Knot Project Space
SAW Video Media Art Centre
Ottawa
2016-2019

As part of my role as Director of Programming at SAW Video Media Art Centre in Ottawa from 2016-2020, I founded its exhibition venue Knot Project Space, curating its first two years of exhibitions and related programming. The physical and technical design of the space, which I worked on within a team, sought to create a room that would be uniquely configured to present contemporary artists working experimentally with the moving image, sound and performance. Following its official opening in January 2018, I programmed a consistent series of time-based exhibitions with local and international artists, always positioning these alongside related discursive contexts such as lectures, panels and seminars, where the claims and positions in artworks and practices were rigorously unpacked, examined and extended. I operated the space with programming structures that prioritised, enabled and maintained a curatorial behaviour that was responsive to emergent interests, concerns and relationships that were occurring with the public assembling these adjacent discursive environments, through this actively involving local, artistic and intellectual cultures into the investigative momentums of the space’s operation. In addition to public presentation programming, Knot also cultivated various ‘working groups’ – consortiums of artists, curators and critics who would assemble as temporary collective bodies pursuing a common line of inquiry, carrying out discussions and debates with visiting international artists, as well as executing non-standard score-based learning contexts, and producing collaborative prompt-driven artworks (see the Groups page for more information on these initiatives). Other enduring platforms and initiatives established through my three years as Director of Programming at SAW Video include the Expanded Practice residency, an intensive at Knot Project Space focused on exploring the materiality and physicality of video and sound, and Knot Projections, a long-term public art commissioning program whose first iteration culminated in an itinerant, city-wide public art exhibition titled Imagining Publics, which ran from August-November 2019 in Ottawa and four sequential sites around the city. 

A full archive of my curatorial work at Knot Project Space is collected below, with photos, video and sound recordings.
All took place at the venue unless otherwise stated. 

Exhibitions

Conakry, Filipa César.
þan-þan, The Confraternity of Neoflagellants.
Akounak | Zerzura, Mdou Moctar, Ahmoudou Madassane + Christopher Kirkley.
Covenant Transport: Move or Die, Amanda Beech.
Public Syntax, naakita feldman-kiss, Ivanie Aubin-Malo, Video in the Public Sphere Working Group, Henry Andersen, Anna Queen, Mara Eagle, Phil Rose + Molly Teitelbaum. Critical Distance, Toronto.
Volatile Prophecies, Patricia Reed.
Don’t Forget to Call, Nelly Matorina.
Wednesdays, Before Piano., naakita feldman-kiss.
Video Rental Store, Under New Management.
All Things Being Equal, Mara Eagle, Anna Queen, Henry Andersen + Phil Rose.

Performances

Documents, Autumn Knight. Arts Court Courtroom, Ottawa.
Kempelen’s Breath, VOR (Andrea Roberts). Arts Court Courtroom, Ottawa.
*219 Condemnations, Alive! The Confraternity of Neoflagellants.
*219 Heretical Marginalia, Alive! The Confraternity of Neoflagellants.
Où sont les ancêtres? Ivanie Aubin-Malo.
Listener, Suzanne Kite.
Wampum, Elisa Harkins. Club SAW, Ottawa.
Breathing [Now and Then], Skin Tone. Club SAW, Ottawa.

Screenings

Spell Reel, Filipa César.
Édouard Glissant: One World in Relation, Manthia Diawara.
Tonsler Park, Kevin Jerome Everson. 
The Common Cinema, Transgender Media Portal, Kind Space, Cinema Politica, MAX Ottawa + Visual AIDS.
Good Luck, Ben Russell. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
Routine Nihilism, Gary Kibbins.
We Chose the Milky Way, Eva Marie Rodbro + Dear Lorde, Duke + Battersby. Club SAW, Ottawa. 

Working Groups

Knot Working Group, 2019
Video in the Public Sphere, 2018 – 2019

Public Art

The Future is Up, Sasha Phipps. STEM Complex, uOttawa. Ottawa.
Tranquil Traffic, Maayke Schurer. STEM Complex, uOttawa. Ottawa.
we only liberate ourselves by binding our liberations to those of one another, Pansee Atta. Victoria Island Hydro Station. Ottawa.
Don’t Believe the Hype!, Ryan Conrad. Bank Street / Ottawa Gay Village. Ottawa.
Open Water, Hélene Lefebvre. Les Suites parking garage. Ottawa.

Talks + Panels

Meteorisations | Reading Amilcar Cabral’s Agro-Poetics of Liberation, Filipa César.
We Only Liberate Ourselves, Pansee Atta, Andi Vicente + Alexis Shotwell. Mill Street Event Space, Ottawa.
Don’t Believe the ’69 Hype, Ryan Conrad, Tom Hooper, Ummni Khan + Darrah Teitel.
In Dialogue, Hélène Lefebvre + Jean-Michel Quirion.
Constructing Time, Amanda Beech. Critical Distance, Toronto.
Art’s Possible Worlds, Amanda Beech.
Reconstructing Screen Experiments from Expo 67’s Archives, Monika Kin Gagnon.
The Public Sphere(s) of Massive Media, Dave Colangelo.
Promiscuous Publicness and the Uncommon In-Common, Patricia Reed.
Intergenerational Practice, naakita feldman-kiss, Nelly Matorina, Ivanie Aubin-Malo + Laura Taler.
Video Rental Store Discussion, Suzanne Carte, Alison Creba + Ben Gianni.
Psychedelic Ethnography, Ben Russell.

Coordinated Workshops, Seminars + Residencies

Expanded Practice, Shani K Parsons. (Residency)
Cold Read, Andrea Roberts. (Workshop)
Second Tongues, Serena Lee. (Workshop)
Shift / Work: [STATIC] Speculations, Neil Mulholland + Norman Hogg. (Workshop)
Expanded Practice, Marc-Alexandre Reinhardt. (Residency)
Expanded Practice, Laura Taler. (Residency)
Theories of Sensory Implication for Public Art, Dylan Robinson. (Seminar)
Art and the Conception of Reality, Amanda Beech. (Seminar)
The Space around the Screen, Dave Colangelo. (Seminar)