A cultural platform for exploring critical ideas of our time through art and dialogue.

Bringing together two distinct archives, Erratics explores the tensions between memory and fiction, examining the role of photographs and words in uncovering hidden narratives.

Attempting to convey two personal stories, these collections of images, texts and records reveal both the impossibility of fully knowing the past and the effectiveness of literary imagination in grappling with history.

Toronto author Martha Baillie adds further layers to her most recent book, The Search for Heinrich Schlögel, through a multi-media installation. In Baillie’s hypnotic novel, an archivist seeks the truth about Heinrich’s life through letters, documents and photographs providing glimpses into the young man’s journey from a small German town to exploring the Canadian North and finding himself lost in time. Hundreds of postcards, voice recordings and a musical composition created by Nic Gotham give material substance to Baillie’s literary plot that addresses our fraught relationship to the historic past.

In His Father Over Time, Toronto artist and curator Malka Greene mines a store of materials belonging to the late Dr. Morris Resnick – a former World War II reconnaissance photographer who avidly documented his life and times. Emulating the work of an archivist, Greene tries to piece together the threads of this private story. In parallel, Morris’s son – television writer and satirist Alan Resnick – explores his relationship with his father and family through the mnemonic device of the archive and responds with a personal series of texts. Where information may lack or memories fail to fill the gaps in time, fiction takes over.

Martha Baillie is the author of five novels, including The Search for Heinrich Schlögel, a Globe and Mail Top 100 book for 2014. Her previous novel, The Incident Report, was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, was a Globe and Mail Top 100 book for 2009 and is being adapted into a screenplay. She has written about contemporary visual art for Brick magazine and other publications. Baillie studied at the University of Edinburgh, the Sorbonne in Paris and at the University of Toronto. She lives and works in Toronto.

Malka Greene is an artist and independent curator with a particular interest in photography and new media. Her work explores many themes, including history, relationships, connections and the grey areas between the known and the unknowable. Greene’s work is included in several private collections and publications, including Flava: Wedge Curatorial Projects (1997-2007) and Chart magazine. She holds a BFA (Hons.) in New Media with an English Literature minor from Ryerson University and a Diploma (Hons.) in Applied Photography from Sheridan College. She is on the Board of Directors of Gallery TPW and is based in Toronto.

Alan Resnick is a TV Comedy Writer who has written for live action and animation. He has won three Gemini Awards and was an original writer on This Hour Has 22 Minutes (CBC). Whether on television or in his literary blog Welcome to Kafkaville (Pop.1), Resnick explores the nuances of relationship, and themes of love and loss, using off-beat humour and satire. He was born in Ottawa and currently lives and works in Toronto.

Erratics

Photos

Mirror Images: Exploring Erratics

The Natalie Brettschneider Archive