The STAG

Think Tank #3: Towards a Micro-Gallery Symposium

The STAG presents:
THINK TANK #3: Towards a Micro-Gallery Symposium
Monday, December 13th, 7pm

Here at The STAG we have become very interested in other artist and curators who are working through similar kinds of ideas. These projects may be called artist run initiatives, or lumped into a general category of Social Practices or Relational Aesthetics, but in considering these works, we believe that they represent something more specific and we have been calling them Micro-Galleries. We see them as distinct from alternative spaces, the pop-up gallery, the artist run center or community art shows. They are galleries that act within an aestheticized curatorial frame, exist in non-traditional venues and (perhaps most importantly) occupy a surplus or parasitical space within existing spaces. They respond to a variety of cultural and economic circumstances with more agility and with greater artistic agency than institutional spaces.

  To give an idea of what we’re speaking to, a list of local examples might make this easier:

The STAG
The Hammock Residency
The Crying Room Mural
Bodgers’ and Kludgers’ Co-operative Art Parlour
Temporary Gallery of Reproduced
Agit Gallery
536 (home of the Poodle Dog Ornamental Bar)

We are interested in organizing a symposium in the Spring or Summer of 2011 here in Vancouver devoted to a discussion of this kind of work. Certainly these kinds of spaces are not new, but they speak to larger questions about artistic and curatorial practices, art economies, criticality and the public in ways that are important to Art right now and here in this city. In considering how to create a Micro-Gallery Symposium we want ask in what way can such an event reflect the practices of the subject matter it wishes to cover? To that end, we’ve decided to open this process up to people who are actually engaging in this work themselves and develop this collaboratively.

How do we structure this?

Where does it take place?

Do we collaborate with larger local arts institutions?

What are our goals?

So please come and join us Monday night at 7pm at the STAG (on E. Pender, b/w Hawks and Campbell)

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Think Tank brings together Creators and a Public to engage in an interdisciplinary exchange of ideas, problem solving and mutual aid. A visiting presenter - perhaps an artist, an educator, a community organizer - meets with a room full of guests and poses a question, presents a work in progress, or reveals a particular challenge they’re facing in their work . By transforming a traditional “artist talk” into a non-linear dialogical space, Think Tank hopes to reveal the potential resources to be found through transparency, questioning and communing with people both inside and outside of our specific fields of work.