<![CDATA[My Site

<![CDATA[My Site - Blog]]>Mon, 03 Nov 2025 09:44:51 -0800Weebly<![CDATA[Art Institutions and COVID]]>Wed, 02 Sep 2020 02:42:38 GMThttp://www.ethnoculturalarts.com/blog/art-institutions-and-covid[Note: The conversations have been edited for clarity, length, and grammatical mistakes. They have also been edited thematically, however the dates of these utterances are noted above each section.]

14 May 2020

Mikhel: I am very ambivalent about it, I am interested to see how institutions come out of this in the end. For a couple of weeks I was following everybody to see what type of programming that was going on and I think there are interesting things out there. In some cases it’s about putting everything online, that they are already doing. The FIFA did a really quick turn around and they put everything online and you know that’s functional and then you know there are institutions that are essentially changing their mandate like Tate Modern. It is going to focus, first on its collection, it’s a collecting institution, and also its local community which was an interesting thing, talking again to my friend at the National Gallery, the local community has never been a part of their mandate. It is a National institute and there are certain restrictions on traditionally how they have been able to represent the Nation… curators flying around the country, but now new types of research and production capacities are being built due to current circumstances. I am interested in how they come up with that.

]]><![CDATA[Archives of the Future]]>Wed, 02 Sep 2020 02:40:40 GMThttp://www.ethnoculturalarts.com/blog/archives-of-the-future[Note: The conversations have been edited for clarity, length, and grammatical mistakes. They have also been edited thematically, however the dates of these utterances are noted above each section.]
14th May 2020

Alice: How do we archive this? How do we document what is going on right now? There haven’t been a lot of people who have lived through a pandemic. You could pull our conversations together into a blog series about what we need to do to get out of it, study it, and know what to do with the next one, and how do you get this data and the things that come up for the humanities through this auto-ethnography. So it makes sense that we date these online interactions, like date stamps. They are specific to a moment and they are raw and capture that rawness of what you were thinking, or what at that moment did you know? Or, did you feel the way that you did because you needed to? How what you thought or felt changed from week to week?

Varda: When the news claimed that the virus is going to be forever, it just took my breath away for a moment. This is not a headline one is used to. It was scary and my husband and I were having a discussion on how there has been an obsession with the virus in the media – it can come through the air conditioning, through the washroom, a toilet bowl, these are the headlines that we read. I just want to put it in perspective. When you say (Alice) that not many people have lived through a pandemic, I just think about what we have lived through – I was born in 1986, I have lived through curfews in my city, I have lived through dictatorships, I have lived through the hype of the Berlin Wall… that is the memory around that event with my parents and their communist, socialist circles and then Y2K, 9/11, the recession and now this, it has to end at some point.

Mikhel: I just wanted to add to what Alice said about archives of the future. I follow archival groups on Facebook, and am interested to see how they are creating collections about COVID. I am also in touch with archivist and curator friends working at large institutions. A friend at the National Gallery is—as we speak—doing a live Instagram interview of an artist. It is interesting to see people in institutions who have this pressure to produce new content now, different from what they are trained to do. This friend of mine resents it: she resents this push from the institution, the need to have new programming, to put the content online. I feel exhausted already by the mail-outs and the online activity institutions are producing: much of it being pretty crappy, especially for someone who is interested in art and the Internet. There are already so many solutions that these institutions are not paying attention to and this impulse to produce new content online is exhausting.

At the end of the day, I feel our perspective is marginal… there are people dying … there are much more pressing issues than what we are discussing. But I appreciate—and this is what Alice said—that there is actually some use in recording our responses: it’s about futurity and the fact that this is something that can be archived and can be retrieved later in meaningful ways.

Alice: I think that there is the cathartic aspect of it too. It’s not necessarily something that is intended for a time capsule, if anyone is interested in our micro conversations here. At the same time I think that for a micro-community like ours basically composed of researchers who have overlapping interests – a natural organic community – our distilled conversations became a document of this particular micro-community or network, the struggle for catharsis during this time because, as we say, when we talk about futurity either as (a) after our passing; or (b) when this may be under control, which may be five years or ten years is what the medical sector is saying, but right now, this is something we will have to deal with. Right now we are in the time of COVID and in the realization that, actually, we will be with COVID for the entirety of our lifetime. Its relation with other pandemics and the scale of them and how different they are, like Varda said, it’s so frustrating, even more so because we realize these are also always with us now. It’s the terms we set about how we are dealing with the virus, which is what is needed now, and I think part of it is to articulate it for ourselves. How do you potentialize what you want to do vis-a-vis what you need to do. Let’s talk on the level of desire as a way to potentialize yourself within this larger meta-narrative that’s going on now that didn’t exist six months ago. How will you go on as a community?

One of the other things is that it's bigger than us: what affects you affects me.

]]><![CDATA[Embodied Gestures of Racism]]>Wed, 02 Sep 2020 02:38:35 GMThttp://www.ethnoculturalarts.com/blog/embodied-gestures-of-racism[Note: The conversations have been edited for clarity, length, and grammatical mistakes. They have also been edited thematically, however the dates of these utterances are noted above each section.]

7 May 2020

Varda: One of my concerns recently has been that when we go out to the park everyday, there will be people who cross or move to the road when you are coming on the pavement. And they will try to avoid you. And I understand right now all of these gestures are gestures of care. But in a while, let's say if it goes on for another three months, we are going to embody these gestures permanently and then ... all of them are so close to ... to racist gestures right? Avoiding someone and everything. What's going to happen when we embody them? I mean how are we going to resist that? I am very uncomfortable with people saying this is the new normal. I am not comfortable... this can not be the new normal, and I am actively resisting this.

Alice: About these gestures and these micro gestures of care that could also be interpreted on a good day as acts of everyday racism or microaggressions… If you could do something about the slippery nature of racism in the context of a university, what form would it take?

Sanaz: It could be like a piece of writing, a manifesto, or a statement.

Varda: All of this new behavior is not going to fall under the umbrella term of racism. We will have to come up with new words, a new definition for these behaviours. We were on our terrace the other day, and this lady stopped to say hello. She was walking on the pavement, and this other woman screamed at her, “you have to keep moving! Why did you stop? You have to maintain the distance.” I mean, you can just give that person a minute before you start screaming at her publicly.
So we would have to come up with new words. And there has to be a zero tolerance policy. And it has to be more grassroots, whatever happens, so there is a dialogue happening between students of colour and between those who are white and they would have to talk about these things. Because you can have a policy that is up there....to overcome this, these embodied gestures of racism, but you need dialogues so that everyone can air out their concerns, and you can really start building up a community foundation over again.

]]><![CDATA[Gender and COVID-19]]>Tue, 01 Sep 2020 17:00:10 GMThttp://www.ethnoculturalarts.com/blog/gender-and-covid-19[Note: The conversations have been edited for clarity, length, and grammatical mistakes. They have also been edited thematically, however the dates of these utterances are noted above each section.]

7 May 2020

Alice: Women make up the majority of students going into art history.

Eli: And yet the directors of galleries and museums are mostly men.

Alice: How has gender factored into your experience dealing with everything in the last six weeks (related to COVID or not)?

Kanwal: Garima Kothari, a “Masterchef” finalist as well as a celebrated chef, was found beaten to death inside her apartment on Sunday in New Jersey. Five months pregnant, the woman was beaten to death by her husband, who later comintted suicide in the Hudson River. According to many sources, domestic violence has risen through the roof during quarantine, due to the fact that many women were already living in difficult relationships. Women are always doubly affected in crises due to their gender which determines their inherent subjugation in heteronormative patriarchial relationships.

Alice: Would you say that this is COVID-related?

Kanwal: As per many sources, abusive relationships have worsened during COVID because there is no respite. People do not get to leave their homes and are forced to live with their abusive spouses 24/7. Hence, it makes the situation much worse than it is. The same goes for kids who experience violence domestically.

Olivia: Someone I know explained the many reasons for his dilemma of whether or not his children will go back to school when it is possible. One of the motivations under discussion for reopening schools is that for Social Services, it is really tricky right now because some children experiencing abuse are often identified through schools.

Varda: This week we got a survey from the Quebec Government via our daycare person. The majority of the daycare and school staff are women. She has high blood pressure and diabetes. She is high risk. But now, because the government is forcing daycares to open from the 19th, she will be obligated to open the daycare and put herself at risk. So, when we got the survey, we decided we are not going to send our kid back until and unless there is a vaccine, or until there are zero percent infections in Montreal. Care/education industries being gendered is putting women, especially those with underlying health issues, in a very difficult position right now. As education seems to be the first industry to open, they have no choice but to comply with government orders.

Eli: The anxiety from COVID is happening. Working in health services myself, my experience dealing with people is that general anxiety and what's going on in the world has affected everyone. Basically we are all going through a collective trauma so it’s bound to make us tired. We just need to give ourselves a break, and realize that it's okay to not be in the best of mood or have the most energy. Speaking of gender, I am also seeing it in Health Services where most of the employees are women. Or a great percentage. And they have been on the front lines obviously since the beginning of COVID crisis. A lot of the managers are pushing women to keep putting ourselves at risk, and keep doing long hours, whereas most men are working on the administrative side.

Alice: If you think of frontline health and service workers, a disproportionate number of these workers are women. In hospitals, it is still predominantly female nurses and male doctors.

Ashley: In addition to caring for children, a lot of us have parents that are aging. I have often felt that it becomes very gendered, supporting aging family members. And also when we think about personal support workers they are predominantly women and racialized and they are also at risk. And what does it mean to be in that kind of position where you need that personal support work?

]]><![CDATA[Funding Issues]]>Tue, 01 Sep 2020 16:55:52 GMThttp://www.ethnoculturalarts.com/blog/funding-issues[Note: The conversations have been edited for clarity, length, and grammatical mistakes. They have also been edited thematically, however the dates of these utterances are noted above each section.]

30 April 2020

Mikhel: Do any of you benefit from other student fundings that the government released, the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB)? I guess it is only for Canadian citizens?

Kanwal: There is a daily briefing by the Prime Minister at 11 am everyday, and as far as immigrants and international students are concerned, it was very disappointing the way he has handled the situation.

Sanaz : If you are on a student visa you can not apply for CERB?

Varda: I think you can apply for CERB, but you need to pay for it whenever you file your taxes?

Olivia: I am not sure if this is helpful. In terms of immigrants, do you mean at large or particular communities? Because every summer many Jamaicans come to Canada and I am just looking locally but there is a support network like the Jamaican Association that is doing something.

Kanwal: I was talking about how it [the Government address] wasn't actually done specifically targeting immigrants or the international students community because when you are not in your own country you are doubly affected by the circumstances.

Varda: I also think that it has to do with that because you are coming to Canada and Canada's reputation as a good country or a nice country, we kind of expect them [the Canadian Government] to do something.

Sanaz: A friend of mine was concerned and didn't want to apply to CERB because he was afraid it would negatively affect his immigration process; technically you are not allowed to take federal money or government aid while you are applying for residency. But he was also thinking maybe they have some exceptional measures that take the pandemic into account. Also, in the US if you are applying for a Green Card and you are getting food stamps or federal aid, as of a couple of weeks ago it is a new law by the Trump administration, it will negatively impact you.

Mikhel: Yeah, one wonders too going forward how universities are going to respond. On the one hand putting all course content online, charging presumably the same for tuition and having less expenditure. I am sure people are going to get upset about that, I mean I am done taking courses but I would be upset if I had to do it online now.

Kanwal: My niece studies in Stanford and everything is online now. And students are asking to get some percentage of their tuition back because they think it is not fair.

Alice: One of the pressing questions, particularly in the field of humanities, which all of you are raising, is the changing demands on the educational sector to deliver that content, the package that students as clients have paid for. Coming from the other side, faculties are also committed by contract to still deliver their course content but in whatever way they can. Perhaps in a different form, but I think what is important to always remember is that the intensity is always there. The quality will certainly change and diminish in some cases, but the intensity of teaching and learning which are at the root of pedagogy is still present. Even on a good day, these aspects of pedagogy are underpaid, undervalued, and underappreciated and so in circumstances of crises ever more so because of the commodified value of education.

One of the projects that SSHRC is encouraging is “building long term resilience and disaster preparedness, by rethinking pedagogical approaches.” And I think this is the concern that we were addressing, about what would you then do to change it. Mikhel, you were talking about communal approaches and your research project is contributing to that in some way and maybe the answer is not right in front of us but it's worthwhile to say that it is contributing in some way. SSHRC also indicates this could include "artistic models and rituals,” let's say “artistic practices,” different ways that you [Olivia] are going about rethinking what you are making and why you are making it is all part of that.

Nima: What is at stake here is that institutions are not changing their model of how they function but actually are absorbing what they were already absorbing from the creative sector, those who are doing “rituals” even Indigenous knowledge systems at this time. It is not very sincere to me. And it is problematic in a sense, as if there is no plan, or long term plan for making any changes given the situation. It is an interesting topic to study, like how in times of crisis, it is easier for institutions not to imagine changing their own systems but imagining contribution from those who are the most vulnerable. We are talking about Indigenous communities, artistic communities. It is always more labour and less security and less stability for those who offer these knowledges.

Olivia: On the positive side, I have been attending quite a few artist talks or artist walkthroughs. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, depending on the artist, their practice and how much it is relevant to have a virtual version of their work or to speak about their work. Yesterday I attended a Berlin gallery walkthrough of a duo based in France talking about their VR installation with a curator somewhere else. It was interesting already because there are several people in different countries and that was just normal and more current to do that. There was something interesting how the medium lent itself to that in some way. But it still seemed a bit odd and not the same as listening to people talk. On another note, I attended a virtual conference in VR. These folks did an incredible job and created a game world, where you entered and you went to the conference as an avatar. It meant that you could go and say hi, it is awkward and it is not the same, but it would allow you a moment of interaction. As much as I study technology, I am not a gamer so I don't do this on a regular basis. I was just walking around and I saw people in the water, so I walked into the water and spoke to this woman and it turned out to be this incredible and inspiring artist that I now have a connection with. I'm trying to see the positive side because there is something in that screen interaction, whether we like or dislike it, there is something that we can take. That is my thesis work as well as my artist work in general - to think through the screen in a different way.

Sanaz: Olivia, your project has a lot of potential especially now with regards to the systems of recognition during the pandemic, when your face becomes the document, your body temperature, and physiology becomes the passing document to cross borders, cities, etc. I think exploring VR and different ways of imagining real time versus speculative time during a time when the speculative is catching up with the real is very interesting. VR has a lot of potential to see otherwise and re-calibrate now.
Regarding the SSHRC grant and what they said about “artistic rituals.” it is amazing how these institutions and grant applications are so good at simplifying and mystifying artistic research, what that entails and what it is. This is very alarming, especially as an artist in academia; that alarm always goes off for me because I see more and more that the precarity expands. As Nima said, they are so good at absorbing the circumstances and shape-shifting it to something else. The artist should be an academic, a publisher, a curator, we have to be so many things. The artistic research becomes a remedy that is supposed to take us from point A to point B, from a problem to a conclusion. Concordia also exacerbates this dangerous simplification and inclusion of artistic research. For instance, there is the 3-minute thesis competition, where artists talk about their research in 3 minutes. What if you can't even talk about your project in 3 hours? We should talk about how institutions are using the pandemic as a state of exemption to expand, absorb and grow pre-existing conditions. It’s amazing to see how the arts and culture sector is being affected.

]]><![CDATA[Militarized Rhetoric and the Pandemic]]>Tue, 01 Sep 2020 16:51:57 GMThttp://www.ethnoculturalarts.com/blog/militarized-rhetoric-and-the-pandemic[Note: The conversations have been edited for clarity, length, and grammatical mistakes. They have also been edited thematically, however the dates of these utterances are noted above each section.]

16 April 2020

Sanaz: In order to fully grasp our current situation, we have to use different perspectives ,and situate them vis-à-vis a historical backdrop. In the case of the United States, where I currently am,the nationlistic/media response is extremely militarized. For instance, all the pandemic-related death cases are compared to those of 9/11 instead of, for example, the HIV pandemic which was a total disaster with the way it was handled by the US government. Thousands of people also have died due to the inaction of the government with the lobbied protection of pharmaceutical companies during the Opioid Crisis. It is really interesting if we connect our experience with the ones that have been historicised and institutionalized, and see what examples have been used (nationally). In the case of the US, they are always tethering COVID to a recent war, there is no other example used to contextualize COVID There has barely been a mention of other pandemics or epidemics or public health crises, rather the state and the media tend to exemplify US military interventions and invasions for the American public. There is always a move to project our post-pandemic futures with these mediated histories pulled into our current conversations.
]]><![CDATA[Unsettling Nationalism in Uncertain Times]]>Mon, 24 Aug 2020 03:25:52 GMThttp://www.ethnoculturalarts.com/blog/unsettling-nationalism-in-uncertain-times[Note: The conversations have been edited for clarity, length, and grammatical mistakes. They have also been edited thematically, however the dates of these utterances are noted above each section.]

16 April 2020

Varda: Does anyone have any views on what Premier Legault said about buying Quebec products? On one hand, it is a good idea because we need to start thinking local and shrink down global corporate culture but on the other hand it's also a way to perpetuate the rhetoric of nationalism.
Kanwal: Don’t you think nationalism is always a standard reaction to a crisis? It’s a different form of nationalism. It’s either religious nationalism, or capitalistic nationalism.
Nima: The idea of nationalism is emerging in different and stricter ways, like closing borders and the economy. What are the limits of nationalism? When I think about history and the movements that were inspired by nationalists, I think about anti-colonial movements since the 1950s and 1960s, when forces like anti-colonial elites were standing outside the imperial matrix of power. And I understand that in terms of politics and economy there are exceptions. When you think about history and when you think about what is happening now. For example, Cuba is among those harshly sanctioned by the US while helping other countries in crisis. These are inspiring exceptions also in terms of how these forms of governance who resisted the capitalist order or have been left out of the global market are responding to the COVID-19 situation, and so when we think about history, these are the examples we can think about.

The way Cuba organized their health care system is exceptional in terms of how we understand health care in the US or elsewhere. Or how no one is responding to those who are left in migration facilities, not even the Prime Minister … there is no mention at all. There are few people who are objecting to the policies. These margins of the borders and the margins of life are where we can rethink what our future would look like. These limits are pushing back. For instance, in the UK Boris Johnson was sending thank you messages to two of the medical staff who were not from the UK (immigrants); even the far right is realizing that how their values have been shaken to the ground.
Varda: On that point, before Boris Johnson got infected he was actually boasting about shaking hands with everyone and now that he is thanking them [NHS/medical staff workers], there is no discussion or commentary about how his careless rhetoric underplayed Covid-19. Who is going to take the responsibility for these kinds of things? There is a certain level of emergency, and in that urgency, we might end up not holding these authority figures accountable ... we are just going to move forward because that is what we are being pushed to do... just move forward with the crisis and do the best that you can and for obvious reasons we are also focused on our jobs and employments… our next paycheck ... paying rent and food … we are so distracted that we are not going to hold these people accountable and that is going to be an important parallel of this pandemic.

]]><![CDATA[What Can We Do?]]>Mon, 24 Aug 2020 03:23:25 GMThttp://www.ethnoculturalarts.com/blog/what-can-we-do[Note: The conversations have been edited for clarity, length, and grammatical mistakes. They have also been edited thematically, however the dates of these utterances are noted above each section.]

16 April 2020

Nima: I have been reading a lot these days about how people respond to these kinds of inquiries - how they are trying to rearticulate what they were doing in the past and how they are approaching the future, especially in artmaking and education. Some are following institutional methods in terms of following the same course, putting it online. I understand this has to happen in terms of how institutions expect and want to continue a sense of normalcy in terms of the activities and evaluation in art. But it’s also good to think about these fundamental questions in terms of the more abstract foundational questions.
Sanaz: Does anyone have other perspectives on how different institutions have worked before, any online sources? How are they handling resources in terms of their current programming or forthcoming programs that have been paused? Resources for the artists who have been involved with the project that have been put on hold, how are they managing? If you have any observations from your networks that you could share...
Mikhel: Mine are all very pessimistic, I think about the financial crash of 2008, when we witnessed a bunch of institutions severing relationships with artists, like commercial gallerists, for example, with written contracts with artists to be delivered and signed who just abandoned these connections and left the artists out on their own with no funds. And I am curious to see essentially the same thing repeating, especially within the types of institutions I have worked with like educational institutions. I talked with people both at OCAD and ACAD and it's dire in both of these art colleges, there will certainly not be new hires for several years to come and they have already started cutting off support to art historical and critical pedagogical faculty.

Institutions may be going to be on the lines of a trade school. A model where students will come in and essentially will have no ability to take courses outside of their specialization. At the same time there are smaller institutions that are planning to step up. So, in Calgary there are a number of small art studios that run courses and are approaching some of these people to come in and do small history and theory courses. So there is a glass blowing studio that teaches glass blowing for much cheaper than if you go to college or university and they are inviting in art historians and curators to teach this summer.
They are optimistic about new models coming out of this crisis that can keep the freedom of our critical thinkers.
Varda: Based on some of the things I have been reading from last week and one of the courses that I was TAing, the pandemic is going to be used in multiple ways politically to further manipulate and violate the rights of people who don’t have privilege, e.g.financial security or insurance. It is going to be used to make way for more authoritarian regimes, disbanding civil libertarians.
Right now, all of the work that is being done is more like a response that is happening. You know we have to control the virus and this and that and there are articles about what would be happening after the pandemic, but there is no holistic study that is taking place. I think these are just slices that people are developing and writing about from their own position. Soyou have a very narrow vision, a tunnel vision and also you are responding to the crisis in a more emotional state than a constructive and/or policy manner … we have not seen policies for the next five years how we are going to deal with the crisis or how we are going to come out of this. And I think this is something we should be looking at as a group and invite more people in to make it a much wider group of art historians and editors, students from different fields and discipline. I want to think from a fresh perspective, I want to hear the perspective of people who don’t have money but those who survive in some way. I want to be proactive and I want to do something. In one of the classes, the professor said that the 1960s was the time when everyone was writing a manifesto and, you know what? This is something that we need. We need to come up with our own document of how we envision things and how we demand certain things which is our right, to voice them, and be heard. I am just putting it out there .. it's very ambitious…but it is out there.
Kanwal: What Isolation and living in quarantine has taught me is how little we need:how much less I can live on and how many things we buy that we don’t really need.I really feel that if all we need to learn something from this whole fiasco or pandemic, is that we let go of the consumerism that we hold so tightly - stop buying things.I think that would be the biggest impact.
Sanaz: I recently read an article by Martha Rosler, she had this interesting timeline of the proliferation of the MFA programs in the United States and the relationship between how at some point artists thought that if they go and get an MFA and teach in the universities, they can go against the market, and won’t need to market their work but rather can have a teaching practice alongside.
Fast forward four decades, we see that there is immense saturation of MFA graduates and artists who come with degrees and sometimes $80,000 in debt. And they still don’t have any secure jobs in the universities, or a secure future working in the arts and culture sector. I think it's definitely related to what you said Kanwal, I think we can reframe it through the lens of academia and artists working in university settings. How does the money flow and what sorts of markets are we operating both as artists/researchers, and academics. The crisis in academia worries me. The precariousness of virtual teaching and how some of the universities are already planning to cut the salaries by doing so. They already had been planning (before pandemic) to invest on virtual teaching - less hires and more students.

]]><![CDATA[Fears and Anxieties: Reflections on Job Precarity and the Future in Art History and Academia]]>Sun, 23 Aug 2020 20:01:44 GMThttp://www.ethnoculturalarts.com/blog/fears-and-anxieties-reflections-on-job-precarity-and-the-future-in-art-history-and-academia
[Note: The conversations have been edited for clarity, length, and grammatical mistakes. They have also been edited thematically, however the dates of these utterances are noted above each section.]

9 April 2020

Sanaz: The other thing that I am concerned about is the future of job prospects. I was already pessimistic about getting into a post-PhD market. What is going to happen with institutions that were already in the midst of a crisis of neo-liberalized academia? And now what will happen to students involved with them? I know for instance some universities have actually halted their admission for this year. It’s important for us to also share this information about career/life consequences for other artists or cultural workers to have a prospect of what may happen and what is at stake in the next couple of months.

Mikhel: And in fact the next couple of years! In the Canadian context, since I work with artist-run centers a lot, we are going to see a crunch happen sooner than later. And for those of us that rely on that for some amount of income, it's a scary prospect . And like you Sanaz, I have had a couple of projects that have been wiped off the slate for this season. And ... yeah, I have no expectation to be able to do that - to make up that work!

Varda: But when you say that MOMA is putting everything online, then shouldn't we really be thinking of the function of things in the first place? How do we understand the function of institutions and these objects from the onset? And how do we re-contextualize it? Despite a critique that is present in all of our work on institutions, we obviously rely on them, for obvious reasons. But maybe, this is a good time for thinking about possible alternative spaces? Are there alternatives out there that we can look for, so we can start discussing them and bringing them into our talks?

Nima: I think this is a fundamental question. Not only “function” in terms of “functionary” that we have for other fields, but also how the knowledge system works. I had this question in the past too, and I keep having the same question. I am not questioning the whole art system, how it functions but, as Sanaz was mentioning, how we can think about political, social, cultural layers ... and at some point, a common concealment that institutions work with. It’s important to how we think about cultural institutions because they have this image from the outside to the general public that they are working with values, working with communities. But when it comes to their own communities, and those who made these communities possible in terms of the labour and knowledge they contributed, they usually fail to do the right thing in terms of the basics, such as providing or supporting their staff, you know, even when it was happening. I remember in January, I met a group of friends who were art handlers and educators, working for MOMA and they were discussing how MOMA is failing to recognize their unionization. So it's not something a pandemic brought to the front. It has been there all along but it’s becoming more and more visible in terms of how cultural institutions were responsive, and how these responses are now accessible to the public to learn about these institutions. This increased attention to responsibility is something that is shaking the foundations of these institutions.

Mikhel: We are talking about the kind of practical needs we have now, writing our dissertation or whatever we are doing. So I just want us to be aware of these two different brackets... to talk about our process and our day-to-day challenges that we are each having. And that while this may be as an interlude, there is of course overlap. Whether or not people are questioning their own research projects right now because of these institutional changes is a question I have.

Kanwal: I wrote my first paper when I was doing my MA. which was in the context of 121212, the apocalypse that was supposed to happen in 2012. So I thought that the reason why people are coming up with these apocalypses and these imagined constructs of mass extinction is that it somehow seems easier for people to have this mass extinction rather than just going alone. So it's kind of a coping mechanism. Why I say this is [because] you know I have done everything by the book. When I am doing my PhD, I try to do everything on time because if I work really hard, I could finish my PhD on time. I will probably not get a job after I am done with it but the thing is, right now people are in much worse condition than I am. The whole world is suffering with us. Whether that’s a consolation,or more depressing, or less depressing - I don't know. But it’s...it’s a way to look at it. I mean, I seriously feel that the whole world is going on right now and ... how COVID has affected people and how people have lost their loved ones. I think if we can just survive and not think about what we are going to do afterwards, we'll be winners, really.

Alice: I was thinking this morning that there was and there is and there always will be some joy in doing the work that we want to do.
For example, if you were to ask me: “what brought you joy in your work this week?” I’d say I was really happy to get a text message through Facebook, from one of the artists whose work I had written about for my MA thesis. My thesis was about the first exhibition in Canada in 1989 devoted to and curated by Black Canadian women artists some of whom I have remained in contact with over the last twenty years. I revisited the 1989 exhibition, “Black Wimmin: When and Where We Enter” (which celebrates its thirtieth anniversary 2019-2020) in January 2020 this year as an article for Canadian Art magazine. I was happy because the artist (Khadejha McCall) said she read my article and that it was a good essay. This means the world to me! Joy!

]]>