Knot Project Space hosted curator Shani K Parsons as participant in a special third iteration of its process-driven residency platform Expanded Practice. Over a two-week intensive period, the Toronto-based curator and founding director of Critical Distance Centre for Curators (CDCC) utilised Knot Project Space’s uniquely malleable presentation capabilities to reflect on and materially strategise around curatorial approaches to the installation of video and sound within poly-vocal, group exhibition contexts. Of specific interest to Parsons during her residency was the development of modes for mapping various works into sequential, transitional flows, to be woven through a particularly challenging non-standard exhibition site in Toronto. The experimentations and conversations that took place throughout the residency sought the potential for a ‘fugitive’ display of video and sound within an architectural space, rather than more immersive or intervening inflections. Beyond the scope of this short-term residency, a scaling-up of these installation poetics would later be transposed and amplified into an expansive exhibition produced by Parsons that is set to open in Spring 2021 in Toronto.
This residency also represented the second coordinate of organisational exchange within an ongoing dialogue between Knot Project Space and CDCC, which produced various points of contact between media art presentation and contemporary curatorial practice. The first of these encounters took shape as the group exhibition Public Syntax, unfolding in CDCC’s gallery space and the surrounding hallways and stairwells of their building in Toronto. A publication documenting and reflecting on this exhibition and organisational exchange is forthcoming in 2020. The public facing components of the residency were presented in relation to a short series of events and workshops that were coordinated by Knot Project Space in a nearby courtroom from December 10-12, each reflecting in some way on the gravities and world-making potentials of individual and collective speech within a site so tethered to the languages, processes and force of law.
Expanded Practice
Expanded Practice is Knot Project Space’s intensive residency program, offered to artists and curators to push the scope of their projects beyond standard screening environment and into installation/exhibition formats. While typically offered to SAW Video members and practicing artists, this special edition of the program will take a curatorial shift to consider the challenges and opportunities for curating media artworks experimentally in non-standard exhibition-making protocols. The resident curator is provided with a fee, a materials budget, unlimited access to the project space and an array of audio-visual equipment for the duration of their residency, during which they are invited to experiment with the spatial orientation of the moving image, the distribution of sound, and other tactics for presentation and audience encounter. Through an emphasis on open, hands-on technological play and frequent discussions with Knot Project Space’s curatorial staff, the Expanded Practice residency seeks to create a collaborative environment in which the participant strategizes with and through the art-space itself, to develop mutual curiosities and knowledges of the materiality and physicality of time-based media. Drop-In Sessions In order to sustain an open, tangential structure for experimentation, there is no final public exhibition attached to the participation in the Expanded Practice residency. Instead, the public is invited to visit the space during a series of “Drop-In Sessions” at points throughout the residency period (times listed above) to view the working and thinking in an in-progress and modular state. The residency participant or Knot Project Space’s curatorial staff will be present at each of these sessions to contextualize the work for visitors, and frame the trajectory of their explorations.
Shani K Parsons
Shani K Parsons (Canada/US, b.1970, Philadelphia) is an independent curator, designer, and founding director of Critical Distance Centre for Curators. With degrees in architecture (Temple University, Philadelphia, 1994) and graphic design (RISD, Providence, 2000) she has pursued a multidisciplinary practice within both independent and institutional contexts and has produced an eclectic body of work ranging from intimate artist’s books to immersive exhibitions, bringing to each her skills, experiences, and interests as researcher, writer, designer, artist, administrator, curator, and critic.
Related Programming
Workshop: Second Tongues, Serena Lee. Courtroom, Arts Court. Nov. 23, 2019.
Performance: Kempelen’s Breath, VOR. Courtroom, Arts Court. Dec. 10, 2019.
Workshop: Cold Read, Andrea Oliver Roberts. Courtroom, Arts Court. Dec. 11, 2019.
Performance: Documents, Autumn Knight. Courtroom, Arts Court. Dec. 12, 2019.