“Antagonisms” is the first of three events in the Undercurrents Forum. Program hosts Parker Kay and chris mendoza will begin the event with an extended introduction, effectively laying the groundwork and diving into the ways cultural production is imbricated in the city’s paradigm of development through public-private partnerships. Parker and chris, will expand on how their previous work together on sites such as the Don River Valley and the Port Lands has informed their understanding of the way cultural spaces are being built into the real-estate driven development of Toronto’s landscape and the knock-on effects on artistic production.

Vancouver-based cultural worker, writer and curator Caitlin Jones will then present her research on the rise and fall of Artscape: a personal account and analysis of how larger market and real-estate development approaches are at odds with a healthy arts ecology. This presentation will be followed by a panel discussion with artist, urban designer, theorist and educator Adrian Blackwell, and architect, artist, educator and founding director of SHEEEP—Reza Nik. The ensuing conversation will aim to expand on larger questions pertaining to the impact of neoliberal policy and public-private partnerships, the future of spaces of cultural production, and what collective action as artists can look like. In keeping with its name, this event will also be a forum for a larger discussion and audience conversation following the panel.

A suggested donation of $10 is encouraged but not required to attend this event.

Caitlin Jones is a long-time cultural worker, curator, and writer—working with and within a range of institutional and independent contexts. As Executive Director of BCA (formerly BC Artscape) she was responsible for the development and operations of multiple affordable real-estate projects for the cultural community. Prior to her move to BC she worked at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Rhizome.org in New York, NY. Her writings on contemporary art and new media have appeared in a wide range of exhibition catalogues and other international publications including Mousse, The Believer, and Documents in Contemporary Art series, among others.

Adrian Blackwell is an artist, designer, theorist, and educator, whose work focuses on the relation between physical spaces and political economic forces. He is a co-organizer and co-designer of Architects Against Housing Alienation's Not for Sale! campaign, which occupied the Canadian Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Biennale of Architecture and whose campaign involving housing activists, advocates and architects is continuing.

His artwork has shown at public galleries across Canada and the US, and at the Shenzhen and Chengdu Biennials, the Toronto Biennial of Art and Chicago Architecture Biennial both in 2019. His recent projects include A New UFO? at Seeds to Sow in Barrie, Ontario. He is a member of artist collective Gentrification Tax Action, whose ongoing campaign for a tax to raise funds to finance deeply affordable housing has shown across Canada and at the 2023 Venice Biennale. Blackwell is an associate professor at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture, co-founder of the journal Scapegoat: Architecture /Landscape / Political Economy, and co-editor of issue 12/13 c\a\n\a\d\a: delineating nation state capitalism with David Fortin.

Reza Nik is a Toronto-based licensed architect, artist, educator and founding director of SHEEEP–a Toronto-based experimental art and architecture studio primarily working within community, education, activism, culture, public art and architecture. Reza has a background in Art History and he is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design. His research is focused on a deeper dialogue between the socio-political nuances of the urban context and playful experimentation. Disrupting the traditional architectural processes and institutions is at the forefront of his pedagogy and practice.

Reza is also one of the founding members and the co-steward of the Toronto chapter of the Architecture Lobby, an organization advocating for labor rights for architectural workers and encouraging more critical discourse within the profession.