SESSION is a project modelling itself after an incubator that invites cultural practitioners to engage with questions that emerge out of a given exhibition.
Cartographies of Presence
Dedra McDermott leads a response under Mercer Union's ongoing series SESSION for the exhibition Paul Maheke: In spite of my own desire to see you disappear. Over the course of a research and development period followed by a public program, Cartographies of Presence invites artists to consider Maheke's propositions about interiority and relationality within the exhibition. Prompted by Maheke’s offering of his installation as a container for multiple subjectivities, McDermott reflects on what is at stake in making our inner worlds discoverable—in bringing sensations, thought, and emotion into the public realm—particularly when these concern the complexity of racialized and gendered experiences. She asks the question: how can we map expressions of personhood through their traces?
Cartographies of Presence begins with this question and invites artists Rakeem Hardy and Marcus “Ademi/O.G.” Paris to develop movement scores that document embodied explorations within Maheke’s sound installation. Informed by their respective dance styles of contemporary and krump, Hardy and Paris will move through the installation environment and use visual notations to translate their sightlines and pathways. These scores will then be available on-site for the exhibition’s duration and will guide a live activation by Hardy and Paris where audiences will be invited to witness, follow, and move alongside the artists’ interpretations.
