Global Citizenship Conference 2007 Artistic Squad Manifesto
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
~ Marcel Proust
Our art reminds us of our idealism.
At the Global Citizenship Conference, we seek to integrate and incorporate art into the conference framework in order to present ideas in innovative and unique mediums, and address diverse learning styles.
Art communicates in a profound and visionary way that speakers or written texts cannot.
As art provides a space for human connection, it can change the world.
We come together to challenge our ideas and perspectives, to address our collective concerns, to take ownership of our citizenship, and to create community culture.
- GCC Arts Squad, 2007
We belong to each other. We belong to our time - pushing relentlessly to reshape the world to our vision.
~ Unknown
Artistic Features
1. "Re-Envisioning Urban Spaces" - Exhibition Opening
Opening Festivities: Friday, March 2nd at 15:30, exhibit open all weekend
Location: MDCL Atrium, and room 1008
Everywhere is city: We still conceive cities as discrete objects, separate from their surroundings. That's no longer true. There is no exterior to the global city that connects and sustains us all. The art exhibition is an interactive and communal project involving conference delegates, organizers, and students in creating a work that re-envisions the materials surrounding us. The exhibition opening features renowned jazz ensemble No G's
2. STAND Darfuri Refugee Camp: Installation
Artist/ Organization: STAND in conjunction with Khalid Kodi
Students Taking Action Now: Darfur (STAND) presents an artistic representation of a refugee camp, highlighting many of the issues face by the internally displaced people of Darfur, Sudan. Artistic contributions have been made by Sudanese artist, Khalid Kodi. The refugee camp also features a station entitled "Take Action" where participants can translate what they've learned in the exhibit into concrete action.
3. RevWear Fashion Show!
Come see the hottest event of the year and support the rainforest while you're at it! RevWear is an environmentally founded fashion show, inspired by issues ranging from globalization, anti-consumerism, women's rights, poverty, animal rights and many more. Created by the loving raging rebels who are the RevWear Committee. Designs are made from 100% reused materials including (but not limited to) potato sacs, bath loofahs, various edible items, and even cigarettes! Also featuring live dance performances, spoken word/poetry, and plenty of installation, stencil, and graffiti art, and so much more. Saturday, March 3rd, 1pm Lunchtime Show.
4. Hamilton Peace Tour: Presented by Non-violence Now
Date: Friday, March 2nd @ 1pm
Discover Hamilton! Join us in at the conference kick-off event where we hop on a bus and take a tour of some of the amazing things happening in our city. Presented by Nonviolence Now, a campus working group of OPIRG, the 2 hour Peace tour will visit some of the greatest community development landmarks of our city including the Beasley mural project at McLaren Park, the Somali Women's Community Gardening Project, Hamilton Harbour, and the SkyDragon Community Co-operative. The tour features the musical stylings of Dave Mayas, your personal busker! Not to be missed! Bus leaves campus at 1pm on Friday, March 3rd and returns at 3pm. Departure location: TBA
Schedule:
1:00 pm | Depart McMaster from 'Reframing Poverty in Hamilton' Poster Fair |
1:15-1:30 | Arrive at McLaren Park - Matt Thompson leads a discussion of the Beasley mural project and the Somali Women's Garden, an urban community gardening initiative. |
1:35-1:50 | Arrive at Sir John A MacDonald secondary school - Head of ESL to give talk about the school's multiculuralism/esl programs |
1:55-2:10 | Hamilton Harbour - Harris Switzman will give talk about Hamilton Industry/environmental issues & the HMCS HAIDA |
2:20 | Arrive at the SkyDragon Co-operative - Kevin McKay will give a talk about the co-op, and their involvement in the Hamilton community and social justice issues |
2:45 | Return to McMaster |
5. ¡Saturday Night Dinner Party!
Location: Quarters
Featuring: Lal (http://www.myspace.com/lalforest)
It's like a Mexican Wedding Party!
6. Film Festival
The 2007 Global Citizenship Conference is proud to present this year's film extravaganza! All films will be screened simultaneously on the evening of Saturday, March 3rd and will be free to the general public! As an alternative to the film selections, check out Student Numbers, a participatory 'Liberation Theater' piece that will be staged at Robinson Memorial Theater In Chester New Hall rm 102, as a part of the McMaster Honours Performance Series.
Film 1: Tsepong: A Clinic Called Hope
Location: MDCL 3020
Director / Date: Patrick Reed, 2005
Duration: 49 min
Winner of The 2006 DEBORAH FLETCHER AWARD for Excellence in Filmmaking on International Development Presented by The Canadian International Development Agency
A documentary capturing the emotional journey of Canadian medical personnel as they race against time to administer life-saving drugs to patients in AIDS-ravaged Lesotho, Africa.
Lesotho is a tiny country in southern Africa with an enormous problem: HIV/AIDS. More than one-third of all adults in the country are HIV positive, the highest rate in the world. Attempting to remedy the pandemic, a small group of Canadian health care workers have traveled to a remote corner of Lesotho, to help set up one of the country's first HIV/AIDS clinics and to distribute life-saving anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs).
Currently, the program is in danger of being a victim of its own success. There are simply too many people desperate to get too few drugs. Failure is not an option. If the anti-retroviral drug pilot project collapses, an ARV resistant strain of HIV/AIDS may develop, spreading across the continent, and eventually into the West. Lesotho is not just a small, remote nation; it is the front-line of a global battle with literally millions of human lives at stake. This battle must be won; this story must be told.
Discussion: Hope, Health and Healing: HIV/AIDS in Lesotho, Africa
Moderators: Dr. Anne-Marie Zajdlik, Alicia Homer (Project Manager, OHAfrica Initiative)
Dr. Anne-Marie Zajdlik is a family physician and an HIV specialist. She is the founder of the Masai Centre for Local, Regional and Global Health, a local HIV/AIDS clinic serving the Guelph-Kitchener-Waterloo area. In early 2006 she launched her $1 million campaign in support of the Tsepong Clinic and has been a member of the OHAfrica Expert Panel for Sustainability since 2005. In July 2006, Dr. Zajdlik spent time at the Tsepong Clinic and she plans to return in July 2006.
Film 2: Manufactured Landscapes
Location: MDCL 1109
Duration: 90 min
MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES is a feature length documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Burtynsky makes large-scale photographs of 'manufactured landscapes' - quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines, dams. He photographs civilization's materials and debris, but in a way people describe as "stunning" or "beautiful," and so raises all kinds of questions about ethics and aesthetics without trying to easily answer them.
The film follows Burtynsky to China as he travels the country photographing the evidence and effects of that country's massive industrial revolution. Sites such as the Three Gorges Dam, which is bigger by 50% than any other dam in the world and displaced over a million people, factory floors over a kilometre long, and the breathtaking scale of Shanghai's urban renewal are subjects for his lens and our motion picture camera.
Shot in Super-16mm film, Manufactured Landscapes extends the narrative streams of Burtynsky's photographs, allowing us to meditate on our profound impact on the planet and witness both the epicentres of industrial endeavour and the dumping grounds of its waste. What makes the photographs so powerful is his refusal in them to be didactic. We are all implicated here, they tell us: there are no easy answers. The film continues this approach of presenting complexity, without trying to reach simplistic judgements or reductive resolutions. In the process, it tries to shift our consciousness about the world and the way we live in it.
Film 3: The Winking Circle
Location: MDCL 1105
Director: Benny Zenga
Duration: 49 min
The Winking Circle video zine is an explosive audio-visual document on the beginnings of a movement that continues to change lives and inspire radical action. Take a journey with a bunch of teens that refused to be bored in their increasingly suburbanized rural town. In a place where Wal-Mart and the local hockey arena are the cultural landmarks, these kids create a scene unlike anything that's been seen before. See them hand paint their cars, start bands, jump off buildings, build a fleet of art bikes and drag their tv sets behind them.
Witness the hard work and heartbreak as they work with their town council to build the Tsunami dream ramp, a public skatepark that is part rollercoaster, part wooden wave. See their short films where they mock Hollywood by living the adventure instead of watching it. Sit in the passenger seat with SOSA (Southern Ontario Sasquatch Association) as they tear up the countryside in pursuit of the elusive squatch.
TWC video zine has amazed audiences and inspired individuals all over the world. This movie is intended to ignite a revolution: the eccentrification of the world.
Discussion: Positive Action and Eccentrification of the World
Moderators: Rady Kay (OPIRG), Britt Lehmann Bender (PACSS)
Randy Kay is an activist, father, friend, and a human. Britt Lehmann-Bender is a student, woman, human, and a lover.
Theater Option: Student Numbers
Experience theatre like you've never experienced it before. Student Numbers interrogates the lives of the students of McMaster through intervention methods. Student Numbers is the fourth play in the McMaster Honours Performance Series. It is written and directed by Krystal Berwick, Simon DeAbreu, Tanya Sitko and the cast.
Date: Saturday, March 3rd at 8pm
Location: Robinson Memorial Theatre (CNH 103) - McMaster University
Director's Notes:
Student Numbers is an imaginative investigation of contemporary issues within our own McMaster community. Collectively created by cast and crew, the production strives to break down barriers between actors and audience to create dialogue so as to strengthen the communal links throughout the diverse communities found on and off campus. As a directorial team we strived to create a safe space where the actors could trust one another and empower themselves to tell their own stories. This production's aim is to use theatre to foster civic engagement and participatory democracy.
Student Numbers has been created through the improvisational games used by both Augusto Boal, Brazilian politician and artistic director of "Theatre of the Oppressed", and David Diamond, Canadian theatre practitioner and creator of "Theatre for Living". This development has broken down our hierarchical notions of what defines "theatre" to equally privilege everyone's voices. Our rehearsal process allowed the actors to also become creators as we guided the actors from a facilitator role. David Diamond's theatre form, "Theatre for Living", has greatly influenced this production and his ongoing support means so much to the cast and crew.
We hope that you as an audience member and an active part of our McMaster community feel inspired to participate as we guide you through this performance. We encourage you, as we have encouraged our actors through this creative process, to break down your own barriers and challenge yourself to be a catalyst for change