Thursday Oct. 5
12:00pm – 2:00pm: Registration (Daniels Spectrum lobby)
2:00pm – 2:15pm: Convergence and Caminos Welcome (Ada Slaight Hall, Daniels Spectrum)
2:15pm – 3:30pm: Session 1 – Keynote, “sq’ép” (Ada Slaight Hall, Daniels Spectrum)
Speaker: Dylan Robinson
sq’ép: gathering
sq’ép: xwélalà:m | listening | witnessing.
sq’ép: through Indigenous logics of inscription.
sq’ép: without extraction.
3:30pm – 3:45pm: Coffee break
3:45pm – 5:15pm: Session 2 – From ‘Discovery’ to Dakota Access: A Critical Duet on Indigenous Acts of Activism and Resurgence in the Americas (Ada Slaight Hall, Daniels Spectrum)
Speakers: Benvenuto Chavajay and Cheryl Angel
Moderator: Zoë Heyn-Jones
Bringing together two radical voices of Indigenous resilience, this conversation will discuss Indigenous activist and art practices that recover, defend, and speak to Indigenous culture and futurity. What pedagogies and tactics create possibilities of social change, sovereignty, and environmental justice? How might such acts of resurgence remind us that, referencing Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, “Decolonization is not a metaphor”?
5:15pm – 5:30pm: Climate Change Theatre Action Play Reading
5:30pm: Dinner on your own.
7:30pm – 9:30pm: CAMINOS Shows (Aki Studio, Daniels Spectrum) – ticketed; conference participants receive free tickets to one night of shows and can sign up on Eventbrite
9:30pm – 11:30pm: CAMINOS Cabaret (Ada Slaight Hall, Daniels Spectrum) – open to conference registrants and the public
Throughout the day: Photo exhibition by Moysés Zúñiga Santiago (Daniels Spectrum Lobby)
Friday Oct. 6
9:00am – 12:30pm: Hemi Convergence Working Group Sessions (various locations)
12:30 – 2:00: Lunch on your own and travel time to Daniels Spectrum
2:00pm – 3:30pm: Session 3 – Art, Representation, and the Politics of Migration in an Age of Increasing Xenophobia (Ada Slaight Hall, Daniels Spectrum)
This panel brings together three experts to discuss art, representation, and processes of migration across three different contexts: Central American migrants traveling through Mexico; Colombian refugees in Ecuador; and migrant arrivals and labour in Canada. How can art address the histories of settlements and displacements in the Americas? In what ways can art intervene in and critique the global and local machinations of power that cause migrants and refugees to leave their homes, or that lead nations to refuse their entry? How might art remap geopolitical borders and imagine alternative forms of radical hospitality in an age of increasing hostility towards migrants?
Speakers: Moysés Zúñiga Santiago, Lisa Stevenson, Farrah Miranda
Moderator: Marcial Godoy-Anativia
3:30pm – 4:00pm: Coffee Break
4:00pm – 5:30pm: Session 4 – Unsettling Multicultural Canada: Racialized bodies and Canadian (In)Hospitalities (Ada Slaight Hall, Daniels Spectrum)
Speakers: Ali Kazimi, Syrus Marcus Ware, Jasmin Zine
Moderator: Olivia Michiko Gagnon
On January 28, 2017, as a reaction to the US travel ban, Canada’s telegenic Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, announced to the world via Twitter, “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada.” Trudeau’s hospitable message, amid an ongoing refugee crisis and growing isolationist movements, evokes the myth of Canada as a cultural mosaic that is welcome to peoples, refugees, and migrants from many walks of life. This panel troubles this myth by discussing the ways in which the Canadian state has historically exercised, and continues to practice, exclusionary and restrictive policies against minoritarian groups. Canadian (in)hospitalities reference the ways in which the state organizes, takes into custody, restricts, and refuses certain bodies that unsettle/contest national narratives of Canada as a harmonious (white) settler society.
5:30pm: Dinner on your own.
7:30pm – 9:30pm: CAMINOS Shows (Ada Slaight Hall, Daniels Spectrum) – ticketed; conference participants receive free tickets to one night of shows and can sign up on Eventbrite
9:30pm – 11:30pm: CAMINOS Cabaret (Ada Slaight Hall, Daniels Spectrum)
Throughout the day: Photo exhibition by Moysés Zúñiga Santiago (Daniels Spectrum lobby)
Saturday Oct. 7
9:00am – 12:30pm: Hemi Convergence Working Group Sessions (various locations)
12:30pm – 2:00pm: Lunch on your own and travel to First Story Walk locations (University of Toronto/Queen’s Park, and the Humber River)
1:45pm: First Story Toronto Walk groups 1 & 2 Meet
Walk 1: St. George Subway Station
Walk 2: Old Mill Subway Station
2:00pm – 3:30pm: First Story Toronto Walking Tours
3:30pm: First Story Toronto Walk groups 3 & 4 Meet
Walk 3: St. George Subway Station
Walk 4: Old Mill Subway Station
3:45pm – 5:15pm: First Story Toronto Walking Tours
5:15pm: Dinner on your own
7:30pm -9:30pm: CAMINOS Shows (Ada Slaight Hall, Daniels Spectrum) – ticketed; conference participants receive free tickets to one night of shows and can sign up on Eventbrite
9:30pm – 11:30pm: CAMINOS Cabaret (Ada Slaight Hall, Daniels Spectrum) – open to conference registrants and the public, curated by Hemi Convergence.
MC: Stephen Lawson
Performers: Beth Nixon, Bone Clock; Minah Lee, Mad Woman’s ESL Poetry; Megan Johnson, The Laborious Performances of Cathy Berberian; Geneva Foster Gluck, Magnetic Chamber; OrgyPUNK, Manifesto Margarita; and DJ Firecracker
Throughout the day: Photo exhibition by Moysés Zúñiga Santiago (Daniels Spectrum)
Sunday Oct. 8
9:30am – 11:00pm: WG meetings/Wrap-ups (Artscape Youngplace)
11:00am – 11:15pm: Coffee
11:15am – 12:30pm: Performances (Artscape Youngplace)
12:30pm – 1:45pm: “Unsettling the Americas, Unsettling Ourselves” Lunch and Cross-Pollination Sessions (Artscape Youngplace)
1:45pm – 2:00pm: Final Wrap-up and Goodbyes (Artscape Youngplace)
2:00pm – 2:15pm: Convergence Ends