The After School Special at Xpace

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

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

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.

Robert Lendrum's "Living Documents"

This is partly shameless self-promotion since I wrote the exhibition text being handed out at the gallery for this show, but I highly recommend checking out Toronto-based artist Robert Lendrum's solo exhibition, "Living Documents: Dr. Frankenstein's Guide to Self-Portraiture", at the Ryerson Gallery this week.

Robert Lendrum, Grandpa 1965 [still], 2008

Lendrum's work uses performance, video and photography to explore how identity is socially and dynamically constructed and often borrows from documentary traditions as well as methodologies from institutional and corporate structures (like market research surveys, for instance) to restage autobiographical narratives. The series of durational performance "stills" that recreate Lendrum's family snapshots, "Family Re-Semblance,"which was shown in curator Shaun Dacey's "Cake on the Icing" exhibition at Interaccess last year, is featured in the Ryerson show, but the emphasis in this new exhibition is on the ongoing "Impostor" project.

Robert Lendrum, Impostor: The Audition [still], 2006-09

For the "Impostor" series, Lendrum compiled survey information about himself in order to cast an actress to play him in a series of videos that explore how his acquaintances, family and friends perceive him. The results of the project, and in particular actress Jacqueline van de Geer's improvisations of "Robert" based on the survey data or in response to Lendrum's prompts, are both ridiculous and hilarious and open up an interesting new way of conducting performance art for the camera. What I like best about Lendrum's work (though I know this is a contentious issue) is the way it uses feminist and queer theories about performance to interrogate how non-marginalized identities (like that of a straight, white, middle-class, male artist) are constructed and enacted and challenges our understanding of "objective" data gathering, but in a playful, humorous and, one would hope, accessible way.

The show opens at the Ryerson Gallery this Thursday, March 19th from 6-9 pm. Most of Lendrum's video work can be found on his website and information about the exhibition, and the accompanying essay, can be found on the gallery's site.

Curatorial Incubator: Life on Venus screening and curator's talk tonight at Vtape

Tonight is the premiere screening of the last program in the 2009 Curatorial Incubator - The Dark Arts: magic and intuition series at Vtape. Titled "Life on Venus," the program examines feminism and the uncanny through a series of videos by Canadian and international artists that investigate the discomforts of the everyday.

Shana Moulton, Whispering Pines 8 [still], 2006, Courtesy Broadway 1602

Curated by Matthew Hyland, the interim director and assistant curator at Oakville Galleries, the program includes work by Toronto artist Deirdre Logue, landmark video artist and theorist Martha Rosler, and the amazing Shana Moulton, whose work I only recently discovered and am totally enamoured with. Moulton manages to make work that is the perfect mixture of pop culture appropriation, over-the-top personae, self-reflexive musing and playful experimentation. It's simultaneously absurdly hilarious and endearingly earnest in a way that reminds me of many people's childhood experiments with video and audio recording equipment.

Salla Tykkä, Lasso [still], 2001

The catalogue for this season of the Incubator, including programs and texts by Darryl Bank, Erik Martinson, Hyland and Leigh Fisher, is available at the opening and Hyland will be doing a curator's talk and Q & A session at 7 pm at Vtape at 401 Richmond St., suite 452.

"Life on Venus" program:

Martha Rosler, Semiotics of the Kitchen, 1975, 6 min.
Jennet Thomas, SHARONY!, 2000, 11 min.
Gunilla Josephson, CRASHBANGSMASH, 2001, 3 min.
Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Me/We, Okay, Gray, 1993, 5 min.
Shana Moulton, Whispering Pines 8, 2006, 8 min.
Deirdre Logue, Eclipse, 2005, 5 min.
Salla Tykkä, Lasso, 2001, 4 min.

Carey Young at the Urban Field Speakers Series

Carey Young, I am a Revolutionary (video still), 2001.
Commissioned by Film & Video Umbrella, London.
© Carey Young, Courtesy the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York

Last night I went to the second lecture in the Urban Field Speakers Series, co-organized by the Visible City Project and Archive, Public journal and the Prefix Institute for Contemporary Art, to see British artist Carey Young speak about her work. Young has an upcoming solo exhibition opening this Friday, March 13th at The Power Plant here in Toronto, but I knew her work from a group show that originated at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2005 (and then traveled across Canada, including a showing at Oakville Galleries) called "Body: New Art from the UK".

The video that was included in that group survey was I am a Revolutionary: documentation of the artist rehearsing a one line "speech" with a professional speech and rhetoric coach in a banal corporate office space that consists of the simple statement "My name is Carey Young and I am a revolutionary". Young's attempts at various deliveries of the same line range from heartfelt earnestness to ridiculously overblown, while simultaneously referencing early video art practices and direct camera performances. While I didn't know much about her work at the time, I was compelled by the piece at the VAG and was eager to hear her speak this week.

Carey Young, Everything You've Heard is Wrong (video still), 1999

Courtesy the Tate, London

Evidently, so were many people in Toronto. The venue, Prefix's gallery space, was packed throughout her hour long presentation and the 45 min question and answer period, mediated by Power Plant curator Helena Reckitt. I really enjoyed Young's presentation about her body of work, especially the video clips she showed of early performances like Everything You've Heard is Wrong, where she delivered a Toastmasters-inspired workshop on how to speak well in public in the midst of the busy and often polemic Speakers' Corner in London. Many of her early performances involved her taking on a corporate identity (inspired by her real "day job" working for multinational corporations) and exaggerating or overemphasizing the bureaucracy of these environments in absurd and often hilarious ways (often hearkening back to Andrea Fraser's landmark institutional critiques).

Carey Young, Body Techniques (after A Line in Ireland, Richard Long, 1974),
2007 © Carey Young, Courtesy the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.

Her more recent projects, including an ongoing series where Young uses legal language and stipulations to drastically reframe the gallery space, or the recent series of photos that restage famous pioneer performance and video works in settings in Dubai, have taken a more serious and sometimes, as Reckitt and others noted, violent turn. Young cited an interest in complicity in corporate agendas and the branding of public space as the impetus for many of these projects, as well as a recent interest in Gilles Deleuze's theories on "Humour, Irony and the Law" where he argues that one of the only ways to subvert arbitrary and absurd legal systems is to become a masochist: to adhere to the law so strictly and exaggerate its system to the point that one enjoys the pain associated with punishment, thereby perverting the intended result of that punishment (to prevent future infringements) by taking pleasure in it.

Young mentioned that her seeming ambivalence in the works that aim to critique corporate culture, or a perceived lack of radicalism on her part, has often made viewers, particularly in the UK, upset with her for not being harder on corporate culture or more staunch in her critique. While the question period at Prefix was rather subdued, the same undercurrent of questioning the success or effect of her critique appeared in many of the questions she was asked about her working methods and her reflections on the result of her projects.

While I can definitely sympathize with wanting to see performance art, especially by younger women artists that deals with corporate and commercial culture, be polemical in the face of global capitalism, I couldn't help but think that some of these questions were not starting from the same premise as Young's own projects. For me, just because Young doesn't use her female, business/upper-middle-class bedecked body as a dialogic site of meaning-making and doesn't make explicit or obvious the violence inherent in these international movements doesn't necessarily negate the critical potency of her work. Instead, I appreciate that her projects begin from a place of acceptance that the avant-garde ideal of finding a space outside of the systems of commercialization and institutionalization to critique these same systems might not be possible. That, from their outset, Young's performances and interventions accept that everyone - artists included (or maybe especially) - are often complicit in the processes that they also wish to critique. In many of her videos and text works, especially, there seems to be a moment of self-deprecating humour and self-reflexivity where Young (or her persona) implicitly addresses the audience, saying "yes, we all know that when we closely examine this rhetoric of creativity and commercial success that it is ridiculous, but yet it still works. It still has a hold on us and is something we want to be a part of, even as we subvert it."

While this acceptance of messy complicity might not offer the radicalism we've come to expect from contemporary artists, and might be uncomfortable in the ways it reminds us of our own daily complicity, it felt refreshing to see work that was so pragmatic and, in many ways, practical in its approach to these peculiar social conditions.

Night of the Living Documents: Identity Construction in the work of Robert Lendrum

For Robert Lendrum's solo show "Living Documents: Dr. Frankenstein's Guide to Self-Portraiture" opening at the Ryerson Gallery Thursday, March 19th.

Click on a page to enlarge.

C magazine: Do Curators Need University Curatorial Programs?

For the 100th issue of C magazine on the topic of pedagogy in contemporary art.

Huge thanks to Alissa Firth-Eagland, Barbara Fischer, Anna Hudson, Cait McKinney, Helena Reckitt, and Kim Simon for their help and guidance with this project, as well as to Rosemary Heather, Bill Wood and Bryne McLaughlin for support and feedback.

Click on a page to enlarge.