Gabrielle Moser Projects and Things

Highly Recommended: Jen Hutton's article, "Lady Gaga and 'the Gaze'" in C magazine

2009-12-17T18:19:00.002-05:00

I didn't think I liked or "got" Gaga until I read this article by Jen Hutton on Lady Gaga and the gaze/gays. It's not available online (except through a digital version of the mag on Zinio), but is well worth the newsstand price. Extra kudos should go to newish editor Amish Morrell for putting together an issue on contemporary feminisms. Karin Bubas's illustrations are also amazing.

Art Criticism and/as/vs Judgment

2009-11-27T17:17:00.007-05:00

I am shocked and also sort of ashamed to see that I haven't updated here in almost 2 months (!?). I blame contemporary art, as well as the first year of a PhD program. I've also been working hard on freelance stuff (writing, The Leona Drive Project, a tiny bit of curating) and have been neglectful of this poor space.

But, for anyone who's still with me, I wanted to write quickly about two sort of concurrent dialogues about art criticism (and judgment) on two Toronto art blogs. The first came on Andrea Carson's View on Canadian Art blog a few weeks ago when she wrote that the current show of contemporary portraiture at Red Bull 381 Projects, curated by Nicholas Brown and Julia Lum and titled "Sitting Pretty", left her feeling cold. She continues:

But is this work that really matters? Did the artist Tibi Tibi Neuspiel make the work with any kind of emotional involvement? If so, there was none left by the time it went on display.

Tibi Tibi Neuspiel, Book Sandwiches, 2009
from the Red Bull 381 Projects Facebook page

Not really framed as a review so much as a meditation on whether VoCA should be "more critical," the post solicited nearly 30 comments which inevitably turned towards the role of arts criticism and the limitations and possibilities that blogs offer to critics. While the dialogue proves that the "crisis in arts criticism" issue is not yet totally stale, I found that there was some conflation of the ideas of criticism versus/as/and judgment in both the post and its responses that muddled the conversation a bit.

Carson has been explicit and consistent throughout her blog that she sees the role of criticism as evaluating and passing judgment about the quality, relevance or importance of artworks (terms which are nebulous at best and, I would argue, far from timeless or universal). In the post about the "Sitting Pretty" show, for instance, she writes "VoCA believes in the importance of criticism and tries to recommend the best (and only the best) work being made in Canada. We must all learn to support the art scene while celebrating the best, and exposing the worst. That’s a critic’s job."

Though I'm definitely on board for a call for criticism that is more, well, critical, and that actually expresses some sort of opinion or thesis about the work being reviewed, I'm not sure that I see criticism as constituted of judgment and evaluation alone. Sure, some work is strong and keeps you thinking about it for days, whereas other work is weak and therefore forgettable and still other pieces are terrible and keep you thinking about them out of frustration. But even this distinction between artworks' affect, they way they make one "feel," say a lot about their effect. Generally, critics don't write about work not worth thinking about, writing about or remembering. They write about the work they want to support because of its strength, or about work with problems that obviously still has some kind of merit or possibility (otherwise it wouldn't be worth all this effort, and lack of monetary reimbursement, in the first place).

And, as Stephanie Vegh wrote in one of the comments on VoCA, only operating between the two poles that this act of judgment seems to offer–celebration or exposure as unworthy–also seems to do the work and its creator a disservice: "It seems to me that discussing only the best and worst might be good for the art scene, but isn’t discussing the points of interest in between those two extremes better for art?" Artists (and curators, and critics, too) make choices when they do what they do. I think the best criticism addresses the choices that were made and asks what the implications of these choices are and if, perhaps, different, more effective ones could have been made instead.

Installation view of Stephen Appleby-Barr's The Nortammag Archives, 2008,
in "Sitting Pretty" at Red Bull 381 Projects

Which brings me to the second Toronto-based art blog to tackle the role of criticism this month: the brief return of Artfag who published an interview with Ryerson journalism student Michelle Kuran where the two discussed the problems and issues at stake in contemporary Canadian art criticism. The Artfag is his usual sassy self, railing against the apparent lack of distinction between criticism and exposition in art criticism (I can see his point) and arguing that Vancouver School work is "formulaic, academically indulgent, [and] anaesthetic" (I point with which I disagree, by the way). But he also has a few insightful, if armchair psychology-inflected, things to say about the role and intent of criticism. For instance:

...we give criticism because someone needs it. If one is never told that one is doing something wrong, one will never correct that wrong behaviour. This is not the act of the saboteur. That is the attitude of someone who doesn't understand what criticism is for. Post-WWII North American social culture, especially since the 1960s, has been propelled by a therapeutic ideal of the promotion of self-esteem and mental and emotional health and well-being. This pervasive idea has wrought much good, and also much bad; in the context of our discussion, it has birthed this idea (and you can see it everywhere, from art criticism to American Idol) that criticism is an assault upon self-esteem and self-actualization. People who value discourse and the free exchange of ideas realize that criticism is always an act of caring, for it is borne of the desire to see things done successfully. Those who believe that criticism is an act of sabotage simply do not value the free exchange of ideas. We're afraid it's as simple as that.

Artfag likewise underscores the role of judgment in art criticism–he terms it as "discernment" between good and bad work–but complicates it with the observation that any kind of criticism carries with it an implicit investment in the work being critiqued. I like that Artfag's call for greater (or maybe better) criticism comes attached with a call for bravery: both from critics who are worried that a negative review will endanger their future opportunities and from readers and the critiqued who might take it personally. To be brave is also a kind of choice that needs to be made. For instance, why isn't anyone writing stridently critical reviews for Canadian Art if they are dissatisfied with its current content? I work there and can guarantee you no review texts come in "more critical" than they are in their final state. The writing that comes to the magazine seems, to me, wilfully "uncritical" when it is so, which says much more about a comfortable complicity with uncritical writing than an editorial decision.

And, to take Artfag's line of questioning further, what is needed in order for writers and readers to be brave and take these critical stances? What kinds of contexts or social/economic conditions would facilitate better criticism?

Cedric Bomford's "TOWER BLOCK"

2009-10-02T13:41:00.002-04:00

Cedric Bomford TOWER BLOCK 2009
Installation view Courtesy Red Bull 381 Projects / photo David Lang

My review of Red Bull 381 Projects' latest exhibition, "TOWER BLOCK" by Cedric Bomford, is out now on the Canadian Art website. The show is open for another week, so I highly recommend stopping by and seeing it (and climbing it!) if you get the chance. With Nuit Blanche fast approaching, it's nice to have a work in the city that is a proper example of a successfully and thoroughly critical intervention.

Stephanie Vegh's "A postscript (and continuation) on the dubious value of art education"

2009-10-02T13:39:00.003-04:00

Just a quick note for those interested: Stephanie Vegh has followed up on the discussion about studio art PhD programs on her blog in an article called "A postscript (and continuation) on the dubious value of art education". She points out that the University of Western Ontario's PhD program does not suffer from the same demographic anomalies/discrepancies as the ones I find currently in York's program.

On the "new" PhD in Visual Arts

2009-09-18T10:31:00.005-04:00

In the current issue of C magazine, which just came out this week, I got the opportunity to review James Elkins' new volume on the advent of the Visual Arts PhD in the magazine's inaugural book review section. Artists with PhDs: On the New Doctoral Degree in Studio Art is a thorough overview of several perspectives - largely from artists who also work as critics or professors - on the relatively recent proliferation of PhD degrees being offered in the visual and studio arts (though, as one essayist, Judith Mottram, shows early in the book, doctoral degrees in studio art are not all that new in the UK, where programs were established as early as 1975 and more than 1,000 students are currently enrolled in doctoral or PhD programs).

While Elkins has previously been a staunch critic of the notion of university programs for curators and art critics, here he takes a more even-handed approach. As I wrote in the review:

Rather than engaging in a simplistic ‘for or against’ argument about the development of studio art PhDs, Elkins wisely sidesteps these questions of legitimacy in order to delve into what is at stake in the creation and proliferation of these degrees. As he writes in his introduction, “The question is not whether the new programs are coming, but how rigorously they will be conceptualized” (ix). Just as master of fine arts (MFA) degrees, which were introduced in the United States after World War II, initially provoked opposition from artists and academics but have since become ubiquitous, PhDs in studio art, Elkins argues, are on a similar trajectory towards acceptance and now, while they are still being implemented in Canada and the United States, is the time to question how they might best serve students and practitioners (vii).

This week, several art critics closer to home weighed in on graduate programs for artists, starting with The New York Times' Roberta Smith. In her profile of the Bruce High Quality Foundation University, a free art school run by an artist collective in New York, Smith writes that:

In this context the growing interest among art schools and universities (mostly abroad so far) in offering a Ph.D. in art makes the blood run cold. It also seems like rank, even cynical commercial opportunism. It’s too soon to tell, but I’d like to think that the economic downturn is doing serious damage to this trend and maybe even put budding artists off graduate school entirely.

Soon after, Toronto's Andrea Carson of View on Canadian Art echoed and endorsed Smith's observations, arguing instead that artists seeking the supportive environment that grad programs seem to offer should be able to find such a network in the contemporary art world, particularly through gallerists, curators and critics.

While I agree with Smith that there might be a degree of cynicism and exploitation involved in American PhD studio art programs, which often charge obscene tuition levels to students, the context in Canada is quite different. As Stephanie Vegh points out in her blog post on the topic, the two existing Canadian PhD programs in studio art - at York University and the University of Western Ontario - subsidize or fund their students to the point that tuition is effectively free. And, given that these and many other grad level programs in Canada fund their students throughout their education, unlike Smith's prediction that the recession would put people "off" graduate degrees, there has actually been a great influx in grad applications at Canadian universities this year as those without stable work have returned to school instead.

Though Elkins' book is mainly concerned with the pedagogical issues at stake in these visual arts PhD programs - How does one teach someone to be an artist at the PhD level? And what should a visual arts or studio dissertation look like? - I'm still interested in an issue that no one seems to be addressing: what are the social, economic and political conditions that these programs are responding to? As someone just starting my PhD in art history and visual culture at York (also a newer program where what constitutes "visual culture" has still not been decided), I have a vested interest in how these doctoral programs are structured. I also am in the unique position of working and teaching alongside the first doctoral degree in visual art students in Canada and seeing the application and admission processes.

At present, all of the PhD candidates at York, in both art history and visual arts, are women. That demographic tidbit alone raises all kinds of interesting questions about what motivates these PhD applications and why women are more likely to enroll in advanced degrees. What are men artists doing differently? Is it just that, socioeconomically, they continue to have greater advantages as professional artists? And what is happening in the contemporary art world so that this level of specialized education seems appealing and necessary to so many artists, art historians and critics? Is it a scarcity of jobs that makes university positions seem so appetizing? or is something more significant at play?

I don't have answers to any of these queries (though I do have opinions on a few of them), but I'm interested in hearing others' thoughts on this and on following the discussion as it develops.

Reviews of two Toronto shows: "The Old College Try" at Red Bull 381 Projects and "feelers" at Susan Hobbs

2009-09-09T22:53:00.005-04:00

Two quick reviews that I wrote for Montreal-based esse magazine came out this week, online and in print. One was for "The Old College Try," a joint show by Jon Sasaki and emerging artist Jessica Vallentin (whose work, especially the project Smithissauga, is impressive), held at Red Bull 381 Projects this summer and curated by my friend Nicholas Brown.

Jon Sasaki, Obsolete Mascot (Nork), 2009. photo : courtesy of the artist and Red Bull 381 Projects

The other was the dazzling, three-artist show "feelers" at Susan Hobbs Gallery here in Toronto, featuring Sarah Massecar, Sandra Meigs and Arlene Shechet and curated by artist Jen Hutton. The full reviews are available through esse's website, but here's a brief excerpt:

Victoria-based Sarah Massecar’s detailed pen and gouache drawings further this meditation on the comical, almost tender, nature of tactile and subconscious experience. Her “Push” series (2009) is a study of push puppets—the hand-held, plastic toys whose limbs are contorted with the press of a spring-loaded button—executed using an “automatic drawing” technique where the artist’s eyes stay fixed on their subject rather than on the paper. Massecar’s abstracted sketches, akin to biological dissection studies, reveal the inner workings of these simple mechanisms by isolating their individual movements.

The intuitive approach to curating that Hutton adopts can be a dangerous one; viewing the results is only interesting so long as the person intuiting has intimate knowledge of the works and a fresh perspective on their interrelationships. Fortunately, Hutton has the acuity of vision to pull it off and “feelers,” much like the subconscious realm it investigates, allows subtle connections to emerge gradually the more time one spends with it.

Amy Lockhart's "Walk for Walk"

2009-09-02T09:45:00.003-04:00

The lovely folks at No More Potlucks recently invited me to write about Amy Lockhart's 2005 video Walk for Walk for their issue on fixation which just came out yesterday. You can find my article here, along with a streaming version of the video itself (which is amazing!). Their current issue is free, so check it out before the next one comes out (there's a charge for back issues).

Amy Lockart, Walk for Walk (still), 2005, courtesy the artist and nomorepotlucks.org

While I've sort of tired of a lot of the lo-fi, psychedelic/punk-inspired Canadian drawing movement, there are a few artists who have kept my attention and enthusiasm going and Lockhart is definitely one of them. One of the things that I think sets her work apart is how she continues to surprise viewers at every turn. Something or someone unexpected always emerges in her videos with perfect comedic timing. And her sound effects and voiceovers are visceral and engaging. No wonder she keeps winning awards.

Jon Rafman on Google Street View

2009-08-14T16:23:00.006-04:00

Despite not getting to as many shows this summer as I would have liked (not helped by the fact that so many galleries are closed this time of year - I just discovered that during my two week trip to Vancouver, only one gallery is open!), I have been better at looking into what's going on across the country/continent. And one of my weekly internet art stops has been at Art Fag City for their annual IMG MGMT series of image-based artist essays. Not only are they fun to scan through, but some of them are super clever.

Google Street View, Rue de la Huchette, Paris, France, from artfagcity.com

In particular, I highly recommend this week's "The Nine Eyes of Google Street View" by Montreal-based Jon Rafman. His survey of images captured by the sorta creepy technology is fascinating, and his commentary, phrased largely in the form of open-ended questions, does a better job of probing the theoretical and ethical questions that Google Street View prompts than any academic article or conference paper I've encountered recently. Rafman's text deftly weaves together the aesthetic pleasure we derive from "spying" on people through the program; the accidentally aesthetic, nearly high-art, images that often result from the robotic camera's documentation (like the distinctly Robert Doisneau-inspired image from France, above); the way boundaries between anonymity and recognition are negotiated through the program (especially the way in which faces are often blurred to "protect" subjects' identities); and the ethical implications of having a wandering, 9-lensed camera documenting the streets.

Google Street View, Via Valassa, Rho, Lombardy, Italy, from artfagcity.com

As Rafman points out, while it might seem that we all run the same risk of being photographed in public, those who live and work in the streets (often people who are poor or marginalized) are most often the ones who are captured by the roving camera. And when viewers encounter these images, we are faced with a kind of moral/ethical dilemma since the program offers us no moral compass or ethical guidelines in the way the images have been taken and circulated (identity, after all, is not just communicated through faces, but through other markers of social and economic standing). The problem, as Rafman puts it, is that "Even though Google places a comment, ‘report a concern’ on the bottom of every single image, how can I demonstrate my concern for humanity within Google’s street photography?"

Google Street View, 51 E. Claremont St. Edinburgh, Scotland, from artfagcity.com

Other, less nefarious images, are compelling for their lack of human figures and for the way they construct specific places in an otherwise geographically unmoored web space. Again, quoting Rafman, A street view image can give us a sense of what it feels like to have everything recorded, but no particular significance accorded to anything.

Super smart, concise, and beautiful. Definitely worth the five minutes it takes to read, if you have them.

Fillip podcasts from the Judgment and Contemporary Art Criticism forum

2009-07-29T10:13:00.005-04:00

This summer, like last year's, has turned out to be unexpectedly busy. I've been doing a lot of writing, as well as work on The Leona Drive Project, and have been neglecting this poor blog. Things should return to normal in a few weeks when these last few deadlines have passed, but for now I want to recommend Fillip's recent series of podcasts drawn from this past winter's "Judgment and Contemporary Art Criticism" panel, co-hosted by the journal and Artspeak.

Tom Morton at Judgment and Contemporary Art Criticism (Photo: Blaine Campbell)

Frieze contributing editor Tom Morton's meditation on the role and obligations of a contemporary arts magazine, as well as the significance of critics dedicating time to considering and analyzing a work of art by writing about it in "Three or Four Types of Intimacy (and Perhaps Some More, Too)" is an interesting, fairly personal take on contemporary art writing. UBC professor and critic William Wood's introductory lecture "Notes on the Demise and Persistence of Judgment" is (perhaps characteristically) denser and more far-reaching in its analysis of different philosophical approaches to judgment and art criticism, but is also quite funny at several points.

The magazine's iTunes podcast feed offers a few other lectures, including one by artist AA Bronson, that also look promising.

ArtStars*: bringing glam to the Toronto artworld

2009-07-09T08:22:00.004-04:00

I know they have already been getting a lot of props and attention from the art blogosphere, but I want to go on record saying that I love ArtStars*, the new video blog/arts infotainment talkshow produced by Torontonian artists Jeremy Bailey and Ryan Edwards and hosted by the super funny, super charming art critic Nadja Sayej. Mostly shot at art openings and events, the high production values, slick editing and great music in the episodes makes the Toronto artworld seem much more glamorous while still managing to document all the awkward moments that often happen at these alcohol-fueled soirees.

Nadja Sayej, from ArtStars*' Facebook group page

As they explain on their website, "ARTSTARS delves into the Toronto art world to capture the buzz the newspaper reviews and magazine previews often miss out on -- from messy art openings to thoughtful studio visits, we chat with the rising stars, the groupies and fashionistas to reveal that yes, if those white walls could talk they'd say that everyone is having a hell of a time (there's a reason why the booze cups are plastic, you know)."

While this formula seems like it could result in overly ironic, irritating fare, the ArtStars* dispatches manage to find a perfect balance between sincerity and good old fashion teasing. A few of my favourite espisodes include:

- Nadja Sayej successfully executing a renegade interview with Douglas Coupland at his opening

- A report on the shenanigans at Power Ball 11, where contemporary art installations and socialites often collide.

Even Cait, who hates openings, loves the show and laughs uproariously at every episode. If that's not a seal of approval, I don't know what is.

ArtStars* also maintains a great Twitter account for those who are inclined to tweet and follow.

No More Potlucks

2009-06-21T19:21:00.003-04:00

One of the editors of this amazing online journal/magazine, published out of Montreal, just drew my attention to the existence of no more potlucks. The magazine "focuses on arts, activism and politics across Canada from coast to coast" with a decidedly feminist slant and is organized into six thematic issues a year.

Jess Dobkin, Mirrorball, 2008

Issues are published online for free every two months at their website and back issues are available as print-on-demand as well. I highly recommend the current article/interviews with academic luminary Ann Cvetkovich and Toronto artist and sometimes-mirrorball Jess Dobkin. While it's sometimes trying to wade through long articles online, no more potlucks (a sentiment I couldn't agree with more, by the way) manages to walk the line between critical academic writing and conversational description, which makes it an engaging read.

Vancouver Art in the Sixties

2009-06-13T10:22:00.003-04:00

Earlier this month, the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery and Grunt Gallery, both in Vancouver, launched a new website devoted to documenting, analyzing and critiquing art production in the city in the 1960s. "Ruins in Process: Vancouver Art in the Sixties" includes essays, interviews and project sites that delve into the work of N.E. Thing Co., Glenn Lewis, Gathie Falk and the Intermedia society (among many others).

Lucy Lippard and Ilya Pegonis watch Robert Smithson's Glue Pour
on the UBC Endowment Lands, Vancouver, 1970. Photo: Christos Dikeakos

Named after a famous line from Robert Smithson's 1967 photo-essay "The Monuments of Passaic" where the artist wrote that his hometown "seemed to contain ruins in reverse," the website continues to draw connections between Vancouver's local art production and international developments in conceptual and post-conceptual art practices. It also provides a rare glimpse into the Belkin's extensive archives of art production from this period and promises to be an excellent research resource.

Reverse Pedagogy in Venice

2009-06-05T09:22:00.005-04:00

Along with following Art Fag City's Venice updates on Twitter and text message updates from a friend who is there for the Biennale, I've also been following the antics of the mischievous Canadian collective Reverse Pedagogy as they infiltrate the festival with some aesthetic interventions.

29 Canadian artists, writers and curators after their Venice canoe expedition,
from reversepedagogy.com

As Murray Whyte reports on his blog, one of the most exciting things the group has done thus far is organize a regatta of eleven canoes, each sponsored by and emblazoned with the logo of a Canadian art organization, through the city's canals.

Inspired by Paul Butler's Reverse Pedagogy self-directed artist residency at the Banff Centre last spring, the Venice-bound group includes a star-studded roster of Canadian artists and curators, including organizers Dean Baldwin, Nicholas Brown, Paul Butler, Gregory Elgstrand, Chen Tamir, and artists Katie Bethune-Leamen, Bruno Billio, Catharine Dean, Fastwürms, Kelly Mark, Paulette Phillips, Jade Rude, Jon Sasaki, and Swintak (among others).

The aim of the collective is to create collaborative interventions, performances and field trips that allow the artists to experiment and even fail outside of the realm of the "professional art world" - a description that definitely fits the Venice Biennale's opening weekend. Future Reverse Pedagogy residencies will be held this fall in Ireland and Vancouver (at the excellent Presentation House Gallery) and next winter at Flux Factory in New York.

The group's blog keeps readers updated on their Venice exploits.

Joni Murphy on Althea Thauberger's "Carrall Street"

2009-05-30T15:26:00.009-04:00

For almost a year now, Vancouver's artist-run centre Artspeak has been focusing on off-site, publication and performance activities rather than (and sometimes alongside) traditional art exhibitions. Cynics have implied that Artspeak's decision may be one way for the ARC (and all like-minded organizations which likewise feel the budget pinch more severely than other art spaces) to do the most with their resources, but I've been impressed with the inventive and multidisciplinary projects that have emerged through their support. The Judgment and Contemporary Art Criticism symposium, publication and reading room that they co-produced with Fillip seems to have provoked a wide variety of important discussions, for instance (see Clint Burnham's report at Canadian Art for proof), while Allison Hrabluik told her audience at York University earlier this month that her PENELOPE! mail project provoked more than just artistic reciprocation: including a cease and desist letter on university letterhead and a screenshot printout of her grant application with the result (rejected) highlighted. Ouch.

Documentation of Althea Thauberger's Carrall Street, 2008, from flickr.com

Now, in the latest issue of Fillip, Vancouver-based artist Joni Murphy has weighed in on one of Artspeak's first OFFSITE projects, a performance-installation-intervention by multidisciplinary artist Althea Thauberger in the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood titled Carrall Street. Last September, Thauberger closed down the 200 block of Carrall Street, which Artspeak occupies, with the help of the police, lit the street with cinematic lighting and had a mix of actors/performers, art viewers and unknowing passersby interact over the course of several hours. Some performers recited Wobbly-inspired speeches drawn from the city archives, while others improvised typified roles such as "drunken bar-goer" or "panhandler."

Documentation of Althea Thauberger's Carrall Street, 2008, from flickr.com

As Murphy points out in her review, because the location of Thauberger's event was (and is) a highly charged one–an intersection where the tourist-friendly Gastown neighbourhood meets the Downtown Eastside, also known as "the poorest postal code in Canada"–Carrall Street created a complicated, fraught and sometimes confusing viewing experience. By lighting and dramatizing the streetscape, Thauberger drew attention to the ethical and relational issues that the Downtown Eastside inevitably raises, but Murphy questions whether this temporary intervention will be effective in any meaningful or long-term way. Echoing Claire Bishop's critique of the social effects of relational aesthetics, Murphy poses the question, "what types of relations are being produced [in Carrall Street], for whom and why?"

Documentation of Althea Thauberger's Carrall Street, 2008, from flickr.com

Key to Murphy's critique is her argument that the theatricality of Thauberger's project put its polemical intent in jeopardy. By theatricalizing an already over-represented area (in commercial film, news media and even contemporary artwork, especially in Vancouver) and setting up a fairly clear divide between performers and spectators, Murphy worries that Thauberger's project reemphasized differences between the viewers and subjects rather than engendering unexpected meetings and interactions. She writes, and I can't help but agree,

I can’t help wondering what Carrall Street would have been like if Thauberger had illuminated the street where John Furlong, the VANOC (Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games) chief executive, lives. Or set up lights in front of developer Bob Rennie’s house. As a collector, Rennie is a huge force in the art community, and both Rennie and Furlong control projects that have a far greater influence on the face of the city and on the DTES specifically than any individual at Carrall Street that night. Yet, their neighbourhoods are rarely the subject of representation, and few people in this town would recognize them by sight. Wealth can often buy protection from bright lights and scrutiny.

Carrall Street Public Forum hosted by Artspeak, October 2008, from flickr.com

The problem, of course, with any project that attempts to represent the under-represented or demonized is that it suffers from a burden of representation: it becomes encumbered by a lot of expectations from viewers to 'represent everything,' which is impossible. I think that Carrall Street suffers in part from these expectations, which Vancouver viewers in particular have for art projects about the Downtown Eastside. Perhaps the public forum that was held in conjunction with Thauberger's project was meant to address some of these issues through dialogue and to unpack some of the results of the artistic intervention. It's something Murphy doesn't have the chance to explore in her review, but I, for one, am curious about the discussions that resulted from it.

A survey of exasperating Canadian art gallery websites

2009-05-22T08:24:00.004-04:00

Art Fag City's very clever Paddy Johnson is currently visiting Toronto and seeing a bunch of art (you can follow her twitter updates, if you do such things, here). She recently posted on the exasperating results of trying to do internet research on these galleries before her trip and the complete lack of accessible information on many websites.

Kitteh speak font never fails to convey absolute truths. From regmedia.co.uk

An excerpt from Johnson's online critique:

The Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA). Splashpages with the word “launch” scare me because they suggest a lot of Flash. To MOCCA’s credit, there’s less on the site than I anticipated, though any image a surfer would want to send to a friend the museum prevents by embedding it with this program. Also, why make users open a PDF press release when we could just view it in html?

The Power Plant. Here’s a really bad idea: Create a splash page first directing all visitors to away from your site and onto Powerball, “The Original Contemporary Art Party” (Thursday May 28th for those who want to attend). I’m not entirely sure why this event is so important, but an array of corporate sponsors logos blind a visitor at first sight, taking up an enormous amount of web real estate. It’s very tacky. Should users eventually arrive at the Power Plant website, a sound effect goes off everytime they scroll over individual frames. It’s annoying, and site already uses rollover images so it’s also unnecessary. All header text is too small.

I have to give MOCCA kudos for finally revamping their old page, but otherwise agree. You can read all of Johnson's Canadian art internet frustrations at Art Fag City.

Dieter Roelstraete's "After the Historiographic Turn: Current Findings"

2009-05-15T08:26:00.005-04:00

The end of term at school has finally been tamed, my thesis has been handed in and all that stands between me and a summer break free from school is a big pile of final essays for the class I TA. Things are looking up and I am definitely looking forward to catching up on some reading, art going and blogging over the next few months.

One periodical I have managed to keep on top of throughout school is e-flux's (sort of) new monthly journal which has featured some fantastically readable, pithy essays by the likes of Simon Sheikh, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Boris Groys and Liam Gillick. I've been following a series by Dieter Roelstraete, curator at the Antwerp museum of contemporary art at MuKHA, on "the historiographic turn" in contemporary art projects and his more recent essay on attempts to "excavate the future."

Mark Dion, Tate Thames Dig, 1999

Roelstraete's first essay, "The Way of the Shovel: On the Archaeological Imaginary in Art," addressed the sometimes problematic way that contemporary practices use archaeological strategies and references to unearth and revisit the past - artists like Mark Dion and Roy Arden were some of Roelstraete's references, but one could easily add Gareth Moore or Kerri Reid in the Canadian context - without focusing enough attention on addressing the present or future. The earlier essay ends with a kind of admonition for contemporary art practices in this vein that are unable "to grasp or even look at the present, much less to excavate the future."

Helen Levitt, New York, 1972

The subsequent, more recent essay, "After the Historiographic Turn: Current Findings," therefore begins where the previous one left off by trying to establish what an art that addresses the present, and points toward the future, might look like. Though he never explicitly addresses them, the essay is illustrated with (mostly street) photographs by Helen Levitt and Zoe Leonard, largely based in New York. These are clearly artists who are documenting their current surrounds and contemporary contexts, which are at drastic odds with the archaeologically-influenced projects Roelstraete outlined in the previous essay, but they are equally influenced by art historical precedents, including social documentary and street photography as it was established by Henri Cartier-Bresson and even Eugene Atget, so I wasn't entirely convinced they fit into his newer argument.

What I liked best about the newer Roelstraete essay was the author's willingness to answer the "so what?" question that the earlier text raised. While it's easy to mount an argument against a trend in contemporary art production, or to problematize it, it's much harder to advocate for what should be happening in its place: to suggest an alternative–or several–that might address the problems one's raising as an author.

Gerard Byrne, 1984 and Beyond, 2005–07

Courtesy the artist and Lisson Gallery, London

So what are the alternatives and solutions Roelstraete offers? The two points I found the most refreshing and applicable to the work I've been seeing lately were the following:

1) That it is time to turn away from using the generic term "contemporary art" (as Roelstraete asks, "contemporary with what, precisely?") and to begin to try to define new -isms, movements and schools within current art production; not as a way to clearly delineate or reduce a multiplicity of approaches to art into palatable genres, but as a way to think about what it means to live in the world and make art at this time. Given the current "crisis" in the economy and the political change being sought in American government, Roelstraete argues that it is time to start thinking about how the past decade will be remembered in the future.

2) That the strategy of "new historicism" that has driven so much of archaeologically inspired and reenactment based art is merely a euphemism for a reaction to a specific political and social context that we can no longer ignore and need to name as such outright. Roelstraete really says it best, so here's a quote from him:

I couched this diagnosis in the critical terms of a “historiographic turn in art” apparent in the obsession with archiving, forgetfulness, memoirs and memorials, nostalgia, oblivion, re-enactment, remembrance, reminiscence, retrospection—in short, with the past—that seems to drive much of the work done by some of the best (and most highly regarded) artists active today...This “new historicism” (is that what we should call it?) is really nothing other—like it or not—than the art of the Bush era.

Given the exploding interest in reenactments and restagings in museums and galleries over the past few years, Roelstraete's analysis is a helpful way to understand the motives behind these gestures. Not only do they represent a desire to call up a time in the past that was more politically active and perhaps more successfully resistant to dominant culture, but they are also a product of upheaval, confusion and the ideological climate of the past decade (in North America and Europe, anyways).

Roelstraete calls in the end for a new kind of "realism" from artists that addresses the present and future. It's an interesting and provocative way to think about current art making practices and I'll be interested to see who takes up his argument and in what ways.

Allison Hrabluik artist talk at York University

2009-04-30T16:38:00.006-04:00

Lois Klassen's version of the PENELOPE! project, from loiszing.blogs.com

I love (and am envious of the recipients of) Calgary-born, Vancouver-based artist Allison Hrabluik's recent PENELOPE! project. On March 17th of this year, Hrabluik mailed out 435 envelopes to various Canadian art world figures. Produced in collaboration with Artspeak as an OFFSITE project, the packages had no return address and each contained a large sheet of white paper that had the addressee's first name written across it in simple but exacting block letters.

While the envelopes were a total mystery to some, and there was quite a bit of online gumshoeing going on to try and find out where they'd come from (on Facebook especially), they seem to have been a welcome surprise for most people. The posters seem sort of like oversized, generous but strangely anonymous "thinking of you" greeting cards. I've really enjoyed finding people's names in such bold, enthusiastic letters above their desks in their offices and other unexpected places.

Anyone want to bet which Greg this might be for? From artspeak.ca

Hrabluik was recently in the Vancouver Art Gallery's "How Soon is Now" survey of West Coast art and is also coming to Toronto next week to do an artist's talk at York University in Dan Adler's "Theoretical Issues in Contemporary Art" grad seminar. The seminar focuses on photoconceptual practices in contemporary art, so I'm assuming her talk will address the use of photographs in her projects at some point.

The talk is free and open to the public (or to those who are willing to make the trek up to North York) and will be happening next Wednesday, May 6th at 11:30 am in Accolade West, Room 003.

Timeline of Museums and the Recession

2009-04-23T08:35:00.004-04:00

The website ARTINFO.com (via Art Fag City) has started a timeline of how North American museums have been affected by, or responded to, the recent economic recession. It's a thorough play-by-play of developments at several major institutions, including Toronto's AGO. While it's a not-so-great distinction for the Canadian institution to be included, the timeline is useful in seeing how early this all began and how much the closures and reductions have increased as of late.

"Recession art" at FIAC, Paris, from www.flickr.com/photos/emergencyrooms

Seemingly inspired by the Brandeis University’s Rose Art Museum's recent near-closure, The Art Newspaper is also reflecting on the relationship between art and the recession in Tom Shapiro's article "Museums and the recession: there is an alternative to closure or selling off the collections—sharing". In it, Shapiro advocates that museums and galleries facing the possibility of reduced staff, programming and public activities join forces with other local institutions to share staff and collections in order to stay afloat and foster new relationships that can offer resources that are hard to come by on reduced budgets:

Bringing together the best thinking from multiple organisations should result in better processes and practices. Also, as employees talk across organisations, they may develop synergies that have nothing to do with shared resources. For example, an art museum and a natural history museum might start lending works or exhibits to each other; museums might begin to coordinate their exhibition schedules and openings, and there may be opportunities for region-wide collaboration.

While I think Shapiro's idea is a good one, theoretically speaking, I'm not sure how practical it would be to execute; particularly in small town environments, which many university-affiliated galleries like the Rose Museum find themselves in, where neighbouring institutions and potential partners might be a great distance from one another. And while I could see larger institutions like the ROM finding some beneficial partnerships with slightly smaller museums like the Gardiner Museum, for instance, I don't know that the institutions that directly "compete" with one another could put aside their differences and make such collaborations work. I doubt the AGO and the ROM, whose recent renovations have put them into direct competition in many ways, would be able to come to agreeable terms for a partnership, for instance. Still, it's worth contemplating, especially since sharing and collaboration are two strategies artist-run centres have used for decades now in order to thrive on their limited budgets.

And for a slightly more light-hearted take on the creative impact of the recession, check out some of the projects at the Recession-Art blog. It hasn't been updated in a while, but offers some interesting performance pieces on art fairs, banks and the recession.

Cory Arcangel and Hanne Mugaas's "Art Since 1960 (According to the Internet)"

2009-04-13T17:45:00.005-04:00

One last piece of Images festival blogging detritus as this year's edition comes to a close:

L.M. and Sally McKay have written an interesting review/critique of one of the last Live events of the festival, a co-presentation with Pleasure Dome of a 'collaborative' (scare quotes to be explained shortly) performance by Cory Arcangel and curator Hanne Mugaas called Art Since 1960 (According to the Internet)

Still from Art Since 1960 (According to the Internet) version 2.0 at Art in General, 2008

I identify with a lot of the points they make, including wishing the presentation followed through on its promise to define the internet, then art on the internet and the relationship between the two, and that it was more structured and concise and less "fly by the seat of your pants and hope you're charming enough to pull it off". But I actually wasn't all that disappointed by the performance. I thought a lot of the clips the artist-curator chose were hilarious (I hadn't seen many of them before, I should admit straight away) and that there were a few phenomena–such as the online exhibition of the bichon frisé in art or the strange way that YouTube seems to produce people who have the same name as famous artists who also share similar characteristics to them, such as a teenage Dan Graham who cynically rambles in stream-of-consciousness sentences–that did manage to comment on the way the internet has changed our relationship to art, even in spite of the sometimes annoying presentation style.

Sally's point that the 'collaboration' was really a one-sided affair, with poor Mugaas stuck in the control booth the whole evening and only occasionally participating by Gmail chat, is definitely well taken, however. One of the interesting things the internet has faciliated is co-creations by artists, curators and all sorts of other folks that may not have been (physically) possible in the past, but the interactions between Arcangel and Mugaas in this performance were sort of like a casual conference call gone horribly wrong.

Andy Paterson also critiqued the performance on his Images blog for similar reasons. His post can be found here.

Update:
Terence Dick has now joined the debate, firmly on the side of "that performance was a waste of time," on Akimblog and I am having the unnerving experience of being in complete agreement with Timothy Comeau after facing off against him quite firmly over the Mammalian Diving Reflex debacle (I believe he called something I wrote "one of the stupidest things [he]'d ever read"). Just goes to show there's no accounting for personal (aesthetic) taste.

Sung Hwan Kim's "In the Room" at Gallery TPW

2009-04-10T10:00:00.004-04:00

I sometimes worry that my love of Gallery TPW's programming is verging on boosterism. Either that, or curator Kim Simon and I share a brain or an ESP link or something. But, as I've been doing double-duty this week at the Images Festival as their blogger, I've had a chance to see tons of programming, and the performance and subsequent installation by Korean-born, New York–based artist Sung Hwan Kim has been my favourite set of experiences.

Sung Hwan Kim,Pushing against the air, 2007 [performance documentation]
Photo: Nina Canell

"In the Room," which began as a Live performance including improvised storytelling, live drawing and music, has now been translated into a month-long exhibition in the gallery space. Curator Kim Simon discussed the performance and exhibition with me on the Images blog here.

There is still lots to see in the last two days of the festival, including several curated screenings and a few Live events coorganized with Pleasure Dome and Wavelength. The full program can be found on the Images site.

South-South: Interruptions and Encounters at Justina M Barnicke Gallery

2009-04-02T16:44:00.003-04:00

My posts on this blog will be scarcer than usual over the next week as I'll be writing for the Images Festival blog here. Artist and critic Sholem Krishtalka and I will be doing previews of screenings and live performances as well as interviews with artists and curators, while Andrew J Paterson and others will be posting their reviews of events, exhibitions and screenings. There are a lot of fantastic events planned, so if you have any interest in film, video and related image-based performance works, I highly recommend checking out the full program online.

Louise Liliefeldt, Lekker III, 2004, performance still (left). Courtesy of the artist
Marlon Griffith, Runaway Reaction, 2008 (right).
Photography by Akiko Ota. Courtesy of the artist.

But, before the Images madness begins this evening, I highly recommend stopping by the opening of "South-South: Interruptions & Encounters," a group exhibition at the Justina M Barnicke Gallery (co-organized with SAVAC) put together by artist and curator Tejpal S. Ajji and historian Jon Soske. The show brings together "eight artists whose work is situated at an intersection of African and South Asian history, politics, or culture" and includes work by Omar Badsha, Allan deSouza, Brendan Fernandes, Marlon Griffith, Jamelie Hassan, Apache Indian, Louise Liliefeldt, and Hew Locke.

Brendan Fernandes, Future (•••---•••) Perfect, 2008,

installation at Toronto's Nuit Blanche

Not only does the exhibition look fascinating, but as with Ajji's excellent 2007 exhibition, "Rightfully Yours," the public programming promises to be fantastic. It includes a workshop with Toronto/New York–based artist and Nuit Blanche alumni Brendan Fernandes, a scholarly panel discussion on African and Indian nationalisms and a multidisciplinary panel discussion that "brings together artists and writers to further explore the notion of an "aesthetics of the encounter" as represented in the exhibition."

The opening is tonight, Thursday April 2, 2009 from 6 pm - 8 pm at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery at the University of Toronto and the exhibition runs until May 19.

AGYU releases Waging Culture Report

2009-04-01T07:57:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, the AGYU (Art Gallery of York University) released their long-awaited Waging Culture Report, which surveys visual artists living in Canada (who voluntarily took the survey) for demographic and statistical data. The aim of the report was to offer data to governmental bodies and cultural policy planners since a nation-wide survey of this kind has not been completed since 1993.

Also working from statistical data, Komar and Melamid used telemarketer survey
results to create the USA's Most Wanted Painting, 1992,
from diacenter.org

The statistics that have resulted from the survey run the gamut from interesting and idiosyncratic to downright depressing. Some findings of note:

- Day jobs and grants are still getting the average artist by, while their studio practice is often an expense rather than a revenue generator: In fact, the typical artist lost $556 from their studio practice in 2007. The vast majority of an artist’s studio revenue is from sales (54%), with grants (34%) and artist fees (12%) making up the rest. Expenses that exceed an artist’s revenue are covered by other employment income.

- Visual artists have higher levels of education than the general population, but this is often directly disproportionate to their artistically-generated income: Over 84% have at least an undergraduate degree, and almost 45% have graduate degrees (compared to 23% and 7% of the total labour force, respectively). The higher an artist’s education level, the less they earn from their practice after expenses; other income sources, however, do increase proportionately to the levels of education.

- Some sort-of good news: Artists in Quebec earn the largest net income from their studio practices (median: $1,383) and those in Alberta lose the most (median: -$2,000). Ironically, artists in Quebec have the lowest total income (median: $15,089)

- And: The wage gap between male and female artists is significantly lower than in the labour force as a whole, a mere 10% for artists versus 36% for the total labour force. The difference in sales, however, is a full 48%.

While I know the methodology of the report has sometimes been controversial, and I'm a little wary of framing other forms of work and income that are not derived from a studio as "non-art related work,"* I think it's important for the AGYU and Michael Maranda to devote time and effort to try and insert this information into the discourse about art, money and funding in Canada. Sometimes the only way to get your voice in to all the bureaucratic rhetoric is to speak the same language.

* While I firmly believe artists need the financial stability, time and space to be able to make the kind of work they want to make and do the research necessary to continue their practice, I'm not convinced that devoting time and effort to other projects - like desk jobs in the arts or elsewhere, writing gigs and curating - necessarily detracts from their practice or whether it instead informs and can be an extension of their studio practice. This is coming from an admitted workaholic, but I'm interested in the boundaries in the art world between "real work" and "art work" and whether those really hold up when tested.

The After School Special at Xpace

2009-03-26T16:13:00.004-04:00

I can't make it to this event, but "The After School Special: A Panel Discussion on Pedagogy" happening at Xpace this Saturday afternoon sounds like it will be amazing.

Curated by Stephanie Rosinski with Casey Wong and moderated by the one and only Jennifer Cherniack, an artist, curator and InterAccess-er, the panel aims to examine "the recent shift towards increasingly specialized education and unconventional methodologies," especially in light of the art and cultural spheres' increasing interest in the notion of the 'creative class' and all they (supposedly) have to contribute to society and the economy. (I, along with a lot of people, am skeptical about the application of Richard Florida's theories about the creative class and its potentially detrimental effects - see the Toronto Free Gallery's recent exhibition, for instance - but also know I have a job because of his theories' notoriety in Toronto especially).

The featured speakers include:
Luigi Ferrara – Director, School of Design and Institute without Boundaries
Eric Nay – Architect, Design Theorist, Educator, and Associate Dean of the Faculty of Liberal Studies at OCAD
Scott Rogers – Artist, Curator and Writer, founding member of the Arbour Lake Sghool
Maiko Tanaka – Independent Curator, Curatorial Resident at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery

Arbour Lake Sghool, Grow Op, 2007
from canadianart.ca

I'm not familiar with Ferrara or Nay, but am a big fan of the work of the Arbour Lake Sghool (though recently heard a rumour that they may not be working together any more) and Maiko Tanaka, responsible for the clever "Toronto Free Library" show (along with co-curator Sarah Todd) and, more recently, "Empty Orchestra," a show about karaoke in contemporary art (and who doesn't love karaoke?).

The talk at Xpace begins at 2 pm this Saturday, March 28th at 56 Ossington Ave.

On another note, this weekend, the events leading up to the 22nd Images Festival really start to rev up, including several "Off Screen" gallery exhibitions/installations and a few pre-festival screenings. Their entire program can be found online here and they have some amazing screenings happening this year that are not-to-be-missed. I'll be blogging for them throughout the week and will be posting my fest picks here soon.

"Gakona" at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris

2009-03-21T08:50:00.008-04:00

Roman Signer, Parapluies, 2009

Courtesy Galerie Art:Concept, Paris, Photo: André Morin

I recently wrote a review of the Palais de Tokyo's group show "Gakona," an exhibition featuring Ceal Floyer, Roman Signer, Laurent Grasso and Micol Assaël inspired by the secretive experiments with electromagnetism supposedly being carried out by the American government in smalltown Alaska. And while I did love the show, especially the audacious sculptural installations by Signer and Grasso, I was even more impressed by the Palais de Tokyo itself as a model for a contemporary art gallery.

An aerial view of the Palais de Tokyo along Paris' Seine

Built as Tokyo's exhibition grounds for the Universal Exhibition of 1937, the building that houses the Palais de Tokyo has a fairly standard layout for a contemporary art gallery, but it was the way in which they used the space to facilitate programming that was really impressive. Alongside the main exhibition room which held the group show, there are also two rotating smaller galleries called "modules" that present new projects by local artists each month and a new rooftop space that currently hosts Hotel Everland: a touring one room hotel created by Swiss artists L/B (Sabina Lang and Daniel Baumann). There is also a cafe and lounge inside the gallery which are free and open to the public (both were packed while we were there), an amazing artist multiples store and an impressive bookshop. The fact that the gallery is fairly centrally located, and open until midnight (!) every day certainly helps to bring people in.

Hotel Everland on the roof of the Palais de Tokyo.
A one night stay costs 375 Euros.

But I think what most impressed me was the gallery's public programming initiatives. Alongside weekly events programmed to accompany the main exhibitions that included presentations by the local chapter of Dorkbot and presentations by scientists and researchers, the gallery also features a "Bureau des Médiateurs" or an Animateur Office where the facilitators stay throughout the day, awaiting visitors' questions or requests for tours. Their office functions as a normal office would, with computers and desks, but also features a library for visitors and an ongoing screening room where art films and commercial movies related to the topic of the current show are screened for free. The gallery's quarterly magazine, Palais, which you can pick up for 1 Euro at the admissions desk, likewise features articles in English and French and melds contemporary art stories (like interviews with artist Laurent Grasso) with non-art related topics (like a feature on amateur experiments with electrical currents and a short story about Nikola Tesla by Cory Doctorow).

Inside the Palais de Tokyo, from www.ivarhagendoorn.com

Altogether, the Palais de Tokyo manages to create a really accessible, fun and playful environment where serious and compelling contemporary art is presented to the public in a new way. It felt a lot like a science centre for adults, which I'm sure was helped by the topic of the show, but the decided lack of pretense and amount of bubbling noise and laughter in the gallery was so strange and refreshing. It seemed like the physical manifestation of what so many contemporary art galleries in North America aspire to be, but never quite manage to achieve. Though, as Cait pointed out, the fact that we found it so engaging and accessible was because it drew so much from skate culture, which is something that might alienate older audiences that are traditionally museums' key demographics.

In any case, I highly recommend it for anyone who's heading to Paris any time soon and would love to hear thoughts from others who have been there.

Or Gallery and Talonbooks launch the second edition of Vancouver Anthology

2009-03-20T10:13:00.007-04:00

Not only is today the first day of spring (check out Eric Carle's interpretation of the Google home page, by the way), but tonight is the pre-launch of the second edition of the landmark volume Vancouver Anthology, originally published in 1991 and edited by Stan Douglas.

Released in tandem with the Vancouver Cultural Olympiad - a program of cultural events to coincide with and augment the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games - and the artist-run Or Gallery's 25th anniversary, the new edition of the book features "a larger format, new hardcover design and a new afterword by Stan Douglas." The Or will also feature an exhibition of works by international artists that deal with the politics of landscape representation.

The timing of the launch of the second edition couldn't be better. Not only is it next to impossible to find a copy of the original volume (last time I checked they were going for $100 a copy on Amazon), but the launch of the first printing in 1990 established a program for art publication releases in Vancouver that is still being followed today: a series of public lectures by local artists and writers, followed by a discussion or Q & A session that leads to the printing of final versions of the papers inspired by these discussions. It's a formula that Vancouver Art & Economies followed (explicitly modeled on the Vancouver Anthology process and mandate) and, more recently, which Fillip and Artspeak used for the series Judgment and Contemporary Art Criticism.

Artist Kristina Lee Podesva (left) and art historian and critic John O’Brian (right)

speak at Judgment and Contemporary Art Criticism in Vancouver
Photo Blaine Campbell, courtesy canadianart.ca

Perhaps most important is the fact that, despite being nearly two decades old now, most of the questions and tensions the articles in Vancouver Anthology address have still not been resolved, in Vancouver and abroad. Robert Linsley's "Painting and the Social History of British Columbia," Scott Watson's "Discovering the Defeatured Landscape" and Marcia Crosby's "Construction of the Imaginary Indian" have each become standard and required reading in classes about contemporary Canadian art production and still raise important questions, functioning as a metaphorical yardstick against which we can measure developments in contemporary visual culture.

A view out the window of photographer Christos Dikeakos' studio
announces his upcoming exhibition at Catriona Jeffries Gallery,
but also shows evidence of Vancouver's rapidly changing urban landscape.

And, as the city prepares to host the Olympic Games and many people begin to question what political and social impact the event will have on Vancouver, it seems crucial to reevaluate the critical potential of contemporary art production and writing in this way.