Forty years after the global 1968 uprisings, German artist Tilo Schulz has arranged a performance and exhibition that involves student action, 1950s–style abstract painting, and local Cold War politics. On the University of Toronto Mississauga campus, a large-scale event involving students stages the construction of 'revolutionary' abstract paintings through the use of paint-ball guns. Meanwhile, in the gallery, an exhibition revolves around this event and the subsequent images in the context of relevant histories, as well as around the legend of Mississauga resident Igor Gouzenko, Canada's first true Soviet spy who only ever appeared in public wearing a hood.

The November 16th event is free and open to the public. In response to political realities, the guns are aimed towards a new aesthetic instead of drawing blood. Results of the event will produce the exhibition, which will be on display until January 11th, 2009.

Student uprisings have always arisen in response to new powers and policies being implemented on different socio-political levels, including the university level. In post-war times, rigid policies trickled down from Cold War politics within university administrations and faculties. Today, a top-down, market-oriented structure dominates many university systems, where students are questioning the role of the university in creating a new society. Amongst students’ grievances today are the distribution of funds throughout the university which tend to reinforce a powerful hierarchy, high tuition fees, poor transportation systems perpetuating overuse of the car, the exclusion of many from a university education, the university’s intimate relationship with corporate powers and militarism, and the complexities of a university bureaucracy set to serve itself before students.

—Séamus Kealy, former Curator of the Blackwood Gallery