Exclusive Memory: A Perceptual History of the Future

Tom Sherman is an artist and writer, who works across media (print, video, radio, performance, the web). Sherman represented Canada at the Venice Biennale in 1980, and has been featured in hundreds of international exhibitions and festivals, including the Vancouver Art Gallery, National Gallery of Canada, Museum of Modern Art (New York), Whitney Museum of American Art, and Documenta X. He has published extensively, including Cultural Engineering and Before and After the I-Bomb: An Artist in the Information Environment and was the founding Head of the Media Arts Section of the Canada Council in 1983. In 1997 Sherman founded Nerve Theory, a recording and performance duo with Viennese musician and composer Bernhard Loibner, and the duo has contributed to many radio venues internationally. Sherman has received the Bell Canada Award for excellence in video art, the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Art, and is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Film and Media Arts at Syracuse University.

David Diviney is the senior curator at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax. He is the editor of Close to the edge… The Work of Gerald Ferguson: Collected Writings and Statements, the definitive account of this late artist’s approach to his art and times, and his writing on the art of the 1960s and ’70s, contemporary art, and visual culture has been published widely in journals and exhibition catalogues. Diviney has also taught curatorial studies and fine arts at the Alberta College of Art and Design, University of Lethbridge, Thompson Rivers University, Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, and NSCAD University.