Special Events

AGO Creative Minds: Art and Survival

creative minds 2018b speakers

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This event takes place at Koerner Hall, TELUS Centre for Performance and Learning, Royal Conservatory of Music, 273 Bloor St. West, Toronto, Ontario


 

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Special Events

AGO Creative Minds: Art and Survival

Monday December 3, 2018, 8 pm
Koerner Hall

As artists grapple with the implications of our current geological epoch, in which humans are the primary cause of permanent planetary change – we invite them to enter into conversation around humanity’s massive and destructive reengineering of the planet. Join us on December 3, 2018 for another edition of AGO Creative Minds as creative thinkers take the stage to discuss how best to demonstrate and bridge the gap between knowledge and action. From pipeline blockades to poetic meditations on melting icebergs, artists are consumed with a sense of urgency around climate and have a vast toolbox of tactics to incite social and political change. For many, passively waiting for the future to be better is not a strategy — and it is not an option. How can art be a catalyst for change?

The event will unfold over 90 minutes, opening with a live performance by Martha Wainwright before moving into the discussion.

 

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is an American environmental attorney, author, activist, clean technology entrepreneur and radio host. He is an Irish American, son of the New York Senator and former Attorney General Robert Francis Kennedy and the nephew of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Kennedy serves as Senior Attorney and President of Waterkeeper Alliance, a nonprofit focused on grassroots efforts to preserve and protect waterways worldwide. He is an environmental law specialist and partner at the law firm of Morgan and Morgan. Kennedy was named one of Rolling Stone magazine’s “100 Agents of Change.” Kennedy is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Law at Pace University Law School in White Plains, New York.

Jennifer Baichwal has been directing and producing documentaries for over 20 years. Her films have played all over the world and won multiple awards nationally and internationally, including an International Emmy, 3 Gemini Awards, and Best Cultural and Best Independent Canadian Documentary at Hot Docs, for features such as Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles, The Holier It Gets, Act of God, and Payback. Manufactured Landscapes won, among others, TIFF’s Best Canadian Film and Al Gore’s Reel Current Award. It played theatrically in over 15 territories worldwide, and was named as one of 150 Essential Works In Canadian Cinema History by TIFF in 2016. The feature documentary Watermark premiered at TIFF 2013, and won the Toronto Film Critics Association prize for Best Canadian Film. Anthropocene: The Human Epoch premiered at TIFF 2018 and is in theatres now.

Brian Jungen lives and works in the North Okanagan, British Columbia, Canada. He draws from his family’s ranching and hunting background, as well as his Dane-zaa heritage, when disassembling and recombining consumer goods into sculptures. Solo exhibitions include Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver (2016); Kunstverein Hannover (2013); Bonner Kunstverein (2013); Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2011); Strange Comfort, National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC (2009); Museum Villa Stuck, Munich (2007); Tate Modern, London (2006); Vancouver Art Gallery (2006); Witte de With, Rotterdam (2006); and the New Museum, New York (2005). Modest Livelihood, a collaborative work with Duane Linklater, has been shown at the Edinburgh Art Festival (2014); Art Gallery of Ontario (2013); and the Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre, in collaboration with dOCUMENTA (13) (2012). Recent group exhibitions include Liverpool Biennial (2018); Art for a New Understanding: Native Voices, 1950s to Now, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville (2018); and Unsettled, Nevada Museum of Art, Reno (2017).

Tanya Talaga is the acclaimed author of Seven Fallen Feathers, which was the winner of the RBC Taylor Prize, the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing, and First Nation Communities Read: Young Adult/Adult. The book was also a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Nonfiction Prize and the BC National Award for Nonfiction, and it was CBC’s Nonfiction Book of the Year, a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book, and a national bestseller. For more than twenty years she has been a journalist at the Toronto Star, and has been nominated five times for the Michener Award in public service journalism. She was also named the 2017–2018 Atkinson Fellow in Public Policy. Talaga is of Polish and Indigenous descent. Her great-grandmother, Liz Gauthier, was a residential school survivor. Her great-grandfather, Russell Bowen, was an Ojibwe trapper and labourer. Her grandmother is a member of Fort William First Nation. Her mother was raised in Raith and Graham, Ontario. She lives in Toronto with her two teenage children

Martha Wainwright is a beguiling performer and a refreshingly different force in music. With an undeniable voice and an arsenal of powerful songs, Wainwright released her debut LP, Martha Wainwright to critical acclaim in 2005. In 2008, she followed with her sophomore album, I Know You’re Married But I’ve Got Feelings Too, which showed her great musical maturity and talent as a songwriter. In 2010 she toured the world promoting her third album, San Fusils, Ni Souliers A Paris: Martha Wainwright’s Piaf Record. Her 2012 album, Come Home To Mama, was heralded by Mojo Magazine as a “substantial and brilliantly sung career best.” Her last album, Goodnight City returned to the rawness of her first release and includes songs by Wainwright, as well as songs written by Beth Orton, Glen Hansard, her brother Rufus Wainwright, Michael Ondaatje, and Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs. Martha tours her music around the world to sold out audiences on several continents.

Duncan McCue is the host of Cross Country Checkup on CBC Radio One and was a reporter for CBC News in Vancouver for over 15 years. Now based in Toronto, his news and current affairs pieces continue to be featured on CBC’s flagship news show, The National. McCue's work has garnered several RTNDA and Jack Webster Awards. In 2017, he was presented with an Indspire Award for Public Service. McCue teaches journalism at the UBC Graduate School of Journalism and Ryerson University, and was recognized by the Canadian Ethnic Media Association with an Innovation Award for developing curriculum on Indigenous issues. His book The Shoe Boy: A Trapline Memoir recounts a season he spent in a hunting camp with a Cree family in northern Quebec as a teenager.

For requests for Verbal Description, American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation and/or live captioning for online and onsite programming, please provide three weeks notice in advance of the event date. The AGO will make every effort to provide accommodation for requests made with less than three weeks notice. Please note that automated captioning is available for all online programs. For onsite visits, the AGO offers these supports for an accessible visit. Please contact us to make a request for these or other accessibility accommodations. Learn more about accessibility at the AGO.

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