Last night was the opening of RAM (Rethinking Art and Machine) at THEMUSEUM. Once I again I find myself wondering “How does this stuff happen in a place like Kitchener, Ontario?” That question is what brought me to this city in the first place, and I hope you will be asking the same during SLSA. See today’s article on RAM in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record.

Today, Colleen Wolstenholme’s oversize brass casts of Xanax and Dilaudid were installed at the UW School of Pharmacy in Downtown Kitchener. Ivan Jurakic, Director of the University of Waterloo Art Gallery is also installing a large collection of Colleen’s work on the main campus to coincide with CAFKA and SLSA. Wolstenholme’s sculpture and jewelry, including “Viagra/Birth Control Rosary,” will be on display at the Critical Media Lab during CAFKA. You can hear Colleen discuss her work — including the copyright controversies surrounding it and her potential law suit against Damien Hirst — during her SLSA panel talk on Saturday, September 24.

In honour of Marshall McLuhan’s mania for bad puns, SLSA 2011 will be joining the IMPACT Theatre Festival’s SALSA PARTY at Chrysalids Theatre on the evening of September 24. Yes, this means salsa at SLSA. The newly revamped Chrysalids is a short walk from the Delta Hotel. It has a dance floor for 200 people, plus a big lounge and bar. The program organizer Isabel Cisterna described the event to me as follows: A total of over 30 performers…lounge, dancing, food, cocktails. Everything is ready including an 11 piece Salsa band. What more can I say? You can read more about the event and its headliner band KAZU here: http://www.nerudaproductions.com/content/event/cazu-latin-band Note that there will be no entry fee for conference registrants.

For you SLSA physicists, it might be worthwhile making an extended stay in the area to check out the new Stephen Hawking Centre at the Perimetre Institute for Theoretical Physics here in Waterloo. The grand opening is from September 16-18, and Hawking is expected to attend. Read about it here: http://www.cbc.ca/m/touch/technology/story/2011/07/27/science-hawking-waterloo.html  

The final online program is available here.