In this economy, try art

I will not doomscroll news about the election(s).
I will not doomscroll news about the election(s).
I will not doomscroll news about the election(s).

Today (and everyday) is a great day to talk about and visit art through shows, lectures and discussions happening this Thursday, Nov 7.

To start things off, from 12-1pm, scholar, DJ, author and curator Mark Campbell will be giving a lecture, An Archival State of Mind: Hip-Hop’s Polyphonies of Preservation, in the Joseph Strug Concert Hall at Dalhousie University’s Fountain School of Performing Arts, at 1385 Seymour Street in Halifax. The talk is part of the school’s David Schroeder Music & Culture Lecture Series, and is free and open to everyone.

Campbell’s research explores archival production around the elements of hip-hop culture—breakdancing, turntablism, graffiti, remixing and sampling—and how these projects offer decolonial methods for preserving histories of Afrosonic innovations and ideas of the human. Campbell brings an impressive resume to the topic. He is founder of the first-of-its-kind Northside Hip-Hop Archives; lead researcher on the project “Hip Hop Archives: The Poetics and Potentials of Knowledge Production;” founded The Afrosonic Innovation Lab, which brings together artists, creatives and scholars to engage in sound experimentation, music-making and musicological analysis across the African diaspora; was on the radio for 17 years with the Bigger than Hip-Hop Show from 1998-2015; and is curator of the exhibition Still Tho: Aesthetic Survival in Hip Hop’s Visual Art, on now at the Mount Saint Vincent Art Gallery until Nov 23.

His talk at Strug Concert Hall will look at the growth of hip-hop archives and the opportunities these create for preserving popular music, honouring Black cultural knowledge and mitigating the coloniality of traditional or institutional archives.

Later on Thursday, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia is opening its doors late—as it does every Thursday—for free entry from 5pm until 9pm. Current exhibitions at the big downtown gallery include Jennifer Marman & Daniel Borins: Three Dimensions on view until Jan 26, and permanent works like Kent Monkman’s “Miss Chief’s Wet Dream.”

You’ll have to time your AGNS visit carefully to maximize Thursday’s artistic potential, because back on Dal’s campus from 6-8pm, the Dalhousie Art Gallery will be posting a panel discussion on its current exhibition, Graeme Patterson’s Strange Birds, which is up until Nov 10. This event is also free and open to everyone with no registration required, and is happening in the MacAloney Room on the 4th floor of the Dalhousie Arts Centre, at 6101 University Avenue. This is a seated event and the venue is accessible.

The panel discussion will bring together three contributors to the exhibition’s catalogue: exhibition curator and Curator of Canadian Art at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Ray Cronin; Dalhousie professor and social scientist Melanie Zurba; and creative writing professor and poet Sue Goyette. The panelists will pull on narrative threads in Strange Birds, including creative ways to engage with the climate crisis, and add their perspectives on curation, academic perspectives on environmental sustainability and the ways art can bring awareness, action and optimism to the struggle for the planet’s future.