Rereading the Riot Act I

               Rereading the Riot Act I. A public action I curated during my Unit/Pitt Residency. At Woodwards, intervention in front of Stan Douglas mural Abbott & Cordova, 7 August 1971. Two readings by Michael Barnholden & Penny Goldsmith (Walking Slow Helen Potrebenko) & 3 readings of the Riot Act, April 23, 2011.  The second event, a Performance Art Cabaret, at The Waldorf took place the same night as the 2011 Stanley Cup Riot. A publication will appear in Autumn for this project, published by Publication Studio.

Rereading the Riot Act II. Vancouver, June 15, 2011

Lori Weidenhammer performing one of two of her responses at the Performance Art Cabaret @ The Waldorf.

My Unit/Pitt residency project: Rereading the Riot Act. Vancouver 2011.

Rereading the Riot Act @ London Review of Books

Unit/Pitt and Rereading the Riot Act II makes the London Review of Books. Move over Elvis impersonators & gardening hour, our event got no local coverage at all. Grateful to the “incomparably lively and thoughtful” LRB for embracing it.

I’ll be writing more about the Cabaret (consumed with my novel edit) on this blog and am touched by the messages I’ve received from the small population who came out and supported it.  Thanks also to the performance/visual artists Leannej, Carol Sawyer, My Name Is Scot, Jeremy Isao Speier and Lori Weidenhammer for engaging with my project and for their thoughtful, robust responses. And for the writers/artists/performers/activists and the Solidarity Notes Labour Choir who participated in the first Rereading the Riot Act event on April 23, 2011 at Victory Square & Woodwards.

We are instigating a panel discussion in conjunction with SFU Humanities I hope and there will be a publication from the project published this Fall by Publication Studio.