SESSION 5

GERMAINE KOH on WORKING BETWEEN DISCIPLINES and CAROL SAWYER on COUNTER-NARRATIVES

Tuesday January 10th
7:00 – 9:00 pm
222 E Georgia Street, Vancouver

Germaine Koh will open a conversation with other producers about working between typical disciplines. The idea of interdisciplinarity or boundary-crossing may be quite fashionable academically, but actually attempting to make headway outside one’s field of specialization can be fraught with frustration — and filled with potential.  Koh will speak to the feeling of being always “in-between” and her impulse to move her work outside of the gallery system, in the belief that it can make a bigger difference there.

Carol Sawyer will talk about her ongoing project, The Natalie Brettscheider Archive, which she began in 1999 out of frustration with the conventions of art historical narratives that to large extent omit the contributions made by female performers of the early 20th century European avant-garde. In developing the body of work Sawyer has grown fascinated with archives and the anecdotal histories that can be unearthed in them. She will consider how these offer counter-narratives or points of resistance to more “official” histories.

GERMAINE KOH is an internationally active artist and independent curator based in Vancouver BC. Her work is concerned with the significance of everyday exchanges, familiar objects and common places. Her current projects include League, which gathers people to play invented sports and games as a practice of creative problem-solving (league-league.org); Home Made Home, an enterprise for building small dwellings (homemadehome.ca); and DOWNTOWNSPACE, a new mobile presentation space focused on urban issues (downtownspace.ca).
germainekoh.com

CAROL SAWYER is a visual artist and singer. Her work often takes the form of photographs, installations, video, and live performances of improvised music. Recent exhibitions include The Natalie Brettschneider Archive in Ottawa at the Carleton University Art Gallery with curator Heather Anderson, and at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria with curator Michelle Jacques.
carolsawyer.net

IMAGE:

Germain Koh photo credit: Scott August
&
Natalie Brettschneider performs Rapunzel and Medusa sit down to talk about war, c. 1948.  Carol Sawyer, 2012

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