CAFKA.14: IT SHOULD ALWAYS BE THIS WAY

CAFKA – Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener and Area is pleased to announce the line-up of its 9th exhibition of contemporary visual art in the public spaces of the Waterloo Region.

 

CAFKA will present more than 17 original installations, performances and projections by contemporary artists in civic squares, storefronts, parks and community atriums in Kitchener, Waterloo, and Cambridge.

 

Artists featured in CAFKA.14 will be Jefferson Campbell-Cooper (Hillsburgh, ON), Darren Copeland & Andreas Kahre (Toronto, ON & Vancouver, BC), Dagmara Genda (Guelph, ON), Don Miller (Shelburne, ON), Sara Graham (Vancouver, BC), Ann Marie Hadcock, (Wiarton, ON), Robert Hengeveld (Toronto, ON), Ruth Gibson and Bruno Martelli (London, UK), Nova Jiang (Los Angeles, CA), Steve Lambert (Beacon, NY), Mary Mattingly (New York, NY), Laura Moore (Toronto, ON), Samuel Roy-Bois (Vancouver, BC), Seripop: Yannick Desranleau and Chloe Lum (Montreal, QC), SWINTAK (Toronto, ON), and Krzysztof Wodiczko (New York, NY) and Robert Seidel (Berlin). 

 

This will be the first CAFKA biennial exhibition to take place in the spring as well as the first month-long exhibition. It will also be the first time that CAFKA and the Open Ears Festival of Music and Sound (June 5 – 15) will present their biennial programs in partnership. CAFKA is also pleased to announce its five curatorial partners: Cambridge Sculpture Garden, Cambridge Galleries, University of Waterloo Art Gallery, the City of Kitchener, City of Waterloo and the Critical Media Lab. Together the two festivals and curatorial partners are creating a multi-part event in which the city will be seen through the lens of contemporary art and music.

 

The CAFKA.14 theme, "It Should Always Be This Way," has been inspired by the the thinking of Marcel O'Gorman, and reflects the artist-run organization's belief that during the biennial, people's daily business is disrupted by the presence of "objects-to-think-with" positioned throughout the city. Rather than putting our heads down and rushing toward our destinations, we may turn our heads sideways and upwards, turn toward contemplation and curiosity, turn toward the artworks and then toward each other in conversation. 

 

Contemplation and curiosity are vanishing skills in our culture of distraction and efficiency, of handheld devices and online interactions. We have shifted from an information economy to an attention economy, subjected daily to psychotechnologies and neuromarketing. CAFKA has the capacity to disrupt this economy, or perhaps to engage directly in it, by capturing the attention of the city for a few short weeks. People should always be promptd to turn their heads sideways for the sake of contemplation, curiosity, and conversation. "It should always be this way."