LAND|SLIDE: Possible Futures

Janine Marchessault
Professor, Cinema & Media Studies

In 2013, Sensorium’s Inaugural Director, Dr. Janine Marchessault, with Dr. Chloë Brushwood Rose (Sensorium member, Faculty of Education) and Dr. Jennifer Foster (FES) organized Land|Slide: Possible Futures, a four-week site-specific exhibition with over 30 international and national artists at the outdoor Markham Museum. The exhibition brought artists, urban planners, ecologists, educators, civic leaders and the general public together in a unique community engagement initiative that paid homage to the past and imagined possible futures.

The exhibition included the work of Sensorium researchers (Jennifer Fisher, Mark-David Hosale, Ali Kazimi, David Han, Patricio Davila) as well as other York faculty, alumni, and over 20 graduate students who participated in the many events that were held throughout: artist talks, a series of panels on urban sustainability, and evening film screenings engaging with suburban and agricultural issues.

Land|Slide was featured in over 100 media stories both in print, on-line, radio and television. The Asian Television Network whose headquarters are in Markham, was the Exhibition’s official media sponsor and featured interviews with all of the artists and organizers. Based on the originality of the exhibition, Land|Slide was invited to represent Canada at the Hong-Kong Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale on Architecture and Urbanism (Dec 2013-March 2014)—one of six national pavilions at the biennale. This invitation was a great honor and highlighted Sensorium and York University’s cutting edge media arts research amongst 101 other projects. 7,500 people in Canada, and over 180,000 visitors in China attended the exhibition.