Light Years : Conceptual Art and the Photograph 1964-1977

May 3, 2013 – 10:28 am

Edited by Matthew S. Witkovsky
Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 2011, 264 pp.

Excerpted from a book review written for Ciel Variable Magazine, no. 94 (2013)

The title phrase of this catalogue, Light Years, is a pun on an oft-misused term. Although widely thought to refer to a measurement of time, it is actually an astronomic unit measuring the distance travelled by light over one year. What meanings can this term have when applied to a historical survey exhibition of photographic practices around 1970? Aside from the obvious reading (the period 1964–77 as a span of time captured by the camera’s mechanical register of light), one could propose an analogy between the space–time equation of the light-year unit and the spatial immediacy and temporal anteriority proposed by Roland Barthes in his 1964 essay Rhetoric of the Image. As a cultural signifier, the photograph exists both as an object in the present and as a seemingly faithful representation of the past – the viewer’s interpretation is dependent upon the correspondences between the two…

Lancement: Le jeudi 9 mai 2013, dès 17h00
Lieu : Le Café de la Cinémathèque québécoise
335, boul. de Maisonneuve Est
Métro Berri-UQAM

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On the politics of publicity

June 3, 2012 – 8:24 pm

An advertising firm specializing in social media marketing contacted me this week. They enquired if I would be interested in carrying a text-based ad on this poorly-trafficked site, promising a fixed upfront annual fee.

I failed to see the advantage that advertising with me would bring to their client(s), and told them as much, asking “Who are your advertisers and what is their target demographic?”

For $150 a year, the company will draft a blog post to place on this site. This is dependent upon their client’s evaluation of my site content for compatibility. As an example, I was directed to a post on a blog devoted to family vacations at Disney resorts. Embedded within a heartfelt description of one anonymous family’s vacation experience was a hyperlink to the  Virgin Atlantic airline company (there were no other links in the post content).

The earnest rendition of familial bliss was the produced by a team of content writers – subject to approval by the blog’s creator (Disney).

Let the phantasmagoria begin.

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Le prix littéraire / Literary prizes

May 17, 2012 – 12:06 am

Le prix littéraire : Le système des prix est un phénomène propre au 20ème siècle, une époque dont la compétition et le gain monétaire ont été parmi les principaux leitmotivs. Dans le monde occidental actuel, ce système est présent chez toutes les classes sociales et dans plusieurs domaines, du sport équestre au milieu de l’art, en passant par la danse de salon et l’agriculture. Cette obsession donne lieu à une prolifération absurde de médailles et d’ordres de mérite — les décorations que reçoivent les généraux qui n’ont jamais porté d’armes, par exemple. Ne peut-on affirmer que ce besoin d’évaluer, de juger, de classer et de récompenser l’effort et la réussite soit symptomatique d’un humanisme de plus en plus décadent? — un humanisme où le succès matériel et la reconnaissance priment sur tout autre aspect de la vie?

A definition of literary prizes from J.A. Cuddon’s Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. 4th ed. (Penguin Reference, 1998) translated by the imminent Simon Brown. Read live as my introduction to the Art’s Stars in Hollywood event.

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(Pour le meilleur ou pour le pire) On the Internet, we can all be making it (For Better or for Worse)

April 25, 2012 – 9:02 am

Launch 27 April, 2012 17h30 at Centre des arts actuels Skol.

The essays in this publication broadly cover the themes of cewebrity and the production of identity through networked information structures. Published by Centre des arts actuels Skol following the exhibitions The Betweeners by Ian Wojtowicz and Scandalishious by Ann Hirsch: 16 April to 22 May 2010, Centre des arts actuels Skol (Montréal). This bilingual publication can be ordered online.

La publication (Pour le meilleur ou pour le pire) On the Internet, we can all be making it (For Better or for Worse) est publiée par le Centre des arts actuels Skol et a été réalisée à la suite des expositions The Betweeners de Ian Wojtowicz et Scandalishious de Ann Hirsch ayant eu lieu du 16 avril au 22 mai 2010 au Centre des arts actuels Skol, Montréal. Les expositions ont bénéficié d’une visibilité accrue en raison de l’association de Skol avec le la 11e festival Elektra.

Authors : Natalia Lebedinskaia, Felicity Tayler, Anne Bertrand
Reprints : Corina McDonald, Jacob Wren
Editor : Anne Bertrand
Graphics and layout : Benoit Pontbriand
Cover : Loki Design
Translation & copyediting : Isabelle Lamarre, Colette Tougas, Nikki Middlemiss, Nicole Burisch, Micheline Dussault
Photos : Guy L’Heureux, Benoit Pontbriand
Printing : Maison Kasini

ISBN : 978-2-922009-16-3
dépôt légal – Bibliothèque et archives nationales du Québec, 2012
dépôt légal – Bibliothèque et archives Canada, 2012

This publication is published under a Creative Commons licence

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Art’s Stars in Hollywood : Screening and Reading

April 18, 2012 – 9:16 am

Art’s Stars in Hollywood : Projection vidéo et lectures

Artexte, Montréal
Wednesday April 18, 2012 at 5 p.m. Walk the red carpet and toast with bubbly in the Quartier des spectacles!
Le mercredi 18 avril 2012 à 17 h. Bulles et tapis rouge seront à l’honneur au Quartier des spectacles!

An evening of readings by contemporary authors around the vintage video Art’s Stars in Hollywood: The DeccaDance (1975). Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Constellations & Correspondences : Networking Between Artists 1970-1980.

Une soirée de lecture d’auteurs contemporains installant un dialogue avec la vidéo Art’s Stars in Hollywood: The DeccaDance (1975). Cet événement est présenté dans le cadre de l’exposition Constellation & Correspondences: transmission entre artistes 1970-1980.

Screening / Projection: Art’s Stars in Hollywood: The DeccaDance, 53 mins
Art’s Stars is a collaborative work involving artists who were active in the correspondence network, including General Idea, Image Bank, Willoughby Sharp and Ant Farm. As a parody of the Academy Awards, over 800 artists gathered to imagine their own constellation of success and celebrity by presenting awards to each other for various categories of absurd achievements.

Art’s Stars est une œuvre collective d’artistes incluant General Idea, Image Bank, Willoughby Sharp et Ant Farm. Crée comme une parodie des Oscars, plus de 800 artistes se sont rassemblés en 1974 pour imaginer leurs propres constellations de succès et célébrité, en se décernant l’un à l’autre des prix pour des réalisations aussi diverses qu’absurdes.

Readings / Lectures: Melissa Bull, Marc-Antoine Phaneuf, Alan Reed and Jacob Wren.

Melissa Bull a déjà publié dans Event, Matrix, Maisonneuve, carte blanche, Lemon Hound et Branch. Son chapbook, Eating Out, a été publié par WithWords, en 2009. Elle est éditrice pour Playboy.com et de la rubrique « Writing from Quebec » pour la revue Maisonneuve.

Marc­-Antoine K. Phaneuf est artiste et auteur. Il a publié deux livres de poésie aux éditions Le Quartanier, Fashionably Tales, une épopée des plus brillants exploits, et Téléthons de la Grande Surface (inventaire catégorique) en 2008. Son prochain livre, Euphorie libidinale dans le meat market, paraîtra en mai.

Alan Reed is an experimental writer turned novelist. He is the author of a collection of poems, For Love of the City (BuschekBooks), and a novel, Isobel & Emile (Coach House Books), and occasionally makes work that sits somewhere between writing, performance and installation art.

Jacob Wren is a writer and maker of eccentric performances. His books include Unrehearsed Beauty, Families Are Formed Through Copulation and Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed.

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Des actions parlantes / Actions that Speak

January 25, 2012 – 10:29 am

Les essais présentés dans Des actions parlantes nous communiquent une manière de faire, de s’engager et de penser qui cherchait à redéfinir et à façonner autrement la société québécoise des années 1960 et 1970. Ils font surtout état d’une volonté de dire et d’agir qui a marqué la vie collective et l’activité artistique de l’époque et qui nous amène à envisager le présent dans la densité complexe de ce passé.

L’essai de l’historien Sean Mills examine le débat linguistique au Québec de la fin des années 1960 dans une optique d’économie politique de l’empire, où les questions de colonialisme et de capitalisme jouent un rôle. Felicity Tayler, nous propose une analyse historique, ainsi que de sa performativité, de la publication en trois tomes Québec underground, 1962-1972, qui a tenté de circonscrire ces pratiques alternatives, pour la plupart collectives, dans les années 1960 à Montréal. Michèle Thériault contribue une première réflexion sur la nature interventionniste du commissariat de Normand Thériault, figure incontournable du milieu artistique des années 1970. Le recueil se termine sur un examen par le sociologue Jean-Philippe Warren, du phénomène contre-culturel des communes néorurales au Québec. En français et en anglais.

Actions that Speak presents essays by Sean Mills, Felicity Tayler, Michèle Thériault and Jean-Philippe Warren that convey processes of doing, thinking, and engaging oneself that contributed to redefining and reshaping Quebec society in the 1960s and 1970s. They reveal a will to speak and to act that distinguished both the community life and the artistic activity of this period, thus encouraging us to consider the present in terms of the complex density of that past.

Historian Sean Mills examines the linguistic debate in Quebec in the late 1960s from the perspective of the political economy of empire in which questions of colonialism and capitalism were important forces. Felicity Tayler presents an analysis of the history and performativity of Québec underground, 1962-1972, a three-volume publication that attempted to circumscribe the alternative and, for the most part, collective art practices of the 1960s in Montreal. Michèle Thériault offers an initial reflection on the interventionist nature of the curatorial practice of Norman Thériault, a leading figure in the artistic landscape of the 1970s. The collection concludes with an examination of Quebec’s neo-rural communal counterculture by sociologist Jean-Philippe Warren. In English and French.

Sous la direction de Michèle Thériault
Essays by / Essais de Sean Mills, Felicity Tayler, Michèle Thériault, Jean-Philippe Warren
Design/ Conception graphique de TagTeam Studio
Janvier 2012 , Galerie Leonard & Bina Ellen
258 pp., broché, reliure allemande
20.00 $
ISBN 978-2-920394-89-6

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International Journal on Digital Libraries

January 11, 2012 – 1:00 pm

Artexte metadata conversion to EPrints: adaptation of digital repository software to visual and media arts documentation. Tomasz Neugebauer, Corina MacDonald, Felicity Tayler. International Journal on Digital Libraries, 2012. (DOI) 10.1007/s00799-011-0077-5

Keywords: Metadata · EPrints · Art documentation · Open access

Does an open access institutional repository model respond to the needs of a non-academic documentation centre? My coauthors and I answer this question through the analysis of the collection materials and bibliographic data management at Artexte, an independent organization founded in 1980 in Montreal with the mandate to support research in contemporary Canadian art. Growing interest in digital publishing platforms prompted us to consider an open source solution for publicly funded publishing in the arts as an alternate option to commercial models.

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On the Subject of Closure

September 25, 2011 – 5:35 pm

Synopsis of the day / Synopsis (en Anglais)

  • Tayler, Felicity, « No Closure From Julie Ault », Centre des arts actuels Skol, (20 octobre 2011). PDF
  • Interview between Julie Ault and Anne Bertrand.
  • Video documentation of Julie Ault’s lecture at the Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery.

Master Class with artist Julie Ault (NYC)
Thursday 20 October, 2011 from 10am to 4pm at SKOL

——-
Cours de maître (en anglais) avec l’artiste Julie Ault (NYC)
le jeudi 20 Octobre, 2011 de 10h à 16h à SKOL

Dear colleague,

Due to your long standing contribution to the non-profit artistic milieu, Skol would like to invite you to join us in a day-long master class led by renowned artist Julie Ault, cofounder of Group Material (New York).

Under the spectre of the Conservative majority government, and a generalized feeling that critical practices have been embraced by public and commercial galleries, much energy in artist‐run centres is diverted from programming toward negotiating the contradictory states of survival and growth. Many not-for-profit centres in Montréal have become preoccupied with the state of their archives, or of historicizing their activities, as if in response to the fear of closure or of no future. What happens if we stop doing what we are doing? Read More »

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Symbolic Landscapes and Their Adjacent Uses

September 1, 2011 – 9:27 am

Below, an excerpt from my recent story in The Dérivateur. In the words of Editor, Beth Blum, the magazine is an agent for musings off the beaten path, framed around the subject of the city.

Beside the bank is an empty lot of land; an aerial photograph dated 1974 shows the lot as a void. The west wall of the bank collapsed last year, toppling the full height of the building onto the uneven, scrubby dirt below. A restoration project brought new sod and a lush covering of grass and clover. The Gardener tends to the lot as the municipality overlooks one project for another and the grass grows higher and goes to seed. His personal project transgresses boundaries between public and private cultivation in the alley (spreading scarlet stalks of amaranth upon the indiscretion of the wind). The municipality is distracted by a proposal to tear down the highway interchange. When the new sod was laid, the lot was bestowed with a garbage can. As citizen groups mobilize against the infrastructure project, collection schedules are overlooked and plastic bags of dog feces overflow into piles on the sidewalk…

You can read the rest of the story in Issue 1: The Street of The Dérivateur .

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Amanuensis

August 26, 2011 – 10:36 am

Petite enveloppe urbaine No. 19
Août / August 2011
Montréal (Québec); San Francisco (California)
Edition of 119
www.crum.ca

In San Francisco, tsunami sirens pierce the seaside air every Tuesday at noon. In this city under constant threat of extinction, Rick and Megan Prelinger have accumulated a private collection of over 40,000 books, periodicals, ephemera and government documents. Many of these documents were once in public library collections, but have been discarded as cultural memory is digitized and migrates online. In the American democratic tradition of building community through private assets, the Prelingers have opened their Library to everyone compelled by curiosity. While some of its most avid users arrive via Silicon Valley, this Library is an ark of pulp and paper, something solid that might float when rivers of information lose their wellsprings of electricity.

Read More »

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