2011 PROGRAM CALENDAR
| Saturday May 7 | Sunday May 8 | Monday May 9 | Tuesday May 10 |
| Wednesday May 11 | Thursday May 12 | Friday May 13 |
| Saturday May 14 | Sunday May 15 |
Saturday May 7
Workers on Site: Artists Talk and Site Tour
Saturday May 7, 1:30pm, Free
Evergreen Brick Works, 550 Bayview Avenue
Workers on Site is a three-part installation of large-scale photographic portraits that Dan Bergeron created for Evergreen Brick Works. The series portrays more than 50 years of labour history on the site. Six large scale portraits of former brick workers from the industrial plant were installed literally brick by brick in the abandoned kiln building. The photographs of the six men are recent, and their presentation reflects on how time has marked their faces and the building where they produced millions of bricks.
In contrast, 13 full figure portraits (12 men and 1 woman slightly larger than life-size) installed in the south stair well of Building 12 represent different trades involved in the recently completed construction of the LEED platinum certified building on the Brick Works site. A group portrait of members of the Eastern Construction crew is mounted on the new utilities shed in Building 16.These workers were instrumental to the transformation of the abandoned industrial site into what became Evergreen Brick Works. The tour of the site will be followed by a talk by Dan Bergeron. Exhibition curated by Ingrid Mayrhofer.
Co-sponsored by Evergreen Brick Works
What's
Becoming of Our City?
Saturday
May 7, 8 pm, $15
The
Garrison, 1197 Dundas Street West
With the recent municipal elections, there's a lot of talk about our city: whose voices are represented, who gets to speak, what do we want it to look like? Four women poets representing a wide spectrum of experiences and styles tackle all these questions and more in What's Becoming of Our City? Our opening night will be graced by poet/emcee Motion, whose art form spans the worlds of music, drama and spoken word. The author of two books of poetry, Motion In Poetry and her newest release 40 Dayz, Motion captivates her audiences with her spoken word performance. Also joining us will be Michelle Muir, who is a teacher, poet, spoken word artist and two-time winner of CBC radio's Poetry Face-Off (2006, 2007). Her recently published first book of poetry, Nuff Said, captures the mood and rhythms of the city through poems that reflect on life, music, community pride and education.We also welcome newcomers jamilah malika and Ghadeer M. to the Mayworks stage! jamilah malika is a storyteller in search of deeper connection and community through conversation, whether on a stage or a page. GhadeerM. is a Palestinian activist and feminist. She writes and performs spoken word poetry, is part of the arts collective AQSAzine and isn't afraid to tell it like it is! Her honesty cuts like a knife - an exciting new poet to watch! Hosted by dub poet/playwright D-Lishus.
The evening will be bookended by the musical offerings at the beginning of the night by Dinah Thorpe and at the end of the night by DJ Leila. Dinah, a musician, composer and producer, makes alternative electro-folk-pop with a little bit of country and a little bit of blues, with political commentary woven in. And after the show, stay and dance to the tunes of DJ Leila as she closes out the night.
Co-sponsored by AQSAzine and Diaspora Dialogues.
Sunday May 8
Mapping
Our Work: Labour History Walking Tour
Sunday
May 8, 10 am, Free
Meet
outside the Steelworkers Hall, 25 Cecil Street
This tour will take you back in time to visit some of the sites of Toronto's most significant labour struggles - the fights for affordable public transit, free public education, for health care and workers' rights. We visit places like the Labour Lyceum, the building where Emma Goldman lay in state after her death; the site of the famous printers' strike against George Brown's Globe;the office buildings out of which emerged key human rights work, like the formation of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and some of the public art that commemorates working people and their activism.
Led by tour guide Maureen Hynes, an award-winning poet and co-writer (with David Kidd) of Mapping Our Work: Toronto Labour History Walking Tours.
Also part of Jane's Walk.
Family Fun Day!
Sunday
May 8, 1-3 pm, Free
Steelworkers
Hall, 25 Cecil Street
In partnership with Art City Toronto, this year's Family Fun Day! brings you active, fun filled and fully participatory arts for kids and their families. Visual artist and educator Paul Boddum will invite Family Fun Day! participants to create a large-scale mixed media painting that celebrates people who work in the arts! Children will explore basic stenciling techniques, painting and drawing. Paul is an established artist who's been a passionate participant in Toronto's local art scene for the past twenty years. Joining Paul will be Carlie Howell, a Toronto based performer, songwriter and educator with a passion for learning and creative music making! Carlie will lead Family Fun Day! participants in creating dramatic soundscapes through explorations in creative movement, body percussion and vocal sound effects. Kids young and old will have fun working together to create an auditory 'landscape to behold!'
Co-sponsored by Art City Toronto in St. James Town.
Write On! Writing
Workshops with Motion and jamilah malika
Sunday May 8, 4-6 pm, $15
Steelworkers Hall, 25
Cecil Street
Registration
required: email registration@mayworks.ca
This year Mayworks is pleased to offer writing workshops from two performers that are part of the opening night line-up, What's Becoming of Our City?. If you were inspired by what you heard, wonder how you too can capture the subtleness and depth of emotion using only words, these workshops will provide you with the tools you need.
Facilitated by Motion, from lyrics to rhymes, spoken word and poetry, scribology is the art of verbal poetics: transforming words from the mind to a page, through a mic, off the tongue, on stage. The Art of Scribology workshop will bring your word/flows to life - this will be a lively and active session!
As a storyteller, jamilah hopes to share her own experience, honestly, so that listeners are inspired to do the same so that soon the whole world will be sharing stories back and forth towards understanding, peace and equanimity. This workshop is about that dialogue and will distinguish print poetry from performed poetry and explore how elements, including the five senses, poetic devices, how words sound and theatricality, can increase the impact of your performance.
All are welcome but space is limited, so sign up soon! Registration is required - email registration@mayworks.ca with your name and telephone number and specify which workshop you're interested in attending.
Monday May 9
The
Boilermakers and Ironworkers Union
Monday
May 9 - Sunday May 15, Free
Opening
Reception: Monday May 9, 6-9 pm
Artists'
Talk: Monday May 9, 7:30 pm
Beaver
Hall Gallery, 29 McCaul Street
The Boilermakers and Ironworkers Union brings together the work of artists Camille Turner and Rick Hill, curated by Jennifer LaFontaine. Growing up in the family of boilermakers and ironworkers respectively, both Camille and Rick have carved out their own life paths from these working families to becoming working artists. Both draw on their family experiences and infuse these identities into their artistic practices.
When she was nine years old, Camille came to Canada with her mother and sister to live with her father. They settled in Hamilton, where her father, a boilermaker, made his living in the steel industry.Hometown Queen is a series of staged photographs of Miss Canadiana, in full-colour, posing in front of panoramic sepia-toned views of Hamilton's steel mills. Through her hallmark use of humour and irony, she both pays homage and explores her contradictory relationship to her hometown.
Also presented in this exhibition is Sankta Barbara, a video work collaboratively created by Camille Turner in collaboration with composer Paulo C. Chagas. The work was created in 2003 during Interaktions-Labor, a residency in an abandoned coalmine in Germany. It draws on the energy of Shango, an African diety who is syncretized with Sankta Barbara, to form a meditation on the unseen and unacknowledged work performed by men in the mine each day.
As Native artist Rick Hill says in his digital story Decisive Moments, "I didn't hear about the Creation story, the Great Law or any of that. All I heard about was being an ironworker. I thought that was my destiny." He recounts his path from ironworker to artist, and the ripple effect it had through his family. His large collection of black and white photographs documents the lives of ironworkers, "to help others see the lives of my heroes as I saw them." The photos and video pieces selected for this exhibit include ironworkers, family, photographers and craftspeople who taught Rick about art, how it shaped his own sense of self, and where his art has evolved from these inspirations.
Co-sponsored by Digital Storytelling Toronto.
Tuesday May 10
Land
of Destiny
Screening
and Artist Talk: Tuesday May 10, 7 pm, $5
Toronto
Free Gallery, 1277 Bloor Street West
Land of Destiny, written and directed by Brett Story, is about how a hard working petrochemical town is rocked by revelations that its workers suffer an epidemic of cancers. But even more terrifying is the looming spectre of de-industrialization and joblessness. Tattooed men serving fries, basement musicians, boilermakers and volunteer fire fighters, heartbroken widows and an optimistic mayor - the lives of a diverse medley of characters intersect to reveal the dramas and contradictions of an industrial town out of sync with a post-industrial economy. In the rich fabric of the city's landscape - rows of boarded storefronts, the bright sprawl of petrochemical plants and the swollen rooms of hospital wards and crowded bars - one finds a microcosm of the 21st century. A portrait of a working-class city in paralysis and a meditation on work and place in the modern economy, Land of Destiny offers an intimate story about work, struggle and survival.
Co-sponsored by Toronto Free Gallery.
Wednesday May 11
The
Faces of Son Jarocho and FBI Family
Wednesday
May 11 - Tuesday May 29, Free
Opening
Reception: Wednesday May 11, 7-9 pm
Artists'
Talk: Wednesday May 11, 7:30 pm
Toronto
Free Gallery, 1277 Bloor Street West
This year Mayworks presents two solo shows in one location, and a chance to hear and meet the artists on the opening night.
The Faces of Son Jarocho is a multidisciplinary project combining oral history, field recordings and portraits using printmaking as a medium. Alec Dempster documents elderly musicians, singers and dancers from the state of Veracruz, Mexico whose lives have all revolved around the music called Son Jarocho. Although this genre is becoming increasingly popular in places as far afield as Los Angeles and Seattle, the effects of migration and other factors are threatening the survival of the music in the rural context in which it originated and has evolved during the past three centuries. By combining his prints with field recordings he took in the area around the town of Santiago Tuxtla, Veracruz, Dempster documents unique styles that are in danger of disappearing. This series is a small tribute to some of the people who have spent most of their lives playing Son Jarocho and have actively struggled to preserve the traditions of their communities. This exhibition, shown in the U.S.A. and Mexico, is being exhibited here for the first time in Toronto.
Combining 1950's family photos with her mother's FBI files, Amy Gottlieb's series FBI Family speaks to historic and contemporary issues around state surveillance as well as the personal and political textures of security. For Gottlieb, these FBI files were the constant wallpaper of her life as a red diaper baby growing up in New York. Both of her parents were members of the Communist Party and dinner conversation always included a large helping of political discussion and passing mention of phones being tapped and calls from the FBI. While the family photos she subverts seem ordinary and representative of domestic photography of the period, the layering injects a counter-narrative of classification, suspicion and control. These days Gottlieb's fears are for the ongoing power of the state to classify, control and demonize dissent. These images ask the viewer to think about the power of the 'security state' and dominant notions of 'public safety' and their impact on democracy.
Co-sponsored by Toronto Free Gallery.
Thursday May 12
Resilience
Thursday
May 12 - Sunday May 22, Free
Opening
Reception: Thursday May 12, 6-10 pm
The
Raging Spoon, 761 Queen Street West
Resilience is a collaborative visual art installation that celebrates Toronto's LGBTTQ2SIA spectrum people of colour as working people, as bodies of resilience and resistance, and as storytellers. Queer people of colour in Toronto often find themselves trapped in a paradox. Facing violence, oppression and systemic barriers to decent wages, healthy working conditions and a living culture. Meanwhile, on some very specific fronts, 'queer positivity' is being mainstreamed. Toronto hosts one of the world's largest Gay Pride Parades and widespread 'diversity' rhetoric makes it seem as though with a bit of effort, queer and trans people of colour can be "just like everybody else." When confronted with these mainstreaming ideas, we ask ourselves: whose queer agenda is being represented? Do these representations truly empower us and our communities? Resilience celebrates the resistance to these things with a collaborative visual art installation. This installation involves photography, short video and multi-media works by Eshan Rafi, Erin Kosm, Nadijah Robinson, Heidi Cho and Huellas Importadas.
Co-sponsored by the Hispanic Development Council and The People Project.
Friday May 13
Stop
Wage Theft! Campaign Launch
Friday
May 13, 7 pm, Free
Beit
Zatoun, 612 Markham Street
Join the Workers' Action Centre at the community launch of their Stop Wage Theft! campaign. Hear from Workers' Action Centre leaders on their fight to stop employers from stealing wages and watch undercover footage of how employers break the law in a new video expose. See also how workers are resisting through 'bad boss' actions around the city. Celebrate our shared resistance with live Afro-Colombian percussion from Ruben 'Beny' Esguerra, a Columbian born multi-instrumentalist, lyricist and arts educator who will be accompanied by New Tradition Drum and Dance; Lishai, an award winning poet and powerful performer who uses her words to create dialogue and tell her story; and Rehaset, a Saudi-born Ethiopian who grew into being an independent musical artist out of necessity and whose mission is to bridge the gap between Afrikans and the world! Come learn about the Workers' Action Centre's vital organizing work for precarious workers.
Organized and sponsored by the Workers' Action Centre.
Saturday May 14
Young
Voices: Work It!
Saturday
May 14, 2 pm, $12
Theatre
Direct Christie Studio, 601 Christie Street
Young Voices, in its fifth year, is a program of Native Earth Performing Arts that fosters emerging Indigenous writers as they work toward developing their voices for the stage. This program strives to de-colonize the mind from its limited imperialist public-school-system thinking, and celebrates the creation of a new Native canon. Mayworks is proud to present this workshop presentation of works-in-progress from writers whose roots span Turtle Island. The Girl Who Talked to Starsis a comedic spin on one young woman's experience in the uncreative world of institutionalized mental healthcare by first time playwright Ashley Bomberry. Sea creatures, indigenous roots and blood ties span continents and oceans in Wagosh Kwewag, a lyrical look at family, loyalty and love by emerging actress and playwright Lisa Cromarty. In Tyler Pennock's Al and the Snake, Al, a First Nations man who grew up outside of his birth community, battles inner demons externalized as he fights to return to his roots for the first time. All Around You, by playwright Jessie Anthony, takes a tragic-comedic look at the journey of a young Mohawk woman who struggles to balance life and love while striving to succeed on the honourable path stretched out before her. Rife with dark comedy, An Interesting, Amusing, Biographical Incident by Sundance Crowe explores one man's nightmarish experience with reconciling the debacle that is the Truth and Reconciliation Hearings with his home life. An excellent opportunity to see the wealth of emerging Indigenous playwrights.
Co-organized
and co-sponsored by Native Earth Performing Arts.
Cake
With
Opening Performance by MataDanZe
Saturday
May 14, 8 pm, $12
Theatre
Direct Christie Studio, 601
Christie Street
Mayworks presents a workshop production of Cake, a new play by Donna-Michelle St. Bernard, which humanizes the dynamic between Niger and Iran around the clandestine trade in uranium. Cake fits into a larger body of work called The 54-ology which aims to look at each country in Africa - all 54 of them - in a different piece of performance work. The overall project aims to question our perception of the continent to see more specific issues than the common Westernized images of hunger and HIV - both of which are significant issues, and neither of which exists in a vacuum. It seeks to acknowledge the internal and external pressures of politics, economics, international trade, cultural and spiritual divergence, colonial consequence and natural resources. This play addresses both local and global scenarios, in which aid is offered to persons and nations in exchange for the perpetuation of systemic poverty. Cake is directed by Clare Preuss, with assistance by Aura Carcueva. Opening the night is a new multidisciplinary performance entitled Desaparecidos, choreographed by MataDanZe collective. This work will expose Canadians to the ongoing social and political phenomenon of disappeared working people in Latin America - often little known about. This work will shed light on these issues, but despite the heavy subject matter, delicate threads of hope and survival of the spirit are woven throughout the piece. MataDanZe is comprised of Victoria Mata, Olivia Davies, Misset Parata, Corrie Sakaluk, Gricel Severino and Irma Villafuerte. Both of these new works, by up-and-coming artists to watch for, will provide insight into some global issues with far-reaching impact.
Co-sponsored by New Harlem Productions.
Sunday May 15
Working
Songs: Maria
Dunn and John Wort Hannam in Concert with Fiona Coll
Sunday
May 15, 4 pm, $15
The
Cameron House, 408 Queen Street West
For our closing day event, folk singer and Juno-nominated musicians Maria Dunn, alongside John Wort Hannam, join us this year all the way from Edmonton in an exclusive concert about the lives of working people. Described by the Edmonton Sun as "... a remarkable singer-songwriter, think of her as a distaff Woody Guthrie," Maria Dunn combines North American folk and country music with the influences of her Celtic heritage. Maria's songs tell stories of everyday working people, their lives, their struggles and their triumphs. Likewise, with comparisons to Gordon Lightfoot John Wort Hannam is a born storyteller with a keen eye for the quirky and lyrics that create stories behind the songs. In 2010, his album Queen's Hotel won the Canadian Folk Music Award for Contemporary Album of the Year! They will be joined by Irish-Canadian fiddler Fiona Coll.
Co-sponsored by Agricultural Workers Alliance/UFCW
