POST pacific POST.COM

I’ve already expressed certain grievances with c. 1983 Part 1.

Part 1 felt like it was the fourth show I saw that month with Ian Wallace (in retrospect it was only the third show).

Part 1 read like a caricature of Vancouver’s reputation.

Part 2 starts to complicate things a slight touch.

The canonization of this era has emerged to be the real question underlying curator Helga Pakasaar’s initiative. Placing Ian Wallace across the room from Kati Campbell, Laiwan adjacent to Christos Dikeakos, Vikky Alexander next to Mark Lewis. The exhibition provokes a consideration of who and maybe why some have skyrocketed into international success while others have become an obscured memory.

The panel discussion with Campbell, Don Gill, Cheryl Sourkes, and Cate Rimmer was an oral history project in the making. There are very few official records for when and where such spaces as N(on)commercial thrived, the early days of Artspeak, the web of connections spurting forth from Intermedia, Kaja Silverman’s stint at SFU, the influence of 90s film theory to Vancouver’s critical art discourse, and the general presence of where galleries and like-minded businesses were in relation to each other are all unmapped histories that Vancouver is just now 30 years later starting to chart out.

The timing of this is crucial, as one audience remark (from a gentlemen with a walking cane) said it is quite preposterous none of this has been written down as those who remember will soon be dead. The room was full of “survivors” as it would appear with only a few faces under forty. Pakasaar noted that more exhibitions about this era are needed and that more should be made with focus on different years in this era.

My mind went blank right around then. A sudden sense of exhaustion overwhelmed me for all those artists of my generation and those coming up after us. If current galleries are going to be preoccupied with remembering the past that they never bothered to record, how will the present, forced to thrive underground, be charted and remembered?

Like a vicious cycle, those who founded the bulk of Vancouver’s artist run centres did so because they did not have a space to show. The impression given was collaborative idealism mixed with youthful energy (or stupidity as they now concede). The tireless and passionate wrote project grants and lived off welfare. Rimmer waitressed while she ran Artspeak. Gill drove city buses for half the year so he could spend the other half processing his knowledge of the city. Beer sales and parties paid the rent.

This all sounds too familiar as the same thing lives on — only, this middle category of the established artist run centre has emerged since then to both distract and dilute. Sourkes said it best when she plainly stated the obvious: emerging artists today have no interest in artist run centres. They see them as another establishment, but a lesser one. Artist Run Centres are an impulse of the past.

So, the model has aged into securing space and broadening their international reputation. Everyone wants space. It’s all anyone can talk about. But everyone wants it for cheap and they want to be paid well to run it. The professionalization of artist run culture has taken the forefront of motivations. I am not against anyone making a dollar in what they do, but I do have to question what it is they are actually doing?

A survey of those ARCs founded in the 80s and still going appear to be more interested in securing long term leases than providing platforms to local artists. As a result, there are dozens of tiny pop up spaces running out of studios and apartments, but there is an apathy in these spaces and in the works that are almost unconsciously anti-professional in a jaded ironic sort of way.

My grievance with exhibitions like c.1983 are not against the works, artists, or curators. I quite like the exhibition for its gendered consideration of an era mostly known as a boys’ club. However, I realize after listening to this support group disguised as a panel discussion that my frustration at these exhibitions is the space they take up in the present consciousness. I have watched the most creative and brilliant minds give up because they find it demeaning to have to reiterate the discourse and legacies that came before them. There is honoring the past, and then there’s just a return of the same. And if this oral history lesson has taught me anything, it’s that a bit of youthful stupidity might still be the best way to get things done.

Image credit taken from Boca Del Lupo

Up and up the stairs into a small blacked out room with chairs loosely spread around and people sitting in positions not quite able to look at each other — but we do.

We are kindly warned, we being theatre goers, we being not claustrophobic, and we being given this choice of the warning.

With a flip of a switch that nobody saw, the kind warnings are gone and we are coldly and efficiently led down and down and into a waiting unmarked van. The re-recreation of human trafficking here lapses as the crowd turns giddy. Maybe from nerves, but the energy of being communally thrilled is consciously perverse, and yet, that’s what we’ve come for.

As a play that throws you into the experience of those who are trafficked across the Pacific Ocean and into Vancouver harbour ever year, Sherry Yoon’s The Voyage packs a small, yet powerful punch. Inside the blacked out van, a precursor of what’s to come, our ears adjust to the radio, at first seemingly contemporary and maybe scanning live, but it’s only the beginning to an intricate and incessant sound design. I think about the benches the 12 of us are sitting on, which have been put in for our comfort. The same benches back to back are inside the container. We never have to touch the floor, be cold, or uncomfortable, or doubt our exit plan.

Hours later, I still have a mild headache from breathing in too deeply from the darkness of the container. The soundscape is the voyage from the dock to the sea to the voices of the trafficked — mostly of women smuggled and sold in the sex trade. The parallel to the Atlantic slave trade is vivid and horrific. Most die on the voyage. Most have no idea what’s about to happen to them.

The horror of the situation can never be re-created, only imagined. Boca Del Lupo have taken a leap into the visceral darkness of human trafficking and present a sensory (deprived) experience that is stunning by our defaults. The impenetrable darkness and the increasing deprivation of oxygen, all for a controlled 20 minutes, is to raise awareness, to produce a tinge of lived empathy, and yet, as we filed back out into the light, taking a leisurely closer inspection of the container, inhaling an extra deep breath of fresh air, and stretching out the muscle cramps that were as imagined as the sea, the lingering experience of The Voyage actually make me thankful, if not feel more privileged than ever before.

We aptly sat in the darkness as the world went on outside, we aptly did nothing as we listened to the stories of the humans who have survived. I can only wonder what the audience thought and felt of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka’s Slave Ship: A Historical Pageant when it premiered in Newark in 1967. Baraka too felt it necessary to immerse the audience away from their daily reality and into the lived journey by confronting all senses from a soundscape of the suffering and the sea to emitting the smells of feces and urine into the theatre.

Slave Ship was from most accounts an unrelenting work about building a communal sense of an African-American identity within the context of the American civil rights movement. I can only begin to speculate about the context of The Voyage, pointing towards the politics of our consumer positions trading places with the bottom barracks of the pan-Pacific economy, giving us a pause in wondering what keeps driving up the real estate prices and who’s really paying the difference.

The Voyage is directed Sherry Yoon as part of Boca Del Lupo’s Micro Performance Series. Designer Jay Dodge. Sound Artists Jean Routier & Carey Dodge. Runs March 28: 7pm & 8pm, March 29: 7pm, 8pm, 9pm, March 30: 7pm, 8pm, 9pm, March 31: 4pm (matinée), 7pm, 8pm, 9pm at The Anderson Street Space

Image credit: Kim Adams, Optic Nerve (2010)

Following this recent post, a friend in New York introduced me to the term “Canadian ghetto.” It was made in reference to an artist we both know who straddles the Atlantic ocean and takes offense at being introduced as “Canadian.”

Meanwhile, I have been in sporadic contact with American curator Denise Markonish for the past year with a recent concentrated effort to discuss her upcoming exhibition, Oh, Canada, at Mass MoCA.

Below is an exchange between Amy Fung and Denise Markonish about thinking and traveling across and through Canada, America, survey shows, ruffling feathers, and of course, a sense of place.

Amy Fung: I want to begin by sharing my own thought patterns in first hearing about Oh, Canada. The first time I heard about the show, I grappled onto the “largest survey of contemporary Canadian art ever produced outside Canada” line. I grappled because from this I infer the fact that Canada has been producing really strong contemporary artists, but no one until now has paid attention. But then I had to ask: Yeah, but is anyone in Canada paying attention? I haven’t found a single person who actually knows every name in your line up. I don’t think this type of show has even ever been produced within Canada, and I am not counting acquisition shows as that’s about something else entirely … The concept of a Canadian biennial has been murmuring for years, but there is absolutely no consensus. What sort of insights can you share about your grand tour?

Denise Markonish: Yes, we struggled with that line a little bit, I do believe it is the largest show of contemporary Canadian art period. In my research I came across biennials from decades ago (Diana Nemiroff’s biennial at the National Gallery was in 1989), and sure there have been plenty of regional shows inside Canada and out. In some ways it is a completely ridiculous endeavor to “survey a country,” but I like that absurdity - especially in a time when I think most of the international art world looks towards places like China or India.

What does it mean, then, to look at Canada, a place that is less considered by most or wrongfully thought of as “just like the U.S.”?

I have always thought Canada to be a kind of stealth producer of all things - from culture to natural resources, to even things like the paint roller and the Wonderbra! But I realized I didn’t know nearly enough about the artists there. Sure, I was familiar with folks like Rodney Graham, Jeff Wall, Stan Douglas, Janet Cardiff etc, but when you think about the Canadian artists that are players on the international stage the numbers are rather small. So I became really interested in finding out more, to taking on the absurd idea of surveying a country.

It was a bit of a grand tour, I went to nearly every province and territory; looked at over 800 artists in preparation and visited 400 over a three year period. Because I had a number of artists in mind from the start (like those listed above) I wanted to challenge myself in what it means to not include some of the usual suspects, I wanted to dig deep and find those surprises, which is really more fulfilling to me. I could have done a great show with the artists I could find easily but then I would have never had a chance to meet every one I did, and to bring more Canadian work to the forefront.

Plus it was important for me to not just get a sense of the art, but to come to know the place. For even if one is not directly making work about place, it has ways of informing a practice. For instance, the funding systems in Canada, which both provide individual artists funding and are geared more towards alternative rather than commercial spaces, allow for artists in general to have more freedom in their practice, more time in the studio which leads to a different kind of practice than is possible in the U.S.

These are the kinds of things that fascinated me and were real revelations. I have always been the kind of curator who looks outside of trends, I have built a career by never going to a place like New York City, and I think that perspective happily forces me to look at art in a broader way. Canada opened my eyes, there is so much amazing work there, so it is really my hope that this show does the same for others. I am glad that you say that not everyone knows all the artists, in my eyes that means, even before the show is up that my endeavor was successful.

Image credit: Divya Mehra, The Pleasure in Hating, 2010, digital c-print, 22.5” x 30”

AF: I wholly support your curatorial approach of looking “outside” the trends or centers, as I think it’s not common enough especially within a country as geographically vast as Canada, but quite small when it comes to its “art world”. Any Canadian survey would seemingly have to include these type of artists mentioned above because that’s what the international art world/market understands as Canadian — if it was curated within the country.

That’s why I wonder if a show like this can only have been done outside of Canada. Do you feel your position as being a so-called “outsider” has given you any advantages/disadvantages? Say for example, the names you list above are all noticeably based in British Columbia, names based in B.C. but with a foot in the international scene. In this way, artists on this side of the Rocky Mountains — which as a recent transplant from the prairies — I have noticed as possibly even more isolated within a Canadian identity, which I understand as an identity struggling with internationalism on a regionalist level.

DM: I do think that in some respect it is easier to approach a show like this as an outsider, it releases one of a certain level of insider politics. I felt like I could be totally free with my choices and omissions in that respect. However, as an outsider I do think lots of folks question whether this is a “true” reflection of Canada rather had it been undertaken by someone living in Canada.

There will always be omissions, how can there not be, and I think the one people pay the most attention to are artists from Vancouver. I think that is because the Vancouver scene is, as you say, “what the international art world/market understands as ‘Canadian’.” So then, what does it mean to take out of the equation that which people identify as “Canadian art?” Hopefully it creates a whole new equation, which broadens the view of what people think of as “Canadian art.”

Though this show includes some historically important artists, I wanted to choose artists who were less identified (and in some cases not known) in the United States. To place these artists next to younger generations, shows that strong art comes from all across Canada and not just one place. I also think that since Vancouver is so often identified with a certain style that many artists get left out of the conversation. My choices or omissions (which ever way they are viewed) were not an aim at dismissing anything, but rather at revealing what often gets lost.

Despite all of this we still come back to the question of whether or not this endeavor could have been undertaken by a Canadian curator. I always come up with the same answer: Why not! Look at shows like the Whitney Biennial - love or hate it - it is a survey of a country by curators who live there…

AF: Don’t even get me started on a national survey by curators who live here … that conversation remains stalled for similar reasons to why I think your curatorial choices have ruffled a few feathers, namely, that Canadians still don’t have a sense of their nation. Geographically speaking, it’s safe to wager that you have seen more of Canada than most Canadians ever will and that you have thought more about Canadian identity more than most Canadians (and Americans) ever will.

I must admit I am actually delighted your choices are ruffling a few Canadian feathers as the show, after all, is going to be seen on the majority by non-Canadians who may never have thought about Canada in any critical or conceptual way let alone the differences between art made in Lethbridge versus art made in Montreal. The level of myopic regionalism in this country is brain damaging. However, it’s all related, as what interests me most about Oh, Canada is its synchronicity with a local (and often emerging) desire to move beyond these historically dominant and stagnant perspectives of Canadian art and Canadian identity (ie. the impenetrable West Coast photoconceptualism legacy still rampant in Vancouver and the Greenbergian Formalism still alive and well in Edmonton and Saskatoon via Emma Lake). It’s a regional if not local conversation that has no national legs, and here via Mass MoCA it suddenly becomes an international conversation. Do you feel like you are participating in a number of local conversations rather than any one national dialogue?

DM: In terms of the local vs. national dialogue, it did feel that way at first. I think because of the geography of Canada separating pockets of artists, a national dialogue takes a lot of work. So, sure I have had lots of regional discussions, but then in putting the show together as a whole and writing the catalogue I really wanted to bring it back to the national, and more importantly the international. I have said all along that though this show is deeply steeped in Canada, that in the end it is a great show of international art that just happens to be made by a bunch of Canadians. My early litmus test for success was whether or not the final list of artists would surprise people. Once the show is up my measure for success is that it keeps people talking, and opens a dialogue that can continue well after this show disappears. The only way to solve these problems of the regional or local is to talk to others about it and before you know it the conversation will be (hopefully) international.

Image credit: Amalie Atkins, In the Reeds with the Bolex from Scenes From a Secret World, 2009.

AF: One last question, or maybe parallel, and that’s this idea that Canada is this vastness filled with untapped potential. This image immediately makes me think of our natural resources that we mine, pump, and excavate for international trade. But instead of bitumen and potash, this show has excavated something else that’s raw? Sure the market value vastly differs, but does this parallel hold any resonance for you?

DM: I have just been talking with the museum director here, Joe Thompson, as he is writing his foreword for the Oh, Canada catalogue. His first draft was all about NAFTA and the changing state of trade over the last decade or so (and the continual cry to “buy American”). And of course there is much talk about pipelines and the fact that most of Canada’s resources get shipped south. So I do think this is an apt metaphor. I find it interesting that in an era where borders are increasingly militarized that an art exhibition can be done that essentially opens up that border and hopes to make it more porous. I guess this is more about exchange that “tapping into resources,” but in many ways the ideas go hand in hand.

Have I “tapped into Canada’s art community” in an attempt to find the more unrecognized, sure… but not from a point of greed but it goes back to exchange. For so long Canada to outsiders has been known for a few stereotypical things like natural resources, comedians, hockey… I think its time it is know for its art too!

It’s been really interesting to think of someplace else for so long. But lately I have been thinking more about here - the United States. I have heard over and over again through my Canadian adventure that it would be impossible for a local curator to do what I did, yet at the same time I ruffle some feathers by not including what everyone expects. So its a funny back and forth…which in all honesty is not that funny at all (maybe funny strange rather than funny ha ha), because it does lead to a stall, which is a no-win situation for anyone.

But back to how Canada got me to think about the U.S. - I don’t actually think anyone here really looks at the whole country. Sure we have the Whitney Biennial, but that is often a pretty myopic view based on current trends. But I don’t get the sense that any American curators are traveling across the country to seek out artists. Maybe as an exchange a Canadian curator should do that! Its a really hard thing to do, to tackle a country, to try to suss out what makes it, and as a result, its art tick. I don’t think it’s impossible to do as an insider either.

Oh, Canada runs May 27, 2012–Apr 1, 2013 at Mass MoCA.

Opening party on Saturday, May 26 with a dance party DJ’ed by Brendan Canning (Broken Social Scene).

Artists include: Kim Adams, Gisele Amantea, Shuvinai Ashoona, Amalie Atkins, Nicolas Baier, Daniel Barrow, Dean Baldwin, Rebecca Belmore, Patrick Bernatchez, BGL, Valérie Blass, Shary Boyle, Bill Burns, Eric Cameron, Cedar Tavern Singers AKA Les Phonorealistes, Janice Wright Cheney, Douglas Coupland, Ruth Cuthand, Dave and Jenn, Michel De Broin, Wally Dion, Mario Doucette, Marcel Dzama, Brendan Fernandes, Michael Fernandes, Eryn Foster, Noam Gonick and Luis Jacob, Hadley + Maxwell, David R. Harper, David Hoffos, Kristan Horton, Terrence Houle, Allison Hrabluik, Sarah Anne Johnson, Garry Neill Kennedy, Wanda Koop, Diane Landry, Micah Lexier, Craig Leonard, Myfanwy MacLeod, Kelly Mark, Luanne Martineau, Rita McKeough, Divya Mehra, Chris Millar, Kent Monkman, Kim Morgan, Andrea Mortson, Clint Neufeld, Graeme Patterson, Ed Pien, Annie Pootoogook, Ned Pratt, Michael Snow, Charles Stankievech, Joseph Tisiga, Hans Wendt, Janet Werner, Mitchel Wiebe, John Will, and Étienne Zack.

Image credit: Guo Fengyi, Avalokitesvara, Ink on ricepaper, 372 x 98, 1996. Taken from the Long March Project, Beijing.

Guo Fengyi is by no means one of the skyrocketing art stars of China’s booming art scene. Her ink drawings are viewed as traditional, her approach is self-taught, and her inspiration is intricately connected to her study of Qi Gong. And yet, Guo Fengyi’s works have exhibited internationally as some form of Chinese “Art Brut” in the first incarnation of London’s The Museum of Everything, Paris’ Galerie Christian Berst, and now making its North American premiere, at The CAG in Vancouver.

I’m not sure what “Art Brut” means when applied to modern Chinese art (besides that it can be a selling feature), but I look at the drawings of Xian born Guo Fengyi (1942- 2010) and I see them as meditative exercises.

The series of drawings up at CAG are densely repetitive in circular motion and reveals a constant movement of hand and eye. They have no beginning or end in formal composition and offer no biting commentary that has come to define the majority of contemporary Chinese art. Her difference has made her appealing, but her difference is not reactionary as she is also from an older generation. In fact, Guo Fengyi turned to art as a means to express her mysticism which came in the form of vivid visions after she delved deeply into her study and practice of Qigong to cure her own bout of illness. Her drawings appear as literal emanations of renewal and rebirth, as modern Qigong has been revered (and held suspicious) for its ability to cure a host of illnesses from cancers, tumours, to degenerative diseases.

The current understanding of Qigong can be traced back to pre-historic China as one of the oldest living exercises that combine breathing with movement. Both Tai Chi and Kung Fu are combative versions of Qigong, which is an inherently meditative practice that focuses on regulating and regenerating the body’s cardiovascular/circulatory, lymphatic, digestive, and nervous systems as well as all internal organs. Qigong practitioners believe most illnesses are from stagnant energies retained in our bodies and organs, and so both breathing and movement are integral to its basic principles.

So I am rather disappointed to hear the CAG held a yoga class last weekend rather than a Qigong class as part of their public programming in support of Guo Fengyi’s exhibition . Sure, the CAG is in Yaletown so yoga fits right in, but the two practices should be respected in their difference and not be collapsed into one ball, especially since movement is so vital to the drawings and to the understanding of Qigong - a primary distinction to yoga’s focus on poses or asanas.

Yoga is also already extremely popular while Qigong is far less visible — a just parallel to the figure of Guo Fengyi.

Guo Fengyi runs February 3 - April 15, 2012 at The Contemporary Art Gallery

I didn’t even know Zach was in town, but so he was and I ask him if he wants to come to an art talk at The Western Front. Zach was staying at Gerome’s place, a guy I knew in junior high and hadn’t seen or thought about except as Zach’s friend. Gerome had moved to Vancouver five years ago and was living just a few blocks away from the Front, but neither of them knew where I meant so we meet at Foundation beforehand. Whoever gets there first should order nachos.

I haven’t had nachos in quite a while since I regularly ate them with Ted and KO. Nutting and Julianna. It’s been a long time. I order nachos, and I have to resist feeling sentimental about it. I think about these people often as I’m walking down the street, but I am glad we don’t live in the same city anymore. Any sense of bittersweet nostalgia vanishes when Zach arrives with five others. To my surprise and mild horror, everyone is connected from yesteryears in Edmonton.

What are you doing here? is a valid enough question. But I couldn’t bare to ask it and I certainly didn’t want to answer it. Strangers would have at least posed the “… and what do you do?” affectation that is only harmful in its unoriginality. The addition of here implies a sense of territory, one that is geographical as much as it is social. There are a lot of Edmontonians in Vancouver. Calgary. Toronto. Anywhere really. There are clusters of Edmontonians across Canada, just as there are clusters of Canadians across Europe. But I don’t want to hang out with Canadians in Berlin just because we come from the same country just as I don’t want to hang out with Edmontonians in Vancouver because we come from the same city.

This much I got from Lise Nellemann’s talk at the Front that night. Invited by Instant Coffee for their parachute marathon of events and lectures, Nellman is the primary organizer behind Sparwasser HQ, an organization that had a heavy rotation of residencies between 2000 - 2008. Nellemann’s presentation of IC at Sparwasser HQ gave the impression that it was a good place for newcomers to Berlin’s international art scene to meet people, especially ex-pats who congregate during fellow ex-pat exhibitions and events. But Nellemann herself has a post-nation attitude, which I wish she had gone into more. I have come from Edmonton and I am from Hong Kong. I don’t feel aligned with either of those places, but the inquisition of place continues to haunt me.

Vancouver has proved to be a city (and art scene) that sees itself as an international centre rather than a Canadian one, but while the city is increasingly feeling and looking more Asian, cultural references are still dominated by European dialogues. It’s as if there is a denial of local internationalism for a more nostalgic sense of the term. I am not alone in thinking this. A wayward comment from the stands that evening mused aloud professing Vancouver as a city sitting at the edge of the world before slowly adding that it was also a gateway into a new other world.

The new infers an old, but no one is consciously saying so yet.

Sorry we’re sick and hung over and late. I didn’t think it would be so loud in here at this time. Can I get a Caesar? Hot toddy? Thanks. Okay let’s get started. We’ve been gone for the last three years, just getting back last summer from graduate school in San Francisco. But before I left I was really into what was going on in Vancouver, and then I left, thankfully, and coming back, I’m not sure if I just learned more or if things had really changed, but I was suddenly tired of the same old conversations … about photo-conceptualism. It has made Vancouver special, but I still see artists having to negotiate this legacy whether or not they work in that vein.

Art in Vancouver has been very serious, researched, conceptual, and about place, but there are also artists who are less concerned with research and concept and working almost in expressionism, who may or may not be working in reaction to photo-conceptualism, but they are making very different work that is not being written about, and they are making a lot of it.

We are speaking in total generalizations, but bottom line is that we are interested in being comprehensive. All these spaces that pop up and get shut down because they’re not going to get the type of funding that go to the institutions and artist run centres so they operate illegally and sell booze to pay the way until they’re caught. There are different levels of Vancouver’s art scene and we want to represent it all in one space, so hence, a website. We are not just trying to be reactionary, but there are going to be reactionary moments.

It’s really loud in here, can you repeat that again? We are interchangeably using those words, “website,” “magazine,” “listing” for now, but we’re focused on creating a space where people can get in touch with the community that is not necessarily being served that well on the internet at the moment. We want to be a resource used by galleries, artists, and visitors. What’s really lacking in Vancouver is a space for reviews which are good for cv building and critical feedback. There’s a history of print culture here and academic publishing, but surprisingly not a more accessible internet presence to connect Vancouver outward.

Coming from America, people were just doing things, and that was great, it was almost expected that someone to start a gallery or just go and do something. Here it is more reserved and passive. We are slow to act and we are focused on community than individually driven. Some would say it’s an insecure arts community that are not well funded and not well respected beyond a small niche market, so it’s also a self-protected passiveness. But we should note that Decoy is a collective endeavour with an ethos of an Artist Run Space. At present, our business model is to be determined.

Should we get another round? We’ll need a minute. Okay, let’s get another round. We both worked at the Wattis Institute and Vancouver does have a great international reputation judging from the artists that were being constantly programmed, but there are also different scenes going on. We had to keep telling people, “There’s more than just these same people we all know about already!” In that way, we are trying to be supportive of the arts community in a different way than we normally see. We are trying to be supportive in a more direct way, in a critical way.

We are employing different styles of writing and Decoy will gain shape as it moves along. We are not only working with professional or self-identified arts writers. We want to have sharp accessible writing, but we also want to work with writers and new voices who will approach art without the same baggage that an arts writer might have. There have been times when I am disgusted with what I read. “Reviews” that are actually regurgitated artist statements and glorified press releases disguised in descriptive language. We were inspired by Art Practical, though AP is much more expansive in scope. We are interested in different perspectives, which we see as valuable. We are trying to take arts writing out of its comfort zone.

I appreciate magazines. I think they’re beautiful. Full of advertising. Print culture will always be there, but we are really interested in doing something online because it’s timely. We don’t want to put out a review three months after the show closed. A website is dynamic and we can only hope that people will read a review and feel compelled to go see the show and have a dialogue with the show and the review. Good question. We understand that nepotism and advertising will have to be negotiated, but in the beginning, we are drawing on our friends because that’s where a community starts, from who you know, but I already know that the shows that repel me the most will likely be the shows I send writers out to because those are the shows that we want to engage with. We are opening up the door to anyone, but we will be negotiating and deciding what’s good and what’s bad art and arts writing as we are also not a free for all.

It’s been tough lately, especially for the arts community who lost The Playhouse and The Ridge. Grants have been getting cut for years. We were in the States when the gaming funds got cut and I remember people were really freaking out then. But I do think this crisis could be a good thing as some spaces have been getting homogenous. We have to be innovative again, and while it’s sad, in a lot of ways the game is changing and different models are going to be in use. It is going to be tough because Vancouver is so regulated and expensive. Rentcouver? That makes sense too.

I’m just sick of working for other people. I am a creative person and I isolate myself in my work and my labour as an artist, but my creative practice and my career are so far apart. It is a solitary practice, though broken with exchanges with galleries and curators, who are a different breed all together. I just got distracted, sorry I didn’t hear what you said. I just ordered fries. Can you repeat that again? Sure there will be some gate keeping. It’s inevitable. It’s our judgement, but it’s also reflective of what we get. We can only respond to what we get, so I hope I am challenged to promote and discuss art shows I can’t stand, but which doesn’t mean they’re not worth promoting.

Drinking revives me. Don’t write that down. Vancouver is a really privileged place and there are a lot of people who have taken their privilege for granted. There’s a sense of entitlement to have cheap rent and to have a beautiful city. I can’t imagine living anywhere else. It’s so warm in the bathroom, we should just do the interview down there. We just want to make Vancouver less impenetrable. It can be a cold, cold city. We know someone who saved and saved to come here and lasted two days. That’s actually not an exaggeration. He was a delicate sort, but still, that says something.

We came up with this idea on a sunny day on the beach last summer. How Vancouver. We had heatstroke. I was finding it hard to re-enter Vancouver. I know what’s going on, but I don’t know if I feel all that comfortable. There’s no hustle here. West coast vibe is real.

Vancouver is consumed with its own history. Vancouver loves to look at itself, probably from all the glass towers that look like mirrors. It’s just where we are. Mr. Peanut is the epitome of Vancouver art to me. Really? I would move to California in a heartbeat. We have no expectations. This can completely fail or completely succeed. The internet is always happening.

Amy Fung sat down with Decoy Magazine (Lauren Marsden, Sasha Krieger, and Max Stockholder) for a conversation about intentions. The text has been transcribed from scrawled quotes and mental notes and has been approved (sort of) by Decoy Magazine. Look for their launch in Spring 2012.

Sitting between the opposing bleachers Instant Coffee have built, I am confident this is as good a function as these risers will ever have. Faces are stacked from floor to ceiling and more keeping creeping in as opinions and distractions are volleyed back and forth.

The topic of rezoning Mount Pleasant has been on the periphery of almost every conversation shared recently. I don’t live in the area, though I did consider it, but when I officially moved here three months ago the area around Broadway and Kingsway had become the most expensive rental zone in the city for what I was looking for. I’m not looking for much; I mainly wished to live within walking distance to fresh produce. I have spent too much of my life getting in and out of cars to buy papaya. However, within this basic priority there lies a number of social prerequisites including an inherent globalized market, a climate to support walking year round, and a density of population who know and support businesses on their street.

If I had to offer a definition for what makes a city livable, one answer would be that it is walkable, and the other is that there are spaces along the way to discover. But what exists in those spaces is just as important as having them there. I may prefer one business over another based on the simplicity of a smile. I apply the same guideline to art spaces when sometimes the level of aloofness is so overt that I wonder why these spaces are public at all. So when these same spaces are under threat in neighborhoods where they have no visibility and have built no connections on the ground, when nearby residents don’t even feel welcome to enter, I am torn as to how I feel about their fate. This may appear antagonistic within my own community, as while I will defend the importance of art with every breath I have, I defend through scrutiny and examination of how art remains vital. Otherwise, we have empty storefronts filled with reified objects and their value as assets take precedence as their primary value.

If we glance back at the rise of contemporary art, we find ourselves at the feet of Duchamp, who blasted art out of the retinal arena only to find it hurried back in with a “Do Not Touch” label next to a didactic panel. The emergence of Artist Run Spaces began as spaces to play, but they too have gone the way of becoming fortresses rather than fields (at least in Canada anyways). So what is there to do? I have no conclusions, but I am interested in rolling back the situation to see how this has come to be. To understand a situation is to look at its roots, because while reactionary responses offer band-aid solutions, it is likely that surgery is actually required.

Back on the bleachers, idioms are being tossed around like a game of hot potato. “Developers” and “City” are held up momentarily but their weights are not considered. An “us vs them” perpetuates the power struggle and comes out as an internalized cultural hegemony. Creating alliances is important, but it’s also important to remember that power is never given. Not even shared. Power is taken, historically, consistently, and effectively by those who really want it. But maybe the hunger for power is the biggest distraction of all, as at the end of the day, people just need to be aware of one another on an interpersonal level. So if the conversation keeps bending towards forging a relationship with the city, then isn’t it natural to create a civic arts council? I was confounded to learn by the end of the night that Vancouver doesn’t have an arts council and that nobody was clear on whether there ever used to be one or not. This posting by Tom Durrie is the closest thing I have found to an explanation, but what needs to be further stressed is that an independent arts council would represent both sides and advises on behalf of the city’s artistic community to government and other agencies while channeling viable city-based opportunities for artists.

All I knew before arriving is that if I had to hear the word “neoliberalism” as an answer one more time I was going to lose it. But Other Sights implied that this was going to be a new type of conversation, one without predetermined agendas in order to open up the discussion rather than offer conclusions. No conclusions were made, though agendas are hard to check at the door. The sugar rush from the root beer float and the lack of oxygen in the room were definite factors, but I did leave that night feeling genuinely buzzed. It was a sensation of being all worked up with no where to go, spinning from an energy with no certain direction. The Future is Floating and that in itself is inspiring and a continuum.

Image credit: Production still from Elles, Les Productions Figlio, Photo credit: Chris Randle, 2012

Joining a prestigious list of some of Vancouver’s most daringly innovative arts companies, Serge Bennathan’s Les Productions Figlio premieres Elles as the 12th winner of the Rio Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Awards. Next year’s winner was also announced as Theatre Conspiracy’s production-in-progress, Extraction, and starting in 2014, RTA winners will also be additionally funded for a tour through Northern British Columbia. The award itself is worth sixty grand, which is certainly nothing to sneeze at in our current arts funding climate both provincially and nationally, and looking backwards, the RTA Performing Arts Award has been directly responsible for launching many international careers.

Starting from Holy Body Tattoo’s Circa to Kidd Pivot’s Lost Action, the peer assessed funds allowed a shift in creative process to dream bigger than before. This is true for Bennathan’s Elles, which featured a depth through its employment of a range of dancers from across Canada. While most professional dancers do hop across the country to dance for various companies, the eight female dancers in Elles are not assimilating into a company’s repertoire as much as they are bringing to the show their own unique histories. With an age difference of over twenty years between the youngest and the oldest, and bringing in different strengths from contact to ballet, I doubt it’s a coincidence that Bennathan chooses to focus on dancers from Vancouver, Winnipeg, and Montreal, the three Canadian cities that sustain a national presence while creating their own dance vocabulary. Bennathan plays a bit of a maestro in assembling a series of powerhouse solos and duets together into one piece, building a tempo that begins with a soft gracefulness and moves deeper and deeper into a frenetically charged propulsion.

The eight dancers, Erin Drumheller, Linnea Swan, Valerie Calam, Ali Robson, Alison Denham, Darcy McMurray, Susan Elliott and Carolyn Woods, have been given the luxury of time to work on the details, especially with their hand gestures and many more minute and quick physical movements such as ticks, wobbles, and juts that speak louder than words. The herd movements were best when synchronicity broke down and the movement rippled outwards rather than being led. As individual uniqueness is played up more so in this production, the ensemble remains cohesive in some shining moments of collective expression. In certain scenes that appear more like chain reactions, Bennathan makes it clear that when one has been affected, all have been affected. The musical composition by Bertrand Chenier was utterly enigmatic, or maybe cinematic, and was the (other) backbone to the show. Some very good image-making occurs throughout, including the last scene which I read as a landscape of warm pulsating rocks or orbs. 

Notes

- While I don’t think any single dancer stands out or is suppose to in this mixed cast, Linnea Swan’s gestures were noticeably strongest.

- I liked it when certain duets fell out of synch, but I’m not certain that was the intention.

- The set was not really used to its effect as shadow play was hinted at, but never executed.

I must admit I found myself resisting the show at first, as it appeared to be another lyrical contemporary dance piece working on a classical motif of women as forest nymphs, but hats off to Les Productions Figlio for shattering that resistance.

Elles runs March 13 - 17, 2012 at The Cultch

Image credit: Skeena Reece, Raven: On the Colonial Fleet, 2010 digital photograph Photo: Sebastian Kriete

There is the Beat Nation exhibition currently on at the VAG, and then there’s the path of Beat Nation that began through grunt. Both take place on unceded territories of Coast Salish Nations, otherwise known as Vancouver, but there are a few important differences.

The one by grunt focused on music, especially on the rise of hip hop influences in contemporary expressions by First Nations artists. The recent history of hip hop as a means to empowerment, storytelling, and myth making grounded in the body as voice and beat has found an unprecedented parallel in both urban and rural First Nations youth.

Under the rubric of hip hop as activism and expression, Beat Nation speaks directly to the anger and negation of a history irrevocably altered and damaged by the Canadian Government’s Indian Act (a piece of statute that is still upheld today). The resulting works are about expression and knowing your rights, translating into mostly dense and poignant, some radically hilarious or scathingly satirical, and all acutely conscious works that speak to awareness.

The one currently on at the VAG shares similar names and intentions, but expands to incorporate artists working with “urban” themes while acknowledging their traditional forms of identity. It is this expansion from hip hop to “urban culture” that is questionable, as the grassroots power of hip hop is not necessarily reconcilable with the commodification of urban life.

I also cannot think of a single contemporary artist of First Nations heritage not working in this vein of responding to what’s around (i.e. urban/rural, technology, etc) while prescient of their peoples’ histories. Assembled together under “urban” meets “traditional” that also encompasses skateboard culture and “staging” (still not sure what that means in the context of this show), Beat Nation could be critiqued for sitting too close on the borderlines of glorifying street culture as a dominant aesthetic for contemporary First Nations expression. The danger I see in this parallel (more so in the art world than in the music industry) is the prevalent classicism of subjugating street culture into a subculture. Some artists included in the exhibition are also clearly not working in this street culture vein, but they are far outnumbered.

Some thoughts that still linger:

- I can’t tell if Omushkego Cree Duane Linklater’s neon nod to Norval Morrisseau’s Androgyny has been misunderstood, and if so, for the right reasons.

- Tlingit/Aleut multidisciplinary artist Nicholas Galanin’s tsu heidei shugaxtutaan pt.1 & 2 were the first works I saw, or more specifically the first works I felt. Part 1 featuring David Elsewhere Bernal’s trademark fluidity breaking to a traditional Tlingit song strips away the big beats and transcends rigid categories of “traditional” and “urban” and moves into an inspiring realm realm.

- Miss Chief Eagle Testickle is best when she’s a ham.

- Roaming artist, activist, and songwriter Cheryl L’Hirondelle’s uronndnland (wapahta oma isonikan askly is revisited as a series of photographs documenting her roadside reassertion of her self and her land along the TransCanada Highway near Morley, Alberta. Rearranging the stones along the shoulder to spell out in Cree syllabically “look at this leftover land” along with in English “I am Canadian,” L’Hirondelle’s work is placed in the “Tag” section of the show, referring to marking and graffiti of urban culture. Only, unlike urban marking, the action of this “tag” is meant to be visible as the significance of the work lies in the presence of the artist as she renders into visibility the dormant histories of confiscated land. 

-  White Mountain Apache/Navajo Dustinn Craig’s 4wheelpony is just good film making.

- And the best moment in the show was turning the corner after seeing the all too quiet jingle boots and finding two little boys ecstatically jumping along with Brooklyn-based Anishinaabe and Wasauksing Maria Hupfield’s video loop of her keeping the beat (and destroying her knees).

Beat Nation is curated by Kathleen Ritter and Tania Willard based on an initiative by grunt gallery. Runs February 25 - June 3, 2012 at the Vancouver Art Gallery

As an evening of contemporary German silent videos programmed by Bernd Milla scored with live musical accompaniment from local musicians programmed by Instant Coffee, Blid N Sound was altogether a pretty magical evening of musical and visual interpretation. Playing four short sets from the likes of Jeremy Schmidt (Black Mountain and Sinoia Caves), Stephen Lyons, Shanto Bhattacharya, Skye Brooks (Fond of Tigers),
Marta McKeever, Tess Kitchen (E.S.L.), Bryan Davies, Edo Van Breemen, Sam Davidson, Tariq Hussain, Brennan Saul, John Walsh (Brasstronaut) to a packed house on another cold drizzly night, the event made me wonder if it was nights like this that made The Western Front what it was in the 70s and 80s.

As one of the first artist run centres in the country and so one of the defining paradigms of what an ARC should be, the Front has long held a legacy of experimentation and events across disciplines from sound art to video to exhibitions. Only, the legacy now precedes any programming of recent memory. The Front has undergone a lot of internal rebuilding over the past number of years with departments such as performance art getting the axe as well as the end of Front Magazine. The Front can still get by on its international reputation, but tonight made me miss a history I never knew.

Immediately following their set, one of the fellas from Brasstronaut said it best when he said to a round of applause: “Vancouver doesn’t do this often enough.” Everyone notices that cross-disciplinary collaboration isn’t happening in this city. Vancouver has even developed a recent reputation for being a void for multidisciplinary opportunities, and hearing this said within the walls of The Front was a wake up call.

Blid N Sound is a project by the Goethe-Institut in cooperation with Instant Coffee and Revised Projects for IC’s 12th anniversary, Feeling So Much Yet Doing So Little running February 17 - April 7, 2012 at The Western Front.

I’m not sure what there is to say as so much was said and yet nothing was said at all. As the kickoff to the much anticipated Prospective Lecture Series, Bernd Milla was the antithesis of what I understand as “prospective.” Talking about the past as in spaces and residencies that no longer exist and sharing some very old news about Berlin as a mecca for artists, Milla’s talk reminded me that I am capable of feeling simultaneously bored and angry at the very same time.

Language barriers may be one thing to consider as I was gently reminded afterwards, but it is not actually Milla the person that bored and angered me, but what he stands for.  Serving as a Director for various organizations over the years with a background in critiquing and curating, his glib remarks about intern exploitation, the personality traits of philanthropists, and the revelation of his image selections all added up to a tired image of middle management.

Middle management has been creeping exponentially deeper into the arts at all levels from the institutions, granting bodies, residencies right down to so-called artist run centres. A lot of this has to do with funding structures and creating accountability (ie. quantifiable productivity), and the general professionalization of the arts which in today’s terms means the corporatization of the arts. Middle management personnel also never leave, which creates a freeze in procedural change for twenty up to forty years. The result is a reinforcement of standards and protocol, which maybe more obviously in the dynamism of art, is a system that stagnates far more than it propagates.

Nevertheless, I am still looking forward to the rest of the lecture series as well as to Blid and Sound, an evening of silent videos programmed by Milla and Instant Coffee featuring live music by Jeremy Schmidt (Black Mountain and Sinoia Caves), Stephen Lyons, Shanto Bhattacharya, Skye Brooks (Fond of Tigers), Marta McKeever, Tess Kitchen & Diona Davies (E.S.L.) and Brasstronaut. Why I am still looking forward is a no brainer, as art is actually not a job or position that one can quit because the conditions are deteriorating. Boring, on the other hand, is a far more deadly state to quell.

More information on Blid and Sound and upcoming lectures available at The Western Front.

Image credit: Still from “Moonstruck” Francois Roux, 2012

The penetrating darkness of a quiet city park is the subject of rumination in Francois Roux’s Moonstruck.  While produced during a residency in France, the video work/installation certainly resonates with wanderers of this city.

Anyone who has taken a walk after sun down in Vancouver, especially through any one of its park lands, will know how pervasive the night really is. The night in this city is not entirely urban, and yet, the light also differs from the countryside as there you can at least see the stars. The darkness in this city, as it is in the video, is broken only by the sparse illumination of manufactured light. Street lamps become one’s navigational stars — and here is Roux’s fascination and play.

There is a play between being drawn to the light and hiding from it too. The presence of lamp posts are very literally at the centre of experiencing Moonstruck. Their formal similarity to tree trunks is not lost, but it is also not exaggerated. An element of voyeurism is hinted as your eyes strain and search, but the intimacy of the space diffuses the lurking sensation, especially if more than one person is present.

More to be seen from Roux as grunt Media Lab presents H20 Cycle, a new series of video works made in and around the English Bay area. As Roux came to Vancouver on an internship through grunt, the cyclical element will be present in more than one way for this emerging artist.

Francois Roux’s Moonstruck runs until March 18, 2012 at CSA Space. Click through for more information.

H20 runs March 16 - 31 at grunt gallery. Opening reception on the 16 from 7 - 11pm

Image credit: The Nekaa Room: Dark Matter, Sachiyo Takahashi, 2012

Presented by Boca Del Lupo as part of their Micro Performance Series, The Nekaa Room: Dark Matter is one (tiny) black sheep. In a culture that fetishes cute animals on everything from accessories to clothing to food to characters in major motion pictures, cuteness, especially anthropomorphized cuteness in animals, has been the facade of narrative rather than its target. But here on Anderson St in a tiny room with a tiny sheep, Sachiyo Takahashi assembles and reassembles a narrative exploring the dark side of nekaa (cuteness).

Don’t be fooled by the sock monkeys and gummi bears; the underlying principle of the show scrutinizes our human tendencies to empathize through cuteness. The cute know how to milk it, and the usual suspects always offer to help out those who are cute, but the sinister consequences offered by Takahashi have scarred me from fondue. 

As one of her microscopic live cinema-theatre works, The Nekaa Room is most interesting in the transference of Takahashi’s miniature world into a live cinematic narrative. Using what looks like a delay effect, a blue gel filter, manual zooming, a deft pair of tweezers, and a prerecorded soundtrack, the performance put on by Takahashi is utterly transparent, yet full of magic and mystery. I felt as if I had stepped inside somebody’s unfolding imagination, and I was curious if not a little horrified. Funny and alarming, The Nekaa Room will thankfully not leave anyone exclaiming “That’s so cute!”

The Nekaa Room: Dark Matter runs March 7 - 10 at The Anderson Street Space: 1405 Anderson St, Granville Island.  7pm, 7:45pm, 8:30pm, 9:15pm each night.

The rain is still falling as I make my way to East 2nd for the third time in a day. I had gone to Catriona Jeffries for Julie Feyrer’s opening, but work is never seen at an opening. I have to go back to view and hear the work in the quietness of the day. To save time I should just stop attending openings all together. I never engage with the work and can never recall any of the conversations had beyond merely having them. But it’s in these pockets where faces can be paired to names and we still need faces to go with names. Openings are the messy intersections where work smashes into life for the precariats in this game and they are emblematic of symptoms I do not reject but which I also cannot accept.

When I step back out into the damp drizzle on a darkening afternoon I head over to grunt to check out Charlene Vickers’ Ominjimendaan/to remember. I am only there for a few minutes to be with the turtles. The show will travel next to Urban Shaman in Winnipeg and as there are no windows there I wonder which direction the turtle heads will face. But I’m not really thinking about this until sometime after as I’m back on the same block six hours later to see Justin Gradin and Justin Patterson do something together. The vagueness of most performance descriptions is a good trick when intentional, but some people really take it the wrong way. Both Justins have studio spaces at Dynamo and I only knew one of them until I am introduced to the other one during Feyrer’s opening.

Here at this performance opening nothing is ready an hour after doors open and Karilynn is already here and not wanting to stay so I suggest we head to the Narrow for a drink. Back into the rain I walk two blocks for one drink though technically I have a double. Once inside we run into Sasha and Lauren who are just coming from Gallery Fukai’s opening of Ian Skedd where they weren’t sure if anything was actually going on. I get the sense though they just can’t be bothered to talk about what wasn’t going on as their feet were wet and their jackets were soaked — though Lauren gets going a little bit when I ask her what she hates most about being back in Vancouver. I could have stayed for another double if I hadn’t made the trip to East 2nd with a purpose so I head back to the performance space — one of these open concept/loft/live/work/gallery/performance spaces that remind me of being 24 again.

The space is crowded now with bodies grouped into small islands and a looping projection of lulling waves on an empty beach that stays on for the entire night. I am no longer in a chatty mood so I hang back leaning against the makeshift wall and stare up at the corrugated steel ceiling that is making everyone so uncomfortably warm. I can hear a chorus of conversations around me that are more rising inflections than anything cognizant and I am not bored but I am suddenly exhausted. As I’m eyeing the exit, the performance begins and Justin P and Justin G appear in black hoods that look like gas masks with smoke stack looking snouts. Wires hang down their throats to pedals on their hips that are further connected to contact mics dangling from their hands. They start playing with garbage, activating, some would say, the perimeters of refuse. They pull staged scraps from a clean steel garbage can placed in the center of the room that could have been dirtier and less staged in its placement. I can see through the mask that Justin P has his eyes closed at times when he tilts his head back to project the bellows of distortion coming from his contact mic. He howls out the excess and howl is just about my favorite word in the English language. Justin G appears more methodical, more concerned with manipulating the mic against surfaces, and it’s their contrast in approach that keeps me watching. They stay close to the ground with their masks and their Made in Canada garbage can churning out this soundscape and something decent is happening, not mind blowing — that is not the point — but they are decent because they are doing and it doesn’t feel like wanking. The piece I feel is too long and it turns out to be only an excerpt of a longer work and album they are taking to Japan.

The lights come on and the girls behind the bar try to transform the MDF cubicle into a dance party, but the space clears and plans are made to head to The Cedar Tavern. My jacket hasn’t dried from earlier as I walk to Cedar Tavern with Warren who knows the way and doesn’t want to stay in the MDF cubicle any longer either. We’ve met a few times before but this is the second time we have a conversation about the art game and I once again get super worked up over the rules of the game. I cannot accept many factors of the game, but I don’t know if there’s a general misunderstanding that displeasure equals quitting and that playing only means compliance. Warren gives me a friendly warning that there will probably be people I have to introduce myself to when I get to the Cedar Tavern, but I save us both the trouble as I buy him a beer for walking with me and I split off.

It’s an alleyway speakeasy with an unfortunate art history reference but the works inside do not match that reference. There’s a small gallery space along the front with some forgettable paintings hanging on each wall and it becomes the only room in another wise crowded space that never seems able to hold anyone for long. Art showing is never half as interesting as art making, not even in its spatial correlations, and while this was even the subject matter of Feyrer’s show with the damning title, we all play along as the gallery space is where the value of the work occurs in exchanges unfolding.

I run into waves of people coming from Samuel Roy-Bois’ open house at Langara and the unanimous report was about the copious amounts of food  from pigs in a blanket to a mountain of meatballs. I end up explaining to a Torontonian about the makings of a pupusa and he grew nostalgic for Jamaican patties. Zuzia joins the pupusa conversation as she arrives from Anza with Dawn, Jenny, and Mike. They were playing darts and doing shots and thought of me. She recommends a place off Nanaimo and Hastings for the best pupusas in town and I want to go there now. Aaron had recommended the place on Commercial, but I’m still researching the places on Victoria. It’s best when we can sustain conversations about other things, which is maybe the difference between having friends and having peers. I talk about the shapes of the alphabet with someone named John and we learn together that a “m” is the letter “h” doing a back bend. Outside the randomness of conversations is slipping and I run into Justin P again. I tell him I liked his show and I meant it. Those who are left in the middle of the night share good-byes and the rain is still falling as I make my way home.

Image credit: Louis Daguerre, Artist Studio, 1836

Louis Daguerre invented the daguerreotype, otherwise known as the first form of chemical photography. The invention to capture the still image followed his colleague Joseph-Nicephore Niepce’s heliograph of a barn, an image spanning over an eight hour exposure time. Daguerre’s invention required only minutes, and produced a clarity and realism that was increasingly privileged in 19th century France as life became mechanized and modernized.  

Releasing the image into the realm of a lived and instantaneous reality, the daguerreotype spurned on an avid populist interest in creating portraits of every and all  aspects of daily life. The same sentiment would be echoed and awed in the earliest films just a few decades later, but the creation of reality is just that — a creation — as Daguerre himself staged this image of an artist studio and then made a daguerreotype, immortalizing the “artist studio” as the contents of this image.

This conundrum is where Julia Feyrer’s exhibition comes to life. In “The artist’s studio” Feyrer has painstakingly recreated a haphazard emanation of Daguerre’s artist studio. From the stone relief of a woman (now on cardboard) to flag-like curtains and a gilded frame of pencil drawings, Feyrer’s staged studio receives the daguerreotype treatment three times perhaps as a counter to Daguerre, but it is her 16 mm film of the staging process that becomes her own. Paired with an unsynched soundtrack of a voice over reading Leonard Da Vinci’s treatise on the material differences between a classical studio of a painter and sculptor of the highest abilities, the looping film takes on the perspective of a curious and impatient observer, never ceasing to fidget as the camera takes everything in. The studio is seen from 360 degrees from the lighted stage of the scene to the recesses of darkened corners, and it is the action of staging that comes into the forefront. There is an enchantment with the notion of play, especially of everyday materials that get rehabilitated in an alternate universe. A parallel to Fischli and Weiss is not out of the ballpark, but they are inherently playing a different game.

Along with the reconsideration of the artist studio, a binaural recording through the Royal BC Museum is available through head sets, but don’t offer much, and a new film, “Dailies” is also shown along with all the clocks within the film on wall display. The film is a series of uncut rushes of each clock’s assembly, with each clock taking on different qualities and personalities. Improvised in construction, the one thing they have in common is that they are all obscured partially, and remain stalled in time yet ticking. I am uncertain to the choice of displaying all the clocks made, as that seems redundant to the film itself. As an aversion of logical measurement, the artist becomes a sort of cruel clockmaker, which as a persona, has been taken up through myths and legends over the centuries as a form of wizardry, and the persona of the clockmaker is not all that different from the mythic portrait of the noble artist. “Dailies” as it sits seems unresolved at the moment, as it is actually the hidden history of each clock that is most fascinating. Maybe akin to the latency of images in the daguerreotype, and like the dailies of any film, the bigger picture has yet to surface.

Julia Feyrer, Alternatives and Opportunities runs March 2 - 31, 2012 at Catriona Jeffries Gallery

Image credit: Allan Sekula, Dismal Science: Part 1. Middle Passage. Panorama. Mid-Atlantic. November 1993, from the series, Fish Story (1995)

I wandered in close to 7:30 p.m. thinking it would be an early night: taking a quick peek at the space, at the work, and then back home. I hadn’t read the invitation very carefully. I just knew I was heading to VIVO as they were featuring the work of Allan Sekula.

In the main space a half circle of seated individuals faced the projection screen of Sekula’s images. One woman was in mid sentence about the sublime, and when she finished, one voice in the back was intermittenly referencing Marx. Alex who invited me then handed me a hefty pile of photocopies and I unfolded an uncomfortable chair. The discussion on the sublime progressed into heterogeneity, and random voices starting reading the text again, stopping every other page or so for continued and acute deliberation.

I didn’t know what I had walked into. Was this the most intense art opening ever or are media artists in Vancouver even more serious than I presumed? Whatever it was though, the momentum of the discussions clipped along through a range of perspectives and backgrounds as people came and went throughout the two and a half hours I stayed. It would turn out the night was an expanded version of the reading group, No Reading After The Internet, and that the evening was being guest facilitated by Andrew Witt, whose writings can be read on The Mainlander. This would also be the first time the reading group incorporated images, which was fitting to Sekula’s image and text project.

With roots from Cineworks/Cheyanne Turion’s Thoughts on Film series, No Reading After The Internet explains itself as this:

“The idea of a reading group isn’t new. No Reading nonetheless poses itself as an experimental learning and discussion space. Simply put, we are suspicious of our own reading abilities, and the extent to which our readings are conversant with one another. No Reading means to offer a slow space within which to retrace our steps in the hopes of discovering individual and collective ways through the realms of language and interpretation. The strategies we have at our disposal are twofold: through the yoking of our discussion to a text; and inducing conversation, where possible, between text and specific, local, contemporaneous art discussions and happenings. Participation in No Reading After the Internet is free and open to everyone, regardless of his or her familiarity with a text or its author. Texts will be handed out at the gathering. No pre-reading or research is required.”

Programmed by Alex Muir, a regular at VIVO and one of my former co-pilots for the trek down to Telluride Film Festival, No Reading will be featuring guest facilitators through the summer including Gabrielle Moser amongst others. I’m kind of overjoyed by the presence of this group as reading collectively is such a rare and slow pleasure. In a way, the evening was the opposite of what I had anticipated for yet another art opening, which more often than not is only a deluge of rushed conversations, saying hi and not saying hi, and definitely not talking about art let alone an open and informed conversation coursing through the realms of interpretation.

Check VIVO for more details and information for upcoming NRATI.