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Lauren Prousky


Exhibitions & Projects
Pubic Mice
Microsoft Office Suite Presents: I Look Forward to Hearing Back 
handeye
a screen is a good servant to a soft animal in wait
Going up the down escalator (searching for a neutral path) 
open channel neutral agent 
Questions for a prebiotic broth
You can tell me more 
When we speak at the same time we speak the same language 
A spill that stays streaming
Collecting Dust
To build tiny monuments it to gather what’s there
Not for right now but keep just in case (BIG BAGS)
The glinting bones will go in my place (final performance in soup)
The Finally Frontier
JunkDrawerPhantomDressUpSoirée
Sometimes I worry I go too far

Gatherings
failsafe
Black Tie Soup Night
Cha Cha Real Smooth: Art with Instructions
This Horizon Line is Bent at The Waist
Familiar Strangers
Buoyancy: Poolside Performances

Non-Fiction
CAFKA.25 Writer-in-Residence 
Untitled (an essay by any other name would probably smell different)
Pinch 40.5: A Written Cabaret
My cuttlebone is a broken heart and it propels me forward
Becoming Slime
My Fruitless Love Affair With Sudoku
In defense of belly button lint and the hole that is nothing
Change of plans
Archive
Piles, colour coding, vessels, shelves and lists 

Fiction
A brief overview of the stuntman economy
Trophy Case
Ushers
Too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction
Word Limit
The Matinée

Workshops
PoeticPolitic: Guided Writing for Collective Visioning
List Poems 
Mischevious Still Lives
Text Collective
Clutter Collaborator
Little Eulogies for Stuff Departed

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Taking the name of the project space seriously—that is, living in ‘a van down by the river’ as the pinnacle of a failed life—"failsafe" is a public gathering with failure at its centre. Within the project, Sudoku puzzles are positioned as a Sisyphean task, a futile labour with no end and little productive value.

“The Sisyphean rule or restriction is brought into play only to then be occupied ambivalently (even humorously at times) where the failure of the action is not only inevitable but is rather encouraged—a desirable deficit which inversely produces an unexpected surplus, the residue or demonstration of wasted energy.”  (Emma Cocker, "Over and Over, Again and Again", 2009)

"failsafe" explores how this unexpected surplus and the seeming inability to “succeed” in the performed action can seductively reveal porosity or flexibility within the rigid frameworks that make up our daily lives under capitalism. To paraphrase Cocker, by deferring closure or completion, the “Sisyphean Loop” could be understood as “a mode of resistance through which to challenge or even refuse the pressures of dominant goal-oriented doctrines”.  

Those who attend the exhibition's opening/closing will receive an 11x17” poster that highlights their (non)achievements, a difficult-to-eat hot dog, and a renewed appreciation for past, present and future failures.

The event will take from 6–8PM in the gravel parking lot behind the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Guelph (115 York Street).

“failsafe” is one in a pair of projects co-curated by Shalaka Jadhav and sophia bartholomew for A Van Down by The River.