Writing by choice or by chance

Responding to The aleatory object with poet Maureen Hynes

The original Greek meaning of the term ekphrasis is simply “description,” but the word now often carries the meaning of the use of one art form or object to respond to another. An aleatoric process is the use of chance or a random, intuitive process in music or art.

This workshop will begin with a brief walkthrough of The aleatory object by curator Shani K Parsons followed by an introduction, prompts, and guidance from poet Maureen Hynes for responding ekphrastically to any aspect of the exhibition. Participants will then, through their own writing, have ample time to explore their responses to looking, thinking, and engaging with the objects and images. We will conclude with an open (voluntary and non-judgmental) conversation on some of the associations, questions, and connections that participants make through this process, and consider some ways to sustain a writing practice in your life.

Please bring a journal or notebook to the workshop. As pens are not allowed in the gallery, pencils will be provided. Refreshments will be served, and all are welcome.

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About Maureen Hynes

Maureen Hynes’s first poetry collection, Rough Skin, won the League of Canadian Poets’ Gerald Lampert Award for best first book of poetry by a Canadian. Her 2016 collection, The Poison Colour, was shortlisted for the League’s Pat Lowther and Raymond Souster Awards. Maureen’s fifth book of poetry, Sotto Voce, was a finalist for the Lowther Award and the Golden Crown Literary Award for lesbian writers (U.S.). Her poetry has been included in over 30 anthologies, including three times in Best Canadian Poems in English (2010, 2016 and 2020), and twice in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2017 and 2021). http://maureenhynes.com/

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About The aleatory object

Originating in an encounter with a psychoanalyst’s collection, The aleatory object (May 11–July 30, 2022) makes visible a curatorial process that is critically oriented toward the unknown. Unfolding as an open-ended assemblage of images, objects, and ideas, it is a process that values attention over intention, curiosity over comprehension—resulting in a curatorial selection that defies easy classification. Through an intentional embrace of uncertainty, and pursuit of associative and improvisational approaches to research and presentation, The aleatory object proposes a different kind of curatorial engagement with knowledge production, one that does not simply restate what is known or strive to demonstrate expertise in any conventional sense. This does not mean that knowledge won’t be produced or shared, but rather that the process will not be so constrained, to paraphrase Freud, by the “imposition of reason on the imagination.”

The aleatory object thus occasions an unconventional co-existence between ambiguous and anomalous things, transcending normative cultural, historical, and disciplinary divides. Underlying the obvious question of how to treat “artifacts” vs. “artworks” within a single exhibition is a deeper, more vexing issue: when not much is known about a thing, it tends to languish in academic and museum contexts where value is often tied to knowability. Objects about which much is known are simply easier to teach and talk about. But what is lost to a culture that only teaches and talks about what it already knows? Ultimately the questions such a project asks may be unanswerable, but the untold possibilities it engenders are the reasons for asking.

This exhibition is produced as part of the requirements for the MVS degree in Curatorial Studies at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto.

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Our supporters

We gratefully acknowledge operating support from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council with additional project support from the Reesa Greenberg Curatorial Studies Award and International Travel Fund.

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Header image: Curator’s process sketches and images for The aleatory object, 2021–2022.