"Riffing the Canon: The Pictures Generation and Racial Bias", Journal of Curatorial Studies, Vol.8, No.2 (Fall 2019).
This article considers exhibitions as archival documents, and conceives of the restaging of exhibitions as an act of appropriating the archive. It examines The Pictures Generation 1974-1984 (2009), curated by Douglas Eklund as a restaged ‘rif’ on Pictures (1977) curated by Douglas Crimp. Pictures was a focused meditation on the historical significance of a particular aesthetic strategy. The Pictures Generation historicized Pictures as the foundational moment of appropriation. Eklund’s form of restaging, however, reinforced the racially segregated realities that have marginalized the history of appropiative practices by artists of colour. Drawing on a post + colonial framework, I consider how exhibition restagings may be leveraged as a curatorial strategy of historical rupture.
“Fair Dealing, Artist Unions, and the Visual Arts in Canada,” International Copyright Flexibilities and Creative Practice, College Art Association (CAA) Annual Conference, New York, NY (February 13 – 16, 2019)
In Canada, one key limitation to copyright intended to protect creators from a monopoly over speech is the doctrine of ‘fair dealing’ which covers eight explicit exceptions: research, private study, news reporting, criticism, review, education, satire, and parody.In fact, over the past two decades, the trend in Canada has been towards the expansion of fair dealing – both by policy makers and through the courts – due in large part to efforts initiated by the education community. For instance, in 2012 several Canadian universities refused to re-sign the Association of Universities and Colleges Canada (AUCC), and the Association of Community Colleges of Canada’s (ACCC) negotiated Access Copyright Model Licenses citing already existing fair dealing allowances (the outcomes of which are still playing out in the Federal Court of Appeal).
In light of the ongoing one-year statutory review of the Canadian Copyright Act launched in December 2017 by Honorable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, and the Honorable Mélanie Joly, Minister of Canadian Heritage, this paper will consider the increasing resistanceto fair dealing by artist unions such as the Canadian Artists’ Representation/Le Front des artistes canadiens (CARFAC) in response to educator fair dealing claims. I argue that CARFAC’s position may be scrutinizedin relation to what Meera Nair has identified as a “campaign of misinformation” regarding creator and user rights in Canada and abroad. Further, CARFAC’s single-minded focus on proprietary rights both ignores, and misunderstands, the fundamental process(es) of creative production to the detriment of its membership base and to artists across borders.