Getting Rid of Ourselves

Artists: Becky Beasley, Adrian Blackwell, Heath Bunting, Kajsa Dahlberg, Jesse Darling, Claire Fontaine, Goldin+Senneby, Janez Janša, Janez Janša, Janez Janša, Kernel

Curator: Helena Reckitt

Exhibition Information/Summary: 

6 Works in the exhibition question the link between art and self-expression through tactics of anonymity, shared authorship, appropriated identities, delegated production, and financial speculation. Highlighting how subjectivity is treated as a form of living currency to exploit, market and sell to, the exhibition explores the diffusion and distribution of artistic agency and intellectual property.

Publication: 

Getting Rid of Ourselves Catalogue.pdf (ocadu.ca) 

Public Program Events (list with description if needed):

• Wednesday, July 16, 6:30 p.m. 
  • CLAIRE FONTAINE ON 1970S ITALIAN FEMINISMS AND THE HUMAN STRIKE presented in partnership with the Consulat général de France à Toronto Room 190/Auditorium 100 McCaul St. 
• Saturday, July 19, 1 p.m. 
  • Curator’s talk with Helena Reckitt
• Sunday, July 20, 11 a.m. 
  • Artists Survival Workshop led by Heath Bunting under the aegis of irational.org 
    • In this workshop, practical woodland and shoreline survival skills will be examined and contrasted with both urban street-level and office survival strategies. Participants will explore techniques of sourcing clean water, fire, food, shelter and weapons. The workshop builds on Heath Bunting’s extensive experience of surviving as an artist on the margins of social and technological surveillance and control.
• Tuesdays, 6 to 8 p.m. (August 5, August 19, September 2, September 16) 
  • Let’s Get Lost – A Walking / Reading Group focused on the Dismantling of Subjects and Spaces 
    • Hosted by Scapegoat: Architecture/Landscape/Political Economy Led by Adrian Blackwell and Marcin Kedzior 
    • Responding to the proposition that we ‘get rid of ourselves’, this biweekly walking/reading group explores the spatial construction of subjectivity. Discussions focus around selected articles that highlight the contradictory values of individual freedom and private property underpinning the principle of the autonomous modern subject, and their current manifestations under Neoliberalism. Adapted from the Walking / Reading Group on Participation devised by Ania Bas and Simone Mair in London in 2013.
• August 5 
  • The Origins of Property in Liberal Individualism
    • Brett Neilson and Sandro Mezzadra, Fabrica Mundi: Producing the World by Drawing Borders; Shiri Pasternak, Property in Three Registers. 
• August 19 
  • Precarious Actors of Neoliberal Urbanization 
    • Irmgard Emmelhainz, The Mexican Neoliberal Conversion and Differentiated, Homogenous Lives; AbdouMaliq Simone, Water, Politics and Design in Jakarta. 
• September 2 
  • Opened by the World 
    • Georges Bataille, The Economy Equal to the Universe; Jane Bennett and Alexander Livingston, Philosophy in the Wild: Listening to Things in Baltimore; Jesse Boon, Kids on Buildings: Echos, Mirrors, and Ghosts. 
• September 16 
  • Commonism, or Caring With Others 
    • Wendy Jacob and Gina Badger, In the Presence of Another Being; Paige Sarlin, Vulnerable Accumulation: A Practical Guide; Isabelle Stengers and Erik Bordeleau, The Care of the Possible.
• Wednesday, September 24, 6:30 p.m. 
  • Insite Exhibition Tour with Paulette Phillips OCAD U faculty, Integrated Media 
    • Paulette Phillips is an artist and educator based in Toronto. Currently she is creating an archive of artist portraits using a polygraph, a camera and series of questions that frame the basis of self-representation. 
• Wednesday, October 1, 6:30 p.m. 
  • Insite Exhibition Tour with Jim Drobnick OCAD U faculty, Liberal Arts & Sciences 
    • Jim Drobnick is a critic, curator and Associate Professor of Contemporary Art and Theory at OCAD U. He has published on the visual arts, performance, the senses and post-media practices, and is the co-editor of the Journal of Curatorial Studies.