May 31, 2025 - The Power of Saying No and Resting
Presentation by Victoria Stanton
Date: May 31
Time: 2-3:30 pm
Language: French/English
Places disponibles : 30
The current (neoliberal) state of socio-economic affairs increasingly pressures artists and arts programs to adopt the same language and attitudes as business models do. Art as business means applying an entrepreneurial mentality and in today’s climate of growth, efficiency, and acceleration, that mentality is to always be “on”: always available, always working, and always productive (even when resting).
What happens when we say “no?”
My artistic and academic practice investigates the pedagogical, and revolutionary, role of rest, pause, slowness, and idleness (or “doing nothing”) within contemporary artists’ works (specifically performance artists or adjacent forms that happen in live or time-based ways), and the parallel social justice implications of integrating moments of pause and rest in the post-secondary studio art classroom. Time for rest, just for the sake of resting (and not returning to work refreshed), is a primordial need, and not something generally taught—or talked about—in school. It is certainly not rewarded in our ableist, colonial, capitalist culture.
In the context of La Centrale’s How to Protect a Radical Idea, this keynote addresses various kinds and qualities of “no” that both serve to empower and to consider the role of barriers as boundaries: limits to be acknowledged and respected. No is liberatory and no is also grief. No is scary and no is firm clarity: an inverted yes that’s not always comfortable to hold. No as an assertion of rest, (however complex), is a lifeline to a more sustainable way forward.
The overlapping threads of Victoria Stanton’s practice – as an artist, researcher, curator, educator – place observation and dialogue at the centre of her performative works. She has co-authored two books (Impure, Reinventing the Word, conundrum press, 2001, with Vincent Tinguely, and The 7th Sense/Le 7e sens, SAGAMIE édition d’art, 2017, with the TouVA collective), and published texts focusing on the performative as it is revealed in material and time-based practices. Stanton has presented performances, infiltrating/relational actions, exhibitions, and videos in Canada, the U.S., Europe, Australia, Japan, Mexico, and Cuba, and in 2018 was a recipient of the PRIX POWERHOUSE. As a SSHRC funded Canada Graduate Scholar pursuing a research-creation PhD in Art Education at Concordia University, her current work is focused on exploring the role of rest, pause and slowing down in artistic processes that occur both in art world contexts and everyday spaces like the classroom.