Critical Distance PROGRAMMING EXHIBITION > Learning to Be Here

Opening Reception: Sunday, January 18th, 2026 from 6pm-9pm; curatorial talkback with artists from 6:30pm-7pm. Please RSVP here.

Learning to Be Here is an exhibition of five looping films by Anika Iyer, Dee Dee Decay, Hala Alsalman, Wang Zi, and Xinyi Tian. Embodiment within a decentralized lens → these films focus on the curiosity of deciphering communication sequences, understanding hi/stories through an oneiric epistemology, symbolic cognition, forming self through communal mark-making, and practices of re-languaging.

Curator Jasmine Liaw is drawn to notions and strategies of unworlding. Unworlding, coined by Jack Halberstam, is the open invitation to do the hard work of un-making entrenched world systems of power that affect bodies and being. These films allow us to let go of these established containers and arrangements → as a way of “world-making” through reframing communication systems and destabilizing socially bounded concepts with diverse articulations of emergence.

In this process of Learning to Be Here, the memory of sounding time made me curious about visualizing non-time? In an attempt to offer a different embodied relationship to time, all of the films in this exhibition are shown on one large plinth screen, with the ability to project the films on both sides. The first side (facing out of the gallery) cycles through the five films, but with each rotation, an additional loop is added to every film, cumulatively expanding the exhibition’s duration until each reaches five loops. The second side (facing into the gallery) loops through all of the films just once, repeating without accumulation. Both sides loop the films as an in-flux relationship, challenging this sense of arrival using visual duration. This curatorial approach transforms how we choose to sit with experimental films, how they are accessed, as well as the expanded significance when sustained together: a collective endurance for decentralization.

Program
Signs and Symbols by Anika Iyer, 2:57 mins
STRIDE & SHINE! by Xinyi Tian, 52 secs
The Rod and The Ring by Hala Alsalman, 8:56 mins
Flammable by Dee Dee Decay, 6:55 mins
Kindergarten by Wang Zi, 1:06 mins

Access notes / Sound description
Stools are provided for viewing on the outward facing side of the wall if needed. Sound descriptions for the videos are as follows:

Signs and Symbols by Anika Iyer begins with tiny clicks from a roll of analog film chatters forward with a soft, steady flutter the motor hums mechanically. At the end, the rhythm stumbles into a hollow spin and a brief, strained release before falling silent.

STRIDE & SHINE! by Xinyi Tian opens with delicate, twinkling chimes that gradually lock into a playful, forward-pulsing pattern of crisp, tactile tones, like a machine learning to dance, then blooms into shimmering textures carried by cheering crowds and the bright voices of children. Soft bubbles pop and fizz in the foreground before joyful, steady drums take over, lifting everything upward and then vanishing into a wide, breath-held silence, as if after a faithful leap.

The Rod and The Ring by Hala Alsalman opens in the dense vibrance of cicadas, their living chorus fades as the separation of the rod and ring syncs with a metallic pulse of synths that bend and shimmer. An inquisitive melody repeats throughout the film, returning again and again as a searching presence, curious and unresolved.

Flammable by Dee Dee Decay begins with the hushed, wavering recording of the artist’s grandmother singing an unknown song, punctuated by brief pockets of silence before cutting into the harsh, physical scrape of metal being ground. Later, a remixed winter-solstice fire gathering surges with an MC’s empowered cry of “Run it down,” drops into silence, and closes with layered recordings of the grandmother speaking Cantonese while teaching the burning of joss paper, uneasily entwined with phone audio of people shouting in panic after an airstrike.

Kindergarten by Wang Zi begins with the sound of the rigorous rasp of a pen scribbling on paper, a fragile, human rhythm that slowly softens as sounds begin to overlap and drift. An Italian children’s choir fades in, bright and cyclical, interwoven with layered recordings of the artist’s mother practicing and mispronouncing English words, her voice warm, vulnerable, and achingly sincere.

Thanks to OCADU’s RBC Centre for Emerging Artists & Designers for their support of this Career Launcher partnership. Critical Distance acknowledges funding support from the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario. Thanks also to Charles Street Video for technical assistance.