Drift: Art and Dark Matter

Expand

Josèfa Ntjam, "Organic Nebula," 2019

(detail) carpet, photomontage. Courtesy of the artist

Drift: Art and Dark Matter

Join us at the Belkin for a choral performance based on artist Nadia Lichtig's Blank Spots, currently on view as part of the exhibition Drift: Art and Dark Matter. Composers Antony Knight and Walker Williams were invited by the School of Music to interpret Lichtig's Blank Spots as a musical score. Alongside Knight and Williams, singers Armand Birk, Sydney Frelick, Kari Rutherford and Tessa Waddell will perform the musical score, while the artist Nadia Lichtig will also be in attendance.

Symposium: Signals and Apparatuses

Thursday, November 25 at 2 pm

Leon and Thea Koerner University Centre, 6331 Crescent Road, UBC

Over the past six months, the Ars Scientia research cluster has connected artists with physicists in a collaborative residency program to discuss and explore the intersections between the disciplines of art and science. On November 25, the groups will convene at a research symposium, Signals and Apparatuses, to share their experiences in the residency and engage in an interdisciplinary discussion with the academic community at UBC. Denise Ferreira da Silva will offer opening remarks, to be followed by a discussion with Drift exhibition artist Nadia Lichtig and graduate student Rhea Gaur, alongside presentations from Ars Scientia collaborators.

Artist talk with Josephine Lee

Friday, November 5 at 3:30 pm

As part of the Ars Scientia artist talks and in conjunction with the exhibition Drift: Art and Dark Matter, artist Josephine Lee will speak about her practice and early engagement with the Ars Scientia residency. This event is free and open to the public, but space is limited; to ensure a spot, please RSVP to belkin.rsvp@ubc.ca. 

An invisible matter is having a gravitational effect on everything. Without the gravity of this "dark" matter, galaxies would fly apart. Observational data in astroparticle physics indicate that it exists, but so far dark matter hasn't been directly detected. Given the contours of such an unknown, artists Nadia Lichtig, Josèfa Ntjam, Anne Riley and Jol Thoms reflect on the "how" and "why" of physics and art as diverse and interrelating practices of knowledge.

For Drift: Art and Dark Matter, these four artists of national and international stature were invited to make new work while engaging with physicists, chemists and engineers contributing to the search for dark matter at SNOLAB's facility in Sudbury, two kilometres below the surface of the Earth. The title Drift draws from the mining term for a horizontal tunnel, in this case the hot underground passageway in the copper and nickel mine stretching between the elevator and the clean lab spaces of SNOLAB. The project begins from a reflection on the forms and energies that connect physics to art, labour, landscapes, cultures and histories.

As a complement to the Drift exhibition, the Belkin is collaborating with the Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute (SBQMI) and the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UBC on Ars Scientia, an interdisciplinary research project fusing the praxes of art and science that will include artist-scientist residencies and a research symposium.

Drift: Art and Dark Matter is a residency and exhibition project generated by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, the Arthur B. McDonald Canadian Astroparticle Physics Research Institute and SNOLAB, with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Stonecroft Foundation, George Taylor Richardson Memorial Fund and the City of Kingston Arts Fund through the Kingston Arts Council. The project is curated by Sunny Kerr, Curator of Contemporary Art at Agnes Etherington Art Centre. The Belkin gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council, UBC Grants for Catalyzing Research Clusters, and our Belkin Curator's Forum members.