Please join us for a keynote conversation between artist Stan Douglas and curator Melanie O’Brian, to be followed by a live Q+A moderated by Claudette Lauzon.

Hinging on Stan Douglas’ recent and upcoming work, the conversation will consider patterns of history, the public realm and showing up.

This conversation will be filmed and broadcast live from the World Art Centre at the Goldcorp Centre for the Arts (Simon Fraser University), located on the unceded Traditional Coast Salish Lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw Nations.

Stan Douglas is a visual artist who lives and works in Vancouver and Los Angeles. His films, videos and photographs have been seen in exhibitions internationally, including Documentas IX, X and XI (1992, 1997, 2002) and four Venice Biennales (1990, 2001, 2005 and 2019). A survey of his work, Stan Douglas: Mise en scène, toured Europe from 2013 until the end of 2015. From 2014 until 2017 his play Helen Lawrence was seen in Vancouver, Toronto, Munich, Antwerp, Edinburgh, Brooklyn and Los Angeles. He received the International Centre for Photography’s Infinity Prize in 2012, the Hasselblad Award in 2016 and was the 2019 recipient of the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement and will represent Canada at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2021. Between 2004 and 2006 he was a professor at Universität der Künste Berlin and since 2009 has been a member of the core faculty in the Grad Art Department of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

Melanie O’Brian is a curator and writer living on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh and Səl̓ílwətaɬ Nations. She has organized exhibitions and offsite projects nationally and internationally that include the work of artists such as Richard Ibghy/Marilou Lemmens, Marianne Nicolson, Walid Raad, Hito Steyerl and Althea Thauberger. She has been Director/Curator of Simon Fraser University Galleries in Vancouver (2012-20), Curator/Head of Programs at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto (2011-12), Director/Curator at Artspeak in Vancouver (2004-11), and Assistant Curator at Vancouver Art Gallery (2001-04). She is the editor of $5 Handshake: Art on Treaty 8 Territory (SFU Galleries, 2018), Omer Fast: 5,000 Feet is the Best (Henie Onstad Kunstsenter/The Power Plant/Sternberg, 2012) with Milena Hoegsberg; Stan Douglas: Entertainment (The Power Plant, 2011); Judgment and Contemporary Art Criticism (Artspeak/Fillip, 2010) with Jeff Khonsary; Vancouver Art and Economies (Arsenal Pulp Press/Artspeak, 2007), and has written for catalogues and magazines including Fillip, The Exhibitionist, Yishu and C. She occasionally teaches at the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University and Emily Carr University.