Speaker Series
March 15th - May 5th
Counter
Memory
Activism
This Speaker Series is a programming iteration of Memory Activism: Collaborative Processes of Counter-Memorialization, a project consisting of curatorial work and research concerning subversive or disruptive modes of memorialization and memory-keeping, including overlapping issues of resistance-memory and areas of connection between various experiences of difficult heritage.
This series aspires to create a public forum for discussion and a free resource for education and research regarding the topics of memory activism. The series will consist of live-streamed panels, presentations, and lectures hosted by our team members, and featuring academics, artists, and activists from across the field of memory studies.
The virtual discussions are free to attend and accessible to the public. The talks are hosted on Zoom and are a secure space where audience members will only be able to listen without video and type questions in the chat. Please find the links to the live and recorded talks below.
Dion Kaszas
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MONDAY MARCH 15TH 2021
ARTIST TALK 7:00 PM AST
Kaszas is an internationally acclaimed tattoo artist, cultural tattoo practitioner, painter, teacher, and scholar of Hungarian, Métis, and Nlaka'pamux (Interior Salish) heritage. He has been an invited artist at tattoo festivals, both national and international, and his work has appeared in Skin Deep Magazine, The World Atlas of Tattoo, Tattoo Traditions of Native North America and most recently the television series Skindigenous which premiered in 2018 on the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network. Dion is one of the founding members of the Earthline Tattoo Collective which aims to enhance, expand and support the work of traditional and cultural Indigenous tattoo practices across Canada. Dion holds a Master's degree in Indigenous Studies at the University of British Columbia Okanagan in Kelowna, British Columbia. His area of research is Indigenous tattooing, specifically the revival of Indigenous peoples’ tattooing practices, using Indigenous and creative research methodologies.
Michael Rothberg
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THURSDAY MARCH 18TH 2021
TALK 6:00 PM AST
Rothberg is an American Professor of English and Comparative Literature and the 1939 Society Samuel Goetz Chair in Holocaust Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. In addition to engaging with the Holocaust, his work concerns trauma and memory studies, postcolonial studies, contemporary literatures, and critical theory and cultural studies. His latest book The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators, published in 2019, reconsiders the familiar categories of victim, perpetrator, and bystander in relation to historical violence and contemporary inequality, and offers a new theory of political responsibility. Currently, he is working on a book for Fordham Press that examines the intersections between migration, citizenship, and confrontation with the Holocaust and National Socialism in contemporary Germany.
Syrus Marcus Ware
FRIDAY MARCH 19TH 2021
ARTIST TALK 7:00 PM AST
Ware is an Assistant Professor at the School of the Arts, McMaster University. He is a Vanier scholar, visual artist, community activist, youth-advocate and educator. Syrus' interdisciplinary practise explores social justice frameworks and Black activist culture, and he is shown widely in galleries and festivals across Canada. He is a core-team member of Black Lives Matter – Toronto, co-founder of Black Lives Matter - Canada, a part of the Performance Disability Art Collective, and an ABD PhD candidate at York University in the Faculty of Environmental Studies. His ongoing curatorial work includes That’s So Gay (Gladstone Hotel, 2016-2019; Online, 2020), and BlacknessYes!/Blockorama. He is the co-editor of the best-selling Until We Are Free: Reflections on Black Lives Matter in Canada (URP, 2020) and is a co-editor of two publications produced by the Marvellous Grounds Collective, Marvellous Grounds: Queer of Colour Histories in Toronto (Between the Lines, 2018) and Queering Urban Justice: Queer of Colour Formations in Toronto (U of T Press, 2018).
Catherine Anne Martin
MONDAY MARCH 22ND 2021
ARTIST TALK 7:00 PM AST
Martin is a celebrated filmmaker, storyteller, and Member of Millbrook Mi'kmaw community. She has achieved decades of acclaim as an award-winning documentarian and independent film producer with her company, Matues Productions. She is a past Chair of the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN), and a past Nancy Rowell Jackman Chair in Women’s Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University. As of last year, Martin is the first-ever Director of Indigenous Community Engagement at Dalhousie University. She has won numerous awards for her achievements in filmmaking, education, and activism, including her appointment to the Order of Canada in 2017. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Arts from Dalhousie University, a Master’s in Education and Media Literacy from Mount St. Vincent University, and a certificate in Conflict, Negotiations and Mediation from Henson College.
Nicholas Galanin
TUESDAY MARCH 30TH 2021
ARTIST TALK 7:00 PM AST
Galanin is a Tlingit/Unangax̂ multidisciplinary artist. Incorporating mediums ranging from sculpture and installation to video, performance, music, and sound, Galanin investigates collective memory and contemporary culture through connections with the land and place-based histories. His work has both roots and reach; it resides in numerous public and private collections and has been featured in solo and group exhibitions worldwide. This past year, he received the VIA Fund for Artistic Production for his work Natural Forces with Merritt Johnson and presented his exceptional installation, Shadow on the Land, an excavation and bush burial, as part of the 22nd Biennale of Sydney. Galanin apprenticed with master carvers, earned his BFA at London Guildhall University, and his MFA at Massey University. He lives and works with his family in Sitka, Alaska.
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This event is co-sponsored by NSCAD.
Wambui Kamiru
WEDNESDAY APRIL 7TH 2021
ARTIST TALK 5:00 PM AST
Born and raised in Kenya, Wambui Kamiru Collymore has been developing artwork around the themes of decoloniality, identity and independence in Africa. Originally a painter, Wambui now expresses her work through installation. She holds an MSc. in African Studies with a focus on Violence, History and Memory from the University of Oxford. She lives and works in Nairobi. Wambui is also the founder of The Art Space, an online art gallery.
Sylvia D. Hamilton
WEDNESDAY APRIL 14TH 2021
TALK 7:00 PM AST
Hamilton is a Nova Scotian filmmaker, writer, multi-media artist known for her award-winning documentary films and her publications, presentations, and extensive volunteer work with artistic, social, and cultural organizations at the local and national levels. Her films include Black Mother Black Daughter, Speak It! From the Heart of Black Nova Scotia, Portia White: Think on Me, and The Little Black School House; they have been broadcast in Canada and screened at national and international festivals. Her 2014 poetry collection, And I Alone Escaped to Tell You, was a finalist for several awards. Excavation: A Site of Memory, a multi-media installation, has been shown in galleries and museums in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec. One adaptation titled Here We Are Here, gave its name to the 2018 Royal Ontario Museum’s (ROM) national group exhibition titled, Here We Are Here: Black Canadian Contemporary Art. Her recognitions include several honorary degrees, a Gemini Award, and the 2019 Governor General’s Award in History (Popular Media). She has a B.A. from Acadia University and an M.A. from Dalhousie University. She held Nancy’s Chair in Women’s Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax and has taught and given lectures at many universities in Canada, and at Middlebury College in Vermont, and the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. After her retirement from the University of King’s College in 2020, where she held the Rogers Chair in Communications in the School of Journalism, King’s named her an Inglis Professor and launched five annual awards in her name for African Canadian students.
Verónica Tello
POSTPONED
Tello is a Chilean/Australian art historian based at UNSW Art & Design, Sydney. Her work is dedicated to engaging and animating queer and migratory archives in Australia and Latin America in particular. In 2016, she published her first full-length book of research, Counter-Memorial Aesthetics: Refugee Histories and the Politics of Contemporary Art, to much acclaim. She is currently working on an exhibition and art history project focussed on the transnational/queer networks developed by Chilean and Australian art workers during the Pinochet regime (1973-1990). Another project, funded by the Australian Research Council, focuses on creating structural change, and epistemic diversity, in Australian art museums through intergenerational care and mentorship. She has completed research fellowships in Rhodes, South Africa, and New York City, USA. She holds a PhD in Art History and Visual Culture from the University of Melbourne.
