Julie Ault: Closure

Master Class & Public Lecture

Master Class with Julie Ault at Skol on Thursday October 20 2011, 10am-4pm
Public lecture at Concordia University on Friday October 21 at 5:30pm

Project Description

Under the spectre of the Conservative majority government, and a generalized feeling that critical practices have been embraced by public and commercial galleries, much energy in artist‐run centres is diverted from programming toward negotiating the contradictory states of survival and growth. As if in response to the fear of closure, or of no future, many centres have become preoccupied with the state of their archives, or of historicizing their activities. What can be learned from the termination experiences of others? This Master Class will be led by Julie Ault, cofounder of Group Material. Active from 1979‐1996 in New York and internationally, this not‐for‐profit organization emphasized collaborative and socially engaged artistic practices. Drawing from her lived experience as a participant, and her later role as the ad hoc historian for the group as editor of Show and Tell: A Chronicle of Group Material (2010), Ault will lead non‐profit cultural workers in a day long reflection on the process of mourning the loss of an ideal. She will speak about the book as a form of exhibition space and the complexities of archiving and historicizing projects that evolved though multiple voices. Although there are differences between New York and Montreal artist‐run culture, Ault will bring her experiences to bear upon the local situation by speaking to shared acts of publishing, making projects, and the challenge posed by collective voices to the reductive archival principle of provenance.

This initiative of Felicity Tayler is presented in collaboration with the Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery and is partly supported by Emploi Québec, via the Comité de formation continue Arts et culture de l’Île de Montréal, managed by the RCAAQ’s coaching program.