Media Releases

How far is near

September 29, 2011

TORONTO, ON — A peren­ni­al crowd favorite, the Justi­na M. Bar­nicke Gallery is once again proud to present a slate of pro­gram­ming for the City of Toronto’s annu­al all night con­tem­po­rary art fes­ti­val, Sco­tia­bank Nuit Blanche. This year’s high­lights include a new­ly com­mis­sioned Farm­ers Mar­ket 2050, a new bar-chi­tec­tur­al instal­la­tion by Dean Bald­win, a film instal­la­tion by Joyce Wieland and Hol­lis Framp­ton, and a video instal­la­tion by Annie Onyi Chung, among oth­ers. We are also excit­ed to announce that we are expand­ing out of Hart House and mov­ing into Mar­shall McLuhan’s famous Coach House Insti­tute with a mul­ti­me­dia instal­la­tion by Ams­ter­dam-based Mark Bou­los.

Pre­sent­ed in con­junc­tion with the 100th anniver­sary of Mar­shall McLuhan’s birth, How Far is Near takes its point of depar­ture in McLuhan’s obser­va­tion that, in the elec­tron­ic age, infor­ma­tion inte­gra­tion would cause peo­ple to be ever more involved in each oth­er’s lives, col­laps­ing any easy dis­tinc­tion between what is felt to be near or far. Increas­ing­ly, artists are exam­in­ing this per­va­sive­ly medi­at­ed envi­ron­ment, the nature of our involve­ment in it, and the pos­si­bil­i­ties and nature of par­tic­i­pa­tion in the pub­lic sphere.

Farm­ers Mar­ket 2050

Mam­malian Div­ing Reflex with Dean Bald­win, Hala Chaoui, Kubo Dzam­ba, Nathan Isberg, and a sci­en­tif­ic inter­pre­ta­tion by the teens of Park­dale

Pre­sent­ed in the Hart House Quad
7 Hart House Cir­cle

It is antic­i­pat­ed that in 2050 the world’s pop­u­la­tion will exceed 9 bil­lion peo­ple. The expan­sion of the world’s food­print that is expect­ed to accom­pa­ny this pop­u­la­tion increase may exceed the tol­er­ances of our plan­et’s ecosys­tems, acti­vat­ing unknown envi­ron­men­tal and eco­nom­ic tip­ping points, and result­ing in extreme food short­ages. How will we feed every­one when the time comes? By eat­ing bugs, of course.

This project pro­pos­es Third Mil­len­ni­um Farm­ing (3MF): har­ness­ing the abil­i­ties of micro-organ­isms (algae and phy­to­plank­ton) and micro-live­stock (insects) to rapid­ly repro­duce, for the pur­pose of food pro­duc­tion. 3MF food pro­duc­tion strate­gies have a sig­nif­i­cant­ly small­er food­print since these new farm­ing oper­a­tions could be fed with cer­tain types of city bio-wastes, cre­at­ing a new, and more sus­tain­able, type of food chain.

Jump in your time machine and vis­it Farm­ers Mar­ket 2050, where you can take a look at the sci­ence and nib­ble on the food. Nathan will be mak­ing some tasty delec­tables with always-tasty crick­ets, algae, and oth­er com­po­nents in our ecosys­tem. Sor­ry, Jiminy, we’re just try­ing to let our con­scious be our guide.

Mark Bou­los: All that is sol­id melts into air

Pre­sent­ed at the Coach House Insti­tute, Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
39A Queens Park Cres­cent East
Toron­to, ON M5S 2C3

Mark Boulos’s large-scale video pro­jec­tion, All That Is Sol­id Melts Into Air, high­lights the dis­tance between glob­al cap­i­tal spec­u­la­tion and its local effects. The work con­sists of two videos—projected simul­ta­ne­ous­ly on oppos­ing walls—which con­front the view­ing audi­ence with con­flict­ing yet inex­tri­ca­bly emeshed forces. One screen presents fren­zied stock traders at the Chica­go Mer­can­tile Exchange (the largest com­modi­ties exchange in the world) spec­u­lat­ing on the futures of oil; the oth­er shows doc­u­men­tary footage of guer­ril­la fight­ers from the Move­ment for the Eman­ci­pa­tion of the Niger Delta (MEND) prepar­ing for bat­tle against oil com­pa­nies that extract and export oil from their land.

Mod­els for Tak­ing Part

Anet­ta Mona Chişa and Lucia Tkáčová, Bouchra Khalili, Ren­zo Martens, Tobias Zielony, and Artur Żmi­jew­s­ki

Curat­ed by Juan A. Gaitán

Pre­sent­ed in the Justi­na M. Bar­nicke Gallery
7 Hart House Cir­cle
Toron­to, ON M5S 3H3

Mod­els for Tak­ing Part assem­bles media works by inter­na­tion­al artists Anet­ta Mona Chişa & Lucia Tkáčová (b. Slo­va­kia and Roma­nia), Bouchra Khalili (b. Moroc­co), Ren­zo Martens (b. the Nether­lands), Tobias Zielony (b. Ger­many), and Artur Żmi­jew­s­ki (b. Poland). The artists’ provoca­tive works crit­i­cal­ly inter­pret the pub­lic sphere as both an idea and ide­al that inter­sects uneasi­ly with fac­tion­al and even per­son­al inter­ests. The exhi­bi­tion presents mod­els of par­tic­i­pa­tion in which the ide­al­ized mar­riage between democ­ra­cy and the pub­lic sphere becomes fraught with incon­gruity, at times appear­ing unsus­tain­able.

Orga­nized by Pre­sen­ta­tion House Gallery and adapt­ed for the Justi­na M. Bar­nicke Gallery

Pro­duced with assis­tance from the British Colum­bia Arts Coun­cil Tour­ing Ini­tia­tives, the Toron­to Arts Coun­cil, and the Hal Jack­man Foun­da­tion.

Justi­na M. Bar­nicke Gallery
Hart House, Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
7 Hart House Cir­cle
Toron­to, ON  M5S 3H3
416–978-8398
www.jmbgallery.ca

The exhi­bi­tions and pro­grams of the Justi­na M. Bar­nicke Gallery are gen­er­ous­ly sup­port­ed by the Cana­da Coun­cil for the Arts.

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For more infor­ma­tion, please con­tact:

Justi­na M. Bar­nicke Gallery
Hart House
7 Hart House Cir­cle
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
www.jmbgallery.ca
416–978-8398
jmb.gallery@utoroto.ca