The A Word

The current exhibition at AKA Gallery, Dustin Wilson / FUTUROLOGIST, may initially deceive you into thinking that you’ve stepped into a project that was rejected by the Western Development Museum. The drawings, videos and the helpful handout with its accompanying list of symbols and definitions belie the wry humour at play. But like all “comedians”, Wilson is illuminating some essential truths (just as Margaret Atwood did in Oryx and Crake), about our potential future(s), our contemporary attitudes and the essential relationship between those two things.

The site of contested [future] narratives for Wilson is his native New Brunswick (he and I had an entertaining – and depressing – discussion about how a number of places in Canada are either never included in the national narratives, or are present solely as outside misinterpretations – he must be a trapper, eh, and I must be a farmer. Or he must be a craft artist who works in fur, and I must paint stripes….). This provincial focus allows a specificity for the Futurologist that is Wilson’s persona with this work, as in his talk at AKA he spoke in a dry, tongue in cheek manner of the “messages” he recieves from the future, and his attempts to decipher and decode them for us all. His words (which I commented previously could be grafted onto a number of sites in Canada, and beyond) speak of  “dissecting issues of rural identity in the current era of rapid social, economic and physical change, [Wilson] draws a line from the unfortunate outcomes that result from short-term, reactionary thinking and connects this with the current global issues of climate change, migration and mass extinction which humanity will inevitably be forced to contend with.”

A number of the images Wilson presents indicate that they take place in C.E. 2300, or further in the future. Some of the inhabitants of New Brunswick at this juncture in time have changed – genetic engineering is alluded to, sometimes fostered by unknown outsiders (perhaps government, perhaps private industries) – to be more hairy, to better tolerate the environment, perhaps all to be better “workers”.  A personal favourite is the genetic offshoot of mer people, who were bred to do work in one of the waterways, but discovered they could survive on their own on fish and other forage, abandoning any oppressive “invisible hand” of the market. Or, to quote Wilson’s illustrated guide, they “don’t work here anymore”: change is rarely predictable, and not often interested in conforming to expectations.

Other images depict the poorer, indigenous inhabitants “bootlegging” some of the technologies, while evolving wildlife disrupts other imposed notions of order (characters described solely as “blue suits” seem to have a role as faceless enforcers of some military / industrial / ‘we’re from the gov’t and here to help you” complex). At his talk at the University, several people spoke of Atwood’s foray in SF with Oryx and Crake, and Year of the Flood: both speak to how the best laid plans go awry when we consider only what we can do, and not whether we should – or, less philosophically, using pigs to grow brain tissue doesn’t work so well when the world ends due to a manufactured virus, and the “pigoons” make a play to be the dominant life form, and that cerebral tissue helps them move up the food chain….

The installation in the gallery proper is minimal, but the aircraft wire used to display the drawings, graphs and other pseudo scientific “research” is aesthetically engaging: and works well on a conceptual level, suggesting the images can be moved or re arranged, as better to fit the research of this Futurologist. To refer to his talk at the university again, Wilson spoke of the changes we (as a species) have made to our environment, and how he is “hopeful” about the future in a “geological” sense, suggesting that his focus on New Brunswick indicates that history – or the future – both happen most relevantly on a local scale, and that we may wish to trust local, immediate experience over that which is remote, that need not live – or die – with the consequences (did I mention the pigoons already?).

At its core, this is genuine research: just as Atwood once commented that her works weren’t fantasy as they were firmly grounded in what we are doing, experiencing and deciding now. Can’t you picture a future where workers willing to be “augmented” will be given the rare jobs in areas that are not part of the governing class’ electorate? Or where it’s required to have this, just as its now required to have a cell phone, FB profile and so many other aspects of technology that in their invasiveness deny that this stuff was supposed to make a shorter work week, and more freedom? Just wait: the gov’t wants to read it’s employees email now, but soon, they’ll just want to modify your DNA so you can have 12 fingers and type like a superhuman…but Wilson, in FUTUROLOGIST, suggests that the best laid plans will not be so smooth. After all, life happens, and evolution happens, and maybe that 12-fingered employee will start a dissident paper that leads to a revolution. One can only hope that in the future posited by Wilson there are more of the “mer people”, and lesser of the “blue suits”. But that might be our responsibility….

Just a note of correction to my previous “bold” commentary on We The Artists: I’ll begin with the positive.

Besides the people I praised, I should also add Adam Naismith: and I received an email from Toryn Adams, who asserts that I am incorrect in saying that the Dean of Fine Arts and Humanities was not there. As I was there until 9 PM, and the event ran until 11 PM, I will take Ms. Adams’s word that an appearance was made – as she is employed as a “research assistant” in the Arts and Science Office, I’m sure she would know.

Attended this extravaganza that students from the Visual, Musical and Dramatic Arts at the University of Saskatchewan made happen last night, and was impressed: not so much by the art works (some were good, some were not) but by the spirit and energy that made it happen. Kudos are in order to those responsible, and as always, respect and thanks have to be given to individuals who see the need for something to happen, and make it happen.

However, I have a few questions: and none of them are directed at WTA, or its organizers or participants. My questions are about those who weren’t there – such as the Dean of Fine Arts and Humanities, or the plethora of fat, lazy tenured faculty who seem content to let the Clarion project die as it may involve some work on their part, or it may interfere with their sabbaticals or other external manifestations of their incompetence and institutional laziness: how does it feel to have the students show you up, and set a bar that you aren’t likely to even try to beat (will it be another 14 odd years before another Faculty show from the tenured profs of the visual arts area – actually, that may be a blessing in disguise….)? I temper my congratulations to the students who organized this with my contempt for the faculty whose absence is literal, and metaphorical.

It is time to revisit what tenure means, and more importantly, what it does not : but when the Dean sounds like a used car salesman who doesn’t even believe his own lines, perhaps the best thing to do is be grateful that ilk is not there to take credit for things they haven’t done, and won’t be doing anytime soon….and it’s not like the tenured parasites and plump bureaucrats make it to events on campus, so what did we expect?

Enough: when our current government, either provincial or local asks the university why they should fund people who do nothing, my satisfaction and schadenfreude will be tempered by sadness at the fact that the students at the University of Saskatchewan in Fine Arts are engaged, hard working, demanding and diligent, and deserve far, far better than what they’re getting…..and they deserve to be congratulated for stepping up and making things happen, and reminding many of us their relevance. These excellent students are why I miss teaching, sometimes…if not those I was compelled to tolerate and abet.

And a large thank you and props to Emma Anderson, Mitch Bonokoski and Toryn Adams. Well done.

…or you can advertise it like neon in the winter night.

This in response to this letter in the Star Phoenix. The debate tires me, and as I am no longer at the University of Saskatchewan I treasure that my interaction with ignorant people has dwindled significantly. But sometimes it’s necessary to get your hands dirty….

This may or may not run in the Star Phoenix, as I sent it off: but I don’t need them to make a point, and here it is.

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Like most people on the Anti – RAGS side (as they can’t honestly be called Pro Mendel, despite their revisionist fantasies about the failed renovation plan), Dave Geary plays loose with the facts, and makes a number of ignorant assumptions that he passes off as “truth”. Although I’m tired of this debate and the refusal of individuals to inform themselves, I’ll step into the fray again (since the Star Phoenix has called me a “Civic Art Star”, perhaps I should….god help me).

A few of the “facts” that Geary cites are anything but, and it’s necessary to point that out.

Firstly, his assertions that this is a closed door process is belied by my personal experience of being invited to a consultation on this: and this was made up of individuals from a number of galleries in the city, and organizations, all of whom have experience and knowledge of what it takes to make a gallery run on a day to day basis. I would add that I’ve been liberal in my statements that the Perehudoff “retrospective” was / is a waste of taxpayer money for the sake of regionalist pandering, and I am as open and blunt with my opinions of other endeavours by the Mendel when I deem it deserved. I’m also supportive, when I feel it’s merited – on a local, and on a national level.  But perhaps that’s why I was there: I pay attention to facts, and don’t sound like a broken record, and I remember the two fires that happened in the inadequate prep spaces, and I have worked – and continue to work – installing exhibitions both traditional and otherwise. In other words, unlike some critics, I am informed.

Facts are important here: I’d also assert that the “Save the Mendel” FB page (because FB is such a factual source) has died. Most individuals who express distaste for the plan are confusing their contempt for our Mayor with the facts, or are part of that tired breed who think we should fund suburban development but that culture is “worthless”. It’s a sad legacy (if these people get their way) that Fred Mendel’s gift will be allowed to rot in unsafe, insecure spaces so we can pretend that ignorant opinions have as much value as informed ones.  And it’s unfortunate that Geary is assuming he speaks for the arts community: he does not, and even the CARFAC issue that spoke to people on the issue was less than homogenous. One could argue that was a “loaded” issue, as it ran opinions by Geary and two others, and didn’t speak to anyone who works at any gallery in the city, commercial, public or private. And I would point out that PAVED arts, one of the better galleries in the city, just bequeathed their amazing collection of photographic works to the Mendel to ensure it would be cared for properly – so Geary should remember he speaks only for himself, and poorly at that.

But these are all facts: and they have no space in Geary’s opinion, as it would require him to change it. I myself consider our current mayor to be desperately in need of someone to wheel him away from the trough, and being a renter and someone who lives in the downtown and works in Riversdale, my contempt for the majority of our City Council is equalled by very few others: but I won’t sacrifice the gift and legacy of Fred Mendel on that altar.

Or, Saskatoon can do what it’s best known for in the rest of the country: abandon culture unless it’s Glen Scrimshaw, and be known as a place that looks backwards, instead of forward.

This will be at the Gordon Snelgrove Gallery this Thursday, January 12th, at noon. I mention this now as some people may not hear this week’s A Word until Thursday night, and will miss the talk, and as I’ve demonstrated, I have no issue using the A Word as an event calendar – if you’re doing something worthwhile, and not karaoke. The next few weeks will see a number of events worth your time, from Emanuel Licha at PAVED to We The Artist at TCU place to Shauna McCabe’s Prairie Readymade, so mark these down in your datebook.

…and I feel fine. In fact, I feel better than fine, as I share an idea at the beginning of today’s show about how we should open “galleries” that are called “prisons”, and then the federal gov’t will have no issue with funding us, and we can always claim we have lots of gallery visitors…oops, I mean “prisoners”, and nevermind that nasty word ‘artist’, we have gaurds, or lobbyists…..they’re just “unreported” or nevermind facts, I had 10, 000 people come to see my latest show. Take this denial of facts and embrace of truthiness as opportunity, ladies and gentlemen: if they can do it, so can we.

Anyway, here’s this week’s show: besides ranting, I mention a number of things, from this event to this event to Prophetic Treasures by Lucy Fern, which has an opening reception on Saturday, Jan 7 (1pm-3pm) featuring live music by Aboriginal Music Award winner Becky Thomson, food and beverages and there will be free admission.

I’ve also posted below the invite images for an exhibition by three emerging local artists at Esteem for the Home gallery: this exhibition is up for the month, but you’ll want to check this out.

….I steal the title that my editor at Planet S used, as I like it very much. This was my year end commentary on 2011 and the shows we “saw” this past year in Saskatoon. Enjoy: and I’ve resisted putting this up at the A Word, but it is 2012, and “so shall it be at the end of the world : the angels shall come forth and sever the wicked from among the just, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth” (Matt 13:49, 50). This will undoubtably make many wail and gnash their teeth – but hey, who am I to disagree with the Star Phoenix calling me a “Civic Art Star”?

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It was a largely good year, with many changes, in the Saskatoon Visual Arts community. PAVED arts welcomed a new Director, a long overdue event. Dan Ring, who has been a curatorial mainstay at the Mendel Art Gallery so long that I suspect he has a secret room (with a wet bar) in the basement, has retired, and we’ll know his successor in 2012. AKA gallery also welcomed a slate of new staff, and like PAVED, and the Mendel, new people mean new directions. Now, at the U of S Art “department” for 2011 / 12, there’s not new people so much as fewer people, with significant cutbacks and a chunk of faculty on sabbatical. Has the university started fundraising for the Clarion Project yet, or will it be stillborn? But my (much suffering) editor cautioned me I’m to talk about relevant things, so I shall attempt to do so. I make no guarantees.

I’d like to frame this in a larger narrative: with the re election of the Sask Party, the myth of the “New Saskatchewan” permeates us all. And I don’t think it’s accidental that nearly everything I’ll be mentioning seems to challenge that narrative. Or I can tell you that the billboard I mentioned in writing on Jayce Salloum’s work that warned that “you’re being lied to, SK” is now advertising some event that has to do with the Titanic. I think I’ve said I don’t believe in coincidence.

Jeff Thomas : Resistance is [Not] Futile at PAVED arts was a worthy exhibit in the same way that Jayce Salloum’s history of the present is : both challenge our assumptions of history, here and beyond. In Thomas’ case, his exploration of where – and how – stereotypical images of Aboriginals appear across Canada matters not just because of the years behind this project, but because his own son Bear has gone from being part of it to a contributor. Salloum works in this same vein, but expanding beyond the “colony of Canada” (his term) to what we think / assume about the Middle East. Another point Jayce made to me was that the Mendel is unique in that it features voices that have no interest in going along to get along : and in this past year, Ruth Cuthand’s retrospective Back Talk offended all the right people in all the right ways, with works both new and old that give a history of this place that won’t be featured at the Western Development Museum any time soon.

Influenza, image credit / artist : Ruth Cuthand

Karine Giboulo and Olga Mishchenko used disarmingly lovely means in Habitaptation at the Mendel to indicate that the 1% are more than happy to keep pissing on the 99% : the toys and tableaux of the former denied their sinister story, just as the latter artist’s images of universities made them look like Orwellian bureaucratic monoliths…. and to top it all off, Michèle Mackasey in face à nous had the audacity to point out that single mothers can be good parents, and worthy of being painted like queens. You can still see that show, along with the aforementioned Salloum.

The College Galleries on campus are never included in my gleeful contempt for the art “department” there. Like a number of places (such as the new Make Work Projects, on 20^th Street, who brought in two significant visiting speakers this year) they step in to fill a need. Two shows stand out this year: Shauna McCabe’s Formerly Exit Five : Portable Monuments to Recent History explored success and failure of urban environments, and Peter Smith’s posthumous exploration of self, creativity – and mental illness  – in his You May Find Yourself. Both offered frank views, and both were shows that you needed to experience repeatedly. Jon Sasaki’s Good Intentions was both heartfelt and hilarious, meaning well and mocking at the same time, and the galleries ended the year with Corinna Ghaznavi’s engaging project Animal, which seemed to be here too short a time.

Going from the theme of animals, Michel Boutin’s Great King Rabbitt at AKA also offered an alternative – and caustic – take on many revered historical figures, and “ways in which history is constructed to perpetuate both personal and ideological power.”: I am curious if Michel will be adding our current Prime Minister to his list of “portraits” along with the Pope, the Queen and a few others deserving of a critical makeover. As a brief aside, PAVED arts showed exhibitions by David Clark (88 Constellations for Wittgenstein) and Ellen Moffat (PickUpPutDown) that are among some of the best new media work I’ve ever “seen”.

I’ll end with what is arguably the most significant event in the visual arts community of the past year: Ellen Remai’s generous donation to the AGS, stepping in to support culture as many governments step out. I mention this not just to praise her but also to end with a question to our respective political “overlords”: do they imagine that the current rapacious rental companies will be making such efforts to support the Saskatoon and Saskatchewan communities, as Remai seems to be re investing money made here back into here, or will they simply take the money and run? Now that governments have begun to abdicate their responsibilities so gleefully in this manner, this is the question that I’ll keep in mind for the start of 2012 – as the most significant exhibition of the past year has been Ruth Cuthand’s Back Talk, and we all know how much politicians like dissent.

Meghan Krauss has an exhibition of works in the Frances Morrison gallery space in downtown Saskatoon that is up until the 29th of December : and I mention this not just because these are engaging works, but also because Meghan is in the latest issue of PREFIX Photo out of Toronto, which has several other Prairie based artists as well.

Meghan has traveled extensively, and she is now doing her MFA at Windsor, which with Windsor / Detroit offers an interesting – and often ignored  – take on what may lie in the future for some urban centres, with “booms ” and busts – and this is something that surely informs her images of Saskatoon, and what is or is not happening here.

You can check out more of her work here, at her web site, but you want to check out the work in person at the gallery while you can.

In Raising Frankenstein: Curatorial Education and its Discontents, one of the aforementioned “Discontents” admits that they started at skepticism and ended with being appalled at the blatant disregard for any kind of public (non academic) audience in “teaching” curating. This Diogenes continues with the assertion that curatorial studies programs seem to offer less than the “outdated” Art History degrees, both in genuine knowledge and in applicable skills. Less “isms”, more history, to paraphrase Paglia.

A critical but relevant starting point with two shows both on the U of Saskatchewan campus:  Animal, curated by Corinna Ghaznavi at the College Galleries, and Twelve Point Buck (a collaborative duo of Leila Armstrong and Chai Duncan), with their show, Flexus Maximus. The former isn’t the first curatorial project by Ghaznavi that has been in the College Gallery space, but easily the most successful: divided between the two floors, the stronger work is upstairs. Tom Dean’s dogs seem very playful and active for cast works, and I confess to a desire to scratch their heads every time I’m in the gallery. An Whitlock’s wall installation  Crow(d) presents a murder of crows, with heads thrusting outward from a wall, some cawing at you, some silent, all suggesting the same action and activity that you get from Dean’s aforementioned Bitch Pack. John McEwan’s grotesquely massive skull (with its own convenient dolly, titled Teko with Broken Base) is more engaging than the flashing lights in his accompanying work Shunt. The rusted and wasted nature of the skull suggests that the crows are laughing at the arrogance of humanity, while the Bitch Pack waits to “mark” their comments in a more pissy (literally and metaphorical) manner

Downstairs, you’ll find Dagmar Dahle’s Rare-Common-Extinct is pleasing to the eye, while a number of other works in that lower space are less so: I suspect the show could have been halved in terms of the contributors, edited down to a very strong show, as opposed to one that oscillates between works worth your time and works that seem more research than art – Lyndal Osbourne’s obsessive gathering, for example (shhh, don’t tell the academy that they’re not the same thing).

This is a good point to go to Flexus Maximus at the Kenderdine Gallery space, presented by Twelve Point Buck: a show that I’m alternating between calling research without any art, or another playfully snide take upon the Canadian obsession with landscape painting. (An artist I admire greatly told me that his most hated form of art is landscape, as its usually banal both in execution and intent). The gallery is filled not with the works of Chai Duncan or Leila Armstrong (okay, a few), but with the works of Levine Flexhaugh, an “artist” whose images of the West are so standardized and so artificial that Glen Scrimshaw may feel he’s encountered his conceptual ancestor. His works can be found in most Western collections (by which I mean the Prairies), but his paintings are all so uniform that you find it hard to believe they weren’t mimeographed or made from a stencil – they are that alike. The usual assertions about the national imaginary happen here, that this is just a codifying of the landscape into consumable items, playing upon regionalist pride over taste. But my issue is in whether this is presented as a mockery of Flexhaugh or in a sense of the futility of all of us trying to capture or speak to our sites, in that history may not judge us so kindly. After all, if we find Flexhaugh to be a joke, maybe our grandchildren will wonder about artists who fill galleries with other people’s works. This may be in the literal case here, or in the karaoke of abstraction manufactured here, like saleable, safe products, lacking innovation and “taste” as egregiously as Flexhaugh (to our “modern” eyes). I say this as someone who recently installed a toilet in a gallery as homage to Marcel Duchamps, but I did that in envy, not disdain, and perhaps that is all the difference.

Both of these shows speak to how we position ourselves in the larger “landscape”, and with our co inhabitants – the animals that Ghaznavi puts at the centre of her show, and the same buck that appears in every Flexhaugh work, looking away from us – but also to how we see our place in the larger dialectic of geography and history. Ghaznavi states that “as representations these animals open up ways for us to think imaginatively about animals: not to anthropomorphize them but to locate both points of affinity and difference.” That affinity and difference is a point to bring to Flexus Maximus as well, but in whether or not we’re any less unreal or disconnected than he is, to our contemporary eyes.

Ellen Moffat’s installation – or more exactly, her latest experiment in interactivity – at PAVED arts indicates why artists who work with audio here in Saskatchewan are getting national attention (Jeff Morton or Erin Gee, both involved with Holophon, out of Regina, to offer further examples).

PAVED has offered a number of shows over the past year or so that explore just what audio art is, or can be, and sometimes these have worked brilliantly, and there have also been some brilliant (if very enjoyable) failures. Thomas Bégin’s almost low tech “Larsen Surf Model Mixing Plan” (with enough electric guitars to please any teenage wanna be rockstar boy, and with the decidedly un “artist” assertion by Begin that he wouldn’t really sell the installation, just the list of components so you can build your own version) and Annie Martin’s bare, stark gallery that, if you closed your eyes, would make you think you were standing in the midst of 20^th street are two examples. Moffat’s PickUpPutDown opened with performances by herself and Jeff Morton and David Grosse, at the three “stations” in the gallery, with various tools and instruments that push what is – and what can be – a musical instrument. Or, to paraphrase Moffat from a previous conversation, objects are often extraneous to her practice, or more exactly, are a means to an end.

Ellen’s words on it are as follows:

“PickUpPutDown is an interaction in and with an architectural space as a base form for an experimental sound project. Saskatoon media artist Ellen Moffat will attach instrument wire and sound materials directly onto surfaces and features of the PAVED Arts gallery space using the walls as ad hoc soundboards. Sound within this environment is amplified with contact microphones. Visitors are invited to engage with various objects and materials through direct actions and improvisation as an intuitive exploration of sound making and listening. The subtlety, repetition and distribution of the sounds will draw attention to their character and relate to the space of the gallery as a sound chamber. This project includes in situ production, installation and performance.”

One of the instruments is a saw that has it’s blade replaced with wire, another is a knitting needle where you can use either the point or the padded end  – there are a number of other tools that are also padded or sponged, to be used on the wall or on the wood elements, or other industrial components, such as the metal bar that comprises most of one of the instruments (a sign in the space asks for gentleness from the “players”). A personal favourite of mine is a segment of another station with a contact mic attached to the wall, partly because the evening of the performance Moffat tapped on the wall with her fingers, and that repeated at irregular intervals from different sites in the room. Speakers sit higher up in the gallery, so that the audio seems to permeate you – the work is less about objects than about creating an environment, and the performance with Morton and Grosse was about each exploring aspects of their “instruments” and “tools” but also about interacting with each other – a necessity as the sounds generated did not stay in a specific site, but moved about the space, with the aforementioned contact mics and speakers and how the sound takes on a nearly physical quality as it moves around, in and through you. Some of the audio is reminiscent of that which you would hear in any movie, with its sharpness or almost tactile nature that may make you tense, or alert – a kind of “ghost in the machine”, but also suggesting that the space is alive. This is similar to how Martin brought the outside inside, or how Bégin’s work may have seemed to be done, or quiet, and then would suddenly give you more “feedback” or further permutations on the original sounds made by the gallery goer.

I’m somewhat enamoured of this work: and I’ve stated before that one of the strong streams of contemporary art is the exploration of pure aesthetics, without a specific social aspect (Ad Reinhardt’s black on black works of the last century are fine examples of this, seduction through technique and beauty). And I like to go to PAVED at intervals and “play” with the work at any opportunity, and encourage the same in the brief window that Ellen Moffat has turned PAVED’s gallery space into a “concert hall” as well as a “jam space”.