Issue 3: cancelled

Guest editor and exhibition curator: Maia Nichols

They say “the time of heroes is over,”[1] hoping to bury with it all forms of heroism. Certain key aspects of society are irretrievable, crossed out, eliminated. On the one hand, some act purposefully under the guise of nonchalance, taking up a void status as strategic positioning. These can be seen to act up, “be unruly,” or to act out, “behave anti-socially” within the world. On the other hand, the impetus for cancelled is to consider agency and alternative models of questioning globalized capital, by rethinking the productive legacy of nihilist strategies and their temporal effects.

The exhibition invited artworks that consider how the fields of communication, hacking, design, architecture, activism, scientific or artistic practices produce effects through cancellation, deflection, or discretion. The essays confront the tensions between strategies of objectification and tools of abstraction versus the glorification of self-hood, expressionism and the individual. Works were sought that addressed specific forms of spatial orientation and the advantages and pitfalls of strategic desertion, drop -outs, or purposeful self-removal.

Exhibition venue: Eastern Bloc in Montreal, Canada
Exhibition Dates: July 28-30, 2017

Participants:

Meliti Kontogiorgi
Jesus H. Mayor
Kutlu Gürelli
Ian Haig
Peter Burke
Alba Mayol Curci
Nancy Mauro-Flude

Additional journal contributions:

Alice Desmond

Jahnne Pasco-White
Manuel Lima
Renee Carmichael

Zeny May Recidoro

Footnote

[1] Bernadette Corporation, Get rid of Yourself, 2003