Mayworks 2018 Festival

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Art Exhibition | The Future is Caregiving

Opening reception at May Day Gathering
Exhibition: April 19th – May 5th
Whippersnapper, 594 Dundas St W
Gallery Hours: Thurs – Sat: 1 – 6 pm
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Kara Manso is a temporary worker turned migrant activist
turned contemporary artist. The work of the caregiver-as-artist
takes its source material from her own experience both as a migrant worker and a migrant activist. Her preoccupation with
the “robots” highlights the irony of care workers being treated without feelings within dehumanizing migrant work programs. Last year, when Manso first applied to be part of Mayworks, she used a pseudonym to avoid persecution by her employers. We also exhibited the robot head masks she had created to protect herself and other caregivers during demonstrations for decent work.

Kara Manso brings us The Future Is Caregiving, a series of drawings that documents the present “robotizing” process of the Canadian Live-in Caregiver program. She then invites us to become participants and engage in the future act of “de-robotizing” through an interactive installation.

Artist Talk & Exhibition | resourced

Opening Reception: Wednesday April 25th, 7 pm – 9 pm
Exhibition: Wednesday April 25th – Saturday May 5th
Trinity Square Video, 401 Richmond St W, Suite 121
Gallery Hours: Tues – Fri: 12 pm – 6 pm

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In a VR helmet, a user will see a number of human figures circulating, and hear a sound track of disparate voices and musical texture. Ambiently hovering over a form will invite the subject to step forward, accompanied
by her chosen objects, and to deliver elements of her interview. The 3D-scanned body will be expressionistically animated to develop elements of the interview and the sound design. The work raises questions about how we know and access the working subject in the context of an encompassing capitalist technological ecosystem.

Artist Talk | Poor People’s Campaign

Presented with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty

Workshop: Wednesday April 26, 7pm

St. Luke’s United Church, Education Room, 353 Sherbourne St.

Opening Reception: May Day Gathering event on May 1st

Exhibit: April 26 – May 5th, Steelworkers’ Hall, 25 Cecil St.

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justseeds Artists’ Cooperative is a decentralized, worker-owned cooperative of thirty printmaking artists throughout Turtle Island. Grounded in the transformative power of personal expression in concert with collective action, Justseeds produces collective portfolios that contribute graphics to grassroots struggles for justice.

Last year, in collaboration with the new Poor People’s Campaign in the U.S., Justseeds produced a print portfolio for the renewed call to end poverty. Since the original campaign organized by Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1967, there have been growing broad and deep social movements rooted in leadership of poor people and aimed to transform the global structures that engender the rotten fruits of poverty, inequality, and oppression.

Justseeds artists Jesse Purcell and Paul Kjelland will host an exhibit of the portfolio and a community open studio. Thinking about and using the images produced for the campaign, participants can learn screen printing basics and create prints on paper and fabric for the May Day march and other anti-poverty organizing in events and actions.

Workshop | Future Conditions

Sunday April 29th, 1 pm – 4 pm
The Public Studio, 58 Lansdowne Ave
Registration is required(Register through Eventbrite).
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In this three hour workshop hosted by Sheila Sampath, participants will be introduced to the practice of conditional design; an adaptive, game-based process of analogue visualization that uses input, logic and creativity to respond to environmental changes. Through discussions and small group activities, we will propose idealized and speculative conditions, resulting in new visualizations that imagine a more just and equitable future for working peoples.

Labour Solidarity Event| May Day Gathering
Tuesday May 1st, 7 – 9 pm
Steelworkers Hall, 25 Cecil Street
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There are massive shifts happening across the globe. There is a significant rise in precarious, temporary contract work. The political
spectrum is giving way to an increasingly polarized climate. The Labour movement continues to be a force for good in this regard. The Mayworks Festival stands as a commitment to Labour and the Arts.
The May Day Gathering is a celebration of labour arts and the work of the labour movement as a whole. We welcome everyone to join us for a free reception which includes exhibitions of The Poor People’s Campaign and Future is Caregiving.

Film Screening| Dreamweavers

In Partnership with imagineNATIVE
Wednesday May 2nd, 7 – 9 pm
Alliance Francaise Theatre, 24 Spadina Road Find this event on Facebook | Eventbrite

The short films in this program weave together surreal landscapes, evocative meditations and luminescent cinema to bring on screen Indigenous people living, working and dreaming. The futurity in these works is deeply rooted in their connection to traditional knowledge, the land and community.
BLIGHT – Perun Bonser (12 min, 2017)
Set in the early 20th century on Australia’s western frontier, a police constable hunts down a band of supposed criminals aided by a young, Indigenous female tracker. When the constable is severely injured, the tracker must use all of her skills to outwit and defeat seemingly unstoppable foe.

MY FATHER’S TOOLS (6 min, 2016)
Stephen goes about weaving a traditional basket with the knowledge his father gave him. As he weaves the basket, there is a sense of peace and connection to all his father taught him.

NUUCA – Michelle Latimer (12 min, 2017)
The oil boom in North Dakota has brought thousands of new people to the region and with them an influx of drugs, crime and sex trafficking. This beautiful work is an evocative meditation on Indigenous women’s integral connection to land and the ways in which the extractive industry’s rape of the Earth is directly linked to the violence perpetrated against Indigenous women and girls.

IN MOMENT – Samay Arcentales Cajas (6 min, 2017)
As the world suffocates in its own self-destruction, the Spirit Callers pray to the Four Directions for help. The struggle of generations past, present and future are about to come to a close, but are our minds, hearts and spirits open enough to hear the call?
THREE THOUSAND – Asinnajaq (14 min, 2017)
Artist Asinnajaq throws a creative net into the National Film Board of Canada’s audiovisual archive, weaving historic footage of the Inuit into a stunningly
original animation. In 14 minutes of luminescent cinema, she recasts the past, present and future of the Inuit in a surprising new light.

Artist Talk & Exhibition | STANCE: Design Against Fascism

Opening Reception: Thursday May 3rd, 7 pm – 9 pm
Curator + Artist Talk: Saturday May 5th, 1 pm – 3 pm
Exhibition: May 3rd – June 16th
Sur Gallery, 39 Queens Quay E, Suite 100
Gallery Hours: Tue & Wed: 10 am – 2:30 pm
Thu & Fri: 12 – 6 pm, Sat: 11 am – 5 pm

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Curated by Rodrigo Barreda, STANCE: Design Against Fascism brings together nine Toronto-based artists and designers reinterpreting the 1973 Chilean poster art exhibition Por la Vida, Siempre! and
explores intersections of contemporary social issues and the resurgence of fascist tactics.
Scheduled to open on September 11, 1973 as part of a nationwide campaign against fascism, the original exhibition never took place and the works were destroyed at the dawn of Chile’s fascist chapter.

Join Sheila Sampath in conversation with curator Rodrigo Barreda and participating designers, exploring the curatorial vision, the theoretical issues, and processes experienced in conceiving and creating the exhibition on May 5, 1 – 3 pm at Sur Gallery.
Participating artists and designers: Monique Aura, Kaiatanoron Bush, Vanessa Eckstein, Coco Guzman, Nancy King, Lara Lucretia, Noel Nanton, Fidel Peña and Setareh Shamdani.

Members of the Graphic Designers Collective of the Universidad Técnica del Estado (Santiago, Chile), creators of the Por la Vida, Siempre! exhibition:
Washinton Apablaza, Pedro Briceño, Pablo Carvajal, Federico Cifuentes, Elías Greibe, Jorge Guastavino, Alejandro Lillo, Enrique Muñoz, Mario Navarro, Juan Polanco, René Quijada, Omar Rojas, Hernán Torres and Ricardo Ubilla.

Closing Party / Performance Art / Film Screening | Cruising Utopia: Superbutch Jukebox ft. Life on Mars with Thin(k) Blank Human

Saturday May 5th, 8 pm – 1 am (19+)
The Garrison, 1197 Dundas St W

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In our love of queering labour, and what has become one of Mayworks Toronto’s traditions in recent years, the Festival is queering the future of labour with its 2018 closing party, Cruising Utopia. Preceding a spectacular dance party featuring DJ Wei Back and other onsite activations are two presentations that share their retrofuturistic aesthetics in the exploration of work and working people. Filmmaker and performance artist Lisa Anita Wegner stars in the playful short film Life on Mars with Thin(k) Blank Human written and directed by Leslie Barton and Steve Weiss, and set designed with photo-locations by photographer Rick Tashi. The film tells the absurdist story of a day in the life of a faceless worker on Mars. Far from being left behind by technology and automation, the protagonist Thin(k) Blank Human seizes the opportunity to freely adopt and discard new personae, moving fluidly between characters and even genders.

Organizers extraordinaire Dinah Thorpe and Heather Blom return from their previous collaboration with Mayworks 2016 to bring us a whole new Superbutch experience, featuring a live band inside a giant jukebox. Designed and built by the fabulous fairy of all traits Paddy Leung, the jukebox will feature the sweet stylings of the Superbutch Jukebox Band (Oriana Barbato, Lynette Gillis, Dinah Thorpe, and Jordan B. Wright). Superbutch Jukebox is serious and playful, one small show and larger than life. Insert your Puff Coins and see what transpires. Also featuring custom cookies by munchemunch, artwork by Lee D’Angelo/@rat666tat, and performances by multi-talented two-spirit Inuk artist Nanook Fareal and legendary burlesque artist CoCo LaCreme.