Events

Calgary Hosted the Touring Panamerican Public Art project!
June 3rd and 4th, 2006

The School of Panamerican Unrest is a public art project that is traveling from Anchorage, Alaska to Ushuaia, Argentina from May 9 to September 15, making 30 official stops along the way. The SPU project will present a panel discussion, workshop, reception, and ceremony during its stay. Presented by the Mountain Standard Time Festival and the Walter Phillips Gallery (The Banff Centre) the project will invite local artists and public audiences to engage in various forms of dialogue about social, political, and cultural issues affecting the various regions of the Americas.

Calgary activities

All activities were free and open to the public. The schoolhouse with the video and book collection were on display at the Calgary Olympic Plaza from 9:00am – 9:00pm, Saturday June 3rd. Events included a workshop, panel discussion, closing ceremony and celebration event.

About The School of Panamerican Unrest

The School of Panamerican Unrestis an artist-led, not-for-profit public art project that seeks to generate connections between the different regions of the Americas through discussions, performances, screenings, and short-term and long-term collaborations between organizations and individuals. Its main component will be a nomadic forum or think-tank that will cross the hemisphere by land from Alaska to Argentina. This hybrid project will include a collapsible and movable architectural structure in the form of a schoolhouse, as well as a video and book collection component.

Initiated by Mexican artist Pablo Helguera, and with the support of more than 40 organizations and more than 100 affiliated artists, curators, and cultural promoters in the Americas, The School of Panamerican Unrest responds to the need to support inter-regional communication amongst English, Spanish and Portuguese speaking America, as well as its other communities in the Caribbean and elsewhere, making connections outside its regular commercial and economic links.

The project is inspired by the travel itineraries of those who once crossed the continent, ranging from missionaries, explorers, scientists, revolutionaries, intellectuals, writers, and others. In the utopian spirit of those who once conceived the Americas as a unified entity, the SPU will cross the continent literalizing the very idea of Panamericanism.


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