University of Waterloo Art Gallery, 263 Phillip Street, Waterloo, Ontario

June 2 to June 6, 2014

Featuring performances and interventions by Lisa Birke, Adrian Blackwell, Terrance Houle, Jessica Thompson, Johannes Zits

Produced by UWAG

This Could be the Place points towards art’s capacity to revel and flourish in confusion, to operate under apprehension and misdirection. As much a statement as a question, the title suggests unpredictability, disorientation and aimlessness as strategies that can be used to activate, define or repurpose different aspects of public spaces while also paralleling the distinctive lack of navigation and means of way-finding within the built environment on campus. This Could be the Place is a satellite project for CAFKA 2014 being developed in response to the biennial’s theme It should always be this way, which poses a similar question––how to disrupt the everyday by inserting utopian daydreaming, contemplation and curiosity into the ebb and flow of the urban environment.

This Could be the Place will run concurrently with the opening week of CAFKA 2014. These on-campus demonstrations will be presented as part of a one-day symposium on June 6 featuring panel discussions and artist presentations that address performativity, the politics of public space and multidisciplinary practices beyond the walls of the gallery.