The Drowned World
Toronto Biennial of Art, Sponsored by MVS Proseminar
Cinesphere, Ontario Place

Guest Curator: Charles Stankievech

Click here to download the program guide.

Regular Times: 11am – 4pm, Saturdays, Sept 21 – Nov 30

Islands. Meteorites. Caves. Waves. Agua Viva. Spanning cosmological origin stories into a future extinction of civilization, The Drowned World contrasts the stretch of deep time with the cut of global ecologies and artistic resistance. Within this brave new world, the artificial boundaries of modernity’s civilizations have evaporated, and life in all its forms continues to shift in ecstatic convolution. Not a traditional film screening program, for the run of the Biennale, the Cinesphere’s spherical cinema is a world within world, mixing readings, films and sound art: genetically reconstructed screams of prehistoric creatures are echoed by the sonification of a dying star; a ritual in a palm oil plantation clashes with the submarine beats of Detroit’s bubble metropolis; the sacrifice of a muskrat, the love of an octopus. As Brazilian Clarice Lispector writes in “The Waters of the World”: “There it is, the sea, the most unintelligible of non-human existences. And here is the woman, standing on the beach, the most unintelligible of living beings. As a human being she once posed a question about herself, becoming the most unintelligible of living beings. She and the sea. Their mysteries could only meet if one surrendered to the other: the surrender of two unknowable worlds made with the trust by which two understandings would surrender to each other.” An Ark on the verge of lifting off from Ontario Place’s artificial archipelago, The Drowned World turtles into its 1970’s utopian dome architecture before its 4th dimensional orgasm leaves ripples across the largest fresh water system on the planet.

Artists
Afredo Ramos and Kashya Badach
Aki Inomata
Alvin Lucier
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Aryo Danusiri
Brandon Poole
Charles Stankievech
Clarice Lispector
Cyprien Gaillard
Dark Morph
Drexciya
James Tenney with Raven Chacon,
Michael Winter and Tom Erbe
Julian Charrière
Jean Painlevé
J.G. Ballard
Jumana Manna
Lisa Rave
Marguerite Humeau
Nils-Alak Valkeapää
Pauline Oliveros
Revital Cohen & Tuur van Balen
Ville Kokkonen / Comme des Garçons
Whatever
World Soundscape Project