Led by poet, artist and facilitator Darian Razdar, a landscape hosts something is a workshop to experiment with place-based practices and poetic landscapes.
Referencing a line in Ada Smailbegovic’s “Descriptions of Invisible Objects,” the title of this workshop series, a landscape hosts something, lingers on the idea that landscapes don’t exist a priori, but are created through acts of imagination. Together and independently, we’ll reflect on “landscaping”—how we re-present ecologies and environments through processes of abstraction. Based on deep listening and responding with place, we will re-engage with landscape as a critical site for creativity.
Participants can expect to engage in facilitated discussions around this theme, semi-structured fieldwork activities, and sharing of one’s own work in a welcoming context. Shaped as a 3-hour workshop in and around Rajni Perera’s newly commissioned work, Vimana (N1 Starfighter), at the Toronto Sculpture Garden, participants will leave the workshop with new and evolving connections, ideas, and practices related to landscapes and the environment.
Each participant will also receive a list of readings and resources to engage with before and after the workshop. The first set of registered participants will receive a notebook, postcard, and guiding pamphlet. This program has a limited capacity. Register via Eventbrite.
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a landscape hosts something is organized by Sarah Edo, Programs Curatorial Fellow. The 2024 Toronto Biennial of Art Curatorial Fellowship Program is made possible by the generous support of TD Bank Group, through the TD Ready Commitment.
Image credit: a landscape hosts something collage. Courtesy of Darian Razdar.
October 10
4:00pm – 7:00pm
This venue is wheelchair accessible.
This program takes place outdoors and is thus subject to environmental factors like sun exposure and brightness.
This program takes place outdoors and is thus subject to environmental factors that produce loud and/or complex sounds.
This program takes place outdoors and is thus subject to environmental factors like strong and/or notable smells.
Artist Bio
Darian Razdar
Darian Razdar is a writer, artist, and independent scholar. His work ties together poetics, landscape, and abstraction through the methods of poetry, photography, publication, art-writing, and collaboration.
Darian is an actively publishing poet and photographer. His titles include: Morning Poems (San Press, 2023); Eye of Water (self-published, 2023); and Counter-Map: A Poetics of Place (Reflex Urbanism, 2022). His critical and poetic writing can also be found in Peripheral Review; C Mag; Vallum: Contemporary Poetry; The Blasted Tree; PM Press; Pleasure Dome; The Asian Canadian Living Archive; Upping the Anti; QT Literary; Hearth Garage; Toronto Star; Progressive City; and Metropolitics.
Darian experiments with creative methods of learning with place via embodied field research. Darian’s field work for Locating Belleville (2018) inspired his Community Power Mapping workshop series (2017-2022), which he facilitated for over 300 participants in 4 countries. Critically re-thinking the project, Darian created Poetics of Place (2022-present), a workshop-research-publishing project that challenges conventional notions of what maps are and how they do. A Landscape Hosts Something is a new workshop designed to rethink landscape as a site of critical artistic practice and play.
Darian holds a BA in Social Theory & Practice and French & Francophone Studies from University of Michigan and an MSc in Urban Planning from University of Toronto. With roots in the Great Lakes and Caspian Sea basins, his practice is currently based in Toronto and Mexico City.
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