Agonistic Possibilities in Ontario’s \nRegional Galleries, A Proposition
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper evaluates the relevance of the regional public art institution in Ontario as it relates to the contemporary global populist moment. Communities in sparsely populated regions are frequently less exposed to cultural, racial, and class differences, making them potentially more susceptible to the rhetoric of right-wing populism. The regional gallery has an opportunity to introduce affective and agonistic presentations of difference that question and complicate existing hegemonic forces. Drawing on theories of public space from Rosalyn Deutsch, antagonism in relational practice from Claire Bishop, and the educational turn from Janna Graham, this paper finds that public art galleries have the capacity to produce agonistic civic spaces. These agonistic tensions, as articulated by political theorist Chantal Mouffe, put into question current hegemonic forms, encouraging the formation of new counter-subjectivities among audiences. These findings are supported by two case studies: Peterborough’s artist-run centre, Artspace, and Oshawa’s Robert McLaughlin Gallery. Interviews were conducted with the curators of each institution, and several exhibitions and programs were analyzed based on the merits of their agonistic potential.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.021 | 0.018 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.011 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".