On Saturday, September 20 from 1:00p.m. to 5:00p.m., Pierre Lassonde Artist in Residence Zachary Gough, is running a free symposium called “Building a Movement for Housing Justice: Social movements, artists and non-profits.” This event is located at the Purdy Crawford Center for the Arts and is open to anyone interested in learning and talking about housing and housing justice. The symposium will be followed by an opening reception from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. for “Homes | Investments,” an exhibition of screen prints and sculptures Gough made during his six months stay as Pierre Lassonde Artist in Residence. Among the event speakers are: Ashley Legere, the Executive Director of the Cumberland Homelessness and Housing Support Association, Matthew Hayes, the Canada Research Chair in Global and Transnational Studies at St. Thomas University, members from Halifax Mutual Aid, and representatives from NB Acorn, a local chapter of ACORN Canada working to protect affordable housing. Gough is also giving a workshop on bridging the gap between fine arts and social justice in relation to the housing crisis.
Gough, a member of the 2008 Mt. A graduating class, with a MFA in social practice from Portland State University and later in life, Gough became a trained carpenter. Gough noted that art schools are somewhere he feels “really at home” as they “offer a window where we set aside the time for art and creativity.” According to Gough, his varying qualifications feed his current art practice which centres around an idea inspired by performance art: “if we can have an action be an artwork, then we could also have an interaction or a relationship be an artwork as well.” During his Lassonde residency, Gough ran a series of workshops attended by Mt. A students. While listening to house music, the group learned about and discussed housing injustice, and Gough shared his carpentry expertise which led to his team of students building an emergency shelter using the Halifax Mutual Aid shelter design.
In an interview with Gough, he discussed how “many people understand the housing crisis from a personal and lived experience […] so many of us have trouble finding apartments or have trouble affording the basics of life like food groceries and housing because our wages are so low in comparison to what the cost of living is and I think you do not have to care about art to come to this event or to get something out of this exhibition.” Sackville, a town that houses approximately 2,300 Mt. A students (mta.ca), and according to Statistics Canada, approximately over 1,500 seniors, has a great need to discuss both housing and education. Seniors, which are, according to Globe and Mail, an age group that makes up over a third of Canada’s single renters population and are at the centre of local housing conversations. Sackville apartment buildings house a large portion of the off-campus students and are majority owned by the Lafford Realty Group, the rental agency, currently building a large complex on York Street in the old block which housed Blooms and Blind Forest Books. Gough encourages an awareness of who owns the tallest building as “throughout history, like European history, the groups with the tallest buildings have always had the most power.” For example, Gough goes on to say that “the church had power, incredible power and they wielded it and built the biggest buildings to prove it. And you know in the 80s and 90s and 2000s there’s like banks, like the big office towers were always banks, banks, banks. And now we see the big buildings are developers, and so you know, pretty much everybody in Sackville understands that the Laffords are control a great deal of power and are shaping the town in a substantial way and so while having more housing is good, what kind of housing are we do we have? And are there any shifts in the social relations of power?” Tradewinds, a Co-op housing program in British Columbia which provides an alternate solution to ensure housing is accessible by setting the rent at thirty percent of the renters income, was proposed by Gough as a solution.
Anyone interested in learning about housing and the housing crisis is encouraged to register using the QR code. If you can’t attend the event, Gough’s exhibit of screen prints and other sculptures will be on display from September 20 to October 20 in the Purdy Crawford Center of the Arts during building hours. To find out more about Zachary Gough and his practice you can visit his website: https://www.zacharygough.com.