Calendar

Aki Onda has channelled the spirit of the late Korean artist Nam June Paik via radio transmission in Nam June’s Spirit Was Speaking to Me (2017/2021). Paik is known for his association with shamanism, a practice that consistently surfaces in his works. With a portable radio in hand, Onda communicates with his spirit from a distance—collecting field recordings of cryptic broadcasts and messages on anonymous radio stations. The series of séances has been conducted in different cities across the globe, beginning in Seoul, Korea in 2010 and continuing in Cologne, Germany in 2012, Wrocław, Poland in 2013, and Lewisburg, United States in 2014. This work was originally commissioned by documenta 14’s radio program Every Time A Ear di Soun in 2017.

From March 26 to June 5, 2022, Aki Onda will present Nam June’s Spirit Was Speaking to Me through microbroadcasting and printed matter at the Toronto Biennial of Art. Broadcasting over two frequencies (88.5 FM and 106.5 FM) that cover the exhibition site of 72 Perth Ave in Toronto, radios are placed as part of the exhibition to symbolize sound waves in the air. The audio work exists as invisible yet discrete and perceptible through the proper medium, recalling the ritual of channeling spirits. Bring your own radio to catch the frequencies.

Onda is also bringing Nam June’s Spirit Was Speaking to Me to the international radio waves in a series of international public programs. The program will play, uninterrupted and in its entirety of 50 minutes. For Onda, those broadcasts are a response to how Nam June Paik spread his ideas through TV cable networks and connected to a large number of people at a global scale.

Made possible by the generous support of The Japan Foundation.

Curated by 2019 and 2022 Biennial contributors Jane Wolff and Susan Schwartzenberg, Toronto Landscape Observatory is both an installation and a collection of tools, walks, workshops, and conversations designed to help Biennial visitors recognize, acknowledge, and understand their relationships to this place—and to other people who care about it. From May 1–June 5, 2022, the Observatory will host weekly programs to investigate the surroundings of the Biennial site at 72 Perth Avenue and draw attention to processes, phenomena, and connections that often go unnoticed. In examining the land and its relationships as they are today, the Observatory looks toward a future made uncertain by local and global change, from development pressures to the climate emergency. It invites visitors to contribute their own observations to an open vocabulary for imagining possibilities that are kinder, more just, and more resilient than the status quo.

Toronto Landscape Observatory is supported by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Office of the Vice-President, International, University of Toronto.

Programming

Toronto Landscape Observatory walks and workshops are held every Sunday from 2-4pm for the duration of the installation at 72 Perth Avenue. For a full list of programs, see below:

May 1: A Conversation about Language and Landscape with James Bird

May 8: An Observing Walk with Jane Wolff and Susan Schwartzenberg

May 15: A Conversation about Being in Place with Dr. Jennifer Wemigwans

May 22: Workshop: Measuring a Leaf with Alexander Moyle 

May 29: A Listening Walk with Sherry Lee and Emily MacCallum

June 5: A Walk to Greet Plants with Lorraine Johnson

Image credit: Aaron Hernandez

In this site- and environmentally-responsive performance, experimental musicians Sara Constant and Naomi McCarroll-Butler greet Wind Oracle. Presented as a new work by Eduardo Navarro, Wind Oracle stands at Colborne Lodge, an entity with a commanding presence but whimsical intention: an invitation to interact with the wind and consider the animacy of air and deeply entangled relations between humans and the natural world. Engaging with instruments and materials (hand-made and otherwise) Sara and Naomi activate the site–grounding and improvising with the audience–and using the wind as a medium for questions asked and answered.

This program will take place at Eduardo Navarro’s Wind Oracle, situated on the lawn of Colborne Lodge. We encourage participants to bring a blanket and to wear yellow!

Co-commissioned and co-presented by the Toronto Biennial of Art and the City of Toronto with support from Colborne Lodge, Toronto History Museums and ArtworxTO. This exhibition has been supported by Cadillac Fairview Corporation.

Learn more about Wind Oracle here.

Join us at Arsenal Contemporary Art Toronto for Storytelling sessions led by Emily DiCarlo.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays: 11am–12pm
Saturdays: 11am–12pm and 2–3pm

American Sign Language Interpretation
The following Storytelling Session at Arsenal Contemporary Art Toronto will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Saturday, May 21, 2022, 11am-12pm.

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

Join us at the Small Arms Inspection Building in Mississauga for Storytelling sessions led by lwrds duniam and Nicole Markland.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays: 11am–12pm, 2–3pm, and 4–5pm
Saturdays and Sundays: 11am–12pm and 4–5pm

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

American Sign Language Interpretation​
The following Storytelling Sessions at the Small Arms Inspection Building will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Saturday, April 23, 2022, 4-5pm.
• Saturday, May 21, 2022, 11am-12pm.

Image credit: Storytelling at the Small Arms Inspection Building with Jeffrey Gibson’s ALL FOR ONE, ONE FOR ALL, 2015. Photography by Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

Join us at 72 Perth Ave for Storytelling sessions led by Jeffrey Canton and Melissa Davidson.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays 11am–12pm, 2–3pm, and 6:30–7:30pm
Saturdays and Sundays from 11am–12pm and 4–5pm

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

American Sign Language Interpretation
The following Storytelling Sessions at 72 Perth will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Friday, April 29, 2022, 6-7pm.
• Friday, May 13, 2022, 6-7pm
• Friday, May 27, 2022, 2-3pm, register here

Join us at 72 Perth Avenue in Toronto for a special Storytelling session led by Melly Davidson and accompanied by an American Sign Language English interpreter.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

This program is presented in partnership with Toronto Sign Language Interpreter Service (TSLIS).

Join artist Azadeh Pirazimian for family-friendly art activities every Saturday at 72 Perth. Azadeh will be leading a multimedia workshop with a focus on stencil printmaking. Participants will make sketches of one simple object or visual element that has captured their attention and mind among the artworks of the exhibit. They will then cut out their sketches on transparent stencil sheets to make a print. The printed work reflects a specific memory of their visit to the exhibit through their own lens.

Drive The Vibe is an outreach initiative community sharing program by VIBE Arts that engages in diverse communities within the Greater Toronto Area and its outskirts to provide a platform to discuss current social issues and shared lived experiences. Led by an Arts Educator and assisted by a youth artist, Drive The Vibe provides free public art-making to communities in and out of the GTA.

Schedule
Saturdays at 72 Perth – May 7, 14, 21, 28
11am to 5pm

• 11:30am – 12:30pm: Workshop 1
• 12:30 – 1:30pm: Workshop 2
• 1:30 – 2:30pm: Break
• 2:30 – 3:30pm: Workshop 3
• 3:30 – 4:30pm: Workshop 4

This program is presented in partnership with VIBE Arts as part of their Drive The Vibe initiative, a mobile artist-driven arts program that goes wherever children and youth are.

In Dish Dances Movement Workshop, 2022 Biennial artist Ange Loft (Kanien’kehá:ka) and Jumblies Theatre + Arts present a project history and sample movement facilitation. Through a guided, low-stakes, individual movement activity complemented by a presentation, participants will build their familiarity with the symbols, embodied gestures and land-based knowledge held in the Dish With One Spoon agreement. The resulting movement outcome will unfold across Historic Fort York’s Garrison Commons supported by Indigenous Dish Dances performing team.

Loft is lead artist of the Talking Treaties Collective, a multidisciplinary group of Indigenous and settler artists/researchers whose projects artfully share Indigenous history and awareness of the place now called Toronto. In June 2022, the collective will release A Treaty Guide for Torontonians, published by Jumblies Press and Toronto Biennial of Art in partnership with Art Metropole.

Participants will meet at the Fort York Visitor Centre at 250 Fort York Blvd.

If registration for the program is at capacity, please email programmingandlearning@torontobiennial.org to be added to the waitlist.

Join us at 5 Lower Jarvis for Storytelling sessions led by Emily DiCarlo.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Schedule:
Sundays from 11am–12pm and 2–3pm

Join artists Akshata Naik and Jenny Chen for family-friendly art activities every Sunday at the Small Arms Inspection Building in Mississauga. Akshata and Jenny will be leading multimedia workshops focusing on painting and collage.

Drive The Vibe is an outreach initiative community sharing program by VIBE Arts that engages in diverse communities within the Greater Toronto Area and its outskirts to provide a platform to discuss current social issues and shared lived experiences. Led by an Arts Educator and assisted by a youth artist, Drive The Vibe provides free public art-making to communities in and out of the GTA.

Schedule
Sundays at Small Arms Inspection Building – May 8,15, 22 and 29
11am to 5pm

• 11:30am – 12:30pm: Workshop 1
• 12:30 – 1:30pm: Workshop 2
• 1:30 – 2:30pm: Break
• 2:30 – 3:30pm: Workshop 3
• 3:30 – 4:30pm: Workshop 4

This program is presented in partnership with VIBE Arts as part of their Drive The Vibe initiative, a mobile artist-driven arts program that goes wherever children and youth are.

In this walk, musicology and sound studies scholars Sherry Lee and Emily MacCallum ask participants to listen to the landscape. Its goal is to draw attention to sounds, both as determinants of experience and as information sources about the characteristics of place.

Curated by 2019 and 2022 Biennial contributors Jane Wolff and Susan Schwartzenberg, Toronto Landscape Observatory is a collection of tools, walks, workshops, and conversations designed to help Biennial visitors recognize, acknowledge, and understand their relationships to this place—and to other people who care about it. From May 2–June 5, 2022, the Observatory will host weekly programs to investigate the surroundings of the Biennial site at 72 Perth Avenue and draw attention to processes, phenomena, and connections that often go unnoticed. In examining the land and its relationships as they are today, the Observatory looks toward a future made uncertain by local and global change, from development pressures to the climate emergency. It invites visitors to contribute their own observations to an open vocabulary for imagining possibilities that are kinder, more just, and more resilient than the status quo.

If registration for the program is at capacity, please email programmingandlearning@torontobiennial.org to be added to the waitlist.

Toronto Landscape Observatory is supported by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Office of the Vice-President, International, University of Toronto.

Image credit: Aaron Hernandez

Aki Onda has channelled the spirit of the late Korean artist Nam June Paik via radio transmission in Nam June’s Spirit Was Speaking to Me (2017/2021). Paik is known for his association with shamanism, a practice that consistently surfaces in his works. With a portable radio in hand, Onda communicates with his spirit from a distance—collecting field recordings of cryptic broadcasts and messages on anonymous radio stations. The series of séances has been conducted in different cities across the globe, beginning in Seoul, Korea in 2010 and continuing in Cologne, Germany in 2012, Wrocław, Poland in 2013, and Lewisburg, United States in 2014. This work was originally commissioned by documenta 14’s radio program Every Time A Ear di Soun in 2017.

From March 26 to June 5, 2022, Aki Onda will present Nam June’s Spirit Was Speaking to Me through microbroadcasting and printed matter at the Toronto Biennial of Art. Broadcasting over two frequencies (88.5 FM and 106.5 FM) that cover the exhibition site of 72 Perth Ave in Toronto, radios are placed as part of the exhibition to symbolize sound waves in the air. The audio work exists as invisible yet discrete and perceptible through the proper medium, recalling the ritual of channeling spirits. Bring your own radio to catch the frequencies.

Onda is also bringing Nam June’s Spirit Was Speaking to Me to the international radio waves in a series of international public programs. The program will play, uninterrupted and in its entirety of 50 minutes. For Onda, those broadcasts are a response to how Nam June Paik spread his ideas through TV cable networks and connected to a large number of people at a global scale.

Made possible by the generous support of The Japan Foundation.

Curated by 2019 and 2022 Biennial contributors Jane Wolff and Susan Schwartzenberg, Toronto Landscape Observatory is both an installation and a collection of tools, walks, workshops, and conversations designed to help Biennial visitors recognize, acknowledge, and understand their relationships to this place—and to other people who care about it. From May 1–June 5, 2022, the Observatory will host weekly programs to investigate the surroundings of the Biennial site at 72 Perth Avenue and draw attention to processes, phenomena, and connections that often go unnoticed. In examining the land and its relationships as they are today, the Observatory looks toward a future made uncertain by local and global change, from development pressures to the climate emergency. It invites visitors to contribute their own observations to an open vocabulary for imagining possibilities that are kinder, more just, and more resilient than the status quo.

Toronto Landscape Observatory is supported by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Office of the Vice-President, International, University of Toronto.

Programming

Toronto Landscape Observatory walks and workshops are held every Sunday from 2-4pm for the duration of the installation at 72 Perth Avenue. For a full list of programs, see below:

May 1: A Conversation about Language and Landscape with James Bird

May 8: An Observing Walk with Jane Wolff and Susan Schwartzenberg

May 15: A Conversation about Being in Place with Dr. Jennifer Wemigwans

May 22: Workshop: Measuring a Leaf with Alexander Moyle 

May 29: A Listening Walk with Sherry Lee and Emily MacCallum

June 5: A Walk to Greet Plants with Lorraine Johnson

Image credit: Aaron Hernandez

In this site- and environmentally-responsive performance, experimental musicians Sara Constant and Naomi McCarroll-Butler greet Wind Oracle. Presented as a new work by Eduardo Navarro, Wind Oracle stands at Colborne Lodge, an entity with a commanding presence but whimsical intention: an invitation to interact with the wind and consider the animacy of air and deeply entangled relations between humans and the natural world. Engaging with instruments and materials (hand-made and otherwise) Sara and Naomi activate the site–grounding and improvising with the audience–and using the wind as a medium for questions asked and answered.

This program will take place at Eduardo Navarro’s Wind Oracle, situated on the lawn of Colborne Lodge. We encourage participants to bring a blanket and to wear yellow!

Co-commissioned and co-presented by the Toronto Biennial of Art and the City of Toronto with support from Colborne Lodge, Toronto History Museums and ArtworxTO. This exhibition has been supported by Cadillac Fairview Corporation.

Learn more about Wind Oracle here.

Join us at Arsenal Contemporary Art Toronto for Storytelling sessions led by Emily DiCarlo.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays: 11am–12pm
Saturdays: 11am–12pm and 2–3pm

American Sign Language Interpretation
The following Storytelling Session at Arsenal Contemporary Art Toronto will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Saturday, May 21, 2022, 11am-12pm.

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

Join us at the Small Arms Inspection Building in Mississauga for Storytelling sessions led by lwrds duniam and Nicole Markland.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays: 11am–12pm, 2–3pm, and 4–5pm
Saturdays and Sundays: 11am–12pm and 4–5pm

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

American Sign Language Interpretation​
The following Storytelling Sessions at the Small Arms Inspection Building will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Saturday, April 23, 2022, 4-5pm.
• Saturday, May 21, 2022, 11am-12pm.

Image credit: Storytelling at the Small Arms Inspection Building with Jeffrey Gibson’s ALL FOR ONE, ONE FOR ALL, 2015. Photography by Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

Join us at 72 Perth Ave for Storytelling sessions led by Jeffrey Canton and Melissa Davidson.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays 11am–12pm, 2–3pm, and 6:30–7:30pm
Saturdays and Sundays from 11am–12pm and 4–5pm

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

American Sign Language Interpretation
The following Storytelling Sessions at 72 Perth will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Friday, April 29, 2022, 6-7pm.
• Friday, May 13, 2022, 6-7pm
• Friday, May 27, 2022, 2-3pm, register here

Join us at 72 Perth Avenue in Toronto for a special Storytelling session led by Melly Davidson and accompanied by an American Sign Language English interpreter.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

This program is presented in partnership with Toronto Sign Language Interpreter Service (TSLIS).

Join artist Azadeh Pirazimian for family-friendly art activities every Saturday at 72 Perth. Azadeh will be leading a multimedia workshop with a focus on stencil printmaking. Participants will make sketches of one simple object or visual element that has captured their attention and mind among the artworks of the exhibit. They will then cut out their sketches on transparent stencil sheets to make a print. The printed work reflects a specific memory of their visit to the exhibit through their own lens.

Drive The Vibe is an outreach initiative community sharing program by VIBE Arts that engages in diverse communities within the Greater Toronto Area and its outskirts to provide a platform to discuss current social issues and shared lived experiences. Led by an Arts Educator and assisted by a youth artist, Drive The Vibe provides free public art-making to communities in and out of the GTA.

Schedule
Saturdays at 72 Perth – May 7, 14, 21, 28
11am to 5pm

• 11:30am – 12:30pm: Workshop 1
• 12:30 – 1:30pm: Workshop 2
• 1:30 – 2:30pm: Break
• 2:30 – 3:30pm: Workshop 3
• 3:30 – 4:30pm: Workshop 4

This program is presented in partnership with VIBE Arts as part of their Drive The Vibe initiative, a mobile artist-driven arts program that goes wherever children and youth are.

In Dish Dances Movement Workshop, 2022 Biennial artist Ange Loft (Kanien’kehá:ka) and Jumblies Theatre + Arts present a project history and sample movement facilitation. Through a guided, low-stakes, individual movement activity complemented by a presentation, participants will build their familiarity with the symbols, embodied gestures and land-based knowledge held in the Dish With One Spoon agreement. The resulting movement outcome will unfold across Historic Fort York’s Garrison Commons supported by Indigenous Dish Dances performing team.

Loft is lead artist of the Talking Treaties Collective, a multidisciplinary group of Indigenous and settler artists/researchers whose projects artfully share Indigenous history and awareness of the place now called Toronto. In June 2022, the collective will release A Treaty Guide for Torontonians, published by Jumblies Press and Toronto Biennial of Art in partnership with Art Metropole.

Participants will meet at the Fort York Visitor Centre at 250 Fort York Blvd.

If registration for the program is at capacity, please email programmingandlearning@torontobiennial.org to be added to the waitlist.

Join us at 5 Lower Jarvis for Storytelling sessions led by Emily DiCarlo.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Schedule:
Sundays from 11am–12pm and 2–3pm

Join artists Akshata Naik and Jenny Chen for family-friendly art activities every Sunday at the Small Arms Inspection Building in Mississauga. Akshata and Jenny will be leading multimedia workshops focusing on painting and collage.

Drive The Vibe is an outreach initiative community sharing program by VIBE Arts that engages in diverse communities within the Greater Toronto Area and its outskirts to provide a platform to discuss current social issues and shared lived experiences. Led by an Arts Educator and assisted by a youth artist, Drive The Vibe provides free public art-making to communities in and out of the GTA.

Schedule
Sundays at Small Arms Inspection Building – May 8,15, 22 and 29
11am to 5pm

• 11:30am – 12:30pm: Workshop 1
• 12:30 – 1:30pm: Workshop 2
• 1:30 – 2:30pm: Break
• 2:30 – 3:30pm: Workshop 3
• 3:30 – 4:30pm: Workshop 4

This program is presented in partnership with VIBE Arts as part of their Drive The Vibe initiative, a mobile artist-driven arts program that goes wherever children and youth are.

In this walk, musicology and sound studies scholars Sherry Lee and Emily MacCallum ask participants to listen to the landscape. Its goal is to draw attention to sounds, both as determinants of experience and as information sources about the characteristics of place.

Curated by 2019 and 2022 Biennial contributors Jane Wolff and Susan Schwartzenberg, Toronto Landscape Observatory is a collection of tools, walks, workshops, and conversations designed to help Biennial visitors recognize, acknowledge, and understand their relationships to this place—and to other people who care about it. From May 2–June 5, 2022, the Observatory will host weekly programs to investigate the surroundings of the Biennial site at 72 Perth Avenue and draw attention to processes, phenomena, and connections that often go unnoticed. In examining the land and its relationships as they are today, the Observatory looks toward a future made uncertain by local and global change, from development pressures to the climate emergency. It invites visitors to contribute their own observations to an open vocabulary for imagining possibilities that are kinder, more just, and more resilient than the status quo.

If registration for the program is at capacity, please email programmingandlearning@torontobiennial.org to be added to the waitlist.

Toronto Landscape Observatory is supported by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Office of the Vice-President, International, University of Toronto.

Image credit: Aaron Hernandez

Aki Onda has channelled the spirit of the late Korean artist Nam June Paik via radio transmission in Nam June’s Spirit Was Speaking to Me (2017/2021). Paik is known for his association with shamanism, a practice that consistently surfaces in his works. With a portable radio in hand, Onda communicates with his spirit from a distance—collecting field recordings of cryptic broadcasts and messages on anonymous radio stations. The series of séances has been conducted in different cities across the globe, beginning in Seoul, Korea in 2010 and continuing in Cologne, Germany in 2012, Wrocław, Poland in 2013, and Lewisburg, United States in 2014. This work was originally commissioned by documenta 14’s radio program Every Time A Ear di Soun in 2017.

From March 26 to June 5, 2022, Aki Onda will present Nam June’s Spirit Was Speaking to Me through microbroadcasting and printed matter at the Toronto Biennial of Art. Broadcasting over two frequencies (88.5 FM and 106.5 FM) that cover the exhibition site of 72 Perth Ave in Toronto, radios are placed as part of the exhibition to symbolize sound waves in the air. The audio work exists as invisible yet discrete and perceptible through the proper medium, recalling the ritual of channeling spirits. Bring your own radio to catch the frequencies.

Onda is also bringing Nam June’s Spirit Was Speaking to Me to the international radio waves in a series of international public programs. The program will play, uninterrupted and in its entirety of 50 minutes. For Onda, those broadcasts are a response to how Nam June Paik spread his ideas through TV cable networks and connected to a large number of people at a global scale.

Made possible by the generous support of The Japan Foundation.

Curated by 2019 and 2022 Biennial contributors Jane Wolff and Susan Schwartzenberg, Toronto Landscape Observatory is both an installation and a collection of tools, walks, workshops, and conversations designed to help Biennial visitors recognize, acknowledge, and understand their relationships to this place—and to other people who care about it. From May 1–June 5, 2022, the Observatory will host weekly programs to investigate the surroundings of the Biennial site at 72 Perth Avenue and draw attention to processes, phenomena, and connections that often go unnoticed. In examining the land and its relationships as they are today, the Observatory looks toward a future made uncertain by local and global change, from development pressures to the climate emergency. It invites visitors to contribute their own observations to an open vocabulary for imagining possibilities that are kinder, more just, and more resilient than the status quo.

Toronto Landscape Observatory is supported by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Office of the Vice-President, International, University of Toronto.

Programming

Toronto Landscape Observatory walks and workshops are held every Sunday from 2-4pm for the duration of the installation at 72 Perth Avenue. For a full list of programs, see below:

May 1: A Conversation about Language and Landscape with James Bird

May 8: An Observing Walk with Jane Wolff and Susan Schwartzenberg

May 15: A Conversation about Being in Place with Dr. Jennifer Wemigwans

May 22: Workshop: Measuring a Leaf with Alexander Moyle 

May 29: A Listening Walk with Sherry Lee and Emily MacCallum

June 5: A Walk to Greet Plants with Lorraine Johnson

Image credit: Aaron Hernandez

In this site- and environmentally-responsive performance, experimental musicians Sara Constant and Naomi McCarroll-Butler greet Wind Oracle. Presented as a new work by Eduardo Navarro, Wind Oracle stands at Colborne Lodge, an entity with a commanding presence but whimsical intention: an invitation to interact with the wind and consider the animacy of air and deeply entangled relations between humans and the natural world. Engaging with instruments and materials (hand-made and otherwise) Sara and Naomi activate the site–grounding and improvising with the audience–and using the wind as a medium for questions asked and answered.

This program will take place at Eduardo Navarro’s Wind Oracle, situated on the lawn of Colborne Lodge. We encourage participants to bring a blanket and to wear yellow!

Co-commissioned and co-presented by the Toronto Biennial of Art and the City of Toronto with support from Colborne Lodge, Toronto History Museums and ArtworxTO. This exhibition has been supported by Cadillac Fairview Corporation.

Learn more about Wind Oracle here.

Join us at Arsenal Contemporary Art Toronto for Storytelling sessions led by Emily DiCarlo.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays: 11am–12pm
Saturdays: 11am–12pm and 2–3pm

American Sign Language Interpretation
The following Storytelling Session at Arsenal Contemporary Art Toronto will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Saturday, May 21, 2022, 11am-12pm.

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

Join us at the Small Arms Inspection Building in Mississauga for Storytelling sessions led by lwrds duniam and Nicole Markland.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays: 11am–12pm, 2–3pm, and 4–5pm
Saturdays and Sundays: 11am–12pm and 4–5pm

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

American Sign Language Interpretation​
The following Storytelling Sessions at the Small Arms Inspection Building will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Saturday, April 23, 2022, 4-5pm.
• Saturday, May 21, 2022, 11am-12pm.

Image credit: Storytelling at the Small Arms Inspection Building with Jeffrey Gibson’s ALL FOR ONE, ONE FOR ALL, 2015. Photography by Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

Join us at 72 Perth Ave for Storytelling sessions led by Jeffrey Canton and Melissa Davidson.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays 11am–12pm, 2–3pm, and 6:30–7:30pm
Saturdays and Sundays from 11am–12pm and 4–5pm

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

American Sign Language Interpretation
The following Storytelling Sessions at 72 Perth will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Friday, April 29, 2022, 6-7pm.
• Friday, May 13, 2022, 6-7pm
• Friday, May 27, 2022, 2-3pm, register here

Join us at 72 Perth Avenue in Toronto for a special Storytelling session led by Melly Davidson and accompanied by an American Sign Language English interpreter.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

This program is presented in partnership with Toronto Sign Language Interpreter Service (TSLIS).

Join artist Azadeh Pirazimian for family-friendly art activities every Saturday at 72 Perth. Azadeh will be leading a multimedia workshop with a focus on stencil printmaking. Participants will make sketches of one simple object or visual element that has captured their attention and mind among the artworks of the exhibit. They will then cut out their sketches on transparent stencil sheets to make a print. The printed work reflects a specific memory of their visit to the exhibit through their own lens.

Drive The Vibe is an outreach initiative community sharing program by VIBE Arts that engages in diverse communities within the Greater Toronto Area and its outskirts to provide a platform to discuss current social issues and shared lived experiences. Led by an Arts Educator and assisted by a youth artist, Drive The Vibe provides free public art-making to communities in and out of the GTA.

Schedule
Saturdays at 72 Perth – May 7, 14, 21, 28
11am to 5pm

• 11:30am – 12:30pm: Workshop 1
• 12:30 – 1:30pm: Workshop 2
• 1:30 – 2:30pm: Break
• 2:30 – 3:30pm: Workshop 3
• 3:30 – 4:30pm: Workshop 4

This program is presented in partnership with VIBE Arts as part of their Drive The Vibe initiative, a mobile artist-driven arts program that goes wherever children and youth are.

In Dish Dances Movement Workshop, 2022 Biennial artist Ange Loft (Kanien’kehá:ka) and Jumblies Theatre + Arts present a project history and sample movement facilitation. Through a guided, low-stakes, individual movement activity complemented by a presentation, participants will build their familiarity with the symbols, embodied gestures and land-based knowledge held in the Dish With One Spoon agreement. The resulting movement outcome will unfold across Historic Fort York’s Garrison Commons supported by Indigenous Dish Dances performing team.

Loft is lead artist of the Talking Treaties Collective, a multidisciplinary group of Indigenous and settler artists/researchers whose projects artfully share Indigenous history and awareness of the place now called Toronto. In June 2022, the collective will release A Treaty Guide for Torontonians, published by Jumblies Press and Toronto Biennial of Art in partnership with Art Metropole.

Participants will meet at the Fort York Visitor Centre at 250 Fort York Blvd.

If registration for the program is at capacity, please email programmingandlearning@torontobiennial.org to be added to the waitlist.

Join us at 5 Lower Jarvis for Storytelling sessions led by Emily DiCarlo.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Schedule:
Sundays from 11am–12pm and 2–3pm

Join artists Akshata Naik and Jenny Chen for family-friendly art activities every Sunday at the Small Arms Inspection Building in Mississauga. Akshata and Jenny will be leading multimedia workshops focusing on painting and collage.

Drive The Vibe is an outreach initiative community sharing program by VIBE Arts that engages in diverse communities within the Greater Toronto Area and its outskirts to provide a platform to discuss current social issues and shared lived experiences. Led by an Arts Educator and assisted by a youth artist, Drive The Vibe provides free public art-making to communities in and out of the GTA.

Schedule
Sundays at Small Arms Inspection Building – May 8,15, 22 and 29
11am to 5pm

• 11:30am – 12:30pm: Workshop 1
• 12:30 – 1:30pm: Workshop 2
• 1:30 – 2:30pm: Break
• 2:30 – 3:30pm: Workshop 3
• 3:30 – 4:30pm: Workshop 4

This program is presented in partnership with VIBE Arts as part of their Drive The Vibe initiative, a mobile artist-driven arts program that goes wherever children and youth are.

In this walk, musicology and sound studies scholars Sherry Lee and Emily MacCallum ask participants to listen to the landscape. Its goal is to draw attention to sounds, both as determinants of experience and as information sources about the characteristics of place.

Curated by 2019 and 2022 Biennial contributors Jane Wolff and Susan Schwartzenberg, Toronto Landscape Observatory is a collection of tools, walks, workshops, and conversations designed to help Biennial visitors recognize, acknowledge, and understand their relationships to this place—and to other people who care about it. From May 2–June 5, 2022, the Observatory will host weekly programs to investigate the surroundings of the Biennial site at 72 Perth Avenue and draw attention to processes, phenomena, and connections that often go unnoticed. In examining the land and its relationships as they are today, the Observatory looks toward a future made uncertain by local and global change, from development pressures to the climate emergency. It invites visitors to contribute their own observations to an open vocabulary for imagining possibilities that are kinder, more just, and more resilient than the status quo.

If registration for the program is at capacity, please email programmingandlearning@torontobiennial.org to be added to the waitlist.

Toronto Landscape Observatory is supported by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Office of the Vice-President, International, University of Toronto.

Image credit: Aaron Hernandez

Aki Onda has channelled the spirit of the late Korean artist Nam June Paik via radio transmission in Nam June’s Spirit Was Speaking to Me (2017/2021). Paik is known for his association with shamanism, a practice that consistently surfaces in his works. With a portable radio in hand, Onda communicates with his spirit from a distance—collecting field recordings of cryptic broadcasts and messages on anonymous radio stations. The series of séances has been conducted in different cities across the globe, beginning in Seoul, Korea in 2010 and continuing in Cologne, Germany in 2012, Wrocław, Poland in 2013, and Lewisburg, United States in 2014. This work was originally commissioned by documenta 14’s radio program Every Time A Ear di Soun in 2017.

From March 26 to June 5, 2022, Aki Onda will present Nam June’s Spirit Was Speaking to Me through microbroadcasting and printed matter at the Toronto Biennial of Art. Broadcasting over two frequencies (88.5 FM and 106.5 FM) that cover the exhibition site of 72 Perth Ave in Toronto, radios are placed as part of the exhibition to symbolize sound waves in the air. The audio work exists as invisible yet discrete and perceptible through the proper medium, recalling the ritual of channeling spirits. Bring your own radio to catch the frequencies.

Onda is also bringing Nam June’s Spirit Was Speaking to Me to the international radio waves in a series of international public programs. The program will play, uninterrupted and in its entirety of 50 minutes. For Onda, those broadcasts are a response to how Nam June Paik spread his ideas through TV cable networks and connected to a large number of people at a global scale.

Made possible by the generous support of The Japan Foundation.

Curated by 2019 and 2022 Biennial contributors Jane Wolff and Susan Schwartzenberg, Toronto Landscape Observatory is both an installation and a collection of tools, walks, workshops, and conversations designed to help Biennial visitors recognize, acknowledge, and understand their relationships to this place—and to other people who care about it. From May 1–June 5, 2022, the Observatory will host weekly programs to investigate the surroundings of the Biennial site at 72 Perth Avenue and draw attention to processes, phenomena, and connections that often go unnoticed. In examining the land and its relationships as they are today, the Observatory looks toward a future made uncertain by local and global change, from development pressures to the climate emergency. It invites visitors to contribute their own observations to an open vocabulary for imagining possibilities that are kinder, more just, and more resilient than the status quo.

Toronto Landscape Observatory is supported by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Office of the Vice-President, International, University of Toronto.

Programming

Toronto Landscape Observatory walks and workshops are held every Sunday from 2-4pm for the duration of the installation at 72 Perth Avenue. For a full list of programs, see below:

May 1: A Conversation about Language and Landscape with James Bird

May 8: An Observing Walk with Jane Wolff and Susan Schwartzenberg

May 15: A Conversation about Being in Place with Dr. Jennifer Wemigwans

May 22: Workshop: Measuring a Leaf with Alexander Moyle 

May 29: A Listening Walk with Sherry Lee and Emily MacCallum

June 5: A Walk to Greet Plants with Lorraine Johnson

Image credit: Aaron Hernandez

In this site- and environmentally-responsive performance, experimental musicians Sara Constant and Naomi McCarroll-Butler greet Wind Oracle. Presented as a new work by Eduardo Navarro, Wind Oracle stands at Colborne Lodge, an entity with a commanding presence but whimsical intention: an invitation to interact with the wind and consider the animacy of air and deeply entangled relations between humans and the natural world. Engaging with instruments and materials (hand-made and otherwise) Sara and Naomi activate the site–grounding and improvising with the audience–and using the wind as a medium for questions asked and answered.

This program will take place at Eduardo Navarro’s Wind Oracle, situated on the lawn of Colborne Lodge. We encourage participants to bring a blanket and to wear yellow!

Co-commissioned and co-presented by the Toronto Biennial of Art and the City of Toronto with support from Colborne Lodge, Toronto History Museums and ArtworxTO. This exhibition has been supported by Cadillac Fairview Corporation.

Learn more about Wind Oracle here.

Join us at Arsenal Contemporary Art Toronto for Storytelling sessions led by Emily DiCarlo.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays: 11am–12pm
Saturdays: 11am–12pm and 2–3pm

American Sign Language Interpretation
The following Storytelling Session at Arsenal Contemporary Art Toronto will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Saturday, May 21, 2022, 11am-12pm.

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

Join us at the Small Arms Inspection Building in Mississauga for Storytelling sessions led by lwrds duniam and Nicole Markland.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays: 11am–12pm, 2–3pm, and 4–5pm
Saturdays and Sundays: 11am–12pm and 4–5pm

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

American Sign Language Interpretation​
The following Storytelling Sessions at the Small Arms Inspection Building will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Saturday, April 23, 2022, 4-5pm.
• Saturday, May 21, 2022, 11am-12pm.

Image credit: Storytelling at the Small Arms Inspection Building with Jeffrey Gibson’s ALL FOR ONE, ONE FOR ALL, 2015. Photography by Rebecca Tisdelle-Macias.

Join us at 72 Perth Ave for Storytelling sessions led by Jeffrey Canton and Melissa Davidson.

Storytelling sessions combine modes of conventional interpretation with artist-led, narrative and embodied responses. Storytellers offer weekly guided sessions, informal conversations, and spot tours to intergenerational audiences at TBA’s main sites. Sharing personal insights and experiences of the city as well as offering perspectives on the artworks within the exhibitions, they guide visitors through the research and artist practises that form What Water Knows, The Land Remembers.

Weekly Schedule
Fridays 11am–12pm, 2–3pm, and 6:30–7:30pm
Saturdays and Sundays from 11am–12pm and 4–5pm

On from April 1st–June 5th, 2022.

American Sign Language Interpretation
The following Storytelling Sessions at 72 Perth will be accompanied by an ASL–English interpreter:

• Friday, April 29, 2022, 6-7pm.
• Friday, May 13, 2022, 6-7pm
• Friday, May 27, 2022, 2-3pm, register here