5:30 p.m. Reception | 6 p.m. Program

Can you imagine a world without birdsong? Exhibition artists Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens, with curator Sylvie Fortin, will discuss their collaborative practice and how their initial inquiry into birdsong for the exhibition, "Look, it's daybreak, dear, time to sing," on display at the Ulrich Museum this fall, led to an exploration of interspecies care, the financialization of agriculture, and the decline of grassland bird populations. The artists’ collaborative practice combines a concise approach to the form and construction of the art object with a desire to make ideas visible. For several years, they have examined the history of science and other forms of knowledge, including the language of economy, the magic of statistics, the capacity for models to impact the future, the aesthetics of data visualization, and the design of laboratory experiments. Their work tends toward the re-sensualisation of abstractions through objects and actions. Sylvie Fortin is an independent curator, researcher, critic, and editor based between Montréal, New York, and Omaha, NE, where she is the Curator-in-Residence 2019–2021 at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts.