contemporary art writing - aceart.org

Paperwait Volume 21aceartinc. 2018/19

CONTEMPORARY ART WRITING

WORKERS 2018/19hannah_g, DirectorTani Miki, Interim DirectorChantel Mierau, Finance & Administration Manager Christina Hajjar, Programming AssistantBrianna Wentz, Programming Assistantjulian_k, Gallery Assistant Alyssa Bornn, Cleaner & Gallery AssistantHassaan Ashraf, Cleaner & Gallery AssistantLaura Darnbrough, Gallery Assistant

BOARD 2018/19Seth Woodyard, President Leigh Bridges, Vice PresidentKelechi Asagwara, Treasurer Madeline Rae, Board Secretary Heather KomusLiam ZarilloLou GandierPriscilla PingaSabrina SethiPeter DuekShaun de RooyJulie LafreniereAnnie Beach

CONTRACT WORKERSMike Carroll, Designer Karen Asher, Documentation Photographer Colby Richardson, Video EditorKevin Doole, Webmaster Simone Hébert Allard, Translation Jeremy Schappert, Accountant

INTERNSMeadow Mckay from Seven Oaks MetLaura Darnbrough

JURIES & SELECTIONSJury that selected the 2018/19 Regular Program convened on September 6 & 7, 2017: Seth WoodyardEvin CollisDoreen GirardNicole Flynnhannah_g

PaperWait Artist Pages selected by: Brianna Wentz Tani Miki

In memory of Tom Bobby, ace's accountant from the mid-1980s to 2017.

ISSN: 1497-8776This publication is copyrighted to aceartinc. Rights to reproduce individual articles and artworks remain with their authors and cre-ators. Some documentation images are the property of aceartinc. or the artists or other contributing organizations.

THANK YOUSaceartinc. would like to thank the following people, organizations and businesses for their ongoing support and partnership: Government of Canada, Manitoba Arts Council, Winnipeg Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, The Winnipeg Foundation, WH and SE Loewen Foundation, Creative Manitoba Indigenous programs, University of Winnipeg Institute for Women & Gender Studies, Plug In ICA, Gallery 1c03, Border Crossings, Graffiti Gallery, Assiniboine Credit Union, Parlour Coffee, Western Paint, Little Brown Jug, Love Nest, Black Space Winnipeg, Cluster Festival, Collecting, Citing, Curating (CCC), MAWA, send+receive, Strawberry Hearts Protectors, QTPOC Winnipeg, our private donors; all contributing artists, curators, writ-ers, photographers; our volunteers and membership. Additional thanks to MARCC, ARCA, CentreVenture, Artspace Arts Management, Urban Shaman, Denise & Arthur Waldman and all our fellow workers at Artist-Run Centres.

PAPERWAIT 2018/19Publisher aceartinc.Editor Tani MikiContributor hannah_gDesigner Mike CarrollPrinter Dave’s Quick Print, Winnipeg, ManitobaPrinted in Canada

aceartinc. is a member of MARCC, a collective of Artist-Run Centres and non-profit arts organisations who work towards strengthening the arts in Winnipeg and Manitoba. MARCC is a member of the national Artist-Run Centres Association (ARCA).

THE WH & SE LOEWEN FOUNDATION

aceartinc. WE LOVE CONTEMPORARY ART. WE LOVE YOUR IMAGINATION. YOU’LL LOVE OURS.2-290 McDermot Avenue, Winnipeg, Treaty One, MB R3B 0T2 | 204 944 9763 | [email protected] | aceart.org | Tuesday-Saturday, 12-5pm

3Foreword

4Steven Leyden Cochrane Shining TapestryA RESPONSE BY FRANCESCA CARELLA ARFINENGO

12Helga Jakobson Sympoietic SoundA RESPONSE BY DUNJA KOVACEVIC

20Toby Gillies Seasons of TogethernessA RESPONSE BY HAGERE SELAM ‘SHIMBY’ ZEGEYE-GEBREHIWOT

28Kelsey Braun Nest.....as a hiding place in the skyA RESPONSE BY TOM KOHUT

36Connie Chappel EmbodimentA RESPONSE BY TRICIA WASNEY

44Partial View: Cartae Open School ExhibitionA RESPONSE BY JASE FALK

50Flux Gallery

54THE SCOTT WACHAL MEMORIAL BURSARY

Alyssa Bornn

56The Ugly

57Emily's Cove

58Artist Pages

Paperwait Volume 212018/19

ACEARTINC. IS AN ARTIST RUN CENTRE DEDICATED TO THE SUPPORT, EXHIBITION, AND DISSEMINATION OF CONTEMPORARY ART.

WE DO THIS VIA AN OPEN CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS AND SPECIAL PROJECTS THROUGH WHICH WE WORK WITH CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS, CURATORS, AND ART WRITERS, INCLUDING EMERGING ARTISTS AND THOSE FROM QUEER, INDIGENOUS, AND UNDERREPRESENTED COMMUNITIES.

CONTEMPORARY ART IS AT ITS MOST POWERFUL WHEN ENGAGED WITH AND THOUGHT ABOUT, AND SO WE ACTIVELY WELCOME THE PUBLIC, WITH ALL OF ITS NUANCED COMMUNITIES.

ACEARTINC. EST UN CENTRE D’ARTISTES AUTOGÉRÉ DÉDIÉ À L’APPUI, À L’EXPOSITION ET À LA DIFFUSION DE L’ART CONTEMPORAIN.

NOUS FONCTIONNONS EN FAISAN T UN APPEL À PROPOSITIONS POUR DES SOUMISSIONS OU DES PROJETS SPÉCIAUX OUVERT AUX ARTISTES CONTEMPORAINS, AU X C O N S E R VAT E U R S / C O N S E R VAT R I C E S , AU X ÉCRIVAINS/ÉCRIVAINES D’ART Y COMPRIS LES ARTISTES ÉMERGENTS, ALLOSEXUELS, INDIGÈNES AINSI QUE L E S ME MBR E S DE TOU TE C OMMUNAU TÉ S OUS -REPRÉSENTÉE.

L’ART CONTEMPORAIN A UN EFFET PLUS FORT QUAND LES GENS SONT ENGAGÉS ET Y PENSENT, ALORS NOUS ACCUEILLONS LE PUBLIC, Y COMPRIS TOUTES LES STRATES DE LA SOCIÉTÉ, D’UNE FAÇON ACTIVE.

Translation/traduction : Simone Hébert Allard

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A round the time that I first joined ace, I noticed that about every fourth person that I knew—through work, family, and friends—was going through some deep personal shit, often presenting as a breakup with

a long-time partner. As you would expect, they were sad, depressed, and often appeared lost. Their worlds had collapsed and a part of them had died. They were dealing with this change as best as they could. My heart went out to them as I could relate. A year and a half before, my partner suddenly died and I was left to navigate life with my infant daughter on my own.

This past summer, ace Director, hannah_g, and Finance and Administration Manager, Chantel Mierau, gave their notices. hannah_g had been on leave to write a book and decided it was time for a big change after 10 years with the organization. Chantel received a grant to pursue her art practice and decided to move on after four years at ace. Their vision and hard work have helped build this organization to where ace is today. There were many exciting exhibitions, programs and initiatives created under their tenure. We thank hannah_g and Chantel for all they have contributed, each in their unique way.

The departure of two senior staff is a symbolic death to ace as an organi-zation. As Chantel prepares to leave, ace already finds itself grappling with its identity. It is a period of transition, of soul searching about what ace was, is, and wishes to become. Our way forward may have its challenges and growing pains, but we should always try to remain calm, grounded and open, and extend respect, patience and kindness to each other in our actions and our words.

After my partner’s death, I discovered that my daughter and I were not really alone. Friends, family and colleagues formed a circle of support around us like a warm comforter. While things change at ace, as they must—change being the only constant in life—I hope that we may find strength, support and input from ace’s community, and that those who have been harmed or negatively affected by our actions and inactions may find healing. Our inner work has begun; a year from now, we hope to eagerly share the yield of this work with you.

–Tani Miki

Foreword

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There is an understanding that the gallery is not a space meant for mourning; expressing feelings in general has been contested in the context of contemporary art. Sol Le Witt, an artist regarded as a founder

of Minimalism and Conceptual art, stated that “it is the objective of the artist who is concerned with Conceptual art, to make his work mentally interesting to the spectator…therefore he would want it to become emotionally dry.”1 But intellect and emotions cannot be split apart so cleanly. Le Witt’s claim is amplified by patriarchy, which genders emotion as ‘feminine’ and deems its manifestation of it as a sign of weakness. In Shining Tapestry, Steven Leyden Cochrane draws on aspects of Conceptual art while rooting the work in highly emotional, personal experiences to give the lie to Le Witt’s reductionist view.

One of the first works we encounter in the exhibition is a large crochet piece made of white cotton thread and pinned onto black felt. Upon close inspection one can appreciate the intricate filet crochet technique Leyden Cochrane has used to construct the work. Filet crochet consists of two stitches combined on a grid, analogous to pixel art. The textile is built with chain stitch to make up empty squares (black background), and double crochet stitch to make up filled-in squares (white). Leyden Cochrane uses

Steven Leyden CochraneShining Tapestry

SEPTEMBER 15 – OCTOBER 5, 2018

CRITICAL DISTANCE VOL 24:1

A response by Francesca Carella Arfinengo

Famine Stela, Crocheted cotton thread.

All photos by Karen Asher.

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the technique to reproduce a digital photograph, but the material restricts the reproduction to a low resolution image. When seen at a distance, the scale of the piece engulfs one’s body. The image is disorienting: a building behind a sparse forest in the precise moment when the rays of the sun shine above the horizon line. The light creates sharp shadows from the trees, which extend to the foreground. The explosion of light creates dizzying movement throughout the image, one cannot tell where the ground and sky really are. Melech House, where mom died (2018, crocheted cotton thread [filet crochet] 2.4m x 1.4m) also gives an indication as to what trauma Leyden Cochrane is referring to in his artist statement: here he intentionally revisits and recreates the site of distress. The choice to do so by crocheting, a technique consisting of repetitive motions that rely on orderly patterns, is in sharp contrast to the chaotic and destabilizing qualities of grief and overwhelming emotion.

STEV E N LE YDE N C O C HR ANE

Installation view.

Collar, wreath, sclera, cenote (Mom); Collar, wreath, sclera, cenote (Koko), Crocheted cotton thread (filet and Irish crochet, unfinished).

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Repetition and multiples are key aspects of Leyden Cochrane’s body of work, present in both his media and content. A digital collage of tree branches is used in multiple pieces of the exhibition. This collage is given physical form using filet crochet in Black hour one, two, three and four (2017, crocheted cotton thread (filet crochet), LED light boxes 109cm x 73cm). Mounted on light boxes, their appearance is reminiscent of distorted analog TV signals; each crochet piece is done in black cotton thread with vertical bands done in a second colour which matches the colour of the LED light in each piece. We get lost in the dense forest. Revisiting the same image of tree branches multiple times, but each time losing information and resolution, alludes to failed attempts at making sense of things after grief and not being able to let go. In his recent artist talk, Leyden Cochrane described his interest in redundancy, calling it “repetition that spills over”2 excess of information and emotion is a thread that runs through the exhibition, weighing the viewer down as they search for meaning.

The aforementioned digital collage of tree branches is also used in the animations Game of Life (Black hours, amber monochrome) and Game of Life (Seneca Lake dusk, blue screen) (2016, digital animation). These were created by inputting the digital collage into the software Game of life, invented by mathematician John Conway as a simulator where “a collection of cells … based on a few mathematical rules, can live, die or multiply.”3 The game works on a grid, like filet crochet, where each pixel can be inputted as a ‘cell’. The

SHININ G TA PE ST RY

Game of Life (Seneca Lake dusk, blue screen), Digital animations.

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software dissolves the image into ‘living’ at different speeds on two monitors and your phone, after reading the QR code. Similarly, across the room on the other desk, the image dissolves into ‘dying’ at different speeds. Choosing the Conway simulator as the animation software is a witty metaphor for our awareness, and unawareness, of how invisible forces determine life or death.

There are moments of uneasy humor in the exhibition. Ooo-ooo, ooo-ooo (2009, framed photograph and mirror, 60cm x 21.5cm) presents a body, the artist, taking a selfie but his face is hidden beneath a blue sweater. The shape he makes is like a child’s impression of a ghost ready to spook you. The mirror is hung high up so the average person is sure to miss the chance to look at themselves but instead sees a reflection of the gallery. The piece is reminiscent of scrying: using reflective surfaces like mirrors to call upon the dead.

Leyden Cochrane gives an equally droll treatment to how language can and cannot convey our experiences. Famine Stela (2017, crocheted cotton thread, 1.2m x 1.75m), is a crocheted string of text shaped like a snake coiled on top


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of itself, where every second line is upside down, making it hard to read. The words are like a stream of consciousness journal entry, each line references a particular thing, often hard to pinpoint: Famine Stela refers to an Egyptian inscription on a natural granite cliff “which tells of a seven-year period of drought and famine,”4 the famine paralleling the grieving process perhaps. White Shit reads next, a derogatory term to describe himself? Old Weed comes after, certainly a disappointment…Witches Tit, Manitoba winters being as cold as one … Terrified/Moon Hoax … Pathetic Fallacy … as one continues to read the piece from top to bottom each crocheted sentence evokes strong feelings, mostly embarrassing and painful. Leyden Cochrane described it as a “confessional” during his artist talk and mentioned Elizabeth Parker’s Sampler as a starting point.5 Parker was a domestic servant who wrote a confessional by cross-

stitching each letter in red thread on linen cloth; the text is hard to bear witness to as she reveals her soul and desperation with each stitch. Similarly, Leyden Cochrane shares private thoughts and personal pain, performing an exorcism with each letter via the repetitive motions of crocheting. However, he presents them in a coded and layered way, keenly aware that his multitude of references will intermingle with those of each viewer. This points to the limits of language, where the meaning of words are relative to each person and the relaying of experience is understood within the limitations of the point of view of the recipient.

Multiplicity of meaning is also prominent in Untitled (Someone to watch over me) (2017, engraved plastic desk signs, each 31.75cm x 5cm). Six signs share a desk with the Game of Life (Seneca Lake dusk, blue screen) monitors. The simple shape of two white dots on a black background is accompanied by text stating six different interpretations: someone to watch over me, a cat’s eyes catching the light … . The plastic signs emphasize just how far our minds


Black hour one, two, three and four (Blackout, streetlight); Seneca Lake dusk (Blue screen, blackout), Crocheted cotton thread (filet crochet), LED light boxes.

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can take something as apparently simple as two white dots. The signs mimic those in institutions that officially indicate the name and title of the desk owner: they infer authority and thus omniscience. Leyden Cochrane pokes fun at our need to find meaning in everything and also the bizarre officiousness that surrounds our most personal experiences such as birth and death or displaying art in institutions.

The two white dots on the desk signs precede the last two, quite unambiguously emotive, works of the exhibition. Collar, wreath, sclera, cenote (Mom) and Collar, wreath, sclera, cenote (Koko) (2018, crocheted cotton thread, unfinished, 53cm x 53cm) The crocheted pieces, done in the round, read “I’m failing” and “Comfortable hole, bye”. The words come from both a deeply personal source and obscure pop knowledge. The crocheted pieces are mounted on velvet of impenetrable blackness: both finite and infinite. The pieces draw heavily on canonical symbolism: the text is surrounded by green leafs, like a wreath at a funeral, for example. Wreaths symbolize eternal life and serve as a means to express sympathy, however, Leyden Cochrane’s wreaths are unfinished, as indicated by the medium information and evident by the hanging threads and needles still pinned. This gesture brings the viewer out of the beauty of the commemorative object itself to question the possibility of ever overcoming grief.


Untitled (Jaundice), Indian yellow oil pigment on marble, artist’s frames.

Blanket, to blanket, Crocheted cotton afghan, chalk ground (rabbit skin glue and marble dust).

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I’m failing

Leyden Cochrane’s work moves us towards compassion by making us witness the disorientation of suffering, the disconnect from reality resultant of mourning, the struggle in understanding one’s feelings, and the limitations of language when communicating them to others. In Shining Tapestry the gallery is transformed into a place where grief can be held in complex, layered ways; a much-needed respite from a society obsessed with happiness.

“Sometimes I get sad It’s not all that badOne day, maybe neverI’ll come around”.6

FRANCESCA CARELLA ARFINENGO is a settler person of colour based in Winnipeg. She is an arts administrator and emerging artist. Using mostly textiles, her art practice explores displacement and immigration. She is interested in the effects of colonialism in humanity’s

relationship to the land.

Notes

1 Sol Le Witt. “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art.” Art Forum, 1967.

http://sfaq.us/2011/11/sol-lewitt-on-conceptual-art-1967/ Accessed September 28th, 2018.

2 Artist talk, September 22nd, 2018 held at aceartinc.

3 John Conway. “Game of Life.” https://bitstorm.org/gameoflife/

Accessed September 23rd, 2018.

4 “Famine Stela”. In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. n.d. Accessed October 4th, 2018.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_Stela

5 Parker, Elizabeth. “Sampler”. 1830. Linen, embroidered with red silk in cross stitch. Height: 85.8 cm, Width:

74.4 cm. London, Victoria & Albert Museum. Accessed October 18th, 2018. http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/

O70506/sampler-parker-elizabeth/

6 Lyrics from the song City Looks Pretty by Courtney Barnett from her 2018 album Tell Me How your Really Feel.


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My visit to Sympoietic Sound began with an act of collective care: Helga Jakobson and I tended to the dead and changing things, sweeping up their remains. The plants chattered in the pink light,

given voice through sensors Jakobson created and in the code she programmed, casting their murmurs throughout the gallery. We spoke, too, of the last year spent trying to systemize differently, to build respectful languages, and about the imperative to world-with.1 Donna Haraway, one of our shared theoretical godmothers, urges, “who and whatever we are, we need to make-with—become-with, compose-with—the earth bound”. 2 This is a question we returned to throughout the evening: what might it mean to become, to compose in collaboration with other earth-bound species?

The EconoUS2018 conference I attended in September, whose theme People, Plant, Economy, similarly asked: how do we build an economy that works for all?3 This is a question with great implications as we navigate unsustainable inequalities and a looming climate catastrophe. During the opening plenary discussion, Carol Ann Hilton, of the Hesquiaht Nation and founder of the Indigenomics Institute, reminded us that a single worldview built the conference room we were seated in and the same one shapes the economy

Helga JakobsonSympoietic Sound

NOVEMBER 2 – DECEMBER 7, 2018

A response by Dunja Kovacevic



Assembling Kin, Becoming Compost

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we live within.4 But, there are so many, many, ways of viewing the world. Various modes, Sara Ahmed suggests, of orienting ourselves towards the world, and the beings and objects populating it.

In Orientations: Towards a Queer Phenomenology, Ahmed writes, “what puts objects near depends on histories, on how things arrive, and on how they gather in their very availability as things to do things with.”5 To be oriented, really, is to be tending towards certain objects and, by natural consequence, not others. Orientation is then about what we face and from what direction the future beckons. But at what cost are we oriented towards some beings and not others? And, what might it look like to reorient—to bring other objects and beings near, to be open to new connections and ways of doing things with things?

Sabrina Scott, in witchbody, proposes magic as an alternative framework to notice and work collaboratively with other bodies. “Existence,” she writes, “is mutualistic material negotiation wherein bodies reach out to one another—tangled, merging, dissolving, touching, engaging, ignoring, changing shape. Magic draws attention to process. It makes visible connections we haven’t seen.”6 For Scott, a flagging houseplant, a pile of refuse, an animal carcass—all belong to larger systems of interconnectedness and interdependence that resist easy hierarchization. It is an adjustment of scale: thinking about the “environment” need not be defined by big, “out there” nature. The

HE LGA JAKOBS ON

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environment is also the everyday one we inhabit and the things we inhabit them with. In a similar tradition, Jakobson, too, pulls from the everyday. Her plant menagerie is mostly salvaged, inherited and gifted. The technology she re-tools is cheap, open source, accessible. Hers is a process informed by curiosity, a process of noticing, subtle turning-toward the beings and objects that people her life.

Perhaps it is also a way of “making-persons, not necessarily as individuals or humans.”7 Haraway positions kinship creation between humans and

other-than-human bodies as essential to preventing our assured mutual destruction due to large-scale environmental disaster.8 Acknowledging our mutual inheritance and knotted destiny is necessary to acting in good faith. From this place we can treat one another as part of a global, flexible lineage. We can recognize one another as kin. To not do so, Scott writes, is to “deny others ‘being’ because they do not be as we be,” and this has consequences.9

Jakobson speaks about her plant-kin as individuals. Touring the exhibit, she

SY MP OIET IC SO U ND

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explains: these ones thrive in company, that one is a little quiet today. Jakobson is something of an intuitive witch herself, performing embodied magic through entanglement. DIY sensors read the bioelectric currents coursing through their leaves, relaying their excitement (or maybe, boredom) to a human public in now-detectable registers. Meanwhile, now defunct technologies—in the form of overhead projectors—are recast as contemporary phantasmagoria machines, playing spider webs projected on large screens. Another adjustment of scale.

In this space, we are immersed in a sound envelope of non-human life. By approximating our senses, because we are unfortunately limited in our understanding of other bodies as beings, we are reminded that our bodies, their presence and action, affect other bodies. This minimally invasive approach, or so Jakobson hopes, is predicated on the desire to be, or become, a respectful visitor. Through noticing, she is able to scaffold and facilitate a space for us to witness one another in a way approaching equilibrium. Sympoietic Sound is then an opening: a glimpse into what a world of more graceful and gracious

HE LGA JAKOBS ON

17 SY MP OIET IC SO U ND

Arachne’s Sonifier, arduino, phototransistors, projectors, real spiderwebs, 3D printed parts, servo motors, teensy 2.0.

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interdependence between humans and other-than-humans might look, and sound, like.

Despite a historical devaluation of kitchen witchery and intuitive knowledges , a cultural turn is occuring. Jakobson suggested that people might turn to the occult as a means of coping when readily available authorities fail them. As we grapple with an atmosphere of political and environmental depression, what can a reorientation or directional shift do? And what possibilities does this entangled, techno-alchemy offer as a path forward? Technology is, after all, a type of mysticism. An interface is a shared boundary. Its functioning is only made possible through interconnection and resource sharing. For Jakobson, coding is spellcasting. The world we occupy is always already a contact zone, where our bodies are in constant interaction with other bodies, even (and especially) those we might not immediately recognize as bodies.10 Learning how to orient towards bodies and objects differently, to remain open to different connections, keeps the possibility of the future open, too. Maybe it engenders the possibility of a future at all.

Am I suggesting that simply noticing has transformative potential? Perhaps it is too late for us, for this planet as some social scientists believe.11 All the more reason then to marvel at our however limited opportunity to interact with so many organisms, so many worldviews. Perhaps, if we were more attuned to this place, to the work of worlding-with our earthly kin, we would not be in our current predicament. If we spent a year, like Jakobson, learning to “catch” a spider web, to stretch the fine, but tensile, threads without breaking, we might also learn something about adaptability. We might still learn to listen.

HE LGA JAKOBS ON

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DUNJA KOVACEVIC is a Winnipeg-based emerging writer and critic born in former Yugoslavia. A femme lesbian, child refugee, and uninvited guest on this land, her work circles questions of (be)longing, (dis)orientations, and absent archives. She holds a MA in Cultural Studies from the University of Winnipeg and works in community development. Her work has appeared in jeunesse: young people, texts, cultures; Border Crossings and Martha Street Journal.

NOTES1 This term is respectfully and lovingly paraphrased from Donna Haraway, who urges humans to systemize

differently with the other organisms occupying this planet across, and with, difference in her work addressing

what is (somewhat loosely) called the Anthropocene.

2 Donna Haraway, “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin,” Environmental

Humanities, vol. 6, 2015, p. 161.

3 EconoUS is an annual conference organized by the Canadian Community Economic Development Network, where

I work, on a rotating basis across the country in cooperation and collaboration with different local partners.

4 The entire opening plenary session, “The Big IDEA for Real Change,” is available online via Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJJizpp7hQo&list=PLMeCVIS0mcLVDW3SBN8MaUfGmSARzfHPV&index-

=2&t=0s

5 Sara Ahmed, “Orientations, Towards a Queer Phenomenology,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies,

Volume 12, Number 4, 2006, pp. 558.

6 Sabrina Scott, witchbody. Weiser Press, forthcoming March 2019.

7 Donna Haraway, “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin,” Environmental

Humanities, vol. 6, 2015, p. 161.

8 Of course, knowledge pertaining to the interconnectedness of humans and not-humans is not new, at least not

to Indigenous peoples all over the world. It is important to acknowledge this theoretical kin-making owes a debt

to those cultures that have been engaged in this collaborative worlding work for centuries already.

9 Sabrina Scott, witchbody. Weiser Press, forthcoming March 2019.

10 Scott references Haraway to discuss how magic, too, is another contact zone facilitated by bodies connecting

with one another. See above.

11 https://www.timesofisrael.com/uk-academic-its-too-late-to-stop-climate-change-were-doomed/

SY MP OIET IC SO U ND

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The Geography of Sweet + Tender Weirdness: Human Imaginaries and We-ing the Other

Seasons of Togetherness is a suggested instruction manual for intimacy through chosen rituals of coexistence. To coexist is no simple feat; humans are different and the stakes for intimacy are equally so. By

displaying a stylized exploration of trust, Seasons of Togetherness emphasizes coexisting in interactive ways. Foundational to the works are poses imagined by Gillies. The poses were depicted with the assistance of interdisciplinary artists Ming Hon, Francesca Carella Arfinengo and Zorya Arrow, then repurposed across media. Gillies uses generous amounts of latex paints in bright colours, large-scale installation, drawing, animation and different colour temperatures of light to accomplish this. His translation circles back towards the human body, at times celestial, monochromatic or translucent. Figures gaze at or become a night sky, tumble in a glittery dream space and are stacked into a tower of a larger-than-life paper chain of people. The exhibition becomes a cognitively interactive experience that encourages the viewer to consider what a so-called togetherness might look like in their own lives.

The show reads as a story of ideals about connection, amplified while full of visitors. Hidden beneath my parka, I slink into the exhibition opening. The space feels like an oasis. It is bursting at the seams above a city deep in snow,

Toby GilliesSeasons of Togetherness

FEBRUARY 9 – MARCH 16, 2018


A response by Hagere Selam ‘shimby’ Zegeye-Gebrehiwot


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ice and windchill. All of the social customs that come with crowding a second floor gallery in a winter city are present: anxiety paired with sociability, the recognition of familiar faces who also braved the elements to arrive (as if it were easy), and music—vinyl LPs no less.

Installed beneath the show title and artist name is the first work, cheap romantic date. Cardboard is transformed into a starry night sky resting on the necks of two stuffed paper faces, one orange, the other pink. I walk towards a small monitor placed on a short plinth on the floor in a central yet inconspicuous location. seasons of togetherness as animation plays. It is an embellished long-form loop of the titular works on paper and as I watch, I become separate from the throngs of gallery goers in a way that feels very online, and in my own space.

friction between flames along with lips for me kissing you loop on two separate pillar-mounted monitors in the centre of the gallery. aceartinc.’s Instagram has a loop of friction between flames and that platform feels like a better fit for the work. Animated GIFs on the internet often supersede offline animations, like meeting someone’s parent/s and commenting on how they resemble their child instead of the other way around (maybe it’s a millennial thing?).

Depending on which work we look at, the show exists almost beyond gender in spite of the recurring motifs of the body and disembodied figures. Gender is blended into a portmanteau of former identities with an indication,

TOBY GILLIE S

Installation view.

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perhaps, of a life before a fuller, shared existence. This is exemplified in the animated projection, glittering fantasy. A near life-sized duo somersault on a glittery form that could be a cloud, a lake, a snowdrift or maybe an XXL sheepskin. The figures are in perpetual motion, devoid of gendered movement or markers.

In pillar of community, four figures in blue, salmon, mauve and yellow straddle a column located in the gallery and are larger than life. The daisy-chain-like figures are also amorphously gendered.

In pleasant setting for enjoying company, the same style of backdrop from seasons of togetherness as animation is made life sized. At first blush,

SE ASON S OF T O GET HE R NE S S

seasons of togetherness (details), 2018. Ink, watercolour, gouache, inkjet print on paper.

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there appears to be a missed opportunity by having the set and the small, floor-dwelling monitor as separate works. If the monitor were incorporated in the installation, the audience may have been drawn into reproducing the gestures found throughout the exhibition. But Gillies is not inviting us to replicate poses. The work appears to be less of an invitation and more of a personal exploration of how to approach intimacy.

Returning to the titular series, this time in paper form, seasons of togetherness (1-72) is installed in a grid, covering a long wall of the gallery. A recurring sphere mediates how the figures interrelate, whether passed around by delicately illustrated hands or propped under a reclining body. Small groups of two, three or four figures are situated in landscapes composed of ink, watercolour, gouache and inkjet prints. Geography is abstracted into monochromatic backgrounds collaged with repurposed house-plant fragments, one for each of the 72 pieces. These plants hover over the figures in the series, like a terrestrial North Star.

I imagine this series as successful in queering the notion of a geographic and social-cultural context and I wonder if Gillies has considered the ways seasons of togetherness (1-72) acts as a disruption of place. The terrain in each work is where gestures take form regardless of how the landscapes are abstracted. I find this imaginary world deeply settling for my diasporic sensibilities.

TOBY GILLIE S

a pleasant setting for enjoying company, 2019. Latex paint, spray paint, laser print on paper, tape, cardboard.

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Here emerges a dilemma: I want to locate the artist in his identities without implicating my own. More importantly, I want to name identities without really knowing them. I don’t really know Toby Gillies—not very well, beyond a crash course over coffee on two occasions, once on the day of the opening and another a few weeks after. About Toby I have gleaned the following: he is 32 years old; he is affable; he thrifts for treasures, for work and pleasure. Gillies went to art school in Winnipeg; works at Art City in West Broadway; is married; and has an upcoming collaborative gig at a major Canadian art institution.

Really, I want to write about the broader implications of whiteness and settler responsibility. All of the exhibiting artists for the 2018/2019 season at


exploring ways you could love (details), 2018. Gouache, latex paint, ink, inkjet print on paper.

couples plunge pool. Ink, latex, carbon from lighter

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aceartinc. are white. Questions emerge and become political around who gets to abstract location and place in art.

The show felt empty the following Saturday afternoon: the music and humans dislocated from an exhibition about interpersonal intimacy. No tall friend to kiss the top of my head after an impromptu waltz in front of exploring ways you could love and couples plunge pool.

Never have I ever visited and revisited a show where the audience was as much a part of the exhibition as the body of work, and the absence of humans left the space hollowed out. Sip.

But standing in solitude in the exhibition, I consider the endless labour of art making and community building. A community of twoor three

or four is central to the process and also what is seen in the works. A sense of place

cultivated in borrowed thrift store

aesthetics

TOBY GILLIE S

Left Column: pilar of community, 2018. Cardboard, latex.

27

found in the self help sectiona key piece of intel:

toby’s eyelashes are endless which may make you consider this body of work differently the longest eyelashes.

(the bluest eye)internet aesthetics for someone that does fine in meatspace

a spinning anchor cardboard cut out night sky

of two celestial figures1 like Gemini

or Pisces (but you’re a Virgo)bathed in pink grow-op lights

or sunset

EPILOGUEReturning to Seasons of Togetherness for a third time wasn’t as lonely as the Saturday afternoon visit. I bumped into a friend that made the show feel full, walked around on my own, then bumped into another friend. When the space was empty, I noticed shadows thrown on the floor with a jigsaw puzzle piece edge of light cast by pillar of community. The shapes, shadows and intention around light filled the gallery with something different from the anxious fullness of an opening or the desolate absence of a second visit. There was warmth.

HAGERE SELAM ‘SHIMBY’ ZEGEYE-GEBREHIWOT is an artist avoiding their lens-based practice through productive pursuits such as thinking about art, writing about other people’s art and moonlighting as an undergraduate student. They would like to thank Aikaterini Zegeye-Gebrehiwot, Teddy Zegeye-Gebrehiwot, Cora Wiens, Omid Moterassed, JSWANK, Kendra Place, Cheryl Zubrack, Michelle Zubrack, Tani Miki, Chantale Garand, aceartinc. staff and of course Toby Gillies for feedback, support and/or sweetness.

NOTES

1 Toby Gillies, magic of the moment, 2018. Cardboard, latex paint, hole-punched paper, disco-ball motor.


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WHAT IS ACOUSTIC SPACE?The concept of “acoustic space” is generally associated with artists and thinkers such as John Cage—whose 1951 experiences in a Harvard anechoic chamber revealed to him that silence is, in fact, full of sound—and Marshall McLuhan, for whom the electronic technologies of the 1960s were causing an overall recalibration of human sensory ratios away from the perspectival linearity that, he argued, has characterized Western modernity since the Renaissance.1 This ratio emphasized vision as the sense most related to the production of space; this space was characterized as an empty plane populated, as per Descartes, res extensa. Discrete objects were related to one another spatially in terms of lines and planes, but this relationality was secondary to their localization in these empty planes.

To this empty, vision-produced space, McLuhan opposed an acoustic space that was, as the name suggests, produced by the ear rather than the eye. Rather than line and plane, volume is the principle mode of formalization. Furthermore, this voluminous space is not empty, but full. Thinking this space is not, as in the visual spatial paradigm, a question of detached contemplation, but rather of immersion in a thick, multidimensional volume of relations. In acoustic

Kelsey BraunNest.....as a hiding place in the sky

MARCH 8 – APRIL 5, 2019


A response by Tom Kohut

Poem for Corner, 2019. Transducers, speaker wire, light bulb and fan.


Antimonies of Acoustic Space

30

space, the abstract mapping-at-a-distance typical of visual space is replaced by a sense of “navigation”: the perceiving being’s location in this space ontologically affects both perceiver and perceived alike.

If these descriptions seem somewhat abstract, one might emphasize that spatiality as such is a necessary precondition for any experience whatsoever. As Kant wrote in his Critique of Pure Reason , “Space is a necessary a priori representation, which underlies all outer intuitions. [...] It must therefore be regarded as the condition of possibility of appearances, and not as a determination dependent on them.”2 Space conditions perception and, hence, thought itself. For this reason alone, the question of the production and thinking of space is paramount for our understanding of the world. The pertinent question, then, is what might it mean to represent and think forms of acoustic space.

K E L SE Y BR AUN

31

(DIS)CONTINUITIES: KELSEY BRAUNIn his 2019 exhibition at aceartinc., Nest.....as a hiding place in the sky, sound and media artist Kelsey Braun addresses these questions. In his previous single-channel, multi-channel and installation work, Braun draws inspiration from the physicality of his materials: sonic, representational, and otherwise. Large-scale works like Fragmentation (2014), single-channel works like Exploration of Surface and Decay (2011) and In Frequency (2009), and field recordings that he has produced draw attention to mottled textures, strongly evoke a haptic presence. This haptic sense, the sense of the physical touch and texture of material, is evoked in several components that make up the Nest assemblage: in particular, through its use of the gallery main space in ways that are both immersive and discontinuous.

Immersive: Speakers (some apparent, others hidden) positioned throughout the gallery produce a continual “ambient” 20-channel soundscape that, augmented by the acoustic properties of the room itself, gives the aural impression of moving through a differentiated volume. As for the visual

NE ST. . . . . AS A HIDIN G PL AC E IN T HE SKY

32

components of the exhibition: perhaps, rather than immersion per se, there is a formal continuity among the various physical objects that are assembled here. The most notable of these are, as the name of the exhibition suggests, the “nests.” These nests, composed of the wires that make up window mesh, tumbleweed, cinder blocks and partially shredded tires provide a visual refrain; these gnarled, twisted but nevertheless homogenous (insofar as each nest is made up of one material) arrangements lie on the ground or nestle around speakers.3 These morphological similarities, which, additionally to nests, also suggest clouds (the nests in the sky?), provide a visual continuity that form a counterpart to the immersiveness of the sound.

Discontinuous: Beginning with the visual discontinuities, the nests themselves seem to be radically isolated from one another. Beyond their aforementioned morphological continuity, there seems to be very little communication between them, each seeming to withdraw into its own separate gallery space. This effect is accentuated by the fact that the nests themselves remain strictly demarcated to the left-hand side of the gallery, with the right-hand side sparsely populated by two mirrors and a series of lightbulb set-ups. The mirrors lie flat on the floor, with the light sources suspended above them from the ceiling, creating a set of abstract patterns on the adjacent walls. Closer inspection, however, reveals that the mirrors are not the pristine surfaces

K E L SE Y BR AUN

33

that one expects from mirrors; as is often the case in Braun’s work, the surfaces are mottled, either through natural corrosion or, in one case, because small iron screws are arrayed on the surface, occasionally rattling around when a bass shaker positioned below the mirror achieves a particular frequency range. Again,

there is a formal variation on a theme, but, like the nests, they are placed apart from one another in such a way as to discourage visual connection.

There is one further element to Nest that emphasizes this overall sense of visual disconnection, and that is in some ways the most enigmatic part of the overall ensemble: Poem for Corner (although I have come to think of it as the Dancing Light Bulb). Isolated in the alcove that connects the main gallery to Flux Gallery, a light bulb, hangs from the ceiling next to a standing fan. The breezes emanating from the fan cause the light bulb to sway jerkily back and forth. Here, the sense of visual discontinuity is strongest, as the impeded kineticism of this particular component stands in stark contrast to the overall sense of stasis and arrest that the other visual components convey. And again, this is accentuated by the physical distance of the work from the other sections of this exhibition, as though it had wandered in from some other exhibition altogether. All in all, despite the formal continuities that spread through Nest, it is impossible not to see here an evocation of the vision-produced space of discrete objects distributed across a neutral, empty plane, in which relations (i.e., the morphological continuities among the components) is ontologically secondary.

Is this the case with the auditory space constructed by the sonic aspect of Nest? The answer, given that auditory space is typically characterized by


34

immersion and volume, turns out to be a surprising one. The soundscape that Braun composes through his sonic materials (composed of field recordings with negligible equalization and compression) maintains an analogous oscillation between continuity and discontinuity to the visual components. The continuity and immersiveness is explained easily enough, not the least because auditory space as such lends itself to these qualities; there is a strong sense of balance and composition, of one sound flowing into another that, given the ambient distribution of the speakers, produces the strong sense of being enfolded in a voluminous space. And yet, if listeners allow themselves time to absorb and reflect on what they are hearing, interesting discontinuities emerge. Discrete events start to emerge from the mesh (the nest) of sound: raindrops, water sluicing, distorted voices, strange and unexplained tones.(These voices produce an eerie, ghostly quality to the soundscape, not the least because they include the voice of the artist’s late father). What is noteworthy about these sonic events is their staccato, sharp quality. Although everything seems to blend together into a immersive whole, the parts themselves seem to have little connection to one another. This impression of discontinuity is amplified by the seemingly aleatory ebbs and flows of the sounds’ totality; there is little sense of refrain or relation between these discrete elements. Composition, which, at first, seemed to have a horizontal, synchronic relationality turns out to be primarily a vertical, diachronic relationality; each moment happens, followed by another, and then another. As with the visual assemblages, the sonic components are neither entirely continuous/immersive, nor entirely discontinuous.

K E L SE Y BR AUN

35

THE ANTIMONIES AND DIALECTICS OF SPACEHow might one characterize the relation between these incompatible, if not opposed, tendencies, i.e., immersive continuity and dispersive disconnection? Are they antimonious, i.e., that there is and can be no relation between these two tendencies? One might even go further and ask if space as such is an antimonious concept—that it is, strictly speaking, impossible to think both the continuous and the discontinuous aspects of spatiality at the same time. (Kant, again, notes that antimonies occur when rationality exceeds its own possibilities and, are, such, indications of a failure of our concepts). Or perhaps there is another option, one suggested by the physicality from which Nest derives so much of its suggestive power? Earlier, I alluded to the haptic quality on which so much of Braun’s work depends. Does the haptic sense of touch, emphasized by the pointillist quality of the sound and the corroded and involuted qualities of the visual components, suggest a way of resolving this antimony into a dialectics of space? In this dialectics, the relationality of the visual/sonic spaces correspond to an irreducible split within the concept of space that is partially resolved in the unquestionable fact that our perceptions and ways of thinking space are necessarily based on on tactility? Nest.....as a hiding place in the sky’s theoretical implication is that neither visual nor audio space is primary. Rather, space, for its conceptualization in such a way to think both its discontinuities as well as its immersiveness, requires a further elaboration of the sense of touch in order for its dialectics to be fully reckoned with.

TOM KOHUT is a Winnipeg-based researcher and writer specializing in media and elec-tronic arts. He is the co-editor of Marshall McLuhan and Vilém Flusser’s Communication and Aesthetic Theories Revisited (Video Pool Media Arts Centre: 2015).

NOTES1 An anechoic chamber, designed by American acoustics expert and inventor Leo Bernek in the 1930s, is a room

designed to absorb sound waves to such a degree that they appear entirely devoid of sound— to the human

ear, at least. (David Bowie can be seen walking into one on the cover of Station to Station).

2 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith, (Boston, New York: Bedford, St. Martin’s

Press, 1965), 68.

3 Besides the “nests”, other objects embedded with speakers in the installation include a guitar and an assortment

of architectural objects such as fake electrical outlets, light fixtures and plumbing materials.


37

Nature’s places, no matter how beautiful and moving we may find them to be,

are not yet gardens; they become gardens only when shaped by our actions

and engaged with our dreams. So we go on to consider the acts that make a

garden: molding the earth, defining and connecting spaces with walls and

ceilings and paths and monuments, irrigating, planting and tending, weaving

patterns of recollection with names and images and souvenirs, and possessing

the place by rituals of habitation.1

With Embodiment, Connie Chappel has created a kind of garden. In gardens, as in art-making, raw materials remain just that until transformed by intent. What is Chappel’s intent? Her garden

is comprised of dead things and disease but is as lovingly tended as any other. A series of suspended root balls are tethered together in solemn yet hopeful solidarity. A large diseased branch is tenderly rocked in a hammock. One-hundred ominous black-knot galls are hung with cheerfully-coloured embroidery floss from the ceiling, some of the specimens wrapped in cocoons crafted by Chappel from synthetic netting as if believing that, with care, they will emerge as something new and alive.

The Healer, 2018. Dry plant root, hollow birch branch, vintage mannequin hand, nylon hair-netting, cotton string, air current.


Connie ChappelEmbodiment

APRIL 26 – MAY 24, 2019


A response by Tricia Wasney

A Garden Laid Bare

38

Inhabited by these sombre artifacts, optimism nonetheless pervades the exhibition. Though the vegetation is no longer alive and the elements inanimate, Chappel has given the works titles that suggest movement and regeneration. Bloom is the first work encountered, dramatically lit and located at the title wall of the gallery—one of five sculptures installed on two-inch high plinths which Chappel refers to as “grave slabs.”2 Cradling a rock, a mannequin arm—joined to a long, slender branch—extends upwards. In Surge, a mannequin arm lies horizontally on the plinth, seemingly born from a nest of lava rock and hair netting; the handless arm rests in the centre of a cracked log, and from the rupture a red glow emits from within. Sisyphos Rock—a sculpture made from a tree root, branches, soil and mannequin parts—evokes the pointless task of Sisyphos but nevertheless suggests movement forward even as we know it also means movement backward, creating a surprising tension between the still components. In This Nest I Rise From, a mannequin arm sprouts from a root ball, nestles around a rock and attaches to a branch of grafted tree fragments. The title says it all; a nest as a place of birth and, eventually, of leaving.

Chappel has provided literal movement as well, and the audience provides more. In Suspended, the black-knot-infected branch is cradled in a hammock that oscillates ever so slightly, not by a prairie wind, but by a tiny motor hidden

C ONNIE C H APPE L

Installation view.

39

inside the gallery wall. The Dwelling Place—a complex environment of root balls hung from the ceiling and interconnected with latex tubing, embroidery floss and monofilament—becomes animated as visitors walk carefully through it, the roots and their connections swaying gently from breath and human bodies in motion. Similarly, The Healer, a dry plant root covered in a birchbark sleeve with an antique mannequin hand extended at one end gestures slightly here, and then there, as visitors create air currents walking by.

Impactful is Chappel’s deep personal involvement with each piece of vegetation. In her artist talk and in a tour with her through the exhibition, Chappel was able to share the provenance of each piece. Not collected randomly, the specimens came from her own yard, from those of friends and neighbours, or from far-flung places that are dear to her. With Drip Drawing I, II, III, Tear Catcher, and Passages, Chappel pays particular homage to a damaged, and now dead and removed, birch tree in her next-door neighbour’s yard. She noticed that the tree was prodigiously dripping sap; crying, as she interpreted it. Adding red food dye (what she had at hand) to the wound, Chappel placed paper below and collaborated with the tree on Drip Drawing I, II, III. She only discovered later that birches are referred to as “bleeders” because of their prolific sap production. The collected sap is housed in Tear Catcher, a glass

E MB ODI ME N T

Installation view of This Nest I Rise From, Sisyphos Rock and Surge.

40

vessel installed in a wall niche that is reminiscent of a funerary crypt. The vessel is covered loosely, allowing the sap to evaporate, another suggestion of movement to another plane.

If you really want to draw close to your garden, you must remember that first

of all you are dealing with a being that lives and dies; like the human body

with its poor flesh, its illnesses at times repugnant. One must not always see

it dressed up for a ball, manicured and

immaculate.3

Chappel’s garden brings to mind a hospital or care home for the sick and dying. Perhaps not surprisingly, Chappel was formerly a recreation director in a nursing home and has cared for her own elder relatives. Embodiment seems an extension of this drive to care and nurture. Passages—one-hundred birchbark fragments arranged in

C ONNIE C H APPE L

Drip Drawing I, II, III, 2018. Birch tree sap, colourant, Amate paper, tempered glass, wood, stain, LED electrical lights.

41

a spiral on the wall and fastened with acupuncture needles—is an evocation of the circle of life, illness and death, and considers the way we try to heal or treat people. The use of acupuncture needles in Passages and of latex rubber tubing (referred to as “connective t issue” 4 by Chappel) in The Dwelling Place further evoke the tools of healing or at least those of medical intervention. The sleeve in The Healer and the strips nailed to the wall in Passages recall the healing properties of birchbark traditionally used by First Nations peoples to treat skin conditions

and wounds. The infected branch is rocked gently in the hammock referencing people in pain who do a lot of rocking. Chappel also likened the hammock to the slings used to move immobile patients. The lamp cord in Surge is covered, suggesting insulation, “a protective covering,” according to Chappel.5 During her artist talk, Chappel handed around a sample of the birch-tree sap for the audience to look at and sniff. Fittingly (and eliciting some giggles from the audience), it was housed in a urine sample bottle.

The small private garden remains true to its instinctive,

unchanged purpose of expressing, protecting and consoling.6

Interestingly, though Chappel ascribes human signifiers of suffering and healing to the dead vegetation, it is the plastic mannequin parts that she regards as stand-ins for people, especially women, “All are female arms; females are often the caregivers, the ones who look after disease and illness and the ones who insist that we take care of the planet. Eco-feminism, earth work—women do this.”7 Chappel knows that many people are creeped out by mannequin parts. Chappel finds them unapologetically fascinating, and a necessary metaphor and

E MB ODI ME N T

Passages, 2019. Birch bark, acupuncture needles, tape, embroidery floss, wax.

Tear Catcher, 2018. Birch tree sap, glass, wood, LED electrical light.

42

representation in her work of human connection to the earth, “It wouldn’t be the same if I didn’t have a human component.”8

The human element is a critical component of gardens. We build gardens, and, as we typically regard them, they are places of nourishment and refuge for us. We walk along their paths, coax their incremental growth, pull at the things that would destroy them, put them to bed for the winter. We care for them and in turn they provide us with food, flowers, scents, and with a deep connection to life and regeneration. Gardens are also about stillness, dormancy and death. This is especially marked here on the prairie landscape. How remarkable is it that the four-foot bergamot plant in my garden last summer is now a dry lump with just tiny signs of life emerging? It will rise again in a few weeks and in a couple of months will push out wild purple blooms. The incredibly fragile-looking pussy toe plant has survived last winter’s minus forty temperatures and an unusually cold spring, and is thriving and blooming right now.

Listen, all creeping things, the bell of transience.9

Chappel’s Embodiment garden is not dressed up for a ball in the conventional sense of what that means, and it will not rise again, at least not in the way we expect gardens to rise. But it possesses its own kind of beauty, vitality and hopefulness. Considering the criteria from The Poetics of Gardens, Chappel has achieved a garden. Her actions have shaped not only the placement of the works in the exhibition but from every touch she laid upon the branches, bark, root balls, rocks, and mannequin parts on their journeys there. She has defined and connected spaces, created paths and tended her charges; she has made connections, woven patterns, bestowed names, and recalled that which no longer exists, creating her own rituals of habitation.

C ONNIE C H APPE L

TOP: The Forest, 2019. Branches, black-knot galls, nylon hair-netting, embroidery floss, glue, monofilament, shadow, air current.

BOTTOM: Suspended, 2019. Fabric, elastic rope, black-knot galls, glue, branch, rock, wire, monofilament, electric motor, movement, shadow.

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TRICIA WASNEY is a Winnipeg artist with a background in landscape architecture and film studies. Her work in writing and jewellery-based work (and sometimes printmaking and film) explores landscape, loss, and notions of home.

NOTES1 Charles W. Moore, William J. Mitchell, and William Turnball, Jr., The Poetics of Gardens (Cambridge,

Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1995), vi.

2 Connie Chappel, from artist’s notes shared with the author, April 30, 2019.

3 Fernand Lequenne quoted in “gardendigest.com,” accessed May 2, 2019,

http://www.gardendigest.com/death.htm

4 Connie Chappel, conversation with the author, April 30, 2019.

5 Chappel, from artist’s notes shared with the author.

6 Geoffrey and Susan Jellicoe, The Landscape of Man: Shaping the Environment from Prehistory to the Present

Day, 3rd ed. (London: Thames and Hudson, 1995), 7.

7 Chappel, conversation with the author.

8 Ibid.

9 Kobayashi Issa, The Dumpling Field: Haiku of Issa, trans. Lucien Stryk and Noboru Fujiwara,(Ohio: Ohio

University Press, 1991), 5.

E MB ODI ME N T

The Dwelling Place, 2019. Roots, latex rubber tubing, embroidery floss, monofilament, shadow, air current.

44

The first thing I saw upon walking into Partial View was a collection of glitter-filled champagne glasses stacked on top of a square of golden lace—I knew I was in for a party. Around the room, images of giant shoes

were plastered over the floors and walls. During the talk with the artists, Emma Mayer discussed the creation of these images as coming out of her fixation on specific objects; that the impulse towards creating large shoes did not require a preconceived theoretical framework to be explored. The shoes all shown at different angles, some in portrait, some on their sides, as if the artist was turning them over, thinking through a fascination with something which has not yet congealed into metaphor; an object for its own sake, containing potential.

The underside of one of these shoes faced out from the wall into the gallery. In this moment I became the ground upon which the shoe rested and was held up by; both a vulgarity and source of stability. I thought about what it takes for one to carry out an artistic practice, what necessary footing it takes to have work in a gallery, and if there needed to be a specific grounding in theory or meaning for an idea to be worth exploring.

In the room over, one of Jean Borbridge’s three pieces was a wood frame with what seemed like a splatter-painted canvas dislodged from its holding,

Partial View: Cartae Open School Exhibition

JUNE 7 – 28, 2019

NOTES & EKPHRASIS

A response byJase Falk

Jean BorbridgeFrancesca Carella ArfinengoDavis PlettEmma MayerMalaikah Rang’inya

45

lazily draped over the structure that once held it tight. The frame itself wasn’t attached to the wall, but rather was propped up on a slight angle in the gallery. On the opposing side of the gallery, another painting was set on the ground in the corner. These two pieces resisted conventional forms of gallery hanging or installation. In the third video work, the colours and forms were similar to the paintings, but in digital form, exploring space through the canvas of the screen. The three works were a dance of interplay between two and three dimensionality.

The frame of the first piece was taken apart and treated with irreverence; the “painting” itself lay casually, like a towel, over the wood form. Jean’s work reminded me of the underside of the shoes in Mayer’s work. What lies on the underside of our wanderings, our artistic processes, the final “products” we hang in galleries?

On the back wall of the first gallery was a video performance of Malaikah Rang’inya in a yellow dress dancing on a canvas of wet paint. Her dance was sped up slightly making all the body movements seem animated as if by a visiting spirit. The lighting had been cast to project a chorus of shadows behind her and, with the lights darkened in this section of the gallery, the viewer’s own shadow joined in this dance as they approached. Malaikah was bare foot; her feet mucking around in the paint, creating something out of chaos. The video was projected onto the canvas on which she had been dancing in the video. The colour palate was an array of browns and yellows, layered imprints of Malaikah’s footprints that had piled up overtop of one another like leaves on a forest floor. A row of jars filled with different herbs lined the wall next to the video. During the gallery opening, Malaikah offered to make spells for gallery attendants

Francesca Arfinengo Carella, installation view, 2019

Davis Plett, everything that happened June 14-28th, installation view, 2019

46

out of the jar ingredients, inviting them into a process of gift giving and creation. Each element of Malaikah’s work displayed part of the process of its very creation; the process and end product were indistinguishable.

The theme of feet and of movement comes to a resting point in Francesca Carel la Arfinengo’s work. A pair of white slippers are part of a felted mat laying on the ground, which one must work to resist slipping their feet into. I imagine this would create a feeling of calmness; a holding, like finding yourself inside of a cloud. The fact that the mat and slippers are of the same material and part of one continuous piece stops any feeling of movement. This piece signals a destination.

Suspended from the ceiling, a square of pink wool hand strung through a perforated board contrasted Arfinengo’s felted mat on the floor. The texture of both suggested softness; something you wanted to run your hands over, the way the hands which made it had run themselves over so many times in the process of making the work. The contrast between the lightness of suspension and the heaviness of stasis on the ground made me think of the complexity of

Jean Borbridge, installation view, 2019

Cartaers; left to right: Emma Mayer, Francesca Arfinengo Carella, Malaikah Rang’inya, Davis Plett, Jean Borbridge

Emma Mayer, installation view, 2019

47

the sensation of softness; how it can feel different in various circumstances and approaches, how a single sensation can produce a variety of effects.

In the very back of the gallery, behind a curtain, there was a single bed. Next to it, a laptop and a pair of headphones rested on a plinth. You could lie down, pull yourself underneath the covers, put the headphones on and turn towards the laptop screen. Here you would be met by videos of the artist, Davis Plett, who is also laying down in bed, speaking in a sweet, croaky voice between yawns, apparently having just woken up. They are telling you of last night’s dreams (though they do not name them as so). Their work was titled “everything that happened June 14-28th.” As I returned to the gallery several times, I found new videos were added that had not been there before. New dreams. New sleepy mornings. This piece unfolded throughout the duration of the exhibition. The process of the artist’s life was still in motion; there was no

distinction between exploration and exposition.

While this exhibit was titled, Partial View, I felt less like I was being given a small glimpse at something and rather that I was being invited backstage, led behind the stage curtain where the actors were still putting on makeup. This was further reflected in the digital collage pieces by Mayer and Borbridge. The beauty of collage is that

whatever is presented also suggests all the other possible combinations which could have culminated out of the materials that went into it. Art is always coming from somewhere and moving towards something else. In this partial view, we are given points towards the closed half of the curtain, asking us to think of all else that could have been said, how the ideas each of these artists are working with might transform in their future work, and what can be taken from this specific iteration of how they appear now.

Malaikah Rang’inya, installation view, 2019

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stasis

trickle across stonehum smooth, gurgle ear brushing the hairs on ur chestif i wrote us a poeminstead of playingout our mid-nightmyths— leaping up from the edges of mirrors, where can one finda body except in motion?

what lies behind the curtainbetween when we wake up& start piecing together last night’s visions?

if you could: press through my skin& grab hold of all the shadowsthat keep dancing, fold until you can fit me in ur palm

stone rolledbetween index & thumb nestled upbeside cochlealisten to the purring us rushing over it— water churning

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JASE FALK is a non-binary artist and researcher living in Winnipeg on Treaty One Territory. They are interested in using a combined approach of poetics and theoretical analysis to discuss institutions of public memory such as archives, museums, and art galleries.

ABOUT CARTAECartae is an alternative learning space for the exploration of contemporary art modes, ideas, and criticality, and their applications to individual practices. It is a site of experimentation, dialogue, creation, and research.

The eight-month studio-based program and year end exhibition offers emerging artists intense logistical and intellectual support. Cartae provides opportunities in the form of peer to peer and self-directed learning, studio visits/workshops from ace’s exhibiting artists and committee, screenings, artist talks, free access to all events that occur in ace, and input from our sister Artist-Run Centres. It has become a key means for emerging artists to intensify their individual and collective practices in unconventional, pro-risk, and critical ways.

aceartinc. emphasises forming relationships between different years of Cartae and with ace itself. Alumni and current participants have joined the Board, Flux Committee, and Cartae Committee.

Cartae is an initiative of aceartinc. and was founded by hannah_g, Jamie Wright, and Helga Jakobson in 2014. The committee members for 2018-2019 were Briar Boyko, Chantel Mierau, Seth Woodyard, Beth Shellenberg, Peter Duek, Julie Lafreniere and hannah_g. The next call for applications will be in the late spring of 2020.

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Flux Gallery exhibits engaging contemporary art in any medium by early-stage emerging artists. Located in within aceartinc., Flux Gallery seeks to address the lack of exhibition space for this group by providing

a 400-square-foot space dedicated exclusively to the exhibition of work by early-emerging artists.

Flux Gallery is programmed by a committee of Winnipeg-based emerging artists/designers/ curators, and aceartinc. staff and board members. Shows are programmed on a quarterly basis.

The 2018-19 Committee consisted of Graham Wiebe, Christina Hajjar, Noor Bhangu, Alyssa Bornn, Pablo Javier Castillo Huerta, Annie Beach, Olenka Skrypnyk, Kelsey Smith, Hassaan Ashraf, Genevieve Farrell, hannah_g and Chantel Mierau.

Flux Gallery

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2018/19 FLUX EXHIBITIONS

SIMON FUHThe Greatest of All Time NOVEMBER 9-17, 2018

The Greatest of All Time is a reflection on sport and play. It uses found sculpture, video and digital images to explore the relationship between fun and organized competition. Simon is interested in how societies (under patriarchy) tend to construct a spectrum of acceptable levels of enjoyment in competitive structures. Games are designed to incentivize winning, and are often thought of as micro representations of our world. Fun, at the competitive level, is not necessarily an emotional response that is highly sought after. Simon’s work is both a representation and subversion of this constructed seriousness. NIAMH DOOLEY NintawinDECEMBER 9-17, 2018

Nintawin, meaning home in Oji-Cree, is a show that explores the revitalization and resurgence of traditions within a home space that may have been lost through colonialism. Using paintings with images of these traditional practices or items and placing them with sculptural items associated with a house builds the relation between tradition and home and the importance of passing down this knowledge. Materials range from oil paint, deer hide, beadwork, moose hair, branches, sinew and wooden found sculpture pieces. The mixture of contemporary and traditional materials work together in connecting the central themes of the show.

LEAH MCINNIS AND DAVID PETERSMood SwingsJANUARY 11-18, 2019

Ladders, lofts, pendulum chairs and stairs to nowhere. What haunts trestle and beam? What remains when we daydream? We leave buzzing shadows as auguries.

Laminated castoffs and bindings, spines and gutters in faded jackets, this is a search for the mercurial. Out for a lark, an architecture to hide a dog ear.

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT:

Tayler BussLeah McInnis + David PetersAbhishek ChaudharyMeganelizabeth DiamondNiamh DooleySimon Fuh

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Licking thumbs under glass cylinders. Dark pools, flip through paper ink indulgences and wait for distances to diminish. ABHISHEK CHAUDHARYSorry, not in print FEBRUARY 1-9, 2019

Sorry, not in print is a collection of memories, bored of being alone in the museum office. The work functions as a tampered archive of textual and visual information that at once seems convincing but promises to be untrustworthy. The seesawing between the real and performative history is where the author finds space for creative, empowering deceits. After all, old passports are good for nothing but perhaps, scribbling. MEGANELIZABETH DIAMONDFifth KingdomMARCH 13-23, 2019

The Fifth Kingdom, according to LIFE’s A Guide to The Natural World, is the inanimate world of rocks and minerals. This Fifth Kingdom is a photo-based exploration that looks at the mining of bits of stone, quartz and other natural materials as they are extracted within the inorganic, digital world. Collaged pieces of rocks and crystals take on new forms, presenting themselves as failed optical illusions and patterns mimicking autostereograms (Magic Eye images). TAYLER BUSS RedMAY 2-11, 2019

Red is an exploration of cultural identity and personal relationships through the use of household objects. The contrast between Western and Chinese objects serves as a metaphor for memories and relationships. The colour red is a connective element throughout the piece while upholding its traditional meaning in Chinese culture: good fortune.

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This bursary is available to art students who have been curated into the Annual Student Exhibition. The bursary is intended to support a project or an opportunity (such as a workshop or residency) that will

positively impact the artist’s practice. In 2013, the youngest artist curated into our Annual Student Exhibition passed away. In his memory, aceartinc. created the Scott Wachal Memorial Student Bursary.

The 2018 recipient was ALYSSA BORNN.

Alyssa Bornn is an interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and organizer from Winnipeg. Her practice regularly utilizes traditional photographic methods alongside alternative and outdated digital modes of image capture. In partic-ular her work is centred around ideas relating to transference, interchange-ability, medium non-specificity, language, failure, and the poetics of technical processes.

In 2018, Bornn was curated into the aceartinc. student exhibition and subse-quently awarded the Scott Wachal Memorial Bursary. As part of this, recipients are invited to give a public talk about their work. Her artist talk was presented on May 16, 2019 and is available from our website under Discourse. Since her talk, Bornn received the Emerging Digital Artist Award in September 2019, an annual national prize which recognizes critical experimentation in digital media.

The Scott Wachal Memorial Bursary

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Image: in either words or images (resampled). Alyssa Bornn. inkjet print on Tyvek, 24 x 16", 2019.

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The Ugly at aceartinc. is a venue for artists working in a contemporary art context with live art, and a platform for experimentation and research.

In November 2018, The Ugly hosted four performances of 805-4821, a trans coming out story made out of other stories: a dialogue from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a half-remembered swim lesson, and an 80,000-word Facebook corre-spondence. Performed using a hacked overhead projector, 805-4821 explored memory, identity, and love in an age of apocalypse. Produced by We Quit Theatre (created and performed by Davis Plett, dramaturged and directed by Gislina Patterson), 805-4821 went on to be presented at Toronto’s SummerWorks Performance Festival.

In February 2019 for one night, Ashley Au organised Lucky 7, Vol. 1, featuring Gabriela Ocejo & Matt Foster and Savant Flaneur. This was the first show in a series intersecting musicians from far-reaching genres and disciplines.

The Ugly started as a pilot project, created in response to a swell in demand for flexible performance space by artists for live art. It is a temporary, discrete space situated in the 400 sq. ft. space between the office and main gallery. The Ugly is named in honour of Professor Sharon Alward, one of Winnipeg's most respected performance artists and a great supporter of aceartinc. It references her work Ugly But Not Inferior (1997).

The Ugly

Left: 805-4821, Davis Plett. Photo by Callie Lugosi.

Right: Lucky 7, Vol. 1, from left: Gabi Ocejo, Savant Flaneur (Nathan Krahn, Gage Salnikowski) Matt Foster. Photo by julian_k.

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Emily’s Cove (named after stellar former intern, Emily G. Doucet) is a small, strange space for aceartinc. interns to program.

The cove is located in a rectangular space to the left of the wooden flight of stairs taken to reach the gallery via the 288 McDermot Avenue entrance. For around 25 years generations of artists and programmers have irregularly used the space to show work, have meetings, and cause mischief.

Currently it’s a space for interns and the artists they program to experiment and have fun. Among other projects and happenings it’s housed The Littlest Museum (Alex King), an animation set for You Were Here (Rhayne Vermette), props from the animation Bonefeather by Callum Paterson + Nathan Gilliss (Emily G. Doucet), sculptures by Olivia Medeiros (Kat Nancy), a screening by nùna (now), a robot by Ken Gregory, an installation by Mahri White (Laura Darnbrough) and more.

Interested in becoming an intern at ace? Get in touch: [email protected]

Emily's Cove

Mahri White, Crepidula 11, mixed media installation, 2018.Curated by Laura Darnbrough.

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Artist Pages

Internet VernacularSeeing Yourself In Othersdigital photography

M.E. Sparks Gap Tooth Woman2018 oil on canvas

HoodoolabDay In Day Out201835mm film

Katrina CraigMaps of Transition: Body and Mind are Not Separate2018cotton thread on canvas

Christina HajjarGhanouj2018performancePhoto by Leif Norman

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GALLERY INFORMATIONace exhibits contemporary visual art in a 5000 square feet of gallery space—the largest Artist-Run Centre in Winnipeg.

This Artist-Run Centre is passionate about the work being produced by contemporary artists and arts writers and critics in Canada and abroad. Many successful, well known and not so well known Canadian artists have shown work at ace early in their careers—we are an established (but not estab-lishment) part of the unique ecosystem of Canadian contemporary art.

We exist to help artists realize their ideas so we share our resources—both equipment and space—freely with artists and other like-minded organisations.

Since 1983 we have exhibited emerging artists—many of whom you will now be very familiar with and some will be exciting discoveries when you trawl our online archive. Each is an important part of Canadian art history.

Our jury-selected Regular Exhibition Program is the spine of ace—the deadline is August 1st of each year. However, we do lots of programming underneath and in between exhibitions. If you have an idea drop us a line: [email protected]

If you happen to be an artist visiting Winnipeg, pop in and tell us what you’re up to. We also have some bicycles we can lend to aid your Pegsploration.

@ACEARTINC

@ACEARTINC FACEBOOK.COM/ACEARTINC

ACEARTINC.BANDCAMP.COMVIMEO.COM/USER12257564

MEMBERSHIPYour support assists in the research, development, presentation, dissemination, and interpretation of contemporary art in Canada.

For one year members receive emails regarding upcoming events and programs, notices of calls for submissions and other opportunities, invitations to events, a subscription to PaperWait, ace’s annual publication, access to Project Rooms, turnarounds, our library and woodshop, and an annual studio visit from an ace staff member.

Membership is $25. If you volunteer for 2 hours you get a membership in return.

www.aceart.org/membership

SUBMISSIONSFor information on submissions please visit: www.aceart.org/submissions

ARTIST TALKSace records all of the artist talks we present. Access them via aceart.org and click on the discourse tab. You can also find the previous editions of PaperWait there.

LIVE ARTaceartinc. supports live art via programs such as turnaround and The Ugly—if you are a contemporary artist working in performance/live ways and want to set up a gig, get in touch.

LOCATIONaceartinc. is located on Treaty One Territory, the original lands of Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation. We offer our respect and gratitude to the caretakers of this land.

FOUNDERS Donna Jones, Douglas Melnyk, Larry Glawson, Janice Dehod, Gail Noonan, Vern Hume, Pauline See, Lorraine Wright, Gord Arthur, Karen Busby.

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Lucille Kim Between Temporal and Permanent Histories of PainSEPTEMBER 6 – OCTOBER 11, 2019

Jordan Stranger FirekeeperNOVEMBER 1 – DECEMBER 6, 2019

Kae Sasaki I hear it well but scarcely grasp itFEBRUARY 28 – APRIL 3, 2020

Elise Rasmussen A Poetic Truth in a Pathetic FallacyAPRIL 17 – MAY 22, 2020

Grace Han Trace of FreedomJUNE 5 – JULY 10, 2020

aceartinc.

Jury that selected the 2019/20

Regular Program convened on

September 24 & 25, 2018:

Luther Konadu

Sylvia Dreaver

Madeline Rae

Kelechi Asagwara

hannah_g

Chantel Mierau

UPCOMING 2019-2020

contemporary art writing - aceart.org

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