Saturday was the second and last day of The Conference On the Conference. Of the six panels scheduled, only [In absentia] was comprised of texts written by those unable to attend, and in turn read by proxies. The text I read was “The Conference as Imaginative Historicity”, by Dimitrios Otis, aka Dhymitruy Bouryotis. Dimitrios is currently serving a five-year prison term in a Pecos, Texas for drug trafficking.
The highlight of our panel, at least to my mind, was a text first delivered at Centre A’s Let’s Twist Again symposium last fall. The text, in the form of a question posed (sincerely) by a UBC art student, amounted to a five minute self-portrait concerning her future as an artist and was addressed to keynote speaker David Elliot, an internationally-renowned curator and cultural historian.
An audio recording of the question/text was played by Stacey Ho, an independent Vancouver-based scholar, who asked us to consider the question less as an instance of embarrassment than as a meditative space, something that this new context (The Conference On the Conference) provided. Ho went on to say that Elliot more or less dismissed the questioned and that the artist who asked it was later censored by the ringing of a bell.
Ho’s “found” text, and her discussion of it, generated what I thought to be the best of our conversation. If not an artwork, then the basis for one.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Yesterday I participated in a conference held at the Woodward's campus of Simon Fraser University's School for the Contemporary Arts. The conference, entitled The Conference On the Conference, is the grad project of one of the School's MFA candidates, Dylan Cree.
Below is my abstract:
O MINUTES
A conference is a temporal regime comprised of activities where actors with common interests perform one or more roles within a predetermined time allotment. Overseeing these activities is a moderator entrusted with the maintenance of these allotments. Greater than the potential for professional disagreement is the potential for conflict between the moderator and the time-indifferent presenter, a conflict that often goes unnoticed. This presentation will use single case analysis and conjecture towards a theory of temporal indifference in relation to conference participation.
And here is my paper:
0 MINUTES
The conference was held in the mountains, at an arts centre. In the months preceding, the centre had undergone an architectural transformation. Where once there stood a circle of buildings, in the middle of which was a large open space, one the original architect might have imagined as a site for impromptu lectures or debates, in the Classical sense, or pedestrian flow, where people could see each other coming and prepare their greetings in advance, now this space, this site, was occupied by an almost-as-large new building, the effect of which created a series of passageways that might be called streets had their steps not said otherwise.
For many, this was their first visit to the centre, so none questioned the new building (or the loss of the open space), focused as they were on the signs that guided them through these (new) passageways, from building to building, from meals to work to rest over the three days we were there.
In advance of arriving, one of the attendees, a friend, had just read Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, and over lunch I listened as she spoke of the novel in the way those who have read it often do: enthusiastically, their life changed. I myself had never read the book from start to finish, but have probably read it at least once from various points.
I have reason to believe that The Magic Mountain has something to say about Time and that is why I have continued to poke at it these past thirty years, curious about its lopsided structure, how the first five chapters cover in exuberant detail the protagonist’s first seven years at the sanatorium, while the last two chapters, filled as they are with the more mundane aspects of sanatorium life, account for his last six. Much has been made of this acceleration, particularly in relation to the transformative nature of illness, but also with respect to the inseparability of Time and Space, something the author was no doubt aware of, writing at the time of Einstein and Heidegger.
As mentioned in my abstract, the conference is a temporal regime, a series of timed keynotes and panel talks, and within them further subdivisions, one of which I was asked to manage, as moderator. Because mine was the last panel, and because the previous panels had, much to the chagrin of the other attendees, run late (one by as much as forty minutes), I resolved to address the problem by asking “my” panelists the length of their presentations, reminding them of the twenty minute time allotment, and that in fairness to those worn down by the previous panels, I would be strict, if not cruel, in my enforcement. Of the three presenters on my panel, all but one had prepared a text; and of those texts, none were over twenty minutes. The one who did not prepare a text was the one who had just read The Magic Mountain.
As a moderator, there is a difference between listening to a presentation towards summarizing its propositional content and listening with the hope that the presentation finishes on time. All sorts of feelings overtook me while listening for the latter; the first of which was a resentment at having taken such a position, the second, a face-changing anger that had me staring balefully at the presenters as if their sole purpose was punctuality, especially when it came to the presenter who had just read The Magic Mountain, who told me, almost apologetically, that she only had fifteen minutes of material, and was that okay? But in listening like this, to this particular panelist, I was also reminded of the structure of Mann’s novel, and whether her presentation might have been conceived in relation to its conceit: an exuberant opening, which hers had been, followed by a much shorter, somewhat sudden ending.
At the fifteenth minute it became apparent that the panelist who had just read The Magic Mountain was nowhere close to finishing, the effect of which had me recalling her opening comments for evidence of an outline. Upon realization that there was no outline, it occurred to me that what we were being presented with was a middle, not unlike the middle the protagonist of Mann’s novel found himself in when he went to the sanatorium to visit his sick cousin -- only to find that he was sick as well. Faced with this unavailable outline, not to mention this ever-expanding middle, I found myself growing nauseous. I looked at the clock and saw that it was approaching 3PM. (For readers of Sartre, 3PM is an auspicious time – too late to start something, too early to finish.) Now five minutes later than the last time I looked, I tore a page from the conference booklet and wrote 0 MINUTES, then passed the page her way, a gesture greeted with an absent nod, then, twenty minutes later, her sudden ending.
A couple weeks after the conference I met the panelist (no longer “the panelist” but my friend again) for lunch. Knowing her as I do I could tell she was waiting for me to explain why I was mad at her, because I could tell she knew I was. But in my rage, and now my cruelty (sadistic and masochistic), I held out, denying her, when all I really wanted to know was whether her extended presentation was related to her reading of The Magic Mountain or a more common strain of time-indifference, like those presenters in the panels that preceded ours. Perhaps by not asking her I did not want to know, fearful that she might surprise me with the wrong answer and thus justify my anger. While part of me would have liked the answer to be yes, it was The Magic Mountain, duh, another part would be disappointed to hear that it was time-indifference, and where do we go when we lose track of time, if indeed we go anywhere other than where we are, at the centre, holding the floor, never letting go? That is the hardest thing to hear, I think. But the answer I most understand.
Below is my abstract:
O MINUTES
A conference is a temporal regime comprised of activities where actors with common interests perform one or more roles within a predetermined time allotment. Overseeing these activities is a moderator entrusted with the maintenance of these allotments. Greater than the potential for professional disagreement is the potential for conflict between the moderator and the time-indifferent presenter, a conflict that often goes unnoticed. This presentation will use single case analysis and conjecture towards a theory of temporal indifference in relation to conference participation.
And here is my paper:
0 MINUTES
The conference was held in the mountains, at an arts centre. In the months preceding, the centre had undergone an architectural transformation. Where once there stood a circle of buildings, in the middle of which was a large open space, one the original architect might have imagined as a site for impromptu lectures or debates, in the Classical sense, or pedestrian flow, where people could see each other coming and prepare their greetings in advance, now this space, this site, was occupied by an almost-as-large new building, the effect of which created a series of passageways that might be called streets had their steps not said otherwise.
For many, this was their first visit to the centre, so none questioned the new building (or the loss of the open space), focused as they were on the signs that guided them through these (new) passageways, from building to building, from meals to work to rest over the three days we were there.
In advance of arriving, one of the attendees, a friend, had just read Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, and over lunch I listened as she spoke of the novel in the way those who have read it often do: enthusiastically, their life changed. I myself had never read the book from start to finish, but have probably read it at least once from various points.
I have reason to believe that The Magic Mountain has something to say about Time and that is why I have continued to poke at it these past thirty years, curious about its lopsided structure, how the first five chapters cover in exuberant detail the protagonist’s first seven years at the sanatorium, while the last two chapters, filled as they are with the more mundane aspects of sanatorium life, account for his last six. Much has been made of this acceleration, particularly in relation to the transformative nature of illness, but also with respect to the inseparability of Time and Space, something the author was no doubt aware of, writing at the time of Einstein and Heidegger.
As mentioned in my abstract, the conference is a temporal regime, a series of timed keynotes and panel talks, and within them further subdivisions, one of which I was asked to manage, as moderator. Because mine was the last panel, and because the previous panels had, much to the chagrin of the other attendees, run late (one by as much as forty minutes), I resolved to address the problem by asking “my” panelists the length of their presentations, reminding them of the twenty minute time allotment, and that in fairness to those worn down by the previous panels, I would be strict, if not cruel, in my enforcement. Of the three presenters on my panel, all but one had prepared a text; and of those texts, none were over twenty minutes. The one who did not prepare a text was the one who had just read The Magic Mountain.
As a moderator, there is a difference between listening to a presentation towards summarizing its propositional content and listening with the hope that the presentation finishes on time. All sorts of feelings overtook me while listening for the latter; the first of which was a resentment at having taken such a position, the second, a face-changing anger that had me staring balefully at the presenters as if their sole purpose was punctuality, especially when it came to the presenter who had just read The Magic Mountain, who told me, almost apologetically, that she only had fifteen minutes of material, and was that okay? But in listening like this, to this particular panelist, I was also reminded of the structure of Mann’s novel, and whether her presentation might have been conceived in relation to its conceit: an exuberant opening, which hers had been, followed by a much shorter, somewhat sudden ending.
At the fifteenth minute it became apparent that the panelist who had just read The Magic Mountain was nowhere close to finishing, the effect of which had me recalling her opening comments for evidence of an outline. Upon realization that there was no outline, it occurred to me that what we were being presented with was a middle, not unlike the middle the protagonist of Mann’s novel found himself in when he went to the sanatorium to visit his sick cousin -- only to find that he was sick as well. Faced with this unavailable outline, not to mention this ever-expanding middle, I found myself growing nauseous. I looked at the clock and saw that it was approaching 3PM. (For readers of Sartre, 3PM is an auspicious time – too late to start something, too early to finish.) Now five minutes later than the last time I looked, I tore a page from the conference booklet and wrote 0 MINUTES, then passed the page her way, a gesture greeted with an absent nod, then, twenty minutes later, her sudden ending.
A couple weeks after the conference I met the panelist (no longer “the panelist” but my friend again) for lunch. Knowing her as I do I could tell she was waiting for me to explain why I was mad at her, because I could tell she knew I was. But in my rage, and now my cruelty (sadistic and masochistic), I held out, denying her, when all I really wanted to know was whether her extended presentation was related to her reading of The Magic Mountain or a more common strain of time-indifference, like those presenters in the panels that preceded ours. Perhaps by not asking her I did not want to know, fearful that she might surprise me with the wrong answer and thus justify my anger. While part of me would have liked the answer to be yes, it was The Magic Mountain, duh, another part would be disappointed to hear that it was time-indifference, and where do we go when we lose track of time, if indeed we go anywhere other than where we are, at the centre, holding the floor, never letting go? That is the hardest thing to hear, I think. But the answer I most understand.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Thursday, March 3, 2011
From the Condensed Fourth Edition of the Greenhorns' Guide for Beginning Farmers (2011):
"Final words, from some of our farmer elders:
In it for the long haul? Slow down.
Don't breathe dust,
practice tractor safety,
consider long term effects,
save your back,
keep poise under pressure,
maintain graciousness,
call your mother for a pep talk,
don't swear loudly from the front porch."
"Final words, from some of our farmer elders:
In it for the long haul? Slow down.
Don't breathe dust,
practice tractor safety,
consider long term effects,
save your back,
keep poise under pressure,
maintain graciousness,
call your mother for a pep talk,
don't swear loudly from the front porch."
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
One of the books I picked up during my visit to Publication Studio’s Portland storefront is The Condensed Fourth Edition of the Greenhorns' Guide for Beginning Farmers. The Greenhorns is a non-profit group who “promote, support, and recruit young farmers nationally.” One of its members, Patrick, was completing a PS residency, on leave from his farm in New York’s Hudson Valley.
The Greenhorns’ book is one of many published by PS, who, like The Greenhorns, promotes, supports and recruits interest in writing, editing, designing and publishing. So far there are a number of PS nodes in North America, including Vancouver, San Francisco, Toronto and New York. It is refreshing to see this kind of generosity and enthusiasm in both publishing and farming, as the two are not unrelated.
Another organization that spreads itself far and wide, one that I have been in conversation with, is Pecha Kucha, a presentation format generated by a design studio in Tokyo and now operating in over two hundred cities. However, the openness and generosity of PS and The Greenhorns is lacking with the originators of Pecha Kucha, who treat their concept less as a presentation format than a brand franchise, as evidenced in Vancouver last fall when a group of UBC Curatorial Studies students were told they could not use the name Pecha Kucha (the Japanese word for "chit-chat") in their 560 Seymour exhibition because it was already taken.
The Vancouver Pecha Kucha franchise is Cause+Affect, a design firm whose expertise extends more towards real estate decoration than expanded notions of the liveable city. When I was asked two months ago if I would be interested in participating in their 15th Pecha Kucha at the Vogue Theatre (in conjunction with the Vancouver Art Gallery’s We: Vancouver exhibition, which I contributed to), I said yes. But the more I found out about Cause+Affect, the more I wanted no part of them. Propriety was a factor; same with the proceeds -- $15 x 1100 seats is a lot of money. Where does it go? And why are the presenters not paid?
My problem with Cause+Affect began when I proposed a set of images we might use to accompany my talk (20 images for 20 seconds, each). In the spirit of “cross-platforming”, I suggested we use a macro/micro version of my Digital Natives billboard project, with guidelines on how to achieve the effect, only to be told that they had no one in their organization (a design firm!) to implement them, but that I should “go for it,” because “what your images will lack in terms of visual interest I’m sure you’ll make up with your presence and dialogue on stage.” When I suggested an even easier idea, easier than the process by which we were to submit our images in the first place (the first twenty images that come up when you Google Image “Vancouver, BC”), I was told they did not have a “volunteer staff” and that maybe they could find me a “student” (as if the latter could not also be the former). That’s when I asked where the proceeds went – because it was clear that none of it was going towards the presentations.
It cost Cause+Affect $5K to rent the Vogue, with $4 of the ticket price going to venue administration. From there things got murky. I was told that “[t]he time it takes to curate, organize, promote and sustain the event is far beyond what minor money we make to host the event,” leading me to wonder what part of curation precludes helping to mount what people are paying to see, especially when Cause+Affect have referred to their Pecha Kucha as a “non-profit" affair. Couldn’t some of that “minor money” go towards the minor cost of on-stage production? When asked this, I was told I was given “an invitation,” and that “no one is forced to present,” and that “[a]ll our presenters to date have been very grateful of the opportunity, it’s fun and often great exposure for them, often providing them with new opportunities, etc. We have 100s of people on the waiting list to present,” etc.
For those who emailed to ask where I was that night, I was here, at Websit. For those who saw what I refused to take part in – a trade show – I am sorry for that too. I just wish I did my homework first.
The difference between projects like The Greenhorns and Cause+Affect’s Pecha Kucha speaks to the times we are living in, a gulf that mirrors the divide between those who have, and those who have not. That the Greenhorns are in my world is reassuring and offsets the despair I feel towards Cause+Affect, especially when firms such as theirs are increasingly active in cultural brokerage, working with larger public institutions (like the VAG) as well as government. Is this the future? Not so much Cause+Affect but this ever-widening divide?
The Greenhorns’ book is one of many published by PS, who, like The Greenhorns, promotes, supports and recruits interest in writing, editing, designing and publishing. So far there are a number of PS nodes in North America, including Vancouver, San Francisco, Toronto and New York. It is refreshing to see this kind of generosity and enthusiasm in both publishing and farming, as the two are not unrelated.
Another organization that spreads itself far and wide, one that I have been in conversation with, is Pecha Kucha, a presentation format generated by a design studio in Tokyo and now operating in over two hundred cities. However, the openness and generosity of PS and The Greenhorns is lacking with the originators of Pecha Kucha, who treat their concept less as a presentation format than a brand franchise, as evidenced in Vancouver last fall when a group of UBC Curatorial Studies students were told they could not use the name Pecha Kucha (the Japanese word for "chit-chat") in their 560 Seymour exhibition because it was already taken.
The Vancouver Pecha Kucha franchise is Cause+Affect, a design firm whose expertise extends more towards real estate decoration than expanded notions of the liveable city. When I was asked two months ago if I would be interested in participating in their 15th Pecha Kucha at the Vogue Theatre (in conjunction with the Vancouver Art Gallery’s We: Vancouver exhibition, which I contributed to), I said yes. But the more I found out about Cause+Affect, the more I wanted no part of them. Propriety was a factor; same with the proceeds -- $15 x 1100 seats is a lot of money. Where does it go? And why are the presenters not paid?
My problem with Cause+Affect began when I proposed a set of images we might use to accompany my talk (20 images for 20 seconds, each). In the spirit of “cross-platforming”, I suggested we use a macro/micro version of my Digital Natives billboard project, with guidelines on how to achieve the effect, only to be told that they had no one in their organization (a design firm!) to implement them, but that I should “go for it,” because “what your images will lack in terms of visual interest I’m sure you’ll make up with your presence and dialogue on stage.” When I suggested an even easier idea, easier than the process by which we were to submit our images in the first place (the first twenty images that come up when you Google Image “Vancouver, BC”), I was told they did not have a “volunteer staff” and that maybe they could find me a “student” (as if the latter could not also be the former). That’s when I asked where the proceeds went – because it was clear that none of it was going towards the presentations.
It cost Cause+Affect $5K to rent the Vogue, with $4 of the ticket price going to venue administration. From there things got murky. I was told that “[t]he time it takes to curate, organize, promote and sustain the event is far beyond what minor money we make to host the event,” leading me to wonder what part of curation precludes helping to mount what people are paying to see, especially when Cause+Affect have referred to their Pecha Kucha as a “non-profit" affair. Couldn’t some of that “minor money” go towards the minor cost of on-stage production? When asked this, I was told I was given “an invitation,” and that “no one is forced to present,” and that “[a]ll our presenters to date have been very grateful of the opportunity, it’s fun and often great exposure for them, often providing them with new opportunities, etc. We have 100s of people on the waiting list to present,” etc.
For those who emailed to ask where I was that night, I was here, at Websit. For those who saw what I refused to take part in – a trade show – I am sorry for that too. I just wish I did my homework first.
The difference between projects like The Greenhorns and Cause+Affect’s Pecha Kucha speaks to the times we are living in, a gulf that mirrors the divide between those who have, and those who have not. That the Greenhorns are in my world is reassuring and offsets the despair I feel towards Cause+Affect, especially when firms such as theirs are increasingly active in cultural brokerage, working with larger public institutions (like the VAG) as well as government. Is this the future? Not so much Cause+Affect but this ever-widening divide?
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
The return train from Portland was on time and mostly took place in the dark. Internet was intermittent, but I had the NY Times Sunday crossword and Faulkner’s Light In August as detours.
At Chapter 6 I noticed Faulkner’s increased use of compound words, such as “cinderstrewnpacked,” “childtrembling” and “parchmentcolored.” There were more, many of them gender- (“womansinning,” “manshape”) and race- (“womanshenegro”) specific, but I will leave it at that.
Portland is a white city. I brought this up with Matthew and he said two things: first, that the KKK has had a long presence there; and second, that Portland was built on what many believe to be a site that is not recognized as the site of a former aboriginal settlement -- implication being that history begins with its settlers (unlike Seattle, which, prior to contact, was the site of a stratified Salish village). Something Matthew did not tell me, something I learned while hitch-hiking in the 1980s, was that Oregon was the last state in the union to encourage tourism.
Although I did not see all of Portland, I could not help but notice a number of bookstores and DIY publishing outlets in the downtown core (one of which was Matthew’s Publication Studio). I noticed also a lot of people in restaurants and cafes reading, which is usually the sign of an advanced interior life. Portland does not have a contemporary art museum, though it does have a Contemporary Craft Museum, the emphasis on “craft” over “art” being a deliberate one, I am sure.
After my last trip to Seattle I came away with a description of the city as a cross between Chicago and New Westminster. To apply a similar comparison to Portland, I would say that it is a cross between Brooklyn and Prince George -- if it were not so blindingly white.
At Chapter 6 I noticed Faulkner’s increased use of compound words, such as “cinderstrewnpacked,” “childtrembling” and “parchmentcolored.” There were more, many of them gender- (“womansinning,” “manshape”) and race- (“womanshenegro”) specific, but I will leave it at that.
Portland is a white city. I brought this up with Matthew and he said two things: first, that the KKK has had a long presence there; and second, that Portland was built on what many believe to be a site that is not recognized as the site of a former aboriginal settlement -- implication being that history begins with its settlers (unlike Seattle, which, prior to contact, was the site of a stratified Salish village). Something Matthew did not tell me, something I learned while hitch-hiking in the 1980s, was that Oregon was the last state in the union to encourage tourism.
Although I did not see all of Portland, I could not help but notice a number of bookstores and DIY publishing outlets in the downtown core (one of which was Matthew’s Publication Studio). I noticed also a lot of people in restaurants and cafes reading, which is usually the sign of an advanced interior life. Portland does not have a contemporary art museum, though it does have a Contemporary Craft Museum, the emphasis on “craft” over “art” being a deliberate one, I am sure.
After my last trip to Seattle I came away with a description of the city as a cross between Chicago and New Westminster. To apply a similar comparison to Portland, I would say that it is a cross between Brooklyn and Prince George -- if it were not so blindingly white.
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