Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art is pleased to present:
Summer Institute 2025: Magic Creek
led by faculty Rodney LaTourelle and Louise Witthöft
August 11 – 21, 2025
Established in 2009, The Summer Institute is a free, international artist research program for professional artists and cultural workers in all disciplines and media. Each year, we invite artists that are critically leading conversations in their field to lead a two week Summer Institute. Each iteration of the Summer Institute invites participants to expand upon their own interests and projects and includes opportunities to work in a collaborative peer-to-peer environment through group activities, guest lectures, and workshops.
This year’s iteration of the Summer Institute will be led by Rodney LaTourelle and Louise Witthöft. It will run from August 11 to August 21, 2025. Each day of the Summer Institute begins with a collective “Story Time” – a shared reading that grounds us in terms of visibility, care, interconnection, and resistance. These sessions set the tone for the day, offering poetic, political, and philosophical entry points into the week’s activities. Throughout the program, we will be joined by invited special guests that expand on our discussions through creative work and physical experience. Participants will further have the unique opportunity to work in creative ways with salvaged materials, such as old concrete, bricks, and glass, from the former Hudson’s Bay Company building, which is situated across the street from the gallery and currently undergoing renovation by the Southern Chiefs Organization. Further working in collaboration with the workshop at the Centre for Architectural Structures and Technology, University of Manitoba, recycled materials will undergo artistic transformations, such as through molding, casting, and concrete-forming, enabling embodied discussions around the HBC’s extensive colonial legacy with an opportunity for awareness and critique. The Summer Institute will conclude with an Open Studio exhibition/performance at Plug In ICA featuring a collective landscape of cast and recycled objects. This shared process – of observing, collecting, moulding, and casting – becomes a way to engage with unseen systems, contested histories, and sustainable futures, in both material and metaphor.
There is no fee to participate in Magic Creek but Summer Institute participants will be responsible for their own travel and accommodations while in Winnipeg.
Applications are due by 5pm CDT June 29.
Spots are limited and applicants will be notified of their results by early July. Plug In thanks all those who applied, only successful applicants will be contacted.