Inadequacy

In the summer of 2008 I attended an artist talk by Emily vey Duke and Cooper Battersby at the Western Front where they talked about their practice and screened a work in progress, asking for feedback from the audience. I had never been to a talk (and haven't since) where the artist(s) asked for constructive criticism on their work, usually it is complete and nothing will change no matter what anyone says. Is this openness or insecurity? Vey Duke related that her and Battersby's motivations to make art came from feelings of not belonging and of inadequacy - if they made something and put it out into the world, then maybe they could get a response to say that someone is either paying attention, or cares to care. So few people care about contemporary art or what individual artists are accomplishing, that any recognition at any scale is wonderful.

Recently, I attended the closing panel discussion for the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art which included Michael Fernandes, Karen Elaine Spencer, Joakim Stampe, and Victoria Stanton moderated by Johanna Householder. Householder asked Stanton at one point what the role of "fear" is in her work. After a longer than usual painful silence, Stanton broke the tension to respond with "fear is this"; "fear is being together". Having to talk about your work in front of people results in a mixture of expectations, doubts and insecurities that haunts everyone - even in that room (XPACE), the panelists and the audience members are all privy since we're each very conscious of our roles as contributors to the afternoon discussions. How stressful. Stanton also related that her motivations in her art practice are derived from her inability to connect with other people, so that her work can act as a vehicle that can maybe achieve connection - art that is born out of a feeling of inadequacy. How honest - how relatable, ironically.

I'd also like to address art-guilt* mixed with these feelings of inadequacy as to why I have not been able to write and produce publicly. Writing and expressing opinions has a pressure associated with it - of putting one's self on the line. This is something I didn't mind at first but gradually it grew on me. But, from these same (shared) feelings of inadequacy and guilt, I am able to jump back up on the wagon.

* you know art-guilt - the anxiety and fear that you're not producing enough art stuff; that you should write more, have an exhibition on or in development, be curating and making art consistently and continuously, since everyone else seems to be....and all this is to be done in between life and your full time job.....

Nature in the City

"Adaptation: Between Species

June 19 – September 12, 2010

The Power Plant

231 Queens Quay West

Toronto ON Canada M5J 2G8

www.thepowerplant.org

Shaun Gladwell, Apologies 1 – 6, 2007-2009.

Courtesy the artist, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Sydney, and Georgia Scherman Projects, Toronto

Allora & Calzadilla, Francis Alÿs, Cory Arcangel, John Bock, Olaf Breuning, Marcus Coates, Robyn Cumming, Mark Dion, FASTWÜRMS, Shaun Gladwell, Lucy Gunning, Nina Katchadourian, Louise Lawler, Hanna Liden, Hew Locke, Sandra Meigs, Rivane Neuenschwander and Cao Guimarães, Jeff Sonhouse, Javier Téllez , Michelle Williams Gamaker

Curator: Helena Reckitt, Senior Curator of Programs


Civilization notwithstanding, we live with and among nature and animals. Cultural followers such as pigeons, rats, foxes, and – in Canada – bears, live off our refuse, while bacteria reside in our guts. The industrial world eats further into natural habitats, but micro-environments flourish in urban and exurban sites. Responding to the contemporary desire to go "back to nature," The Power Plant's summer group exhibition 'Adaptation: Between Species' explores interspecies encounters. What happens when humans, animals and the natural world meet? What forms of communication, miscommunication, intimacy, and exchange ensue?

While species live in ever closer proximity, many people feel profoundly cut off both from natural environments and from their own animal natures. Our deep longing to connect with non-human life forms is reflected in contemporary phenomena ranging from the boom in pet ownership and the widespread anthropomorphism in popular culture to the upsurge in vacations that promise to transport us to unspoiled lands.

However, despite this deep-seated sense of alienation from nature, the species are in fact closely related. For instance, as Donna Haraway notes in her book When Species Meet, 90 percent of human cells are filled with the genomes of bacteria, fungi, protists, and such, with only 10 percent comprising human genomes. 'Adaptation' explores this commonality between the species and considers the various forms of intelligence and knowledge they share. It also asks what our interactions with other species reveal about our human as well as our animal natures. Highlighting the urge to observe, touch, live with, and mimic other species, the exhibition delves into the intimate and, at times, uncanny fusions that result. Many of the artworks hover between seriousness and absurdity, embracing the potential for fantasy, childish antics and regression at the core of human/non-human relations, and reveling in the transgression of both social acceptability and human identity that interspecies encounters can engender.

Coinciding with the United Nations International Year of Biodiversity, the exhibition considers how adaptation functions as a form of biological and cultural survival. It also takes a realistic view of human/non-human dynamics, acknowledging the unbalanced and exploitative power relations that too often characterize our society's attitudes toward other life forms.

What do we learn by sharing our lives and this planet with other species? Impersonating and identifying with the natural world and the animal kingdom might contain the seeds for radical change, as we affirm our links with other species, recognize our animal natures and experience the liberation of feeling wild at heart.

A publication together with an extensive program of public events accompanies the exhibition. Highlights include a DJ Set and SKRY-POD public tarot reading by Ontario artists FASTWÜRMS, a film screening 'Animal Drag Kingdom' with works by Guy Ben-Ner, Douglas Gordon, Kathy High, Kristin Lucas, and Steve Reinke and Jessie Mott, a children's workshop on animal language, and free gallery tours every weekend at 2pm.

SUPPORT DONOR: The Jack Weinbaum Family Foundation

The Power Plant offers free gallery admission all summer thanks to the support of the Hal Jackman Foundation and Media Partner NOW Magazine."

http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/8223

Centre Identity Cont.

The Banff Centre promotes itself as a specific and unique place in association with its epic natural context. Since January when I arrived to work at the Centre I have been continuously debating with myself whether the setting provokes people to start considering their surroundings as a source of inspiration for artistic production or whether it’s simply a secluded environment in which to harness one’s focus (regardless of the Rocky Mountains, the wildlife, the lakes and rivers).

Two artists currently based out of the Centre presented separate works the other week that led me to decide that a sense of specific place and time is indeed influential to one’s creative process. Without previously considering place as significant, both works converted me through their use of environmental context as something both evocative and intrinsic to their structure.

Although many people (artists, tourists, restaurant workers etc.) come to the town of Banff in order to have ready access to nature, there’s still quite a few of us who are here only for the Centre and the international cultural aspects. Like myself, to which skiing and hiking are not selling points, my relationship to the identity of Banff as closely approximated to its natural environment doesn’t feel, well, natural to me. I see it as an artificially constructed identity to a large degree. My ideas about how people are inspired by nature and how they choose to artistically express their feelings, interactions, and experiences in nature seem already outdated only because my kind of art is about so much more than an interaction with something viscerally real and more about a mediation of experience (art that's about art). Nature is the ‘real’ in Banff, while hipster intellectualism is the ‘real’ within an urban environment. Both are silly, but undeniably influential to art practice.

After having lived in Alberta for only four months, I have noticed a marked difference in how people relate to their surroundings. In Banff, nature is always in the conversation – not a day goes by without talking about the mountains, about the strangeness of the town of Banff in relation to the Centre, animal presence etc. From living in Toronto for almost three years, I can’t recall the city itself as a main conversation topic. From Alberta I have learned more about Canada as a highly varied landscape recognizing that provincial location distinctly influences how people live.

Lessonlands, 18min, HD Black and White

Rory Middleton with sound and original score in collaboration with Andrew Dickens

Images courtesy of artist.

Screened on May 17th in the Telus Studio, Jeanne and Peter Lougheed building, Rory Middleton’s video Lessonlands (2010) is composed of a series of landscape shots, some evocative of absent human presence, others not – more about recording the brush of grass, the ripple of water pushed by wind, the staggerings of a short-legged dog, tramping through woods with branches obscuring the path – all scenery that is notably NOT Banff. Based in Edinburgh, Middleton’s currently completing a six month residency at the Centre.

Lessonlands, Rory Middleton

The footage in this video comes from areas along the coast of Scotland which he has been editing and compiling while he’s been in Banff. With expectations that all nature images I would see coming out of the Centre would be dealing with the Rockies, snow and elk sightings, there were surprisingly no mountains and frozen lakes presented to me in this video. Within the isolated Banff bubble, knowing that people often come here to work with its locational specifics, I was reminded that different representations of nature exist and that it cannot be considered as one all encompassing theme – instead it informs us of the distinct differentiations of place and context.

Jonathan Green, Polaris Lost, The Other Gallery, The Banff Centre, 17-19 May 2010

Installation images courtesy of artist.

An installation in The Other Gallery, Polaris Lost (May 17-19th) by Jonathan Green, a Studio Work-Study from St. John’s, NFLD who’s been working at the Centre almost one year, involved interpretations of a rather epic and dramatic 1871 expedition into the Arctic on the ship Polaris. Several high contrast charcoal drawings, which depict some amazing combinations of starkness and busy variations in mark making, filled the wall space. These were accompanied with a variety of elements: fluorescent lights propped in corners, a mast-like pole precariously propped with lines of twine, stacked plinths positioned too close together, and porcelain casts of lightbulbs crushed in one area of the floor beneath some vintage blue lightbulbs. All these elements combined to evoke specific interpretations of an environmental experience which just so happens to be a distinct identity separate from Banff.

Polaris Lost, The Other Gallery

Severed from the international hub of The Banff Centre, the other galleries in town represent Banff art: forest scenes, grizzly bears, and mountain ranges. Do people in cities make art about buildings, rat-races and pavement? Can city art survive outsidethe city, or Banff art outside of Banff – I think that some can and some can’t. Is internationally acclaimed art about specific place – ever, never, sometimes? People visiting Banff will be compelled to buy a painting of an elk – not the same case in a city necessarily. Middleton and Green are examples of artists concerned with place, but not the place they currently find themselves, but places that are translatable.

After living in a few different Canadian cities, context has often revealed itself as somehow not as important if only because I am always myself; the identity I bring with me is my own context which never changes – my problems follow me, people follow me (physically and non-physically). Living in Banff has made me realise how much my context actually affects my personality and how I live my life – unsure of how to identify the variable, me or my context at any given time - we can assume that both are effected, potentially right along with my art practice.

Notions of the sublime that one must accept and embrace in order to fully benefit from the experience of isolation as a source of creative inspiration

There is a traditional belief pattern which is convinced that the power of isolation is an effective influence in provoking creative production – maybe not even creative production, but any sort of efficient and prolific production. If one happens to find oneself in an isolated Art Centre (The Banff Centre, Black Mountain College or Emma Lake) you are either there because you like robust outdoor activities or you’re there to get some work done. Some people come to these venues with a specific project in mind which is in line with the context of the isolated Art Centre and its natural, epic or sublime setting. Right now at the Banff Centre’s Walter Phillips Gallery (WPG), Ragnar Kjartansson and his collaborator David Thor Johnsson, drew on the epic beauty of the Rocky Mountains as their scenery for a drawn out rock-groove homage to both the splendid and ideal setting of the isolated, untouched beauty of the mountain-scapes of Western Canada and a love of the cowboy cliché (also to be found in Western Canada). These inspirations resulted in The End (2009), a five channel video installation with an original composition (in five separate parts which coalesce) by Thor Johnsson.

This sort of site-specific inspiration in Kjartansson’s The End works beautifully with my own process of adjustment within the Banff, AB community– the exhibition opened on January 28, 2010 and was consequently the first exhibition running during my current contract with the WPG. Before I arrived at the Banff Centre I figured I would begin to adhere to the tradition of nature-based creative stimulation that is both a cliché as well as an honest decision to fall in line with a long tradition of artists moving through the Centre for over a century. So, I planned to begin my series’ of watercolour landscape paintings of the mountains and portraits of elk and bears fishing in the river. A deliberate decision to move my practice into landscape and portraiture could only be honest in the sense that I am attempting to be ironic through immersing myself in a seemingly outdated scene (outdated from my contemporary art perspective) or at least evidence of an attempt to make a comment on the un-transformative nature (or my resistance to this transformation) of the idyllic Rocky Mountain settings. Kjartansson and Thor Johnsson are working both angles – while playing with clichés, they also truthful embrace and react to the beauty of the exceptional environment they found themselves within Banff National Park while filming for the work in February 2008.

Protected and sanctioned, I am reminded daily of the bizarre character of the town of Banff being situated in a Canadian National Park. Noticing that a family of deer are always given the right-away at intersections, that human families march in lines along the downtown street, skis in tow and ski boots still on their feet, precious animal shit located along every path that will not be disturbed for days (it may be illegal), along with X-treme winter sports playing on every TV in every bar in town, it can all make one rather uneasy – oddly enough, this make me more uneasy than drunken men from the suburbs partying it up for an evening downtown, bums posing bananas as guns to beg for change on the street, naked performance artists at early evening events snorting coke, and crazy people pushing dogs in baby strollers down the street in the middle of a sunny Saturday afternoon – things that one may find in the larger cities’ scenes. I suppose both are unnerving…it may depend on whether you’re a city or country person. It also may depend, in this comparison, on how much outside cultural input one needs in order to thrive (city vs. country). In a place like Banff this input will come from yourself and whoever else may be visiting the Centre at any given time during residencies, conferences or symposia; while in the city it can be externally sought every day of the week with several venue changes throughout the course of an evening if something sucks – there’s always the next something to move onto.

The most important thing about the Banff Centre is that people move on to other things and it’s always anticipated as such. Many institutions are like this, with all working and studying positions becoming vacant on a frequent basis, new crops of people and ideas moving through at a constant pace, and impromptu events cropping up because everything is dependent on self-starting within the microcosm of the community. At every event I’ve attended – small openings both at the Centre and in the local community – it’s the same people at every event…..and this is no different than any large city I’ve lived in. So really, how is it different? Maybe because it seems so finite and truncated – finite in that you know the exact reaches of the local community at all times (I currently know all visual artists within the residencies in Banff- which I can also assume makes up about 90% of the artistic community in the town of Banff) and I’ve shared a bottle of wine from plastic cups leaned up against a wall at 3am in a studio in the woods with all of these same people. It seems truncated because, although there are many different international visitors at any given time going through the Visual Arts department and the rest of the Centre, I don’t necessarily understand how what we are doing at the Centre expands beyond that on-site interaction between international and local: the lecture, the studio visits and the fancy dinners. It must expand outwards, or why else would anyone care to isolate themselves in such extreme ways? Right?

The Benefits of Seclusion

The Banff Centre and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design connection: both institutions rely on the perceived benefits of social and geographical seclusion to induce fits of artistic inspiration. With the wider arts community far on the outside of these institutions, they can only operate inwardly, forming strong mixed communities of participants, which may be reaching close to some sort of an understanding and practice of inter-disciplinarity (although I attended NSCAD, I have yet to confirm these activities in the Banff Centre). On another note, moving to Halifax to attend university was actually a large step towards cultural expansion and exposure for me personally – people who move to Halifax from larger cities and communities have a tendency to hang around in Halifax after they graduate NSCAD due to the intoxicating community of cubby hole galleries in people’s hallways and rogue restaurants in other people’s living rooms.

Recent research into the NSCAD conceptual art heydays in the late 1960s into the 1970s unearthed some explanations as to why it could have ever happened in the small city of Halifax. Garry Neill Kennedy offered his opinion upon arriving in Halifax as the first president of the College in 1967 when he decided that there wasn’t much of anything else going on in the city at the time: no distinctive art movements and no public institutions displaying historical or contemporary art from local or international artists. There were essentially no barriers to break down and the city was ripe for the introduction of anything creative and experimental. Being a Nova Scotian and an art historian who has researched the healthy development of abstract art in Halifax in the 1950s and 60s, I know that the region was not an artistic wasteland. All the same, I agree that it was deserving of and receptive to some cultural infusion. Upon his instatement Kennedy hired a new crop of teachers, mostly from the United States and began inviting artists from the great New York conceptual art scene including the likes of Lawrence Weiner, Dan Graham, Lucy Lippard, Douglas Huebler, and Joseph Beuys (on the more European scope) and many more. These artists gave lectures, hung about the hallways (according to Kennedy in his account in the book Conceptual Art: The NSCAD Connection 1967-1973, Beuys “became the unanticipated and personable star. His accessibility and friendly demeanour were made more surprising and engaging given the stern, removed, and shamanistic figure that he had projected in the art press. The students loved him. And he hugged everyone!”), contributed instructions for students to realize in David Askevold’s Projects Class, worked with master printers in the Lithography Workshop and with Seth Siegelaub on publications out of the NSCAD Press.

Colours are probably more brilliant in person. http://rangermikedesigns.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/postcard_banff.jpg

Banff has a similar history as far as a strong and steady movement of artists coming and going, contributing, networking and leaving work and legacies in their wakes. Although I am moving from the largest city in Canada this time, opposed to a small town, the art community is still strong, and most likely no more insular than the current Toronto scene that seems to get smaller by the week.

Blog Cross-Over

Taken from Gaping Void Blog; a cartoon drawn by Hugh McLeod in response to a blog post at Global Neighbourhoods Blog; with a subsequent response at All Things Distributed. Blog networking Power.

In line with my discussions about the state of art blog criticism, I would like to use my own differing experiences of writing for myself on Art in Practice and through my recent contributions to XBLOG.

Although I do not believe that either my own blog nor the XPACE Blog would be classified as criticism in the sense that I would hope art criticism to be within - it's certainly a different experience to write for one's self than for a gallery's blog. In my own circumstances, the public aspect of my writing seems all the more distant, while my contributions to XPACE must incorporate a consideration for the audience I am writing for; although potentially quite similar to my own, it's definitely a criteria. I also consider within this audience, the affiliation of the gallery and its artists within the larger community - with institutional partnership, they work directly with artists, their work and that subsequent exchange and promotion - if I am to talk about artists, their association in any part to XPACE must be considered - moving back to Terrance Dick's admittance of not wanting to bump into anyone who he may have spoken ill about in his Akimblog and otherwise - I am not only representing my own reputation, but that of an institution in addition to my own character when I'm writing for XPACE.

There are no parametres when writing content for XPACE, there is a consensus on what is considered criticism within the context of the institution as well as a concept of audience. Contributors are expected to somehow fit within that context. Individuality and content is preserved and encouraged - which is interesting, because I have the option of free reign and content on my own blog, why do I chose to contribute material through an institution - regardless of how free of editorial intervention it may be? For credentials of course; holding associations with an organization means that you and your work are set to qualifying standards. Other important considerations could include access to a broader audience, and the opportunity for furthered public discussion on your topics and ideas? Would it be the same comparison in the print publishing world either through the community of DIY zine culture or through a long-running magazine publication? Maybe it's better to pursue both options - a good example being Leah Sandals' blog Un-edit my Heart where she offers herself the opportunity to relax from the conditioning of print journalism.

Publishing in print seems like the Holy Grail in writing accomplishments, especially for someone like me who is just beginning to break into this territory - but honestly, there's a lot more work and certainly more compromises involved, if only in the beginning stages - a good writer does not require much editing, or the writers are already accomplished to a level where no one would care to intervene in the writing style or content (I'm sure this changes drastically from magazine to magazine and among editors, but all the same). It's easier and more reflexive to publish online and to assert free reign over content and opinions, accepting spelling and grammatical errors as facts of life. There's a rush at hopping on the bandwagon, but only when it runs along a parallel road that may suit as a compliment.

The State of Blog Criticism – In Encouragement of Chair-Throwing

Img.: http://www.badonka-donk.com/images/chair.jpg

I entered into the art blog realm essentially uninformed about what was at stake; approaching the project as a form of personal expression and as an archival tool for tracking my job search and meetings with individuals in the Toronto arts community. Although the focus of the blog’s content has mostly been a review and reflection of the structure of the Toronto gallery and contemporary art system, I have inevitably found some events and exhibitions interesting within this context and perhaps have occasionally ventured into the realm of ‘art criticism’.

So what does ‘art criticism’ mean within the ever-expanding and delirious arena of online self-publishing? Most likely not much beyond itself as blogs seem to stand as reflections of individuals’ personal opinions in an age when anyone who has access to a computer can have a public voice about anything and everything. Within the Toronto art community, being small and narrow as it is, I was never under the impression that I had free reign over what I would be ‘publishing’ as I understand that maybe whoever I wrote about would also read the text concerning them, under the assumption that an artist I mention may soon read my post, dealers, curators, other writers etc. In no way knowing how often this happens, or whether it happens at all, I have still always kept in mind that whoever I write about is also someone I could bump into in a bar or along the street and would be interested in talking about what was written. For me, the blog is an invitation for discussion.

With physical printed text – reviews and criticism – the opinions are perhaps more concrete, more serious and permanent, and critics maybe more concerned about the tone and the expression of opinions with a desire to remain within an understanding of respectability and inoffence. Blogs are different. They can accidentally offend because of a more relaxed level of concern on the part of the writer, or they can be inaccurately researched, without copy editing or peer reviews…..and have the possibility of being posted after the writer’s had a few drinks. These qualities are what make the blog-world absolutely unique and excitingly problematic; two great qualities that shouldn’t be exploited. One must always remember that the online world is a form of the public sphere of course.

Due to the responsive and slap-dash format of writing and posting that blogs offer, they can fall easy prey to improperly or incompletely developed thoughts, feelings and opinions. One must understand these possibilities and use them to one’s advantage, or else the content can easily just be passed off as bad-criticism. The content does not match the same expectations for print materials. Looking at a (kind of) recent Toronto Akimblog entry by Terrance Dick’ (14 October 2009), there was a response to Dick’s statement about the role of the critic. In Dick’s opinion, he considers art critics to be responsible for pointing only towards good art, as he expressed a sense of personal guilt upon publishing (online or in print) any ‘less than favourable’ comments. He also said that he found himself afraid of running into artists he had spoken ill of (to any degree) along the streets of Toronto. This one reader’s response to the presence of bad criticism (or lack of presence) was taken through an opinion expressed through Gary Michael Dault, that there is simply “not enough room for negative reviews.”

If you attend five exhibitions in the next week (which you should do if you haven’t already), relect upon them all together, and you can weed out all the bad stuff pretty quickly. Maybe one show was mildly interesting, but nothing to write home (or online) about. So, what’s the responsibility of art critics to discuss all exhibitions, both bad and good? Again, our opinionated Akimblog responder said “As an example you [Dick] write about 3 or 4 shows, and are forced to not write about the 200 hundred others happening in the city. I understand[:] promote the good forget the garbage.” So, as a writer and publisher, there’s no constructive use to pointing out the faults and failures of the art community perhaps. Really, who would it benefit? Maybe it would put some fire under the butts of artists to make better work? Maybe ‘any publicity is good publicity? What about artists who make work that is intentionally bad? It will all end up in a swirl or opinions – the opinion of everyone who has access to a computer and beyond.

Looking to another recent example on the Voice on Canadian Art blog by Andrea Carsen where, in the 6 November 2009 post, she posed the question whether her blog should be more critical. This ran in tandem with her review of the current Redbull 381 Project’s exhibition Sitting Pretty: The Enduring Role of Portraiture in Contemporary Art . She panned it, or at least expressed dislike for the works in the show. She got a pointed response by curators Nicolas Brown and Julia Lum, who indicated some further details about the works that they thought Carsen had incorrectly or hastily overlooked and misinterpreted. So this is either some good old art drama or it’s an indication of the problems of art-blog-criticism being called out for all the problems it so easily plays with : inattention to detail, hurried and subjectively responsive content (researched or not) and some sort of understanding that the blog lies somewhere between public and private (typed from the comfort of bed and a cup of tea – where I usually write, then posted for the whole internet world to see and judge and potentially respond).

I’m fully encouraging of screaming arguments over art, taking from the spirit of the Futurists and Abstract Expressionists – getting drunk and getting into fights about what’s at stake in the art world– there’s simply not enough of that nowadays. Although two recent events of note made attempts to reinvigorate this spirit: The Toronto Alliance of Art Critics event entitled BRING-IT, MAKE FACE MOTHAFUCKAS! (Double Double Land, Dec. 2) which was supposedly a raging debate about art criticism in Toronto which featured David Balzer, Otino Corsano, Rosemary Heather, Charlene K. Lau, Leah Sandals and Murray Whyte, and Lawrence Weschler: What’s the New Line? (Cinecycle, Dec. 3) event which included rousing audience and participant attempts at re-positioning and re-evaluating current Toronto artists’ practices.

So, in the spirit: If you don’t like what I’ve said, this is a public blog and I want people to talk about the issues it discusses and play within this tricky public-private divide...although I certainly don’t encourage people to hurl any chairs in my direction next time I see them.