Portrait of Sylvie Fortin, photo: C. Daniel Dawson.
Portrait of Sylvie Fortin, photo: C. Daniel Dawson.
Lecture by Sylvie Fortin
As part of her curatorial residency at Bétonsalon
This lecture by Sylvie Fortin is part of a three-month curatorial trip at Bétonsalon, during which the curator, based between Montreal and New York, continues her exploration of the intersections between hospitality and the economy within both cultural institutions and artistic practices. Her research focuses on the notion of unacknowledged, unpaid, and unpayable debt, revisits what the fields of economics and finance owe to practices of hospitality, and questions the ways in which the dominant economic system shapes cultural institutions. Sylvie Fortin will present her methodology, which combines collaborative approaches, experimental writing, and curatorial reflection, as well as the artists she works with and the projects they develop together.
Sylvie Fortin
Sylvie Fortin is an interdependent curator, researcher, writer, and editor based between Montréal, New York, and Buenos Aires and working internationally. She was Curator-in-Residence at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, USA (2019–21); Executive/Artistic Director of La Biennale de Montréal (2013–17); Executive Director/Editor of ART PAPERS, Atlanta (2004–12); Curator of Contemporary Art at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Canada (2013); and Curator of 5th Québec City Biennial, Quebec, Canada (2010). Fortin lectures widely and her critical essays and reviews have been published in numerous catalogues, anthologies, and periodicals, including Artforum International, ART PAPERS, Art Press, Art Review, C Magazine, e-flux Criticism, and Frieze.
In 2017, Fortin began a long-term curatorial inquiry into the currencies of hospitality. This hydra-headed durational pursuit has had several public manifestations, including exhibitions, publications, research groups, discursive encounters, and assemblies. Her current research focuses on the debt that economics and finance owe to hospitality. It is carried out through curatorial residencies and the realization of Transitive Properties, a long-term mobile platform hosting undisciplined artists and thinkers, supporting their open-ended research and production, and propagating exhibitions across the Americas and Europe. In the process, Transitive Properties redistributes resources and fosters contagious social experimentation.
