POST pacific POST.COM

Image credit: Jem Cohen, year unknown. From: This Long Century

I watched a selection of films by Brooklyn-based film artist Jem Cohen on Monday night. As part of DIM Cinema curated by Amy Kazymerchyk, the films selected included Lost Book Found (1996), which evoked Walter Benjamin in spirit and in action and reminded me of a curiosity for the city landscape that I haven’t felt or seen in sometime.

Cohen’s imagery sparks off an insatiable appetite for the city he inhabits, absorbing the passing congregation of the gritty and the light. There is no difference between the sacred and the profane, not in a Cohen film, and his awe of the city’s tics and vibrations captured a city that wasn’t afraid of its own underbelly.

The city in Cohen’s films is a city that no longer exists. His portrait of Patti Smith, Long For The City (2008), could read as a self-portrait of Cohen. Public congregations are a rare sight today, seen mostly in my mind as part of sanctioned and quartered off outdoor festivals, or lately, through mass protests notably within Canada through the streets of Montreal. Cohen’s latest film is a series of observations taken during Occupy Wall Street’s stance in Liberty/Zuccotti Park. That work carried a different tone, one that was not fueled by curiosity, but of urgency.

Public filming has slid into a rare privilege as laws have taken away the rights (and footage) of many who are trying to engage with their surroundings. There is a decline in public space to gather; there is also a decline in the right to participate, let alone document, the experience of a public space. As a result, there will be a decline in voices such as Jem Cohen and the City as we know it will be a structure antagonistic to our freedom.

Image credit: Jessica Eaton, cfaal (mb RCB) 21, 2012, inkjet print 127 x 101.6 cm, Courtesy the artist and Clint Roenisch Gallery, Toronto

It’s not until the third time I turn the bend do I start to realize how grounded this particular Jessica Eaton image really is. Not this one picture above. But the one with the horizon. Kelly points that out. The horizon makes it. I can only agree. The image is very strong, and speaks very well to the wall of Elizabeth Zvonars that first drew my attention. I have been drawn to her work before, and it’s good to start putting faces to names.

En route, I run into some folks on the sea-bus. I don’t remember who they all are, but afterwards, I am reminded one of them was Dan Siney. Really? I can’t remember what he looks like now. But Cowboy, the smaller of the two, has stayed with me. This image captures Spring time. I look up his works afterwards, and he seems consistent. Absorbed. Bad sight lines at the opening, but patience in waiting for the standing room conversations to move on was worth it.

The main room is muggy. I thought it was only muggy in Toronto. I could feel the humidity as we climbed the stairs. Everyone is out on the patio taking breaks. I have a hard time matching names to faces tonight. My mind must be somewhere else. But a double take and recognize the boy that I once knew as Patrick. Another world away.

I circle the crowd again, trying to locate the Kevin Schmidt work. No one recalls seeing it. Turns out it’s a web exhibition along with Jay Johnson. What is a web exhibition? This is their web exhibition. I’m not sure about it either, but I like that they will grow. Actually, clicking through Johnson’s archive so far now, it’s pretty great. Formalism reduced. Digitized. Collected and re-collected into the new. I’m brought back to Rachelle Sawatsky’s works. The older My Room adjacent to Optimization. They belong together. The spectrum is balanced, but not obviously so. I want to see this work again.

Phantasmagoria runs until July 8 at Presentation House Gallery. Curated by Helga Pakasaar and Reid Shier

5/19/12

I feel like it’s been a while since I did the loop. At least a month. A long month. It’s been a long morning, but gorgeous weather. I don’t know how people get any work done in this town. I start for Main St. I take Robson which I never take. i wanted to walk a straight line and this is as close as it gets. One of the scrolling footer quotes from Solnit’s Wanderlust speaks to how when provoked, you should walk away into the horizon until your anger subsides. Physically marking out the variation of emotions. That’s hard to do in Vancouver. There are no straight lines from the West End. No distance to mark and look back. I hear a cyclist get hit before I see him on the ground. I am glad I walked instead.

I make it to Access in no time. I make some notes about Vessel. They are written in blue ink with blue creases from my jean pockets and say: “I like the floor … Expressive! … Archival? … Imperfect perfections.” I only really remember Carranza’s chairs. They remind me of junior high.

In the alleyway across the street, BEFORE I DIE has been written out on a chalkboard slab against the fence. It’s like graffiti. Or a yearbook, which after all, gets filled with graffiti. It’s a junior high kind of day. Before I die dot dot dot various chalk colours have written  “see the world … go to university … eat more pussy … be with my family.” There is no chalk to be seen.

I spend all of 5 minutes inside the Western Front. Sans Song, curated by Jenny Walton. I will have to come back. This is the kind of work that makes you inhale. I was not ready to inhale.

It’s getting really hot outside and I step inside to Catriona Jeffries. Maya is already there and we take a closer look at Judy Radul’s brain.

5/26/12

I haven’t slept in for weeks. This feels awesome. Jeannie is staying over for a few days and is gone when I wake. My mother calls and sees if I am free for lunch. I am, but does she want to eat around 46th and Fraser? I wouldn’t mind checking something out over there. It’s an enthusiastic yes. There are good eats over there.

It’s another gorgeous Saturday. Nothing good can possibly happen in good weather. The glow of the pink and black alleyway courtesy of Instant Coffee is two steps before Ho Yuen Kee. This is all I have ever wanted. These green beans are a knock out. I take a look around before lunch, but I am not really there yet. I come back after lunch and sit and chat for a while. Mary Anne is there and she asks if I am cooking. I am wearing dark denim and a light coat. She is boiling in a summer dress. Jin is wearing denim chaps. Sort of. Michael is wearing desert boots. I don’t think there should be socks with this look. He thinks otherwise. Kelly takes advantage of the sale rack around the corner and dons an orange and white skirt. Creamsicles make summer official.

I head back downtown and walk into 221A with a bag of guava. Fierce!  Bitch, please. I missed all the openings and parties last night. Erdem Taşdelen is great. The hand-sewn sequins need to be seen in person. Alison is signing things and picking up beer. There is a porch party later. I have no idea what my plans are. Jericho is too far tonight. I should try to meet up with Jeannie at some point tonight. I make it to the four German curators doing their whirlwind tour of Canada. I realize then I learn more about each city through their Q&A’s than anything else. I also realize then that Oh, Canada was opening at that exact moment. I am thinking about all the Oh, Canadians finally being able to take a sigh of relief. The German curators are keen to go see it. But not sure how this will happen. I would also like to see it, but not sure how this will happen. I run into Hilke later that evening in the doorway of the porch party. We extend the conversation about Canada with her holding a can of PIL and me with a tall boy of Carlsberg and I am delighted that they went to Winnipeg. I am asked why I hold such an affinity to Winnipeg. It must be some form of loyalty and respect for the people I have met there. I know I don’t yet feel an affinity to Vancouver, but I do like being here when I am surrounded by good people.

At the very end of my Deveron Arts fellowship/residency in 2011, I conceptualized and organized a two day arts writing symposium called Who Are We Writing For? in the town of Huntly, Aberdeenshire (UK). As an intimate platform for invited arts writers, artists, and curators, WAWWF? brought together peers from across the UK, Western Europe, and North America to come together and meet face to face through a series of programmed activities centered around Roman Signer and Ross Sinclair, both of whom were premiering new works in Huntly. WAWWF? ranks as a professional project on par with any one of the articles I have ever written and any one of the public exhibitions I have ever curated. It is a framework that I will continue as the question at the head and heart of the symposium is, of course, a perpetual question any one of us in this profession will ask ourselves.

However, it is not often arts writers get together to talk about our profession in any formal capacity. I have only noted one other symposium that focused on arts writing specifically, and that was by Maria Fusco during her time as the inaugural arts writer in residence at Whitechapel called Who is this who is coming? It was Maria who told me about the symposium after I invited her to WAWWF?, as the world of arts writers in the English language is just that small.

WAWWF? left me charged with a new direction in my own professional goals as an arts writer. Admittedly, I had started my fellowship burnt out about what I had been writing, namely, hustling non stop for five years writing for anyone and everyone from my base in Edmonton. I had reached the point where I resented most unsolicited queries, not that a lot of my resentment wasn’t unwarranted: On an average week, I was solicited by numerous guilt trips if not outright demands via email and even in person that ranged from pity to psychosis on why I should be writing about their shows. I maybe wrote one to two reviews a week for the weekly, a handful per season (if I was lucky) for the magazines, and whatever I had the energy for on my art blog, Prairie Artsters.  In 2008, I received a one year city grant to pay emerging writers to contribute to Prairie Artsters with the idea to generate a legion of voices. Some of them wrote for a while, but no one really stuck with it. I can’t blame them. Freelance writing is rough. By the end of my time in Edmonton, I made most of my freelance fees covering exhibitions outside of the region as I just wasn’t getting enough paying local work to cover my basic living costs.

The same holds true today in Vancouver, though the context has changed; the majority of my writing on the local arts scene is work I do for next to nothing. I write to engage with subjects that matter to and challenge me, and I do it still because I approach my writing as a practice, and so, one must practice.

In Edmonton, I wrote because it was expected of me, and I no longer remembered how to stop. The couple hundred dollars I raked in every month for the thousands of words I submitted to the local weekly was a mutual gesture to have a local voice and a local presence. But the situation of working as a full time freelance writer was on a downward spiral. As just the tip of the iceberg, I recall a local peer of mine asking me to do him a “favor” by coming into his gallery to review a show that the city paper failed to contextualize properly. I told him plainly that if he wants commissioned writing, he should commission my writing. (He never commissioned my writing). Another incident involved a different local peer of the same generation trying to undercut my writing fee by a third relative to the standard amount they had been issuing to my national peers. (I got the full amount in the end, but not without wading through the bullshit). I applied for endless local jobs in the arts to supplement my writing, but no organization was willing to hire me out of their conflict of interest worries. I felt I was being demanded of and simultaneously unsupported by the same group of people. I left deflated, and over the course of my time away, I knew I was leaving Edmonton as there was just too much baggage from ten years of freelance to carry forward.

So fast forward to January 2012. I am living and writing in Vancouver and I get a message from someone I know in Edmonton saying how she has been reading about Who Are We Writing For? and how great the idea is as she’s also been thinking about similar things. She asks me if I could share some of my insights about hosting the symposium and if I was interested in attending something similar if she organized one in Edmonton. The full transcript is here. This is the last thing I hear:

“Hi Amy,

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly!

I agree with you about this being something that is on people’s minds - XXXX and I have had many conversations that relate to this topic, both in terms of it being something a question others are engaged with and in terms of our own practices. I’m also not interested in it turning into a bitching session, which could happen very quickly. I’m contemplating inviting people to attend who are not just from Edmonton, which I think will help to bring in different perspectives. I really love your idea about having artists who write participate as well, which has the potential to have a similar effect.

I spoke to XXXX about the possibility of hosting a weekend forum as part of my time with XXXX, and he’s interested too. So much so that we’re going to meet to discuss budgets. Once that happens, I’ll let you know if a travel fee is in the realm of possibility - given your experience, I think it would be an asset to have you present. If you send me anything, this is probably the best email at which to reach me.

Thanks again, Amy!

XXXX”

This is the last I hear of her “weekend forum” until this weekend, when I am blindsided this morning by seeing something posted about a “Who Are We Writing For?” symposium happening in Edmonton out of XXXX. Shock is only one of the things I was feeling. In that moment I still held onto a shred of hope as I looked through their website thinking they would have the human decency of at least acknowledging my efforts of the same name and frame. But nope. No credit was given anywhere to the original WAWWF? symposium.

My shock turned disappointment has now formed into a blinding light of rage. I did not know I was still capable of feeling this angry, but I know now in myself that this feeling is tied to a feeling of being shamelessly used. I don’t mind not being invited to my own idea, as I have already been there. I support growing the dialogue between writers, but not like this. If they genuinely had their own unique idea, then that is not clear. If they had just wanted WAWWF? to happen in Edmonton, you hire me to produce it. Writing is already one of the primary byproducts of an invisible labour force (in and out of the art world), and to be made further invisible by one of your own supposed peers is inexplicably vile and contemptuous. The organizer and host gallery are equally responsible for this irresponsibility, and as a first step, I can only make a pledge to myself to never write about either of them or their future activities ever again. As an arts writer, I am setting standards for who I am writing for and whom I am writing about.

May 20 Amendment: I write this to keep track of our accountability to each other as writers and cultural producers. We work in ideas, and ideas must be shared to be realized. This incident is not rare, unfortunately, and I am writing this as an open letter to suggest we start demanding transparency in how we deal and are dealt with in our precarious profession. The exchange of ideas cannot stop, but this is a good a place as any in the blogosphere to begin developing further strategies in how we can share ideas in a respectful and productive manner.

Image credit: Natalie Tan. People Don’t Care What They Say At You, Part II, Acrylic on canvas. 96” x 40”

My heart grows colder with each graduate year. No, don’t say that, even if you are referencing UBC. ECUAD is still a young graduate program, right? Right. But do you see any difference between the graduate and undergrad art shows? It’s not there. Not yet. How will they distinguish themselves in this city?

I was sent an image last Friday from the opening of a hand painted sign painting by Eun Kyung Kim, or is it by Natalie Tan? It was not well painted, but it was clever, and that needs to count for something. I’m also a sucker for hand painted signs. Don’t get nostalgic. I just prefer to see the hand. If I was nostalgic, I would have liked “We drove to find.” Wistful photographs in old frames by Nicole Kelly Westman. I am over nostalgia through transference. Feelings of longing through the lens. Tumblr meets Instagram have jumped the shark on that one. But the stack of papers is of note. The jar of rocks though needs to go.

Nothing happened when I flipped the switch on the side of the melting tile mat by Mandy Mitton. It was nice tile work though, but perhaps lacked spatial boundaries to get across the point. Graduating group shows are never winners, as the randomness overcomes. Caitlin Connors presents a nice gesture for her mother. There is something there.

Over inside Charles H. Scott, things look slicker, but not much better. This is the Masters show so they get the nicer space. Hierarchies have already begun. David Vaisord’s Little Mountain Project is actually well-done. The illustrated map though is misleading. Too pop for the content. I almost did not watch the content. I want to like a lot more of the works, but I tend to not like one liners and smoke and mirrors. This would have been a decent undergrad show, and the undergrad show with some editing would have also made a decent undergrad show, so what is the difference again?

*First appeared on Decoy Magazine

Image credit: Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir and Mark Wilson, 2010

“I attended Interactive Futures’ conference on “Animal Influence” with high expectations. As a potentially exciting platform to bring together artists, cognitive ethologists, biologists, psychologists, and philosophers for discussions and potential collaborations, “Animal Influence” ended with an unprompted PSA on veganism by one of its presenters, and that one moralizing gesture summarized the entire conference for me … “

This is an excerpt from a conference report currently in the Winter 29.2 Issue of BlackFlash Magazine. I hadn’t moved to the city quite yet, but had traveled to Vancouver specially for this conference as a guest researcher for TippingPoint Canada.

As one of the co-organizers of the forthcoming event on climate change and the arts, I was looking for projects and artists that were effectively communicating and translating scientific data and research. I was seeking work that explored our ethical imperatives, but I found mostly over the top moralizing.

There were a few gems overall, more than what’s just discussed in the article, and I would like to thank the organizers of the conference for letting me crash their animal party.

Interactive Futures Conference

Photo cred: Divya Mehra, 2012

I have been stuck on the side of an unmarked road in the middle of Saskatchewan not once, not twice, but three times now. Facing flatness at any one of the available three hundred and sixty degrees, I never know where to begin. A few artists and curators had tried to organize a province-wide art happening years ago called The End is the Beginning is The End. I understand what they mean now.

All three times I’ve been stuck, I was either going to or coming from a studio visit with Heather Benning. I have only visited her twice. You figure out the math. Leaving her family farm on a stretch of road somewhere near Venn and a ways from Watrous, which already, is situated in the middle of nowhere, my wee rental car kept getting stuck in the melting snowbanks. It should be illegal to rent small cars in certain provinces. Snow really piles up and the flatness is deceiving of depth.

After getting stuck the second time on a remote stretch of gravel road, I settled into a pure sensation of being completely stranded and being set free. Only an hour of time may have passed out there, but looking back, that hour reflected years of my life.

It was the last official studio visit I did for an exhibition that was at that point in time titled Isolated. I have been researching for this show actively since 2010, though I may have actually began in 2007. I covered a lot of ground to find these people, and the forthcoming exhibition is now titled They Made A Day Be A Day Here.

This last time of getting stuck was different. On the surface, it was mud, not snow, that halted the car. I had a road trip accomplice in Divya Mehra, who decided to wear white shoes. The air was dry even if it kept raining. The ground didn’t know how to retain the moisture. Clouds were hanging low enough to make you wonder what kept the sky from collapsing to the ground. Familiar as it all was, nothing felt quite like home anymore. One wrong turn and that was that.

My arms hurt for two days afterwards from repeatedly pushing the car forwards and back in the mud. The main difference was that I no longer lived in the prairies, and I wonder if that had anything to do with feeling less ridiculous when the wheels started spinning and the engine overheating and having absolutely no idea where we were. There is still mud on my boot heels. There are no signs in Saskatchewan except for these signs.

I spent the past two weeks away from the West Coast, traveling back west (my west) to Northern Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. While things appear booming in Grande Prairie and Demmitt (saw the soon to be opened Art Gallery of Grande Prairie, dinner with recent Montreal/New York transplant Elisabeth Belliveau, caught up with the von Tiesenhausens for a concert at The Demmitt Cultural Centre, and a day with Jennifer Bowes just across the border at Dawson Creek), I now regret not traveling further north to see what was going on in Fort McMurray.

Under Prairie Artsters, I have written about Keyano College in Fort McMurray twice before. My first piece was a lament towards the closure of their art gallery. The second piece focused on my first and only visit so far in February 2010.

In that moment, Fort McMurray still undeniably appeared to be a makeshift town and I was allergic to the air. Keyano’s visual art program had been running for over twenty years and I saw a pretty spectacular musical theatre number in their state of the art auditorium. It was the first time I ever tasted Mankoushe and I was treated to a detox spa treatment inside of a trailer. Nothing made sense about the place, but there we all were from every corner of the world.

The concept of isolation really resonated when I visited the Wood Buffalo region also known as Fort McMurray. Built down into the surrounding thickness of the valley and lacking any visible pedestrian life, each person/car/unit was unto their own. The only crowd I ever saw was in the lobby of the college theatre, as everyone milled around after the show for food and drinks and faces. Once upon a time, Keyano had a visiting artist series with visitors from Monica Tapp to Alex Janvier, but that along with the gallery hasn’t existed for years.

I write with regret to say that as of Friday, May 4, Keyano has quietly pushed out the senior staff of their visual and drama departments. Keyano has been laying off senior staff for months from VPs to the Head of HR in what appeared to be a complete implosion of the college. Change was pending, and while cuts have been made across the departments, the arts took the biggest hits.

Sources say that everyone from the Chair of the Department to the Head of Drama along with the founding member of the visual arts department were fired Friday morning and told to pack up their offices and studios and leave the building with only 15 minutes notice. Eye witnesses report the staff were escorted to their offices by security in front of their students before escorted to their vehicles. An official open letter to the editor with questionable facts has been released from Keyano, and no word on the future for recently recruited students to currently enrolled students have been made clear as the college now faces a severe staff shortage to carry on existing programs.

Keyano should provide an independent count before saying their arts enrollment is on the decline and transferability is an issue. Programs have been scaled back over the years, but not due to the lack of want. By all accounts, Keyano arts classes have been full and credits have been fully transferable with alumni spread across Canadian universities. Keyano is still a publicly funded post-secondary institution, but feels at the moment like it’s operating as a private corporation. A focus on “skills shortage” was a highlight from the open letter, insidiously suggesting the production of culture is not a skill required for the sustenance of Wood Buffalo.

Rumors are flying that Keyano will turn itself over into a conservatory-style institution. This would mean the removal of accreditation for all courses and consequently, removing any potential for prospective students to earn a higher education in the region. While a lot that goes on up there remains unchecked, this recent gesture has not gone unnoticed. The unceremonious removal of senior staff, including those who first brought the arts into the community, does not bode well for Keyano, and by way, for Fort McMurray’s regional, national, or international reputation as a place to live and certainly not as a place to stay.