Seminar

Writing and speaking in public entail constant editing, revision, redaction, and correction. Oftentimes these are dictated by style guides, genre conventions, or shifting cultural and political discourse—what some might call “political correctness”—but more often than not, by the writer’s or speaker’s practice of pushing the boundaries of language and craft and propriety and legitimacy.

Strike That brings together visual artists, writers, and poets who critically reflect on changing language in the broader cultural and political landscape and their own work. How are vocabulary, grammar, and syntax negotiated, updated, or rejected to reflect the fissures between inner lives and political realities? How do we do so in real time and respond to crises while attending to the repair or recuperation of linguistic histories and legacies from violence and dispossession? What of translation, legibility, and opacity? When do lexicons fail us, and when are they a tool for empowerment and resistance? From neologisms to reclaiming outdated terminology, the speakers discuss the poetic and political stakes in word choice as speech and speech acts are censored, criminalized, and the speaker silenced. 

Participants
Those registered and
Demian DinéYazhi’, Native American artist, poet, and activist.
Fargo Nissim Tbakhi, Palestinian-American performance artist and writer.
SA Smythe, transmedia storyteller and assistant professor of Black Studies & the Archive at the University of Toronto.

The last in the Vera List Center for Art and Politics’ two year Correction* Seminar Series, this program is co-presented with the Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen’s University, Ontario. It is organized and moderated by Nasrin Himada, Associate Curator, Academic Outreach and Community Engagement, Queen’s University, and Eriola Pira, VLC Curator and Director of Programs.