Looking back at 2055

2015-16 was UNIT/PITT’s 40th anniversary. At various points in its history, it seemed unlikely that the Pitt would survive to see its 40th year. (And if you want to know more about all of that, Allison Collins wrote a great recap of our history back in 2012.) Since we had already looked back at the Pitt’s history, we decided to do something different, and start with the premise that we weren’t marking an end-point of 40 years, but a mid-point on the way to the Pitt’s 80th year in 2055.

Exhibitions and programs for this year were put together by a temporary curatorial team: Mariane Bourcheix-Laporte, Kay Higgins, Abbey Hopkins, Brynn McNab, Catherine de Montreiul,  Gabriel Saloman, Jamie Ward, and Zebulon Zang. Artists who participated in exhibitions, panels, music nights, and talks included Elaine Carol, Elliot Heintzmann, Joël Doyle, Eli Zibin, Curtis AuCoin, Terry Hunter, Cecily Nicholson, Michael Clague, Andrea Creamer, Laiwan, Brady Cranfield, Rachel and Sarah Seburn, Pietro Sammarco, The Rita, Graeme Wahn, Monique Levesque, Cole Nowicki, Alison Braid, Alyssa Dusevic, Jordan Abel, bill bissett, Danielle LaFrance, Donato Mancini, sidony o’neal, Anahita Jamali Rad, The Third Thing, Alana Gerecke, Alexa Mardon, Jacquelyn Ross, Carolina Bergonzoni, Justine Chambers, Alex Mah, Lee Su-Feh, Evann Siebens, Hong Kong Exile, Deanna Peters, Justin Langlois, Penny Jo Buckner, Matt Hern, Mark DeLong, Dream the Combine, M. Rattray & Eloise, Skeena Reece, prOphecy sun, Irwin Oostindie, and possibly some others I’m missing right now. Contributors of material to the Limited Time Library project included Brit Bachman, Brick Press, Tommy Chain, Gabi Dao, Stefana Fratila, Steffanie Ling, Emma Metcalfe-Hurst, Lauren Lavery, Cole Nowicki, Jeff O’Brien, Penny Library, Lyndsay Pomerantz, Dan Pon, Jasmine Sacharuk, Ellis Sam, Graeme Wahn, Tom Whalen, and SP Yoon. We would also like to thank Bridgette Badowich, who was doing a co-op with us during much of this madness.

Our audience was bigger than ever before: counting web-based projects and Monique Levesque’s 6-week-long public art project, our audience was probably more than 20,000 people. But we also call something a success if a dozen people show up for a really productive discussion about the how artist-run communities relate to the other communities around us, which is what happened with the Art and Community Reading Group series.

After a bit of a break, we will be changing a few things for fall 2016 and beyond — the day the Pitt stops changing and gets predictable is the day we might as well find jobs selling real estate.