Tricky math and haunting messages accumulate in unresolved poetics this fall at the Art Gallery of York University (AGYU).
The AGYU invites you to “surge out there” as it joins with Raqs Media Collective: technological poets for an India in transition, to present their newest exhibit Surjection.
Of the current generation of Indian artists, the Raqs Media Collective from New Delhi (Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta) are among the best known and most widely exposed in the west – and certainly the most media conscious. Having started as documentary filmmakers, over the past 20 years they have evolved a sophisticated, and 
sometimes performative, practice that combines film, media, audio and text, all of which draw upon philosophy and political theory, in installations of an unresolved poetics.
Right: Members of the Raqs Media Collective, from left, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Jeebesh Bagchi and Monica Narula
The Raqs Media Collective exhibition, Surjection, opens with a free public reception tonight, from 6 to 9pm at the Art Gallery of York University. The artists will be at the reception.
The collective describes their AGYU exhibition this way: “Raqs Media Collective delights in transposing the plenitude of the incalculable onto the fabric of the ordinary. By counting to infinity, sensing animation in stillness and speaking in the language of silence, Raqs will breathe numbers, figures, proverbs and stories into the galleries of the Art Gallery of York University.”
In this exhibition of entirely new work, the artists start with traces that are minimal but that contain great amplitude within them, such as the palm print of Raj Konai – the ancestral trace (from 1859) of the entire history of forensic identification – that hovers over the exhibition. Now animated, this image of a counting hand initiates a series of moves that the viewer animates through the exhibition. At the same time, the viewer witnesses other evolutions in video projection where stillness itself slowly is animated. Surjection begins outside, in AGYU Vitrines and occupies both galleries.
The elements of the exhibition are in a surjective relationship to each other. “Surjection” is a mathematical concept devised by the Bourbaki Group, whereby the elements of one set are applied, transposed, or mapped onto those of another set. Surjection continues until Sunday, Dec. 4.
Surject yourself onto the Performance Bus
It’s an entirely different experience of numbers and letters on the Bingo Dilemma Bus. The game starts tonight at 6pm sharp when the Performance Bus departs the Ontario College of Art & Design University campus at 100 McCaul St.. Riders gather the clues to the game on the way to the Raqs Media Collective exhibition opening at the AGYU. Artist and game host Oliver Husain will be on the bus calling out the game clues. Performance Bus returns downtown at 9pm.
Math too tough for you? Go back to school with AGYU @ Art Toronto
The AGYU tricks or treats fair patrons with one of its specially commissioned installations featuring Toronto novelist Derek McCormack and Toronto artist Ian Phillips. The haunted schoolhouse is the outcome of an four-year project supported by the AGYU of H.A.M.S. (Holiday Arts Mail-Order School), which is a correspondence course (for the 1936-1937 school year) devoted to the holiday arts. Hallowe’enologists will be on hand to take your questions and offer demonstrations. Alumni are welcome.
Virtually AGYU
The surjective relations continue online with the Studio Blog as independent Toronto curator Su-Ying Lee visits the studio of New York-based artist Alexandre Singh, whom she met in Paris this past summer while travelling in Europe. on her travels through Europe.
Writing from the ash-filled Grimsvötn sky, Toronto artist Katie Bethune-Leamen counts down the rest of her days in Iceland as she writes about contemporary art and generous helpings of never-ending splendour, mind-blowing sunsets, migratory birds, half-shorn sheep, geothermal pools and more.
For more information, visit the AGYU website.