucracy of evil. Architect and U of T alumnus Bruce Kuwabara arranged a tour of the Canadian Embassy on Leipziger Platz, which he designed with his firm, KPMB Architects. The students also took day trips to Potsdam, Hamburg and Dessau, seeing the famous Bauhaus in the latter.

Yixuan Zhang, a third-year student in the Daniels Faculty’s Bachelor of Arts, Architectural Studies program, “loved exploring buildings we usually only see on [lecture] slides…going inside a building and being able to feel its materials is something I treasured from all our site visits.”

In addition to Okwonga, local Berliners who met the students included the architects Christoph Heinemann, Jochen Jürgensen and plattenbaustudio, the photographer Stefan Berg, and the author Maria Zinfert. In the course’s spirit of experimentation and discovery, one afternoon was spent learning to use analog printing presses at galerie p98a, and an evening was set aside for a Hertha Berlin soccer match at the Olimpiastadion.

The students’ main assignment was to make an eight- or 16-millimetre film using Super-8 or Bolex cameras. To do so, they were guided by three young Berlin-based filmmakers from the LaborBerlin collective: Christian Flemm, Jules Leaño and Adèle Perrin. Working in small groups, the students traversed Berlin, each trying to capture some aspect of the city’s unique spatial tapestry. “The goal of the project,” Sealy says, “was to introduce a new, unfamiliar medium [analog filmmaking] while prompting the students to see Berlin ‘through the lens.’ In other words, making films provided an opportunity to glimpse the city as filmmakers do.”

For Auden Tura, a fourth-year student in Daniels’ Bachelor of Arts, Visual Studies program, “the slowness and careful preparation required for 16mm filmmaking” allowed her and groupmates Ella Spitzer-Stephan and Gillian Stam to consider “Berlin’s urban spaces from a new perspective. With our Bolex, we began to see Berlin’s overgrown courtyards and empty buildings as mystical spaces.” Inspired by Maya Deren’s ground-breaking 1943 short Meshes of the Afternoon—which the students watched at a special screening curated by Flemm—their film investigated the surreal qualities of these semi-abandoned spaces found all over Berlin.

For Taylor Joseph, a second-year student in the Faculty’s Master of Architecture program, the entire cinematic focus of the course proved edifying. “Without the context of the course, I don’t think I would have watched or had the knowledge to be pointed in the direction of these films, most of which are in the German language. They provided a wealth of information on and such insight into the metropolis over generations. As an architecture student, I was able to understand the built environment of the past through the films and thus experience it [more richly] in the present.”

The participating students (both undergraduate and graduate) were drawn from the Daniels Faculty’s many disciplines, including architecture, visual studies and landscape architecture. “I was blown away by the way the students’ own knowledge of architecture and urban practices—how people inhabit cities—helped them decipher a multicultural city like Berlin,” Sealy says. “I took a lot of joy from the students’ own moments of discovery and cannot wait to return as soon as possible!”

“All in all,” concludes Joseph, “every moment of Berlin could make the highlight reel, as it was an unforgettable experience and hopefully will be ongoing.”

“Berlin, A City in Film” was one of four global studios offered by the Daniels Faculty in 2023. Other courses included studies in Athens, Greece; Kumasi, Ghana; and Fez, Morocco. A domestic studio also took place on Fogo Island, Newfoundland and Labrador.

Banner image by John Henry. Last image by Mint Song. All other photos by Peter Sealy.

Monday, December 4 to Tuesday, December 19
Daniels Building
1 Spadina Crescent

Whether you're a future student, an alum, or a member of the public with an interest in architecture, forestry, landscape architecture or urban design—you're invited to join the Daniels Faculty for Fall 2023 Reviews. Throughout December, students from across our graduate and undergraduate programs will present final projects to their instructors and guest critics from academia and the professional community.

All reviews will take place in the Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. (unless otherwise stated). Follow @UofTDaniels on social media and join the conversation using the hashtags #DanielsReviews and #DanielsReviews23.

Please note that times and dates are subject to change.

Monday, December 4 | Graduate 

Design Studio I
LAN1011Y
Coordinators: Alissa North, Peter North 
Room: 330 

Tuesday, December 5 | Graduate 

8:45 a.m.–6:30 p.m. ET 
Design Studio I 
ARC1011Y
Coordinator: Chris Cornecelli 
Instructors: Fiona Lim Tung, Anya Moryoussef, Aleris Rodgers, Julia Di Castri, Tom Ngo 
Rooms: 215, 230, 240, 330 

Wednesday, December 6 | Graduate 

Integrated Urbanism Studio
ARC2013Y, LAN2013Y, URD1011Y
Coordinators: Mauricio Quiros Pacheco, Rob Wright, Roberto Damiani
Instructors: Karen Kubey, Aziza Chaouni, Jon Cummings, Christos Marcopoulos, Mariana Leguia Alegria, David Verbeek, Megan Esopenko
Rooms: 200, 215, 230, 240, 330 

Thursday, December 7 | Graduate  

Integrated Urbanism Studio
ARC2013Y, LAN2013Y, URD1011Y
Coordinators: Mauricio Quiros Pacheco, Rob Wright, Roberto Damiani
Instructors: Karen Kubey, Aziza Chaouni, Jon Cummings, Christos Marcopoulos, Mariana Leguia Alegria, David Verbeek, Megan Esopenko
Rooms: 200, 215, 230, 240, 330 

Friday, December 8 | Graduate  

Design Studio Options 
LAN3016Y

The Hart House Farm
Instructor: Liat Margolis 
Room: 330 

Urban Design Studio Options 
URD2013Y
Instructors: Kanwal Aftab, Maya Desai 
Room: 230 

Monday, December 11 | Undergraduate  

Drawing and Representation I 
ARC100H1
Coordinator: James Macgillivray
Instructors: Matthew De Santis, Dan Briker, Mauricio Quiros Pacheco, Nicolas Barrette, Anne Ma, Jeffrey Garcia, Monifa Charles-Dedier, Angela Cho, Mariano Martellacci, Connor Stevens, Ji Hee Kim, Kyle O’Brien, Lara Hassani, Brandon Bergem 
Rooms: Main Hall (170A, 170B), 215, 230, 240, 315, 330, 340 

Tuesday, December 12 | Graduate & Undergraduate 

9 a.m.–2 p.m. 
Drawing and Representation II 
ARC200H1
Coordinator: Roberto Damiani
Instructors: Nova Tayona, Simon Rabyniuk, Reza Nik, Paul Howard Harrison, Sam Dufaux, Karen Kubey, Katy Chey, Phat Le, Samantha Eby, Alejandro Lopez 
Rooms: Main Hall (170A, 170B, 170C), 209, 215, 230, 240, 315, 330, 340 

10 a.m.–3 p.m. 
Capstone Project in Forest Conservation 
FOR3008H
Instructor: Catherine Edwards 
Room: 200 
View detailed schedule.

Wednesday, December 13 | Graduate & Undergraduate 

Architectural Design Studio: Research 1 
ARC3020Y

Rehearsing the Parade: Ephemeral Assemblies and Persuasion on the Move
Instructor: Miles Gertler 
Rooms: Main Hall (170C), 209 

Architecture and Health Equity in an Imperiled World
Instructor: Stephen Verderber 
Room: 330 

Architecture Studio III
ARC361Y1
Coordinator: Adrian Phiffer
Instructors: Shane Williamson, Carol Moukheiber 
Rooms: Main Hall (170A, 170B), 230 

10 a.m.–3 p.m. 
Capstone Project in Forest Conservation (FOR3008H)
Instructor: Catherine Edwards 
Room: 200 
View detailed schedule.

Thursday, December 14 | Graduate & Undergraduate 

Architectural Design Studio: Research 1 
ARC3020Y

The Certainty of Uncertain Forms, or in search of anexact typologies
Instructor: Carol Moukheiber 
Room: 330 

Counterhegemonic Architecture
Instructor: Lukas Pauer 
Rooms: 215, 240 

If robots are the answer, what was the question?
Instructor: Brady Peters 
Rooms: 209, 242 

Bridging the Divide: An Architecture of Demographic Transition
Instructor: Shane Williamson 
Room: 230 

Design Studio Options 
LAN3016Y

Generative Design in Landscape Architecture: Explorations and Applications
Instructors: Rob Wright, Matthew Spremulli 
Room: 200 

Landscape Architecture Studio III 
ARC363Y1
Instructor: Behnaz Assadi 
Rooms: 315, 340, Main Hall (170C) 

Technology Studio III
ARC380Y1
Instructors: Nicholas Hoban (Coordinator), Maria Yablonina 
Room: Main Hall (170A, 170B) 

Friday, December 15 | Graduate 

Architectural Design Studio: Research 1
ARC3020Y

Swarm / Counterarchive
Instructor: Jeannie Kim 
Room: 330 

ARCHIPELAGO, 4.0: Docu-Drawing, Activism, Re-Building
Instructor: Petros Babasikas 
Room: 230 

SUPERNATURAL
Instructor: Laura Miller 
Room: Main Hall (170A, 170B) 

USING TREES
Instructor: Zachary Mollica 
Room: 240 

HOUSE FOR PIRANESI at Hadrian’s villa: TRIUMPH OF THE FRAGMENT DRAWING AS THESIS An allegory for illustrated ARCHITECTURAL narrative
Instructor: John Shnier 
Room: 1st Floor Hallway 

Monday, December 18 | Undergraduate & Graduate

9 a.m.–2 p.m. 
Design Studio II
ARC201H1
Coordinator: Miles Gertler
Instructors: Brian Boigon, Jennifer Kudlats, Aleris Rodgers 
Rooms: 215, 240, 315, 340 

9:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m. and 1:30-4:30 p.m.
Post-Professional Thesis Review
ALA4021
Rooms: 209, 242

Senior Seminar in History and Theory (Research) 
ARC456H1
Instructor: Petros Babasikas 
Room: 330 

Senior Seminar in Design (Research) 
ARC461H1
Instructor: Laura Miller 
Room: Main Hall (170A, 170B) 

Senior Seminar in Technology (Research) 
ARC486H1
Instructor: Nicholas Hoban 
Room: 230 

Tuesday, December 19 | Undergraduate 

Senior Seminar in History and Theory (Research) 
ARC456H1
Instructor: Petros Babasikas 
Room: 330 

Senior Seminar in Design (Research)
ARC461H1
Instructor: Laura Miller 
Room: Main Hall (170A, 170B) 

Senior Seminar in Technology (Research)
ARC486H1
Instructor: Nicholas Hoban 
Room: 230 

The annual Eyeball exhibition showcasing recent artwork by the Daniels Faculty’s undergraduate students in Visual Studies is currently on view at 1 Spadina Crescent.

Featuring works by nearly two dozen students, the yearly survey will be on display in the Daniels Building's Larry Wayne Richards Gallery until December 1.

Students represented this year include Jacob Muller, Megan Croft, Samahdi Alvarado Orozco, Denise Akman, Elly Yoo, Rory Marks, Jared Rishikof, Fatima Tahir, Nara Wrigglesworth, Cathy Zhou, Jasmine Mohan Zhu, Gillian Stam, Evan Bulloch, Veeshva Rana, Dorsa Sarvi, Prasham Shah, Massimo Giannone, Hanna Kamehiro, Sophie Woelfling, Mandy Chiu and Jinyan Zhao.

The exhibition encompasses a range of media, including painted works on paper and canvas, film and video pieces and mixed-media installations.

A closing celebration will be held in the LWR Gallery from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. on Friday, December 1. All artists, supporters, Visual Studies faculty and Daniels Faculty staff are invited to attend. Light refreshments will be provided.

On view at the Jackman Humanities Institute (JHI) until next June, the exhibition Mnemonic silences, disappearing acts grapples with the absences, erasures and censorships that pervade queer and trans histories, offering alternative forms of documentation, storytelling and memory-keeping that respond to archival gaps and propose strategies for future archiving.

On Tuesday, November 14, exhibition curator Dallas Fellini, who is currently pursuing a Master of Visual Studies in Curatorial Studies at the Daniels Faculty, will provide a guided tour of the show, which features works by artists Jordan King, Kasra Jalilipour, Hazel Meyer and Cait McKinney, Kama La Mackerel and Lan “Florence” Yee.

Following the tour, attendees will be invited to walk over to the Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent, where curator Fellini and artist King will lead a discussion about their work and its role in trans memory-keeping and resistance.

All are welcome to join both the tour and the talk. The hour-long JHI tour will begin at noon on the 10th floor of 170 St. George Street. The talk, at which lunch will be provided, will commence at 1:30 p.m. in Room 230 of the Daniels Building. Attendees may register here.

Situated at the intersection of trans studies and archival studies, Fellini’s research interrogates the compromised conditions under which trans histories have been recorded and considers representational and archival alternatives to trans hyper-visibility. 

King is a multidisciplinary artist, curator and writer whose practice is rooted in performance, archival research and intergenerational dialogue. She is currently a Curatorial Practice MFA student at OCAD University, where her focus is on documentary film and multimedia documentation of underground queer performance. 

The JHI tour and Daniels Faculty talk will take place during Trans Awareness Week, established to encourage awareness of and advocacy around trans rights and inclusion and to affirm trans lives and experiences in all their complexity. Trans Awareness Week will be observed this year from November 13 to 17.

The week will be followed by Trans Day of Remembrance and Resilience (TDoRR) on November 20. TDoRR is observed annually to honour the memory of the trans people who have lost their lives as a result of transphobic violence.

U of T will mark both Trans Awareness Week and TDoRR with a range of events and gatherings. For the full programming list, click here.

Exhibition images: Among the works on view in the exhibition Mnemonic silences, disappearing acts are Untitled by Jordan King (top) and Leaving Space by Lan “Florence” Yee (bottom). On Tuesday, November 14, curator Dallas Fellini will lead a tour of the show at the Jackman Humanities Institute before joining artist King for a discussion at the Daniels Faculty. Lunch will be provided. King photo courtesy of the artist, Yee photo by Alexis Bellavance.

Last spring Assistant Professor Gareth Long and eight undergraduate Daniels Faculty students traveled by air, land and sea to Fogo Island. Known as an island off an island, Fogo Island is an outport community: a remote coastal settlement unique to the province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

“For many students this is a completely new and foreign landscape in which to find themselves,” says Long. “Though still in Canada, it couldn’t be more different to the experience of being in Toronto.”

The trip was the first of its kind in the visual studies program at the Daniels Faculty, and one that Long hopes to recreate in the future. Over the course of 10 days, students experienced the island through a series of seminars, fieldwork and visits with both artists-in-residence and locals.

In partnership with Fogo Island Arts, the students were introduced to an institution created with the conviction that art and artists have the capacity to instigate social change and offer new perspectives on issues of contemporary concern. Founded as an artists’ residency program, Fogo Island Arts is part of Shorefast, a registered Canadian charity with the mission to build economic and cultural resilience on Fogo Island, making it possible for local communities to thrive in the global economy. The Fogo Island Inn, designed by architect Todd Saunders, is also a Shorefast initiative and has become a globally recognizable travel destination while helping to secure a resilient economic future for Fogo Island.

“The visual studies students were invited in to not just witness, but become a part of this larger story, this larger social enterprise that has, since its inception, had art at the centre of its mission,” says Long. “Though it is highly specific to Fogo Island, it resonates with countless other places in the world."

For Satyam Mistry, a fourth-year architecture and visual studies student, Fogo Island’s reputation as an international art hub, "encouraged me to pursue the chance to visit a place I otherwise could not imagine having the opportunity to do so on my own.”

Here’s a snapshot of the trip’s itinerary:

• Visits with international artists like Liam Gillick, Cooking Sections, Maria Lisogoroskaya (of Assemble) and Armand Yervent Tufenkian
• Tours of the Fogo Island Inn and the four artist studios, plus visits to the Fogo Island Workshops, the Fogo Island Clay Studios, SaltFire Pottery studio, Peggy White’s guitar studio and the JK Contemporary Art Gallery
• Student presentations on the Fogo Island Arts’ monographs
• Discussions of public artworks on the island Liam Gillick’s “A Variability Quantifier: The Fogo Island Red Weather Station,” and “The Great Auk” by Todd McGrain
• Shared meals with locals, hikes to sites such as Brimstone Head (one of the four corners of the "Flat Earth”) and participation in a rug hooking workshop (more than once)

“It was really shocking getting to the island and immediately being hit with so many things to do,” says Olive Wei, a fourth-year student in visual studies. “After the 10 days it felt as if we had left the island with our to-do list barely halfway done. Everything about the island, the landscape, people and history all invite you back to stay longer and longer,” added Wei, who did stay on after the course for a six-week summer internship on the island.

While the syllabus was full of opportunities to experience what Fogo Island is known for, Long says the emphasis in this course was on communal learning, collaboration and the shared testing of ideas. “I hope some found that being together, thinking together, experiencing this newness together, was the most enriching part and that this might lead to new ways of working and being together in the future. That hospitality takes many forms. That the remote doesn’t have to be remote."

These takeaways ring true in the experiences of the students. “As the trip progressed it became clear to me how much dialogue and learning could be generated simply from the act of being together as a cohort with both my peers and instructors,” says Mistry.

Throughout their time on Fogo Island, students were asked what knowledge they would be able to bring back from the island—how can one take the island off of the island? This question formed the basis of the exhibition, Sediments, that the group produced on their return to Toronto.

"As the question silently lingered throughout the trip and plagued our minds, we had reached our last day and did not get closer to an answer. It was after our departure we had realized we were taking the island within us,” Wei wrote in the exhibition statement. “Sediments attempts to honour the depth of knowledge and history embodied on Fogo Island.”

The presented works investigated attachment to place, remembering, documentation, and intimacy—and a feeling of home about a place one may not have been yet. “The best way one can take the island off the island is through sharing stories of the people, life, and togetherness one experiences while they’re there,” Wei says. “The trip is unique to everyone which lends itself to feeling like a personal, intimate memory.”

Sediments, an exhibition of visual studies work from Summer Studies Abroad: Fogo Island, was on view in the North Borden Building in September 2023. Featuring work from Auden Tura, Chloe Chukwunyelum, David Zolya, Ella Spitzer-Stephan, Gareth Long, Joy Li, Mia Coschignano, Olive Wei, Rahul Sehjipaul—the Daniels Faculty’s digital fabrication technologist, who supported the group on their trip—and Satyam Mistry. 

All images in this story are courtesy Satyam Mistry.

The University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design is an unparalleled centre for learning and research, offering graduate programs in architecture, landscape architecture, forestry, urban design and visual studies, as well as unique undergraduate programs that use architecture and art as lenses through which students may pursue a broader education.   

Situated in the heart of Toronto—a hub for creative practice and home to many of Canada’s leading architects, landscape architects, urban designers, foresters, artists and curators—the Faculty focuses on interdisciplinary training and research in architecture, art and their allied practices, with a mission to educate students, prepare professionals and cultivate scholars who will play a leading role in creating more culturally engaged, ecologically sustainable environments.

U of T, which year after year ranks among the top universities in the world, provides a framework of knowledge and expertise on which all Faculty members may draw. Additionally, the environment in which our students learn and congregate is as unique as our program offerings.

The Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent is a bold work of architecture and landscape on a prominent urban site between U of T’s St. George campus and the vibrant centre of Toronto. Across Spadina Crescent, the North and South Borden buildings (home to our visual studies programs) and the Earth Sciences Centre (HQ for forestry studies) complete the Faculty’s trifecta of sites. 

To learn first-hand how you can study at the Daniels Faculty, visit our campus throughout November for the following information-gathering events.

November 7 and 8: Graduate Open House

Stop by the Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent or connect via Zoom on Tuesday the 7th and Wednesday the 8th to learn about the Faculty’s graduate programs in architecture, landscape architecture, urban design and forest conservation, as well as our research stream programs: our PhD in Architecture, Landscape, and Design, our Master of Science in Forestry, and our PhD in Forestry.

Learn, too, how to prepare for the application process, and pick up information on funding, financial aid and awards.  

Four tours of the Daniels Building will also be offered on Tuesday, November 7. 

To register in advance for this Graduate Open House and the individual tours, click here.

November 16: MFC Program Open House

Learn about the Faculty’s Master of Forest Conservation program—either in-person or online—by joining Assistant Professor Sally Krigstin, MFC Program Coordinator, for a presentation on the subject. The in-person session will take place at 3:00 p.m. in Room ES 1016B of the Earth Sciences Centre. For further Zoom, dial-in or other access, contact Laura Lapchinski, Program Administrator, at laura.lapchinski@daniels.utoronto.ca.

If you can’t make it on the 16th, recordings of the sessions will be made available. For more information, please visit the Daniels Forestry website.

November 23: U of T Fall Campus Day 2023 

U of T’s annual fall event for future undergrads, Fall Campus Day provides the opportunity for prospective students, as well as their parents, families and friends, to visit the downtown St. George campus and get details about our programs, colleges, residences, student life and more. Campus and residence tours, mini-lectures and presentations from the different faculties will be running throughout the day.

At the Daniels Faculty, tours and information sessions will take place at 1 Spadina Crescent from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Join us then to learn more about our undergraduate programs in Architectural Studies and Visual Studies, meet with faculty and students, tour Daniels Faculty facilities and more. 

Click here to register for the in-person FCD!

For more information on all three days, check out the Events page on the Daniels Faculty website.

The John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto is proud to announce that ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home, an Indigenous-led exhibition organized by and first presented at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal, will be on view in the Architecture and Design Gallery at 1 Spadina Crescent from October 25, 2023 – March 22, 2024.

ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home was co-curated by Joar Nango (a Norway-based Sámi architect and artist), Taqralik Partridge (Associate Curator, Indigenous Art - Inuit Art Focus, Art Gallery of Ontario), Jocelyn Piirainen (Associate Curator, National Gallery of Canada) and Rafico Ruiz (Associate Director of Research at the CCA). The exhibition showcases installations by Indigenous designers and artists, reflecting on how Arctic Indigenous communities relate to land and create empowered, self-determined spaces of home and belonging.

Through the exhibition, as well as its accompanying publication and programming, ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home aims to have long-term impact, opening new forms of dialogues and ways of thinking about Northern Indigenous practices of designing and building that are not normally considered in the canons of architecture.

“Towards Home recognizes that architectural design in this country has been generally insensitive to Indigenous peoples’ traditions and cultures,” says Jeannie Kim, Associate Professor at the Daniels Faculty and organizer of the Toronto exhibition. “Participating in this project, our Faculty hopes to broaden understandings, and to support our shared efforts towards fostering practices of land-based design.”

Work on view will include Taqralik Partridge and Tiffany Shaw’s The Porch, a transitional space unique to Northern living that welcomes Indigenous visitors into an institutional setting that has historically excluded them. Geronimo Inutiq’s I’m Calling Home presents a commissioned radio broadcast that recalls the central role that radio plays in both connecting Inuit communities and expediting colonialism. Nuna, an installation by asinnajaq (in conversation with Tiffany Shaw), is a tent-like structure that invites both sharing and reflection while evoking the four elements. Offernat (Votive Night) by Carola Grahn and Ingemar Israelsson is an altar featuring a birch burl that evokes the burning of Sámi drums during Christianization in the 1700s.

The exhibition also facilitated the Futurecasting: Indigenous-led Architecture and Design in the Arctic workshop (co-curated Ella den Elzen and Nicole Luke) that brought together nine emerging architectural designers and duojars (craftpeope) to convene across Sapmi and Turtle Island to discuss what the future of design on Indigenous lands might become.

The full list of contributors includes: asinnajaq, Carola Grahn and Ingemar Israelsson, Geronimo Inutiq, Joar Nango, Taqralik Partridge, and Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory. The original exhibition design was by Tiffany Shaw, Edmonton, with graphic design by FEED, Montreal.

The Exhibition Opening will take place on Wednesday, October 25. Additional updates and related programming will be announced soon.

Land Acknowledgement 

We wish to acknowledge this land on which the University of Toronto operates. For thousands of years, it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island, and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land. The land of 1 Spadina Crescent has been the home and an important trail of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples. Spadina is synonymous with Ishpadinaa, meaning “a place on a hill” in Anishinaabe. 

Also, we are acutely aware as architects, that unjust settler strategies and logics denigrated Indigenous land and architecture, particularly harming Indigenous people’s ability to create safe places to call home. Today, many of the ways these lands are used conflict with Indigenous values, practices, and histories. The acknowledgement of past wrongs and current realities are only the beginning of redressing and improving conditions, and creating a more just built environment. 

Image captions: 1) Nuna, asinnajaq in conversation with Tiffany Shaw. qulliq, asinnajaq in conversation with Ludovic Boney and Tiffany Shaw. 2) J'appelle chez nous / I'm calling home / Uvatinni Uqallajunga, Geronimo Inutiq. 3) All images credit ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Vers chez soi / Towards Home exhibition view, 2022. Photos Mathieu Gagnon © CCA. 

Presented by the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto, the annual MVS Proseminar offers visual studies graduate students in curatorial studies and studio art the opportunity to connect and exchange with field-leading international and local artists, curators, writers, theorists, and other creative scholarly practitioners and researchers.

The 2023-2024 MVS Proseminar series is organized by Zach Blas, assistant professor, and Jean-Paul Kelly, assistant professor and director of the visual studies program at the Daniels Faculty.

All events take place in Main Hall at the Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent (unless otherwise noted) and are free and open to the public. View or download the series poster.

Fall 2023

October 17, 6:30 p.m. ET
Amina Ross
Artist and educator

Amina Ross makes videos, sculptures, sounds, and situations that consider feeling, embodied knowledge, and intimacy as survival technologies for black, queer, trans, and feminine-spectrum people. Ross is the 2023-2024 Estelle Lebowitz Artist in Residence at Douglass College, Rutgers University. They also serve as faculty at Parsons School of Design, The New School, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Art at Vassar College.

November 14, 6:30 p.m. ET
Zach Blas
Artist and writer

Zach Blas works across installation, moving image, theory, and performance, engaging the materialities of computation while also drawing out the philosophies and imaginaries that undergird artificial intelligence, biometric recognition, predictive policing, airport security, and the internet. Blas is an Assistant Professor of Visual Studies in the Daniels Faculty at U of T.

November 21, 6:30 p.m. ET
Tina Rivers Ryan
Curator, art historian, and critic

Dr. Tina Rivers Ryan is a curator, art historian, and critic specializing in art since the 1960s and is widely known as an expert on digital art. Dr. Ryan is a curator at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum. This event is part of the Daniels Faculty's Fall 2023 Public Program in association with MVS Proseminar. Register in advance.

POSTPONED: November 28, 3-5 p.m. and 7-9 p.m. ET 
Weather Report: Where are we going with art and its institutions? 

Organized by the Art Museum at the University of Toronto and Fogo Island Arts (FIA), this tenth edition of The Fogo Island Dialogues is a series of panel discussions by renowned international museum directors and curators, moderated by significant contributors in the field.  

NOTE: Given the current context, Fogo Island Arts has decided to postpone the Fogo Island Dialogues originally scheduled for November 28, 2023, in Toronto. These remain important conversations that Fogo Island Arts look forward to in the future.

December 5, 6:30 p.m. ET 
Aisha Sasha John
Poet, dancer, and choreographer

Aisha Sasha John is interested in choreographing performances that occasion real love. She’s passionate about the creative potential of surrender and through her work builds structures that allow for experiences of entrancement. The expressive possibilities exclusive to Black being-together is one of her ongoing research interests. A celebrated poet, Aisha is author of the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize nominated collection I have to live.

Winter 2024

January 16, 6:30 p.m. ET
Hearth 
Curatorial collective

Hearth seeks to provide a site to present projects by a diverse range of emerging collaborators within a context that values experimentation and community. Hearth works towards an anti-oppressive, queer-positive environment and welcomes marginalized and racialized folks through programming that celebrates the work of a diverse range of emerging collaborators.

February 13, 6:30 p.m. ET
Corina L. Apostol
Curator, art historian, and editor

Dr. Corina L. Apostol curates and researches at the intersection of art and politics, focusing on artists who create long-term, pedagogical, community-based projects to empower their audiences. Dr. Apostol is the co-founder of the seminal activist art and publishing collective ArtLeaks and editor-in-chief of the ArtLeaks Gazette. Dr. Apostol is an Assistant Professor in Social Practice in Contemporary Art and Culture in the Faculty of the Humanities at the University of Amsterdam.

February 27, 6:30 p.m. ET
P. Staff
Artist

P. Staff is a filmmaker, installation artist, and poet, whose interdisciplinary practice explores necropolitics, affect theory, the transpoetics of writers, modern dance, astrology, and end of life care to emphasise the processes by which bodies––especially those of people who are queer, trans, or disabled––are interpreted, regulated, and disciplined in a rigorously controlled society. This event is part of the Daniels Faculty's Winter 2024 Public Program in association with MVS Proseminar. Register in advance.

March 5, 6:30 p.m.
Cassils
Artist

Cassils, Associate Professor of Visual Studies in the Daniels Faculty at U of T, is a transgender artist who makes their own body the material and protagonist of their performances. Their art contemplates the history(s) of LGBTQI+ violence, representation, struggle and survival. Drawing from the idea that bodies are formed in relation to forces of power and social expectations, Cassils’s work investigates historical contexts to examine the present moment.

March 19, 6:30 p.m. ET
Elisa Giardina Papa
Artist

Elisa Giardina Papa is a research-based artist whose practice, employing discarded AI training datasets, censored cinema repositories, factitious colonial travel accounts, or fabricated heretical accusations, seeks forms of knowledge and desire that have been lost or forgotten, disqualified, and rendered nonsensical by hegemonic demands for order and legibility. Papa is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University.

All images courtesy of the artists. Image captions: 1) Cassils - Tiresias, Performance Still No. 3 (ANTI Festival, Kupio, Finland), 2012. Photo: Cassils with Pekka Mekinen. 2) Amina Ross - sample animation. 3) Zach Blas Profundior (Lacryphagic Transmutation Deus-Motus-Data Network) Mixed-media installation. (12th Berlin Biennale, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart), 2022. Photo by Mathias Völzke.