Krys Verrall - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Krys Verrall
McGill-Queen's University Press eBooks, Feb 1, 2008
Captus Press Inc., 2018
"Drawing from the established fields of “African American Art History”, “Race and Representa... more "Drawing from the established fields of “African American Art History”, “Race and Representation”, and the “Visual Culture of Slavery”, Charmaine A. Nelson and her colleagues — a group of established and up-and-coming artists, scholars, and cultural critics — argue for an African Canadian Art History that can simultaneously examine the artistic contributions of black Canadian artists within their unique historical contexts, critique the colonial representation of black subjects by white artists, and contest the customary racial homogeneity of Canadian Art History." -- Publisher's website
Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, 2020
... As Sidney Eve Matrix notes in applying Fiske's theories to prom culture, "pop-cultu... more ... As Sidney Eve Matrix notes in applying Fiske's theories to prom culture, "pop-cultural productions are both oppressive and rebellious vis-à-vis the status quo" (10), neither solely imposed on nor solely empowering to their consumers. ... Print. Matrix, Sidney Eve. ...
Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, 2012
Canadian Journal of Communication, 2012
In August 1967, as the slogan Black Power burst the confines of African American subcultures and ... more In August 1967, as the slogan Black Power burst the confines of African American subcultures and global anti-colonial movements began to circulate prominently within mainstream mass media, seven men from two countries met via a transnational telephone connection to talk about the colour black. Their conversation, and its subsequent publication in the arts journal artscanada’s October 1967 issue titled “Black,” provides this article’s focus. While the thematic issue indexes a rare intersection between elite art and racial politics, and while it is unlikely that any of these representatives of innovative contemporary art practices intimate with the radical countercultures of Greenwich Village and Yorkville saw any cloying taint of bigotry compromise their views about art and art-making, the issue nonetheless enforces covert racism sustained by ideologies of Whiteness. The result is that rather than embracing creative expression associated with black, Black-as-race is construed as alie...
... Friend: How the War Disguised de Gaulle's Designs | olivier courteaux 116 8 The Ambi... more ... Friend: How the War Disguised de Gaulle's Designs | olivier courteaux 116 8 The Ambivalence of Architectural Culture in Quebec and Canada, 19551975 | france vanlaethem 127 9 Art and Urban Renewal: moma's New City Exhibition and Halifax's Uniacke Square | krys ...
TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, 2011
The story of the 1960s civil rights movement is conventionally viewed as a distinctly American ph... more The story of the 1960s civil rights movement is conventionally viewed as a distinctly American phenomenon arising from that nation’s longer history of slavery, civil war, segregation, and racial violence. The following paper challenges this convention by looking at the dynamic relationship between black activists in Halifax and Toronto and the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a radical organization based in southern states from 1965 to 1967. Indeed, neither SNCC nor Canadian activists saw themselves in local or even national terms. While their aim was to transform local injustice, their sightlines were transnational. In this, singing proved instrumental. This paper takes two instances from 1965—the Selma, Alabama, solidarity protests in Toronto and the Freedom Singers Maritime Tour—to chart how activists on both sides of the border recognized music’s strategic importance to public protest. Both events mark a high point in SNCC/Canadian solidarity. However, the prod...
Beyond Parochialism: Telling Tales about Black Activism and Conceptual Art. Towards an African-Canadian Art History: Art, Memory, and Resistance, 2018
In the early 2000s my research began to look at the relationship between conceptual art and black... more In the early 2000s my research began to look at the relationship between conceptual art and black cultural activism in the 1960s in Canada. Although scholars, artists, and activists in black studies, art history, and art criticism recognize the period as a vital wellspring for all of these fields, few have teased apart conceptual art’s and black cultural activism’s complex relationship in a Canadian context. Thus, my objective is to outline a process for historical cultural research, which is in itself conceptual, in order to find another idea, one that simultaneously brings into view intersections and elisions between 1960s conceptual art and black cultural activism.
The story of the 1960s civil rights movement is conventionally viewed as a distinctly American ph... more The story of the 1960s civil rights movement is conventionally viewed as a distinctly American phenomenon arising from that nation’s longer history of slavery, civil war, segregation, and racial violence. The following paper challenges this convention by looking at the dynamic relationship between black activists in Halifax and Toronto and the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a radical organization based in southern states from 1965 to 1967. Indeed, neither SNCC nor Canadian activists saw themselves in local or even national terms. While their aim was to transform local injustice, their sightlines were transnational. In this, singing proved instrumental. This paper takes two instances from 1965—the Selma, Alabama solidarity protests in Toronto and the Freedom Singers Maritime Tour—to chart how activists on both sides of the border recognized music’s strategic importance to public protest. Both events mark a high point in SNCC/ Canadian solidarity. However, the productive intersection of north-south activism with singing was fleeting. By 1966 SNCC’s internal transformations had adverse repercussions on its Canadian support base. At the same time, singing’s place as the dominant realization of culture with revolutionary praxis also changed in ways that would privilege the visual over the aural.
The following article takes four art projects from visual arts, performance, and design as case s... more The following article takes four art projects from visual arts, performance, and design as case studies in order to identify a number of key features for analyzing artistic texts produced by child/youth and adult artists. While the kinds of projects examined here have strategies particular to them, in my discussion I identify some of the strategies and characteristics they share. My findings have wider application both to child and youth studies and to community art, art education, and avant-garde studies. My discussion should not be taken as an attempt to represent an entire genre of art. I make no overarching claims for collaborative practices between professional artists and young people. Instead, my intention is to sketch some of the key elements activated in these projects. I argue that what is useful about these collaborative art projects is that their differently aged participants must negotiate across the culturally imposed boundary separating the spheres of childhood/youth from adulthood. In doing so, they reveal how age distinctions are constituted discursively, institutionally, and commercially in relation to an adult norm. At the same time, however, collaborative work shows another set of conditions and possibilities by fostering intercultural and intergenerational exchange. I conclude by reflecting on what the projects contribute to undoing hegemonic understandings about young people and their relationship to a common intergenerational culture, a culture shared between young people and adults.
in August 1967, as the slogan Black Power burst the confines of African Ameri-can subcultures and... more in August 1967, as the slogan Black Power burst the confines of African Ameri-can subcultures and global anti-colonial movements began to circulate prominently within mainstream mass media, seven men from two countries met via a transnational telephone connection to talk about the colour black. Their conversation, and its subsequent publication in the arts journal artscanada's October 1967 issue titled "Black," provides this article's focus. While the thematic issue indexes a rare intersection between eiite art and racial politics, and while it is unlikely that any of these representatives of innovative contemporary art practices intimate with the radical countercultures of Greenwich Village and Yorkville saw any cloying taint of bigotry compromise their views about art and art-making, the issue nonetheless enforces covert racism sustained by ideologies of W/iiteness. The result is that rather than embracing creative expression associated with black, Black-as-race is construed as alien to contemporary arts mise-en-scène. RÉSUMÉ En août 1967, quand le slogan « Black Power » se fait entendre au-deld des subcultures afro-américaines et les principaux médias commencent à couvrir les mouvements anti-impérialistes mondiaux, sept hommes vivant dans deux pays, par l'intermédiaire d'un lien téléphonique interurbain, ont eu une échange sur la couleur noire. Cet article porte sur cette conversation et sa publication ultérieure en octobre 1967 dans un numéro de la revue artscanada intitulé « Black ». Ce numéro thématique est l'occasion d'une rare intersection entre l'art d'élite et la politique raciale. R est peu probable que ces représentants de pratiques innovatrices d'art contemporaii}, avec leur connaissance intime des contrecultures radicales de Greenwich Village et de Yorkville, aient été conscients d'avoir exprimé des préjugés à l'égard de l'art et de la création artistique. Pourtant, le numéro comporte des exemples de racisme implicite soutenu par une idéologie favorisant la blancheur. En conséquence, plutôt que de reconnaître l'expression créative associée à ce qui est noir, les interlocuteurs traitent le noir en tant que race étrangère par rapport à l'art contemporain MOTS CLÉS Art et politique raciale; artscanada; Black Power; Périodiqes Krys Verrall is a fine arts and cultural scholar with an interest in the relationship hetween marginal populations and cultural production. She teaches in the
Between the late Fifties and Sixties all along the Trans-Canada Highway, the worn down Negro town... more Between the late Fifties and Sixties all along the Trans-Canada Highway, the worn down Negro towns outside every white town in Nova Scotia vanished. A sudden cut in the map and they were quickly gone. Africville, on the north end of Halifax, remains a particular and vivid instance of municipal violence. This chapter revisits two urban development projects, one in New York and the other in Halifax. Both promised to remake, renew, and re-imagine ill-used and blighted areas of the urban landscape. Through the projects and the discourses that surrounded, them we can see intersections in what I call transnational discourses. The international avant-garde and the civil rights and anti-poverty movements circulated beyond any geo-political boundaries. Although their autobiographies center most visibly on the American stage, they had scattered counterparts. As we will see in the New York and Halifax cases, their marked differences usefully illuminate some striking similarities.
McGill-Queen's University Press eBooks, Feb 1, 2008
Captus Press Inc., 2018
"Drawing from the established fields of “African American Art History”, “Race and Representa... more "Drawing from the established fields of “African American Art History”, “Race and Representation”, and the “Visual Culture of Slavery”, Charmaine A. Nelson and her colleagues — a group of established and up-and-coming artists, scholars, and cultural critics — argue for an African Canadian Art History that can simultaneously examine the artistic contributions of black Canadian artists within their unique historical contexts, critique the colonial representation of black subjects by white artists, and contest the customary racial homogeneity of Canadian Art History." -- Publisher's website
Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, 2020
... As Sidney Eve Matrix notes in applying Fiske's theories to prom culture, "pop-cultu... more ... As Sidney Eve Matrix notes in applying Fiske's theories to prom culture, "pop-cultural productions are both oppressive and rebellious vis-à-vis the status quo" (10), neither solely imposed on nor solely empowering to their consumers. ... Print. Matrix, Sidney Eve. ...
Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, 2012
Canadian Journal of Communication, 2012
In August 1967, as the slogan Black Power burst the confines of African American subcultures and ... more In August 1967, as the slogan Black Power burst the confines of African American subcultures and global anti-colonial movements began to circulate prominently within mainstream mass media, seven men from two countries met via a transnational telephone connection to talk about the colour black. Their conversation, and its subsequent publication in the arts journal artscanada’s October 1967 issue titled “Black,” provides this article’s focus. While the thematic issue indexes a rare intersection between elite art and racial politics, and while it is unlikely that any of these representatives of innovative contemporary art practices intimate with the radical countercultures of Greenwich Village and Yorkville saw any cloying taint of bigotry compromise their views about art and art-making, the issue nonetheless enforces covert racism sustained by ideologies of Whiteness. The result is that rather than embracing creative expression associated with black, Black-as-race is construed as alie...
... Friend: How the War Disguised de Gaulle's Designs | olivier courteaux 116 8 The Ambi... more ... Friend: How the War Disguised de Gaulle's Designs | olivier courteaux 116 8 The Ambivalence of Architectural Culture in Quebec and Canada, 19551975 | france vanlaethem 127 9 Art and Urban Renewal: moma's New City Exhibition and Halifax's Uniacke Square | krys ...
TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, 2011
The story of the 1960s civil rights movement is conventionally viewed as a distinctly American ph... more The story of the 1960s civil rights movement is conventionally viewed as a distinctly American phenomenon arising from that nation’s longer history of slavery, civil war, segregation, and racial violence. The following paper challenges this convention by looking at the dynamic relationship between black activists in Halifax and Toronto and the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a radical organization based in southern states from 1965 to 1967. Indeed, neither SNCC nor Canadian activists saw themselves in local or even national terms. While their aim was to transform local injustice, their sightlines were transnational. In this, singing proved instrumental. This paper takes two instances from 1965—the Selma, Alabama, solidarity protests in Toronto and the Freedom Singers Maritime Tour—to chart how activists on both sides of the border recognized music’s strategic importance to public protest. Both events mark a high point in SNCC/Canadian solidarity. However, the prod...
Beyond Parochialism: Telling Tales about Black Activism and Conceptual Art. Towards an African-Canadian Art History: Art, Memory, and Resistance, 2018
In the early 2000s my research began to look at the relationship between conceptual art and black... more In the early 2000s my research began to look at the relationship between conceptual art and black cultural activism in the 1960s in Canada. Although scholars, artists, and activists in black studies, art history, and art criticism recognize the period as a vital wellspring for all of these fields, few have teased apart conceptual art’s and black cultural activism’s complex relationship in a Canadian context. Thus, my objective is to outline a process for historical cultural research, which is in itself conceptual, in order to find another idea, one that simultaneously brings into view intersections and elisions between 1960s conceptual art and black cultural activism.
The story of the 1960s civil rights movement is conventionally viewed as a distinctly American ph... more The story of the 1960s civil rights movement is conventionally viewed as a distinctly American phenomenon arising from that nation’s longer history of slavery, civil war, segregation, and racial violence. The following paper challenges this convention by looking at the dynamic relationship between black activists in Halifax and Toronto and the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a radical organization based in southern states from 1965 to 1967. Indeed, neither SNCC nor Canadian activists saw themselves in local or even national terms. While their aim was to transform local injustice, their sightlines were transnational. In this, singing proved instrumental. This paper takes two instances from 1965—the Selma, Alabama solidarity protests in Toronto and the Freedom Singers Maritime Tour—to chart how activists on both sides of the border recognized music’s strategic importance to public protest. Both events mark a high point in SNCC/ Canadian solidarity. However, the productive intersection of north-south activism with singing was fleeting. By 1966 SNCC’s internal transformations had adverse repercussions on its Canadian support base. At the same time, singing’s place as the dominant realization of culture with revolutionary praxis also changed in ways that would privilege the visual over the aural.
The following article takes four art projects from visual arts, performance, and design as case s... more The following article takes four art projects from visual arts, performance, and design as case studies in order to identify a number of key features for analyzing artistic texts produced by child/youth and adult artists. While the kinds of projects examined here have strategies particular to them, in my discussion I identify some of the strategies and characteristics they share. My findings have wider application both to child and youth studies and to community art, art education, and avant-garde studies. My discussion should not be taken as an attempt to represent an entire genre of art. I make no overarching claims for collaborative practices between professional artists and young people. Instead, my intention is to sketch some of the key elements activated in these projects. I argue that what is useful about these collaborative art projects is that their differently aged participants must negotiate across the culturally imposed boundary separating the spheres of childhood/youth from adulthood. In doing so, they reveal how age distinctions are constituted discursively, institutionally, and commercially in relation to an adult norm. At the same time, however, collaborative work shows another set of conditions and possibilities by fostering intercultural and intergenerational exchange. I conclude by reflecting on what the projects contribute to undoing hegemonic understandings about young people and their relationship to a common intergenerational culture, a culture shared between young people and adults.
in August 1967, as the slogan Black Power burst the confines of African Ameri-can subcultures and... more in August 1967, as the slogan Black Power burst the confines of African Ameri-can subcultures and global anti-colonial movements began to circulate prominently within mainstream mass media, seven men from two countries met via a transnational telephone connection to talk about the colour black. Their conversation, and its subsequent publication in the arts journal artscanada's October 1967 issue titled "Black," provides this article's focus. While the thematic issue indexes a rare intersection between eiite art and racial politics, and while it is unlikely that any of these representatives of innovative contemporary art practices intimate with the radical countercultures of Greenwich Village and Yorkville saw any cloying taint of bigotry compromise their views about art and art-making, the issue nonetheless enforces covert racism sustained by ideologies of W/iiteness. The result is that rather than embracing creative expression associated with black, Black-as-race is construed as alien to contemporary arts mise-en-scène. RÉSUMÉ En août 1967, quand le slogan « Black Power » se fait entendre au-deld des subcultures afro-américaines et les principaux médias commencent à couvrir les mouvements anti-impérialistes mondiaux, sept hommes vivant dans deux pays, par l'intermédiaire d'un lien téléphonique interurbain, ont eu une échange sur la couleur noire. Cet article porte sur cette conversation et sa publication ultérieure en octobre 1967 dans un numéro de la revue artscanada intitulé « Black ». Ce numéro thématique est l'occasion d'une rare intersection entre l'art d'élite et la politique raciale. R est peu probable que ces représentants de pratiques innovatrices d'art contemporaii}, avec leur connaissance intime des contrecultures radicales de Greenwich Village et de Yorkville, aient été conscients d'avoir exprimé des préjugés à l'égard de l'art et de la création artistique. Pourtant, le numéro comporte des exemples de racisme implicite soutenu par une idéologie favorisant la blancheur. En conséquence, plutôt que de reconnaître l'expression créative associée à ce qui est noir, les interlocuteurs traitent le noir en tant que race étrangère par rapport à l'art contemporain MOTS CLÉS Art et politique raciale; artscanada; Black Power; Périodiqes Krys Verrall is a fine arts and cultural scholar with an interest in the relationship hetween marginal populations and cultural production. She teaches in the
Between the late Fifties and Sixties all along the Trans-Canada Highway, the worn down Negro town... more Between the late Fifties and Sixties all along the Trans-Canada Highway, the worn down Negro towns outside every white town in Nova Scotia vanished. A sudden cut in the map and they were quickly gone. Africville, on the north end of Halifax, remains a particular and vivid instance of municipal violence. This chapter revisits two urban development projects, one in New York and the other in Halifax. Both promised to remake, renew, and re-imagine ill-used and blighted areas of the urban landscape. Through the projects and the discourses that surrounded, them we can see intersections in what I call transnational discourses. The international avant-garde and the civil rights and anti-poverty movements circulated beyond any geo-political boundaries. Although their autobiographies center most visibly on the American stage, they had scattered counterparts. As we will see in the New York and Halifax cases, their marked differences usefully illuminate some striking similarities.