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The Centre for Imaginative Ethnography (CIE) is pleased to announce "The Imaginative Ethnography Symposium: Imagining Canada’s Futures with Romani Refugees & Migrants"
November 9-10, 2017, York University, Toronto, Ontario, curated by Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston

The symposium will include two keynote addresses, a roundtable panel, and a workshop for graduate students.

Keynote Speakers:

Professor Ian F. Hancock is an internationally renowned scholar in the fields of Romani Studies, English history, grammar and dialectology, language and identity, African and Afro-Caribbean linguistics, and creolization and language contact. He has taught as a member of the minority faculty at The University of Texas since 1972, and is Director of RADOC (The Romani Archives and Documentation Center) at The University of Texas. He has published widely with over 400 articles, chapters and books authored or edited, including International English Usage (Routledge, 1986), Roads of the Roma: A PEN Anthology of Gypsy Writers (Hertfordshire UP, 1998), Readings in Creole Studies (Story-Scientia, 1979), and We Are the Romani People (UHP, 1995). A collection of his essays edited by D. Karanth entitled Danger! Educated Gypsy was published in 2010 by The University of Hertfordshire Press. In addition to his academic work, he is a human rights activist, having represented the Roma at the United Nations as a member of the UN Economic and Social Council and of UNICEF. He is North American member of the Vienna-based International Romani Parliament and was a member of the Project on Ethnic Relations’ Advisory Board. He addresses the US Congress and the Council of Europe on human rights issues, and has represented the US State Department at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Warsaw, and spoken in Brussels, Geneva and New York before the EU and the UN. In 1998, President Bill Clinton appointed him as the sole Romani member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. He was recipient in Norway of the Rafto Foundation International Prize for Human Rights (1997) and of the Gamaliel Chair in Peace and Justice from The University of Wisconsin (1998). In 2015, he was appointed Honorary Vice-Chancellor to the International Roma University in New Delhi.

Lynn Hutchinson Lee is a multimedia artist/writer, daughter of a Canadian mother and Romanichal (English Romani) father, living and working in Toronto, Canada. A co-founder of Red Tree and chirikli collectives, she has exhibited in Canada, Latin America and Europe. Her mixed media installation, Shelter, Provisional (Awaiting Permanent Structure), is part of Red Tree’s Enraged, Inertia Ran Off intervention in a Hamilton, Ontario park (www.redtreecollective.ca/inertia.htm). She collaborated with Monica Bodirsky, Hedina Tahirovic Sijercic, and Riel Brown in Musaj te Dzav (I Must Leave) (www.chirkilicollective.com), an installation of multimedia skirts at Gallery 50, Toronto, as part of Toronto Roma Community Centre’s Opre Roma Festival. Other exhibitions include metanoia, drawings and paintings at Hamilton’s Workers Arts and Heritage Centre (http://wahc-museum.ca/event/lynn-hutchinson-lee-metanoia/); Ololo/ Our natural bodies: mapping and surveillance, and Elemental/ Meditation on Sugar, Privilege, & Acculturation, both site-specific installations with Amanda Hale at Galeria Casa Guayasamin, Havana, Cuba. Her stories, creative non-fiction and poetry are published in: CLI-FI: Canadian Tales of Climate Change (Exile Editions); Romani Women in Canada: Spectrum of the Blue Water (Inanna Press); Romani Folio (Drunken Boat), and other anthologies. Her spoken word poem Five Songs for Daddy was one of four works in chirikli collective’s sound installation Canada Without Shadows at the Roma Pavilion, 54th Venice Biennale, Italy; bak (basis voor aktuelle kunst) in Utrecht, Netherlands (2011); and Romania’s National Museum of Contemporary Art (2013).

Thursday, November 9

Workshop
The confluence of creation, identity and social engagement: an arts workshop
Lynn Hutchinson Lee, 3:00-5:00pm, ACE 209
In a printmaking and assemblage workshop, Lynn Hutchinson Lee will work with graduate students to explore identity and their perspectives on social engagement. After an initial group discussion, participants will develop images collaboratively or individually that reflect upon or respond to these issues, followed by the carving of linoleum blocks from the original drawings. The prints, once pulled, will be affixed to a paper garment made by the artist for the workshop, and previously subjected to a process of painting with konnyaku paste and drying, allowing the paper to be distressed, shaped and manipulated. In addition to the block prints, participants will collaborate in writing text or poetry, drawing, or otherwise marking the final garment.

Keynote
Romani reality and the ‘gypsy’ myth
Prof. Ian F. Hancock, 6:00-7:30pm, York Lanes 280N 
It is still the case that the general public knows very little about the actual Romani people, while having a much more detailed notion of what "gypsies" are. Professor Hancock presents an overview of the Romani Studies course that he has taught at The University of Texas for the past 30 years, examining the reasons for the great disparity between the two identities. He will also discuss early and current explanations re: origins, and summaries of the two great Romani tragedies—the five-centuries-long period of slavery, and the Porrajmos, the Nazi genocide. He will also briefly address aspects of Romani religion and culture, the emergence of political movements, and the situation of Roma refugees and asylum seekers in the post-Communist period.

Friday, November 10

Roundtable
Imagining Canada’s futures through ethnography and the arts
10:00-11:30 am, York Lanes 280N
This roundtable will include keynote speakers Prof. Ian Hancock and Lynn Hutchinson Lee, as well as renowned Romani authors, artists, and activists, including Ronald Lee, Jennifer Danch, Ildi Gulyas, Nazik Deniz, and Monica Bodirsky. Participants in the roundtable will discuss the role of imagination and the arts in ethnographic and community-based activism. The roundtable chair will offer follow-up questions, and facilitate a dialogue between the presenters, and with the audience.

Keynote
Poshrat (half/blood): making art in a precarious identity
Lynn Hutchinson Lee, 6:00-7:30pm, York Lanes 280N
Drawing from her mixed Romani/non-Romani heritage, multimedia artist Lynn Hutchinson Lee deconstructs the skewed identities and cultural influences that mark her social engagement, activism, artistic practice and sense of belonging in shifting and converging communities. Beginning with Five Songs for Daddy, her spoken word poem from chirikli collective’s sound installation at the 2011 Venice Biennale’s Roma Pavilion, she explores a vicarious identity marked by the life of her Romanichal father. With a puppet as ‘witness’ from her ancestral past (made by her father when the family still travelled in England), she examines the practice of ‘reinventing’ oneself, and discusses identity in both cultural practice and broader social context. Finally, she asks what implications these issues have in imagining futures for Romani refugees in Canada.

All lectures are free and open to the public. For more information on the symposium, please email Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston at mkazubow@yorku.ca

Special thanks to our sponsors:

Centre for Imaginative Ethnography (CIE)

150 Canada @ York

Department of Theatre

Graduate Program in Theatre and Performance Studies

Performance Studies (Canada) Speaker Series

Dean of Arts, Media, Performance, and Design (AMPD)

Centre for Refugee Studies

Faculty of Graduate Studies

Department of Anthropology

About the course:

THST 6305 3.0 Performing Objects and Theatrical Things
This course responds to the recent turn towards "new materialism" and "posthumanism" in Theatre & Performance Studies, evidenced by the uptake of thing theory, actor-network theory, vital materialism, object-centred ontology, and other new materialist methodologies in the work of numerous scholars.  Students will encounter a range of theories and methodologies for thinking through and with objects in their research.

Keynote Speakers:

Professor Lee Maracle is the author of a number of anthologies including the award winning publication, My Home As I Remember.  She is a member of the Sto:Loh nation.  In 2009, Maracle received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from St. Thomas University.  Maracle recently received the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal and the premier's award for excellence in the arts.  Her latest works are: Celia's song [novel], Memory Serves and other Words [creative non-fiction] and Talking to the Diaspora.

Professor Sarah King - ethnographer, environmental philosopher, and anthropologist of religion - is interested in the role that religion and culture play in shaping human relationships to the natural world.  Her areas of specialization include:  comparative religion; place; ethnography and community-based research; Indigenous-settler relations in North America; environmental values and conflict; food justice and sustainable agriculture; and North American environmentalism.  She is the author of Fishing in Contested Waters: Place and Community in Burnt Church/Esgenoôpetitj (University of Toronto Press, 2014), and currently teaches in the Liberal Studies Department at Grand Valley State University.

Workshop: Ethnography and Activism, Sarah King - April 6, 3:00-5:00 pm, 305 York Lanes

This workshop, open to graduate students from across the university, will attempt to build a collaborative, critical conversation exploring the relationship between ethnography and activism.  Who employs activism in the ethnographic field?  Is the work of ethnography itself activism?  How is research changes when collaborators or community members within the ethnographic field see academic researchers as targets for transformation?  Where are there opportunities for ethnography to help build transformative communities, and when should we take them?

Keynote: Performance, Indigeneity and Canada's lack of imagination, Lee Maracle - April 6, 6:00-7:30 pm, 305 York Lanes

Roundtable: Storytelling and Activism: the role of imagination in transforming Indigenous-Settler relationships - April 7, 10:00-11:30 am, 305 York Lanes

This roundtable will include keynote speakers Lee Maracle and Sarah King, as well as Martha Stiegman (Faculty of Environmental Studies, York), Megan Davies (Graduate Program in Theatre & Performance Studies, York), Deborah McGregor (Osgoode Hall Law School, York), and Naomi Adelson (Anthropology, York.) Roundtable participants will share stories about the role of imagination in transforming Indigenous-settler relationships.  The roundtable chair, Sarah King, will offer follow-up questions, and facilitate a dialogue between the presenters and the audience.

Keynote: Contesting Place, Constructing Activism: examining the dispute at Church/Esgenoôpetitj NB, Sarah King - April 7, 3:00-4:30 pm, 305 York Lanes

After the Supreme Court's 1999 Marshall decision upholding Mi'kmaq fishery rights, a prolonged violent conflict broke out over indigenous fisheries at Burnt Church/Esgenoôpetitj NB.  The inability of the Canadian public (writ large) to attend to the values and concerns that motivate those involved in the dispute inflamed and prolonged the violence.  This presentation explores some of the activist strategies employed by dispute participants to draw attention to their values and concerns, the stories that local people tell about these strategies, and the ways that they make sense of their experiences now that the conflict is over.  Paying attention to the complexity of disputes such as the one in Burnt Church is itself a critical strategy in resisting the 'whitewashing' of Canadian identity and politics.

All lectures are free and open to the public.  However, the workshop is full.  If you want to have your name placed on the waiting list, or for more information on the symposium, please email Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston.

Special thanks to our sponsors:  Theatre and Performance Studies Graduate Program, Performance Studies (Canada) Speaker Series; Department of Theatre; Dean of Arts, Media, Performance, and Design (AMPD); Department of Anthropology; and Office of the Vice-Provost Academic.

Centre for Imaginative Ethnography
Performance Studies (Canada) Project

Areas of Creative and Scholarly Interest Include:

• Experimental Music and Sound Art/Theory
• Improvisation and Distributed Creativity
• Human/Machine Agency
• Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence Applied to Performance
• Telepresence
• Deep Listening
• Movement and Computation
• Sonic and Haptic Perception
• Phenomenology of the Temporal Sense
• Gesture and Embodiment
• Biophysical Sensing and Performance
• New Instrumental Systems for Performance
• Material Computation
• Composing for Immersive Environment
• Sensory Substitution
• Live Coding as Performance Practice
• Sound Analysis, Transformation, Synthesis, Classification

The DisPerSion Lab meets Every Tuesday and Thursday at 5 pm unless otherwise noted.   (Meetings every Tuesday, Play Sessions every Thursday)

DisPerSion Lab Inaugural Meeting - October 13th, 5:00 pm, CFA 334
Lab director Doug Van Nort will give a brief 15-30 minute overview of research interests and lab focus.  Discussion and meet & greet will follow.

DisPerSion Lab Inaugural Play Session - October 15th, 5:00 pm, CFA 334
Weekly play sessions in a variety of media, drawing heavily on improvisation and experimentation.  A time to develop a practice, test ideas, etc.  Come by and play!

1. Workshops

Difarnecio will be leading two performance workshops open to students from across the university.  The workshop will explore corporal and gestural techniques in popular theatre, with a focus on how engaging with the politics of body and memory can open up diverse strategies in performance.

Workshop 1 - Tuesday, September 22, 2:30-5:30 pm and Friday September 25 8:30-11:30 am  in Accolade East 207

Workshop 2 - Wednesday September 23, 11:30-2:30 pm and Friday September 25, 11:30-2:30 pm in Accolade East 207.

2. Lecture

Difarnecio will give a talk and visual presentation on her popular theatre work with FOMMA and the urban performance actions and installations she has staged against femicide in the region of Chiapas, Mexico.

Thursday, September 24, 10:30-11:20 am in Kaneff Tower 956.

The lecture if free and open to the public.

Special thanks to our sponsors, York's Department of Theatre, Graduate Program in Theatre and Performance Studies, Performance Studies (Canada) Project, Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean, Canadian Consortium on Performance and Politics in the Americas, Office of the Vice-Provost Academic, Pan Am/Parapan Am Games @ York.

By focusing on key vignettes - the abjection of transgender Filipinas in the workplace and queer Filipino embodiment in contemporary Filipino Canadian art - Diaz suggest that queer Filipinos/as enact performances, memories, and desires that refuse to fall in line around the very identitarian tenets from which Canadian multiculturalism gains its power and political dominance.

Biography

Robert Diaz is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences at OCAD University.  His teaching and scholarship focus on the intersections of Sexuality, Filipino, Asian, and Postcolonial Studies.  Diaz is currently editing Diasporic Intimacies: Queer Filipinos/as and Canadian Imaginaries (under contract with Northwestern University Press), which brings together artists, scholars, and community workers in order to examine the contributions of queer Filipinos/as to Canadian culture and society. His research has appeared or is forthcoming in Signs: Journal of Women and Culture in Society, GLQ: Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Women and Performance, The Routledge Companion to Asian American and Pacific Islander Literature, Philippine Palimpesests: Essays for the 21st Century, and Plaridel.

** Please note that we will hold the talk off-campus (venue TBA) if the current labour disruption continues.

See the event page here.

Sensorium is currently inviting proposals for presentations which revolve around these constellations and engage critically with the multiplying intersections of art and science within contemporary and historical practices.  We are particularly interested in the intersection of art, science and planetary as they are concerned with climate change and our ecological moment.  This one-day symposium will offer a unique symbiotic opportunity for emerging researchers and artists to gather, exchange, bond, and cross-fertilize future landscapes for research materializing at disciplinary boundaries.  If you are an artist invested in science and technology, a scientist absorbed by art, or a researcher engaged with collaborative or interdisciplinary investigation please consider submitting a proposal for this exciting and collaborative event.

Potential topics/areas include, but are not limited to:

• The planetary in and through emerging media
• Digital cartographies and conceptions of climate change
• Funktionskreis, umwelt and theories of "the functional circle"
• Bio-semotics, bio-philosophy, and bio-art
• Critical thing theory and "vibrant matter"
• 21st century approaches to digital research and the environment
• Human, animal, and planetary energy systems,
• Global information networks and "the cloud"
• Intercorporeity
• Bodily cartographies
• Deep data and deep earth
• Cyborgs and the posthuman
• Queer futurities

Presentation formats:
Posters, workshops, round tables, interventions/performances, presentations - traditional and experimental - and other emerging forms will be considered.  We encourage cross-disciplinary interpretations, variations and unforeseen mutations of our working themes.

Submissions:
We invite papers and presentations that critique, consider, and construct the intersection of art, science, the planetary and iterations therin.  Please send a 300 word abstract, along with a working title, short biography, and contact information.  If you would like to submit a joint proposal with several researchers/artists please send only one application that includes collective biographical and contact information.  Specify the format of your presentation, keeping in mind it should be no longer than 20 minutes in length (with 90 minutes for panels and/or round tables).  The final date for submissions is 30 January, 2015.

Email: sensoriumsymposium@gmail.com

About Sensorium:
Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts and Technology is an experimental research centre based out of York University that supports cross-disciplinary work in all areas that intersect with digital media practices.  Sensorium is a nexus for new ideas and experimentation that incorporates work from diverse fields of study and creates spaces for innovative dialogue.  More information is available at: sensorium.info.yorku.ca

"ASTR is the central organization in theatre research, and the Barnard Hewitt Award arguably the field's most esteemed book prize," said Gobert.  "I feel incredibly honoured to be joining the ranks of such past winners as Stephen Orgel, Martin Meisel, and Joseph Roach.  Last year's winning book by Judith Pascoe is one of the most remarkable works of theatre history I've ever encountered.  It's still hard to believe the company that I've been put in."

The Mind-Body Stage explores how Descartes' understanding of emotions has influenced theatre and how theatre has influenced Cartesian philosophy.  The book portrays the century after Descartes' death in 1649, a period of significant importance to both theatre and philosophy.

ASTR recognized The Mind-Body Stage for its innovative approach to theatre history, interdisciplinary scope and meticulous research.  Gobert conducted research for the book in England, France, and Sweden, where he analyzed a wide variety of historical documents, including letters, libretti, religious pamphlets, aesthetic treatises, and architectural plans.

The Barnard Hewitt award is given annually to an author whose book published in the previous year demonstrates outstanding research in theatre history.  Barnard Hewitt was an American professor who specialized in dramatic literature and theatre; he is considered a pioneer in the historical study of American theatre.

Gobert is Graduate Program Director in the Department of English and a member of the Graduate Program in Theatre and Performance Studies.  In addition to the Ann Saddlemyer and Barnard Hewitt awards, he has received a Dean's Award for Outstanding Teaching and the Polanyi Prize for Literature.

Performing the Accidental Archive, the fourth annual York University Theatre and Performance Studies Graduate Student Symposium, invites submissions for papers, installations, performances, manifestos, and workshops.  In recent years, much theatre and performance studies work has been devoted to investigating, critiquing, and expanding upon the embodiments, objects, places, and practices that comprise the archive.  Performing the Accidental archive is a call to further these discussions by imaginatively exploring the places, practices, objects, and events that are archival despite themselves and that point towards the unintended and incidental remains of our everyday lives and actions.  The Oxford English Dictionary defines accidental as "not essential to the existence of a thing," and as something relating to or occurring " by chance, unintentionally, or unexpectedly [...] or produced by accident."  "Accidental Archives" then refers to the non-essential, the contingent, the secondary, the subsidiary places, objects, and actions that are unintentionally archived, or that remain in different, transformed, and stubborn, immutable ways.

Please respond to this call by submitting your 200-250 word abstract and a 100 word bio to yutpsgsa@gmail.com on or before January 10, 2015. Given the nature of the topic, we strongly encourage submissions that step outside of paper-presentation norms in order to explore concepts of alternative archival practices in both content and form.  Standard papers will still be accepted.  Please clearly indicate whether you are proposing a paper presentation, performance, manifesto, or workshop, and make sure to include your technical requirements (within reason).

Additional information can be found at yutps.ca

The Graduate Program in Theatre & Performance Studies frequently organizes and hosts events related to our students' and faculty's fields of interest.

We have assembled a dynamic group of artists, administrators, and policymakers to address these timely questions, including: Pierre Allard & Annie Roy (Action Terroriste Socialement Acceptable); Franco Boni (The Theatre Centre); Ryan Cunningham (Native Earth Performing Arts); Jennifer Green (Toronto Arts Council); Iris Häussler (Independent Artist); Dale Jarvis (Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador); Stephen Lawson & Aaron Pollard (2boys.tv); Cheryl L'Hirondelle (Independent Artist); Nicole Mion (Springboard Performance); Natasha Mytnovich (Artscape Youngplace); Joyce Rosario (PuSh Festival); Catherine Sicot (Elegoa Cultural Productions); and Sharon Stevens (International Avenue Business Revitalization, Forest Lawn).

A full schedule can be accessed at: performancecanada.com/events
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Thank you to all who made this event a great success! MA Student, Zoë Erwin-Longstaff provides her reflections on the event below.

York University’s third annual Theatre and Performance Studies Graduate Symposium, Critically Kinesthetic: Performing Bodies of Political Engagement, took place this year on April 16 and 17. The largest symposium to date, the event featured more than thirty performers and scholars from across North America, presenting on a vast range of interdisciplinary work.

The opening night wine and cheese at the Heliconian Club in downtown Toronto featured two panels: one on “Postcolonial Geopolitics” and a second, “Embodying Borders.”  These explorations of the body politic ranged from a discussion of the dancing body of the Yoruba figure, Xica da Silva, to one on the emotional labor undertaken by the Filipina Cultural Coordinator at Texas University. These talks were broken up by a live performance, Joya Powell’s Movimento do Povo, a capoeira dance piece that overwhelmed the hall, evoking through intense physicality colonial relationships in Brazil. The four dancers bounded through the space, throwing their bodies in sharp sudden movements despite their physical proximity to the audience. It was an exhilarating demonstration. Meanwhile, throughout the opening reception, both panels and the dance break, Thea Fitz-James carried out a performance piece, Unraveling the Daughter’s Disease: Secrets Knitting and The Body, a work that explores a family-trauma narrative through explicit body art and textiles.

April 17th began with the keynote address from philosopher, visual artist, and dancer Erin Manning of Concordia University.  Her talk, “Choreographing the Political,” was drawn in part from her trilogy of books, from The Politics of Touch to Always More Than One.  Manning spoke about the ways in which sensing bodies react to existing political structures; such bodies not only move in pre-constituted space, they also through sheer movement challenge the borders of time and space. This theme of the troubling limits of embodiment was touched on at many of the panels.

Panel B, “Applications of Embodied Knowledge,” took up this theme as it took into consideration the disabled body in performance and digital co-presence. “Sluts, Bitches and Trio A” discussed the materiality of women’s bodies in performance as well as how these bodies become inscribed as political symbols. Here, topics for discussion ranged from the idiosyncrasies that manifest in re-performances of Yvonne Rainer’s modern dance, Trio A, to the policing of women’s bodies in legislation on sex work in Canada, and women’s mobilizations around the word “slut” in the global “Slut Walk” protests.

The conference closed with an inspiring “long table” discussion where presenters and participants alike were encouraged to comment, interpret, theorize and question the day’s talks and performances.  My “pod” had a particularly engaging and frank discussion on scholarly creativity and resistance, where Professor Manning shared some of her strategies for coming to a position of self-definition within the rigid structures of academia.

Staging Sustainability 2014 will introduce you to ground breakers working across Canada, on Broadway, in London, in community gardens—as well as all points in-between—to remake the way we work in the performing arts. It will be the largest gathering of innovative sustainability practitioners in the world to focus on ways in which performance can positively affect our planet. We invite performing arts professionals including producers performers, technicians, funders, decision makers—and anyone interested in how the performing arts can support sustainability efforts—to attend Staging Sustainability 2014.

Performance has always been about how the work affects people. Now we are ready to look at how our performances can affect a sustainable world.

Helene Voster’s Embroidery for the Forgotten Dead: Shot at Dawn (Photo credit: Henry Chan)

In addition to working towards an MA in Theatre & Performance Studies, Adriana Disman is curating a new performance art series, LINK & PIN.

Focused on performance art but presenting a vast range of interdisciplinary work, LINK & PIN turns the usual “evening of performance” on its head by presenting work on Sunday afternoons, allowing for a different kind of energy and attention with which to share and receive the work. With the intention of fostering links in the interdisciplinary arts community, each event is followed by a Discussion Forum, opening space for the artists and the public to engage in conversation about the work while sharing tea and (topical) dessert.

As well as presenting both national and international performers, the series invites two writers to report, comment, interpret, theorize and question the work. The series strives to invite writers who are from different disciplinary backgrounds (for example, one from Performance Studies and one from Art History) and at different points in their writing practices. Descriptive texts from past events can be found at LINK & PIN. Stay tuned for details on the publication of critical texts!

Thea Fitz-James’ Needle Piece (Photo credit: Adriana Disman)

When asked what drew her to this project Adriana said, “A core philosophy of LINK & PIN is “try it.” This has resulted in a myriad of curatorial structures and ways of programming artists including invitational, open call, and lottery. My willingness to organize these events (LINK & PIN is essentially a one-woman show- though I have support from my incredible intern Veronica Abrenica, and the awesome hub14) is based in my passion for the work. I look at my community and see artists whom I am deeply inspired by and who’s work I want to support. Opening space for others to perform has always felt like a return to the community. Not particularly a “giving back” but rather intersecting circuits of reiteration that are the reproductive couplings through which we proliferate the work. Because it’s hard to keep making art. Because we have to let each other know that we care about each other’s work.”

The first event in the series, FEMINIST FIBRES, investigated the intersection of feminisms, textiles, and performance. FEMINIST FIBRES looked more closely at recent trends in re-appropriating and politicizing craft and textile work that has, historically, maintained a gendered and marginalized status in the art world. The event featured pieces by current PhD candidate Helene Vosters as well as Theatre & Performance Studies graduate Thea Fitz-James (MA 2013). You can read about their pieces at LINK & PIN - Texts.

LINK & PIN’s next event, REPERFORMANCE, takes place on February 8th and 9th. For REPERFORMANCE, York and LINK & PIN have teamed up to co-present a workshop by Victoria Stanton, one of the presenting artists.