Spaces of Contestation artists’ panel and finissage reception

Friday, April 18, 2014
Panel Discussion: 7pm
Finissage Reception: 8pm

Artists: Lauren Marsden, Gabriel Saloman, Didier Morelli, Zoe Kreye and Catherine Grau
Curator: Mariane Bourcheix-Laporte

UNIT/PITT Projects will host a panel discussion with artists Lauren Marsden, Gabriel Saloman, Didier Morelli, Zoe Kreye and Catherine Grau, and curator Mariane Bourcheix-Laporte on April 18, 2014. The artists and curator will discuss key concepts and processes underscoring the realization of Collective Walks/Spaces of Contestation’s performance series and exhibition. A finissage reception will be held in the gallery after the panel discussion to mark the end of the exhibition’s accumulative process. The exhibition will remain open to the public until May 3.

In the past weeks, artists involved in Collective Walks/Spaces of Contestation have presented site-specific performances in the form of walks, which were developed in collaboration with local community groups. In parallel to the performance series, UNIT/PITT’s gallery has hosted an evolving exhibition serving as space of flux in which collected artifacts and ephemera from the performances (and the processes through which they have developed) have been accumulating as an extension of the collaborative work the artists have engaged in with community partners.

Collective Walks/Spaces of Contestation is a series of talks, performances, public actions, publications, and an exhibition that examines the collective walk/protest/public demonstration as both a performance and a social formation. The core of the project is in four collaborations between artists and community organizations that initiate community engagement and democratic use of public space via the realization of site-specific participatory performances. The project is curated by Mariane Bourcheix-Laporte and co-presented with the SFU Vancity Office of Community Engagement and the SFU Institute for the Humanities, and is supported through the BC Arts Council’s Arts-Based Community Development Program and a grant from the Hamber Foundation.

UNIT/PITT Projects | 236 East Pender Street, Vancouver BC Canada V6A 1T7 | +1 604 681 6740 | www.unitpitt.ca

UNIT/PITT is grateful for the assistance of the Canada Council, the British Columbia Arts Council, and the City of Vancouver; we are particularly grateful to individual donors, volunteers, artists, and cultural workers, without whom we would be unable to continue.