funkaesthetics round table discussion

Funkaesthetics Round Table Discussion



Image Left: Adrian Piper, Funk Lessons, performance, 1983. Courtesy of the artist.
Image Right: Free Dance Lessons (Paige Gratland & Day Milman), 2004. Video still by Samara Liu. Courtesy of the artists.

Monday, March 9, 2009
6pm

Music Room (2nd Floor)
Hart House, University of Toronto

7 Hart House Circle
Toronto, ON

This round table discussion brings together four University of Toronto scholars from various disciplines to further explore ideas concerning funk as represented in the exhibition Funkaesthetics, curated by Luis Jacob and Pan Wendt, currently at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery Hart House (February 12-March 23). The conversation will be moderated by co-curator Luis Jacob.

Funkaesthetics is premised on the idea that funk constitutes a uniquely rich system of thought. With its interest in the distant past of ancient Egypt and the allegorical futures of science-fiction, in its freakish costumes and focus on the figure of "the alien," funk manifests a vision of time and identity as mutable and open to transformation. The exhibition is an occasion to consider funk in the context of its birth at the time of Black consciousness and the struggles for civil rights in the United States. Funkaesthetics continues till March 23, 2009.

Panelists:

Gage Averill, Vice-Principal Academic and Dean of the University of Toronto Mississauga, formerly served as Dean of Music at the University of Toronto and Chair of NYU's Department of Music. Averill is an ethnomusicologist, specializing in popular music of the Caribbean and North American vernacular music.

Luis Jacob is a Toronto-based artist whose work has shown in the Kunstverein in Hamburg (Hamburg), the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst (Antwerp), the Barbican Art Gallery (London), and Documenta 12 (Kassel). His curatorial projects include "Golden Streams: Artists' Collaboration and Exchange in the 1970s" (Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto at Mississauga, 2002), and "The JDs Years: 1980s Queer Zine Culture from Toronto" (Art Metropole, Toronto, and Helen Pitt Gallery, Vancouver, 1999).



Ken McLeod teaches at the University of Toronto Scarborough's Music Department. His research and publishing activities address the study of gendered and racial narratives of national identity in 17th- and 18th-century English theatre music, and has also published on identity politics in popular music, Chaos theory, the appropriation of classical music by disco and electronica, and the intersections between science fiction and rock music.

Jon Soske is a PhD candidate in the Department of History, University of Toronto. He is currently completing his thesis entitled "'Wash me Black Again': African Nationalism, the Indian Diaspora, and Kwa-Zulu Natal, 1945-79." Soske is an instructor in the African and Caribbean Studies Programs (University of Toronto) and is co-curating (with Tejpal S. Ajji) the exhibition "South-South: Interruptions and Encounters," which opens at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery on April 2, 2009.

Rinaldo Walcott is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education (University of Toronto), where he also holds the Canada Research Chair in Social Justice and Cultural Studies. His teaching and research has been largely in the area of cultural studies and postcolonial studies with an emphasis on black diaspora studies. He has published on music, film, queer theory, literature and theatre.

The Justina M. Barnicke Gallery gratefully acknowledges the support of the Centre for the Study of the United States, Canada Council for the Arts, and Ontario Arts Council.

For information related to this exhibition and other Gallery programming please contact:

Justina M. Barnicke Gallery
Hart House, University of Toronto
7 Hart House Circle
Toronto, ON
M5S 3H3
Canada

Tel: + 1 (416) 978-8398
Fax: + 1 (416) 978-8387
Email: jmb.gallery@utoronto.ca
Web: www.jmbgallery.ca

Gallery Hours
Monday to Wednesday 11am - 5pm
Thursday to Friday 11am - 7pm
Saturday to Sunday 1pm - 5pm

The Gallery is closed on statutory holidays.
The Gallery is wheelchair accessible.