The Function of Festival in Crisis II

2021English

First programmed as part of last year’s festival, this panel continues to reckon with the function of art, festival, and gallery spaces in a time of crisis. What can art and artmakers do? How do we contend with the radical possibilities and limitations of arts programming and its relationship and responsibility to sociopolitical events?  

Moderator:

Belinda Kwan • Arts Administrator and Independent Curator, InterAccess, Trinity Square 

Video, Bunker 2 Contemporary Art Container

Belinda Kwan is a curator and arts worker interested in social critique, pedagogy, and advocacy through the arts. Her research-based practice explores how processes of knowledge translation and legitimization respond to transgenerational trauma. Currently, Kwan is the Educational and Outreach Coordinator at InterAccess (Toronto, CA), Co-Director at Bunker 2 Contemporary Art Container (Toronto, CA) and an Executive Board Member of Trinity Square Video (Toronto, CA).

Panelists:

Sean Lee • Artist and Curator, Tangled Art + Disability

Sean Lee is an artist and curator exploring the notion of disability art as the last avant-garde. Orienting towards a “crip horizon”, he is interested in the transformative possibilities of crip community building and accessible curatorial practices that desire the ways disability can disrupt. Sean is the Director of Programming at Tangled Art + Disability. He also is a member of the Ontario Art Council’s Deaf and Disability Advisory Group and Toronto Art Council’s Visual Arts / Media Arts Committee.

Scott Miller Berry • Programmer and Cultural Worker, Rendezvous with Madness

Scott Miller Berry is a filmmaker and cultural worker. Currently Managing Director at Workman Arts, an art + mental health organization in Toronto that presents Rendezvous With Madness Film Festival; previously Executive Director at the Images Festival. Currently on Boards of Toronto Media Arts Centre [TMAC] and Long Winter Festival; on staff of annual Film Farm residency and programs films via year-round re:assemblage collective. Recent screenings include: VUCAVU, New York, Wales, Montréal, Lisbon, Bangalore, Jakarta, Oberhausen and solo retrospective at Colectivo Toronto.

Darian Razdar • Organizer, Researcher, and Artist, Bricks & Glitter, REFLEX Urbanism

Darian Razdar is an organizer, researcher, and artist currently living in Toronto with roots in the Great Lakes and Caspian Sea basins. He is driven by beauty and experiment to explore cultural tensions that incite change. Darian began community organizing at a young age in Michigan, and has continued in Toronto with Bricks & Glitter and REFLEX Urbanism. As an artist, Darian writes poetry, weaves rugs, dyes textiles, prints prints, and puts on drag.