Labour of Love: On Digital Economies in the Arts
The browser as… | A lecture by Ali Shamas Qadeer
Monday, December 2, 2019 | 7pm
Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art | 1, 460 Portage Ave | Winnipeg MB | Canada
Plug In ICA and School of Art, Graphic Design at the University of Manitoba present The browser as…, a lecture by Ali Shamas Qadeer as part of Labour of Love: On Digital Economies in the Arts, a series of lectures, screenings, and workshops.
The browser is a canvas, a window, a building, a forest, a swamp, a desert, an undersea network, a security camera, a prison cell, a book, a placard, a road sign, a printer, an everything. Shamas Qadeer’s talk will address the backstory and possibility of the web browser as a medium for making things and intervening in others. Qadeer’s lecture will take place at Plug In ICA, on Monday, December 2 at 7pm.
Ali Shamas Qadeer is a designer and educator based in Toronto. He works in web, print, and web and print. After completing a BA in philosophy and religious studies at McGill University, he developed an independent design practice in New York City before returning to school to complete an MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2014. His work focuses on algorithmic formmaking, unorthodox toolmaking, and the disciplinary and economic structures that design practices buttress. After returning to Canada in 2014, Ali joined the faculty of OCADU where he is an Assistant Professor in the graphic and industrial design programs. In his teaching practice, Ali champions a critical approach that always refracts through a practice of formalism and making.
Labour of Love, or LOL, takes the “public course” as a platform for engagement, this program highlights the various ways in which the digital is interrogated, explored, celebrated, pushed to its limit, reworked, re-invented by artists, scholars, curators, writers and others. The course encompasses a full array of events, delving into such topics as coding, circuit bending, VR, AI and AR, gaming, scanning, and 3D printing. Divided into two streams, a lecture and screening series, and workshops, Labour of Love at its most general examines the relationship between the economics of labour and the digital arts as it contends with the conditions of racial capitalism. As a research platform, we aim to build an understanding of the digital by presenting artists who invent new trajectories through various technologies.
All lectures and screenings are free and open to the public.
This talk is available in our online video archive.
Associated Programming:
Labour of Love: On Digital Economies in the Arts
October 17 to December 17, 2019
Thursday, October 17 | 7pm
Screening: Videos by Hannah Black
October 17-November 17
Screening in Plug In’s Breezeway
More, Less, About the Same (2019)
By Alyssa Bornn
Thursday, November 7 | 7pm
Monday, November 18 | 8pm
Friday, November 22 | 6pm
Friday, November 22-23
Monday, December 2 | 7pm
Co-presentation with School of Art, Graphic Design, University of Manitoba
Monday, December 2-6
Thursday, December 5 | 7pm
Lecture by Morehshin Allahyari
Co-presentation with Institute for the Humanities, University of Manitoba
Tuesday, December 17 | 7pm
Keynote Address by Hannah Black
December 6, 2019 – March 6, 2020
Screening in Plug In’s Breezeway
Soft Nails ~ ♥[ASMR] Kleincomputer Robotron KC87 ♥
By Nadja Buttendorf
For participant bios + more information on the program:
https://plugin.org/exhibitions/labour-of-love-on-digital-economies-in-the-arts/
This program is made possible through the Digital Strategy Fund: Digital and Intelligence by the Canada Council for the Arts.
Acknowledgments
Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art recognizes we are in the territories of the Anishinaabeg, Cree, Dakota, Dene, Métis, and Oji-Cree Nations. Plug In ICA is situated in Treaty 1 territory, the ancestral and traditional homeland of Anishinaabe peoples. Treaty 1 was signed in 1871, taking this territory from seven local Anishinaabe First Nations in order to make the land available for settler use and ownership (Referenced from the University of Winnipeg).
Plug In ICA extends gratitude to our artists, generous donors, valued members and dedicated volunteers, with special thanks to our Director’s Circle.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council and Winnipeg Arts Council. We could not operate without their continued financial investment and lobbying efforts.
Plug In ICA relies on community support to remain free and accessible to all, and enables us to continue to present excellent programs. Please consider becoming a member of Plug In ICA and a donor at https://plugin.org/support or by contacting Angela Forget: angela@plugin.org
For more information on this and our other education programs, contact Nasrin Himada at nasrin@plugin.org
For general information please contact: info@plugin.org or call 1.204.942.1043.
