Please join us for Delineating nation state capital, the final of five conversations on the theme of attention, with speakers Bonnie Devine, Artist and Associate Professor Emerita OCAD University, and Luis Jacob, Visiting Professor, University of Toronto. Their short presentations will be followed by a discussion moderated by David Fortin, McEwen School of Architecture, and Adrian Blackwell, University of Waterloo.
Praxes of Care asks, “what is an architecture of care?” Over four terms–Fall 2021 to Winter 2023–a series of conversations will bring together two or more architects, designers, researchers, artists, activists, and care workers to discuss care processes according to the themes of Attention, Action, Communication, and Maintenance. The series is curated by faculty, staff, and representatives of student groups: Treaty Lands Global Stories, Bridge, and the Sustainability Collective. Recent calls for change have shifted the discipline toward the underlying social and ecological processes enabled by the production of architecture. By listening to and learning about care practices from interdisciplinary perspectives, we can begin to reshape the discipline of architecture into a form of care.
FALL 2021: ATTENTION
“Caring about means that we are attentive to the needs that need to be addressed. Before any caring process can begin, someone has to recognize the need for care. This is a more difficult task than it at first seems: some needs are made difficult to see or deliberately ignored.” — Joan Tronto
Paying attention is the initial step of the caring process. Western technoscience theorists, Aryn Martin, Natasha Myers, and Ana Viseu, describe attention as “a mode of inquiry mediated by hesitations, questions, and observations: it is a practice of not knowing what to do even as one wants to respond.”
What is observed, focused on, or paid attention to is filtered through our individual experiences and understandings of the world. In bringing attention to something, other things may be neglected in the process. What we pay attention to effects and reflects our worldviews and the decisions we will
make. Not all attention will lead to action and that can be very important. Yet the act of paying attention also calls on us to bear witness, fight for recognition, and coordinate our efforts in the struggle for equity and inclusion. This set of conversations explores how architects can be attentive to care needs while remaining critical of how and to whom attention is given.
This event is presented alongside the launch of Scapegoat: Architecture/Landscape/Political Economy 12 - c\a\n\a\d\a.
SPEAKER BIOS
Bonnie Devine is an installation artist, video maker, curator, writer, and educator. Using cross disciplinary iterations of written, visual, and performative practice, Devine explores issues of land, environment, treaty, history, and narrative. Though formally educated in fine art at the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD U) and York University, Devine’s most enduring learning came from her grandparents, who were Anishinaabe trappers on the Canadian Shield in northern Ontario.
Devine’s installation, video, and curatorial projects have been shown in solo and group exhibitions and film festivals across Canada and in the USA, South America, Europe, Russia, and China, including the Art Gallery ofOntario, the Berlin Film Festival, the National Museum of the American Indian, and Today Art Museum in Beijing. Recent public acknowledgements of Devine’s practice include a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2021, and an Ontario Lieutenant Governor’s Heritage
Award and OCAD University’s Distinguished Research and Creative Practice Award in 2019. An Associate Professor Emerita and the Founding Chair of the Indigenous Visual Culture program at OCAD University, Devine maintains an active artpractice and serves on several cultural boards and councils in the United States and Canada. She is based in Toronto.
Luis Jacob is a Peruvian-born, Toronto-based artist whose work destabilizes viewing conventions and invites collisions of meaning. Since his participation in documenta 12 in 2007, he has achieved an international reputation — with exhibitions at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Austria; Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, Germany; and the Toronto Biennial of Art (all 2019); La Biennale de Montréal (2016); Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York (2015); Taipei Biennial (2012); Generali Foundation, Vienna (2011); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,New York (2010); Hamburg Kunstverein and the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery (both 2008).
Accessibility: Waterloo Architecture is committed to achieving accessibility for persons with disabilities who are attending the event. Closed Captioning will be available during the live event. For accommodation questions and requests, please contact us in advance of the event at julie.dring@uwaterloo.ca.
For more information on this series and other events presented by Waterloo Architecture, please visit waconnect.ca or follow us @waterloo_architecture.