write On 2020: A THEMED WRITING WORKSHOP
rooted
Togetherness in the built environment.
The root systems of healthy trees, through underground mycorrhizal networks, are known to feed and strengthen weaker neighbouring trees. Linked root to root, a row of Aspen can resemble a single tree. This dimension of being “rooted” implies not simply individual strength, but the essential role of support networks.
In a time of unprecedented change, where is the way forward in supporting our neighbours and communities? What openings can we find to make up for lost time in seeking to re-connect with the land? What memories or histories can we draw from in order to remake our support networks even more open and caring? And finally, what might creative process offer?
The Write ON 2020 workshop is an opportunity to take the time to develop the capacities to articulate the meaningful in our urban environment. It’s about words. And about contemporary expressions of visual form. We seek explorative and provocative thinking.
All are invited to apply to be supported in developing a writing practice.The annual program is open to professional and aspiring writers: artists and architects, as well as individuals who work in film, digital media, design, theatre, public art, planning, urbanism, anthropology and geography.
The workshop includes four writing sessions and work with an individual mentor to develop a piece of writing. Write ON 2020 will run between June 20 and November 15, 2020.
Sessions By
Dr. Yvonne Poitras Pratt (video, June) is a Métis scholar whose family ancestry traces to the historic Red River Settlement and, more recently, to the Fishing Lake Métis Settlement in northeastern Alberta. She is an Associate Professor in the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary, and has previously served as Associate Director, Métis Education at the Rupertsland Institute, a Métis Centre of Excellence. She led the creation and development of the “Indigenous Education: A Call to Action” graduate program in 2016 and she continues to explore the potential of reconciliatory pedagogy through her scholarship and ongoing teaching in this program. Dr. Poitras Pratt’s research concentrates on experiential learning and creative imaginings. She ethnographically explores the potential of digital storytelling to revitalize oral traditions in her book, Digital Storytelling in Indigenous Education: A Decolonizing Journey for a Métis Community (Routledge Press, 2019). Her scholarship builds on the use of media, and other aesthetic expressions, as catalysts for transformative learning within difficult learning environments. Dr. Poitras Pratt publishes in the area of reconciliatory pedagogy, critical service-learning, Indigenous education, anti-racism and social justice studies, with a special interest in the integration of arts in a variety of learning environments.
Mimi Zeiger (video, July) is a Los Angeles-based critic, editor, and curator. She was co-curator of the U.S. Pavilion for the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale and curator of Soft Schindler at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture. She has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Architectural Review, Metropolis, and Architect. She is an opinion columnist for Dezeen and former West Coast Editor of The Architects Newspaper. Zeiger is the 2015 recipient of the Bradford Williams Medal for excellence in writing about landscape architecture. Zeiger is author of New Museums, Tiny Houses, Micro Green: Tiny Houses in Nature, and Tiny Houses in the City. In 1997, Zeiger founded loud paper, an influential zine and digital publication dedicated to increasing the volume of architectural discourse. She has curated, contributed to, and collaborated on projects that have been shown at the Art Institute Chicago, 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale, the New Museum, Storefront for Art and Architecture, pinkcomma gallery, and the AA School. She co-curated Now, There: Scenes from the Post-Geographic City, which received the Bronze Dragon award at the 2015 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture, Shenzhen.
Suzanne Harris-Brandts PhD, OAA (November) is a Canadian architect and urban scholar bridging design and the social sciences. An Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at Carlton University, her interdisciplinary work explores issues of power, equity, and collective identity in the built environment. She has over a decade of experience at design practices in Toronto, Vancouver, London, the West Bank, Tbilisi, and Abu Dhabi and in 2017, she co-founded Collective Domain, a practice for spatial research, urban activism, architecture, and media in the public interest. Harris-Brandts has disseminated her work through international exhibitions, lectures, and publications, the latter ranging from design magazines to academic peer-reviewed journal articles, online platforms, and books—often integrating visual analytical material. While working at Toronto-based Lateral Office, she acted as deputy curator for Canada’s 2014 pavilion at the Venice Biennale (Arctic Adaptations: Nunavut at 15) and lead researcher for the book “Many Norths: Spatial Practice in a Polar Territory” (Actar, 2017). Her current book project, “Constructing the Capital,” draws from her dissertation research uncovering the politics of urban development and image making in Eurasian capital cities.
Mentorships With
Lev Bratishenko is Curator, Public, at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, where he produced “Come and Forget”, a series of speculative historical erasures, and “How to: not make an architecture magazine”, a manual for avoiding publishing, among other projects. He has written for Cabinet, the CBC, Gizmodo, Icon, Maclean’s, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, Opera Canada, Opera News, Uncube and others. He was classical music critic for the Montreal Gazette and Online Editor-in-Residence at Abitare, an USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Fellow, and a National Magazine Award nominee for his Literary Review of Canada essay “Jane Jacobs’s Tunnel Vision”.
Mark Clintberg is an artist who works in the field of art history. He is represented by Pierre François Ouellette art contemporain in Montreal, Canada, and teaches in the School of Critical and Creative Studies at the Alberta University of the Arts. Public and private collections have acquired his work, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, the Bank of Montreal Corporate Art Collection, and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. Journals and periodicals that have published his writing include Senses & Society, The Journal of Canadian Art History, C Magazine, ETC., Esse, BlackFlash, and The Art Newspaper.
Marzena Czarnecka, journalist, novelist, poet and blogger, has written on business, legal affairs, strategy, energy, social justice and the stranger-than-fiction proclivities of entrepreneurs for most of Canada’s leading business publications. As M. Jane Colette, she is the author of several novels and the facilitator and curator of the YYC Queer Writers creative writing anthologies. She also teaches creative writing courses for the Alexandra Writers’ Centre Society, and she is a founding member of TIARA, The Inclusive Authors of Romance Association. Currently, she is teaching in the journalism program at SAIT, blogging the pandemic at NothingByTheBook.com, and writing a rom-com about finding enlightenment by eating many, many delicious pastries.
Dr. Enrica Dall’Ara’s expertise is in the field of landscape architecture, with emphasis on urban renewal, public open spaces design, development of criteria for landscape design in rural areas, and landscape rehabilitation of industrial sites. She has written for journals such as Landscape and Urban Planning, Landscape Research, Cities, and Journal of Culture and Heritage. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary’s School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, and practices landscape architecture through her studio, P’ARC, that has produced award-winning work since 2001 and based in Cesena, Italy. Her design works are published in various venues, among which catalogues of the International Biennial of Landscape Architecture of Barcelona (Spain) and landscape architecture magazines Paisea, paiseaDos, and Architettura del Paesaggio.
For Catherine Hamel, who was born in Beirut, Lebanon—the experience of extreme physical destruction, and rapid human adaptation due to the politics of the region—is a personal given that translated into a professional curiosity. The tenuous bridge between the personal and the collective is one she continuously builds and dismantles. As an associate professor of architecture at the School of Architecture, Landscape and Planning at the University of Calgary, the theme of her recent studio was on re-settlement collaborations. Students explored the impact of a range of displacements—and possible roles of the built environment in mitigating adaptation in the necessity of reaching alternative connections to communities of inhabitation. In writing, she has an interest in the gaps between words and languages. In addition, she uses visuals in an expansive role rather than an explicatory description. She has a penchant to leans towards thoughtful provocations rather than clear resolutions.
Ruth Jones is co-editor in chief of The Site Magazine, and a writer and curator whose work has appeared in the Boston Globe, Literary Review of Canada, Los Angeles Review of Books, and C Magazine, among others; her audio work has aired on CBC radio. She holds a PhD in French and Francophone Studies from UCLA, with interests in literary history, translation, and the narratives that shape the built environment.
Elsa Lam is editor of Canadian Architect magazine. With a doctorate in architectural history and theory from Columbia University, Lam has written extensively for architecture and design magazines, as well as collaborating on the editing and writing of several books. Previous to her role at Canadian Architect, she worked with the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. She is the co-editor of the book Canadian Modern Architecture, 1967 to the present, released by Princeton Architectural Press and Canadian Architect in 2019.
Susanne Schindler is an architect and historian focused on the intersection of policy and design in housing. She is currently a visiting lecturer at MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning and co-directs the MAS program in the history and theory of architecture at ETH Zurich. From 2013 to 2016, Susanne was lead researcher and co-curator of the research and exhibition project House Housing: An Untimely History of Architecture and Real Estate at Columbia University, and co-author of The Art of Inequality. In her current book project, based on her doctoral research at ETH Zurich, Susanne analyses how the little-known and largely discredited Model Cities program played out in New York in the late 1960s and set the stage for many housing practices still with us today. Susanne writes regularly for a range of publications, including Urban Omnibus, the online journal of the Architectural League of New York.
Jared Tailfeathers is a performance and interactive installation artist of Blackfoot heritage. A musician and musical instrument maker, his practice blends multi-media, narrative and conceptual design. He is the Program Coordinator for the Indigenous Placemaking Project at the Calgary Public Library, a project that involved coordinating a collaborative work of art by six Indigenous artists connected to Treaty 7 territory that is featured in the New Central Library. He curated AlterNATIVE: Balance produced by EMMEDIA featuring artists finding a position of balance between tradition and contemporary practice. He is a member of the Indigenous Performance Arts Alliance.
SESSIONS WILL TAKE PLACE IN THE AFTERNOON ON:
June 20, 2020 (online)
July 11, 2020 (online)
July 18, 2020 (online)
October 31, 2020 (online)
We acknowledge the ongoing support of Calgary Arts Development, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the donors who have made this program possible.