Spaces of Contestation: Art, Activism and the City Lecture Series | Riot Dogs and Research Labs with Stephen Collis

What is poetry for in a time of spiralling struggle? Sometimes it’s just a riot dog, at best maybe able to bite a cop’s leg, or at least warn you when they are at the door. Sometimes it allows us to think differently about the spaces we need to contest. Poet and activist Stephen Collis explored some of these spaces, inside and outside of poems—from the streets, to urban and suburban “commons,” to the conceptual space of the future and the pervasive and interconnected spaces of resource extraction that enclose such futurity in diminishing climate returns.

Spaces of Contestation: Art, Activism and the City was a series of talks, curated by Mariane Bourcheix-Laporte, presented by SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement, the SFU Institute for the Humanities, and UNIT/PITT Projects. The series was part of a multi-layered project researching the aesthetic and conceptual overlap existing between strategies for participatory performance and activist self-organized demonstrations (presented as part of UNIT/PITT Projects 2013-14 programming year). Realized through a series of discursive events, site-specific performances, an exhibition and print publications, this project sought to establish connections between artistic and activist actions in urban space, and initiate dialogue about the transformative potential of these types of interventions on the urban experience through the creation temporary communities and alternative subject positions.