Notice Board

Searching for the Post-contemporary: a report on the 2016 Berlin and Montreal Biennials

Janice Isabel Jackson has sung over 200 world premieres, many works written specifically for her, and performed with contemporary music ensembles and in concert halls around the world – Beijing, Paris, Vienna, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Torino, Toronto, Montreal, New York, Berlin, Johannesburg, Cape Town and more.

Robert Del Tredici is a photographer and artist who has been teaching cinema history and the art of animated film at Concordia University in Montreal since the early 1970s. He has also been documenting the nuclear age since 1979. His first book, The People of Three Mile Island, covered America’s worst nuclear accident. His next book, At Work in the Fields of the Bomb, documented the US nuclear weapons complex. In 1987, he founded the Atomic Photographers Guild.

Mary Kavanagh is an artist and associate professor in the Department of Art at the University of Lethbridge.  Since 2005, Kavanagh has researched and documented activities and ephemera at historic and active nuclear sites: her current project Atomic Tourist: Trinity explores nuclear anxiety in the post-Cold War era through interviews with atomic pilgrims at the testing site of the world’s first atomic bomb. Recent explorations in glass, breath and drawing have further addressed the permeable body, vulnerable to imperceptible contaminants and atmospheric fallout.

Maria Z Madacky’s art is rooted in literature and ancient philosophies. Her practice involves investigations into the liminal including unconventional structures of knowledge that mediate the rational and irrational modes of thinking such as mythology, folk tales and rituals; as well as the liminal spaces of the social. Her projects often employ blurring the boundaries between the art and audiences while addressing complex social issues. Maria’s exhibition “Trash Talk”, executed in collaboration with the performance art collective M.E.D.I.U.M.

I am from Okinawa, Japan. Growing up on the island, I often took its beauty and traditional arts and crafts for granted. After I immigrated to Canada in 1999, I began to rediscover my heritage and artistic ideas associated with it. This realization guided me toward furthering my education.

“In 2006, I finally decided to follow my passion to study art. I graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a major in studio art from the University of Lethbridge in 2011.

In the new real, we are running with the robots. Industrial robots for seamlessly automated car manufacturing; medical robots for facilitating patient care in assisted living retirement communities; warrior robots engaged in materializing the imaginative game scenarios of cyber-warfare; toy robots that promise a happy first encounter between machines and the newest generation of humans; and, most of all, invisible robots circulating in the data clouds of social media as SocialBots.

Internationally renowned performance and installation artist James Luna (Puyukitchum/Luiseno) resides on the La Jolla Indian Reservation in North County San Diego, California. With over 30 years of exhibition and performance experience Luna has given voice to Native American cultural issues, pursued innovative and versatile media within his disciplines, and charted waters for other artists to follow.

Echo + Seashell was founded in 2011 by artists Henna Hyvärinen (Finland) and Susan Kooi (Netherlands) when they met at an art-student residency in Germany. Performing in venues ranging from concert halls to art spaces, the duo is interested in how they can fit into the existing locales they come to occupy through their creative practice. Utilizing film screening paired with live performance, echo + seashell seek to create site-specific experiences for viewers around the world and have performed at various locations across Finland, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany.

Hyang Cho was born and grew up in Seoul, Korea, and studied history at Sogang University in Seoul. After moving to Canada in 2002, she enrolled in the Alberta College of Art + Design in Calgary. She also completed a Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Guelph. Recent exhibitions include Counterpoint, Modern Fuel in Kingston, Ephemeral Frontiers, Design at Riverside in Cambridge, Nothing Much, Georgia Scherman Projects in Toronto, and In the Making, Illingworth Kerr Gallery in Calgary.Cho currently lives and works in Guelph, Ontario.