Following the impact of a string of seminars which took place in 2018-19 in relation to Knot Project Space’s lecture series Video in the Public Sphere, in 2019 I produced another set of contexts for discourse, collective working and experimental learning in relation to a series of fall/winter presentation programs at Knot. While the previous seminars and the cohort that formed through them focused on notions of ‘publicness’ and culminated in the production of five individual video commissions by the group’s participating artists, the assembly of the 2019-20 Knot Working Group followed a different structure and track, occurring over more condensed period of time, and with an effort on understanding these gatherings as sites of potential future collaborative practice.
Thematic Threads
Some key themes were pursued in the discussions, workshops and Knot Project Space’s public presentation programming:
1) Fictioning
2) Vocality
3) Exhibition-Making
The resonances between these three units were not immediately made evident, an intentional ambiguity that positioned this program as a process of inquiry, one that would set us in-motion towards producing a shared knowledge, rather than being the delivery of a pre-determined curriculum. In other words, it was through the very processes of discussion and collaborative working, as a consortium of artists, curators, programmers and thinkers, that the group met in a middle-space to uncover new ground between these otherwise disparate zones. It was also possible for the group to decide to diverge away from or modify these proposed units as we responded to programming and each other’s interests – a tangential behavior that was encouraged.
Future Project
Despite the openness to the trajectory that the working group could take, this collectivity was also grounded with a more determinate aom, with the introduction of a possible Future Project and public presentation in 2020. Though ultimately interrupted by COVID-19, the Future Project was meant to encourage to the group to organize itself as an autonomous, collective body that could extend beyond the scope of these initial discussions to produce a form of publicness of some kind with and through Knot’s programming structure.
Archive of Activities | Nov. – Dec. 2019
Nov. 2 – Discussion | Art Practice as Ficitoning (or Myth-Science) – Simon O’Sullivan.
Moderated by Norman Hogg (The Confraternity of Neoflagellants).
Nov. 9 – Workshop | Shift / Work [STATIC] Speculations.
Conducted by Norman Hogg + Neil Mulholland (The Confraternity of Neoflagellants).
Nov. 16 – Discussion | Performance Fictions – David Burrowns.
Moderated by Neven Lochhead.
Nov. 23 – Workshop | Second Tongues.
Workshop score by Serena Lee. Conducted by Neven Lochhead.
Nov. 30 – Off-Site Visit | Toronto Biennial of Art.
Visited + Discussed various works.
Dec. 11 – Workshop | Cold Read.
Conducted by Andrea Roberts.
Dec. 19 – Discussion.
Moderated by Neven Lochhead.
Related Public Programming
Conakry, Filipa César
Meteorisations, Filipa César
pan-pan, Confraternity of Neoflagellants
*219 Condemnations, Alive!, Confraternity of Neoflagellants
Spell Reel, Filipa César
Expanded Practice, Shani K Parsons
Kempelen’s Breath, VOR
Documents, Autumn Knight
Working Group Participants
Alexandra Noble, Alexis Boyle, Michael Davidge, Stephanie Berrington, Marc-Alexandre Reinhardt, Pavel Pavlov, Rachel Weldon, Katherine Wyatt, Ellen Chang-Richardson, Edgar Hernandez, Shani K Parsons, Morris Rothman, Mathieu Hallé, Rachel Gray + Hélene Lefebvre.