Tuesday, January 14th, 7pm
AKA/PAVED Arts Event Space
Artists and non-artists are invited to come conspire! In this workshop, we will consider the shadowy question of “conspiratorial thinking” in the present day, examining its roots and causes, functions, aesthetic mechanisms, and artistic possibilities.
It is no coincidence that the sharp increase in widespread conspiratorial narratives that we’ve seen over the past several decades, whether speculations about JFK and 9/11 or occult theories about reptilian overlords and demonic sacrifices, has intensified alongside an equally sharp upturn in the power and complexity of industrial, military, financial, and generally “corporate” bodies. Among their many functions, conspiracies all seem to index a certain desire to narrate our increasingly impenetrable, opaque, and callous world in a way that is both comprehensible and aesthetically intriguing. Without disavowing or denying the very real dangers inherent to many contemporary schools of conspiratorial thinking, we will collectively explore how conspiracy-making, as an aesthetic act of distributed political storytelling, might be repurposed to serve an agenda of economic and social justice.
Specifically, we’ll consider how the photographic, videographic, and writerly strategies of conspiracy-making can be adopted through artistic means. Collectively and individually, we will dig through a variety of corporate archives and databases, appropriate images, videos, and documents, and try our hands fielding real political questions through directed conspiratorial storytelling.
Artist Bio:
Miles Rufelds is an artist, writer, and researcher based in Toronto. He holds a Master of Visual Studies in studio art from the University of Toronto (2019), and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Ottawa (2015). Rufelds’ interdisciplinary projects consider how technological, scientific, and aesthetic systems become corporatized and militarized. Through mixtures of video, photography, writing, sculpture, and installation, his works trace these patterns throughout the histories of ecology, chemistry, industry, food, film, and art. He’s exhibited in solo and group exhibitions, as well as screening programs and lecture series’, nationally and internationally, and has published essays on contemporary art and cinema across Canada.
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Members: FREE
Non-members: $50 (Price of membership at time of registration or $25 for students/underemployed)
To register for this workshop, email technical@pavedarts.ca
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About Memberships:
Did you know? PAVED member perks include free work-shops and darkroom plus artist-priced access to equipment rentals, video editing suite, digital photo suite, audio suite, event space rentals, and more. Our Darkroom Suite is always free for our members to use!
Fee: $50/year ($25 for Student/Underemployed)
To buy/renew your membership, please contact Lenore at
technical@pavedarts.ca or 306-652-5502 ext. 3
www.pavedarts.ca/membership