We live in partitioned times. The rendering asunder
of common territories and histories in the name of imaginary ethnic imperatives
is, politically speaking, precisely what Inadvertent Monuments [see WILL] seeks to critique. Yet art itself is not exempt from
this logic of partitioning, often merely transforming politics into an
image, an artwork, thereby defusing its real and potential force. Is it
possible to address the perceptual geopolitics of partition using art-related
habitus and skills while avoiding the pitfalls of "picture politics?"
The screening of Ilana Salama Ortar's short documentary film, Adamut/Lands
[Israel 2003, 12 min, DV], and the ensuing presentation will be the occasion
to examine the veritable use-value of art in a political framework. The
film deals with the situation of land stripped of its soil. Is it possible
to envisage art without artwork, refusing to remain partitioned within
the territory of its discipline? Can the inadvertent, symbolic configuration
of the real be the object of the sort of sustained scrutiny usually reserved
for the category of objects known as artworks? Ilana
Salama Ortar and Stephen Wright, Guest Artists
• ILANA SALAMA ORTAR AND STEPHEN WRIGHT • FACILITATOR:
SARA MATTHEWS •
Stephen Wright is a Paris-based theorist
of art-related practice. Ilana Salama Ortar
is a Haifa-based artist, working on the development of "civic art," investigating
the visible and invisible traces of the erasure of individual and collective
memory in the urban fabric.
INNIS TOWN HALL: 2 Sussex Ave.
subway stop St. George, south of Bloor
TICKET PRICE: $5 or pwyc
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