no. 01
spring 2015
Nom de l’artiste
Spiffy Moves Team
Editor-in-Chief
Nancy Webb
Spiffy Moves is an anthology of critical and experimental art writing and visual art.
For more information contact [email protected] or visit www.spiffymoves.com.
Editorial Team
Emily Bergsma
Marie-Hélène Busque
Matthew Palmer
Mikhel Proulx
Graphic Design
Xavier Cédric
Véronique Nguyen
Cover Image
Les Ramsay
The Original
Mixed media with stool
Dimensions variable
2013
Printing and Binding
Anteism
No. 1 / Spring 2015
No part of this publication can be reprinted or in any way reproduced
without written permission from the publisher.
2
Editor’s introduction—
Writing about art
can ruin art. Susan Sontag called this “the revenge of the
by Nancy Webb
intellect upon art.”1 Sometimes it’s better to come in from a different
angle – to make sure that text and image are in the same room, but that
they merely exchange glances. In this spirit, Spiffy Moves attracted
its units of content to a central core, where they now hover in subtle
relation to one another. Within this nebula there are vases, hands,
Thomas Hirschhorns, awkward silences, fêtes, gaskets, car hoods, spies,
quizzes, interruptions and Art Forum erasures. Text, image, typography
and design are mutually supportive. They overlap, providing scaffolding
4
5
for one another. We endeavoured to make something polyphonous – a
mixed bag of ideas that rarely make explicit reference to visual art, but
when they are assembled, form the contours of this moment and this
place in art, writing and cultural criticism.
As this is the inaugural issue, it doesn’t know what to make of itself,
only that it is the result of a group of several brains pulsing like plump
rubies. We hope that you will enjoy reading it as much as we’ve enjoyed
making it.
Nancy Webb
Editor-in-Chief
1. Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation, and Other Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1966), 4.
Mona
Ayyash
Interruptions
Collage
24 cm x 30.5 cm
2014
6
7
The Brittle Sinews of Relational Propositions
Pétur Már Gunnarsson
The Brittle Sinews
of
Relational
Propositions
ABSTRACT
In The Brittle Sinews of Relational Propositions the author
strives to shed an earnest light on the pseudo science and academical
shortcomings he feels characterizes the visual arts of today. In
effect the text generously gives a clarifying voice to topics obviously in no
need of being further fortified such as capitalism, racism, colonialism, sexism,
bigotry and displacement to name a few, as well as addressing the pressing
matter of career envy. As a point of reference, the text’s undercurrent celebrates
humanity’s next to lowest common denominator – death by strain.
Preparation is in order. Murder? No. Draw one’s blood in the fall
and store. Perfect. On Christmas Day. To introduce it back into
the system and see what happens. Show one’s teeth. Think a tad
bigger. Pretend to be sitting but be hovering. Hold it. Eat. Smile.
Teeth show. Christmas. Richard Tuttle. Is here. The gift for him is
from a robot. A rather messy robot. The tie is nice though. It’s a laser
tie. His hair is smoked. The smell reminiscent of the end: when we
fall backwards into the viscous river of lava and the nose inhales out
of habit but the lungs have evaporated. The lungs are nothing but
stinky smoke, which now enters the nostrils. They inhale out of habit
out of habit out of habit. When this happens we understand that the
past cannot be. It never was. It only takes woolen socks minutes to
get soaked, even when worn under modern shoes, but all the days of
the past could not dry them up. That’s a fact we will on our last day
see as a fact. There’s William Tell with a laptop. How funny. It’s a
classic Ilya Kabakov joke; must be him joking around. One of the presents sitting under the Christmas tree has a light switch. We want to
flip it and see what happens. But to get to it, without coming across
as performance artists (the kind from which vigorous schooling has
cut off all hills and valleys of the voice), we would need to turn our
back on Kara Walker. We fear this might for some reason trigger her
into whispering to the back of our head something profound about
slavery or fashion and we don’t want that. Let’s not present her with
that option. Matthew Barney shows a new video. In it he’s trying to
sell an old car to Tino Sehgal. These words and so many more are
exchanged:
MB: Original gaskets! Just do me one favour you insane
customer: don’t be a loser okay! I have so little time for
losers that just thinking about it creates a black hole in my
head followed by a very boring song pestering me for the
rest of what never fails to be a very important day for the
world bathed in sun. I love you, you bright young thing!
TS: Yes…
MB: Say it, don’t spray it! Original gaskets!
No doubt, gaskets here mean something else. Such is the simple mind
of this complex artist.
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9
Cory Arcangel made the tree. It wiggles its hips, hands
resting on them. There is our mother. She’s hanging from
hooks running through the skin on her back. Who would
have thought she was into stuff like this? We are for sure
doing the Lance every Christmas from now on. What a feast
this is. Marvelous. Mother’s left eye is crying while the right
is laughing. It’s way too much. We love it. Apart from that
she remains expressionless. All applause. We are still
hovering above the chair as if our sinews have solidified. “Oh, the
brittle sinews of art” sweeps across our mind like tumbleweed
and we feel like releasing it onto the party but this is not the era.
And we’re not sure if we should waste this metaphor on art. We
need to wait. Luckily, waiting is our profession. We grew up on
wait. Waiting for time. Waiting for a man to be hanged. Waiting
for our chance. That’s normal these days. It has resulted in us
going all the way. We make what we want to make and ruin it. Then
it’s done. Complete. They’ll definitely hang us for nothing, and
nothing is all we do. We are losers like Tino Sehgal. We don’t have
a car. Now mother is really crying. All softly applause. Steve Jobs’s
body is there. His soul is somewhere.1 William Tell cannot stop
looking at the corpse. How funny is that? Real funny if you ask us.
We love humour. It’s tough without irony though, which is being
ironed out these days. But we can wait.
TS: I…
TS: I… MB: I reach for that which amplifies.
MB: I reach
There
for that
I findwhich
the thingness
amplifies.ofThere
that which
I find the
isn’t.
thingI…
ness of that which isn’t. I…
Joseph Beuys is under the dinner table, listening. He’s got one ear
cocked for Barney’s new video, the other for the oven. In there meat
is sizzling. Beuys’s forehead and the oven window are identical
– the same lines, same specks of burnt fat, same history, same
translucency, same glass skull. Damien Hirst is the sizzling meat.
It will be tough on the jaws, but nothing that a touch of Sauce
Deleuze can’t make edible. This sauce can impregnate copper and has
children. Mother is retired but she used to make windows. Her
tramp stamp reads “Glass is liquid”. She has never cooked. She’s
all about diamonds and food for thought, as her tattoo indicates.
A magnificent beast that we love, she is. She’s in Dennis Hopper’s
collection. Storming by a gallery every so often he was once brought
to a halt for not seeing anything he liked so he bought the window
through which he saw nothing he liked. Out of habit out of habit
presumably. The only thing we can compare mother to is herself,
unless we want to turn all her windows into Penrose triangles.
That’s a fact even Peter Fonda gets. We remind us that his twisted
sister is an important window on Spaceship Earth.
Thomas Hirschhorn will read the Christmas tags. That’s unanimous.
He’s preparing now, allowing the text to use his eyes in a double slit
experiment. Particles leave the paper in a trajectory, waves show on
his retina. They incarnate as his hair, contrasting that of Tuttle’s,
and as tears streaming down his rough cheeks. He is reading. Clad
in a tangerine v-neck he swiftly and repeatedly jerks up one of the
sleeves only to immediately pull it back down. This gives rise to a
memory in us; we recall something we read about elbows. But what?
We raise Hirschhorn’s sleeves and see that his are largely made out
of what appears to be the shrunken skin of a baby elephant. Crevices,
deep and black, run wild. We need to stick cut flowers in there. And
talk to Merleau-Ponty about it. That’s it!
Oh, Lance! Why did you do it?
[email protected]
1. (A banana I just ate showed the Donnie Darko film poster after the first bite. With a loop I could read the
tagline. I found that exciting. After the next bite there was The Shining poster, then Rosemary’s Baby’s,
then Psycho’s.)
Touching Realities
Dario Ré
Touching Realities
Touching Reality
Video stills
2014
Thomas Hirschhorn’s video installation
Touching Reality debuted at the 2012
Triennale at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.
I encountered the work (albeit briefly)
two years later at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal as part of the
2014 Biennale de Montréal. The piece
is a 4-minute 45-second video loop
showing a female hand manipulating
(on a tablet) anonymous Internet
images of casualties of war – defined
by Hirschhorn as “destroyed bodies.”
destroyed bodies: “origin, redundancy,
invisibility, iconism-tendency, reduction
to facts, victim-syndrome, irrelevance
of quality and distanciation through
hyper-sensitivity.” To my (in retrospect
unfounded) surprise, he illustrated each
reason with a plethora of photographs,
screenshots, anecdotes and comparisons. Based on the ghostly complexions
of those who didn’t storm out of the
auditorium, I think few people agreed
with his defense.
After a mere ten seconds, I was
barraged with my own contemptible
teenage memories of being coerced
by a peer to watch Internet videos of
death: a racing bicyclist nudged off
a bridge, a pole-vaulter penetrated
by his own pole, a woman obliterated
by a speeding car – graphic, to say
the least. I scorned Hirschhorn’s work,
which paradoxically heightened its
appeal. Then I spent the following week
ruminating on this act of rejection.
Finally, I compromised with my injured
psyche to attend his talk where I had
hoped to sidestep the viscera and
explore the political and conceptual
aspects of the work.
My curiosity about rejection thickened
and I decided to appropriate and
recontextualize Hirschhorn’s means,
theory, and rationale to address
Touching Reality from a new perspective.
Thus came my own version of Touching
Reality, a 4-minute 45-second looped
video installation composed identically
to Hirschhorn’s, but instead featuring
anonymously trolled Internet images of
destroyed trees.
The public lecture was organized by
the Biennale de Montréal and hosted
by the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia
University.1 Hirschhorn asserted eight
reasons why it is important to look at
1. The lecture was integrated into a 300-student undergraduate art
course, FFAR 250 (an acronym ironically shared by the United States
military: Folding-Fin Aerial Rocket).
10
11
Lise
Latreille
Cars
C-print
12 in x 18 in
2014
12
13
Annie Katsura Rollins
Hand Exceptionalism
You’ve probably read this before. Our hands are what set us apart: movable
independent fingers, more sensitive fingertips with nails – not claws, and that
saddle joint that enables our thumb to be opposable. But I’m not talking human
exceptionalism here (‘tis not my belief nor my point – no, no), I’m merely interested in
hand exceptionalism.
But.¶
Hand
Exceptionalism
Our long and glorious history of the hand, the knuckles that bore us, may be coming
to an end. The hand’s claim to glory is threatened. They’re calling it Hand Regression.
Think about it – you’ve been neglecting them, haven’t you? What have you done with
your hands lately? I mean, really done? How intelligent are your hands? Do you even
use your hands to write now, or just type? Has hand intelligence been moved into the
mere fingertips – tip, tap, touching screens and buttons?
Our minds, or so cognitive archeologists say – you know, those people digging for
old clues about our brains and development and stuff – they say we didn’t start
out so smart. But you know what made us smart? These hands. Directly born out of
our ability to encounter the material world in ways different from other species, our
minds developed coterminously.
That first grasp started with our hands. Objects, materials, textures, and substances
were all catapulted into a new relationship with our five-fingered mode of
interaction. We could fully grasp the thing. And we found we could manipulate it.
Take a thing, hold it, work it, shape it, change it. The thing we humans now do best
(or worst) started with, that’s right: our hands.
Don’t believe the hype? Take a look around you. There is nothing in your vicinity that
doesn’t have the hand’s stamp all over it. Reading this on a computer? Hands made
that. Going old-fashioned and reading this on paper? Still hands. Is your computer or
paper resting on a table? Hands. Sitting in a building with some heat and lights on?
All hands, all the time. Any tool used to make that computer, that piece of paper, that
table, that building, those lights can also thank the hands. Did you just eat or drink
anything? You got it, HANDS. We made it all, all of it, with this hand exceptionalism.
I grasp, therefore
I am.¶
We grasp, therefore
we are.¶
When was the last time you grasped something, really grasped it?
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15
We should be careful with this taking-for-granted hand snobbery. Who’s to say
that what the hand gave the hand can’t take away again? With prolonged neglect,
could our hand exceptionalism devolve back to converge with the paws and claws
we so arrogantly love to delineate ourselves from? Perhaps the hands will go anoint
someone else, something else. Stick these hands on a dog and who knows what great
and terrible things they would be capable of.
Could our swashbuckling brains be reduced back into the pea-sized nothings
they started from if we let the machines do it all for us?
Where’s our modest
deference?¶
Where’s our humble
reverence?¶
Perhaps I’m preaching to the choir here. A bunch of hand worshippers, are you?
Knitting your own socks and cultivating your own kale? Penning letters to granny with
quill pen and ink on paper made from your own mold and deckle? Hand-hewing
lumber for your own tiny house and sculpting effigies with those two things hanging
at the end of your arms? Well there’s still work to do. We can always do more.
Tap less, grasp more. Now, let’s get back to work.
Lesley
Anderson
Dark Horse
Acrylic and oil on linen
30 in x 40 in
2014
Mark (Yellow on Blue)
Acrylic on canvas
48 in x 60 in
2014
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Béatrice Cloutier-Trépanier
Festive Territories: A Reflection on Absolut Vodka’s Attempt to “Bottle Art”
Festive Territories:
A Reflection on Absolut
Vodka’s Attempt to
“Bottle Art”
analysis of the progressive transformation of a leisure activity, such as sharing
les plus aptes, les disques et les alcools qui conviennent. L’éclairage et la
drinks, into something that is diametrically opposed to its originally unproductive
conversation devront être évidemment de circonstance, comme le climat
nature. Strong historical links persist between art and the consumption of alcohol,
extérieur ou vos souvenirs. S’il n’y a pas d’erreurs dans les calculs, la réponse
and the potential of the fête (Lefebvre) as a reclaiming of social space. However in
devrait vous plaire.7
the context of Absolut’s art bars, this established relationship between art, alcohol
The staging of social situations suited to varying degrees of inebriety was also
and social unrest becomes fraught with commercial interests.
performed by Situationist collaborator Yves Klein, who organized an “art party”
at his 1958 Le Vide exhibition at Galerie Iris Clert, for which blue cocktails were
In his Critique of Everyday Life (1947), Henri Lefebvre elaborates on the importance
created and served by pretty waitresses.
of leisure to capitalist modernity and the need for unproductive time. He insists
on the importance of leisure activities to produce a break – or at least the illusion
What these historical instances of alcohol consumption and leisurely social
of one – with everyday life. He wrote: “There is an increasing emphasis on leisure
interactions have in common is that they were conceptualized as a reaction to the
characterized as distraction, […] liberation and pleasure.”3 According to Lefebvre,
status quo, to postwar productivism and capitalist ethics. On the contrary, contem-
To “bottle art” – I wish I had come up with it. This tagline from an Absolut Vodka
leisure’s ultimate characteristic is “the feeling of presence, towards nature and
porary iterations of art and leisure masquerade as such by letting loose, presented
marketing campaign describes the brand’s longstanding collaboration with Andy
the life of the senses […] leisure transcends technical activities to become a style
as art, while appropriating distinct forms of historical resistance and marginal
Warhol, which is said to have launched Absolut’s commitment to the arts. Since
of living, an art of living.”4 Within his analysis of the paradoxical nature of leisure
movements in service of contemporary capitalism. Indeed, they have very little to
2012, this pledge has taken the form of collaboration with contemporary artists in
and its relationship to everyday life, Lefebvre refers to the fête (the party) as
do with the reclamation of social space, if anything at all. The Experience Economy
the installation of “art bars”, usually in concordance with international art fairs such
the ultimate unproductive activity; it provides both a moment of pure sensorial
(B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore, 1998) presents an economic model
as Art Basel. Absolut commissions the conception and installation of a functioning
enjoyment and a break from everyday productivity. For Lefebvre, the fête is the
in which products need to be incorporated in spaces of consumption that are
bar, leaving the rest up to the artist, including the creation of original Absolut
most influential use of space precisely because “it consumes unproductively,
conceptualized as total environments. These environments are built to distinguish
Vodka-based concoctions and the serving of these drinks to thirsty audiences.
without [any] other advantage but pleasure.”5 His conception of leisure activities
themselves and the products they contain in order to stay relevant and appeal
To borrow Martha Buskirk’s words, they are “little more than an excuse for a party,
such as the fête is twofold: it is both a break from the quotidian and a critique
to their target markets. Companies strive to offer engaged (staged) experiences,
in the context of a contemporary business model centered on opening-night
of everyday life. Thus the fête, despite its ultimately unproductive nature, holds a
which in cases such as Absolut’s, are equated with the appropriation of historically
critical potential that Lefebvre urges us to reclaim.
purposeful gestures and the narrative reproduction of sophisticated leisure and
festivities.”1 Indeed, those bars are representative of an economy based on the
construction of experience and the appropriation and reproduction of particular
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pleasure. This type of appropriation is reflected in Gander and Torres’s Center and
Historically, booze-fuelled parties and other festive events conceptualized as art
is made even clearer with Absolut’s insistence on the installation’s convivial yet
can be affiliated with practices such as Allan Kaprow’s Happenings of the late 1960s
serious nature. Through the language used to describe it, the Center strives for a
Absolut’s initiative, led by the Absolut Marketing Director of Creativity and Luxury,
or Tom Marioni’s Café Wednesday (1970-ongoing) and Free Beer (Drinking Beer
balance between fun and intellectualism that references and appropriates historic-
exemplifies the reification of the artist’s bar packaged as a luxurious yet accessible
with Friends Is the Highest Form of Art) (1970-1979), mostly in their intent to foster
al tropes of artistic interventions on festive territories. Gander and Torres’s Absolut
art activity. It now includes Nadim Abbas’s Apocalypse Postponed (2014),
sociability through the experience of art, but also as a way to circumvent the ob-
bar attempts to legitimize its commercial existence with diluted conceptualism,
Ry Rocklen’s Night Court (2013), Mickalene Thomas’s Better Days (2013), Adrian
ject-based art paradigm by shifting the focus toward an embodied and ephemeral
vague claims to research and the utilization of contemporary art-speak such as
Wong’s Wun Dun (2013), Los Carpinteros’s The Güiro (2012), Jeremy Shaw’s The
experience of being-together. This type of being-together6 also finds interesting
“being-together” and “platform for research.”8
Kirlian (2012), and Ryan Gander and Mario García Torres’s The Maybe Center for
precedents in the French Lettrist and Situationist movements of the mid-twentieth
Conviviality (2012) – a piece that was part of Documenta (13). These installations
century, as they promoted the consumption of alcohol as an important element for
The function of the Absolut art bars is twofold, especially in the case of the Center
are overtly crafted and organized to function as leisurely social settings, as spaces
their construction de situations. The following excerpt from the Lettrist/Situationist
for Conviviality; the language surrounding it is utilized as a signifier of cultural
in which to let loose, as rec rooms to party in. Gander and Garcia Torres’s Center
journal Potlatch, taken from an article titled “Le jeu psychogéographique de la
relevance and knowledge, while its festive nature is exploited and transferred to
for Conviviality demonstrates a different attitude that veers away from Absolut’s
semaine,” elaborates on these situations:
Absolut’s identity. In the process of this transfer of values, Absolut has repurposed
art historical narratives.
signature thematic, gimmicky and somehow self-reflexive environments. Their
Construisez une maison. Meublez-la. Tirez le meilleur parti de sa décoration
important historical narratives related to art-making and social leisure to suit its
Center for Conviviality was more attuned to the tastes of Documenta crowds, which
et de ses alentours. Choisissez la saison et l’heure. Réunissez les personnes
very particular goals: to position itself as a cultured provider of leisure aligned
are decidedly more cerebral than Art Basel’s partygoers. The Center was created
with contemporary art discourse, and an emblem of enlightened lifestyle. They
with the intention of seamlessly inserting the space into the folds of everyday
absolutely know how to bottle art.
life, and as such, it feels like a quiet get-together. It was not about “reimagining
nightlife”, as Absolut has claimed for some of its other installations, but rather
a space to enjoy a drink and “share ideas and knowledge.”2
How to “bottle art” indicates Absolut’s desire to both legitimize its insertion
into art circles, and to use artworks as marketing ploys in order to enhance their
product. From a critical standpoint, the slogan’s meaning is restrictive. It is merely
an indication of the shortcomings of the appropriation and commercialization of
1. Martha Buskirk, Creative Enterprise: Contemporary Art
Between Museum and Marketplace
(New York and London: Continuum, 2012): 327.
2. “The Warhol Spirit,” Absolut Vodka, accessed January 23, 2015.
http://www.absolut.com/en/warholspirit/.
3. Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life Volume I, trans. John Moore
(London and New York: Verso, 1991), 229.
art forms. Absolut’s tagline can also refer to suffocation and the act of muffling
4. Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life, 235.
or stifling. This is not a disavowal of dematerialized or process-based art, but an
5. Henri Lefebvre, “Industrialization and Urbanization,” in Writings on
Cities, eds, Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas (Cambridge, Mass.:
Blackwell Publishers, 1996), 66.
6. In The Inoperative Community (1986), Jean-Luc Nancy conceives of the
being-together as a way of being in common, as social coexistence.
Ignaas Devisch (Jean-Luc Nancy and the Question of Community, 2013)
clarifies : “Being-together is always being with others, and signifies
also simultaneity, that is, being at the same point in time. […]
Collective space and time are the conditions of possibility for the
social.” It has resurfaced in recent theories such as Nicolas Bourriaud’s
Relational Aesthetics (English translation, 2002), in which the relational
artwork is said to operate as a social interstice. Jacques Rancière also
refers to being-together in his turn towards art theory, The Politics of
Aesthetics (2006). In both these discussions, the being-together takes
on a redeeming value and is perceived as an alternative resistance and
remedy to contemporary, prescribed modes of communication.
7. International Lettriste, “Le jeu psychogéographique de la semaine,”
Potlatch 1 (22 juin 1954). Reprinted in Guy Debord, Potlatch (19541957) (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), 15.
8. Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Artistic Director of dOCUMENTA
(13), writes: “I am pleased by the partnership with Absolut as both
dOCUMENTA (13) and Absolut focus on conviviality and the continuity of the body in and with all forms of organic life. This is a colorful
Documenta and committed to creating moments of being together
in meaningful ways. The Maybe center for conviviality supported
by Absolut provides such a condition.” Absolut Vodka. “ Art Bar
Installations.” Accessed February 6, 2014. http://www.absolut.com/
en/Absolut-Art-Award/Art-Bar-Installations/.
a) Maurice Merleau-Ponty
b) Drake
a) Maurice Merleau-Ponty
b) Drake
4.
“Feelings and passional conduct
are invented like words.”
9.
“We are caught in a secret history, in a forest of
symbols.”
a) Maurice Merleau-Ponty
b) Drake
a) Maurice Merleau-Ponty
b) Drake
5.
“My reality is brighter
than your dreams are.”
Bonus Question:
“Everything I’m not,
made me everything I am.”
a) Maurice Merleau-Ponty
b) Drake
a) Maurice Merleau-Ponty
b) Drake
Maurice
Merleau-Ponty
or
Drake
?
8.
“We are nothing but a view of the world.”
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21
3.
“Knowledge is pain
and that is why it hurts to know.”
Who
Said It:
Who Said It?
Marie-Hélène Busque
b) Drake
1.
“Everyone is alone
and yet nobody can do without other people.”
6.
“My body is a thing
among things.”
a) Maurice Merleau-Ponty
b) Drake
a) Maurice Merleau-Ponty
2.
“Mind in one place,
heart in another.”
7.
“You can be whoever you want, even yourself.”
a) Maurice Merleau-Ponty
b) Drake
a) Maurice Merleau-Ponty
b) Drake
Answer Key
1. a) Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The World
of Perception (Abingdon and New York:
Routledge, 2009), 87. 2. b) Drake, from
Lil Wayne, “It’s Good” (ft. Drake and
Jadakiss), Tha Carter IV, Lil Wayne (New
Orleans and Santa Monica: Young Money
Entertainment, Cash Money Records and
Universal Republic Records, 2011), CD.
3.b) Drake, “Brand New”, So Far Gone,
Drake (Toronto: October’s Very Own,
2009), CD. 4. a) Maurice Merleau-Ponty,
Phenomenology of Perception (Abingdon
and New York: Routledge, 2002), 189
5. b) Drake, “Congratulations”, So
Far Gone, Drake (Toronto: October’s
Very Own, 2009), CD. 6. a) Maurice
Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and Mind,” The
Primacy of Perception: and Other Essays on
Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy
of Art, History, and Politics, ed. James
M. Edie (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern
University Press, 1964), 162-163.
7. b) Drake, “Connect”, Nothing Was The
Same, Drake (Toronto, New Orleans and
New York: October’s Very Own, Cash
Money Records, and Republic Records,
2013), CD. 8. a) Maurice Merleau-Ponty,
Phenomenology of Perception (Abingdon
and New York: Routledge, 2002), 406.
9. a) Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Cézanne’s
Doubt,” The Merleau-Ponty Reader, eds.
Ted Toadvine and Leonard Lawlor
(Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University
Press, 2007) 82.
Bonus - Trick question! Kanye West,
“Everything I Am”, Graduation, Kanye
West (New York: Roc-A-Fella Records
and Def Jam Record, 2007) CD.
Photo credits:
Drake (2013). [Online image]. Retrieved
February 28, 2015, from http://noisey.
vice.com/en_uk/blog/a-series-of-interpretive-vines-based-on-nothing-wasthe-same
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2012). (RDF)
[Online image]. Retrieved February 28,
2015, from http://politproductions.com/
sites/default/files/img-maurice_merleau_ponty-du_comportement_et_de_la_
perception_au_langage-entretien_avec_
georges_charbonnier-1959.jpg
Matthew-Robin
Nye
Ublimé, the Tapada of Bogota
2014
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23
Damien Smith
Totally Eighties
Totally Eighties:
Numbers stations were first implemented during WWI, but their
use increased during the Cold War, surging in the late 1970s to the
late 1980s following the failure of Soviet-American détente of the
early 1970s, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent
escalation of nuclear armaments buildup from 1979 to 1986. This
was the Cold War era of Reagan and Brezhnev and the spectre of
mutually assured destruction loomed heavily on the public psyche.
Nuclear annihilation entered the realm of pop culture during the
1980s as protest, political commentary and by way of sci-fi films,
or “The Imagination of Disaster”, as cultural critic Susan Sontag
described it in her 1964 essay bearing that title. Unlike in Sontag’s
dissection of the tropes of the science fiction double feature of
the late fifties and early sixties, the monsters and “inconceivable
terror” of the era did not originate from outer space; most of the
terror was produced in-house. Humankind was its own engineer
and harbinger of megadeath and total destruction. Pop songs and
films of the 1980s such as Nena’s “99 Luftballons," Frankie Goes to
Hollywood’s “Two Tribes," “War Games," “Red Dawn” and made-fortelevision film disaster extravaganzas like The Day After (1983) vividly
depicted scenes of mass immolation. The on-screen vaporization
of American citizens as a result of a Soviet nuclear attack (scored
with another eighties musical trope – the ominous synthesizer wash)
was the prominent pop cultural manifestation of the deepest
Cold War anxieties.
“The Lincolnshire Poacher” and Other Archival
One-Hit Wonders of the Late Cold War
The radio dial after the Second World War wasn’t just
transmitting pop tunes, public broadcasting and all sorts of
other genres and subgenres of music for the varied masses;
unnamed and unregistered shortwave stations were also
transmitting cryptic fragments of tunes and broadcasting
a litany of polyglottal, creepily-intoned numbers. These
radio stations were known as numbers stations and played
an integral role in the tradecraft and communication
network of Cold War era espionage. Numbers stations
were an untraceable means to send coded information and
instructions to agents anywhere in the world.1 The sequence
of numbers would be transmitted and deciphered using a
one-time pad, an uncrackable encryption technique that was
randomly generated for each new transmission. The pad and
code used to decipher the radio transmissions functioned as
a form of esoteric high-espionage Sudoku. The audio and
visual tropes of the tradecraft (or spy-craft) of numbers
stations can be seen in television series such as Tinker Tailor
Soldier Spy (1979-80), Smiley’s People (1982) and in period
dramas situated in the 1980s such as The Americans (2013).
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25
The Conet Project was an archival project undertaken by Akin
Fernandez in 1992, the year after the collapse of the USSR and the
same year Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man
was published. Based in Great Britain in the mid-eighties, Fernandez
established Irdial-Discs, an independent and emphatically cult
record label. A music and radio geek, he was surfing the shortwave
dial when he came across the cryptic transmissions (“chatter” in
the contemporary parlance of post 9/11 intelligence) and he became
intrigued by the crackling static. He began recording the transmissions
and researching their origins, yet got very little information from
governmental or broadcasting authorities. Numbers stations were
the open secret most governments publicly denied; to the untrained
ear they merely sounded like a meteorological or nautical report.
The recordings of such transmissions were categorized and named
by like-minded aficionados based on an identifying feature such as
a voice or song used to alert an operative that a number code was
about to be transmitted. One particular numbers station of British
intelligence (The M-16) is well known due to its use of a jaunty,
instrumental snippet of the folk song “The Lincolnshire Poacher”.
The Conet Project’s recordings were released as a four CD set in
1997 and became a cult phenomenon. The frisson of intrigue and
otherworldliness was integral to the appeal of The Conet Project’s
recordings. Also at play was a cultural nostalgia for the Cold War
era’s climate of espionage and the potential for nuclear annihilation
that most of the listeners and musicians would have experienced
then. The irony being, of course, that Fernandez began archiving his
recordings three years after the end of the Cold War and one year
after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Of course, the threat of nuclear war hasn’t abated; espionage
still occurs to this day, as do numbers station transmissions.2
For example, The Illegals Program – the capture of ten Russian
spies working undercover in the US in June 2010 – was a stunning
revelation of the sloppy tradecraft of the spies, but also of the fact
that Russia was still running a dedicated espionage campaign upon
American soil, decades after the Cold War had ended. As such,
the eighties revival extended beyond the scope of its pop cultural
tropes – arpeggiated synthesizers, peg-legged jeans, oversized
shaker-knit sweaters, skinny ties and asymmetrical haircuts.
Framed within the socio-political and media landscape of the
eighties, The Conet Project’s recordings of coded numbers provides
a chilling and ephemeral counterpoint to the era’s most popular
Cold War themed hits: Nena’s “99 Luftballons” and Frankie Goes
to Hollywood’s “Two Tribes”. Unlike the overt musical and visual
tropes of eighties music and fashion, the cryptic transmissions of
The Conet Project – captured from analog and archived digitally –
evoke a more anxious memory of the eighties through their
electronically altered voices, monotonous recital of code and
fragments of carnivalesque calliope music filtered through atmosphere
and static noise. Jacques Derrida theorized that the archive is
linked to the threat of death – that the archive drive or archive fever
is in essence a capitulation of the psyche to the idea of “radical
finitude.”3 The morbidity of the archival act, exemplified by The
Conet Project, resonates with the Cold War of the eighties. This
was a decade politically and culturally immersed in the imagination
of disaster – no need to wear shades; the future wasn’t looking
so bright.
As archival relics that gained a cult following, The Conet Project
recordings operate as more than just noise; as musical affect, they
are content-laden. The content is — for those of us who don’t
possess the number pads (unarchived, of course) — indecipherable.
However, when the Conet recordings are incorporated into musical
works like Wilco’s album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002), the soundtrack
of Vanilla Sky (2001) or German composer Gerhard Trimpin and
the Kronos Quartet’s 4 Cast: Unpredictable (2007), they not only
reference the ethereal mystery of the original radio transmissions
but also their associations with the later years of the Cold War.
In their indecipherability, they function as open-ended phonemes
of potential subversion or disaster. These transmissions were
intended for a single secret listener. Archived in analog, then digitally
remastered for the public to hear, these recordings inhabit a sonic
archive fever à la conditionnel passé of nostalgic fetish, intrigue
and potential destruction.
Live out your own private sleeper agent fantasies – Irdial’s Conet
Project playlist can be heard here:
www.archive.org/details/ird059
1. Olivia Sorrel-Dejerine, “The spooky world of the 'numbers stations’”, BBC News Magazine, accessed January 20, 2015,
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24910397.
2. One example is the Norwegian rocket incident of January 1995. A scientific rocket launched from the Norwegian arctic
to study the Northern Lights almost triggered a Russian retaliatory nuclear attack due to a bureaucratic misunderstanding. See: “Shattered Shield: Cold-War Doctrines Refuse to Die” By David Hoffman, Washington Post Foreign Service,
Sunday, March 15, 1998; Page A01, which outlines the incident.
3. Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans. Eric Prenowitz (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 19.
Matthew Palmer Interviews Les Ramsay
Everyone Has a Different Idea About Table Cloths
Everyone Has a Different Idea
About Table Cloths
Matthew Palmer Interviews Les Ramsay
titles
Why is the sculpture on the cover called The Original?
Well, it has a seashell, it has a banana, it’s got a potato. What
else does it have? A vase. It’s figurative, sexual and suggests a
narrative. It’s an ironic assemblage.
microexperiments
Do you edit a lot? Where does editing take place in
your process?
context around the material qualities of a painting – being
in cities with commercial galleries showing nice paintings
with nice sides, or framed paintings. Who frames a brand
new painting?
I think my editing comes in the end. It’s kind of this “put the
blinders on” mentality, to keep going straight. There have
been a lot of micro-experiments within larger experiments
that are never fleshed out. Like my thin veil paintings with
the fans. I really want to do more of those soon, but I’m kind
of hesitant because I want to do it right with some motion
sensors in the fans, so they move only when someone else
moves. I think it’s a funny idea, but it’s just bad if it’s this fan
in a gallery [mimics a fan] and that’s it.
When I used to paint, I never knew what to do with
the sides.
Because it’s not original?
It has that humour that I like, where it makes a joke, but then
folds back and becomes complete enough to be its own.
Part of its humor is that it’s balancing – it’s tippy. And that’s in
a lot of my work, for instance, compositionally.
Your work titles are almost like song titles. They could be
titles on an Ariel Pink album.
My titles are definitely influenced by music; people are super
used to two and three word song, book, and movie titles.
Short titles have a good ring to them, they’re lyrical and
poetic and allow for word play. Especially in my work, because
I assign a rhythm to the formal structures and visual supports,
like a one – two – three.
Sometimes my titles are longer, but I’m not so interested in
works with titles that allude to content found elsewhere than
in the work.
This winter I made a painting called Old Dutch. It references
potato chips and Vermeer.
sides
You always check the sides of paintings.
Yeah, my plaster paintings are basically a lure to get the viewer
closer to the painting. Because it’s textured, you think, “What’s
that texture?” and you peek on the side and say, “Oh there’s
a fluorescent beach towel.” Those pieces are about getting
people engaged enough to look at the sides of paintings.
As a professionalism thing or conceptual consideration?
Definitely a conceptual consideration. I created my own
Well, the sides are funny. You get your art supply store frames
and they’re built by a machine, wrapped over the sides and
stapled a million times. You can punch through them. Then
there are those old fashioned sides you see in museums, like
an old painting with staples exposed on the sides...or some
people used furniture tacks, and you’re just like, “Oh wow,
that’s a different way. They made a painting like they would
make a drum.” Since then, the clinical austerity or slickness
of paintings in the white cube has changed a lot of people’s
ideas about painting.
music
I see your work as kind of like weirdo pop songs.
The thrift shop is great for that because it’s all there. Bryan
Adams is there. The Bee Gees are there, Pat Benatar and The
Beach Boys are there, KISS is there.
Your paintings are kind of like sample-based music. Kind of
like hip-hop. Scouring the bins, looking for something you
can flip and recompose.
It’s coming to light more now that I’m showing this new work.
Someone at my show mentioned The Beach Boys to me.
There’s that one big surfer piece – I looked at it again and
thought, “Wow, this is super Beach Boys.” And I remember
being so into The Beach Boys.
26
27
I think there needs to be a bit more of an interactive element.
Like, “Got me!” Kind of like the paintings do, like “Got ya!”
A bit more lo-fi, slapstick, low tech. I think low tech is a
good idea for them. But it is similar to how I think about
monochromes. There is no reason why I couldn’t be making
interesting monochromes with the materials I’m using, but
I’m always so excited to combine different things that I get
sidetracked super easily. I get so wrapped up in the intuitive
act of matching things.
vertical
action
In my work, there is this constant reference to a modernist
composition. Which is not necessarily the grid, but more so
the horizon. A lot of the time when the horizon is in my work
it is up at the top. It doesn’t really let you out of the picture.
It kind of keeps you in, which was a modernist strategy. That
kind of composition, for me, always felt great. Like the composition of a cigarette box. You can see most of my paintings
are vertical rectangles. Almost always. There is always stuff
in the top third. The newest works aren’t really like that, but
a lot of my early collage was inspired by cigarette packages
and I liked that shape so much that I kept doing it with other
pieces. It just became an evolution of compositional interest.
Yeah, me too.
Your work is almost never landscape orientation.
Group Of Heaven is a mauve piece with the small cross stitch
of a big tree in a landscape – now, thinking of music, I see that
it’s super Simon and Garfunkel. It’s totally Belle & Sebastian,
cardigan and Clarks. It’s also referencing Canadian landscape
painting and “California Dreamin’’’ by The Mamas & The Papas.
It’s a super kitschy piece.
The paintings I’ve been working on recently are slow burning
imaginary landscapes. Some of them end up romanticizing
Canadian landscape painting. Although they are referencing
landscapes, they’re very figurative when you stand next to
them. Some are super landscape-y, but have a lot of vertical
action. Sometimes they have a weird pose or a slouch to
them, as if the painting’s leaning into itself and it has its arm
out to the corner, supporting it. I can explain a painting by
doing a pose with my body. It has to do with the scale and
where you put things. I think that’s why I like these ones big.
They have this fluffy thing. Like, I just thought of this too, you
know those stupid sports mascots? People pose for pics with
them and just crack up, because there’s a stranger in there
and you just don’t know what they’re doing. Or the dancing
guy at the corner with the car wash sign?
That’s a funny metaphor for your paintings.
Sometimes I feel like I’m dressing them up when I’m picking
colors. It’s the same rules of what clashes just right. It’s like
if you want your shoelaces to clash just right or something.
Like a Marcelino get-up.
One little thing that just throws you off.
Mayra Morales
Invisible Islands
Invisible Islands
The house is full of invisible islands here and there. The heart as well. Invisible
islands grow quietly everywhere... Invisible islands are these far away inaccessible
lands that appear carefully compositionally in all kinds of spaces and corners. In
the park. In the kitchen. Between my and your eyes. Invisible islands invade throats.
Language is full of these islands. A mummy pushing a stroller is an invisible island.
The song on the radio – the singer that’s no longer there becomes an invisible
island. The cloth hanging purposelessly and forgotten there, on a post, becomes an
invisible island. Aging is full of invisible islands. The space between the farm and
my mouth. My mouth is also one. Trajectories that pass and cross – the ones that
only pass by – are so much many islands of invisibility. The chin underneath the
beard. Surrender underneath desire or desiring underneath surrendering. All of those,
invisible islands. The breach between the cord becoming cut, sound, skin and the rush
to something more inaudible. Resting and the places where things rest only to begin
again. Like that invisible region that’s growlingly growing, in daily feelings, in
every feeling. Every feeling invaded by this growlingly growing invisible region, that
grows toward its insides. It’s a growing that’s not expansible but a shrinking-in28
29
to-growing type of growing. The words in my hand, each and every word, each and every
single one has its own invisible regions, waiting there, hopefully to never come into
the path of a discoverer. Maybe it welcomes invisible wanderers, maybe. But that’s not
something for us to know. The most amazing invisible islands are not the ones that
exist in far away territories, but the ones that follow us everywhere we go in our
every steps. Those are the most amazing and dangerous ones. They are wild wild lands
not for the eyes, nor for the feet. The most amazing ones are those which follow the
shadows that light up a creation of a world that appears in front-around-inside outone-world-one. Those are the most amazing, wild and dangerous ones. Not for you to
enter. These kinds of islands – the ones of the invisible ones – , are not land over
there to enter. These are regions that traverse and move toward and through you. They
have the capacity to exist in more than one place at the same time; they multiply
in the blink of a second and shrink in the closing of a door. When they multiply
they become almost visible as if they would grow smaller but then, when they shrink,
they growlingly grow towards its insides taking it all in in its disapparition. This
invisible islands hide the most precious secrets and landscapes. They hide our most
precious what we’re always looking for. They like to play with our looking eyes. They
move the things we look for, to other places. Other not necessarily away from where
we left them. That’s what invisible islands enjoy the most. To swallow things that
people look for. They love hiding things in their insides. But they do it playfully.
That’s what they do. They appear here and there in their invisibility as a result or
not of all the vibratioality going on. Especially all the vibrationality going on not.
Especially that. As a result of the clashing and eruptions that never become. All
the remaining parts that no one wants. They find a way to emerge in their invisibility here and there and everywhere, to move in their emergence, to growlingly grow and
shrink all the same at the same time. Hanging there, as clothes and leaves.
Natalie
Nadeau
Elise
Windsor
Phallic Vase
Digital c-print
2014
Cut and Loop
Plaster
2013
30
31
Man walks through space towards the front desk. He inquires about a book for sale at the gallery. We have what he’s looking for, and I retrieve it for him.
He asks if the gallery has a friend-of-the-gallery discount. We don’t, I say, but we do have a student discount. Ah! He says. Great. I ask him if he’s a student,
and he says yes as he begins to shuffle in his bag for his student ID card. He shows it to me. I recognize his face and the University’s emblem, but then
immediately forget his name and our connection. I calculate the book’s cost by hand. Price of book - 20% discount + 5% GST. I make a mistake and have to
start over. He doesn’t seem to mind my unhurried speed. The gallery lends itself to a comfortable slow pace.
In the images, he looks like a young Orson Welles.
In 1934 Everett Ruess (20) disappeared in the deserts of Utah…
…across the Atlantic Ocean…
I tell her to tell me when to turn the pages of the portfolio. I am her hands now. But after a couple instances, she stops doing so and I have to wait. I look
at her – she smiles as if to tell me that she is done. I smile back as a response to her nonverbal instructions and I turn to the subsequent print. Why are we
speaking in smiles and not in words? It continues like this until we reach the final print.
A man with peppered hair and slouched shoulders walks up to the front desk. He asks a simple question and I respond. He’s talkative and friendly. Most
often, I answer in closed, condensed sentences, but (starved for conversation?) I surprise myself by expanding the expected exchange into a conversation.
I suggest a gallery he should visit; I tell him about a trip I took to a historical museum with my son and how much time we spent with their underground
dioramas; I express interest in a French commercial photography gallery he brings up. The gallery was founded in France and expanded recently to
Montreal. I express interest despite possessing neither the finances, status, nor desire to ever enter such a space. He tells me that he will return another day
with their business card in hand for me. I smile.
A middle-aged man and his adolescent son pace quickly around the space, bouncing from one work to another. While the father looks at the humourous
drawing, his son meanders towards a book set up on a table. The boy picks up the white gloves that send mixed signals. The large-scale book tells the
history of an object, interspersed with imagery of men and women fucking from nineties pornography magazines. I walk up to the boy and I tell him, if you
are interested in the book, I am happy to open it for you, but, I turn to the father and continue, there is explicit imagery in the book that you may or may
not want for him to see. His father says, son, this book is not for you. He makes a joke that one day the book will be for him, but today, it is not for him. The
son is unaffected, doesn’t respond, and brings his attention to neighboring works. I respond to the father’s joke with a quip about how much he will enjoy
the work when he is older but immediately regret it. I smile, turn my back, cringe, and walk away.
A young woman enters the gallery with a cell phone held up in
front of her face. Initially, I thought she was narrating something to
herself vocally, recording her thoughts. Whenever we see people in the world talking to
themselves, we think they are crazy. But we all
talk to ourselves… As she turns a corner, I see that she is recording a video of the space with
her phone. She is creating a virtual tour of the space. For what, who knows.
Spies and undercover policemen talk to themselves all the time (into communication
devices) when they suspect illicit activity.
1:38 pm
2:28 pm
3:56 pm
4:22 pm
I look up, and she’s gone.
How many people have I seen that I thought were mad, when, truly, they were undercover cops in pursuit of a thief or a murderer?
She takes off the glove that she put on her right hand and offers it
to me. I begin to put it on…
away from them and slowly walk towards the girl standing in front
of the portfolio that reflects light with its aluminum foil cover. I ask
her if she is interested in looking through the book, and offer to
open it for her. She looks at me, surprised, and is taken aback. I have
interrupted whatever experience she was having in exchange for an
awkward one. She says ok because what else can you say.
Two young girls walk into the gallery, moving leisurely from one exhibited work to
another, from a set of collages, to prints, to a large humourous drawing. The girls
disperse melancholically from one another. One approaches the display table with
Larry Rivers’s print portfolio of the 1770 Boston Massacre (34th copy of 128 copies).
White gloves rest atop the portfolio. Looking attentively at the cover of the portfolio,
the girl adjusts the coat resting in her arms so to comfortably put on the white gloves.
Despite what the white gloves suggest, she is not permitted to open the book herself.
Next to me, my colleagues are discussing an academic project. I divert my attention
1:34 pm
colony, a colony that began in 1889 but no longer exists.
At the time of his disappearance, he was staying at an artists’
Baltic Sea and the salt marsh coast of Germany.
in Ahrenshoop, a north coastal village that sits between the
In 1945 Alfred Partikel (57) disappeared while picking mushrooms
…the glove is warm.
what I did over the weekend (tobogganing) and he tells me about
his (cabin with family).
disappeared while sailing… The gallery’s technician walks by and I say hello to him. I recount
Google search ‘lost artists’. An image of Vanna White appears. She is
standing in front of an artwork at the Lost Art Gallery in Florida.
Google search ‘artists who have disappeared’...In 1975 Bas Jan Ader (33)
Walk through gallery space. How many artists have disappeared?
How many artists have disappeared,
and were never found? Open closet and grab remote controls. Turn on projectors, television
screens, and speakers. How many artists have disappeared, were never found?
And were never written about, never had their images
printed on milk cartons? Return remote controls.Walk back to desk.
Turn on security monitor. How many lost artists are
retrievable on the Internet?
Unlock and open gallery doors for the public.
Unlock gallery doors, walk through, lock doors from inside.
Walk through space to front desk.
Drop bags on floor under the desk; set coffee on desk.The carton of chocolate milk that I poured from this morning showed
an image of an adult man. The text at the top said FOUND instead of the anticipated MISSING. Pause. I didn’t pay attention to the image at the time…
Hang coat. Why are milk cartons now showing images of found people?
32
12:50 pm
12:22 pm
12:19 pm
12:16 pm
11:55 am
11:52 am
11:50 am
Slow Movements and White Gloves:
Recordings of a Gallery Attendant
Chantale Potié
Slow Movements and White Gloves: Recordings of a Gallery Attendant
Marcelino
Barsi
Statement
Felt pen on Art Forum Magazine
26.5 cm x 26.5 cm
2014
34
35
Marcelino Barsi (continued from page 32)
Towers
Collage on Frank Gehry chairs
14 cm x 20.5 cm
2014
36
37
Contributors
Béatrice Cloutier - Trépanier graduated with a M.A. in
Art History from Concordia University, with a thesis entitled
“Vernaculars of Leisure and Festive Aesthetics: On the Contemporary
Art Museum as a Social Host”. She was the co-organizer of the Art
History Graduate Conference at Concordia University in 2014,
which was held under the theme Singulier Pluriel: Collectivity,
Community, Engagement. Recipient of Concordia University’s
Hitting the High Notes Fellowship, the Joseph-Armand Bombardier
Masters Scholarship (SSHRC), and a Graduate Research Scholarship
(FQRSC), she is currently working at the Montreal Museum of
Fine Arts. Pétur Már Gunnarsson - (40) has from day one
(1) worked hard, reluctantly, involuntarily, unconsciously and hopelessly to simultaneously change and adapt to a plethora of past
and present models, fleeting or lasting, by means of adding and/
or subtracting (if that’s possible). In Pétur’s mind the set of natural
numbers includes zero (0) (without it we are nothing!). Dario
Ré is an interdisciplinary artist and musician from Spokane,
Washington. He lives with his partner and his two boys in Montréal
and is completing an M.A. in Art History at Concordia University.
Annie Katsura Rollins is a current student in Concordia’s
Interdisciplinary PhD in the Humanities program. When Annie
is not desperately trying to fulfill the whims of her advisors, you
can find her performing janky shadow puppet shows, fieldworking
around China and capitulating about our declining hand exceptionalism. www.anniekatsurarollins.com. Chantale Potié is a writer,
researcher and gallery attendant in Montreal. Damien Smith
holds a BA Hons. in Studio Art and Art History from the University of
Guelph and is currently a Master’s student at Concordia University.
Smith is also a practicing artist and has exhibited in solo, group and
museum exhibitions throughout the United States, Canada, Europe
and the United Kingdom. As a person, he grew from early tweendom to adulthood during the 1980s. Mayra Morales was born in
Mexico City and is a choreographer, writer and dance artist living and
working in Montreal. She is currently studying a PhD in Humanities
in the areas of movement, process philosophy and radical pedagogy,
towards non-disciplinarity. Elise Victoria Louise Windsor
is a visual artist working and living in Montreal, Quebec. She is
currently an MFA candidate at Concordia University in the Studio
Arts Program, concentrating in Photography. She graduated from
OCAD University’s BFA program, focusing in photography, printmaking and sculpture. By layering photography with sculpture,
she has been exploring the creation of physical objects and
alternate modes of display, while still thinking about the most traditional photographic form, the still life. Lesley Anderson is a
Vancouver-based artist. Her work is founded on optical, formal
and experiential curiosities. She received a BFA from Emily Carr
University, Vancouver, B.C, in 2009 and has shown her work in
public art spaces, artist run centers, universities and abroad. She is
an MFA Candidate at Concordia University. More can be found at
www.lesleyanderson.ca. Mona Ayyash is a Palestinian artist,
born in Kuwait City in 1987. She lived in Dubai for many years
before moving to Montreal in 2012. Her work has been exhibited
in Dubai-based galleries such as Art Space, Ayyam Gallery, The
Empty Quarter, and The Third Line. Lise Latreille was
born in Shawville, Quebec in 1984. She completed a Bachelor’s
degree in photography at Concordia University in Montreal
and Gothenburg University in Sweden. She is currently an MFA
candidate at Concordia University. Born in Windsor, Ontario,
Natalie Nadeau grew up in the township of Essex County. She
received a BFA from the University of Windsor and a Mechanical
Technican-CAD/CAM Diploma from St. Clair College. MatthewRobin Nye is an interdisciplinary artist whose research and
production explores and maps architecture’s political potential
and aesthetic dimensions, articulated in relation to social and
visual arts practices. His current research is concerned with the
definition and production of Queer Utopic Architectural Space
through collaboration, performance, video work and installation.
A former member of the Flux Factory collective in NYC, Nye is
presently a participant in the SenseLab, preparing a curatorial
project on Architecture by Artists at 221A Gallery in Vancouver,
and exhibitions and performances in Canada and abroad.
Marcelino Barsi: Born in Puebla, Mexico in 1979. Lives and
works in Montreal. Les Ramsay: A native of Vancouver, Ramsay
currently lives and works in Montreal. He’s studied visual arts at
Emily Carr University, at the Universitat de Politecnica in Valencia
and has most recently completed his MFA in the Painting & Drawing
Department at Concordia University. His work has been exposed in
Canada, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Germany and in the United
States. Timothée Messeiller is a fibre artist, born in 1988 in
Vevey, Switzerland. He works and lives in Montréal, Canada. His
practice is based on design, the artistic process of creation and
the social status of the artist towards society and the context of
art exhibitions. Nancy Webb is the creator and editor-in-chief
of Spiffy Moves. Marie-Hélène Busque is completing her
Master’s in Art History at Concordia University, where she received
her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art History as well. She has worked
in commercial galleries in Montreal, the McCord Museum and
the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. She currently works at Heffel
Fine Art Auction House. Matthew Palmer is a post-medium
artist, currently living and working in Mile End neighbourhood,
Montreal’s most vibrant. At 6’2”, Palmer is largely known for his
experimental approaches to painting and life. Having received
almost hardly any awards, Palmer fully intends to try harder soon.
Emily Bergsma has small hands and sometimes uses them to
write things and make baked goods. She is a Master’s student in the
Art History program at Concordia University. Mikhel Proulx
is an interdisciplinary post-humanist ambidextrous homosexual.
Véronique Nguyen & Xavier Cédric are graphic designers
who enjoy working together.
Spiffy Moves humbly
acknowledges the generous
support of:
Art History Graduate Student
Association (AHGSA)
Concordia Council on Student
Life (CCSL)
Concordia University Small
Grants Program (CUSGP)
Department of Art History
Department of Studio Arts
Graduate Student Association
(GSA)
Office of the Dean
38
The Spiffy Moves team also
extends our most genuine
thanks to the following
individuals for their
much-needed support
and advice: Ingrid Bachmann,
Cynthia Hammond, Geneviève
Robichaud, Anna Waclawek and
Anne Whitelaw.
Béatrice Cloutier - Trépanier
p.16
Lise Latreille
p.11
Natalie Nadeau
p.29
Pétur Már Gunnarsson
p.6
Matthewp.21
Robin Nye
Dario
p.8
Ré
Annie Katsura Rollins
p.12
Marcelino Barsi
p.32
Les Ramsay
p.24
Chantale Potié
p.30
Damien Smith
p.22
Timothée Messeiller
Mayra Morales
p.26
Nancy Webb
Marie-Hélène Busque
p.18
Elise Victoria Louise Windsor
p.28
Matthew Palmer
p.24
Lesley Anderson
p.14
Emily Bergsma
Mikhel Proulx
Véronique Nguyen & Xavier Cédric
Mona Ayyash
p.4