Durham, Canada—Rural Reading Riot (RRR) is a literary and visual arts festival that combines performance, spoken, visual and written practices of artists and writers. While generated in so-called rural Ontario, RRR seeks to connect and reach beyond rural boundaries, gather and share through riotous collectivity, radical care and collaboration.

As we pivot to accommodate the flexibility necessitated by the changes, needs, and care emerging from the pandemic and movements, Rural Reading Riot considers the letter as an intimate and radical form of communication. Taking place over three days, from Friday, October 23 to Sunday, October 25, 2020 RRR brings you:

A slow-release-series of commissioned letters by visual and literary artists including Kait Dickinson, Pamila Matharu, Janet Rogers, Sarah May Taylor and more!

The first-ever online performance of A Choir of Demands and Desires on Repeat by Annie Wong in collaboration with Faith Arkorful, Hanan Hazime, Fiona Raye Clarke, Angela Sun, and Rebecca Sweets. A Choir of Demands and Desires on Repeat is choral performance of feminist speech acts. Performed by an ad hoc choir of local women and nonbinary BIPOC, the score recalls, reminds, and reinstates demands made by women and feminist movements across geography and history. Lending from sound poetry and endurance performance, nuanced political desires within the intersectional matrix of oppressions overflow in an orchestrated cacophony of sounds. Resounding in echoes is the exhaustive labour of repeating a history of feminists demanding social justice.

A series of online workshops rooted in maintaining connection while separate.

---

You are invited to join the artists, writers and performers by attending one of their online workshops: 

To Whom it DOES Concern facilitated by Janet Rogers

Coming To Voice: An AWA Creative Writing Workshop led by Fiona Raye Clark

Finding Your Voice: Read Aloud with Confidence and Energy with Angela Sun

Going Short: An Introduction to Flash Fiction guided by Hanan Hazime and Rebecca Sweets.

---

Durham Art Gallery’s first annual Rural Reading Riot (RRR) is a part of the exhibition What Haven’t We Learnt Yet, Still? Artist Pamila Matharu dedicates a virtual baithak (the Panjabi/Urdu/Hindi word for lounge) as an online gathering space to host the festival.

Durham Art Gallery rests on the traditional land of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation, which is represented by the communities of Saugeen First Nation and Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation. We thank them. We also thank of the Métis Nation of Ontario, whose history and people are well represented in what are now Bruce and Grey Counties. Durham Art Gallery is a non-profit, exhibition-driven space for contemporary art and visual culture in so-called West Grey, Ontario. From our earliest incarnation in the local Carnegie library to our current purpose-built home, the Gallery’s evolution is marked by an engaged community and a diversifying landscape.

Rural Reading Riot gratefully acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada, Canada Arts Presentation Fund, for their generous support.