PANEL 2: PERIODICALS AND ART WRITING

Moderator: Maxine Proctor
Panelists: Joni Low & André-Louis Paré (Espace); Anton Vidokle, Brian Kuan Wood & Hallie Ayres (e-flux); and Maandeeq Mohamed (C Magazine)

Presented with generous support from Fillip & the Libby Leshgold Gallery / ECUAD

Art magazines and journals play integral roles in the cultural landscape, not least of which is their support for critical writing that sits apart from the (often) laudatory writing of catalogue essays and other institutionally commissioned texts. The demands of running a periodical are high, and we’ve seen numerous publications wrap-up or substantially change direction over the past few years. This panel features representatives of three periodicals who will speak to their current editorial and artistic directions, and what strategies they employ to sustain their important role.

Maxine Proctor is an editor, writer, and arts administrator living in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She was the director/co-founder of the Toronto Art Book Fair, director and editor of BlackFlash magazine, and is currently the Development Manager at Remai Modern. Outside of the arts, Maxine is a dedicated animal advocate. She volunteers as the foster support coordinator for New Hope Dog Rescue, community outreach support for Canine Action Project, and has been a loving foster home to dozens of companion animals.

Anton Vidokle is an artist and co-founder of e-flux magazine. Working primarily in film, Vidokle’s current practice focuses on Russian Cosmism, a school of thought developed by the Russian librarian Nikolai Fedorov (1828–1903) that tried to unite science, technology, religion, and art, and heavily influenced Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Lev Tolstoy, Kasimir Malevich, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, and Leon Trotsky, among many others.

Brian Kuan Wood is a writer based in New York, and a founding editor of e-flux journal. He has edited readers and catalogs such as The Internet Does Not Exist and Are You Working Too Much? Post-Fordism, Precarity, and the Labor of Art (with Julieta Aranda and Anton Vidokle, Sternberg Press, 2015 and 2011 respectively), Modern Monsters: Death and Life of Fiction (Taipei Biennial 2012 catalogue, with Anselm Franke, 2014), IINN PPEERRPPEETTUUAALL PPRROODDUUCCTTIIOONN (with Natascha Sadr Haghighian, 2013-14), Selected Maria Lind Writing (Sternberg Press, 2010), and others. He occasionally produces sleazy disco tracks. He was a visiting professor at the Home Workspace study program (Ashkal Alwan, Beirut) in 2013-14.

Hallie Ayres is a researcher and art historian living in New York. Her writing has been published in e-flux Criticism and e-flux Journal, and she has lectured at the Academy of Fine Arts, Prague. She is a research fellow at the Institute of the Cosmos, where she edited Cosmic Bulletin 2021. Hallie has coordinated many exhibitions and projects around the globe and has produced a number of experimental films, including in New York and Turkey. She works as Associate Director at e-flux.

Joni Low is a writer and curator whose practice explores interconnection, intercultural conversations, and sensory experience. A CGS-D SSHRC Doctoral Fellow at SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts, she researches artists who are sensing otherwise to access different ways of knowing. Low has presented exhibitions across Canada, and written for catalogues and journals including Artforum, Canadian Art, ESPACE Art Actuel, and Yishu: Journal for Contemporary Chinese Art. In 2022 she published the anthology What Are Our Supports? – 23 artists reflecting on supports during precarious times (co-editor: Jeff O’Brien). Low is an editorial board member of The Capilano Review and Vancouver correspondent for ESPACE.

André-Louis Paré is an independent curator and art critic. He has written many articles for visual art magazines and has had numerous essays published in monographs. He co-curated the exhibitions Cynismes ? (Manif d’art 3, Québec, 2005), Québec Gold (Reims, 2008) and Monuments aux victimes de la liberté (AXE NÉO 7, Gatineau, 2015). He also was the curator for Hors de moi/Beside My Self, an exhibition presented at Expression (Saint-Hyacinthe, 2008) and at the Maison de la culture Côte-des-Neiges (Montreal, 2011). More recently he curated Mutations, an exhibition presented at the Magasin Général (Rivière-Madeleine, 2016). In December 2013, he became the Editor ofESPACE art actuel.

Maandeeq Mohamed is a writer, editor and researcher. She is currently the Associate Editor of C Magazine, as well as a PhD Candidate in English and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto, where she is a SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Doctoral Fellow.

VANCOUVER ART BOOK FAIR 2025

SAVE THE DATES: JULY 4–6, 2025 AT ROUNDHOUSE COMMUNITY ARTS & RECREATION CENTRE

SAVE THE DATES: JULY 4–6, 2025
AT ROUNDHOUSE COMMUNITY ARTS & RECREATION CENTRE