News

Burn Up/Burn Out: Curating for the Future
Sunday June 5, online, 2-4pm*

Eventbrite zoom link: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/burn-up-burn-out-curating-for-the-future-tickets-335500831017

What does it mean to be an arts worker in a time of crisis? Join us for Burn Up/Burn Out: Curating for the Future, part of the Centre for Sustainable Curating’s Waste/Care/Carbon/Labour Speakers’ Series. For this event we have invited four early career curators, artists, and arts administrators with innovative practices to share and think about their projects in terms of the Synthetic Collective’s approach of “enough.” What does “enough” look like when confronted with the pressures of granting cycles, job insecurity, and growing wealth disparity? Are there ways to nurture our practices collaboratively, slowly, or in a dispersed manner?

Teresa Carlesimo, Lillian O’Brien Davis, Juliane Foronda, and Maya Wilson Sanchez will share short presentations on their work, followed by an in-depth discussion hosted by Amanda White.

The Synthetic Collective writes: “An approach of enough … means we should put in a lot of effort to build more equitable worlds, and that should be accompanied with an ethic of care, mindful that we don’t burn out and the planet doesn’t burn up….”

Image description: The background is an abstract colour field of various shades of green in shapes reminiscent of flames on a bright pink background. Text reads: Burn Out/Burn Up: Curating for the Future, June 5, 2-4pm. A list of the presenter names is included on the left hand side.

This event will have ASL and graphic interpretation.

*In Fall 2021, the Centre for Sustainable Curating posted a survey on accessing virtual events. Weekend afternoons scored very highly, particularly for those working full time. For this reason, Burn Up/Burn Out will be hosted on a Sunday afternoon for a live audience, and recorded and posted on the website.

The carbon impact of all events in the Waste/Care/Carbon/Labour Speakers Series will be calculated and shared in 2023.

Every step of exhibition design, from the initial organization to the deinstallation, can benefit from a lower carbon footprint.
Using the Resources at Hand is a guide designed primarily to help students think about eco-friendly options in designing exhibitions. Skills learned here can also be used elsewhere and can help to make the cultural sector as a whole more sustainable. The booklet offers tips for low-carbon design, outlines resources in Southwestern Ontario (with a focus on London), and includes information on borrowing and sharing resources and materials so that we can reduce and reuse at Western University.

If you’re interested in the guide, but not located in Ontario, Using the Resources at Hand is open-source and can be adapted and used by anyone hoping to share information about ecologically-friendly exhibition design. Email us at sustainable.curating@uwo.ca for the source files – we’re happy to share! 

September 8–November 20, 2021 at The University of Toronto Art Centre
Organized by the Synthetic Collective

Link to Exhibition and Related Programming

Works by:

Christina Battle, IAIN BAXTER&, Sara Belontz, Leticia Bernaus, J Blackwell, Amy Brener, Hannah Claus, Sully Corth, Heather Davis and Kirsty Robertson, Aaronel deRoy Gruber, Fred Eversley, Naum Gabo, General Idea, Kelly Jazvac, Woomin Kim, Kiki Kogelnik, Les Levine, Mary Mattingly, Christopher Mendoza, Tegan Moore, Skye Morét, Meagan Musseau, Claes Oldenburg, Meghan Price, Françoise Sullivan, Catherine Telford-Keogh, Lan Tuazon, Marianne Vierø, Joyce Wieland, Nico Willliams, Kelly Wood

Plastic Heart is an experimental exhibition that examines plastic as art material, cultural object, geologic process, petrochemical product, and a synthetic substance fully entangled with the human body. The exhibition includes new commissions, historical and contemporary artworks that relate to plastic as a politically loaded material, and investigations into the paradoxes of plastic conservation in museum collections. The exhibition acknowledges plastics as both lubricants of artistic, gallery, and museum practices and also as ‘wicked problems,’ made even more complex by their use and discard in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Plastic Heart mobilizes practices of institutional critique and proposes an alternative method of exhibition development and presentation that addresses ecology and sustainability in content and form. Seeking to stimulate viewers to be active subjects, the exhibition challenges received modes of art-making and viewing that are deeply dependent on fossil fuels. It also features data visualizations of a study conducted by the Synthetic Collective that provides a first-ever snapshot of post-industrial microplastics pollution on the shores of the Great Lakes. This exhibition links scientific and artistic methodologies to show how arts-based approaches to thinking and working can make viable contributions to environmental science and activism.

Watch the exhibition teaser.

Dialogue 1: Plastic, Pollution, and Policy Change

Wednesday, September 15, 6pm–7:30pm EDT
With Mark Fisher, Vanessa Gray, Michelle Murphy, and Chelsea Rochman, with moderator Heather Davis
Watch the recording

Dialogue 2: Plastic Pollution in the Laurentian Great Lakes: Industry and Invisibility

Wednesday, October 6, 6pm–7:30pm EDT
With Ian Arturo, Dr. Sara Belontz, Tegan Moore, Mary Mattingly, and Alice (Xia) Zhu, with moderator Kelly Jazvac
Register

Dialogue 3: The Plastic Conservation Conundrum: Preserving Plastics in Museum Collections and Plastics’ Durability in the Environment

Wednesday, October 13, 6pm–7:30pm EDT
With Courtney Asztalos, Dr. Patricia Corcoran, Roger Griffith, Sherry Phillips, and Dr. Lorena Rios Mendoza, with moderator Kelly Jazvac
Register

Dialogue 4: Sustainable Museums

Wednesday, October 27, 2pm–3:30pm EDT
With Suzanne Carte, Maya Ishizawa, and Sarah Sutton, with moderator Kirsty Robertson
Register

Virtual Spotlights

THE COMMUNITY IS NOT A HAPHAZARD COLLECTION OF INDIVIDUALS
Looking Ahead to Plastic Heart: Surface All The Way Through
What is a Wicked Problem? Introducing the Synthetic Collective
Turning the Tables on Research: A Q&A with Kristen Bos of U of T’s Technoscience Research Unit

Exhibition Resources

A DIY Fieldguide for Reducing the Environmental Impact of Art Exhibitions
Press Release
Exhibition Brochure
Large-Format Text

Our Supporters

We gratefully acknowledge the operating support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Toronto Arts Council, and the Ontario Arts Council, with additional project support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Jackman Humanities Institute.

In keeping with the CSC’s efforts to keep a low energy footprint, the video from the launch of the CSC on May 27th was available online for 30 days following the event and has now been saved to our archive.

Please contact us if you require access, it may also be available as an audio file (vastly reducing its size) upon request.

Thank you for watching!