Events and Projects

I still dream... of Orgonon

(Added 18 September 2011)

Image: Leisure Projects, “Cloudbusting” research at Orgonon, Maine, 2011

Leisure Projects is pleased to have been invited to participate in K-Town, a Karaoke lounge installation by Luke Painter and Meera Margaret Singh.
Leisure’s on site research at The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust, Orgonon, Maine, resulted in our contribution to K-Town, a karaoke tribute to Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting.

K-Town
OPENING: SEPT 24th, 6-9pm
Sept 20-24th
Angell Gallery
12 Ossington Avenue
Toronto, ON

Sept 27-October 6th
K-Town at x-space
Toronto, ON

Dec 1-16th, 2011
Ed Gallery
Guelph, ON

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The Compulsive Browse

(Added 19 February 2011)

Image: McGill Archives, Compulsive Browse

The Compulsive Browse Colloquium
You look at this, you look at that.
Concordia University, Montréal, February 18-20, 2011

Artist Participants: Michael Blum, Michelle Gay, Angela Grauerholz, Luis Jacob, Michelle Lacombe, Leisure Projects, Alexandre St-Onge, Felicity Tayler

Looking for times and places? Visit The Compulsive Browse schedule page.

This intimate two-day colloquium is the first in what we hope will be subsequent gatherings of artists and cultural professionals who have an interest in exploring the particular research cultures that evolve around contemporary artistic practice. This initial session welcomes participation from an intentionally broad range of disciplinary perspectives including practicing artists, museum and gallery professionals, library scientists, archivists, and art school educators.

The Compulsive Browse is a two-year research project by Rebecca Duclos supported by the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art at Concordia University. The project encompasses three main areas of activity that directly involve artists, scholars, faculty and students in questioning the means and methods of “research” that are used by contemporary Canadian cultural practitioners today.

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The Walker of the Snow

(Added 5 December 2010)

Image: Courtesy of the Dawson City Museum, 1994.123.20

Monday, December 6
at Macaulay House, KIAC artist residence, corner of 7th and Princess
“Accomplice” cocktails will be served at 4:30pm

“To the cold December heaven came the pale moon and the stars,
As the yellow sun was sinking behind the purple bars.
The snow was deeply drifted upon the ridges drear
That lay for miles between me and the camp for which we steer.”
— The Walker of the Snow, Charles Dawson Shanly, 1859

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Paris of the North

(Added 20 November 2010)


Image: Nebula, Yukon, Canada, Charles Stankievech with Sophie Springer. Penetrating further into the realms of the winter king, we inspect his fortress, reads the description on the back of a 1898 stereograph photo of the Klondike Gold Rush. This image is part of a collection of images and ideas representing fantasies and fabrications related to the outpost of our imagination in the Canadian Arctic.

Leisure Projects departs this Wednesday for an adventure in the Great White North at the Klondike Institute of Fine Arts.

During the residency at KIAC, Leisure Projects will focus on the intersection between social culture and landscape in the history of leisure pursuits, celebrations and social events in the early years of Dawson City. Through research in the Dawson City Museum’s photographic archives, Leisure Projects will explore the impact of outdoor spectacles on the flourishing cultural imagination of the 1900s “Paris of the North”.

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Leisure Radio

(Added 13 March 2010)

Leisure Projects will be broadcasting live this Monday evening on Thrift Store Radio, 89.0 fm.

Tune in at 7pm to hear Leisure Projects present: Jano, Laura, Charlerie, Odile, Natalie, Taylor, Bunny, Sheena, Francesca, Samantha, Aretha, Louisa, Jannetta, Holly, Kumari, Isa, Olivia, Carly, Donna, Tess

For streaming audio visit: http://akvk.tumblr.com/#411555666

Thrift Store Radio is part of the exhibition, Ghost Acoustics (AKVK – Steve bates, Joshua Bonnetta and Douglas Moffat) at the FOFA Gallery, 1515 Ste Catherine St Ouest until March 21.

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Watching Water: Views of Niagara Falls

(Added 1 November 2009)

In the heat of SUMMER!, a detail from Watching Water: Views of Niagara Falls, Leisure Projects’ contribution to AbC’s WATER anthology. With special thanks to photographs posted to flickr by: Wil Zoetekouw (summer of 2003), Yangyongwei (August 2, 2005), hokorii, August 2, 2007, Difo&Natura (August 6, 2008), Wolfgang Staudt (August 10, 2006), digitaleye81 (August 19, 2007), Dreamer (August 24, 2006)

Alphabet City is a series of annual hardcover anthologies originating from Toronto, Canada. Each volume in the series addresses a one-word topic of global concern and draws on the diverse perspectives of writers and artists from many cultures and disciplines. Each book is a graphically rich and textually surprising combination of images and texts that critically and imaginatively reinvents the topic at hand…

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