(Vancouver, BC) – grunt gallery and Gallery Gachet are proud to co-present 10 years of State of Emergency (État d’Urgence), a multidisciplinary visual exhibition based on a retrospective of works from 1998-2013 during État d’Urgence (State of Emergency) and Fin Novembre (End of November).

The annual event État d’Urgence (State of Emergency) began in 1998 in downtown Montreal and was created by ATSA, a not-for-profit organization founded by artists Pierre Allard and Annie Roy. It was originally conceived to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The event itself is a 24-hour, 5-day refugee camp in support of people living homeless and under conditions of poverty. The event was created as a public intervention in the city and includes the provision of food, clothing and shelter as well as the production of hundreds of art works from multidisciplinary backgrounds. État d’Urgence was so successful that it has returned on an annual basis and now, 16 years later, goes by the name Fin Novembre.

The exhibition has been presented in numerous venues in Montreal, as well as cities across the province of Quebec. It is now touring Canada with exhibition dates planned in Fredricton, Calgary and Winnipeg, arriving in Vancouver to be co-exhibited at both grunt gallery and Gallery Gachet.

At grunt gallery, ATSA presents a selection of 30 ATSA art works and archives produced throughout the years of the event from 1997 to 2013, including the montage U pour Urgence presented at the Canadian Architecture Centre, Deposit, Last resort, Under surveillance, The Brasero and a collection of video capsules by Santiago Bertolino, Steve Patry, Henrique Vera Villanueva and Luc Sénécal. This selection shows the evolution of the event and all the political and social difficulties and challenges the artists experienced.

At Gallery Gachet, the 10 years of State of Emergency exhibition features artwork by over 20 artists—local, national and international—who made original contributions to État d’Urgence during the event’s run between 1998 and 2010. Included in these works are collaborative illustrations, sound track and photo projects; paintings on unconventional media; drawings, a survival handbook; miniature cardboard architecture and more.

Join us on Friday April 11 at Gallery Gachet (5:30-7:30) and at grunt gallery (7:30-9:30) for the opening receptions of 10 years of State of Emergency (État d’Urgence). Join us on Saturday April 12th (2-3pm) for the artist talk. These exhibitions run until Saturday May 17^th, 2014.

 

Gallery Gachet (gachet.org), 88 East Cordova Street, 
Vancouver, BC V6A1K3

Media Contact: Lee Williams programming@gachet.org 604.687.2468

grunt gallery (grunt.ca) 116-350 East 2^nd Ave, Vancouver, BC V5T4R8
Media Contact: Karlene Harvey karlene@grunt.ca | 604.875.9516

ATSA wishes to thank the Conseil des Arts de Montréal en tournée for producing and staging the first exhibition and tour in Montreal, as well as the Conseil des art et des lettres du Québec and the Canada Council for the Arts for the Canada-wide tour.

Gallery Gachet and grunt gallery would like to thank the following funders:
Vancouver Coastal Health, Canada Council for the Arts, British Columbia Arts Council, and the City of Vancouver.

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Who is ATSA?

ATSA is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1998 by artists Pierre Allard and Annie Roy. The pair creates transdisciplinary works and events for the public realm that take the form of interventions, installations, performance art and realistic stagings. Their actions are born of a desire to raise public awareness of various social, environmental and heritage issues that are crucial and that need to be addressed. They aim to sway both the public and the media—in short, to motivate as many citizens as possible to take an active role in improving society.

ATSA is recipient of the 2013 Honourable mention for the Mayor’s Democracy Price, the 2011 Giverny Capital price, the 2010 Pratt & Whitney Canada Nature de l’Art Prize awarded by the Conseil des arts de Montréal, the Citoyen de la Culture 2008 award handed out by Les Arts et la Ville and of the Artistes pour la Paix 2008 award.

ATSA is also proud to have been the spokesperson of Artists in the Art of the City Mouvement (2013),  5^ème Sommet citoyen de Montréal (2009), 22^ème Exposition inter-collégiale d’arts plastiques du Réseau Inter-collégial des Activités Socioculturelle du Québec (RIASQ 2010), and of Journées Québécoises de la Solidarité Internationale (2011). ATSA is a member of the board of RAIQ.

http://www.atsa.qc.ca/en/

A tremendous thank-you to everyone who supported our 30th Anniversary campaigns!

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Kickstarter Support:

Thank-you to everyone who supported our Kickstarter fundraiser! We met our goal and raised over $10,000.

Adad Hannah
Ahmad tabrizi
Alex Phillips
Allyson Clay
America Meredith
Andrea Kwan
Andrew Siu
Ann McDonell
Annie and Pierre
Anonymous
Ashok Mathur
Baco Ohama
Barbara Cole
Barbara Polkey
Beth Carter
Bo Myers
Bob Ayers
Brian McBay
Brian Nicol
Caitlin Jones
Carlee Price
Carol Sawyer
Catherine Siu
Charlene Vickers
Charlotte Townsend-Gault
Christina Adams
christos dikeakos
Claire Hatch
Dan Pon
Dani Fecko
David Diamond
David Khang
Deanna
Deanna Bayne
Deanne Achong
Deirdre Hofer
Devon Smither
Diana Zapata
Diyan Achjadi
Donna Alteen
Donna Hagerman
Duane Elverum
E Rausenberg
Eddie Chisholm
Eileen Kage
Elisha Burrows
Ernesto Gomez
Fiona Mowatt
Glenn Alteen
Gloria Henry
Guadalupe Martinez
Hannah Claus
Hannah Jickling
Helen Reed
Hyung-Min Yoon (윤형민)
Ingrid Mary Percy + Jon Tupper
Innes Yates
Jane Ellison
Jane irwin
Janice Toulouse
January Rogers
Jason Lujan
Jayce Salloum
Jeffrey Ng
Jen Crothers
Jenny Barclay
Jessie Caryl
Jill Baird
Joni Low
JP Carter
Julie Voyce
Julie Wong
Justin Langlois
Justin Wiebe
Karen Duffek
Karlene Harvey
Kate Hennessy
Katherine Dennis
Kathleen Ritter
Keith Wallace
Kenneth Yuen
Kim Nguyen
Klara
Kristin Dowell
Laiwan
Lana Shipley
Linda Grussani
Lora and Simon Carroll
Lorna Fraser
Lynda Baker
Maiko Yamamoto
Marcia Pitch
Marcus Bowcott
Margriet Hogue
Maria Lantin
Marie Clements
Marie France Berard
Mark Mizgala
Mary Ann Anderson
Meagan Kus
Meaghan Daniel
Meg Marie
Melanie Brown
Michelle Hasebe
Michelle Sound Perich
Mira Malatestinic
Miriam Aiken
Monique Fouquet
Nancy Bleck
Naomi Sawada
Natalie Siu-Mitton
Nicholas Galanin
Norman Armour
Paddy Ryan
Paul Wong
Philip Beeman
Pietro
Priscilla Ng
Rachel Barclay
Rachel Iwaasa
Randy Lee Cutler
Reid Shier
Rita Wong
Rolande
Rosanne Bennett
Ryder
Sadira Rodrigues
SD Holman
Sepideh Saii
Sharyn Yuen
Sherri
Sheryl Orr
Shirley Tillotson
Tania Willard
Tara Roberts
Tarah Hogue
Tracy Stefanucci
Vancouver Art and Leisure Society
Vanessa Kwan
Vanessa Richards

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Early 30th Anniversary Campaign

Thank-you to everyone that donated to our early campaign in Spring 2014. A special recognition for these early contributors was included in our 30th Anniversary eBook, Disgruntled: Other Art.

Andrew Siu
Bo Myers
Charlene Vickers
Dana Claxton
Danielle Peacock
David Khang
Erin Crisfield & Ian Forbes
Fiona Mowatt
Glenn Alteen
Henry Tsang
Innes Yates
Jayce Salloum
Jin Me Yoon
Karen Kazmer
Karlene Harvey
Kristin Krimmel
Laiwan Chung
Marcia Pitch
Mary Ann Anderson
Meagan Kus
Mira Malatestinic
Norman Armour
Paddy Ryan
Rebecca Belmore
Rita Wong
Ron den Daas
Rosanne Bennett
Sandra Semchuk
Sharyn Yuen
Tania Willard
Vanessa Kwan

 

You can help continue our fundraising efforts by donating to grunt gallery through Canada Helps:

Laura Moore’s exhibition, one man’s junk, showing at grunt until March 22nd, looks at the product of consumer waste and discarded objects. In this exhibition, Moore uses limestone as a canvas to document discarded electronic objects, such as old computer monitors, that most tend to overlook. Looking through grunt’s archives, you will find that this theme of artists critiquing consumer waste features prominently in the history of the Vancouver art scene. The themes of consumption and discarded objects are particularly evident in the 1992 grunt exhibit Two Walls by Vancouver assemblage artists Ken Gerberick and Marcia Pitch. The artists’ respective pieces, Crushed Wall and Off the Wall, which filled two walls in the grunt space with found objects, expressed an overwhelming feeling that society was mired in over-consumption, consumerism and waste.

Gerberick’s industrial themed objects versus Pitch’s toy themed works created a striking juxtaposition of discarded objects, affording viewers no escape from their complicity in the issue at hand. The assemblage art aesthetic featured prominently in the grunt archives during the late 1980s and ‘90s, but this aesthetic seems to have dropped out in the mid-‘90s. Gerberick and Pitch both identify rising rent prices as one of the contributing factors to this decline, making it more difficult for artists and galleries to exhibit this type of show, and note that assemblage pieces generally are not of interest to commercial galleries.

When asked about how he responds to people questioning the validity of assemblage art, Gerberick replied that he expects it:

“I mean, it’s funny too, because anybody that figures out which end of a paintbrush to use can slop paint on canvas. Some people do it really well; an awful lot of them don’t. Assemblage art is the same way. I mean, bad assemblage makes me just want to go back to doing silverpoint illustration, which I used to do. A lot of people figure ‘ah, you find something and you glue it down and there you go.’ It’s like abstract art, and I love abstract art, and bad abstract art just sucks.”

Gerberick, coming from a punk tradition, feels that if his work does not challenge or discomfort people then it’s probably not incisive enough. He sees a connection between assemblage art, Dada (Kurt Schwitters being his hero) and punk/noise music. The central concern, of course, in these forms of media is the control over materials. It allows the artist to disassemble and reassemble things in ways the original creators did not intend.

Pitch discussed a common interest in using sound in her practice, but expressed that “it’s not sound in an electronic kind of way and the stuff that I like is sort of low brow or low tech. I like technical but the low; you know, the transistors and the wires and the grooves and nuts and the bolts and that kind of stuff.” She draws inspiration from children’s toys, particularly the older, less mass-produced toys that allow for a total transformation of the object— “you know, the plastic and all that stuff that people really hate, I love to work with.” Pitch noted that the materials found in these older, more generic toys tend to have a warmer, more human and less technical quality to them. As an artist who gathers the majority of her materials from secondhand stores, she has noticed that the increase in demand for ‘vintage’ objects is leaving her with fewer materials to work with, but what she finds most salient is what people are discarding:

“I guess the stuff that people throw away is new – like, you know, toasters. Anything that’s broken is never fixed, because it’s more expensive to fix than to replace. But I haven’t been able to use that stuff, because there’s no human element to it for me.”

There is a unifying theme seen ion the work of Gerberick, Pitch and Moore, mainly their concern with making viewers aware of their own complicity in consumerism, consumption and waste production. The changes in the “junk” we consume and dispose of has made it more difficult for assemblage artists to remove or distort the industrial/technological stamp of the image. Moore faces a similar dilemma, and by creating these objects in limestone she is able to bring a more human element into these ubiquitous plastic machines.

Marcia Pitch’s Between Madness and Delight will be showing at the Reach Gallery Museum on September 25th, 2014.

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About Audrey MacDonald:

Audrey moved moved to Vancouver after graduating from the University of Alberta with a degree in Physical Anthropology and Linguistics. She’s enrolled in the Art History Diploma program at UBC and began volunteering at grunt and the Vancouver Art Gallery shortly afterward to become more familiar with the Vancouver arts community. She is currently a docent at the VAG and continue to work on the labour of love that is the grunt archives.

This past September, Audrey started an Internship at the SFU Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology where she is working as the Curator of Archaeology, Research and Collections Care Management. She is interested in public programming and creating inclusivity within the arts.

We put computers out on the curb like junk. It’s one of those concepts that teeters on the edge of futurism; what would have been unthinkable twenty years ago, today verges on the mundane.

Technology begins to expire as soon as it is produced. When you buy a computer, speaker system, video player, or hard drive, the depreciation is immediate – the forward march of innovation means that their worth immediately begins to decay. These cast-off pieces of technology, once the very symbols of invention and ingenuity, become strange ghosts, forlorn testaments to the exponentially increasing rate of progress.

Sculptor Laura Moore’s current installation at grunt artist-run centre, one man’s junk, takes these forgotten castaways and turns them into something permanent, immemorial, timeless. Moore says that her choice of limestone for this series, as well as her interest in stone as a medium in general, has to do with its status as history-keeper for the human race. “Before cameras and electronics,” the artist says, “people told their stories in stone and sculpture…It’s a material that I think is really important historically.” As a member of an artists’ studio in Italy, Moore was inspired by the ancient sculptures and monuments there, in that country that has such a familiar relationship with the preserving of stories in stone. Although at first, she says, she was interested in carving electronics for chiefly aesthetic and geometrical reasons, she quickly became interested in the juxtaposition of a material old as the Earth itself and a subject matter that is from its start meant to break down.

As soon as Moore started experimenting with carving stone, she knew she had found her medium. She describes it as “the first thing that came really naturally.” The idea for this specific exhibit began when Moore was wandering on foot around her native Toronto. As she crossed a pedestrian overpass, she noticed an old computer monitor that had been flung to the ground below. “For me, that moment kind of marked something,” she says. Struck by inspiration, she spent the next few months biking around the city, looking for other examples of abandoned machines. When she found a suitable piece, she would photograph it, then transport the object back to her studio, where, she says, she still has dozens stockpiled. In this way, the sculptures that make up this exhibit could be described as portraits: likenesses of actual discarded objects, rather than generic outdated models.

one man’s junk represents a logical progression in Moore’s own body of work. In her initial phase of carving electronics, she was interested in the intricate, city-like shapes of circuit boards; her earlier works have included a huge limestone computer mouse and similarly scaled-up computer keys. Both were installed in outdoor settings, to catch casual passers-by off guard. Moore’s fascination with technology took a slightly different bent in Kernel Memory, an installation currently on the lawn of the Saint Catherine’s, Ontario City Hall. After becoming “very obsessed with USB memory sticks,” Moore became fascinated with the idea of where they would naturally occur in nature. “They connect to everything,” she says. “They would be…your fingernails, the stems of fruit.” She combined them with another aesthetic fascination, acorns and pinecones, to create a series of 9 nature/tech hybrids proportionally upscaled from inches to feet.

“We put computers out on the curb like junk. It’s one of those concepts that teeters on the edge of futurism; what would have been unthinkable twenty years ago, today verges on the mundane.”

Where the Sidewalk Ends, a 2007 installation that shares with one man’s junk a slightly humorous title, provides a prime example of the deceptive relationship in the artist’s work between labour and simplicity. Upon first seeing the exhibition, one could hardly imagine anything more minimal – a series of curbs, just like the ones that hold cars in place on the street, line the edges of a “white cube” gallery space. A similar simplicity informs the first impression of one man’s junk – the pieces are stacked, grouped all together on a wooden pallet. What Moore accomplishes with these installations is that artist’s trick of “making it look easy” – that is, the smooth, almost computerized looking surfaces belie the many hours of physical labour that went into revealing them from unrelenting chunks of stone. In the case of the curbs, not only did Moore carve them by hand, rather than casting them as one might guess, but she specifically re-sized them to four feet from eight, in order to hold two people, instead of two cars.

Throughout Moore’s work can be seen a carefulness, a quietness; a sense of concern and appreciation for the minutiae of everyday life. By coming upon a scaled-up computer mouse or escape key in the street, one hopes that the viewer could as well come to appreciate the beauty of these tiny forms. By giving a pallet of discarded electronics your appreciation in a gallery setting, we are redirecting our attention to these forgotten objects – elevating and exonerating that which has done the brute work of transmitting our data and preserving our stories. That which, for all its technique and innovation, inevitably becomes nothing but one man’s junk.

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About Genevieve Michaels:

Genevieve is studying art history and creative writing at the University of British Columbia. She has been volunteering at grunt since last October, writing and assisting with maintenance and digitization of the archives. She also writes about music and city life for local magazine Beatroute BC. Follow her on twitter: @LavenderIndigo0

Produce, Consume transforms grunt gallery’s media lab into a multifaceted playground of website artworks and displays. Visit grunt gallery for this special weeklong exhibition that invites the public to access and explore new tools for sharing, seeing, and becoming.

Matt Troy, grunt’s Media Lab artist-in-residence, has invited artists and teams around the globe to participate and facilitate interactive art websites. The exhibition includes the premiere of three commissioned artworks by Vancouver-based artists Patrick Daggitt, Dan Leonard, and Sammy Chien. Five international artworks will be screened by Kim Asendorf (Germany), Michael Borris (France), Joseph Yølk Chiocchi (United States of America), Chris Collins (United States of America) and James Hicks (United Kingdom).

These nine art sites include a tool to create something: a file, jpeg, mp3, gif, or text. Each file explores a component of human sensory interaction: sound and audio; touch and feeling; seeing and being seen; commerce and language. User engagement with these tools creates a file that is catalogued and immortalized forever online.

The role of the traditional ‘artist’ is subverted as the artists act as faciltators, programmers or playground supervisors within this online landscape. The audience is encouraged to explore these digitally created tools, producing new works by interaction and participation.

Join us at grunt gallery on Friday March 28 (7-10pm) for the opening reception of Produce, Consume. This exhibition runs until Saturday April 5th.

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grunt gallery gratefully acknowledges the Canada Council’s Project Grants to Media Arts Organizations, Groups and Collectives for making this exhibition possible. grunt gallery would also like to thank their operating funders: Audain Foundation, City of Vancouver, and the British Columbia Arts Council.

Interview article by  Gizem Sözen & Eylül İşcen

Having grown up in Istanbul, Turkey, both of us come from a region rich with historical layers and multi-sided political upheavals. As we were raised in this geography with its enigmatic qualities, we encountered the contradictions of everyday life heavily loaded with oppressive patriarchal culture and state violence. Therefore, we always struggle with/are interested in how to deal with those contradictions and be part of the political milieu, which constantly requires documentation, action, reflection—as students or scholars—in our writings or media works.

This might be one of the reasons why we feel in resonance with Rabih Mroué’s works, including those he has been presenting in Vancouver since early January: his exhibition Nothing to Lose at grunt gallery, and his lecture-performance Pixelated Revolution during the PuSh Festival. The questions we came up with after long discussions with the artist are strongly intertwined with our own feelings and thoughts. Those questions turned out to be quite personal and emotional on some levels and yielded a conversation that opens ways to question/rethink/transform our thoughts and feelings in parallel to Rabih Mroué’s works.

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Gizem Sözen:

You call your work, Pixelated Revolution, a “non-academic lecture,” and lectures are not normally thought of as an art genre. There seems to be a tendency to approach the work as an intellectual argument, like an essay, like a lecture. What role does this aspect of the work play in what you are trying to achieve?

Rabih Mroué:

I studied theatre, so I do theatre mainly. For me theatre contains many layers: acting, story, lighting and sounds in addition to “this is the space” (gesturing to the space around him). A very important matter is how you treat the space, what relation there is between the stage and the place where the audience is sitting. For me this relation should be always under question. The works that I categorize as “non-academic lectures” are basically like performances. But what distinguishes the non-academic lectures from performance, in my opinion, is that it does not question the space at all, and I take the relation between the stage and the audience for granted. So from the beginning, I accept this relation and the audience accepts it as well. You know it is lecture form: there is a table, a chair, and I sit and I lecture to the audience. The audience listens to me and at the end we have a Q&A discussion. There is nothing special to the relation, so this is why I name it as non-academic lecture. It is not theatre and it is not performance, because it doesn’t contain the question of space. But also there are other aspects that make me call them non-academic lectures than the space issue like, for example, the lack of references and quotes, or mixing the personal with facts, the real with fiction, etc.

Eylül İşcen:

Your works seem to return to seemingly related issues, like memory, remembering and forgetting, especially within political realms of struggles, wars and revolutions. In your works, what is the central problem that you often return to that shapes the ways in which you deal with the materials you are working with?

Rabih Mroué:

There is no central problem. I try in my work not to generalize, not to go with big titles such as memory, forgetting, remembering… No, I prefer to start from a very specific point, a specific case, and try to work on it, to dig inside as much as I can to try to bring hidden elements out of it in order to make connections, to make them also react together to come out with alternative thoughts other than the norms, the clichés and stereotypes…. So in this sense each work has its own problems, its own questions, its own doubts, and consequently they also shape the work itself—whether it will be an installation or a performance or a non-academic lecture or a video. But I can also say that yes, there is a line that can connect all the works together, a line of thought that is connected maybe to my biography or my political background…

Eylül İşcen:

What fascinates us in your works is that you start with a very simple observation or question. It can be the last testimony of a martyr, or can be about a Syrian revolutionary who is shooting his own death, as you discuss in Pixelated Revolution. You start with these very basic incidents and work through them, unfolding significant tensions and relations between experiences. We see that you are going back to these incidents, these micro-moments, within larger societal issues. Can you elaborate on why going back to these small incidents is significant to your work?

Rabih Mroué:

I think every work deals with the past in one way or another. For me, when I deal with the past, it is not for bringing it to the present but instead in order to understand the present more. So we go to the past and put the past next to the present, and try to think about the future also. We imagine the future through the past and through the present, but I think present is always something that slips from our hands. So we always shift between imagining the future and re-thinking the past. We are never in the present time because when I start to talk about this moment, now, it is already gone – it is now in the past. Of course, when I work there should be something that intrigues me, that makes me question, that makes me uncertain. This is what makes me work. If I don’t feel there is something enigmatic or something that I want to research and discuss, to reflect and to discover, then I don’t do it. I bring these topics or cases from the past, whether it’s near past or far past, and talk about them in the present because I don’t understand them or because I want to re-think them. If I know exactly why I am bringing up those topics, then it is as if I have the answers, as if I am trying to convince others of my beliefs by bringing the past and showing it in whatever frame. So I think this is what might differentiate politics from political art, politicians from artists. Artists are, in a way, politicians but without a political message to address, while politicians have projects and political agendas and they want to convince people about their goals even if they still have some questions, or sometimes they hesitate but they want people to follow them, to vote for them, while art has no answers, it does not invite people to follow. On the contrary, it brings all the answers and thoughts we believe in under question and starts to shake them. It says “Let’s go back to the basic questions and definitions, and let’s see if we can change them; can we shake the rules? If yes, how?”

Gizem Sözen:

This is a difficult question because you know about the recent Gezi Parkı uprising in Istanbul. I was there, Eylül was here. Being here and not there was difficult for her, and there was a sense of guilt. In your work I, the Undersigned, you make an apology, stating that “I apologize that during the war I incurred no physical wounds, that I wasn’t kidnapped, that no one attempted to assassinate me, and that I received no personal threat.” Why an apology? This part of your work really affected us since we could relate it to a feeling of guilt we suffered from during Gezi Parkı demonstrations when we were watching protestors on internet live-streaming as they were recording the state violence targeting them and getting detained by police. Many times we felt guilty for not being injured, not being detained. But at the same time we feel uncomfortable with this sense of guilt because we feel that no one should be ready to position their body as a target to such violence for any cause. How do you approach that difficult issue of guilt?

Rabih Mroué:

What you are trying to evoke is a very important issue because when I put the statement that “I apologize for not being kidnapped, not being injured, not being a target for assassination or I, the undersigned,threatened by anybody,” I was trying to play with it. Because I noticed that some citizens who stayed the whole period of the civil war in Lebanon were aggressive towards other citizens who did not stay in Lebanon or who left the country during the war and by consequence were not allowed to talk about “our war” since they did not experience it or since they fled the city etc. It is as if, if you stay in the country, live the war and suffer it with your body, then you gain a kind of passport that gives you the right to talk about it and to stop any “other” person who would like to talk about it. As if you gain a “truth” that allows you to be the presenter and representer of the period. Actually, I went too into this trap, but in fact it does not need much to discover that this is a naïve, childish attitude because there are a lot of valuable studies and excellent reflections that have been done by writers or artists or philosophers who did not live a war or the specific event that they are dealing with. Anyone has the right to talk on any subject she or he wants to…and one can make serious work by studying and working and also by researching and asking about this subject, by really trying to understand… Of course it would not be the same result as someone who lived the events, but this also does not mean that the latter would talk about it in a good way or even in an interesting way… If we did not live the danger, that doesn’t mean that we don’t have the right to talk about the issue.

Gizem Sözen:

Our last question is about your approach to the binary of fictive and real. There seems to be a common obsession to question the truth behind an image; many are concerned with fictiveness and constructedness of an image, and hesitate to believe in it. How do you deal with this binary of fictive and real?

Rabih Mroué:

It is something that I worked on for long time with my partner, Lina Saneh. We don’t believe that there is an absolute truth. There are always different points of view and different angles to look into the same thing. No one can pretend to have all the versions that talk about a specific event. There could be some versions missed, some angles that haven’t been seen, and we shouldn’t blame ourselves that we couldn’t cover all the angles, because it is an impossible task. In this sense, there is always a part that is missing and a part that is bit fictive and maybe relates to the subjective. So subjectivity and objectivity are two things that work together. They are not separated from each other; at least we don’t separate them. We try to take cases and put inside them some fictive elements, but not in order to cheat the audience; on the contrary, it is in order to tell them and tell ourselves that in every narrative there is a part of fiction and part of real, and the issue is that we cannot distinguish the real from the fiction and the fiction from the real. If we are trying to do that, then we will be falling into the dichotomy trap, a binary discourse between fiction and reality, lie and truth, good and evil. For Lina and I, we try to accept any version, even if we notice that this version is completely fabricated; we accept it as the reality of the side that is telling this version and we study it as it is. We take it and study it as if it is true and start to deconstruct this version and to ask questions about it and try to understand what it shows and what it hides, but without accusing, without saying that they are lying, they are manipulating the truth. We just try to understand the political and social discourse behind this version. There are always some people who come to me and ask if “this was a fiction or real?” I always say that it doesn’t matter. I am proposing this work to you, so just take it as it is and think about its meaning. I am not aiming to change the world; my work is only about raising some questions and some thoughts — some doubts to make us think together.

 

 

grunt gallery is happy to announce Vanessa Kwan as our new curator of community engagement. Kwan’s professional and creative practice bring an integral arts-based approach to community engagement that will strengthen relationships with our surrounding community and beyond.

Vanessa Kwan is a Vancouver-based artist, programmer and curator. She has worked for a number of arts and cultural organizations in recent years, including the Powell Street Festival, Access Artist Run Centre, The Vancouver Queer Film Festival and the Vancouver Art Gallery (where she currently holds a part-time position of Public Programs Coordinator). She has been a guest curator of exhibitions/ events at 221A Artist Run Centre (with Kimberly Phillips), The Richmond Art Gallery, the Powell Street Festival and the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival.

Much of her work as an artist has involved the production of work in public space; recent projects include a public artwork called Geyser for Hillcrest Park (with Erica Stocking), Sad Sack, a series of collaborations on the subject of melancholy, and Everything Between Open and Closed, a study of signs. She serves as an active member of Other Sights for Artists’ Projects curatorial collective, and is a founding member of the performance collective Norma, who were honoured with a Mayor’s Arts Award for Public Art in 2011.

Kwan officially starts this role at grunt gallery in February 2014. grunt gallery would like to thank the BC Arts Council, Capacity and Sustainability program, for making this position possible.

A raw steak must be among the least likely of things you’d expect to find in a cardboard box of papers. But that’s exactly what myself and another volunteer found, to our surprise, during an afternoon of work on grunt’s archive a couple of weeks ago. We discovered that the uncannily realistic-looking steak had formed part of a mid-nineties grunt exhibition called Palimpsest, and when the artist behind it, Marcus Bowcott, happened to stop in a few days later, it seemed only natural to catch up with him to discuss his art, personal philosophy, and what he’s doing now.

I took a rainy-day journey out to visit the artist in his studio in peaceful North Vancouver – a town that Bowcott’s long-time partner, Helene, describes as a “bedroom community, separated from agriculture, industry, entertainment”– an exemplification of the separation in the modern world of the facets of our lives, the way in which we work, eat, play and sleep in locations far removed from one another.

The modernization of the human experience is clearly something of combined terror and fascination to Bowcott. As we sipped on tea provided by Helene, who Bowcott describes as “a partner, in so many ways, in developing my work,” the artist described to me a recent trip down to Seattle, during which he was struck by “just the number of cars on the highway… The automobile is gobbling up energy.”

The automobile, in its used-up state as compacted refuse, has been a recurring theme in Bowcott’s work for some time. The painting exhibited at Bowcott’s grad show from London’s Royal College of Art featured wrecked and compacted cars, and since then, he’s explored the theme in sculpture, notably in a piece, 25 Standard Stoppages, currently being featured at Seattle’s Punch Gallery as part of a show, curated by Rock Hushka, titled Whither the American Dream?. He’s also developing a massively scaled-up version of the sculpture for Vancouver’s upcoming Sculpture Biennale, although, as he wryly comments, “people don’t want to show wrecked cars.”

“The bull doesn’t look that big here [in the photo] but he was 1200 pounds, and the whole gallery became like a manger… There were tons of people packed in there, but all of a sudden you’re honoring this animal, something that is often considered to be below us.”

The wrecked cars in question provide Bowcott with a vehicle to examine modern industry and its often unexamined aftermath. He titled a handful of these sculptures Das Kapital, which he explains as “a reference to our surplus capital, our surplus value/goods…which I’m presenting here as wrecked cars”, a leftover of the industrial process upon which most of us will never lay our eyes.

Another, perhaps more tragic, forgotten leftover of the industrial process was featured in Bowcott’s Palimpsest, the show that, years later, would inspire this article. Something amazing was accomplished in addition to the hyper-realistic steak sculptures and paintings of packaged steaks: for one night, the gallery was emptied of breakable artworks, and a live bull was brought in to inhabit the space. Marcus and Helene evocatively described what it was like to experience such a surreal coming-together of incongruities –

“The bull doesn’t look that big here [in the photo] but he was 1200 pounds, and the whole gallery became like a manger… There were tons of people packed in there, but all of a sudden you’re honoring this animal, something that is often considered to be below us. The cave painting [which was projected onto the bull’s body as part of the show] had much to do with feeding people. They were honoring the animal…and today we just shop for meat. We all had to be really quiet to keep it calm; that kind of hush was a really interesting addition to the installation and performance.”

“We live atomized lives,” Helene continues. “With technology, people become more and more isolated from each other. The same thing happens with food production. In many different aspects of our life…we are becoming more and more specialized.”

A critique or exploration of that atomization could be seen to run through Bowcott’s work as a unifying thread, perhaps in a sense of superimposition, of “stacking, or layering,” Helene tells me. “Even Palimpsest, the word, has to do with layering… An image on an image,” she says. A cave painting projected on the side of a bull. Crushed cars on top of cars on top of cars.

Visit Marcus Bowcott’s website.

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About Genevieve Michaels:

Genevieve is studying art history and creative writing at the University of British Columbia. She has been volunteering at grunt since last October, writing and assisting with maintenance and digitization of the archives. She also writes about music and city life for local magazine Beatroute BC. Follow her on twitter: @LavenderIndigo0

Note: Dynamo Lines also coincides with SWARM 2013, read here for more info on this annual artist-run centre festival. 

grunt gallery and New Forms Festival present Dynamo Lines, a video, sound and live performance by Josephin Böttger and Sergej Tolksdorf, and Trapez with the support of the Surrey Urban Screen.

Media and installation artist Josephin Böttger presents a new work entitled Dynamo Lines, which looks at the fragmentation of cityscapes caused by social constructs, urban development, traffic, lights and movement. Three looped video projections depict time-lapsed motion and light from various vantage points of city grids and traffic. The artwork explores the relationship of densely populated areas versus individual movements within fragmented spaces.

Working with musician Sergej Tolksdorf, Böttger’s video installation includes footage of actors emerging as a work team, observing busy highway arteries. But their movements are edited so they appear sporadic, contrapunctual to the rythm and flow of light from the streets. These scenes transition into drawn sequences removing the detail of urban density and simplifying the images into minimalist, white outlines.

The live performance uses an archive of sounds that sync with the projections, along with compositions made for particular scenes. The installation and live performance will take place at grunt gallery’s Media Lab on Thursday September 12, 2013.

Josephin Böttger will also be presenting Trapez at New Forms Festival. The video documents the construction work that occurs at a building site; time and reality is distorted by time lapses and drawn elements that blend into the footage. The video examines construction and demolition, both key components of urban development. The soundtrack echoes sounds of construction; the work acts between dance and architecture, the human body shaping the built environment.

The projection appears outdoors on various public spaces and building walls like temporary graffiti. This project will take place at New Forms Festival, at the Centre for Digital Media, on Sept 14, 2013.

Join grunt gallery on Thursday September 12th between 7 and 10pm for the Dynamo Lines installation and performance. The installation will be viewable in the Media Lab until September 15th, 2013. www.grunt.ca

Attend New Forms Festival to view Trapez, which will be taking place at the festival site. http://2013.newformsfestival.com/

Trapez will also be viewable at the Surrey Urban Screen from Sept 6–15, 2013. Surrey Urban Screen is an outreach venue of the Surrey Art Gallery and located on the west wall of the Chuck Bailey Recreation Centre. http://www.surrey.ca/culture-recreation/7315.aspx

Dynamo Lines Media Release

Read a short interview with Josephin Bottger on CiTR’s website.

there hidden, far beneath and long ago.
February 20 to April 5,2025.
Artist: Moozhan Ahmadzadegan.
Curated by Whess Harman

Nee’ Shah | Our House
December 5, 2024 to February 1, 2025.
Artist: Teresa Vander Meer-Chassé.
Curated by Whess Harman

Mapping Ancestry through Sound, Space and Time.
October 3 – November 16, 2024.
Artist: Stina Baudin.
Curated by Whess Harman

HOHOL (Hang Out Hang Out Lang)
June 15th – August 17, 2024
Artists: Christopher Baliwas, Trisha Baga, Patrick Cruz, Ella Gonzales, Ramolen Laruan, Lani Maestro, Manuel Ocampo, Christian Vistan, Thea Yabut. With a text by Patrick Flores.
Curated by Patrick Cruz and Christian Vistan

a memory with you: of holding, of carrying together
April 4th – June 1st, 2024
Artist: Maria-Margaretta Cabana Boucher
Curated by Whess Harman

Inside/Out: the art show my dad never had
February 2 – March 16, 2024
Artists: Sue Dong Eng, Mercedes Eng
Curated by Mercedes Eng and Keimi Nakashima-Ochoa

Daughter Daughter Daughter
November 23, 2023-January 21, 2024
Artist: Sora Park
Curated by Whess Harman

Enticed and Entagled en algo Antiguo
September 14-November 4, 2023
Artist: Francisco Berlanga
Curated by Whess Harman

Syncretic Birthrights
May 12-July 8, 2023
Artist: Odera Igbokwe
Curated by Whess Harman

Ladykiller the Maneater
March 16-April 29, 2023
Artist: Alison Bremner
Curated by Whess Harman

Three Way Mirror
December 2nd 2022—January 21st 2023
Artists: Daniel Barrow, Glenn Gear and Paige Gratland
Curators: Whess Harman & Vanessa Kwan

Mullyanne Nîmito
September 17th—October 29th, 2022
Artist: Cheyenne Rain LeGrande ᑭᒥᐊᐧᐣ
Curator: Whess Harman

Terremoto
July 9th—August 13th, 2022
Artist: Michelle Campos Castillo
Curator: Vanessa Kwan

An Insufficient Record: The photo-ethics of preserving Black Vancouver
May 20th—June 18th, 2022
Curator: Nya Lewis

SuperNova
March 26th—April 30th, 2022
Artist: Rah
Curators: Vanessa Kwan & Whess Harman

Smokes, Sings Loud
February 4th—March 12th, 2022
Artists: Lori Blondeau and Michelle Sound
Curators: Dan Pon, Whess Harman and Vanessa Kwan

Project Fire Flower
October 2—December 12th, 2021
Artist: Collin van Uchelen with Carmen Papalia
Curator: Whitney Mashburn

Black Gold
January 22 — April 17th, 2021
Artist: Tsēmā Igharas
Curator: Natasha Chaykowski

Cheap! Diligent! Faithful!
September 25 — December 12th, 2020
Artist: Marlene Yuen
Curators: Vanessa Kwan and Whess Harman

pi’tawkewaq | our people up river
March 5th to April 11, 202011`
Artist: Meagan Musseau
Curator: Laurie White

BAIT
January 10 to February 22, 2020
Artist: Couzyn van Heuvelen
Curator: Ryan Rice

a sentimental dissidence
November 1st to December 14, 2019
Artist: Gabi Dao
Curator: Vanessa Kwan

a study in restraint, nanlaban
September 6 to October 19, 2019
Artist: Anton Cu Unjieng
Curator: Glenn Alteen

nindinawemaganidog (all of my relations)
July 2 – August 3, 2019
Artist: Rebecca Belmore
Curator: Glenn Alteen

dot.dot.dot.
May 10 – June 22nd, 2019
Artists: Sejin Kim & Inyoung Yeo
Curator: Vanessa Kwan

An Exploration of Resilience and Resistance
March 15 – April 22nd, 2019
Artist: Kali Spitzer
Curator: Glenn Alteen

March 5, 1819
March 5 – March 5th, 2019
Artist: Rebecca Belmore
Curator: Glenn Alteen

Strident Aesthetic: Towards a New Liberation
January 10 – March 2nd, 2019
Artist: Carlos Colín
Curator: Glenn Alteen

2068: Touch Change
November 2 – December 16th, 2018
Artist: Syrus Marcus Ware
Curator: Vanessa Kwan

Woven Work From Near Here
September 7 – October 20, 2018
Artists: Debra Sparrow (θəliχʷəlʷət), Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill, Hank Bull, Jovencio de la Paz, Kerri Reid, Matt Browning, Melvin Williams, and Merritt Johnson.

March of the Monarch Public Performance
August 30, 2018
Artist: David Khang

The Blue Cabin Exhibition | Jeremy & Sus Borsos
June 15 – July 28, 2018

Motion Within Motion | Azadeh Emadi
May 2 – May 12, 2018

Requiem for Mirrors and Tigers | Naufus Ramirez-Figueroa
February 22 – April 21, 2018

Ghost Spring | Derya Akay, Dilara Akay
January 5 – February 17, 2018

2167, An Indigenous VR Project | Danis Goulet, Kent Monkman, Scott Benesiinaabandan and  Postcommodity
December 19 – 21, 2017

You won’t solve the problem with an air freshener | Dominique Pétrin
October 27 – December 9, 2017

Technical Problem | Aileen Bahmanipour
September 8 – October 14, 2017

UNGALAQ (When Stakes Come Loose) | Maureen Gruben
June 9 – July 29, 2017

Contingent Bodies | Brigitta Kocsis
March 3 – April 15, 2017

Three Cities: Prayer and Protest | Mere Phantoms (Maya Ersan and Jaimie Robson)
January 13 – February 18, 2017

#callresponse | Christi Belcourt and Isaac Murdoch, Maria Hupfield, IV Castellanos and Esther Neff, Ursula Johnson, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Tania Willard, Marcia Crosby, Laakkuluk Williamson-Bathory, Tanya Tagaq
October 29 – December 10, 2016

Tomorrow, Tomorrow. | Mark Hall-Patch
September 8 – October 15, 2016

Four Faces of the Moon | Amanda Strong
July 22 – August 20, 2016

High Kicks into the Light Forever and Ever and Ever | Elizabeth Milton
May 27 – June 25, 2016

análekta | Merle Addison
April 7 – May 8, 2016

Sausage Factory | Weronika Stepien and Stephen Wichuk
Feb 25 – Apr 2, 2016

Remote Viewing | Noxious Sector
8 Jan – 13 Feb 2016

FutureLoss | Zoe Kreye
3 December – 19 December 2015

Génération Sacrifiée | Sayah Sarfaraz
22 October – 28 November 2015

Remediating Mama Pina’s Cookbook | Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda
23 November – 28 November 2015

Catastrophe, Memory, Reconciliation | Osvaldo Ramirez Castillo
10 September – 10 October 2015

ARCTICNOISE | Geronimo Inutiq (madeskimo)
Guest curated by Yasmin Nurming-Por and Britt Gallpen.
Produced in conjunction with ISEA.
5 August – 22 August 2015

Diptychs | Mark Igloliorte
4 June – 18 July 2015

Eraser Street | Henri Robideau
9 April – 16 May 2015

MAINSTREETERS: Taking Advantage, 1972-1982 | Kenneth Fletcher, Deborah Fong, Carol Hackett, Marlene MacGregor, Annastacia McDonald, Charles Rea, Jeanette Reinhardt and Paul Wong
Off-site exhibition @ The Satellite
Curated by Michael Turner and Allison Collins
8 January – 15 March 2015

Chopper | Brandon Vickerd
26 February – 28 March 2015

Crossed | Ahmad Tabrizi
15 January – 21 February 2015

Kitchen | Julia Feyrer
1 November – 19 December 2014

gruntCraft | Youth Project by Demian Petryshyn
Summer – Winter 2014

Double Book Launch & Poetry Reading | Janet Rogers & Chris Bose
9 October 2014

The Book of Jests | Hyung Min Yoon
11 September – 11 October 2014

Épopée: L’état des lieux | Groupe d’action en cinéma (Epic Group Action Film)
Co-presented with Dazibao and Queer Arts Festival
21 July – 9 August 2014

Play, Fall, Rest, Dance | Valerie Salez
2 June – 5 July 2014

10 Years of State of Emergency | ATSA (Pierre Allard and Annie Roy)
11 April – 17 May 2014

Produce, Consume | Matt Troy
28 March – 5 April 2014

one man’s junk | Laura Moore
20 February – 22 March 2014

Nothing To Lose | Rabih Mroué
Co-presented with PuSh Festival
10 January – 8 February 2014

location/dis-location(s): contingent promises | Jayce Salloum
25 October – 30 November 2013

Mamook Ipsoot | Desiree Palmen and youth
18 October 2013

Don’t Go Hungry | Bracken Hanuse Corlett & Csetkwe Fortier
Curated by Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun
5 September – 12 October 2013

Trapez & Dynamo Lines | Josephin Böttger
Co-presented with New Forms Festival
12 September – 15 September 2013

The Big Foldy Painting of Death | Ian Forbes
21 June – 27 July 2013

Agente Costura | Lisa Simpson
5 July 2013 (1 night performance)

Background / ThisPlace | Michael de Courcy (w/ Glenn Lewis, Gerry Gilbert, Taki Bluesinger); Emilio Rojas, Guadalupe Martinez, and Igor Santizo.
10 May – 8 June 2013

Strange Songs of Trust and Treachery | Laura Lamb
5 April – 4 May 2013

Gutter Snipes I | Cal Lane
15 February – 23 March 2013

Holding Our Breath | Adrian Stimson
4 January – 9 February 2013

Remains | Mark Mizgala
13 December – 6 January 2013

The Sea Is A Stereo | Mounira Al Solh
11 October – 1 December 2012

Do The Wave | Jonathan Villeneuve
6 September – 6 October 2012

Amelogenesis Imperfecta (How Deep is the Skin of Teeth) | David Khang
6 September – 22 September 2012

BLIZZARD | Jamasie Pitseolak, Nicholas Galanin, Tanya Lukin-Linklater & Geronimo Inutiq
In the media lab Northern Haze: Living the Dream (2011) directed by Derek Aqqiaruq
5 July – 4 August 2012

Qiqayt, 1982 | Emilio Portal
29 May – 23 June 2012

Here There Nowhere, Flaccid Means Without End | Ali Ahadi
6 April  – 12 May 2012

Ghostkeeper | Ahasiw Maskegeon-Iskew, Archer Pechawis, Adrian Stimson, Cheryl L’hirondelle, Sheila Urbanoski & Elwood Jimmy
21 April – 28 April 2012

H20 Cycle | François Roux
16 March – 31 March 2012

Ominjimendaan/ to remember | Charlene Vickers
23 February – 31 March 2012

The Symbolic Meaning of Tree | Christoph Runné
6 January – 11 February 2012

Pin-Up | Colette Urban
28 October – 3 December 2011

Like A Great Black Fire | Rebecca Chaperon
8 September – 15 October 2011

Taking Care of Business | Immony Men
9 July – 6 August 6 2011

Skullduggery | Robert McNealy
28 May – 25 June 2011

The Pigeon’s Club | ATSA (Pierre Allard and Annie Roy)
20 May – 21 May 2011

Old Growth | Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas
21 April – 21 May 2011

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grunt gallery’s volunteers are working to make all of our past exhibitions available in an online archival database called The Activation Map.  If you can’t find the information you are looking for, please feel free to email our Archives Manager, Dan Pon: dan@grunt.ca