Toronto Biennial Report & Plan Released At Last

Further to my whiny December post about the extreme lateness of a Toronto Biennial forum report overdue to the public from MOCCA and the Power Plant, I received notice today that a summary report is now available as a PDF at http://www.thepowerplant.org/News/Report_FORUM_17April2010.pdf.

Penned by Power Plant director Gregory Burke, Power Plant curator Jon Davies, independent critic/forum moderator Peggy Gale and MOCCA director David Liss the summary concludes:

Based on the interest and enthusiasm of many participants at the [April Toronto Biennial] Forum, we recommend that we move forward with developing options for staging a recurring international contemporary art event in Toronto and that options should:

1. consider the intricacies of the current funding situations in Toronto, Ontario and Canada, and questions of who the audiences are for such an event.

2. recognize both the specificity of Toronto and its specific communities, histories and cultural legacies.

3. recognize the leadership, capacity and diversity of the contemporary art infrastructure in Toronto and the role of artists and artist-run culture in creating Toronto’s rich cultural landscape and history.

4. reinforce that the event must be ideas driven and must put forward a distinctive argument on contemporary art production both in Canada and internationally.

The core leadership group will continue consulting with the art community and aims to present a number of options to an open meeting in Spring 2011 for response.

I'll look forward to seeing what form this spring meeting about "moving forward" takes. Also, this summary excludes a lot of the day's discussion. If you want a full description of the day’s events, one is promised to be available by email from Robin Boyko at rboyko@harbourfrontcentre.com.

(Note-taking image via Mahalo.com)