The “crit” or critique is a long-standing art school practice where students present their work before peers and professors for the purpose of feedback and evaluation. In these moments of exchange, the discourse formed around the works can become more meaningful than the artworks themselves. While ideas are typically exchanged between peers and passed down from reviewer to pupil, Group C is interested in the potential of younger-generation artists to challenge certain art-world conventions through their enthusiasm and naivety. 

For Session 32, Group C will facilitate different participatory game-like structures for conversation, centered around a small collection of works-in-progress by the collective’s members. The audience will be asked to situate themselves between “feeling positive” and “some unresolved elements” –language commonly employed in crits. This event will take place in the Champ des Possibles, or in the case of rain, in the gallery at Dazibao.

Group C is an artist collective made up of a fluctuating membership of Concordia University fine art students. Working with photography and different media, the collective is founded on the challenge of converging very different perspectives and representing each of the members’ voices through collaborative works. Verbal conversation between the members is their primary method for producing artwork and, for them, constitutes a form of art in itself. The films, photographs, sculptures, performances, and installations produced collectively, or in tandem with one another, are directly informed by those conversations and represent their common interests and creative motives. This way of working stems from a timely communal need for more mutually respectful and empathetic person-to-person interactions.