Research, publication, documentary and exhibition projects addressing photography and film as a curatorial tool to investigate the built environment.
In 2023 we continue to promote research into urgent questions that architecture should address in the coming years, with the aim of contributing critically to the field and expanding its response to societal concerns. In this, we are committed to diversifying perspectives with the aim to represent more thoroughly the complex and multifaceted reality of the architectural field and its discourses.
The notion of land-based knowledges developed in dialogue with Indigenous communities has been fundamental in 2022 to opening a new perspective on the CCA’s ongoing work on environmental discourses, as demonstrated by the exhibition Angirramut / Ruovttu Guvlui / Vers chez soi / Towards Home, on view through March 26 at the CCA, and opening in September 2023 at the Architecture and Design Gallery of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto.
In 2023 we build on commitments and projects that provide support and resources to Indigenous communities and researchers to interrogate the built environment and reshape the CCA's institutional understanding as a settler institution intent on pushing architectural thinking forward. The collaboration with Tsi Tkarón:to- (Toronto)-based multidisciplinary performance artist Ange Loft, of Kahnawà:ke Kanien’kehá:ka Territory, will take shape in the CCA building through a three-site installation inaugurated in February 2023 that reflects on Mohawk place-naming, the role of archaeology in urbanism and settler colonialism, and other ways in which the land on which the CCA is situated was once a part of Kanien’kehá:ka Territory.
Our interest in decolonization is also materialized in the upcoming publication, Centring Africa: A Sourcebook for Postcolonial Perspectives on Architecture, a series of conversations between researchers that frame the “how” of centring Africa through ways of finding, seeing, and listening to archival sources across the continent, available April 2023 and co-published with Jap Sam Books.
The diverse program offered in Montréal, elsewhere, and online throughout 2023, further spans from the launch of a new cycle of research and exhibition projects questioning the relevance and actuality of photography and new media as a means to interrogate and interpret the mechanisms that model our visible world, opening in May with the first episode The Lives of Documents—Photography as Project, co-curated by Bas Princen and Stefano Graziani; to the next iteration of the three-part Out of the Box exhibition series, providing new and expanded readings of the work of Argentinian architect Amancio Williams, one of the key figures of modern architecture in Latin America, which will launch in June and is curated by Studio Muoto, Pezo von Ellrichshausen, and Claudia Shmidt.
Alongside exhibitions, our projects will pursue the use of film as a curatorial tool that offers closeness to the subject and the ability to capture the nuances of its context. This includes the premieres of two new documentary films, Once We Are Old, the final instalment in a three-part documentary film series launched in 2019, conceived by Giovanna Borasi and directed by Daniel Schwartz, that examines the ways in which changing societies, new economic pressures, and increasing population density are affecting the homes of various communities. This third film will focus on how the growing aging population is reforming architectural and social constructs. The documentary film كیف لا نغرق في السراب / To Remain in the No Longer by Joyce Joumaa, 2021–2022 CCA Emerging Curator, shot at the unfinished international fairground site designed by Oscar Niemeyer in the city of Tripoli, Lebanon, looks at how architecture operates in this failed state. By examining the precarity of the project site that remains to this day, the documentary reflects on the country’s current socio-economic crisis. The film will premiere on 9 February and be accompanied by an exhibition in the form of research notes, on view through 28 May.
The CCA operates in the spaces between architectural culture at large and academic discourse through exhibitions, publications, public events, and research programs. Our research fellowship programs are open to researchers, architects, and curators who intend to pursue interdisciplinary research on architecture, urbanism, landscape, and/or design at the CCA. We have now selected the ten fellows who join us in 2023 within the framework of three of our research fellowship programs: the CCA-WRI Research Fellowship, the CCA Virtual Fellowship, and the CCA Research Fellowship.
In 2023, we continues to question the role of cultural institutions, their tools, and the issues they face today, in the second volume of The Museum Is Not Enough (no. 10–14) available September 2023 and co-published with Sternberg Press. Following the first volume (no. 1–9) published in 2019, no. 10–14 reflects on collaborative creation, cinema as a curatorial tool, the description of collection objects, post-custodial archival practices, and ways of operating at international, national, and local scales.
For more on our research, publication, film, exhibition, and collection programs, please consult the full 2023 program press kit here.
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