The Silent Stacks: Jamie Ross at the CLGA
26 Feb 2019.  

Drawing upon queer Argentinian poet and post-pornography scholar Laura Milano’s whisper methodology, artist Jamie Ross, a queer community activist hosts a workshop that promises to breathe life into letters between queer organizers in Toronto with their counterparts in other cities just before 1969 as the community was tentatively organizing.

The experience will be one of deep listening through an approach that revives letters between organizers of two of Canada’s first queer groups, including International Sex Equality Anonymous, the Montreal political organization which organized a private gay and trans club, before it was legal to do so. The workshop will hold space for quietude, igniting a candle of contemplative mystery in the archives.

Jamie Ross's projects include a tripartite exhibition, talk and performance series entitled Unscrew the Locks on his work as a prison chaplain organized in tandem with Verticale (Laval, QC) and Eastern Bloc (Montreal) an exhibition at Quebec’s art archive, Artexte The Hot Summer Posters : 10 years of Montreal underground queer visual culture (2017) on the visual culture of 10 years of Perverscité, Montreal’s radical anti-Pride festival, and curating the Montreal iteration of this exhibition and event series disrupting the 1969 anniversary (Sum Gallery, Vancouver; CLGA, Toronto; MAI, Montréal).