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.comNow, 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.comAs 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.comKey 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.
Nadja Sayej, from ArtStars*' Facebook group page
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