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29 May 2020

Rock Gardens: Lisa Robertson and Yaniya Lee

  • Yaniya Lee

    Yaniya Lee is a Toronto-based writer and scholar and Associate Editor at Canadian Art magazine. Her interdisciplinary research draws on Black studies to question critical-reading practices and reconsider Canadian art histories. She has an interest in community organizing and collective practice. Lee is a founding collective member of MICE Magazine and member of the EMILIA-AMALIA working group. She was previously on the editorial advisory committees for C Magazine and FUSE. Her writing has appeared in the FADER, NOW Magazine, C Magazine, Magenta Magazine and Adult. She has two chapbooks: Troubled (2014) and In Different Situations Different Behaviour will Produce Different Results (2013). Lee has also written exhibition texts for Walter Scott and Laurie Kang, and about the artistic practices of Tau Lewis, Divya Mehra and Hannah Black. From 2012 to 2015, Lee hosted Art Talks MTL, a series of long-form interviews with Montreal art workers. In 2016, she programmed “Labour, Land, and Body: geographies of de/colonialism” for Vtape’s Curatorial Incubator.

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  • Lisa Robertson

    Lisa Robertson is a poet and essayist from Toronto who currently lives and works in France. She has published several poetry books, essays and reviews and has been a visiting poet, lecturer and artist-in-residence at various institutions. Robertson’s poetry is known for its subversive engagement with the classical traditions of Western poetry and philosophy. Her subject matter is varied, framing poetic genres and philosophy with concepts of gender and nation, nature and womanhood and utopian impulses, as well as art, architecture, food and astrology. In the mid-1980s, Robertson studied at Simon Fraser University and became involved with the Kootenay School of Writing, a Vancouver-based writing collective, before running Proprioception Books (1988-94). Robertson has taught at the University of California San Diego, Capilano College, Dartington College of Art, the California College of Art and the University of Cambridge. Robertson continues to be one of Canada’s most celebrated and internationally recognized poets.

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A Conversation Exploring Other Tangled Forms of Living Together

 

We gathered at the beginning of March, in what can only be described now as the last weekend of before – before the new normal of these isolated days – to celebrate the culmination of Beginning with the Seventies. For two days we shared ideas, meals, reflections, strategies for moving forward. The finale, Rock Gardens, was both an ending and a new beginning – this has become very clear in the weeks since as we shelter at home. Rather than give a reading, a form and practice that is familiar to the writer and the reader alike, Lisa Robertson and Yaniya Lee engaged in a performative offering. They sat across from one another at a small table, their gazes directed conversationally rather than towards the audience, and arranged a series of colour-coded index cards across the surface of the table. These indexes contained quotes, prompts, queries pulled in part from Lee’s chapbook Troubled (2014) and Robertson’s text “The Collective” (2017) – propositions for a confabulation to unpack and understand how to think about the things that propel them in their work and in our world. Each interlocutor would choose a card carefully and with deep consideration, read from it, and pose a question, a reaction, perhaps wonder or delight, as an invitation for response. We are posting the video documentation now to share in the experience as spectator and to encourage us all to carry on in our respective processes. 

 

 

      

Images (above): Yaniya Lee and Lisa Robertson, Beginning with the Seventies catalogue launch and symposium, March 7, 2020. Photo: Rachel Topham Photography

  • Yaniya Lee

    Yaniya Lee is a Toronto-based writer and scholar and Associate Editor at Canadian Art magazine. Her interdisciplinary research draws on Black studies to question critical-reading practices and reconsider Canadian art histories. She has an interest in community organizing and collective practice. Lee is a founding collective member of MICE Magazine and member of the EMILIA-AMALIA working group. She was previously on the editorial advisory committees for C Magazine and FUSE. Her writing has appeared in the FADER, NOW Magazine, C Magazine, Magenta Magazine and Adult. She has two chapbooks: Troubled (2014) and In Different Situations Different Behaviour will Produce Different Results (2013). Lee has also written exhibition texts for Walter Scott and Laurie Kang, and about the artistic practices of Tau Lewis, Divya Mehra and Hannah Black. From 2012 to 2015, Lee hosted Art Talks MTL, a series of long-form interviews with Montreal art workers. In 2016, she programmed “Labour, Land, and Body: geographies of de/colonialism” for Vtape’s Curatorial Incubator.

    Read More

  • Lisa Robertson

    Lisa Robertson is a poet and essayist from Toronto who currently lives and works in France. She has published several poetry books, essays and reviews and has been a visiting poet, lecturer and artist-in-residence at various institutions. Robertson’s poetry is known for its subversive engagement with the classical traditions of Western poetry and philosophy. Her subject matter is varied, framing poetic genres and philosophy with concepts of gender and nation, nature and womanhood and utopian impulses, as well as art, architecture, food and astrology. In the mid-1980s, Robertson studied at Simon Fraser University and became involved with the Kootenay School of Writing, a Vancouver-based writing collective, before running Proprioception Books (1988-94). Robertson has taught at the University of California San Diego, Capilano College, Dartington College of Art, the California College of Art and the University of Cambridge. Robertson continues to be one of Canada’s most celebrated and internationally recognized poets.

    Read More

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