Afterall, an art journal published by Central Saint Martins in partnership with the Daniels Faculty and other institutions around the world, will launch its 49th issue on June 25. The launch party, which will consist of a talk by featured writer Hyunjin Kim on the work of Korean artist eun young jung, will take place on Zoom. Attendees are required to pre-register on Eventbrite.

The new issue, titled "Extractivism," examines topics related to extractive capitalism. The forward was written by Charles Stankievech, the director of the Daniels Faculty's Visual Studies program and a contributing editor at Afterall.

To purchase the full issue, or to browse past issues, visit the Afterall website.

Next week, as part of We Are One, a 10-day online film festival that will be taking place on YouTube, viewers will have an opportunity to watch Service of the Goods, a 2013 short film by Jean-Paul Kelly, a visual studies lecturer at Daniels.

Service of the Goods will be shown on the festival's YouTube channel on June 4th, starting at 9:45 a.m. EST. The 29-minute experimental short is a critical reimagining of the work of Frederick Wiseman, in which scenes from the legendary American director's documentaries play out in strange and surprising new ways.

In addition to Kelly's short, the We Are One festival will be showcasing numerous other films co-curated by programmers at 21 different film festivals around the world, including the Toronto International Film Festival, the Venice Film Festival, and Cannes. Kelly's short was selected by programmers from the New York Film Festival.

All of We Are One's films are free to watch, but viewers can make donations to support the World Health Organization and local relief partners during the COVID-19 crisis.

View the festival's full schedule here. And find more information on the festival's screening of Service of the Goods here.

Image: A still from Service of the Goods.

One consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic is that, for many people, every day feels the same as the last. With no friends around and no direct collaboration with work colleagues, it's easy to feel creatively exhausted.

That's partly why Daniels Faculty assistant professor Mitchell Akiyama created "Under the Dog Star," a new website that invites visitors to stretch their imaginations by quickly responding to creative writing prompts. (The name is a reference to a passage in The Rings of Saturn, a novel by W.G. Sebald.)

When a user loads Under the Dog Star in their web browser, they're presented with a creative writing prompt. It may ask them to transcribe a quote from an imaginary conversation, or to invent a voice for an inanimate object. Users are given only five minutes to write. After five minutes have passed, the website automatically sends them a new writing prompt.

Akiyama uses similar prompts in the classes he teaches as part of the Master of Visual Studies program at the Daniels Faculty. "These prompts are something I've been doing for a while now," he says. "The idea is to come up with prompts that make it very difficult to write in a standard voice. I want to get people to explore ways of expressing themselves that they would not usually have available to them."

All of a user's responses to Under the Dog Star's writing prompts are saved, anonymously, in a database. Once the website accumulates a large enough repository of writing, Akiyama hopes to analyze the text for patterns.

"The exercise is to make writing strange in a way that calls attention to what it is to write," Akiyama says. "On another level, this project is trying to do something similar with data collection and analysis. What kinds of representations of this material can you make that are interesting, and that speak to the very idea of data collection? What does doing an analysis on creative writing entail?"

Under the Dog Star's development was funded with a grant from the University of Toronto's School of Cities. Akiyama worked with Matthew Nish-Lapidus, a Master of Visual Studies student at the Daniels Faculty, to design the website.

Visit Under the Dog Star

Welcome to our new cohort of undergraduate students coming this fall. The Daniels Faculty has a long and distinguished 125-plus year history. There have been other times when we have had to cope with unpredictable circumstances. Our past and our present are replete with stories of our students, faculty, and staff rallying together for the greater good. Together with our faculty, undergraduate students in our Architectural Studies program have assembled some of those moments in the video above. You will also see previews of some of the exciting things you will be engaged in as a Daniels student.

We look forward to meeting everyone soon.

Jeannie Kim, Undergraduate Director, HBA Architectural Studies

Today is the 50th annual Earth Day, and there's good news and bad news. The good news: the earth's ecosystems are absorbing less manmade pollution than usual. The bad news: that's because people around the world are housebound as a result of COVID-19.

At the beginning of the winter 2020 semester, before the COVID-19 lockdown, students in the Daniels Faculty's Critical Curatorial Lab (a Visual Studies course that teaches curatorial and critical practice in visual and media arts) were already preparing for a world-altering crisis. Their group assignment was to create a manual for holding an art exhibition in a world in which life had been disrupted so thoroughly that electricity was no longer available.

Their "blackout" manual is now finished, just in time for a very weird Earth Day.

Download a PDF of the manual and read the class's press release below:

Download the "BLACKOUT" PDF

PRESS RELEASE: EARTH DAY X COVID-19 X BLACKOUT

From the beginning of the winter 2020 semester until the shutdown, students from the Critical Curatorial Lab (Daniels Faculty) were engaged in developing an exhibition format to be deployed in an emergency scenario. Conceived as pre-mediation for a moment when patterns of life are radically disrupted, their aim was to examine the affordance of art during a power blackout. Running throughout this thought experiment, radically reduced energy dependence and its possible culture was at issue. Addressing social relations, spectacle, and consumption, the project outcome was conceived as an emergency kit (exhibition) and instruction manual (catalogue) to be activated during a future power outage.

In light of COVID-19, only the second part of the project was realized. To mark the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, we are pleased to share this playful manual (featuring student essays, artworks, and archival material) in digital format. While ultimately consuming energy via U of T servers, we offer this document (as polemic) to the time of novel coronavirus. As the shutdown drives a dramatic reduction in energy demand, causing the largest ever drop in recorded CO2 emissions, this sudden change is also bringing instability to electrical grids worldwide. Blackouts may yet be a flow-on effect of this pandemic. However, beyond any outages, we propose the relevance of our speculative method for broader reflections on cultural life during our present crisis: Attempting to exhibit the critical moment in advance is a way to better handle its emergence in real-time. Curatorial pre-mediation is one bulwark against intercession by panic or shock doctrines, when everyday society and culture are up for grabs.

Visiting Professors Dr. Dehlia Hannah and Dr. Nadim Samman
John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto

Curators: Lilian Ho, Kaixin Li, Leona Liu, Jiaxin Mai, Olivia Musselwhite

Artists: Simon Fuh, Talia Goland, Eli Kerr, Seo Eun Kim, Matthew Nish-Lapidus, Yoko Ono

MVS Proseminar Winter 2020

Marguerite Humeau
Jan 21st
Main Hall, 1 Spadina Cr., 6:30pm to 8:00pm

Anne Carson: History of Skywriting
Feb 5th
Main Hall, 1 Spadina Cr.  7:30pm to 9:00pm

Yusuke Obuchi
March 3^rd
Main Hall, 1 Spadina Cr., 6:30pm to 8:00pm

Symposium: PROFIT and LOSS
(organized by Lisa Steele and Kim Tomczak)
March 6 and 7th
Main Hall, 1 Spadina Cr.

Filipa Ramos
March 17^th
Main Hall, 1 Spadina Cr., 6:30pm to 8:00pm

Rui Amaral
March 24^th
Main Hall, 1 Spadina Cr., 6:30pm to 8:00pm

Afterall Journal
March 31, Issue # 49 Launch
Main Hall, 1 Spadina Cr., 6:30pm to 8:00pm
April 4th, Workshop with international Afterall Editorial Team, Room 229 North Borden

Elizabeth Povinelli
April 9th Talk at SUGAR Contemporary
5 Lower Jarvis St. Toronto

Inaugural Visual Studies Researcher-in-Residence

We are pleased to announce the Researcher-in-Residency program for the Visual Studies program in the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto.  Each year an international guest will be in residency in the program as a visiting professor conducting their own research and engaging the students through teaching and graduate student mentorship.  For the inaugural session, philosopher of science Dehlia Hannah and curator Nadim Samman are hailing from Copenhagen and Berlin respectively.  They will be teaching courses on curating in the context of a “Blackout" and a graduate seminar on “The State of Nature (and its discontents).”  While in the city during the Winter term, they will be conducting studio visits with local artists and researching for a future exhibition. Together they will be writing the catalogue essays for the MVS Studio Thesis exhibition opening at the Art Museum April 17^th.

Dehlia Hannah, PhD, is a philosopher and curator, and Mads Øvlisen Fellow in Art and Natural Sciences at the Department of Chemistry and Biosciences at Aalborg University-Copenhagen. Her current research project, An Imaginary Museum of Philosophical Monsters, examines the role of fictional places, beings, and technologies in the history of philosophy. She holds a Doctorate in Philosophy and a Certificate in Feminist Inquiry from Columbia University, with specializations in philosophy of science and aesthetics. Her recent book, A Year Without a Winter (Columbia University Press, 2018), reframes contemporary imaginaries of climate crisis by revisiting the literary and environmental aftermaths of the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora. Her forthcoming monograph, Performative Experiments, examines contemporary artworks that take the form of scientific experiments. Her writing, teaching and curatorial practice broadly explore emerging environmental imaginaries and philosophies of nature. 

Nadim Samman is a curator and art historian based in Berlin. He read Philosophy at University College London before receiving his PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. He co-founded and curated the 1st Antarctic Biennale (Antarctica, 2017) and the Antarctic Pavilion (Venice Biennale of Art, 2015-). In 2016 he curated the 5th Moscow Biennale for Young Art, and in 2012 the 4th Marrakech Biennale (with Carson Chan). Other major projects include "Treasure of Lima: A Buried Exhibition" (a unique site-specific exhibition on the remote Pacific island of Isla del Coco) and Rare Earth (at Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna). Between 2012 and 2019 he co-directed the non-profit art space Import Projects, Berlin. In 2014 he was named among "100 Leading Global Thinkers" by Foreign Policy magazine, and in 2016 among the "20 Most Influential Young Curators in Europe" by Art.sy.

The residency is made possible by generous support of the Dean’s Office.

As the year (and the decade) draws to a close, the Daniels Faculty is getting a few wins in under the wire. Now Magazine's list of the "best of Toronto's art scene" in 2019 includes a number of mentions of work by people connected to the Master of Visual Studies program.

Associate professor Charles Stankievech, the director of the MVS program, earned a nod for Best Film Program, as a result of his work on The Drowned World, a multimedia marathon at the Ontario Place Cinesphere, which he curated for the Toronto Biennial of Art.

Pegah Vaezi (MVS 2019), a student in the MVS Curatorial Studies program, was the organizer of "What do We Mean When We Say 'Content Moderation?'," which Now deemed 2019's Best Symposium. The event was funded by the Art Museum at the University of Toronto.

And 2019's Best New Art Space is SUGAR Contemporary, a waterfront gallery that is co-directed by Xenia Benivolski (MVS 2021), another Daniels graduate student.

When Master of Visual Studies curatorial student Yuluo Wei started thinking about the Jackman Humanities Institute's theme for the 2019 school year, "Strange Weather," it occurred to her that the strangest thing about the weather is how little we're forced to pay attention to it. "The way I wanted to approach it was to talk about the climate crisis," she says. "In modern, urban spaces, we have permanent climate control systems. We forget what's really happening outside. It's a kind of amnesia."

That was the genesis of the art exhibition she curated, "Weather Amnesia", which opened in mid-September in a space on the Jackman Institute's 10th floor.

The exhibition features a variety of artworks — some new, some selected from the University of Toronto's permanent collection, but all related in some way to notions of the environment and seasonal change.

Among the pieces on display is a sculpture of the Jackman Humanities building. It was milled out of a chunk of mass timber, an environmentally friendly wood construction material. Wei obtained samples of the wood through the University of Toronto's Mass Timber Institute, where Daniels Faculty researchers are studying ways of using mass timber in the construction of tall buildings. The sculpture was created by Master of Architecture student Fiona Lu:

This is Imago Humanus: shapes interacting during a Canadian Winter, by Rick McCarthy. "It's a collection of shapes in winter," Wei says. "It could be snowflakes, it could be snowstorms or anything you can imagine. This is the only abstract piece in the whole exhibition."

These 3D-printed flowers are by Tania Kitchell. "They're based on the real floral species, but the artist manipulated the ratios," Wei says. "The heads are bigger than the real ones. And they're all white because the artist really wants the audience to focus on the form, and to reimagine what's going on outside."

This piece, titled Birches, Rockcliffe, is a 1922 oil painting by the Scottish-Canadian artist Graham Noble Norwell.

"Weather Amnesia" will remain on view until June 26, 2020 at the Jackman Humanities Institute (170 St. George Street). For more details, and for hours, visit the exhibition's webpage.

Top photograph: Yuluo Wei in front of "Watching, Dull Edges," by Lisa Hirmer. All photographs by Barry Roden.

Toronto has officially joined the club of cities with their own international art biennials: the first Toronto Biennial of Art opened on September 21 and will continue until December 1. Among the dozens of artworks, installations, talks, and performances on the agenda are some contributions from Daniels faculty members. Here's what they're up to.

Still from We're Getting Younger All the Time.

...before I wake (2000-12)
Lisa Steele and Kim Tomczak, professors of visual studies

Longtime collaborators Steele and Tomczak produced a trio of related video-art pieces over the course of more than a decade, all three of which are now being presented as a triptych at the Biennial.

We're Getting Younger All the Time (2001) shows the artists growing 12 hours younger over the course of a 20-minute time-lapse video, inviting viewers to contemplate notions of age and youth. Practicing Death (2003) consists of digitally altered footage of the artists' sleeping faces, which appear to be carved from sand.

For Entranced (2012), Steele and Tomczak hired a therapist to hypnotize them. "We wanted to be taken to a door," Steele says. "And when we opened the door, the other would not be there." The video uses a combination of sound, images, and text to show the results of the experiment.

259 Lake Shore Blvd. E. Until December 1. See website for hours.

Photo of Carla's Island, by Brandon Poole, showing at the Cinesphere.

The Drowned World
Charles Stankievech, director of visual studies

The Cinesphere, at Ontario Place, is normally a spot for catching blockbuster movies in eye-popping IMAX format. But assistant professor Stankievech has turned the domed 1971 structure into something else entirely.

His installation, The Drowned World, named after a J.G. Ballard novel set in a world that has been devastated by global warming, uses the Cinesphere's giant screen and audio system to show a five-hour series of specially selected film and audio shorts (and also a custom scent, made by the Finnish industrial designer Ville Kokkonen to be reminiscent of the Finnish taiga).

Visitors can linger for the entire five-hour run, or they can consult the schedule and plan out a less lengthy visit.

The film-art marathon includes a number of older pieces, some of which have been revamped to take advantage of the Cinesphere's unique environment. There are also new works, including Cargo Coral, a four-minute video by Stankievech that documents a World War II-era undersea cargo dump off the coast of Vanuatu. Brandon Poole, a Master of Visual Studies student at Daniels, contributed Carla's Island, a four-minute piece based on found footage of the first-ever instance of computer-animated water. (The animation, originally produced in 1981, was considered lost until Poole rediscovered it among some archival IMAX test footage.)

"It's really unique that you can go hang out in the Cinesphere, navigate it and experience things that sound and look different depending upon where you are in the space," Stankievech says. "The show is about ecological issues and how climates have shifted all throughout history. What does that mean for our contemporary time, and for the future of the planet, with or without humans?"

Ontario Place. Until November 30, every Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The contemporary shoreline. Illustration by Jane Wolff.

A Walk Across Space and Time: Queen's Quay to Front Street
Jane Wolff, associate professor of landscape architecture

Departing from the Toronto Biennial's home base at 259 Lake Shore Avenue East, associate professor Wolff and her collaborator Susan Schwartzenberg, a curator and visual artist, will lead a tour of Toronto's rapidly developing waterfront area.

"It's a really interesting part of the city, because it's on so many edges," Wolff says. "It's on the edge of the water, it's on the edge of the new wave of urbanization of the waterfront. And it's at the Gardiner Expressway, which is such a key edge in the city. If you walk from there along Queens Quay and the shoreline, up past the Redpath sugar factory, you can see so many different notions about what the city should be."

Wolff and Schwartzenberg will discuss the history of the area, beginning with its initial settlement by European colonists. After a stroll of approximately two hours, participants will return to 259 Lake Shore, where they'll be provided with tools to draw and make notes on what they've just seen and heard. "Our purpose — and the purpose of our ongoing work together — is to help people think about how their observations today can shape their ideas about the landscape's future," Wolff says.

259 Lake Shore Avenue East. November 30, 12 p.m.

The Riddle, by Luis Jacob. Now on display at Union Station.

The View From Here
Luis Jacob, visiting professor

Jacob, a Toronto-based artist and curator, made a multipart contribution to the Biennial. The View From Here consists of two related installations. At Union Station's Oak Room, Jacob has assembled a series of photographs, rare maps, and historical street views that depict the Toronto area from the 17th century to today, including a 1677 map by Giacomo Giovanni Rossi that depicts the region as the territory of the Huron and Petun peoples.

At 259 Lakeshore Boulevard East, the Biennial's main venue, Jacob has put together a second collection of city-focused photography, complemented by a display of Toronto-themed books ​and urban-planning documents published between 1872 and today. Rounding out the installation is a series of lectures, organized by Jacob, on topics related to the city's history and geography. One of those lectures will be given by Daniels Faculty assistant professor Fadi Masoud (see below).

The View From Here: Reading a Moving Shoreline
Fadi Masoud, assistant professor of landscape architecture and urbanism

Professor Masoud's research on the ways coastal cities reclaim land from oceans and lakes has obvious applicability to Toronto, where the city's entire harbourfront district is built on landfill. For the Biennial, as part of a lecture series organized by Luis Jacob, Masoud will participate in a public discussion about Toronto's waterfront with Adrian Blackwell, an artist, designer, and University of Waterloo architecture instructor.

The talk — which will take place, appropriately enough, in a wooden amphitheatre shaped like Toronto's inner harbour, designed for the Biennial by Blackwell — will discuss the ways in which reclaimed land is vulnerable to the damaging effects of climate change, as well as strategies for mitigating those effects. Attendees will participate in a mapping exercise, during which they'll work together to document the natural and man-made forces that are remaking the city's shoreline.

259 Lake Shore Avenue East. November 18, 4 p.m.