Vive le Skol libre!

un petit papier
à imprimer ou non,
à découper ou non,
à distribuer ou non
en tout cas petit signe envoyé
clin d’oeil…
manière d’être avec vous, sans y être dixit Painterman

vive le sKol libre !

l’avion de la furtivité

Le rapport de la commissaire :: Curator’s report

PART B1 – ACTIVITY REPORT

orange

Un jour d’avril nous avons dispersé des oranges sur le sol de montréal. La curator et artiste karen m’a dit : “c’est ma réponse à ton travail (pinxit) “, Sait-elle qu’en france, l’expression “je t’offrirai des oranges”, veut dire en argot : je viendrai te voir en prison. cette expression existe-t-elle aussi en anglais ?

une action à montréal

je n’ai pas publié d’article depuis mon séjour à montréal.
il est temps de couvrir ce retard.

Action non visible, non cachée
réalisée à Montréal entre le 9 et 15 avril, 2011.

Montréal était en période électorale. Le canada renouvelait ses gouverneurs fédéraux. La ville était parsemée d’incompréhensible panonceaux politique à l’héraldique inédite pour moi (orange et vert ; bleu et gris…) des slogans vagues. La ville était ponctuée de visages imprimés m’adressant des messages aux référents abscons. Une chance. Quatre d’entre eux jalonnaient avec plus de persistance ma dérive : élisez moi ; parlons Qc ; travaillons ensemble ; here for canada. Moi aussi je n’avais rien à dire d’autre : je suis là – content d’être là – que peut-on faire au Canada et nulle part ailleurs ? Je reprenais ces slogans les gravaient dans de la pâte de couleur que je dispersais dans la ville. Réaliser ces petites gravures de couleurs, c’était un peu comme faire mais gamme matinale, des pochades pour garder la main, ou comme semer des miettes qui ne permetteraient pas de retrouver mon chemin mais justifierais mes promenades. Peut-être peut-on encore les voir ?

• cathédrale Notre Dame, sur le dossier du banc de messe 304, près de la colonne polychrome : travaillons ensemble, gravé dans de la pâte rose et jaune.• place Emilie Gamelin, à l’angle du boulevard Maisonneuve et de la rue saint-Hubert, sur le plus proche arbre de la plaque dédié à la religieuse : élisez painterman, gravé dans de la pâte noire. • rue saint-Hubert près de l’autoroute Villeneuve, près du chantier du nouvel hôpital, sur un tronc d’arbre painterman, here for canada, gravé dans de la pâte sinople. • sur le saint -Laurent, cap aux meules, au niveau du restaurant des Terrasses bonsecours, sur un congère dérivant : painterman, here for canada, gravé dans de la pâte rouge. • sur une branche au sommet du Mont Royal : élisez painterman, gravé dans de la pâte bleue. • sur une barrière près du pont Jacques Cartier à la hauteur du 2143 rue Notre-Dame, côté quai, vers le Lunapark, près d’un container vert décoré d’un CAPITAL peint en majuscule noire : travaillons ensemble, gravé dans de la pâte violette. • au 2033, bd. saint -Laurent sur une souche oublié sur le terrain vague près de la librairie anarchiste l’insoumise : parlons Qc, gravé dans de la pâte violette • au musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal sous le banc placé devant la Crucifixion de Nicolas Poussin, visible face au tableau en prenant du recul : painterman, here for canada, gravé dans de la pâte blanche. • au 1001 Carré Dorchester, sur le tronc amputé d’une plante de la banque financière sun life, entre les colonnes à l’extrême gauche : travaillons ensemble, gravé dans de la pâte verte.

histoire furtive

j’aurais dû écrire cette histoire qu’on m’a racontée il y a quelques mois déjà. je l’ai presque oublié et je devrais essayer de l’écrire aujourd’hui. elle ne serait plus la même. elle serait encore plus à moi qu’elle ne l’était quand on me l’a offerte.

Culture visuelle contemporaine à interpréter?

<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/21502084″>Latitude 53 Splash! – 01 April 2011</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user3101858″>Latitude 53</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>

<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/15494298″>Slight Haircut Latitude 53</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user3101858″>Latitude 53</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>

des conditions…

Spencer’s curatorial statement claimed a space of self-determination within the institution; the space was awarded to the project Teasing the Furtive, with very few conditions. The conditions consisted mainly of managing and sticking to the project’s budget and beginning and end dates ; the budget was determined by the artist-organiser and the coordinator, on the basis of the needs of the project; objectives were fuzzy but stated in the project description sent to the funders.

Artists are remunerated on the assumption that, as artists, they will do something and document the gesture or action in one way or another, as documentation is an inherent part of furtive practice.

Furtivity, like any other form, requires certain conditions to thrive. In the context of an art institution, furtivity and critical thinking can be supported in a way that is mutually beneficial, both to the artist and the structure through autonomous, self-determined participation and sharing. Work is produced and then shared in the context of regular meetings, convened and facilitated by the artist-organizer (karen); the heterogeneous group of 11 artists might even reflect, on a micro scale, the composition of the centre’s active membership and how it can operate with minimal control, as long as values of trust and autonomy are shared. In the case of this year’s Teasing the Furtive, the structure consists of the following :

• subsistance funding to support the facilitator, artist fees, meetings, some travel and lodging for outside artists;
• an artist-organizer who likes people and who can manage a roving space for meetings (i.e. meetings are held in the artists’s homes and studios) at monthly intervals;
• an artist-organizer who can also step away in favour of other voices and leaderships;
• the right to not share, or disclose, but an understanding that people are interested in knowing about the individual’s furtive practice;
• artists who work alone and who do not have ready-made communities of studio-mates;

Structures and modalities have an effect on creativity ; uplifting effects? energy sinking effects? liberating effects? I sincerely look forward to continuing this exploration of structures through new projects, including the Artivistic summer residency and publication project.

Documents of the work will be collected at some point and shared, in some form or another, as per individual expressions, evocations, symbols, representations, presentations.

the furtive,

as a practice, could be said to embrace the unknowable.  perhaps it could even be said, the furtive, as a practice, performs to underscore this very unknowing.

use values and capitalists

d. is not a capitalist. he did not buy the “raw material” of his performance (the gesture of the woman on the plane.) however, the woman’s gesture was a “use-value” that d. consumed to produce his own version of the gesture that he himself “owns.” i.e. d. gave a use-value to something that generally would not have a use-value and “stole” this value for himself, the producer of the gesture is more than likely unaware she created a use value.

The labour-process, turned into the process by which the capitalist consumes labour-power, exhibits two characteristic phenomena. First, the labourer works under the control of the capitalist to whom his labour belongs…
Secondly, the product is the property of the capitalist and not that of the labourer, its immediate producer. p.128 marx, capital

m. is not a capitalist. the “finished product,” the painting of the sleeping venus by giorgione that m. used as a reference, a template, a historical signifier for her tattoo project reiterated the painting’s character as a use-value. it is unlikely that the owner of the painting knows this use value has been accorded to the painting. (however, if m. was to show this painting in a cinematic work that was to be screened, a hefty royalty would probably have to be paid to the “owners” of said painting because the owners of this work do know that the product in question has a use value as a “finished product.”)

If then, on the one hand, finished products are not only results, but also necessary conditions, of the labour-process, on the other hand, their assumption into that process, their contact with living labour, is the sole means by which they can be made to retain their character of use-values, and be utilised. marx, capital. p.126.

the best way to destroy something is to “not use it,” the best way to keep something alive is to “use it.” pockets count as things.

you may wonder…

why i would be posting a quote portraying the economics of power…although i figure by now the furtive(s) have figured this out…

but the quote below speaks of structures that we may never see, may never know in terms of their controlling presence in our day-to-day lives (as in anne’s contract pages) which i would say are just as invisible, just as hidden, just as “performed” as any other furtive act. the main difference is not the structure of the act, but rather the position of the player who is performing the act. but further, i would also suggest that many acts called furtive are in response to super structures we feel as somehow unjust – think here of anne’s tulips, josh’s gloves, joceline’s effacement --even though we may not see these structures operating.

 

In 1960 a royal commission investigated what should be done to save Canadian magazine publishing from extinction by unfair competition from Time and Reader’s Digest. The chairman was one of Canada’s distinguished newspaper editors, Senator Gratton O’Leary. The O’Leary Commission recommended that expenditures on advertising placed in Canadian editions of foreign magazines should no longer be tax-deductible. Implementation of the recommendations of the O’Leary Commission would have driven Time out of competition for the Canadian advertising dollar. The original U.S. edition would of course have continued to enter Canada, like any other American magazine. “It may be claimed, “ wrote the Commissioner, “that the communications of a nation are as vital to its life as its defenses and should receive at least as great a measure of protection.”
No less a person than President Kennedy interceded to inform the prime minister of Canada that he wished Time to be exempt from any legislation based on the O’Leary report. Washington put pressure on the Pearson administration by making exemption a pre-condition for agreement to the pending treaty on partial free trade in automobiles and parts. (…) Time and Reader’s Digest were both exempted from the bill, passed in 1965, which denied tax deductibility for advertising in any foreign-owned publication aimed at the Canadian market. The effect was to leave these two “branch-plant” magazines stronger than ever, protected from future competition from the United States. p.8. Levitt, Kari. “Silent Surrender : the multinational corporation in Canada.” Macmillan of Canada, Toronto. 1970.