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Slow motion: Geologic Processes and the University in Andreas Bunte’s Erosion by Oscar Alfonso Lira Sanchez

The demolition of Louis Riel House at SFU, 2016. Photo: Oscar Alfonso.

I first came to SFU thirteen years ago during the summer months as part of the crowds of children that populate the university’s summer camps. As I have grown in the intervening years, so too has the school. From the West Gym, Saywell and Blusson Halls to expanded student residences, there have been numerous additions to the university that have accumulated over the last decade.

Alongside this growth, many spaces and services have also moved around. Parking services, the library’s map room and the Arts and Social Sciences office are amongst the many things to have found new homes. Others, like bathrooms and study areas, have been renovated, with layers removed and resurfaced. Some spaces have simply disappeared. The climbing wall on the facade of the centre gym and the old portables for the School for the Contemporary Arts are no more. Louis Riel House, being demolished right now, will soon join them.

This has been a slow moving but constant process that can easily go unnoticed on a larger scale. These kind of gradual processes of simultaneous contraction and growth are at the core of Andreas Bunte’s new film work and exhibition, Erosion. Shot on campus in January 2016, Erosion explores the university’s iconic architecture in relation to geology. By focusing on geologic processes, the 17-minute film loop subverts the perception of monumental architecture as one of permanence punctuated by the occasional moment of change. It draws attention to architecture’s constant state of change which can only be seen if one takes a step back and focuses on the smaller shifting details.

Andreas Bunte, Erosion, 2016. Installation view at SFU Gallery, 2016. Photo: Blaine Campbell.

Erosion opens with the sound of water pouring over a rock formation on Burnaby Mountain. Sound carries throughout the film as silent shots give way to the relentless hum of building machinery and the gentle but seemingly unending din of rain and running water: the strongest erosive force on the planet. The opening shots in the woods of Burnaby Mountain focus on the stratigraphy of dirt, rock and sediment which ground the film in a consideration of natural layering processes. Erosion is dominated by this meeting point between architecture and nature. In this, the University’s inhabitants are only occasionally glimpsed walking amongst the concrete.

The static framing shots used in Erosion and its shortage of human subjects is characteristic of Bunte’s work; many of his films draw attention to the spatial relationships of his chosen environments. Erosion isn’t focused on film’s indexical ability to record and represent the past, but rather explores film’s ability to consider the present through the slow motion of water and its ever present interaction with architecture. This motion is subtly visible in the ebb and flow of people across convocation mall and the never ending envelope of fog that covers the campus. This motion also results in two of the film’s most mesmerizing shots: water flowing over a constructed sandy riverbed in SFU’s River Dynamics Laboratory and the slow expansion of water over a dry concrete surface. Both of these scenes are compressed experiences that can be easily overlooked in the natural world.

The architecture slowly comes apart under this gentle but relentless action. Exposed steel, crumbling concrete and growing mineral deposits come into being in Erosion. Paired with shots of SFU’s Fluvial Research Lab, and lots of SFU fog, Bunte suggests that this is a part of the architecture’s natural process as a geologic entity. The interaction between architecture and natural forces is endless.

The same slow erosive motion that Bunte draws attention to is part of a larger conversation around the university’s self-reflexivity and (in)stability as nature slowly takes the university apart. The university’s erosion shared an uncomfortable coexistence with the Student Society’s attempt to place its own addition in the landscape in the development of the new Student Union Building. Students were caught between rising fees, environmental awareness and the slow physical decay of the university’s architecture which sparked a strong moment of reflection about university space and what it means to study here. These moments come and go as campus involvement and self-reflection ebbs and flows. Though the purported shortage of verbal discourse, community and activism has long been a point of conversation and complaint, there is another aspect of this self-engagement and reflectivity that should be considered.

The construction of the Student Union Building at SFU, 2016. Photo: Oscar Alfonso.

Since its opening year in 1965, the university has been an environment supporting critical thinking and engagement in the arts. Present in student projects, faculty programs and the SFU Gallery, there is a substantial tradition on which to reflect. For example, the SFU Galleries exhibition, Through a Window: Visual Art and SFU 1965-2015, drew together diverse perspectives by looking at the production of art by artists affiliated with SFU as students, faculty and collaborators. Despite this work, Erosion joins a comparatively small number of artworks that directly consider SFU’s context. Much like the purported shortage of student engagement, this shortage of artistic reflection leaves something to be desired. It is perhaps partially a result of the emotional and physical distance that exists between the Burnaby Campus and the School for the Contemporary Arts downtown. Here too, the university is subject to the same natural processes of erosion and maintenance required to keep that relationship alive.

The slow nature of erosion can be easily overlooked until it is well underway. It doesn’t only manifest itself in growing mineral deposits, or a shortage critical self-reflexivity, but also in the shrinking privacy of our digital spaces and the polarization of our democratic discourse. Everywhere around us, the world is slowly but inexorably subject to the forces of erosion. However, erosion needn’t be perceived solely as a negative as it also carries the potential for new things to form, to be deposited and grow from what is carried away.

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REVIEW: Bright Lights, Hopeless Return by Kayla Elderton

Marianne Nicolson, Oh, How I Long For Home, 2016, installation view at Teck Gallery. Photo: Blaine Campbell.

The familiar glow of neon lights fills the Teck Gallery at 515 West Hastings Street, but this time, the lights glow for no commercial brand. A complicated relationship between the city and neon lights bloomed in the 1940’s and 50’s, when an abundance of street signs started to populate the streets of Vancouver. A decade later a law was passed to eliminate the bright lights [1]. Since then, there has been a slow reintroduction of neon signage as an homage to the glow that once was familiar to our streets. Artist Marianne Nicolson confronts this neon history as a representation of falsehood; a reflection of a promise and hope for Indigenous people that never surpassed artificial light. p;

Nicolson's installation, Oh, How I Long For Home, consists of two parallel black walls facing one another: one containing a long row of framed black and white photographs, the other, colour photos and neon signage. The four photos on the west wall are of recognizable neon signs from Hastings Street and situated under a red neon text. On the east wall hangs twelve street photographs of people from Nicolson’s community during Vancouver’s neon heyday, framing the hope and excitement that came with its colourful arrival in the city. The two walls are separated by a broad window and the physical distance is a spatialized reminder of the colonization that took place which changed feelings of hope and excitement to confusion and disappointment.

Marianne Nicolson, Oh, How I Long For Home, 2016, installation view at Teck Gallery. Photo: Blaine Campbell.

The unrelenting glow of neon in the space urges us not to forget colonization and its active legacy. The Kwak’wala words in neon read “Wa'lasan xwalsa kan ne'nakwe”, which loosely translates to “Oh, how I long for home” and refer to a return, just as the sun returns [2]. Although the sun’s return is a comforting occurrence for most, Nicolson’s return is unfulfilled. The title highlights the inability to return home for many Indigenous people in terms of land and culture. The exhibition itself is held on unceded land, an actively colonized and further institutionalized territory. Nicolson is not talking about return as a decolonization, but rather a return of power to those that once called this land home. As such, Nicolson’s display of archival photographs is a conversation about our ongoing state of occupation and not a mere historical snapshot.

That Oh, How I Long For Home was made for a public space, which is occupied by students studying, is a challenge to complacency. The space of the Teck Gallery is open, unlike most traditional galleries, and students may not even consider their interaction with the art therein, but Nicolson’s work is glowing for our attention and intimate consideration. Thus the invitation is to not only coexist spatially, but also to recognize historical patterns, seek restoration and engage critically with our shared future on this land.

Works Cited

[1] John, Mackie. "Bright Lights, Old City: Remembering Vancouver's Neon Glory." Www.vancouversun.com. The Vancouver Sun, 13 Nov. 2009. Web. 05 Oct. 2016. [2] O’Brian, Melanie. “Marianne Nicolson, Oh, How I Long For Home.” Www.sfu.ca/galleries. Web. 05 Oct. 2016.    

For more information on Marianne Nicolson: Oh, How I Long For Home click here.

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Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber’s The Templeton Five Affair, March 1967 By Barbara Matthews

Could it be that the lessons of the street are exhausted, out-dated, and likewise the teachings of the window? Certainly not. They perpetuate themselves by renewing themselves. The windows overlooking the street is not a mental place, where the inner gaze follows abstract perspectives: a practical space, private and concrete, the window offers views that are more than spectacles; mentally prolonged spaces.[1]

Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber’s The Templeton Five Affair, March 1967 investigates the fragmentation of collective agency in the university. The Bitter and Weber installation at the Teck Gallery in SFU’s Harbour Centre campus from June 3, 2015 to April 30, 2016, is part of the larger exhibition Through a Window: Visual Art and SFU 1965-2015, that looks back on 50 years of visual art history at SFU. The exhibition’s title references the chapter “Seen from the Window,” in French Sociologist Henri Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis (1992), in which he observes the polyrhythms of public life from the privacy of his apartment. Bitter and Weber also draw from Lefebvre in The Templeton Five Affair, particularly his concept that architecture is defined by social interaction.[2] With the open view of Vancouver, the installation confronts the functionality of the city—its regularities, flows, and rhythms—a space that systemizes the production of busy bodies, defined by social interactions that are at once technological and in constant surveillance. Lefebvre’s ideal is perhaps a vanishing one.

Why is social interaction within a “public” architectural space so private and secure?  In this installation, many tensions arise as one becomes entangled in a “public” space overcome by the private, a space that denies agency.

The Templeton Five Affair consists of five large panels wallpapered with a photograph of students gathered on the multiple levels of the Academic Quadrangle that surrounds Convocation Mall. It documents a key moment in Simon Fraser University campus politics and student activism. In March of 1967 five SFU Teaching Assistants led a demonstration outside Templeton Secondary School demanding academic freedom in response to the high school students that were suspended for distributing a publication that mocked a teacher's view of poetry. [3] The TAs were penalized for organizing the protest and this escalated into the student demonstration at Convocation Mall, a space that was conceived of by architect Arthur Erickson as intimate and unifying. This conflict became known as The Templeton Five Affair.

Bitter and Weber duplicate the photograph and situate the two images facing each other. Each version is distinctly scaled and edited. In one photograph the demonstrators are whited out from the architecture. In the opposite image, which is cut into four panels, the concrete architecture of the Academic Quadrangle is erased, leaving the demonstrators to float in space. These ghostly images are a reminder of many contemporary conditions: the disappearance of activists from university campuses, the tension between authority and academic freedom, and the hyper-policing of public space.

To look back on the last 50 years of SFU is to also think about the ways in which neoliberalism has annihilated the collective agency of the university.

The tension portrayed in the The Templeton Five Affair also draws to mind the 2014 Burnaby Mountain demonstrations against the Transmountain pipeline, which produced a direct confrontation between SFU students, faculty and authority. In a time where collective agency is slipping away, this moment was pivotal and energizing for university campus politics. The Burnaby Mt. occupation signified the reclamation of sovereignty, a resistance to authority.

The contemporary affair that exists between the private and the public is in constant flux, largely conditioned by the policing of actions. Bitter and Weber’s installation is a reminder that collective agency is becoming more fragmented than ever before but that it has not vanished or gone away. It is while looking through the windows of the Teck Gallery, a ‘mentally prolonged space’, that we can continue to think deeply about social interaction. To return to Lefebvre, the lessons of the window are not exhausted.

[1] Henri Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis, pg. 33 [2] From the Teck Gallery vinyl text [3] http://www.sfu.ca/archives2/PDFs/ResearchGuideCampusPolitics1v0.pdf

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The Mimicry of Body, Form, and Craft: The Splits Reviewed By Daniella Donati

Allison Hrabluik’s The Splits is a fifteen-minute film that features twenty-five people performing an array of actions from the mundane to the extraordinary. Through the use of montage and relational filmmaking, Hrabluik seamlessly fashions together image and sound to make a cohesive film of contrasting actions.

Hrabluik uses the camera to focus in on faces, actions and areas of the body that are performing the activities There are numerous shots depicting performers’ faces, hands, and feet because that is where the tension and mental focus is placed. At times a face will take up the entire frame and during those shots one can see the concentration on the task at hand. The eyes appear glazed, indicating that the participant is no longer aware of everything around them and are only focused on what skill they are trying to achieve in that moment.

Hrabluik’s particular method of filmmaking establishes associations between disparate actions and images, through intuited or sensed relations. This can be observed in sequences of shots linked through formal qualities, such as the related colour palette of a sequence intercutting an opera singer’s orange wig and a pyramid of flesh-toned hot dogs encased in their buns, or between the composition of images, such as the close shot of hot dogs boiling in water intercut with a close shot of a tasseled dress moving. There are also transitions that work through related physical actions. For example, the distinct repetitive slap of ground meat being thrown against a table is intercut with tap shoes hitting a battered board, or the grooming of an Afghan show dog set against images of a woman having her hair cut.

Hrabluik also takes a similar approach in her editing of sound, taking diegetic sound, sound that is present or implied to come from within the image, and using it as non-diegetic sound, sound that has no apparent source within the image. This approach can be seen with the use of the opera singer’s voice, which is present throughout the film in shots where the opera singer is absent.

Another noticeable element within Hrabluik’s sound editing is the use of silence and breath. Throughout the film there are points at which the sound is cut and the audience is left with silence, before continuing on to the following scenes of tension and focus. The silence, in some cases, mirrors or parallels the preparation of the subjects, taking a breath in anticipation of physical and mental effort. An example of this is when there are two quick shots of one of the female gymnasts, one with and one without sound, before it cuts to an image of three gymnasts crawling across the floor without sound. Being the longest moment of silence within the film it can be seen as the calm before the storm, preparing the audience for the escalation of visible tension and the building of sound that concludes the film.

This culminating escalation is rendered both visually and audibly, with scenes of a show dog climbing up a seesaw as the operatic voice climbs in octaves. As the voice continues, the image cuts to the three gymnasts. The two women face the camera and the male gymnast places his hands on their shoulders and lifts himself into a handstand, pressing the balance of his weight on their shoulders. The soaring operatic voice comes to a climax just as the female gymnasts’ composure is pushed to the breaking point. The film concludes with the collapse of this interplay between visible focus and tension, the levity of the actions and subjects, and the careful editing of sound used to weave it all together.

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Pulsating Resilience: Releasing Motion in Dana Claxton’s Uplifting by Vanessa Grondin

Within the darkened gallery, the vibrancy of colourful imagery emanating from four lit media works in Dana Claxton’s exhibition Made To Be Ready encompass an immersive atmosphere of performativity. Of these four works, each illuminating an Indigenous woman poised with her cultural belongings, this life force is most felt in the projected video Uplifting (2015). The video features a woman wearing a red jumpsuit, crawling very slowly on her hands and knees across a thin strip of light cast in a dark space. With back contracted, shoulders shrugged, and the heaviness of her head drawing her dark hair over her face, she progresses from the right to left side of the screen. In an inconsistent pulsating rhythm, she hesitantly places her hands and knees down in a natural movement pattern, alternating between sides. This motion becomes an act of resistance as she demonstrates determination to keep moving, despite the conflicted internal struggle she embodies.

Although this video is presented within a contemporary art context, the bodily motion in Uplifting can be compared to analyses of movement in Indigenous hip-hop culture. Karyn Recollet, a cultural theorist who focuses on Indigenous hip-hop feminism and new media, speaks about the motion of dance in Indigenous hip-hop as a means of holding tension in one’s muscles before suddenly loosening them. She suggests that this patterning demonstrates “moments of feeling the heaviness of the colonial weight within the body, and the necessary release.”[1] In a similar manner, Claxton dynamically illustrates this colonial weight through the woman’s slow endurance of struggling to drag her knees forward and bring her arms up before she suddenly releases the heaviness of her hands back on to the ground. Although there is no sound in the video, this action becomes the rhythmic force of the exhibition. The strength she draws between steps acts as the “space between beats” that Recollet refers to as being “linked to an impulse and life force that forms the base of all movement and creation.”[2]

As the woman finally makes it to the left side of the screen, she collapses into a crouched position, taking a few deep breaths before folding into a fetal position and then spreading out loosely on her back. Looking down at her chest, the intensity of her struggle increases as she forcefully pulls on the fabric of her red jumpsuit. This gesture accumulates in pressure until her grappling body gains enough strength to suddenly hoist herself to sit back up and fold over to release this tension.

This sudden motion relates to Recollet’s idea that muscle release expresses “fluidity within the rupture [as] a moment of working through [it].”[3] The woman proceeds to pull a concealed pouch from her jumpsuit. With its emergence, she slowly rises, elevating it above her head until she is fully standing, firm and grounded. She takes a few breaths to acknowledge this moment of resilience, and instantly disappears. The video loops back to the reappearance of her shadow creeping into the right side of the screen, located right next to the entrance of the exhibition space where witnessing viewers continue to move in and out.

What Uplifting presents us with, compared to the other still images in the exhibition, is the cycle of a story in constant motion. The exhibition statement refers to Anishinaabe scholar and writer Gerald Vizenor and his notion of unifying “survival and resilience as a means of resistance,” which he terms “survivance.”[4] Vizenor also defines “survivance” as stories of “active presence,” which go beyond notions of survival and endurance.[5] The moment in which we witness the woman in Uplifting ground her feet and roll up to stand offers a sense that her cultural belongings, along with her endurance, have supported her to not only regain her physical strength, but to undergo a transformation and reconnect with a deeper part of her self. It is as if she has entered the “other world spaces” found between the beats where “creation thrives […] where stars, celestial space, and places underneath us are our connectors to ourselves.”[6]

Carla Taunton, a Professor in Art History who focuses on Indigenous performance and media practices, has written about Claxton’s earlier video work, stating that “video-based Indigenous installation art can offer to local, national and international audiences a site within which to bear witness to the current realities of Indigenous peoples and to take notice of the trauma that marks the Aboriginal body. At the same time, it also contributes to the discourse of Indigenous decolonization, whereby self-determined Aboriginal voices are indigenizing spaces, such as the gallery.”[7] Taunton states that Claxton’s use of video to share histories and experiences “links her to the history of storytelling by Lakota elders,” which results in the creation of “visual documents of Indigenous lived experiences.”[8] Through the medium of video shown in a perpetual cycle and Uplifting’s presentation in an art gallery, Claxton reclaims space to enact the pain and struggle that Indigenous people have been forced to live through in front of our own eyes, altogether.

The life force that Uplifting brings to the entire exhibition through its expression of pain, struggle and determination, felt in the immediacy of the performer’s gradual lifts, sudden releases and swaying breaths, invites us to enter her personal narrative and makes us aware of our interconnected responsibilities as witnesses. We come to experience the movement that this woman shares with us in our own bodies, and to embody her discomforted gestures, burdened by the restraining impacts of colonialism. In spite of her struggle however, we also feel in her rising force a momentary breath of relief, just before she vanishes. She leaves us, through Claxton, with the reminder that each of us has a responsibility to play if we are to continue lifting up the weight of colonial impact into an absolute release that can last long after her disappearance. 

Works Cited

[4] “Dana Claxton: Made To Be Ready.” Audain Art Gallery. Vancouver: Simon Fraser University Galleries, 2016. https://www.sfu.ca/galleries/audain-gallery/Upcoming.html

[2] [6] Recollet, Karyn. “Dancing ‘Between the Break Beats’: Contemporary Indigenous Thought and Cultural Expression Through Hip-Hop.” In The Oxford Handbook of Dance and the Popular Screen, edited by Melissa Blanco Borelli, 412-428. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

[1] [3] Recollet, Karyn. “For Sisters.” In Me Artsy: An Exploration of Contemporary Native Arts, edited by Drew Hayden Taylor, 91-104. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2015.

[5] [7] [8] Taunton, Carla. "Indigenous (re)memory and resistance: video works by Dana   Claxton." Post Script 29, no. 3 (Summer 2010): 44-136. Literature Resource Center.

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Intertextual Reading Series by Weiyi Chang

Monique Mojica’s “Stories from the Body: Blood Memory and Organic Texts” lead by Lindsay Lachance on February 3, 2016 at the Audain Gallery. 

“Our bodies house a collection of experiences as clear as tattoos on our skins.” 

“The role of the witness is not only to watch and listen, but to tether the improvisers to the physical world.” 

In reflecting upon Intertextual’s inaugural reading group, it quickly became evident to me how timely and significant the series is, representing an interjection into broader debates regarding the complex relationship between arts institutions, Indigenous artists, and public discourse. The potency and power of Monique Mojica’s “Stories from the Body: Blood Memory and Organic Texts” further amplified the significance of the project. Held at the Audain Gallery and facilitated by Lindsay Lachance, thirty-odd readers sat gathered under the gallery’s lights, girdled by Dana Claxton’s haunting exhibition, and read aloud Mojica’s words with an unanticipated sensitivity and intensity. For a short period of time, the Audain Gallery became a communal space where Mojica’s stories could be spoken, shared, lived, and internalized.  

Sometimes tentatively, sometimes confidently, readers gave voice to Mojica and her stories. Lachance, having initiated the event by reading aloud the introductory paragraphs of Mojica's text, extended an open invitation to the room. The format of the reading group was loosely structured, with individuals encouraged to speak up and read the text as long as they wished. In this manner, moments of protracted silence disrupted the flow of words and took on a sense of heightened importance, with each break carrying in it an irrepressible wave of anxiety that broke upon the first syllables of the following reader. Some fully embraced the performative aspect, taking the opportunity to circumambulate around the room whilst reading, while others sang aloud melodies that could only be inferred from the marks on the page. In doing so, Mojica’s words carried on in the flesh and blood of participants, becoming a part of their stories and lived experiences. 

At the close of the reading, as Mojica’s final words found refuge in articulation and settled into the room (“You’ve witnessed me naming the names of my predecessors. Now their names and our stories are part of your memory, and as long as they are remembered they live on. This is blood memory. This is where my work comes from.”), readers began sharing their reflections and interpretations. For some, Mojica’s text provoked questions, seeking clarification and meaning, desiring to affix the words in a coherent manner, while others were motivated to probe within themselves to find expression for their own ways of being in the world. 

Like Mojica, I am mining my own memories in the writing of this text. As an Intertextual organizer, my participation centred on observing and documenting. Going through the photographs taken that night, which unfortunately fail to capture the ambiance of the room, is a means of recapitulating the energy and narratives shared that evening. Through the act of reflection, by putting pen to paper (or, more accurately, hands to keyboard), the stories put into motion by this first reading group will continue to shape and expand as the series progresses. 

Intertextual: Art in Dialogue aims to link a series of readings, held within the gallery context, that function less like a syllabus and more as a web in which questions regarding knowledge, power, authority and sovereignty in the construction of artistic practices and objects are raised. Throughout 2016, a reading group session will be held each month until 2016. Each session will be hosted by a different organization. Texts will be distributed at the event and read aloud; discussion is open to all and no prior preparation is required.  

Weiyi Chang is a writer/curator from Ottawa, Ontario, and she is currently a graduate student at the University of British Columbia.

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ENTABLATURE XA by Jordan Lemoine

Roy Lichtenstein’s work Entablature XA (1976) is a large rectangular screenprint depicting an entablature, the horizontal piece that rests above columns in Greek and Roman architecture. Drawn from a larger series which traces variations of this architectural element, from its ancient beginnings through to its use in European and American architecture, Entablature XA differs from earlier editions in the series in its inclusion of text, with the word “JVSTITIA,” Latin for justice, spanning the width of the work in bold, silver letters. This lends the work a social and political character, which shown within the context of Alex Morrison’s exhibition Phantoms of a Utopian Will, contributes to a number of through lines, crosscurrents and tensions.

Lichtenstein gained prominence in the 1960s pop art scene with bold works that drew on the aesthetics of comic strips. Drowning Girl (1963) for example is a work in which Lichtenstein took a strip from the DC comic Run For Love! featuring a drowning woman. He edited the strip by cropping out the woman’s boyfriend­–who in the original is attempting to save her–and altering the text to create ambiguity in the meaning. Lichtenstein’s style later evolved from making art from comic strips, to making comic strips of art. In Woman with Flowered Hat (1963), Lichtenstein took a Picasso painting of Dora Maar and recreated it in a cartoon/comic strip aesthetic.

In the early 1970s, Lichtenstein embraced architecture as a subject, and deepened processes of appropriation by referencing not original works, but appropriations of original works. This creates distance, makes his work an abstraction loosely related to the original, and draws attention to the process of appropriation, and the historical progress of the original work continually revised by different cultures throughout history.

The Entablature series was developed over two distinct periods: the first was produced between 1971-72, and the second between1974-76. The source material for the first part of Lichtenstein’s series were photos the artist took of  Greco-Roman-inspired architecture in lower Manhattan. These 20th century buildings were based not on the original Greco-Roman architecture, but on 19th century renditions by French Beaux-Arts architects. Owing to changing aesthetic tastes and evolving material conditions and technologies, the modern entablature has lost many original qualities, and gained many new ones. Lichtenstein, no doubt also thinking about the relationships between the architectural frieze, the film strip and its printed analogue–the comic strip, emphasizes these relationalities and historical, architectural quotations and translations, by reducing the entablature to its essential elements.

IMAGE CREDITS: Roy Lichtenstein, from Entablature series, 1970-71/1974-76 

The second part of the series departs from photographs as source material, with the first series now serving as the reference point. Lichtenstein began to take more liberty with the form, no longer strictly binding himself to the traditional proportions of the architectural structure of architrave, frieze and cornice for example. This isn’t to say that he abandoned the essential qualities he’d retained in the first part of the series, but only that he was less strict in his depictions of them.

IMAGE CREDITS: Roy Lichtenstein, from Entablature series, 1970-71/1974-76 

The text included in Entablature XA, “JVSTITIA,” references Justitia, or Lady Justice, the Roman Goddess of Justice, the personification of fair and objective law. Statues of Justitia, often shown blindfolded and holding a set of scales, are still erected in court houses and judicial buildings, as the values that she represents remain the foundation of modern judicial systems.

IMAGE CREDITS: Roy Lichtenstein, Entablature XA, 1976

One of Morrison’s works in Dun Lurnin, Dun Cairin, Dun Livin (2014-2015), a series of ceramic plates and sculptures, also alludes to a Classical figure. The small ceramic sculpture is a flat, cartoonized profile view of the face of Diogenes, a Greek philosopher associated with cynicism, a school of thought founded on the belief that life is best lived in accordance with virtue and nature. 

IMAGE CREDITS: Alex Morrison, Dun Lurnin, Dun Cairin, Dun Livin (2014-2015), (Installation view)

The letters “ACAB” have been cut of the clay below the face, a reference to an  an anarchistic slogan “All Cops Are Bastards,” that, several centuries removed, correlates to Diogenes’ opposition to political structures that enforce human law, social hierarchies, and the pursuit of wealth and power. Morrison’s conflation of anarchist principles with the Greco-Roman philosophy of Cynicism, painted a glossy black and situated in juxtaposition to Lichtenstein’s “JVSTITIA,” figures as a strong and persistent countercultural shadow of mainstream, political orders.

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Artur Heras by Jordan Lemoine

Artur Heras was born in València in 1945 and studied at the School of Fine Arts San Carlos, Valencia. In the 1960s Heras became associated with two other artists working in Valencia at the time–Manuel Boix and Rafael Armengol–and with the Spanish Narrative Figuration movement, which was in many ways the European equivalent of America’s Pop Art movement. The two movements shared a similar aesthetic, as well as a mutual subject–the pop culture of contemporary society. Items, images and motifs of contemporary society were taken and used in new and often shocking contexts in order to criticize the beliefs, pleasures and the general conditions of the times. For Heras, this meant the Franco regime governing Spain at the time. With the rampant propaganda and censorship the regime utilized to control Franco’s public image in the media, Narrative Figuration made for an appropriate form to subvert the propaganda dominating the country’s media. The new connotations, or new “narratives” given to these pop cultural items would hopefully serve to propagate change in society through ironic commentary.

This is almost the reverse of what Alex Morrison is suggesting in his exhibition. Morrison is concerned with the ways in which counter-cultural movements are subsumed into the mainstream culture they revolt against. For example, the hippie caricature statuettes: the hippie was, in its time, a figure of social progression and cultural revolution, whereas now it is a pop-cultural artifact belonging to the mainstream culture as a gag, a joke, a Halloween costume (as is also suggested in Morrison’s video piece “We Dance On Your Grave”).

For Morrison, counter-culture becomes pop culture, and for Heras, pop culture becomes counter-culture. Morrison documents the tranquilization of revolt, Heras utilizes the tranquilizing entertainments of pop culture as tools for revolt.

The piece by Heras that Morrison has chosen to include within his exhibition is from a later period, which marked a change in both style and theme. It’s entitled Taller and was produced in 1980, post-dating both Franco and Narrive Figuration. The piece bears none of the attributes of either Pop Art or Narrative Figuration. It does away with mainstream forms and instead blends a variety of disparate elements and qualities. Bearing a relationship perhaps to Morrison’s architectural drawings, Taller depicts an isometric drawing of table and chairs, an elongated grid with measurements lightly marked, and the word “taller” written in coloured pencil and rather curiously, a thick wooden capital “T.” It seems to be more self-reflexive than Narrative Figuration, in that it deals with the questions of its own form as an art piece, and less with political and pop-cultural criticism.

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SFU Galleries New Publications!

We've had a really great response to our recent publications. Just a reminder that these are available for purchase through our website, at the Audain Gallery and other local bookstores. Find them here. 

Samuel Roy-Bois: Not a new world, just an old trick Edited by Melanie O'Brian

Co-published by SFU Galleries, Carleton University Art Gallery and Oakville Galleries, Samuel Roy-Bois: Not a new world, just an old trick includes essays by Adrian Blackwell and Kathleen Ritter that consider ideas and topics related to Roy-Bois’ 2013 work of the same name.

Regular price: $25

Negative Space: Orbiting Inner and Outer Experience Edited by Antonia Hirsch

Negative Space: Orbiting Inner and Outer Experience is the second in SFU Galleries Critical Reader Series. Edited by artist Antonia Hirsch, the book includes contributions, interviews and reproduced texts by Theodor Adorno, Lorna Brown, Daniel Colucciello Barber, Elena Filipovic, François Laruelle, Olaf Nicolai, Lisa Robertson, Ana Teixeira Pinto and Wolfgang Winkler.

Regular price: $15

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The Constructed Landscape: Arthur Erickson's Concrete by Trevor Boddy

On Saturday, December 5 at 1PM, Trevor Boddy will lead a walking tour of SFU's Burnaby campus architecture in relationship to Alex Morrison's exhibition Phantoms of a Utopian Will, on at SFU Gallery until December 11. The exhibition starts from the architectural and cultural histories of Arthur Erickson's Brutalist SFU campus. Morrison's analysis of architectural styles, the historical context of their development and the evolution of their use over time, raises questions not only about historical and social narratives, but also the aesthetics of cultural identification.

Trevor Boddy is a critic, curator, historian of architecture/urbanism, and consulting urban designer.

As a quick pre-read before the tour, attached is his essay The Constructed Landsace: Arthur Erickson’s Concrete .

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SFU Galleries in the News!

It has been a busy fall for SFU Galleries with Alex Morrison: Phantoms of a Utopian Will / Like Most Follies, More Than a Joke and More Than a Whim and Lili Reynaud-Dewar: My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard's Class), among our other public programming events. 

Here is just a few press pieces that we received in the past few months. 

The Ontario Association of Museums Award: Innovation in Collections-Based Exhibition for Samuel Roy-Bois: Not a new world, just an old trick - http://oaag.org/awards/

Image: Samuel Roy-Bois “Not a new world, just an old trick” installation view, SFU Gallery, 2013. Photo: Blaine Campbell.

Art Forum Critics Pick: Alex Morrison: Phantoms of a Utopian Will / Like Most Follies, More Than a Joke and More Than a Whim http://artforum.com/picks/id=55613

Image: Alex Morrison “Phantoms of a Utopian Will / Like Most Follies, More Than a Joke and More Than a Whim” installation view, SFU Gallery, 2015. Photo: Blaine Campbell.

Canadian Art Review: Black Mirror: Image and Reality in the Work of Antonia Hirsch - http://canadianart.ca/reviews/black-mirror-image-and-reality-in-the-work-of-antonia-hirsch/

Image: Antonia Hirsch, “Negative Space” (installation view), 2015. Image curtesy Gallery TPW. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid. 

Mousse Magazine: Lili Reynaud-Dewar “My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class)” at Audain Gallery, Vancouver - http://moussemagazine.it/lili-reynaud-dewar-my-epidemic-audain-gallery-vancouver-2015/

Image: Lili Reynaud-Dewar, “My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class)” installation views at Audain Gallery, Vancouver, 2015. Courtesy: the artist and Audain Gallery, Vancouver. Photo: Blaine Campbell.

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Something That Scares You: A Review of My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class) by Alexandra Best

Many of us who are post-secondary students today were born after the AIDS crisis of the 1980’s. What do we understand about the lived experience of this virus? The exhibition by French artist Lili Reynaud-Dewar, titled My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class), presented by SFU Galleries’ Audain Gallery, addresses the delicate personal and collective histories surrounding HIV/AIDS. Not only is My Epidemic an art exhibition, but the artist hosted a seminar of the same name with SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts students, including myself, to discuss this theme.

The Audain Gallery is situated on Hastings Street at the crossroads of the Downtown Eastside and downtown. For many of the residents of the neighbourhood, complex conditions of poverty, intravenous drug use and HIV infection are a reality. The large uncovered windows of the gallery expose every aspect of the exhibition to passersby. People who might not otherwise consider visiting the gallery can stop on the street and view the artwork. Through these windows, My Epidemic is indirectly exposed to people who may be directly affected by its sensitive subject matter.

Walking into My Epidemic, visitors are surrounded by white: white walls, white curtains, white bean bag chairs, white light pouring in from the large, open windows. It is both serene and expected in a gallery setting. The white monochrome is broken up by a violent red in the form of stains at the bottom of the curtains and quotes in red paint above. However, the red is not splattered like a crime scene, as one might expect. It has been soaked, absorbed, saturated. There is a definite feeling of time having lapsed. Similarly, HIV is not a sudden and violent illness, but a slow, creeping one. The use of fabric in the gallery makes the red feel human. Fabric is tactile, comforting, intimate. It surrounds us and touches our bodies at all times. Red brings to mind love, passion, sexual desire, blood, life, survival. These themes are represented in the unsettling and provocative quotes painted on the curtains:

...my disease is so contagious... a little peck on the cheek is enough to almost guarantee transmission / cruising is best done alone / I believe in exchanging bodily fluids, not wedding rings / I resent that over time friends slowly become pallbearers, waiting for death… Imagine what it would be to have a demonstration every time a lover or friend or stranger died of AIDS / by the act of gay emancipation, we sow the seeds of the destruction of gay identity...this is the great paradox: queer liberation eradicates queers… 

The quotes provoke a feeling of discomfort, even nausea, as the violence of lived experience is revealed. However, they also prompt thinking about taboo subjects. This thinking is further encouraged as you step forward into a circle of oddly-shaped beanbag chairs (some of the most comfortable and enticing chairs I have ever sat on), and encounter pile of books strewn in the middle. These books touch on many subjects surrounding HIV/AIDS, including homosexuality, political activism, barebacking, and sexual freedom versus monogamy. Some texts are historical accounts of laws passed surrounding HIV/AIDS, and some are fictional stories depicting personal accounts of gay experiences. Some books are the sources for the quotes on the curtains.

My Epidemic creates an environment that is immediately disturbing, but at the same time provides a space to explore these issues. Thinking and discussion was further encouraged in the SCA seminar, which took place every Friday and Saturday in October inside the gallery. In this seminar, Reynad-Dewar taught a syllabus that had been designed by Norwegian artist Bjarne Melgaard. This class was a type of performance, as it took place during gallery hours and was open to the public to witness. The class was also a dissemination, or ‘transmission’ of information. As someone whose knowledge on the subject of AIDS was previously limited to Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia, I found this seminar unsettling, and yet invaluable. The first time we picked up Guilllame Dustan’s In My Room and read aloud his detailed descriptions of sex acts, an uncomfortable pall fell over the room. I remember watching as the book and microphone was passed from student to student between chapters, and my heartbeat rising as it neared my turn. After reading aloud this subject matter in the first person, I realized that this is simply the experience of a man trying to live with HIV and retain his sexuality and humanity. These texts are so relatable and responsive. Through this seminar I learned the ways in which all kinds of different people learn to cope with this illness. In the books we read, some responded with political activism, some responded with anger and violence, some responded by embracing the virus to the extent of fetishizing it. The more I read, the more I felt comfortable understanding and embracing this subject. I think this is an understanding rarely available to my generation and I feel fortunate to embrace it moving forward in my artistic career.

The challenge of this subject matter is that it is never going to be discussed to its full potential and neatly resolved in a way that everyone will feel satisfied with. This exhibition cannot possibly answer or even address every question about HIV/AIDS. It does however act as an accessible platform through which to explore the issues. Stop by. Bring a friend or colleague. Relax in a beanbag chair. Pick up a book that scares you. Discuss.

Photos: Lili Reynaud-Dewar, My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class). SFU SCA Seminar with Alexandra Best, Kayla Elderton, Jorma Kujala, Siena Locher-Lo, Chris Mark, Emily Marston, Weifeng Tang, Cory Woodcock, Sitong Wu, Viki Wu, Nicholas Yu. Installation view, Audain Gallery, 2015. Photo: Blaine Campbell.

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The Intersection of Consumer Culture with Political and Natural Realities by Jordan Lemoine

In his current exhibition at SFU Gallery, Alex Morrison has selected a number of works from the SFU Art Collection, including a piece by pop artist James Rosenquist. The exhibition considers the subversion of counter culture by popular culture through the absorption of the former into the latter, and vice-versa. Rosenquist’s work (as well as the general pop art movement) naturally fits into this theme, as he appropriates the aesthetic of consumer advertisements for his own counter-cultural message.

Sketch For Forest Ranger (1968), a 24 x 20” piece constructed from two vinyl sheets mounted onto bars made from Plexiglas, was created as part of a portfolio of prints and editions produced by Leo Castelli in 1968. The university acquired 8 of the 10 works in this series in 1968, including pieces by Lee Bontecou, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Roy Lichtenstein, Larry Poons, Frank Stella and Robert Morris.

Image: Sketch For Forest Ranger, 1968, James Rosenquist

Sketch For Forest Ranger (1968) would seem to be related in name, construction and form to another larger piece by Rosenquist entitled Forest Ranger (1967). The word “sketch” which would seem to imply that the “sketch” is a prototype for the other work. However given that Sketch For Forest Ranger was produced a year later, the title may instead be referring to the smaller scale and simpler construction in relation to Forest Ranger; it is a “sketch” in the sense that it is a bare bones rendition of the complete work–an example, or a model.

Both works are hanging mobiles constructed from two clear plastic sheets. One of the sheets is cut down the center so that the second piece can slide within it to form a cross. When the mobile rotates, the piece presents either a single full image or two half-images. The bottom halves of both sheets are cut into thin, vertical strips, like tasseled curtains.

Image: Forest Ranger, 1967, James Rosenquist

In the larger iteration of Forest Ranger, an oversized saw, held by a hyper-realistic hand intersects an image of a military tank. The work is done to such a large scale that people are able to walk through the tasseled ends of plastic. In this way, the viewer of the work becomes an active part of it. The scale of Sketch for Forest Ranger is much too small to allow for the same interactivity, however the work still seems to invite tactile appreciation through its tasseled ends. This work also features different graphics: a swing, illustrated with the style and bright colours characteristic of the pop art aesthetic (reflecting, more particularly, Rosenquist’s style of mimicking advertisements) intersecting a more photorealistic depiction of what appears to be a stalk of celery, radishes and lettuce in a bed of ice, similar to what you might find in the produce department of a supermarket or at a buffet.

Rosenquist is known for his juxtaposition of multiple, meshed images within a single work to convey a critique or message. For example, President Elect (1960–61/1964) combines three images; John F. Kennedy, half a Chevrolet, and a stale slice of cake. Regarding this work, Rosenquist said: “The face was from Kennedy's campaign poster. I was very interested at that time in people who advertised themselves. Why did they put up an advertisement of themselves? So that was his face. And his promise was half a Chevrolet and a piece of stale cake.”

Image of President Elect, 1960-61/1964, James Rosenquist

Rosenquist associates presidential campaigns, and perhaps the presidential role, with consumerist bribes for the masses. He seems to say that Kennedy hopes to gain your vote by promising economic excess, but even a promise as superficial as that cannot be kept, as is made evident by the state of the cake and delivering only a portion of a car. Rosenquist, through his juxtaposition of unrelated images, creates a new meaning that directly attacks the state of democracy in a consumer, capitalist economy.

Applying the same method of analysis to Forest Ranger, a similar message can be read. The graphic of the tank is comparable to Kennedy’s face in President Elect for their political nature (as the US was engaged in the Vietnam War at the time of the work’s’ production), and the graphic of the saw is comparable to the Chevrolet or slice of cake because they both reflect an element of American consumerist culture. In both works, consumerism and pop culture intersect, both literally and figuratively, with broader social and political currents.

Sketch For Forest Ranger lacks a politically charged image, however the theme of consumerism remains. What connects the two images in content is the idea of a consumable, domesticated nature. That is, an enjoyable aspect of nature (or the outdoors), is converted into a consumerist product. The greens provided by the earth are claimed by consumerism and made a product no different than a car or handsaw in the image of produce; the enjoyment of the outdoors–wind, fresh air, etc.–is even converted into a product through the red swing, likely purchased at the same supermarket as the produce. Food and entertainment once naturally provided have becomes toys of consumer society: nature is now a product too.

The meaning of the images is only a partial interpretation of the work, as the physical construction is elaborate in itself. The tactility of the work’s construction, and the dynamism of its form and rotation as a mobile, lures the viewer into having an active relationship with it. The work is not a static, unchanging object, but one that shifts and evolves. In tracing that shift, that evolution, the viewer’s relationship to the work evolves as well, and the viewer must constantly call that relationship into question, and reevaluate the meaning. Sketch For Forest Ranger, in its emphasis on form and material, creates a physical relationship to the viewer in addition to the relationship it creates in the cultural implications of its images.

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Poster Archive: 2. Blue by Adriana Lademann

It is raining for the first time in weeks. Outside the gallery, a fog sets and I am reminded that we are in a rainforest. Days like these are perfect for reflection, so for your enjoyment, here are this week’s selections.

My first selection is “Next Cloud, Please” from a solo exhibition of T.D.C Seghi, in the fall of 1970. The only person I could find under that name is a painter from Chicago, who now goes by Tom Seghi. His work consists mostly of fruits - apples, two apples, two apples and a paintbrush.

“People often ask me, “Aren’t you getting tires of painting pears and apples?” My only response is “No, I feel like I’ve just begun.” – Tom Seghi

There are also a variety of cloud paintings, including my personal favorite “Last night I saw some clouds.” There are no records of this exhibition on his website, however. This exhibition comes only one year after receiving his MFA in printmaking and painting from the Art Institute of Chicago. Tom has since passed away.

Next up is a poster for “The Simon Fraser University Dance Workshops In Concert.” There are no dates except that it happened in March. The details of this poster are really fantastic. The white layer is a matt finish, orange semi-gloss all the way up to the green, which is super glossy. When I run my finger over the poster, I can feel the layers. SFU MFA student Emiliano Sepulveda would describe this poster as sensuous. And indeed the bodies are layered upon each other, impossible to tell where one stops and one begins.

The last selection is “Contemporary Chinese Paintings: East-West.” This exhibition ran from October 5-30th 1987. According to Western scholars, the Cultural Revolution in the late 70’s exposed Chinese artists to Western art history and arguably  marks the beginning of contemporary art in China. This is strongly opposed by Chinese historians, arguing that Eastern philosophies approached art making in a different matter, whether it was acknowledged by the west or not.

During the 1980s, there was a movement of Chinese artists interested in the Surreal. The painting in the poster is one of a flock of white cranes flying into the sun. The white crane is a classic symbol in Chinese culture and stands for longevity and immortality. This painting also reminds me of Icarus and his son flying too close to the sun, as his wings melt away.

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Projections at the Perel

On the busy, but warm and clear, evening of Friday, September 11, Vancouver’s artist run centres celebrated the second evening of SWARM16, and the Audain Gallery opened the SFU MFA Graduating Exhibition featuring Lucien Durey, Curtis Grahauer and Jaime Williams. Tied into these events, a significant site in the history of Vancouver’s artist run culture and visual arts studies at SFU was highlighted during two hours of artist performances and video projections.

Just after 8pm a small crowd gathered as SFU alumna Casey Wei climbed a bench in front of the Woodward’s building West Hastings street entrance to perform in front of HAIR (2015), a text-based work referencing an earlier Hastings Street project by Ken Lum. Casey’s work was projected from the windows of 112 West Hastings street, the former Perel Building, an address that once housed SFU visual art department studios as well as incarnations of the Or Gallery, Artspeak and the now defunct Perel Gallery.

Casey’s guitar riffs floated up Hastings Street beyond the output of her smoke machine and drew the curious in.

By 8:30pm the images flickering across the Perel building’s windows switched to the film noir scenes and documents that SFU alumna Cindy Mochizuki edited into a murder mystery. The audience pulled in closer to hear her dialogue about memory that addressed the events of the WWII-era internment of Japanese Canadians in Hastings Park. This site was known as a ‘Manning Pool’ and Cindy’s work Wake (2006) evoked this in black and white montages.

The crowd shifted. Some moved on and others arrived to watch successive screenings of Wake and a second performance of HAIR. Then everything ended just before 10pm and less than an hour later, the street resumed its regular Friday night rhythms.

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Alex Morrison: Artist Talk and Bus Tour

Images from the amazing bus tour we had with Alex Morrison to his shows at SFU Gallery and the Burnaby Art Gallery last Saturday. We heard from Alex, thought about the contexts of SFU and the BAG (Arcadia, Brutalism, Arts and Crafts, Post-modern aesthetics and politics), and had a great turnout.

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Rain or Shine Saturdays #1: Listening from One Place to Another

On a cloudy but warm afternoon in July about 20 people met at the Audain Gallery where they joined Jenni Schine and Russell Wallace on a guided sound walk. 

For about an hour our group silently wound its way through SFU and the Woodward’s complex, along Pender, East Hastings and 40+ stories above the city at 128 West Cordova Street.

Jenni gave a brief introduction to soundwalks and active listening. Russell shared some of his personal observations and recollections about growing up around East Hastings Street. He pointed out the link between the development of the neighbourhoods encompassing Hastings and Pender Streets and Vancouver’s Chinese and First Nations communities who established close commercial and social connections to thrive despite the discrimination that both groups faced. We were asked to think about where we encountered various categories of sounds, including natural sounds and urban sounds. And then we quietly set off.

Fountains, staircases, elevators, glass overpasses, record shops, alleyways, pianos, walled gardens and rooftop lookouts….

At the end of the walk while overlooking the city, Russell described how the role of sound and vibrations in Coast Salish cosmology establishes that power flows upwards from below and could not be interrupted by the layers of concrete and glass that we found ourselves standing on. Our discussion then turned to the ways that the afternoon’s shifting soundscapes marked both our passage through place and the passage of place through time.