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We Regret To Inform You...: A Virtual Discussion Series

Wednesday, October 21 @ 6pm, Wednesday November 4 @ 6pm and Wednesday, November 25 @ 6pm


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We Regret To Inform You...: A Virtual Discussion Series

The Centre for Art Tapes (CFAT) presents 'We Regret to Inform You,' a virtual discussion series about our ideas around "success" and "failure" in the arts. Facilitated by Dr. Julie Hollenbach, the series will invite local artists and arts workers to discuss the wide range of ways in which an individual's art practice can differ from what we may have been trained to perceive as "successful."

The series will take place over Zoom meetings on Wednesday evenings from 6pm to 8pm ADT. To register, please follow the link for each event below:

October 21 - Discussion with Masuma Khan (CFAT's current Artist in Residence)
November 4 - Discussion with Merray Gerges
November 25 - Discussion with past CFAT Media Art Scholars: Kaashif Ghanie, Charvel Rappos and Tara Taylor

More about the series:

This series aims to decentre narratives of success in Western art worlds and cultural practice (often times at talks, artists centre experiences of success! Highlighting successful projects and all the things in their practice that worked!). What is oftentimes so precious and so rarely talked about is what happens when things don’t go as planned. Setbacks and “failure” are normal, everyday occurrences that are a fundamental (and sometimes generative) part of creative practice. The hope here is to create community conversations that destigmatize “failure” (which can look like setbacks, dead ends, rejection from grants/exhibition proposals, taking a break, blockage, impasse, and on and on).

'We Regret to Inform You" will also critically consider “success” stories and the myth that everyone can achieve “success” in a colonialist, white supremacist, neoliberal capitalist society. Who is excluded from “success”? Those excluded from “success” are often meant to feel like “failures” ... and to take failure personally ...when it is in fact a systemic failure. Is “success” the carrot that is dangled in front of our faces to motivate our complicity in the status quo? We hope to critically assess the cultural systems that fail so many folks, while giving complexity to the myriad experiences that exist in the arts.

About Dr. Julie Hollenbach:

Julie Hollenbach is a queer white woman of German ancestry born on unceded Syilx territory, now living and working in K’jipuktuk/Halifax, Nova Scotia. Julie is Assistant Professor of Craft History and Material Culture at NSCAD University. Her curatorial and academic research uses a queer, feminist, anti-racist and decolonial methodology in order to address craft practices and craft cultures at the intersections of history and location, tradition and ritual, contact and connection, meaning and use. Julie’s writing on culture has been published in popular press platforms (Canadian Art and Studio Magazine) as well as scholarly publications (Craft and Design journal, Cahiers métiers d’art ::: Craft Journal). Julie has curated exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, MSVU Art Gallery, Union Gallery, and the Anna Leonowens Gallery.


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