Column

Nasrin Himada is a Palestinian writer, editor and curator based in Tio’tia:ke (Montréal), in Kanien’kehá:ka territory. Their writing on contemporary art has appeared in Canadian Art, Critical Signals, The Funambulist, FUSE Magazine and MICE Magazine, among others. They are the co-editor of contemptorary.org.

##### Desert Hearts

_Desert Hearts_ (1985) is a lesbian love story set in Reno, Nevada in the ’50s; it’s the first feature film from director Donna Deitch and is based on the novel _Desert of the Heart_ (1964) by Jane Rule. I happened upon it one day while browsing through the Criterion Collection’s digitized film archive, procrastinating in anticipation of a looming deadline, needing to start a piece of writing. But the beginning—it always hurts. To ease the pain of self-sabotage, I scrolled through the romance section, as I often do, for distraction and comfort. As the story goes, a straight-laced English professor named Vivian Bell from New York City arrives in Reno to establish residence for a “quickie” divorce. She stays in a guest house on a ranch run by a matriarch named Frances. There, she meets Cay, Frances’ stepdaughter, a free-spirited artist 10 years her junior who revels in bold and flirty encounters, always searching for that one true love. A slow and tender romance unfolds between the unlikely couple against the backdrop of a stunning desert landscape.

Around this time, as I was attempting to start my writing assignment, but before I watched _Desert Hearts_, I had been ruminating on the idea of revenge writing. In one scene in the film, shortly after their first kiss at Lake Tahoe, Vivian and Cay return to the ranch only to find that Frances has packed Vivian’s bags and ordered a car to take her to a hotel in the city. Frances is livid, and speaks directly to Vivian when she confronts the couple for embarrassing her at a party the night before; them leaving together had caused quite the stir. Vivian is outraged, storms off and gets into the car. Cay tries to go with her, but Vivian won’t have it—for now. The car drives off, leaving Cay behind. A few days later, Cay shows up at Vivian’s hotel door and insists they speak about what happened. At first, Vivian is reluctant, but then opens the door to let her in. Vivian is dishevelled and a mess, her hair all loose and uncombed, her eyes filled with tears, her cheeks red from crying. “You’re beautiful,” Cay says, upon first sight. Vivian walks to the kitchen and takes a big gulp of whiskey, lights a cigarette and starts at it with Cay, demanding justice in response to Frances’ behaviour. “Why don’t you justtell her off?” Cay exclaims, to which Vivian responds, “I am not in the habit of raising my voice over false issues. When I retire, I will simply write a short story for my revenge, about this town, these people, these gamblers.”

I couldn’t help but laugh—and relate! I wondered how often writers ruminate over revenge fantasies only to then use them as material for better stories. I laughed because I was in the midst of thinking of doing the same thing. I had recently received an email from an ex-partner. We hadn’t been in touch, partly because I had refused to engage with them. The relationship was very hard and caused much distress; so much so, that when someone even utters their name, my body goes into shock. When I received this email, I was enraged because I had blocked them from my inbox. But I hadn’t realized I could still receive messages from them in my trash folder. So, when I saw their message, I froze. Opened it, and read it. My thought shortly afterwards was to go and egg their car. I desired immediate action. I wanted to give precedence to this impulse. For days afterwards, I fantasized about this in detail: who would I recruit to help me, what would I wear, where would I buy the eggs, what time of night would this take place?

In the end, I chose to simply write about it, as a way to seek revenge without taking action IRL. To make it into fiction, in this way, supports my ongoing attempts to overhaul the stigma directed at those who express anger over a fraught relationship. That relationship was nothing short of abusive, but the shame and repression that comes with trying to communicate that, without using that word, can be so isolating. At times, it has felt difficult to express such dynamics openly and critically in my queer community, where it can often seem like harmful behavior is let slide in ways that it might not if the partner was a male cisgendered person. Many have written about this, but we still have so much to learn in regards to accountability, both individually and as a community.

By writing a story that gives precedence to my impulse for revenge, I get to process this anger differently than I would in public, even among my peers. Writing cuts through what would, in a public context, be experienced as stigma and shame. There is no shame in feeling this anger, and I want to talk about it with all of you. And the need to explore the indignant residue of a lingering resentment is respected. Yes, often writing gets me back to a tender place, one that allows for a path open to forgiveness, to return to the place where light is. Sure. Maybe. But writing also allows for an intimacy with the monstrous; in this case, to break the veneer of respectable post-breakup behaviour.

Right now, all I want is revenge: to lay claim, to avenge, to retaliate, to gain satisfaction. Writing is action, too, and that’s the beauty of Vivian’s remark. She wanted to repair the moment of inaction by ultimately writing about her humiliating experience; she wanted the chance to express in writing what she was unable to in person at the time of the confrontation and take power back. Revenge writing is time travel, time in effect, then corrected, re-made through a fantastical vision. It’s the ultimate remake.

##### The Place Behind the Couch

The images I see, they’re all mixed up, or maybe they’re a memory. I was sitting with my brother behind a couch. We were in an apartment, not ours. Our parents were in another other room, not far from us, but still at a distance. They were talking, laughing with the hosts and other guests. We were with all the children. We were children, too. Behind the couch, we hid. I remember we were scared, not of the other children, but of where we were, in that room, in that apartment. Something felt off. We were not safe. The hosts, we didn’t like. We just wanted to go home. But we weren’t able to move, not from that particular spot. We felt stuck, as if we were put there by some other force, bound to it. We stayed. We couldn’t leave, and we couldn’t say anything. We didn’t shout for them, our parents. We wanted to, but we had to stay quiet. But where were they? Why were they taking so long? We just wanted to go home. Eventually, our mom appeared, towering over us, and in a stern voice, low as a whisper, told us to get out of there, it’s time to go.

Writer

Institutions

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Narrative

Memory

Two short vignettes that reflect a safety found in writing by writer and curator Nasrin Himada. The first, oriented around the plot of the film _Desert Hearts_ (1985), examines revenge fantasies and writing as a space to process and release. The latter is a childhood memory of unease.

On Writing: in two vignettes

**Jac Renée Bruneau** is a writer, editor and organizer based in Toronto. She was formerly the editor of _C Magazine_.

“Yo—bunch of bullshit, right?,” says TJ, a pouty, unemployed thirtysomething with a chinstrap beard and a Brooklyn drawl. He’s talking about a voir dire, a hearing to determine the competency of prospective jurors, and the event around which _Mediums_ (2017) revolves. The grandfatherly Caucasian man, Gary, is like, “Excuse moi?” and TJ retorts, with deep resignation, “What’s the point?” Gary, again: “The point? The constitutions of the United States and the state of New York guarantee defendants in criminal trials and litigants in civil trials the right to a trial by jury. That’s the point.” He punctuates the period of this sentence with his glowing, blue-tipped vape, and when TJ says, “Why me? Why now?,” goes on to say that, “Potential jurors are randomly selected from lists of registered voters, holders of driver’s licences or IDs issued by the division of motor vehicles, New York state income tax filers, recipients of unemployment insurance or family assistance.” His know-it-all response at first bears the faint stink of mansplaining, but before long, we see that a “woke” jab at masculinity is thankfully not the project director James N. Kienitz Wilkins is here to undertake. Rather, Gary’s spiel (abbreviated here) is the first of seven—one from each character who finds themselves in front of a courthouse over the course of one business day. Four have been called to a voir dire, two are lawyers on site for different reasons and the seventh shows up at lunch time to try and sell his car.

This 38-minute film, shot on 16mm, is constructed entirely of medium shots, used most commonly in dialogue sequences, allowing the viewer to see the actor’s body language. The location of _Mediums_ is assembled from three still photographs, each of which is rear-projected (giving it the warm ambience of a lightbox): two depict the building’s stone steps from different angles, and the third is of the Dunkin’ Donuts across the street. Actors are posed in front of the screen, illuminated with standard, three-point lighting. The resulting visual discontinuity between actor and screen is to be expected; it’s by no means successful in convincing viewers that they are looking at a naturally occurring time and place. The seams of production are apparent but not in the way other films fetishize what’s otherwise deliberately kept behind scenes. The artifice here is subtle, seductively strange, unmooring and appropriately sets the scene for a surreal string of monologues.

The seven strangers are reticent to engage each other (the cell phone is used as a vague, inanimate prop to avoid conversation, which mostly doesn’t work), as strangers tend to be a result of both a generalized mistrust and a defence of one’s own time. Time figures heavily in the film, with an ostensibly gigantic, unseen clock face far above where the actors stand, which they turn towards now and again, to begrudgingly articulate to- the-minute countdowns to various deadlines. The opening shot itself shows 8:19 a.m. on a grey background. We watch for a full minute, until it turns to 8:20\. It’s a familiar feeling, staring at the clock, in class or at work, waiting for the desired configuration of its hands (or pixels) to strike. In this way, Kienitz Wilkins forces us to feel time, imposing the discipline of monochronic time, wherein agreed-upon timeframes, appointments or bookings are made, and failure to comply is punishable. It’s the non-negotiable time of capitalism and it has significant bearing on how people behave and relate to each other.

Each character in _Mediums_ has a piece of information to articulate, as well as one to hear—and there’s nothing colloquial about it. Someone who mentions they’re an actor, working on some “short films… student stuff, mostly,” gets an earful about the Screen Actors Guild/ American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. Another, who expresses that jury duty comes at a bad time, explaining that he has a senile mother who is bedridden from a recent fall, gets the 4-1-1 on New York State of Health benefits for which he may be eligible. And even Gary, who is trying to open a Dunkin’ Donuts franchise, runs into a franchise lawyer who homes in on the fine print of the copy of the franchise disclosure document he’s carrying in his pocket. The unwitting, time-killing small talk that comes about in the interstices of regimented time in Mediums proffers a highly concentrated, hyper-specific redux of a primary source, precisely tailored to each character’s issue.

Flirtations with what is fact or fiction, original or derivative, representational or interpretive, are at the core of Kienitz Wilkins’ practice. Special Features (2014) starts with a man in a basic black button-up in front of a studio background, telling the story of a time he was catering some fancy event. Though he’s speaking as if straight from the horse’s mouth, the shot ends unceremoniously, and then a different man, wearing a basic black button-up shirt (the uniform of a caterer) picks up where the other left off. Eventually, a third man joins the cast, and all in, this has an effect so quietly beguiling that one actually can’t be sure what the point is, except to say: this format, commonly used in documentary practice to centre a primary source, is not immune to infidelity. Such probing into the epistemology of the primary source is taken up again in _Public Hearing_ (2012) which reproduces—in the form of a feature-length film—the entire transcript of a public hearing in Allegany, New York, around the proposed expansion of a Walmart into a Walmart Supercenter. Kienitz Wilkins, who clearly has a productive fascination with bureaucratic process, takes this record of a real event, and transforms it into a wryly comedic, satirical microcosm of America’s socio-economic woes, through tone-setting interstitial shots as well as through the actors’ dramatizations of the actual participants.

_Mediums_’ kooky characters are not, though they may seem, people talking to other people, but conduits for institutional data, and the narrative, mere connective tissue for its delivery. The film expounds the disembodied language that institutions use to explain what they do, by having laypeople voice those texts (which were probably never meant to be read aloud). This has the effect not only of materializing the cool distance of the entities that govern, regulate and support us, but also of drawing our attention to all actors in all scripts—on screen and otherwise—as mouthpieces for someone else’s master plan. However, because of the sincere function this data serves for each character, this film might not merely be thought of as a rendering of an artificially intelligent future, where everyone speaks like they’ve downloaded a headful of internet data but, perhaps more darkly, a good dream about how productive small talk could be in the deep recesses of late capitalism.

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Language

Government

Film

C Magazine Editor Jaclyn Bruneau examines James N. Kienitz Wilkins’ short film _Mediums_ (2017), considering how its odd assemblage of characters, and “actors” more broadly, act as simple conduits for the messages of the institutional bodies that govern them.

Artefact: Mediums

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Walter Phillips

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Casey House 1

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Editorial

Kari Cwynar is a curator, writer and editor based in Toronto, where she is Director of Kunstverein Toronto and Editorial Director of _C Magazine_. She writes on contemporary art for publications and catalogues, contributes regularly to _Frieze_ and _Metropolis M_.

This issue, on Institutions, picks up threads from the fall 2018 issue on Trust, acting as a kind of sister publication. As the Trust issue came together earlier this year, it was clear that one of the most critical sites in which trust is at stake is in relation to institutions—in art and otherwise. In that issue’s editorial, _C Magazine_’s editor Jaclyn Bruneau and I wrote: “The theme’s reach grew, with trust (and breaches of trust) revealing itself as a fundamental principle through and against which we are all working today, where public trust has been eroded, and where interpersonal trust must endlessly be redefined.”

Many—or most, or all—of us working in the arts have witnessed or experienced instances of institutional failure, have observed outdated processes and protocols upholding institutional practices that are in urgent need of updating. The word “institution” evokes systemic, structural power. In 2018, it has become a dirty word, conjuring arts organizations’ shaky attempts to modify or dislodge values established in a different time, or political institutions and systems in rampant decline. The word connotes the ever-hungry force of professionalization, with its impulse to formalize self-organized initiatives, artist-run centres, apartment galleries, artists without “formal” education. As art institutions are being cracked open and held accountable in previously unseen ways, we wanted to re-evaluate what it means to make work for, against and in them, for it is almost impossible to imagine working outside of institutions in 2018, though artists always have.

The issue includes artists’ reflections on institutional experiences; a conversation on how issues of accessibility are—or aren’t—being navigated in museums; a look at how curator Candice Hopkins has proposed and fostered models for shifting or disrupting the global contemporary art biennial; and a Q&A with OCAD University’s new dean Ashok Mathur, who examines the impulse towards the doctorate in fine arts and the academization of artistic practice.

Annie Wong and jes sachse’s collaborative piece is a poetic debrief written after a difficult recent experience working with an art institution. Wong’s text uses concrete—a material that many galleries and museums are primarily made of—as a metaphor for institutions, quietly suggesting material and ideological oppression in the latter. The text oscillates between a subjective-poetic and objective-didactic voice, which transfers energy back and forth between the container or structure, and the life, body or mind occupying it. Alongside Wong’s text, sachse’s concrete poem is structured around three ramps, the familiar form recalling public institutions’ attempts at accessibility.

Whitney Mashburn and Carmen Papalia’s conversation around accessibility in the museum unpacks the oft-used term “meaningful inclusion,” and the mutual exchange required to see disability politics adequately addressed in art institutions. Their conversation is dense with tangible examples and ways forward—for example, more fully integrating topics of disability and accessibility into curatorial conversations, rather than seeing them routinely sequestered in public programs departments. As Mashburn writes, “for institutional decision-makers, inclusion requires the allocation of resources to support projects engaging topics of disability. Arts leaders need to know what it means to disrupt ableism and be open to a radical reorientation of the field, guided by those at the margins.”

Natasha Chaykowski—the first signatory on a public letter penned by a number of arts workers in Calgary who, earlier this year, protested a Jordan Peterson talk at Arts Commons, a multi-venue hub that is home to several of the city’s artist-run centres—describes the broken communication, institutional barriers and resulting breakdown of trust that she and her colleagues faced after the letter was sent. We may fixate on institutions as rigid, cold, hard, even concrete. But the crux, for me, in Chaykowski’s text is in thinking through the real people that make up institutions and prop them up. She writes: “Arts Commons, like all institutions, is borne of humans, but ultimately, it is something greater than its discrete, fleshy, constituent parts. A wayward gestalt. A living creature that—like an animal, a human, any living organism—is compelled by its subconscious desire to survive at whatever cost: the behaviour of self-preservation.

As Bruneau pointed out to me, coincidentally, both Chaykowski’s feature and Kendra Place’s review of Jackie Wang’s book _Carceral Capitalism_ make mention of last summer’s forest fires in British Columbia. The urgent topics in each—hate speech and institutional silence in the former, the prison industrial complex in America in the latter—were mirrored and intensified against this apocalyptic backdrop. Place quotes Wang: “Before I was able to disentangle the political, economic, cultural, and racial forces that were shaping my context, I could feel their effects.” There is, and was, quite literally something in the air. 

The artist project in this issue also looks beyond the specifics of art and academic institutions to broader capitalist city systems. Gentrification Tax Action (GTA), a collective comprising artists, designers and activists Adrian Blackwell, Sameer Farooq, Jane Hutton and Kika Thorne. GTA formed this year in response to the increasing lack of affordable housing in Toronto, and the collective has installed signage and poster projects in parks and windows around the city. The poster in this issue will be similarly dispersed with the magazine’s mail-out, alongside an accompanying text that reads something like a manifesto:**“This is a proposal to create a Gentrification Tax to make Toronto affordable for lower- and middle-income residents. The tax is designed to discourage house flipping and to direct real estate profits to the local community.”** 

To go back to the start, the issue opens with Nasrin Himada’s text for _C Magazine_’s final On Writing column, ahead of the magazine’s 2019 re-design and editorial re-structuring. In this column, which for the past five years has featured “writing about writing,” Himada homes in on revenge writing. It’s a compelling way to open an issue dedicated to the looming, omnipresent weight of institutions in our lives, with Himada reminding us that writing _is_ action. Publishing an issue on institutions at the moment of C Magazine’s re-structuring is also a fitting reminder of the magazine’s own responsibility to institutional reflection, evolution and open dialogue.

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Editorial Director Kari Cwynar introduces the theme of “institutions” in this issue.

Editorial: Institutions

Feature

Often found marrying poetry with large-scale sculptural forms, Toronto-based artist jes sachse’s work and practice addresses the negotiation of bodies moving in public/private space and the work of their care.

**Annie Wong** is an artist and a writer based in Toronto. www.anniewong.co

_The dancers move through the entire building, weaving through the audience,_  
_embracing stairs like descending sunlight._

In 1982, a study was done with two flocks of adult sheep. The first were   
subjected to daily walking on a concrete surface, while the second walked   
on wood chips. After two years, the scientists observed a significant   
decrease in the cartilage density and alteration in the bones around the   
knee joints of the first flock.

_One of the dancer’s feet, bare and baroque, has become swollen._   
_They continue nevertheless, offering a tenderness and softness_  
_to the concrete floor: more than it deserves._

Despite its seeming neutrality, concrete is dynamic.  
When you press yourself against its surface, it presses back   
against you. It will try to take from you more than you can give.

_As I watch them dance, I lean against a flecked concrete pillar._   
_It burns with a coldness. I touch my skin and feel the imprint of_   
_tiny stones._

Portland cement’s name refers to the eponymous limestone  
mined from the quarries in the Isle of Portland in Dorset, England.   
It is the most commonly used mixture for the production of  
concrete to date and has been used for the construction of many   
institutional buildings, including the Buckingham Palace, the   
British Museum and the Bank of England.

_An immaculate whiteness swells in this room._

It is produced by sintering limestone, clay minerals and  
gypsum in a kiln, resulting in clinker, which is then pulverized   
into a fine powder.

_A sudden pain shoots up my spine._

A concrete building is a machine for working; a monument to   
functionality, designed to ensure the constant flow of work.

_I think about the swollen foot and the logic of concrete that compels us to keep going,_  
_even when it hurts. This is our contract with concrete._

Concrete is not without memory. It is a material loyal to power.   
It moves like intransigent sprawl that slowly consumes the land   
under our feet. In 1908, during the construction of a pipeline,  
a building inspector for the City of Toronto uncovered a hundred   
moccasin footprints pressed in blue clay at Hanlan’s Point.  
Construction nonetheless continued, and the ancient footprints   
from 1,100 years ago were covered with concrete.

_I find myself discoloured._

In awe of his housing unit, bare and in mid-construction,   
Le Corbusier decided that the building, in its state without   
plaster, was complete. He described his masterpiece  
as “a massacre of concrete.”

_We are hired to make idols of achromatic walls,_   
_to bend on foundations that bruise knees._

In a moment of crisis, the concrete building is a fortified  
mechanism, designed to control all threats to the  
institution by doing what it does best: nothing.

_How did we give it the gravity to pull us in?_

The durability of building material is measured by its compressive strength, how much it can withstand being pushed together, and tensile strength, how much it can resist being pulled apart.

_Why do we give up our bones trying to make stone bleed?_

While concrete demonstrates high compression strength, it has low tensile strength. Thus, with substantial impact, concrete cracks.

_How do we build a building:_   
_not as a site of exhaustion,_   
_not with origins of violence,_  
_not from empire, not of concrete?_

[^1]: Le Corbusier, quoted in Flora Samuel, _Le Corbusier in Detail_ (Oxford: Architectural Press, 2007), 19.
[^2]: “Ultimate tensile strength,” Wikipedia; [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate\_ tensile\_strength](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate%5F)
[^3]: EL Radin, RB Orr, JL Kelman, IL Paul and RM Rose, “Effect of prolonged walking on concrete on the knees of sheep,” _Biomechanics_, Volume 15, Issue 7 (1982), 487–492.
[^4]: Ronald F. Williams and Robert I. MacDonald, “A Resource like no other: Understanding the 1100 year old relationship between people and water,” in Wayne Reeves and Christina Palassio, eds. \_HTO: 
[^5]: Toronto’s Water from Lake Iroquois to Lost Rivers to Low-flow Toilets\_ (Toronto: Coach House Books, 2007), 42–52.

Artist

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Conceptual

Institutional critique

Poetry

A poem by artist and writer Annie Wong examining the logic of concrete and its relationship to human touch, productivity and power, accompanied by a concrete poem by artist jes sachse.

A Study in Concrete: Text by Annie Wong, Image by jes sachse

Natasha Chaykowski is a writer and curator based on Treaty 7 Territory in Calgary. Currently, she is the Director of Untitled Art Society.

“Hey you! Just wanted to let you know that I think you are dangerously retarded. Hope you have a fucked up day!” Derek W wrote pithily to me from the discreet address dmw0714@gmail.com one smoky afternoon late July past. The dues paid for being the first signatory listed in an open letter penned collaboratively with my colleagues from a number of organizations, urging Arts Commons—a performing arts hub in Calgary, Alberta—to reconsider hosting Jordan Peterson for a “one-of-a- kind uplifting lecture, where he discusse\[d\] overcoming life’s biggest obstacles, how to improve oneself, and his new book: _12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos_.” People phoned me at work to call me fascist. Someone named Dwain Lowe emailed me (from his iPad) to tell me that he thought I was a Nazi. “This has only damaged your brand. I (and many I know) will no longer be supporting your organization.” Bye, Dwain, our brand will miss your years of ardent patronage. I was called a “far-left ideologue,” whatever the fuck that means. “This petition leader Natasha Chaykowski quite the feminist that would be triggered,” along with a link to an article I wrote in 2015 about the limits of feminism, ironically enough. Strangers lamented together on Facebook about the days when people “like me” would fall by the wayside of the persistent biological churning of evolution; the demands of natural selection, the logic of the fittest surviving. According to such strangers—Scott Nichols, someone named Barb, and another named Ron, who, it occurred to me, darkly, could be friends of my parents in a slightly alternate reality—I, and my whining kin, wouldn’t last one minute if things were how they should be. How they might be again, in an apocalyptic scenario. A natural order. “Attrition to the snowflake genepool!” Scott cried into the heavens that smoky July. It’s a weird feeling to witness complete strangers on the internet wish that you’d starve to death, post-apocalypse, if you first survived being “ravaged by criminal gangs.” The smoke, travelling swiftly eastward from BC wildfires sparked by unapologetic lightning, burned my eyes, lingered in my chest, slinked its way into my mood most days that month.

What none of his proponents seem willing to admit is that their feverish, foaming-at-the-mouth feelings about Peterson are the direct result of his having legitimized a deep fear. He has unmoored this fear from shame, dusted it off and given it a platform. Fear that women are taking jobs away from hard-working men instead of staying home with the kids. Fear that women have the power of retribution, to destroy a man’s career, if he’s sexually assaulted her. Fear that immigration will lead to proportionately less-white classrooms in elementary schools. Closer to home in the art world, fear that BIPOC will be prioritized for job positions, awards, opportunities and funding. Fear that trans and non-binary people threaten traditional ways of being, undermine the neat, if violent, binaries that our society has leveraged to create structures of power. Fear that small strides made by marginalized communities might result in loss for those who’ve reigned supreme in our hierarchies, our social order, heretofore. Such gains are articulated as chaos—and symbolically, feminine—by Peterson; they undermine what he believes is a biologically determined hierarchy—the proper, masculine, order that exists from crustaceans to stories in the Bible. So, it follows: it must be natural. Chaos—or ardent striving toward equality—is, for Peterson, a particular contemporary malady, and he’s got a cure to peddle. His bullshit pseudointellectual treatise unfurls the argument that hierarchies are the result of millions of years of evolution, and are in fact a natural, non-socially constructed phenomenon; inequality, according to Peterson’s over-simplified and unsubstantiated neuro- and evolutionary science, is part of a dominance hierarchy that all humans partake in, a hierarchy as arcane as time, as perennial as the sunrise, and “old- er than trees,” to use his bromidic language. Dominant lobsters have more serotonin so they stand up straight. Human males, too, can invoke this ancient power of dominance by standing up straight. Lobsters, Peterson fails to mention, don’t actually have brains. But still, you should stand up straight, as an alpha lobster would. Tell the truth. Make your goddamn bed. A prescription written for all, signed by Peterson, that unfortunately only works on the particular ailment of being a dejected privileged person, threadbare and weathered by all this feminine chaos in the air of late.

Our open letter was met by Arts Commons with crickets, and a flaccid statement issued to the press by President and CEO Johann Zietsman about Arts Commons’ position that “freedom of speech means not censoring some- one because we don’t agree with what they have to say.” I forwarded him, and several staff members[^1]—Aaron, Leslie and Alynn, all real people made of muscle, marrow, skin—the messages I’d received from Dwain, from Derek W, in case there was any doubt about the sincerity of our claims that hosting Peterson and his frenzied disciples makes it such that it is not safe for us, nor the artists we support, to work within that building, as we were required to as staff of artist-run centres that programmed vitrines within the brick-and-mortar institution of Arts Commons. No one replied. I was confounded: how could these individual humans with names and memories and birthdays—our ostensible colleagues—build such an insurmountable institutional wall through their silence? How could they outright ignore our reasonable request for a safe place to work? My hurt quickly morphed into hot anger, which then bore some branches, one off in the direction of wonder: what could compel such cruel disregard on the part of these individual people?

Arts Commons, like all institutions, is born of humans, but ultimately, it is something greater than its discrete, fleshy, constituent parts. A wayward gestalt. A living creature that—like an animal, a human, any living organism—is compelled by its subconscious desire to survive at whatever cost: the behaviour of self-preservation. Institutions are of us, but exceed us, in the way that, although I am made of 37.2 trillion cells, I can decide to drink another cup of coffee if I want to. I made that decision, not my cells, although they certainly would have had a complex modicum of influence upon it. They, working together, enabled my hand to pour it, then bring the cup to my lips. They shuttled electricity happily through my mesolimbic pathway after I took that first hot sip. I, however, am more than the sum of their machinations.

If an institution can be likened to a living creature, emulating biological structures and replete with its own agency, desires and impulses—none of which are completely within the purview of the humans that comprise it—it follows that it may likewise be vulnerable to the laws of evolution, the imperative that foregrounds our existence.

For example, it may inherit random mutations—like an abhorrent CEO, a politically and socially apathetic staff, or a Board of Directors looking at a bottom line—that may make survival more likely. Maybe that’s why Leslie never answered my email, or why Aaron was willing to defend Arts Commons in the wake of another controversy, this time around the institution’s subsequent transphobic actions and hypocritical act of censorship of a video-based work about trans visibility by Montreal-based artist B.G-Osborne in The New Gallery’s former window space in the +15 Galleries at Arts Commons. Maybe that’s why our pleas were met with silence. And, maybe that’s why Dwain, Scott and Derek were so incensed by our open letter that they felt compelled to take time out of their days to let me know just what a degenerate I was; they, too, are the mutated genes of a creature, an institution. They’re the laymen components of patriarchy; the neurons of a brain in a body under threat; the cells of the adrenal medulla signalling to release the hounds, the hormones: time to fight. Patriarchy is bigger than them, but it needs that cascade of norepinephrine and epinephrine to survive. It needs those grunt-working cells, those Dwains, those Scotts, those Dereks.

Institutions in any context can proffer such examples. In the wake of the release of the most recent UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report in October of this year, Katie Warrick, interim chief executive of the World Coal Association, released a statement that said, “credible experts continue to see a role for coal for the foreseeable future,” and that coal should still be considered a sustainable source of fuel; its extraction and combustion should not be hindered by the IPCC report’s findings that “irreversible changes in major ecosystems and the planetary climate system may already have been reached or passed. Ecosystems, as diverse as the Amazon rainforest and the Arctic tundra, may be approaching thresholds of dramatic change through warming and drying. Mountain glaciers are in alarming retreat and the downstream effects of reduced water supply in the driest months will have repercussions that transcend generations.” _Good clean coal_. Rex Tillerson, the former CEO of ExxonMobil, has known about global climate change since a report landed on his desk in the 1970s, and has spent the better part of his career and the budgets available to him on an expansive and decades-long propaganda campaign to discredit the science of carbon emissions and their impact on our planet’s ecosystems (when he wasn’t getting tangled in genocidal geopolitical situations, peddling gas to whoever’d buy it).

The list goes on. Our clothes, our phones, the computer at which I sit writing this, are all made with unethical labour in the global South, during the kind of workday that would make most of us weep were we to witness it. Animals are treated cruelly for the sake of easy access to the massive quantities of meat needed to sustain a typical North American diet. Unprecedented wildfires are burning as people are being unjustly killed because of their identities; droughts and floods are devastating swaths of the earth as many Indigenous communities still don’t have access to clean water; coral reefs are disappearing, like the Arctic and Antarctic ice, as women are being sexually assaulted; infants are encamped as the oceans rise, all at the behest of institutions—creatures lusting to survive—and those who enable them to.

All the logistics of these things are planned, computed and carried out by humans within the organism of capitalism, but are ultimately outside of the control of any one of the gestalt’s parts. That all such things continue speaks, again, to each institution’s desire to survive, despite that its host planet, and constituent species, are both alarmingly (for some) at risk of not existing very soon. How else can we possibly make sense (without talking about actual evil) of someone like Warrick, someone like Tillerson, being so ready to risk the future of literally everything living right now? How else can we possibly make sense of Aaron, of Leslie, of Alynn, of Johann Zietsman being so willing to undermine the fundamental rights of certain humans? Of a complete stranger wishing me dead for expressing concern for the safety of the artists I work with? Peterson writes in _12 Rules for Life_ that “Mother Nature is hell-bent on our destruction.” It seems to me that the structures of his order—institutions at the top of a dominance hierarchy—are the ones hell-bent on destruction and ultimately, the real chaos. Mother Nature is out on the fucking streets, throwing bricks at cops, protesting her abuse.

But, I can’t believe every institution is built to harm. Like all creatures, institutions must also sometimes have the potentialities for radical good in them. Particularly smaller ones, grassroots ones—the artist-run centres writing open letters, radical environmentalists, Black Lives Matter—built to be malleable, adaptable, fighting for change. Such institutions are disrupting the dominant hierarchies, challenging the alphas unrightfully at the top, dismantling socially built realities of oppression, undermining biological predisposition and the righteous claim to accept one’s predetermined position in the social order and stand up straight. They are intervening in the processes of evolution; they won’t bide their time, and wait for the ones on top—Arts Commons, patriarchy, capitalism—to go extinct. Whether by the strike of a match, or Her good strike of lightning, those on top will eventually have to burn to the ground[^2]. Our survival depends on it.

issue-140-p14-17.pdf

Identity

Artist-run centres

Politics

Writer and Curator Natasha Chaykowski discusses the latent complicity and possibility for disruption on the part of the individual within the institution. Framed in light of vitriolic backlash received for signing an open letter requesting the institution housing her workplace, Arts Commons, Calgary, to reconsider hosting a Jordan Peterson lecture.

By the Strike of a Match, or Her Good Strike of Lightning

Whitney Mashburn is an independent curator working at the intersection of contemporary art and disability activism. She holds MAs in critical and curatorial studies and in rehabilitation counselling, and is based in Boston, Massachusetts.

Born in Vancouver, unceded Coast Salish territory, in 1981, Carmen Papalia is an artist who uses organizing strategies and improvisation to address his access to public space, the art institution and visual culture. His socially engaged work has been featured at The Solomon R. Guggenheim museum, New York; the Tate Liverpool; the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge; the Grand Central Art Center, Santa Ana; and Gallery Gachet, Vancouver, among others.

Meaningful inclusion necessitates investment in long-term interpersonal relationships, between artists, institutions, curators, educators, publics and surrounding communities. The interrelationships of the individuals within a space define the accessibility of the place, and these relationships are a product of lasting, intentional care. In the privileged arena of the museum, a radically new order can be created through a series of commitments that transfer value from objects to people, both as audience members and content-creators. Here, we focus on the responsibility of institutions and curators to activate these relationships so that individuals who are marginalized can claim access to cultural platforms. 

This is the story of how we convened around these ideas and came to clarify how inclusion can be meaningful. We have been collaborating on a project that reimagines accessibility and challenges the visual primacy of art institutions, entitled _Let’s Keep in Touch_ (2016–present). Through the project, we are investigating non-visual learning and tactile aesthetics through the development of a methodology for haptic criticism, and publicly crowdsourcing vocabulary for tactile description of object-based art. The project has undergone two phases thus far; dialogue and participation have played key roles in both. Within the first phase, Whitney selected 16 artists whose work held an engaging tactile aesthetic, and Carmen contacted these artists, entering into dialogue about tactile access to their work. The resulting exhibition[^1] presented: excerpts from these conversations in both printed and audible forms; two interactive sculptural works with complete tactile access;[^2] and an opportunity for exhibition visitors to document their own descriptions of the works’ tactual qualities via writing or voice recording. The second phase, at the Queens Museum in New York City, centred youth input in the production of museum object descriptions. We shared a dialogue with local young people, who had responded to an open call from the museum, in which we discussed methodology for touching and evaluating objects for tactile qualities.[^3] We then listened as they interacted with the objects and each recorded their impressions via conversation and writing. These interactions spurred further thought investigated in our current writing and research, exhibition content and future planning of exchanges between Carmen and author Georgina Kleege. 

Each of these iterations caused us to think more deeply about inclusion and meaningful participation, and what is required of institutions to develop rapport and long-lasting relationships with art professionals and community members. We have also been considering what meaningful participation means for those from marginalized positions who are entering art practice, criticism and the appreciation of art—whether they have complex needs, experience multiple systemic barriers or learn in ways that are not meaningfully supported. Through this essay, we share insights into these musings on meaningful inclusion, noting the difference between that and tokenism, and highlighting goals and challenges for better implementation. 

Meaningful inclusion is all about dedicating space, dialogue, care and action to concepts that previously have not been seriously considered. For instance, institutions in the contemporary art landscape do not typically integrate works with reference to disability, and if such works are exhibited, it is through special programming or “separate but equal” educational departments’ interpretation and not within general curatorial schema and practice. It is vital for the progression of art institutions to critically engage topics of disability within their curatorial rigour. All too often, inclusivity is tokenistic, such that the institution includes topical programming thought to be representative of individuals who are marginalized, but these efforts are evaluated on the basis of institutional benefit. Inclusion that is meaningful necessitates a transformational effort toward publicness, emerging from naming and addressing foundational barriers responsible for the vast inequities between those with access and those without.

**Carmen Papalia**: Inclusion was something different for me when I was starting out as an artist. I was trying to find my place within a field that was built on the study of visual culture as someone who learns with their non-visual senses. What made sense to me at the time was to identify my position and say that I experienced my surroundings non-visually. The qualifier “non-visual” helped me stop feeling like someone who was “blind” and I soon realized that I had access to entire unseen bodies of knowledge from my position. I knew there weren’t many like me practising as artists. In fact, I learned that many of my non-visual friends had never set foot in a museum; they didn’t think there would be anything for them to do. And even when there was—usually in the form of a specially programmed touch or descriptive tour—it was a poor consolation for the privileged visual art experience. 

Years later, while presenting a workshop at the Baltimore Art Gallery, I remember getting halfway through my story about the practice of looking being a choice—and the museum being an institution that enforces visual primacy—and feeling like what I was saying was more for the group than it was for my own sense of belonging. It was one of the first times that I felt like I had privileged access to the museum. At the same time, I knew just how little currency my access held in that context.

**Whitney Mashburn**: I came to curating seeking to integrate accessibility into the practice of contemporary art curation, combining my work in disability services offices, where I collaborated with students to create new accommodations, and as an art historical researcher in galleries, archives and academia. Also, following a series of workplace exposures, I developed a chemical intolerance, which has increasingly reconfigured my own access to public spaces. Wanting to rethink accessibility beyond the legal stipulations required of institutions to provide simple physical access, I undertook studies and practice in curating, in which I found the arena to test ideas of inclusion in theory and practice. It is here that I began looking for others who were thinking similarly about integrating a social understanding of accessibility within curating. 

I found that most individuals working in disability studies or in the arts were unaware of each other’s work—facilitating this dialogue is at the core of my practice, as I want to share insights across the respective fields. Though most people I encountered were confused as I did not fit into a neat category, through my research, I found an innovator already making strides in rethinking contemporary curating in light of disability theory and practice: Amanda Cachia. It is through her writing that I found two insights: I was not alone in my efforts, and there was an artist exemplifying these ideas, Carmen Papalia.

**CP**: Since I was entering the field as an outsider, I made sure to only accept opportunities that wouldn’t further marginalize me. When Amanda Cachia invited me to show my work as part of her first exhibition that engaged the topic of disability in contemporary art, _Medusa’s Mirror: Fears, Spells, and Other Transfixed Positions_ (2011), I made a point of identifying my work as social practice rather than associating it with the disability arts movement. This was my first exhibition opportunity and I wanted to reach a mainstream audience: a group with problematic perceptions that my work could somehow help shift. I felt politically aligned with Cachia and knew that we were similarly frustrated with the state of disability discourse in contemporary art. For me, her shows were a platform to a new space, where disability was central and disabled artists were vital to the progression of the field. Through working with Cachia, I realized that disability had been ever-present in art history; it just was rarely acknowledged. 

When Whitney approached me with an opportunity to produce an exhibition for her thesis, it was a chance to take a risk that she would help me pull off with minimal damage. After our first conversation, I knew Whitney trusted me and was open to meeting the challenge of a risky project, even though her thesis depended on it. I knew she would be my advocate and help establish a context for my work that served its purpose; working with her was a mutually collaborative exchange. 

The dynamics of our relationship motivated me to bring Whitney a proposal that curators at major institutions had politely passed on. With Whitney on my side, I could finally set a precedent for critical haptic engagement and explore its implications in the museum and other contemporary art contexts; something that me and my mentor, Georgina Kleege—a fellow non-visual learner—had only ever speculated about. I asked Whitney to curate a list of living artists whose work she felt would offer an engaging tactile experience. The challenge of this unorthodox request and what it meant in the museum context—where tactile access is reserved for curators, conservators and the odd, gloved non-visual visitor—was the catalyst for weekly conversations about how Whitney and I would advocate for the project in a field that would inevitably be unsettled by it.

**WM**: Keeping an open dialogue facilitated a fluid collaboration between Carmen and me, and allowed us to pivot around initial defensive responses to our touchy topic. Our first proposal, to allow the public to touch museum collection objects, was tactfully refused by three institutions, so we shifted our approach to directly engage artists in conversation about tactile access to their works, which became the fulfilled first iteration of _Let’s Keep in Touch_. Through this method, we not only achieved tactile access to contemporary works, but also gained documentation of rich conversations shared between Carmen and other artists. 

It is conversation and collaboration that, as tools, can enable disruption of norms and progression of social change through care, intention and listening. As my discussions with Carmen evolved, it became clearer that he approached his practice as an engaging dialogue, and that we shared an ardency for asking, “why not?” to institutional policies entrenched in stigma surrounding disability politics. We both wanted to expand the definition of how access was understood in art institutions, beyond the _Americans with Disabilities Act_ (ADA) requirements, toward an embodied approach, subverting existing privilege and creating new thinking about inclusion. Early in our collaboration, I described Carmen’s art practice as “a playfully subversive yet inquisitive and constructive dialogue to sensitize, reframe, and broaden our manner of ‘seeing’ and experiencing art and our surrounding environment. He uses the social tool of conversation to challenge institutional accessibility and prompt exploration of… perception.”[^4] Since then, he has not only engaged these methods through his art making but also via direct consultation with institutional leaders.

**CP**: In the summer of 2018, I received one of 10 Host Your Own Engagement (HYOE) grants from the City of Vancouver’s cultural department as part of its Creative City Strategy, a recent initiative to follow up on their 2008 cultural plan and produce a document to guide the distribution of resources in Vancouver’s cultural sector over the next 10 years. HYOE’s mission was to support organizations in holding public consultation-style events with community members at the margins of Vancouver’s cultural sector so the city could hear directly from those for whom access, support and representation was limited. 

Following my last few years of work with the community at Gallery Gachet, a collectively run space that has demystified issues of mental health in the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood since 1993, I partnered with Other Sights for Artist Projects to produce a panel and series of presentations by community members about the state of discourse regarding accessibility. 

After learning that Accessible Canada, a new federal accessibility plan from Employment and Social Development Canada, failed to address ableism, social accessibility and the ongoing and intergenerational effects of colonization, I felt it necessary to frame the HYOE program by asking what accessibility might mean if institutions were to acknowledge systemic barriers and traditions of cultural violence. Accessible Canada’s 2017 online survey reached less than 1% of the population that “lives with a condition that limits their participation in one or more daily activities,” and the initiative’s “priority areas” were informed by a cross-country consultation process that resulted in the exclusion of community members living in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood altogether.[^5] 

I didn’t want to bear witness to yet another consultation resulting in a tokenizing program that organizers could celebrate as an institutional investment in a community that they played a role in marginalizing. Knowing that the HYOE consultations were intended to inform Vancouver’s own cultural plan, I wanted to represent deep-rooted barriers to access that those at the margins face when accessing cultural resources in Vancouver; and show just how vast the gap between those who have access and those who don’t is when the effects of ableism and its intersections with other forms of oppression guide one’s approach to accessibility.

**WM**: In observing how the practice of artists working along the lines of disability politics has been presented and received, though my own work, and in discussions with other curators seeking to incorporate accessibility, the same frustration emerges: inclusion of work not in exhibitions but through public programming, outreach,and/or educational departments. Even in preparing access-topical projects, it is common to find only limited funding for programming through a public outreach designation, and no budget or staff allocated to exhibition components of the project. This is not unfamiliar to those working at the intersection of disability studies and contemporary art. 

Though inclusion via outreach departments is a good start, we must do better. Why should the critical discourse of disability be approached with any difference than other dialogues of race, gender or class, topics that often headline major shows? Why should artworks be relegated outside of mainstream curating just because they engage critical discourses of disability or access? Cachia devotes a discussion to this very conundrum in her 2014 essay, “Disability, Curating, and the Educational Turn: The Contemporary Condition of Access in the Museum.”[^6] Such an integration necessitates listening, care and allowance for fluidity of roles. There is much benefit for institutions, especially those with more rigid organizational configurations, to embrace flexibility of roles and efforts, both across departments and inside/outside museum walls. 

Institutionally, meaningful inclusion requires a mutual exchange with individuals who are disabled. It is a great responsibility, as curators, that we do not speak out of turn for those whose own voices can better tell their own story. In order for disability politics to vitally inform curatorial premise within institutions, curators need to: understand access in social rather than physical terms; assess any attitudinal barriers inherent in their own practice and disrupt ableism; listen to, centre and learn from those in the disability community who hold embodied forms of knowledge; and then rebuild their own intellectual rigour to be respectfully and intentionally inclusive. For institutional decision-makers, inclusion requires the allocation of resources to support projects engaging topics of disability. Arts leaders need to know what it means to disrupt ableism and be open to a radical reorientation of the field, guided by those at the margins. An excerpt from Carmen’s _Open Access_ project lends clear direction: 

“Let’s not forget that offering support requires us to listen, realize our privilege, redistribute our access, step aside, and let those who are seeking support lead the conversation about their own well-being. It requires us to acknowledge the disabling social, cultural, and political conditions that the institutions that we are dedicated to enforce. It requires us to admit the injustice that we have perpetrated or been complicit in and then participate in reparation, reconciliation, and a radical restructuring of power. It requires the systems and practices that those in need rely upon to undergo radical change. My hope is \[to\] help guide some of the challenging work ahead and transform accessibility into a cultural practice that is central to the ways we relate to each other. My hope is that we organize for accessibility from the grassroots and invest in the formal and informal support networks that keep the most vulnerable people in our communities alive.”[^7]

[^1]: _Let’s Keep in Touch: Conversations about Access and Tactility_ (2016), Gallery X, Louisville, Kentucky.
[^2]: Christina Warzecha, _Please Touch_, 2016, porcelain, stoneware.
[^3]: Corey Dunlap, _Thrown About and Without_, 2016, painted foam and wood.
[^4]: Workshop methodology from a set of participatory exercises presented by Whitney Mashburn during her 2016 thesis defense, based on selected examples of touch techniques developed by Georgina Kleege in a collaboration with Fayen d’Evie in _The Levity, The Gravity_ (2016) Kadist Foundation, San Francisco, California.
[^5]: Whitney E.B. Mashburn, “Let’s Keep in Touch: Conversations about Access and Tactility” (2016). <https:// www.doi.org/10.18297/etd/2500>.
[^6]: Employment and Social Development Canada, “Areas of Focus Moving Forward,” in _Accessible Canada – Creating new federal accessibility legislation: What we learned from Canadians_ (2018); [www.canada.ca/en/employment- social-development/ programs/accessible-people-disabilities/reports/consultations-what-we-learned.html](http://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/ programs/accessible-people-disabilities/reports/consultations-what-we-learned.html)
[^7]: Amanda Cachia, “Disability, Curating, and the Educational Turn: The Contemporary Condition of Access in the Museum,” in _OnCurating.org: After the turn: art education beyond the museum_, no. 24 (December 2014).
[^8]: Carmen Papalia, _Ottawa City Hall_, in partnership with the Ottawa Art Gallery, Open Access: A Demonstration (2017), curated by Stephanie Nadeau.

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issue-140-p20-29.pdf

Accessibility

Disability

Museums

Participation

Collaboration

Through their ongoing collaboration _Let’s Keep in Touch_ (2016-present), Curator Whitney Mashburn and artist Carmen Papalia discuss the significance of developing meaningful participation and inclusion in the arts for marginalized groups.

Meaningful Inclusion

K. Hart is a graduate student in criticism and curation at OCAD University where they were awarded the President’s Scholarship. They work in artistic direction and program management at various non-profits that promote collaborative practices between dynamic arts innovators.

<h5>Earlier this year, cultural organizer, writer and artist Ashok Mathur left his position as head of the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies at the University of British Columbia Okanagan to become dean of Graduate Studies at OCAD University. He made the shift after discerning OCAD U’s unique potential to critically engage the implementation of practice-based research in the framework of the academic institution—a movement that has seen notable progress in scholarly environments outside of Canada. Two months into his decanal post, Mathur released a detailed list of items he was interested in pursuing at the school; among them, the investigation of a doctorate in practice-based research. A PhD in visual arts employs the methodology of research-creation, which, although distinct to the field, has recently gained recognition for its value in the academy across disciplinary boundaries. I corresponded with Mathur about research-creation, its utility as a methodology, the significance of its emergence in Canadian institutions and what it has to offer to artists who may be looking to undertake doctoral studies.

—K. Hart</h5>
 
 
**K. Hart**: What is research-creation?

**Ashok Mathur**: Research-creation is the concept of artistic production that incorporates various forms and levels of in-depth research. This results in creative work that shows clear evidence of a research practice without over-determining the work with what some might deride as an overly academic approach. We view the output from a research-creation project as something embodying the principles of research as defined by disciplinary knowledge, but not absent of aesthetic or technical methodologies.

**KH**: What makes it distinct from other forms of research dissemination in the academy?

**AM**: The general practice of research-creation is generated from the arts, although other disciplines, such as applied sciences, social sciences and humanities, are employing such methods more frequently because of their potential for immediate social relevance to a general population. Though the precept of research-creation was borne from and is inherently an artistic project, the interplay be- tween disciplines is starting to take effect. We have seen more projects coming before Tri-Council \[the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council\], for instance, led by principal investigators who are not artists nor otherwise working from sites of creative output, where at least some of the major dissemination is creative in nature. Scholars and academic disciplines are beginning to comprehend the value of output that is creative and artistic, creating a wave of new activity across disciplines.

The obvious difference between research-creation and other forms of research is the output. More traditional or discipline-bound forms of research result in products such as papers, journal articles or books, but the dissemination of research-creation is often for public consumption and with an arts perspective. Many works of craft and art have a deep history of method and research behind them; often, these forms are not simply technical skills, but learned from deep engagement in communities of master craftspeople, artists, scholars, elders and non-traditional forms of knowledge acquisition. The important distinction is that the latter works are not presented as research but as products of research.

It is perhaps important here to unpack the very term “research,” a term that Linda Tuhiwai Smith and others have rightly criticized as one that can do more to con-tain and oppress than it can to reveal or open possibilities. How, then, might research-creation be thought of as a salve to this condition of the term? I would suggest that artists and designers who ground themselves in research are also grounded in or connected to various communities outside the university structures. This practice refutes the linear hierarchy of the university as purveyor of knowledge and allows for a more collaborative framework that does not unevenly value gown over town, so to speak. That is what a university should be and that is what re- search-creation can possibly support in developing.

**KH**: What are the changes affecting how research-creation is received?

**AM**: The most significant change is that research-creation has entered into the discourses of Tri-Council, particularly SSHRC, and it has become widely accepted that a funded research project may result in a performance, an installation or another artistic output. As well, many new practitioners across disciplines are framing themselves as researchers who are producing art as their disseminated product, not for purely aesthetic reasons, but for reasons that are social and political. They may think of themselves as artists, but the goal of their work is to produce creative output that differentiates itself from other art forms by virtue of the way its embedded research builds capacity to develop graduate student knowledge, advanced teaching in the university and so on.

**KH**: Why do you think the PhD in research-creation has not been present in Canadian academic institutions to date?

**AM**: Mostly the reason is historical. In the European Continental, Australian and New Zealand contexts, it has been a common path for students to go from their bachelor’s degree into their doctoral education. In fact, in some instances, the master’s degree was awarded to those who had entered their PhD but not taken it to completion. In North America, the MFA was determined to be the terminal degree in creative practices, whereas in the social sciences, sciences and humanities, the master’s degree was seen as a stepping stone to the PhD. But, within a global economy of artistic discourse, this is starting to shift, as students, professors and our very institutions be- come aware that higher education allows us many opportunities to grow in ways we can define ourselves.

Many institutions, including OCAD University, are investigating the potential for doctoral programs within creative disciplines. Some already offer these, but largely from a comprehensive university standpoint, which means those degrees are often beholden to the standards created for disciplines traditionally designated as “critical”: dissemination to other academics, for instance, whereas the dissemination for research-creation is of- ten more public. We will see a dramatic shift in the next few years and a trend toward the PhD, or practice-based delineations such as the Doctor in Fine Arts (DFA) or Doctor of Design (DDes). We are already seeing the academy populated more and more by professors with these types of degrees—primarily outside of North America, but that too is changing as we increase global awareness around these sorts of degrees.

**KH** What does a PhD in art provide an artist that a BFA or MFA may not?

**AM**: A scant few decades ago, the MFA was considered a good but unnecessary thing for an artist to have. It was seen as a credential for teaching at post-secondary levels but, even then, not a requirement. A lot has changed in the intervening years: more and more, we are seeing practising artists, without a quest to teach in colleges or universities, spending time acquiring their MFAs. They are not looking to merely credentialize, but to take their work further and deeper into today’s rich and shifting arts economy, challenging themselves to take their work to different levels. For many, that means a concerted and dedicated period of time not just engaged in an in-depth research project, but—and this is the crux of the matter—engaged with other artistic thinkers: professors, colleagues and other students.

I would break it down like this: the BFA is a technical and critical training ground for artists, a place they can discover new disciplines and experiment by themselves and with others. The MFA is a next leg up, allowing the candidate to take their knowledge into a deeper place, producing a significant body of work that is informed by research and by the academy supporting it. The PhD is a place to dive deep into a new arena and should be the grounds for radical new work that has not been produced before. This may seem an extreme description, but it is really the path of doctoral study: to open doors passed by before, to bring new elements into critical consciousness.

**KH** What are the main differences between an artist with an art education and subsequent studio practice and an artist in a research-creation PhD program?

**AM**: We have to understand that the PhD, like the earlier educational regimes before it, is another step along the way of studio practice and research-creation. Although doctoral education is what we might think of as more substantive and of a greater depth, it is not necessarily categorically different than undergraduate and graduate programs. What we are bound to see, however, is that with the emergence of the PhD in research-creation will come an evident reflection on the work undertaken at the master’s and bachelor’s levels. In other words, the PhD has the potential to inflect the types and means of practices in these other degrees. I think what we will see are mid-career artists and designers re-inhabiting the academy to pursue a PhD, essentially moving their studio/professional practice into an academic setting. Just like any other discipline, there will be those who feel the PhD is prudent for their careers, and others who will be content pursuing a vibrant studio/professional practice.

As for a base rationale for undertaking doctoral education, some suggest the PhD in art is a way to fund a major project, assuming there is academic funding to be had—but as we all know, there are likely novel ways to achieve some of that limited funding without enrolling in university. This means the major reason for the PhD is to further challenge artists within a community that is nurturing and critical, allowing those artists to take themselves to new places. Those of us who inhabit positions at art and design universities are well aware of this trajectory, and we want to move toward developing re- search-creation at all undergraduate and graduate levels. This includes but is not limited to the PhD. We want to produce this category on terms that make internal sense, rather than being beholden to doctoral programs in other disciplines. In other words, we need to take control of our own agency in devising these programs, everything from expectations to principles put into practice, so that the PhD in research-creation retains the key elements that are important to us.

**KH**: Could you talk a bit about how currently there is a necessity for art to be accompanied by text (academic papers, artist statements, didactics) that justifies its relevance in order to be accepted as research within academic institutions? How does this requirement shape artistic practice?

**AM**: I do not think there is a necessity for the art to be accompanied by text to make the project whole. But as a way toward granting a degree, there is usually a critical writing component that works alongside the creative output as a device to illustrate the connections of research to production. Rarely do we see a master’s or doctoral research-creation project “travel” with these component parts; rather, upon completion of the work, those creative elements that are the results of the research often find a life of their own in galleries and other venues, generating engaged interest through that presentation. That does not mean the written or critical component of the work is devalued or necessarily excised from the finished work—in fact, such writing often finds a life of its own in various publications and other settings—but we have to reconfigure our thinking from one that equates good writing with good creative production. Often, they are hand-in-glove, but more important is cogent communi- cation: written or oral discourse around work that illustrates the methods and practices that brings it into being.

**KH**: Is there any difference in the frame of reference with which the art world regards or should regard artist-scholars in contrast to artists? Are there distinctions?

**AM**: I would hope that distinction, if it currently exists, is blurred and eventually has no purchase. What we do not need is another binary to divide us. However, we can also understand there are spectrums and always will be; some artistic production, both in and outside of academia, will be far more dependent on research-creation than others and we want to steer away from value judgements that suggest one approach is superior to the other. There will always be those who engage research and take it into creative outputs, and those who may not focus on a research agenda but still produce art. The blurring is interesting, appearing in the past where artists have influenced one another, whether through shared research, studio space, exhibitions and general discourse. The important thing is to find a use for all that we do, find ways to challenge ourselves and to take ourselves further, whether in art, ethics or ideas.

On a recent trip to Australia and New Zealand, I met several artist-researchers who were completing or had completed their DFAs—many of them were international students and/or from racialized immigrant families. The manner and type of information they conveyed through their 2D and media practices alongside their critically dis- cursive frames was nothing short of profound. They were embedded in nurturing environments that allowed them to pursue their chosen practice while providing them the tools of comprehensive analysis, leading to large-scale exhibitions and global tours of their work. One of the preeminent scholars in the field, Danny Butt, has written an exhaustive analysis in his book, _Artistic Research in the Future Academy_ (2017), unravelling how doctoral education has its roots in creative and exploratory research. This is something we need to comprehend as we develop models for the future.

This is the type of landscape we can create in Canada, but to do so we have to keep certain elements frontal and foremost: any doctoral work has to be driven by energies brought in by candidates—to mould and shape doctoral students by the institution is a radical mistake, but to support their endeavours and have the institution shift to accommodate is a necessity. The same goes for research-creation as a whole: it cannot be prescribed by those of us who are cocooned by the institution, but must be a porous field that allows intimate and intricate parlance between those inhabiting and those entering, al- lowing for a digestion and support of new ideas and simultaneously propelling the university to reinvent itself in ways that are responsive to the populations it must serve.

Ashok Mathur is a writer, artist and cultural organizer who works around issues of racialization and Indigeneity in the fields of creative practice and postsecondary education. He is a Professor in the Department of Creative Studies at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus and incoming Dean of Graduate Studies (2018) at OCAD University.

Participant

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Academia

Multi-disciplinary

Education

Arts programmer K. Hart confers with OCAD University’s new dean of Graduate Studies, Ashok Mathur, over his recently proposed PhD in visual arts program, and the utility of its research-creation methodology—particularly in the context of Canada.

The Artist as Doctor (of Fine Arts)

Jenn Jackson is a curator and writer based in Vancouver on the unceded and traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil Waututh) and sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish Coast Salish) peoples.

Curator Candice Hopkins tends to take an untethered approach to working with institutions, keeping one foot in and the other out. She often works in roles where she is an advisor to or resident of the institution. This approach enables an important perspective—one that gives opportunities to challenge normal or traditional institutional models. For Hopkins, there is a stability to not being entirely tethered. Her curatorial roles at documenta 14, SITE Santa Fe, the forthcoming Canadian Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale and her recently announced appointment at the Toronto Biennial are anchored in a collaborative and artist-centric framework of respect and reciprocity. And whether by choice or chance, Hopkins has found herself working with institutions open to structural shifts and change: both SITE Santa Fe and the Toronto Biennial are committed to re-thinking the format of the biennial. In particular, these two biennials offer great latitude around how, with what, where, when and by whom new institutional models are delivered.

Next to longer standing institutions, the biennial as a form finds its own stability by being untethered from traditional methods of exhibition, education and public programming practices. Rather than following previously successful models, the biennial projects in Toronto and Santa Fe have taken interest in challenging and expanding the ever-replicated structure of such frameworks.

SITE Santa Fe shows the possibility of shifting a successful institutional method into an unknown realm. When the SITE Santa Fe International Biennial was founded in 1995, it was the only international biennial in the United States and one of only a few worldwide. The two decades following the foundation of the SITE Biennial saw an exponential proliferation of biennials. In 2011, Irene Hoffmann, director of SITE Santa Fe, responded with a proposal to revise and rethink the SITE Santa Fe Biennial structure through a phase of intensive self-examination. What emerged was an open framework, with a greater focus on local audiences, a reconception of the roles and commitment of guest curators and a vision open to collective forms of contribution. Rather than replicate the typical power structures seen in artistic institutions at the time, SITE Santa Fe set into motion a biennial critical of institutional history, ideology and social responsibility. The resulting six-year commitment—to implement a new biennial model for three iterations in 2014, 2016 and 2018, with Hopkins on the curatorial advisory teams for all three— continues today with unprecedented awareness of cultural blind spots, colonial histories and legacies.

Hopkins was directly involved in the revisioning sessions of SITE Santa Fe, alongside curators and artists who had previously worked with the SITE biennial, people from other national and international institutions, including the Carnegie International exhibition, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Bienal de São Paulo. In these sessions, an idea came forward to consider what would happen if the biennial focused more specifically on the Americas—differentiating itself from what had come to be concentrated global biennial power structures. Under the name SITElines: New Perspectives on Art of the Americas, local geography and situatedness emerged as a central interest and framework. Through the collective vision of the think-tank group, the SITE Santa Fe Biennial was radically revised to reflect its geographic location and its attendant politics, whereby Santa Fe functioned as a microcosm of the history of the Americas: it was and remains Indigenous land, it was once Spanish territory and subsequently it was part of Mexico, all before becoming a part of the United States. Santa Fe also happens to be located along the Pan-American Highway, which was of particular interest to Biennial Director Irene Hoffman.

The focus on the Pan-American Highway, a road network that spans from Alaska to Panama, evolved to critically examine predominant international art perspectives of an east–west orientation to one of north–south. The relationship of north–south has remained a sustained focus for Hopkins. From her early visual arts education to her current writing and curatorial work, she has considered how the terms and conditions of a north-south orientation inspire different perspectives. For her, the relationship is both personal and political. Hopkins self-identifies as being from the North. She was born in the Yukon and, at a fairly young age, her family moved from Whitehorse to Mile 731⁄2 along the Alaska Highway. She has always been interested in how Canada narrates the North. The North as a national identity, for instance, is often pictured through projection rather than an understanding of actual economies and lives. From her earliest curatorial roles (including director of exhibitions at Western Front) to now, Hopkins has maintained this interest through relationships with artists from the Arctic.

In conversation with Hopkins, she reminds me that in the North, the arts provide a central economy; that the Arctic in Canada has more self-defined artists per capita than anywhere else in the country; and, yet, that the majority of artworks produced in the North are immediately sent south. The result of this migration is that most work from the North is interpreted by people other than the artists who produce the work. Although slowly shift- ing, the opportunity for artists from the North to speak for themselves has proven limited. Hopkins is part of a dedicated group of curators working to shift this inequity. She credits her experience working as a curatorial resident with Christine Lalonde, associate curator of Indigenous art at the National Gallery of Canada, who strove to create platforms to bring artists from the Arctic to speak to and of their own work. For Hopkins, considering the relationship of north–south represents a way to have expanded conversations about art not only in Canada but also internationally. In 2017, the exhibition of Kananginak Pootoogook’s work at the 57th Venice Biennale marked the first inclusion of Inuit art in the Biennale’s headline exhibition. SITE Santa Fe has included Inuit artists in every edition of the reframed biennial program, featuring works by Shuvinai Ashoona, Zacharias Kunuk, Victoria Mamnguqsualuk, Ohotaq Mikkigak, Jamasee Pitseolak and Tanya Tagaq.

Hopkins was a member of the national committee that selected Inuit video-based production company Isuma—led by Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn—to represent Canada at the 58th International Art Exhibition—La Biennale di Venezia in 2019, and she was later announced as co-curator of the project. Isuma’s participation in Venice marks the first presentation by Inuit artists in the Canada Pavilion. The collective media production company was co-founded in 1990 by Kunuk, Cohn, Paul Apak Angilirq (1954–1998) and Pauloosie Qulitalik (1939–2012) to preserve Inuit culture and language and to present Inuit stories to Inuit and non-Inuit audiences around the world. In Inuktitut, the meaning of “isuma” translates to “to think, or a state of thoughtfulness.” The work to be presented by Isuma in Venice includes a feature-length documentary video titled _One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk_ (2018), which revisits an encounter from 1959 when the first relocation of Inuit people to government settlements took place. The film calls into question both the initial and reverberating consequences of the mass relocation—consequences that continue to resound in the regional, national and international politics of today. The film speaks to the effects of forced displacement and the radical reconfiguring and restructuring of people’s lives in the aftermath of the transitional time.

In their work, Isuma is concerned with shifting perspectives of the North. Both Cohen and Kunuk have advocated for broadcast material within the media landscape of the North to include knowledge presented from the perspective of the people who live there. Reflecting on his time spent working with the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation, Kunuk has said that even when they could show content from the North, it was required to maintain a certain level of political neutrality. Founding Isuma enabled the collective to talk about the impacts of censorship and provided a much- needed platform for bigger questions of displacement within the media landscape. In addition to extending Isuma’s reach to audiences of the Venice Biennale, the collective’s participation opens a broader question of reciprocity: Isuma has put forward the question of how being in Venice not only serves the very specific audience associated with the Venice Biennale but also the Inuit community in Canada. This is a question that will be collectively considered by Isuma, Hopkins and her co-curators, including artist, writer and curator Asinnajaq, leading up to the opening of the Canada Pavilion.

Part of Hopkins’ work with such a range of biennial projects includes a close consideration of who biennials are for and who they really benefit; as such, she is invested in thinking through how the biennial structure can be more beneficial for local artists. Her engagement with SITE Santa Fe was driven by an impetus to craft a mandate for an artist-centric biennial. The curatorial team initially did extensive local studio visits, creating an invaluable local resource for future curators of the Biennial. Each group of SITE Sante Fe curators has also engaged in extended historic and geographically rooted research as part of their curatorial process; both the 2016 and 2018 iterations of the Biennial developed from particular historical narratives from the area.

The 2016 exhibition, titled _much wider than a line_, featured the contested construction of Italian architect Paolo Soleri’s 1970 Amphitheater—located on the Santa Fe Indian School campus, previously the location of the Institute of American Indian Arts. The present-day ruins of the Amphitheater spoke to a very specific moment in Santa Fe’s history. An enlarged photograph of the original amphitheatre was mounted floor to ceiling on the entrance wall to the exhibition, introducing its entangled history—from its inception by the Institute of American Indian Arts to that institution’s contentious expulsion from the property in 1979 when the Santa Fe Indian School took over tenancy, and finally to its closure and call for demolition in 2010 by the Pueblo Governors of New Mexico. To this day—cordoned off by a gated fence while slowly deteriorating with exposure to unrelenting desert conditions—the fate the physical structure, continues to spark debates around issues of conservation. The inclusion of the Amphitheater as a historic anchor of the SITE Biennial brought forward the history of native theatre while introducing questions around authenticity. Artist Eliza Naranjo Morse notably produced a maquette replica of the Amphitheater made out of micaceous earth—a critique, no doubt, of Soleri’s claim to understand Pueblo architecture and his questionable decision to use concrete rather than the site-specific architectural practice of using earth itself in the construction of the Amphitheater.

The 2018 iteration of SITE Santa Fe, titled _Casa Tomada_, featured an equally captivating way into the area’s contested historical legacies, with reference to a 16th-century conquistador Juan de Oñate and the controversial 1993 equestrian monument that was erected in his name.

Located in Alcalde, New Mexico, the statue glorifies Oñate’s brutal assault on the region’s Pueblo inhabitants. In 1599, Oñate ordered the amputation of the right feet of 24 Acoma Pueblo prisoners. In 1997, the right foot of the monument statue went missing. In 2017, the _New York Times_ ran an article featuring the story of the theft as told by the man who possessed the stolen foot. As with the Amphitheater, the inclusion of the Oñate foot links the biennial closely to place.

A cast of the stolen Oñate foot was presented as an object at the entrance of Casa Tomada. It functioned as both an artifact and a replication of an artifact, speak- ing to the complexities of New Mexico’s history. The foot was installed in a square window-like opening on a central wall, keeping it in constant proximity to the artworks in the adjacent rooms. All of the artists who had work in the rooms surrounding the replicated artifact were consulted about the Oñate foot being included. Overwhelmingly, the conversation surrounding it came to consider how such objects reappear at certain moments in time. The fact that the foot had returned, and that the return was shared with the world through a _New York Times_ article furthered its mythical presence. The cutting of the foot linked to the re-evaluation of monuments and the contemporary moment of historical reckoning. This was important to Hopkins as a medium to question history and the dismantling of presumed neutrality surrounding historical narratives in relation to artworks within the gallery. Furthermore, the dismemberment of the foot from the body—the monument—became a metaphor for the fact that historic fragments can no longer stand in for the whole but as signifiers in considering particular moments in time.

The practice of creating space for different kinds of knowledge and telling the stories of place continues within the structure of the Toronto Biennial, which Hopkins is also shaping in her role as senior curator. Artists will be given the opportunity to work with a range of Toronto Biennial guests who will share their perspectives and areas of knowledge, creating an adaptive framework open to institutional risk-taking. It makes space for different kinds of knowledges: historical resistances, languages and the agility to continually extend to include further references. The Biennial will also take into consideration that Toronto is a city where more immigrants are arriving than any other place in Canada; it will be responsive to this and to the more than 200 languages spoken within the city. The gathering and exchange of these different knowledges will come together as a process of extended learning, with an ambition to posit alternative futures for Toronto.

The Biennial will sprawl across a number of locations in Toronto, with a focus on the waterfront, and the majority being sites that have never before been used for art. The proposal of these sites poses an intriguing relationship to the waterfront as a transitional zone. The Toronto waterline is one that has shifted and changed with the exposure of land by both the natural and industrialized retreat of the waterline. The fluctuation of this space brings forward many questions—in particular, that of Indigenous land claims. With reference to this geography, the Toronto Biennial, like the SITE Santa Fe Biennial, engaged early on with local artists to support research into the area. One of the Toronto Biennial’s first commissions is from the multi-disciplinary artist and performer Ange Loft, from Kahnawake Mohawk Territory, who has undertaken a brief on the Indigenous history of Toronto. She has gone back thousands of years in projecting an idea of the land’s future. From her research came the realization that the site of the biennial replicates the original lands of the Toronto Purchase, and as a result Loft’s commissioned research has come to inform the broader framework of the biennial. As institutions and their vernaculars change, a window opens to consider how exhibition, education and public programs might look to the future, from not only the perspective of others but also from that of geographic specificity. Hopkins describes that in Toronto this shift can be as simple as offering an unexpected perspective of the cityscape from the water. To offer a reversal in the direction of looking. The option of being on the water— to move from looking out from the city to looking into it—also calls to question what is happening beneath the surface, not only of the city but the geography and bodies of water that it inhabits. These propositions look beyond art to broader cultural perspectives on economies of wealth and aesthetic systems, and expand the notion of institutional responsibility. They look at the rhetoric of this particular moment and create pause to ask bigger ideological questions. To ask, what can biennials and institutions offer? And, to realize the consciousness of institutions, of the people that make up institutions; to look at what has been missing or historically omitted because of unconscious bias.

At best the biennial as an exhibitionary or institutional model can offer a shift in perspectives and a shift of context. The emergence of multivocal biennial modes in recent years calls for a reframing of the roles and responsibilities of host institutions, staff and curators, such that biennials might breach zones of comfort and stability, forgo the usual rules or reject the usual language. These new modes allow a thinking through of broader social, geographical and historical contexts and offer an urgency around how language and words, artworks and biennials have started to stand in for much more complex discussions and even histories. Hopkins is dedicated to unravelling the bounds of historical amnesia. She has described her curatorial contributions as a knot with many strands. Each thread offers an opportunity to extend the conversation and provide alternate resources for thinking more broadly about the future. Hopkins acknowledges that although biennials, exhibitions, education and public programs offer an opportunity for conversation with different perspectives, they can’t always sustain them. She proposes that these conversations are sustained beyond these programs in different ways—through the bodies and minds that circulate beyond the original encounter or experience, whereby the responsibility rests on each individual to remain aware of the ever-shifting terrain of their institutions.

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Site-specific

Curatorial practice

Indigenous

Cities

Through Candice Hopkins’ curatorial work with institutions such as SITE Santa Fe Biennial, curator Jenn Jackson looks at how this could translate in her work for future biennials, such as the Toronto Biennial. Discussing the relevance of divergent perspectives, geographic specificity and adaptability, it explores the responsibilities of both the institution and the individual.

Historical Blinds and SITElines: Unsettling the Biennial with Candice Hopkins

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Editor

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Artist Project

GTA (Gentrification Tax Action) is a group of friends, artists, and architects (Kika Thorne, Jane Hutton, Sameer Farooq, Adrian Blackwell) who have formed a collective to fight the predatory real estate market in our neighborhoods.

This is a proposal to create a Gentrification Tax to make Toronto affordable for lower- and middle-income residents. The tax is designed to discourage house flipping and to direct real estate profits to the local community. A Gentrification Tax would tax any increase in the sale value of homes within the first 10 years after purchase, declining from 100% in the first year to 0% after year 10. Income from the tax would be used to fund local self-managed affordable housing in the form of land trusts and co-operatives.

The Toronto housing market is out of control. Rents and housing prices are out of step with what most Torontonians earn. In the last 10 years, apartment rents have increased by 28% and house prices have increased by 112%[^1], while wages have increased by just 18%. This is making it unaffordable for middle- and lower-income residents to live in the city. The average bachelor apartment in central Toronto costs $1,200/month, yet a third of Toronto residents make less than $1,700/month; which means spending 70% of one’s income on housing alone. [^2] Just as rents are unaffordable, purchasing is also out of reach. The average price for a condo in Toronto is $498,000, yet the median salary in Toronto is $30,000\. The maximum mortgage a bank will offer based on this salary is $190,000; the median earner would need a down payment of more than $300,000 to purchase this home. [^3] As property values rise in a neighbourhood due to gentrification, it is renters, not homeowners, who are vulnerable to displacement. [^4]

Increase in property value is a result of many factors, but speculation is the most significant. Speculation turns housing into a financial asset, making money for a small number of people while undermining the function of housing, which is to provide shelter. In the Greater Toronto Area, there are 99,000 homes that have been left empty as speculative investments. [^5] As an example of this strategy, of the homes sold in Toronto in March 2016, 17% had been flipped within the preceding two years. [^6]

Taxes focused on speculation have been implemented in different places in the past. The first wave of speculation taxes was implemented in the early 1970s. Vermont and New Zealand both applied theirs in 1973. [^7] Ontario’s Conservative Party under Premier William Davis implemented a speculation tax from 1974–1978[^8] and Washington D.C. Mayor Marion Barry instigated one from 1979–1981. [^9] Speculation taxes re-emerged in 2010 in Hong Kong. [^10] British Columbia implemented two new taxes in 2016, a Foreign Buyers Tax and a Vacancy Tax, and Ontario followed suit in 2017, implementing a Non-Resident Speculation Tax. [^11] Naming a tax a “gentrification tax” focuses the tax on the class character of neighbourhood transformation, bringing its effects on the ground into focus.

This proposed Gentrification Tax (2018) learns from these earlier experiments, differing from them in a number of significant ways.

> 1) It applies to all residential properties, including primary residences, so speculators can’t retreat into the primary residence market.

> 2) All its revenue is used to build or maintain local affordable housing.

> 3) This housing must be locally managed, in the form of co-operatives and or land trusts.

> 4) It taxes the increase in price, rather than the purchase price of the home, making it impossible for a seller to lose money on a sale.

> 5) It is graduated over a longer period—10 years—making its effects longer lasting and the potential income from the tax greater, in turn creating more affordable housing.

[GTA](https://thepublicstudio.ca/gallery/gentrification-tax "Gentrification Tax Action") is a group of artists, and designers (Kika Thorne, Sameer Farooq, Jane Hutton, Adrian Blackwell) who have formed a collective to campaign for a Gentrification Tax. Such a tax would redirect profits from house flipping to support local, community-controlled housing initiatives such as land trusts and cooperatives. Contact us on [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/gentrificationtax/) or at [gentrificationtax@gmail.com](mailto:gentrificationtax@gmail.com).

[^1]: Toronto Economic Bulletin, May 2018; CMHC Rental Market Report – Greater Toronto Area 2009–2017; MLS Home Price Index, 2018.
[^2]: Nishi Kumar, Kwame McKenzie and Seong-gee Um, Thriving in the City: What does it cost to live a healthy life? (Toronto: Wellesley Institute, September 2017); CMHC Rental Market Report – Greater Toronto Area 2017.
[^3]: City of Toronto, 2016 Census: Income Backgrounder, September 14, 2017; CMHC Affordability Calculator, https:/www.cmhc schl.gc.ca/en/co/buho/buho\_020.cfm 
[^4]: Isaac William Martin and Kevin Beck, “Gentrification, Property Tax Limitation, and Displacement,” _Urban Affairs Review_, Volume 54, Issue 1 (2018). 
[^5]: “Toronto Has Over 99,000 Unoccupied Homes, Here’s Where They Are,” https:/betterdwelling.com/city/toronto/toronto-has-over-99000unoccupied-homes-hereswhere-they-are-interactive/
[^6]: Joe Castaldo, “How Canada’s real estate market went completely insane,” Canadian Business, April 11, 2017\. 
[^7]: R. Lisle Baker and Stephen O.Andersen, “Taxing Speculative Land Gains: The Vermont Experience,”\_Journal of Urban and Contemporary Law\_, Volume 22 (January 1981). 
[^8]: Lawrence B. Smith, “The Ontario Land Speculation Tax: An Analysis of an Unearned Increment Land Tax,” _Land Economics_, Volume 52, Issue 1 (February 1976), 1–12\. 
[^9]: Katie J. Wells, “A Housing Crisis, a Failed Law, and a Property Conflict: The US Urban Speculation Tax,” _Antipode_, Volume 47, Issue 4 (September 2015), 1043–1061\. 
[^10]: “On Sale or Transfer of Immovable Property in Hong Kong,” https:/www.gov.hk/en/residents/taxes/stamp/stamp\_duty\_rates.htm 
[^11]: https:/www.leg.bc.ca/parliamentary-business/legislationdebates-proceedings/40thparliament/5th-session/bills/rstreading/gov28-1; https:/www.n.gov.on.ca/en/bulletins/nrst/index.html

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A proposal for the creation of a Gentrification Tax aimed towards making Toronto affordable for lower- and middle-income residents, written by the artists and designers comprising GTA (Gentrification Tax Action), with an accompanying poster _Artists Are Leaving_, 2018. 

Tax Gentrification / Gentrification Tax, 2018

Review

Esmé Hogeveen is a writer based between Tkaronto/Toronto and Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

_Some Trick: Thirteen Stories_ by Helen DeWitt is itself a bit of a trick. Thirteen being an auspicious number, the reader is obliged to attribute some significance to the volume of narratives in this collection about the strange characters and compromises that make up the worlds of art and publishing. Indeed, DeWitt’s stories are often about probability and her interest in numerical calculations frequently works as a vehicle for exploring analogous aesthetic and literary formulas. These rules, as one might call them, of art and writing may not always be clear, but they can be discerned at least by degrees and DeWitt takes a distinctly formal approach to their unpacking. Fittingly, then, ratios and scarcity, luck and shrewd investing, are at the heart of DeWitt’s stories, whose slantways narratives are never just about one thing. Depending on the reader’s perspective, DeWitt’s greatest trick may either be telling one story 13 times or making 13 disparate stories seem related. 

To the readers of this magazine, DeWitt’s characters may seem uncomfortably familiar: artists looking for a break, publishers attempting to re-package the European avant-garde for US market appeal and “geniuses” who may or may not have anything interesting to say when encountered in person. DeWitt’s overarching project in _Some Trick_ is chronicling the trials and tribulations such characters undergo through their various engagements with the fickle world of taste-making. In the resulting vignettes, DeWitt captures many of the cringe-worthy clichés germane to art and publishing milieus—or should I say _sectors? spaces? sites?_ (DeWitt makes one painfully conscious of needless argot!) In response to DeWitt’s canny, though occasionally self-conscious, depictions of creative power struggles and ennui, the reader feels a mixture of bemusement and implication. 

A trick may be social or cultural, but in _Some Trick,_ DeWitt is chiefly engaged with rhetorical ramifications. Each of her tales is about the conflict between what one wants or hopes to make and the strangeness of watching that desire being awkwardly communicated. In “Brutto,” a middle-aged artist has a chance encounter with a famous gallerist who asks her to recreate what he calls a “‘monstrosity,’”a “sullen mustard wool \[suit with\] psychotic stitching” that the artist had made during a dressmaking apprenticeship in youth. The artist hesitates to sideline her painting career, but ultimately feels obliged to make the concessions that Adalberto, the gallerist, requires in order to elevate her career. Fame, the presumed goal of the practising artist, is a trick Adalberto knows how to master. Under his wing, the artist recognizes what is needed to successfully play the games of art awards, prizes and international attention. Considering textile options on a lavish buying trip, the artist reflects: “If you set out to make something ugly it is like setting out to make something beautiful, you will just end up with kitsch.” DeWitt describes the artist’s subsequent realization that to make the new suit approximate the original, “she had to pretend she was just making some suits the way they used to.” To pull off Adalberto’s scheme, the artist has to pretend not to understand it—herein lies the trick! 

DeWitt skewers the ways in which artistic potential comes up against financial and cultural realities informed by bureaucratic incentives, commercial market demands and curious notions of public impact and accessibility. DeWitt’s adroit renderings make sense given her firsthand experience of creative recognition as a result of her successful novels, _The Last Samurai_ (2000) and _Lightning Rods_ (2011), and the period of financial challenge that came between them. Her darkly humorous take on the difficult repartees between creatives and their financial and critical interlocutors form a thread that coheres the collection. In “My Heart Belongs to Bertie,” a mathematician who recently published a bestseller struggles to explain to his literary agent why it’s imperative that his upcoming book include complex formulas. In “On the Town,” “dudes who had won at Sundance, who thought funding was solid for their first feature, had suddenly found that the money had dried up because the producers wanted something guaranteed bankable and commercial.” Throughout _Some Trick_, DeWitt reminds the reader of the impossibility of untangling personal and commercial value. As Gil, a New York publisher trying to woo a punctilious Dutch author into a new book project, reminds us in “Climbers,” there may be mutual awkwardness around the process of collaboration: “The thing is there are people who . . . like hustling, and they’re good at it. . . . . I’d be afraid of losing something that really means a lot to me . . . What if it changed the books for me?”   
In anecdotally charting the role of the trick in the linked processes of art making and marketing, DeWitt draws the reader’s attention to how appreciation always exists relative to what the creator can recognize, _as well as to what they predict others will recognize_. In other words, DeWitt’s stories suggest that success, however defined, is the result of a series of bets and bargains. Whether or not an artwork or book is well received is almost secondary; the point is that its creator has correctly wagered people will care to respond and thereby render a project culturally relevant. “Some trick,” the narrator mutters in the preface, as if responding to a magician who’s just produced an ill-concealed rabbit (no coincidence that the same creature appears on the book’s front and back covers). The fact that the rabbit—here, a trick embodied—was there in the first place is the marvel DeWitt reminds us to grapple with.

[^1]: All quotes are from _Some Trick: Thirteen Stories_ by Helen DeWitt (New York: New Directions Books, 2018).

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Esmé Hogeveen reviews American novelist Helen DeWitt’s collection of short stories, _Some Trick: Thirteen Stories_ published with New Directions, 2018.

Helen DeWitt: Some Trick: Thirteen Stories

**D’Arcy Blake** is a Canadian-American writer and artist.

Six canvases stretch over lightboxes, each approximately two metres wide and five metres tall; an accompanying soundscape of white noise reads more like aerial landscape photos or abstract topographies than ultra-closeups of human skin. The unusually corporeal images, which Seth Price began producing in 2015, stand out from what we’ve come to expect from the artist, who often tends to imply or skirt figuration rather than foreground it. Price has traditionally avoided direct representation, focusing instead on what packages and contains products and people alike. His most recognizable works are polystyrene wall pieces, vacuum-formed around consumer goods and body parts; plywood cut-outs of negative space between two people; and huge textile envelopes, with a corresponding fashion line, manufactured within the production networks of couture. Though notoriously hard to locate, a through-line of Price’s restlessly transdisciplinary career is his tendency to intimate the ultimate proximity to human, without actually touching it. Price’s recent attention to human skin might, then, indicate an ontological pivot in which the human being now fulfills the role of an envelope or a garment: it contains, carries and delivers.

For each piece in the installation _Danny, Mila, Hannah, Ariana, Bob, Brad_ (2015–2017), thousands of ultra-closeups are captured by a forensic camera, stitched together using satellite-imaging programs like the ones used to make Google Maps, and then rendered with 3D graphics software. The body parts that compose each work (a foot, an elbow) become distorted, elongated and discoloured, appearing less like appendages than what one might see peering out of the window of an airplane, flying above a mountain range made of flesh. The pictures aren’t pleasant; sometimes scarred and burned, jaundiced and bruised, they evoke fragmented limbs from war photographs that pepper today’s media. But in this case, it is unclear whether the blemishes are real, enhanced by Price’s digital process or are digital wounds—remnants of the process itself. The absurd degree of overproduction granted to pictures of skin elicits a duality: “real” physical experiences and technological mediations thereupon. Price digitally maps the human body, a superfluous gesture that implies _humans_ have become technology within a digital landscape.

In Price’s work, autonomy seems beside the point. Rather, his practice is suspended in a matrix of creative industries, and within this schema, he acts as a broker of connections. Artists have long reached into parallel disciplines, but Price’s nebulous approach emphasizes the human subject as a Thing that is produced through the dispersal of creative, intellectual and economic processes. Here, Price deploys this by isolating and expanding minute fragments of the human body, configuring them as data points and using them like code. Perhaps this is an ideal imagining of the new Western subject under neoliberalism—the subject-as-data, a techno-organism ripe to be processed for market research. While Price’s work mainly finds its audience in art-world contexts, today we can witness corporations and artists commodifying online social spaces without restraint, and thus the subjects that emerge within them. Take, for instance, the Instagram profile of fictional influencer Lil Miquela, a CGI avatar whose discreet, yet frighteningly powerful, integration of performance and marketing is so effective precisely because users participate enthusiastically, just by clicking, liking and sharing.

Price’s notion of dispersion—the use of distributed media to reach a contemporary public whose collective experience takes place, for the most part, in private—seems less like a critical response to the current intellectual and creative labour economies than a deployment of economy itself as an artistic medium.[^1] Today’s market demands that artists efficiently perform every role that structures the creative economy. As critic John Kelsey writes, “the contemporary artist or post-Fordist virtuoso is no longer a producer so much as a communicator, a transmitter, an emailer: ‘human Vaseline’.”[^2] In this sense, the current state of technological ubiquity marks the death of the artist, as such, and the rise of its post-Fordist successor: the creative professional. When, in 2014, Price withdrew from the art world to become a novelist (a nod, perhaps, to Duchamp’s retreat), he made a readymade of his own career, testing its commodity value within other networks of distribution. The resulting autofiction, _Fuck Seth Price_ (2015), a pseudo-theoretical meditation on art economies, makes clear that today the difference between contemporary artist, writer, critic and PR person, is moot—there are too many common duties for the tenuous distinctions to hold.

By virtue of their limitless job description, the contemporary artist is always on call, demanding a new formulation of artist’s labour—the artist-as-_Gesamtkunstwerk_, inside which the commodified personality comprises just one piece of its complete value system. The other parts: a website’s design, a CV, an essay or an Instagram account all operate on the same plane as the traditional artwork, each constituting a kind of portrait. That Price’s colossal images stand upright, are illuminated from within and are each named for the individual model indicates problems introduced to notions of identity and subjecthood by the commodification of digital social behaviour. Indeed, humans are more identifiable, traceable and predictable from our digital footprints than by our IRL behaviour. Yet Price’s backlit images exude warmth—not lifelike warmth, but an estimate of it. Is there a point at which technology subsumes the body? While our interaction with and development alongside technology is what has, by definition, made us human (at least in the evolutionary sense), the current state of communicative capitalism imbues minute cultural and personal exchanges with economic factors that instrumentalize the subjective experience.

[^1]: Price’s widely circulated essay “Dispersion”(2002), which has appeared in print, as a PDF and reproduced in his own artworks, is available on his website: <http://sethpricestudio.com/writingarchive/DIspersion.pdf>
[^2]: John Kelsey, “The Hack,” in _Canvases and Careers Today: Criticism and its Markets_, eds. Daniel Birnbaum and Isabelle Graw (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2008), 65–73.

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D’Arcy Blake reviews New York-based artist Seth Price’s exhibition _Danny, Mila, Hannah, Ariana, Bob, Brad_ at MoMA PS1 in New York (June 3–September 3, 2018).

Seth Price: Danny, Mila, Hannah, Ariana, Bob, Brad

Dagmara Genda is an artist and writer currently working in Berlin.

Just as Europe buttresses its defences against the dispossessed families arriving at its shores, Berlin opened its 10th Biennale. _We Don’t Need Another Hero_ lifted not only the title from Tina Turner’s theme song for _Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome_ (1985) but also its defiant revolutionary charge. _Conflicting Heroes_, the Berlin extension of Canada’s Contemporary Native Art Biennial hosted by Art Mûr, brought a North American perspective to the larger event’s post-colonial discourse, though it forwent the adrenaline of the rock anthem for a more ambivalent approach. For curator Michael Patten, the heroic role model is both necessary and problematic, poised at a point of contradiction that can either uplift or oppress. The cross-section of real and imagined heroes in the show are a case in point: Alanis Obomsawin, Louis Riel, Spiderman and even Napoleon. As its title suggests, the exhibition outlines ways in which role models may be celebrated, appropriated or rejected. The most nuanced works in the nine-artist show make use of cultural hybridity, in which conflict is also inherent, to emphasize different levels of meaning.

Filling the entire street-level window is David Garneau’s _Louis David Riel (after Jacques Louis David)_ (2009), which depicts the Métis leader, Christian cross in hand, triumphantly and absurdly posed as David’s _Napoleon Crossing the Alps_ (1801). Upon entering the gallery, one discovers another painting by Garneau behind it, _Noose/Fist (Métis Flag)_ (2003) in which the insignia of Canada’s Métis—also the symbol for infinity—becomes a noose, presumably the one used in Riel’s execution for treason. The juxtaposition highlights the conflicting symbolism associated with Riel—for some, he is the defender of Métis rights, for others a Catholic nationalist. Caroline Monnet’s eye-catching group portrait of six influential Indigenous women, _Renaissance_ (2018), is hung opposite, placing it in direct dialogue with Garneau’s dry irony. Monnet also employs European tropes in the form of monarchic regalia, but rather than tackling the history of oil painting, she uses the glamour of fashion photography. The women, among whom is visionary filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin, are part of the contemporary cultural vanguard and are nothing short of queens. They wear Elizabethan ruffs and corsets combined with beadwork, moccasins and fur. Contrary to Garneau, Monnet’s use of regal imagery seems a straightforward celebration. Media representation of Indigenous women has too long been biased by the lens of Eurocentric racism. However, incorporating classical European tropes of power and beauty can give with one hand, while taking with the other. Is it possible to represent without the tools of oppression or is representation a matter of manipulating what’s available, no matter how faulty that may be?

It is this clash of perspectives in which many of the works in _Conflicting Heroes_ operate, and as such, they invite different readings depending on who’s looking. Inaccessibly titled for a white audience, Dayna Danger’s _Gi zhaa goo tha mik_ (2016–17) consists of three large-format portraits of a young woman in a black beaded bondage mask. Though her conventional beauty and the studio photography prompt the spectator’s look to linger, it’s only a ploy to let one know she doesn’t need the (presumably white) viewer’s gaze. Her pose is not so much defiant, which can also be a provocative tease, but self-sufficient, even judging. For an Anishinaabemowin speaker, this image will carry yet other layers of meaning. The mask—popularly prefixed with “gimp” (with regretful thanks to Quentin Tarantino), is a mark of submission—though here it is subverted by the addition of beadwork, and thereby invested with a dignity that also renders it a shield. In an interview with _Canadian Art,_ \[1\] Danger notes that BDSM is fundamentally consent-based; in play, the submissive holds the reins. 

Sonny Assu also benefits from the layering of cultural symbols to invite different avenues of access. Assu discovered his Kwakwaka’wakw roots at the age of seven and the experience has informed his life and thinking ever since. The three works from _The Treasury Edition_ (2018) series are amalgamations of _Spiderman_ comics he read as a child and formline, a stylistic feature of Indigenous art from the Northwest Coast. The effect of combining these two forms of highly coded illustration emphasizes their aesthetic similarity and breaks down their distinctions; the comic loses its narrative to become a series of malleable gestures while the drawn lines start to bear cross-cultural meaning. 

Another highlight of the showis Skawennati’s sci-fi “edu-tainment” series _Timetraveller_ (2007–14). The nine episodes, which can also be viewed online, are an introduction to Indigenous history using mass-entertainment models—namely _Second Life_ visuals and soap-operatic narrative hooks—to keep their audiences glued to the screen. The artist weaves a relatable narrative and an impressive first-person account of key moments in Indigenous history, from the canonization of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha to the Oka Crisis. Though presumably aimed at a white audience with little knowledge of pre-European cultures in what is now known as the Americas, the work also depicts a journey of self-discovery by the futuristic Indigenous protagonist. The concept behind the series is that Indigenous people must be envisioned in the future in order to ensure they will be part of it. Interestingly, the story primarily focuses on the past, while the future never diverges from the expected hyper-urban jet-pack scenarios— one of the limitations of _Second Life_’s imaginative potential.

It is undeniable that an alternative, better future _is_ remarkably hard to imagine, especially as one observes the grim irony of a European continent feeling itself besieged by impoverished people literally dying to reach its shores. _Conflicting Heroes_ is a humbling reminder that European colonialism is an ongoing siege whose effects are felt worldwide. At the same time, _Conflicting Heroes_ is a testament to how blurry the line between cultural influence and colonial tool of oppression can be. The ambiguity with which the younger generation of artists mixes cultural symbols speaks to a radical openness that is remarkably future-oriented, even as it simultaneously deepens Canada’s history beyond its European import. In addition to critique in the form of ironic appropriation, hybridity and receptivity are an integral part of the younger artists’ work. They embrace culture not as a static ideal to be defended with fortress walls, but as a living entity whose roots nurture it through changing conditions. This is a vitally important perspective, and it may represent the only path into an uncertain future that demands drastic and irrevocable change from us all.

[^1]: “In the studio with Dayna Danger,” _Canadian Art_ (June 1, 2017). https:// canadianart.ca/features/ video-in-the-studio-withdayna-danger/

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History

Representation

Photography

Dagmara Genda reviews Sonny Assu, Natalie Ball, Dayna Danger, David Garneau, Leonard Getinthecar (Nicholas & Jerrod Galanin) in collaboration with Nep Sidhu, Kent Monkman, Caroline Monnet, Jessie Ray Short, and Skawennati’s group exhibition _Conflicting Heroes_ at Art Mûr in Berlin (June 8–August 4, 2018).

Conflicting Heroes: Sonny Assu, Natalie Ball, Dayna Danger, David Garneau, Leonard Getinthecar (Nicholas & Jerrod Galanin) in collaboration with Nep Sidhu, Kent Monkman, Caroline Monnet, Jessie Ray Short, Skawennati

Jacquelyn Ross is a writer based in Toronto.

When I try to picture a New Man, I think immediately of textured hair products, of conceptual photography, of the sipping of espressos in gallery-white cafés with baby-shaped lumps on chests. Of guys on bikes with just-filled growlers in their panniers zooming between start-up offices and estate garage sales. In my mind, the New Man is a man who is “enlightened” and lives in a city; someone who has “good politics” but who is also well-off enough to have the luxury of observing most injustices from a distance—that is, _aesthetically_. Who self-identifies as an “ally”; who has a mom and a sister who are feminists. Good people, good men, with good intentions. And yet, in the age of #metoo and innocuous predators masquerading as writing professors, I’ve learned to be both grateful for and wary of these men. 

I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about the irony of all of this. What is it about the male condition that makes it so inherently prone to conflict? What does it mean to be a “decent guy” if your identity is still categorically tied to so much physical and sexual violence, brutality and war? What can be done, if anything? The New Man, with his hapless mix of historical guilt and wanting-to-do-right entitlement, feels like a remarkably good topic for a novel. Unfortunately, in the case of Lynne Tillman’s latest book, _Men and Apparitions_, what seems like a good idea in theory sadly fails to deliver in practice. 

In large part, the book’s failure lies in the unbelievability of its narrator, 38-year-old Ezekiel (“Zeke”) Stark, a cultural anthropologist specializing in family photographs whose latest field study, cheekily titled “men in quotes,” attempts to take up the topic of contemporary masculinity from an ethnographic angle. The novel, which unfolds in pseudo-essayistic fashion, under fragmented headings like “anon family album throwaway pix” and “the glut of images, boring,” follows Zeke’s mundane musings as he stumbles through albums of family photos and reminisces about his pale, middle-class upbringing. Even putting aside the feelings of boredom and alienation I experienced trying to relate to Zeke’s earnest but ultimately petty descriptions of fighting with siblings in a Modernist glass house in the suburbs, I found myself faltering most of all on his voice. Rather than endear us to him, Zeke’s incessant “just kidding”s and “haha”s have a stilted effect, and are made worse by his robotic use of oddly uncolloquial shorthand like “pix” and “gen” and “POV,” calling into question his very contemporaneity. Far from the symbol of the sophisticated, espresso-sipping man of culture, Zeke comes across as socially and technologically disconnected—more akin to a retired scholar than a savvy, self-aware thirtysomething born under the “sign of feminism.”[^1] 

Presumably, Tillman is trying to poke fun at precisely this kind of man: the anachronistic “theorist of the contemporary,” intellectually rigorous on the one hand but emotionally stunted on the other. The problem is that the way she chooses to embody this character on the page is so unlike any man I know (or can even imagine) that I actually fail to recognize him as such. Who is this alien that I am following, and what is the value of his point of view? Absent of the book’s hefty conceptual framework, I’m left very simply without a clear impression of the person I’ve just met, or why. And while I can try to convince myself that this confusion is just what the author intended, I suspect that Tillman is just genuinely out of touch herself. “All ‘portraits’ are also self-portraits,”[^2] Zeke tells us in one rare moment of self-reflection early on in the novel, frustratingly never returning to the subject. Not even ironically.

The book is saved, in part, by its final section, Zeke’s long-awaited field report, “men in quotes.” Here, he poses questions to a small sample of male subjects, surveying them on topics ranging from male aggression, power and restraint to the role of fathers, male friendships, consent and care. “What do New Men want?”[^3] he asks. “How did our feminist mothers and sisters and aunts and the women and girls affect us?”[^4] The ethnographer’s subjects stumble thoughtfully through their answers, thinking out loud about Richard Gere, Michael Cera and James Dean. “Masculinity is as complex and nuanced and confusing for thoughtful men as I imagine femininity is for thinking women,”[^5] one subject remarks, in one of the section’s more poignant moments. Zeke’s voice is buoyed by these voices, lending his inquiry the contemporary context it was missing all along. 

Lynne Tillman is widely regarded as one of the great writers working at the intersection of fiction and criticism, having published numerous novels, short story collections and essays in and around contemporary art. These days, this overlap between literature and criticism is regarded as novel: a show of breadth and interdisciplinarity, a refusal to be tied down by genre. But there remains at least one fundamental difference between art criticism and literary fiction: while the former champions “concepts” and journalistic “telling,” fiction (conventionally, at least) employs methods of “showing” and requires much more than ideas alone to work. _Men and Apparitions_, like so much of Tillman’s fiction, leans too heavily on the strength of its conceptual idea to solve what are fundamental craft problems, and ones that could be better addressed through good, old-fashioned character development, or even just a simple scene change. Instead, this book is crammed cover to cover with everything you never wanted to know about family trees, fragile male egos, breakups, soul mates, 19th-century relatives (and their estates), ethnography, self-loathing, sibling rivalries, the convention of marriage, small insects, college darkrooms and backpacking in London. I’ll keep waiting for the novel that will take down the (New) Man; _Men and Apparitions_ should have been an essay.

[^1]: All quotes are from _Men and Apparitions_ by Lynne Tillman (Soft Skull Press, 2018).

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Jacquelyn Ross reviews cultural critic and novelist Lynne Tillman’s novel _Men and Apparitions_ published with Soft Skull Press, 2018.

Lynne Tillman: Men and Apparitions

Jovana Jankovic is a Toronto-based writer, editor and translator. She teaches in Centennial College’s Communications and Professional Writing program and works as a communications specialist for the University of Toronto. Her writing has appeared in _Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism and cléo: a journal of film and feminism_, among others.

Entering the single, windowless room in which Yve Laris Cohen’s _Meeting Ground_ is installed, one can’t help but think, “Is this it?”—and then suddenly feel guilty about perpetuating a clichéd philistine conception of art. The work is quiet, unassuming and sparse: it consists of the transplanted walls of the interior of Sherwood Auditorium, a grand performance space in La Jolla, California that was shuttered in 2017 to make way for the construction of a new facility. The old auditorium’s walls line the walls of the gallery space completely, fitting perfectly from floor to ceiling, inch for inch. \[1\] There is nothing else there.

The sparseness could easily have a viewer give up and leave; or, alternatively, reach for something to hang onto, some avenue through which to pierce the stark, empty silence. Indeed, once thought through, the work’s puzzling implications elicit an infinite (and fun) spiral of questions. It’s fitting that the work’s effects take place in a future ahead of the moment of its viewing, since the work itself seems to be concerned with, among other things, dismantling ordinary conceptions of time, change, objecthood and memory.

A particularly entertaining aspect of the philosophical branch of metaphysics is concerned with the persistence of objects through time, their identity, their material constitution and the puzzle of how and whether they “change” at all. Think of the ways in which our bodies grow hairs or lose skin over time; and yet, we are still “ourselves.” Think of the conundrum of art restoration, and whether a piece whose parts are replaced, repaired or otherwise altered is still that same piece of art. To what extent is _Meeting Ground_ actually Sherwood Auditorium? Is there “enough” (quantitatively or otherwise) of the latter to be able to say as much?

What about the relationship of names to things? Artworks, of course, have titles, and places have names as well. Do we call this iteration of the auditorium _Meeting Ground_, while in its past iteration it was named Sherwood Auditorium? Would “Sherwood Auditorium” then qualify as the _materials_ out of which the artwork is made, as when we unproblematically agree that an oil painting’s materials are oil paints?

A San Diego native, New York-based Laris Cohen’s history as a trained dancer informs his work in Minimalist sculpture, physical movement, performance and social critiques of art and labour. _Meeting Ground_ is his first solo exhibition on the west coast, and takes up his usual concerns with objects (often buildings or bodies) and their identity, decay, transformation, appearance and disappearance. Laris Cohen’s own identity as a transgender man relates to these issues at a deeply personal level: what is the body’s relationship to identity? To the names we call it?

Laris Cohen sees memory and experience as integral to the constitution of an object’s or space’s identity. _Meeting Ground_ was installed with the participation of Mike Scheer, a former Sherwood events technician who acted as caretaker of the venue for over two decades. In his notes on the exhibition, Laris Cohen also relates that he visited 91-year-old Daniel Lewis in Orange County; Lewis conducted the San Diego Art Center chamber orchestra inside Sherwood Auditorium (then called Sherwood Hall) for five seasons in the 1960s. “I showed him photos of himself conducting in Sherwood Hall in 1961,” writes Laris Cohen. “He said, ‘that man’s handsome’ and asked if it was me who was pictured.”[^2] In this touching anecdote, a body is replaced, a memory displaced; an object, an era and a locale are mistaken for others.

Indeed, if it weren’t for the existence of an experiencing subject, such as Mr. Lewis (or myself), we could not accurately list “thing of which I have certain kinds of memories” (joy, regret, longing, trauma) as a rightful property of a certain object. It’s here that Laris Cohen’s experience with performance begins to emerge, and yet in such a starkly performance-less exhibition made up of the physical parts of a venue that has seen so much performance inside its walls. Consider the extent to which I, as viewer, as visitor, as interpreter, was being asked to _be_ the performer, the doer. _Meeting Ground_ asked me to do quite a few things, and not necessarily all at once; did I not go home and read up on the metaphysical concepts of temporal parts and identity over time? Did I not start to look at simple objects and their temporal relations differently—say, the banana in my kitchen that’s suddenly unappetizingly brown, fostering disappointment, regret, confusion about where all that time went so quickly?

Finally, and perhaps extremely: are there such things as galleries or auditoriums at all, or only collections of particles and material “stuff”? While the latter is in many senses true, the former can hardly be disputed when we think of the people who worked inside the Sherwood Auditorium, those who attended performances there, those who fought battles for funding for the arts, unionization for Sherwood’s employees, support for restoration efforts and more. \[3\] To whatever extent my memory of a time, place, object or person is part of that thing’s identifying characteristics, it also marks me as real, as present, as a thing that exists.

As philosopher Katherine Hawley writes, in a seemingly simple point about the magic of temporality: “What is it about the passage of time that makes it possible for one and the same object to have apparently incompatible properties?” \[4\] _Meeting Ground_ plays with this question, hinting at the fact that its answer might be somewhere, but certainly not here nor now.

[^1]: “I asked Security Manager David Mesa if we could remove the gallery’s security camera so the wood could run floor-to-ceiling along all four walls, uninterrupted,” writes Laris Cohen. “He said we needed surveillance to protect the artwork from theft; I said there was nothing to steal but the walls themselves.” Yve Laris Cohen, _Notes on Meeting Ground_, 2017.

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Jovana Jankovic reviews San Diego born, New York-based artist Yve Laris Cohen’s exhibition _Meeting Ground_ at Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (April 19–September 2, 2018).

Yve Laris Cohen: Meeting Ground

Theresa Wang is a writer and curator based in Toronto. She is currently Associate  
Curator & Registrar at Oakville Galleries.

In Karen Kraven’s work, capricious associations collapse upon one another. Such playful semiotics reveal her proclivity for anomaly; nothing is quite what it seems. In her latest project, _Pins and Needles_ (2018), at the newly revitalized Toronto Sculpture Garden, the artist presents an installation inspired by the neighbourhood’s histories of “labour action in garment factories.”[^1] What was from 1981 to 2014 a storied fixture for contemporary art, the small, rectangular parcel of greenery fittingly commissioned an artist who recognized the value of historical context for the re-inauguration of its exhibition program. Kraven’s installation marks the beginning of a new series of installations at the site that the city has pledged to support. Rooted in both the historicity and myths of women’s roles in industrial work, _Pins and Needles_ explores the social and physical implications of labouring, gendered bodies. 

Like Kraven’s recent works, _Pins and Needles_ returns to the fashion and textile industry as an entry point to confront bodies and physicality. The project carries resonance with her solo exhibition _Razzle Dazzle Sis Boom Bah_ (Mercer Union, 2014) in its use of narrative and archive as structural framework, but more deeply ties to _Deadstock_ (MAW, 2017) in employing costume and uniform to materialize different forms of embodiment. _Pins and Needles_ leans heavily into archival photographs of a 10-week strike by the women of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) in Toronto in 1931, as well as into Kraven’s personal influences, including her father and his father’s knitting factory.  
Of a monumental scale, _Pins and Needles consists_ of an assemblage of 10 oversized garment pieces on a turquoise steel rack. Wavering against the summer breeze, the fabrics carry a jovial funhouse sentiment and a tinge of the macabre. The title recalls the idiom that signifies disturbance and unease, but it also references the 1937 Broadway musical of the same name, organized by the ILGWU, which presented a charming twist on topical labour concerns of the time, such as fair wages and arbitration. 

With whimsical poise, Kraven imbricates ambiguities. A recent turn has seen her forgo some of the random found in her past work while maintaining the enigmatic. In uncovering archival materials, the artist fixated on the unfinished clothing that workers would leave in factories while on strike “as a symbol of their labour and of their protest,” the paradox of labour disputes being that efficiency is relegated aside in demand for greater efficiency. \[2\] This incongruity is reinforced by the materiality of the sculpture; the fragments of marine canvas are restricted to a palette of pallid nudes and greys, as if the wan molting of the imaginary bodies they could hold. In contrast to the stiffness of the upholstery material, the swatches of soft colours provide a flash of humanity and defiance, despite limitation. Gabrielle Moser’s accompanying text deems these pattern pieces—having lost their essential functionality— to be on strike, equating the “quizzical \[active/ passive\] logic of striking” to the similarly disjunctive associations held by the sculpture. Pierced as if driven through a stake, the textile pieces together call emphatically for collective action. 

The sculpture is delightfully graphic. The fabrics were cut to make edges like puzzle pieces, each a connective tissue to the social pulse of the city’s old industrial neighbourhood on King Street. They are distinctive shapes, though only registering as clothing fragments when the odd zip fastener, belt loop or utilitarian pocket is spotted. Any of the garments’ formal relationship to abstraction is important insofar as it draws a complementary link between art and craft. Kraven has previously disclosed that the lay(wo)man nature of her textile work is purposefully awkward, yet certain fabric swatches in _Pins and Needles_ reveal an amateur professionalism, if not direct expertise: contrast hemmed stitching of fawn seams on chestnut fabric, adjustable straps with hardware, a slipstitch here and there. We see this rigour throughout the textile dimension of her practice; whether we assign this work to the tradition of found objects (fantasy) or industrialized fabrication (economy), Kraven’s visualizations of body labour exist in the curious crevice between that dichotomy. 

In _Pins and Needles_, Kraven deftly envisages, in a place that has temporarily lost its community, what it might regain. She cares as much about history as she dreams about its capacity moving forward. Her textile work might be thought of in relation to her family’s knitting factory, which closed the year she was born, as her way of renewing a family practice. _Pins and Needles_ is truly site-specific, conscious of its locale in the heart of the Toronto commercial district. Just one block north of the garden is the neighbourhood’s latest encounter with clothing manufacturing: what formerly housed the stores and factories of the T. Eaton Co., where strikes did take place, now encloses a blockade of shopping centres. _Pins and Needles_ excels in its capacity as an abstract visualization of labour action and captures the friction of its environment. There is power and conviction in how it inhabits the space, a touch of the work of womanly bodies.

[^1]: Gabrielle Moser, “Unfinished Work: Karen Kraven’s _Pins and Needles_” (2018).
[^2]: Karen Kraven, “Q&A” in \_Partners in Art \_(August 16, 2018). http:// partnersinart.ca/media/ karen-kraven-q-a/

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Theresa Wang reviews artist Karen Kraven’s exhibition _Pins and Needles_ at Toronto Sculpture Garden (June 7–September 15, 2018).

Karen Kraven: Pins and Needles

Karie Liao is a curator, writer and community organizer based in Toronto.

_What Do Stones Smell Like in the Forest_ (2018) is an autofictional opera on video about living with illness— exploring what it might feel, smell, look and sound like. Presented on two expansive screens, _Stones_ opens with the sound of wind instruments playing an atonal tune of scattered notes. A lime green screen fades in on the right, and on the left, a dancer in a purple tie-dye outfit, bathed in hot pink light. She holds a chartreuse mask to her face that resembles a safety pin bent slightly out of shape. It has two openings: a hole just wide enough for her mouth and small rectangular window for her eyes. Its large, looped handle offers the dancer a secure grip but also a dancing partner, shield and disguise. While a crooked safety pin might insinuate a temporary fix, vulnerability or subterfuge, the dancer’s apparent agency and strong gaze suggest an alternative reading.

On the adjacent screen enters our protagonist, named in the libretto as the Golem—in Jewish legend, a mud or clay figure brought to life by magic. Our Golem is made up of several sculptural objects painted the colours of bruises: green, yellow, pink and purple. They are lumpy, intestinal and kettlebell-shaped, wrapped around her body and held together with straps. Her hair, in teased curls, is unruly, as if she has just arisen from bed in the late afternoon, or perhaps never left it. In her mezzo-soprano, the Golem belts, whispers and drags out words, alternating between crescendo and decrescendo: “IIIIIIIII thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiink of the sennnnnsaaaaaaaation that ra-di-ates from the pro-tru-ding knot of booooooone,” describing her relentless discomfort. “No amount of anti-inflammatories lesssssssen the bone-deeeeeeeeep yaaawwwwwwwning iiiiiiiiiiiiitch.” She is slow, clumsy and lumbers across the ground. As the Golem sings, the first dancer is eventually joined by two more dancers, becoming a chorus of three.

Similar to past work, Lum and Desranleau continue to explore the relationship between the body, materials and objects—or, more specifically, masks, cyborgs, prosthetics and body extensions. Lum’s accompanying exhibition text provides a framework for the opera; many of its lines can be found in this text. We learn of her personal struggle and experience living with an invisible chronic condition that is unspecified. She writes, “\[d\]aily life requires me to perform wellness, must I also perform illness?”[^1] The masks featured in _Stones_ echo a voice-over sequence from _Is It The Sun Or The Asphalt All I See Is Black_ (2017): “perhaps it’s the pretense of not being oneself when masked that allows me to act like myself under their cover. Putting the mask on to take all other masks off.” Here, masking emphasizes the performativity of identity as well as being.

In the accompanying exhibition essay, jake moore describes _Stones_ as epic, referring to Bertolt Brecht’s theatrical movement. “Epic Theatre,” he explains, “did not argue for a suspension of disbelief to narcotize its viewers, instead it asserted a technique of alienation, or Verfremdungseffekt, to demand a more engaged and intellectual role for the audience.”[^2] _Stones_ is multi-faceted in material, media and form, creating an affective and multi-sensorial experience. 

Halfway through the performance, the dancers leave and re-enter the stage/screen in a synchronized fashion, tip-toeing, hopping, bending their bodies and snapping their fingers, conjuring _West Side Story_ imagery. In musical theatre, the Chorus plays a very important role in engaging the viewer, often portraying everyday townspeople or bystanders inadvertently acting as proxies for the audience, helping them to empathize with the protagonist.[^3] Here, the Chorus dances as the Golem sings and echoes her soliloquy, providing affirmations when appropriate. They move for her when she cannot and ask questions on our behalf, like “How bad must it be to be pain / Instead of pain-adjacent?” or “Does the body in pain give off a particular scent?” To the latter, the Golem replies, “Wet, earthy, a bit salty and a touch green. Somewhat like petrichor—with a whiff of musty stillness tinged with iron.” The Chorus then asks, “How does one describe the scent of salt to those convinced that the mineral has none?,” re- minding us through metaphor that describing the body in pain is a challenging task. The Chorus is our empathy surrogate.

In _The Empathy Exams_ (2014), Leslie Jamison recounts her experience being a simulated patient for medical students. An important part of their exam was to voice empathy. For Jamison, “empathy isn’t just listening, it’s asking the questions whose answers need to be listened to. Empathy requires inquiry as much as imagination. Empathy requires knowing you know nothing. Empathy means acknowledging a horizon of context that extends perpetually beyond what you can see.” \[4\]

The Golem sings earnestly about her being— the discomforts, limitations and frustrations—but she also works to embrace the heightened qualities of her existence with the help of others. _Stones_ is a reclaiming of the ill body from stillness and lost time. It is also a lesson in empathy.

_What Do Stones Smell Like in the Forest?_ will open at Gallery TPW in Toronto, in January 2019.

[^1]: Chloë Lum, “What Do Stones Smell Like?” in _Chloë Lum and Yannick Desranleau: What Do Stones Smell Like in the Forest?_ (Montreal: FOFA Gallery, 2018), 63.
[^2]: jake moore, “This is the sound that bird makes,” in _Chloë Lum and Yannick Desranleau: What Do Stones Smell Like in the Forest?_ (Montreal: FOFA Gallery, 2018), 30.
[^3]: Donald E. Whittaker III, “Subversive aspects of American musical theatre.” PhD diss., Louisiana State University, 2002\. LSU Digital Commons (1125).
[^4]: Leslie Jamison, _The Empathy Exams_ (Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2014), 5.

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Karie Liao reviews Montreal based artists Chloë Lum and Yannick Desranleau’s exhibition _What Do Stones Smell Like in the Forest?_ at FOFA Gallery in Montreal (April 23–May 25, 2018).

Chloë Lum and Yannick Desranleau: What Do Stones Smell Like in the Forest?

Ines Min is a writer and publicist based in Vancouver. Her heart will always be split between Austin and Seoul.

Ines Min reviews Canadian artist Germaine Koh’s exhibition _Home Made Home_ at Richmond Art Gallery in Richmond, BC (June 17–August 26, 2018).

Header

C Mag

Issue 140

Institutions

Credits

Editorial

Editorial: Institutions

Explore Issue by Images

Features

A Study in Concrete: Text by Annie Wong, Image by jes sachse

By the Strike of a Match, or Her Good Strike of Lightning

Meaningful Inclusion

The Artist as Doctor (of Fine Arts)

Historical Blinds and SITElines: Unsettling the Biennial with Candice Hopkins

Artist Projects

Tax Gentrification / Gentrification Tax, 2018

Columns

On Writing: in two vignettes

Artefact: Mediums

Reviews

Helen DeWitt: Some Trick: Thirteen Stories

Seth Price: Danny, Mila, Hannah, Ariana, Bob, Brad

Conflicting Heroes: Sonny Assu, Natalie Ball, Dayna Danger, David Garneau, Leonard Getinthecar (Nicholas & Jerrod Galanin) in collaboration with Nep Sidhu, Kent Monkman, Caroline Monnet, Jessie Ray Short, Skawennati

Lynne Tillman: Men and Apparitions

Yve Laris Cohen: Meeting Ground

Karen Kraven: Pins and Needles

Chloë Lum and Yannick Desranleau: What Do Stones Smell Like in the Forest?

Germaine Koh: Home Made Home

Deep-Time Construction: Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Lida Abdul, Sky Hopinka, NIC Kay, Asma Kazmi, and Amanda Russhell Wallace

Lorna Bauer: The Hand of Mee

Jackie Wang: Carceral Capitalism

Lisa Smolkin and Neil LaPierre: Belonging(s)