I Don’t Know When Paradise Is: History as Artistic Material

An artist talk with Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay.

The event will begin with Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay’s performance lecture The Five Ages, a floral archaeology that explores the symbolic relationships between human history and plant life, specifically within the context of a queer aesthetics. Nemerofsky selects five flowers to symbolize distinct moments in the history of El Dorado, referencing both its incarnation as interwar Berlin nightclub and early 80s art exhibition, as well as its general application as a legendary, faraway site of utopian longing. The flowers stand in a ceramic vase designed by the artist to provide each flower with its own distinct opening. The artist arranges the flowers to interact contrapuntally, creating a bouquet of colliding and overlapping temporalities. The performance will be followed by a conversation between the artist and History’s Jennifer Evans.

Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay is an artist and diarist based in Edinburgh, Scotland. His artisticgestures in sound, video and text contemplate the history of song and the gender of voices, the rendering of love and emotion into language, and the resurrection and manipulation of voices – sung, spoken or screamed. In his work you will find bells, bouquets, enchanted forests, folding screens, gay elders, glitter, gold leaf, love letters, imaginary paintings, madrigals, megaphones, mirrors, naked men, sign language, subtitles, and the voices of birds, boy sopranos, contraltos, countertenors and sirens. His work is in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada, the Polin Museum for Jewish History, Warsaw and the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. www.nemerofsky.ca

This event is sponsored by the History Department, the Carleton University Art Gallery, and the Cultural Memory group.