Western Canadian Art Projects and Residencies

For November 27th.

Last class as part of an overview of Modernism in Canada, we got an overview of the Regina School of Art's Emma Lake workshops. All this made me dream about artist residencies in general, and about life after school. As well, it made me think of art in the prairies that has countered and responded to its strong modernist movement in the 60's. I'll just touch onto each briefly. Dreams, dreams, dreams:

About art in the prairies that is not modern art, there is certainly M:ST, the Mountain Standard Time Performative Art Festival. The festival is biennial and happens in the Southern Alberta region. I definitely want to go there sometime, preferably at the next one, perhaps as a participant.

Performance at M:ST by Les Fermiere Obsedees.

When it comes to artist residencies in general, I've been getting plenty of talkin' to about them, and have been gladly taking it all in. I understand that for my kind of art, they are the most conducive and productive path. I've also been receiving plenty of emails from Akimbo lately such as one accompanied by the photo above. In this call for applications, the Banff Centre looks for artists and their projects for a Thematic Residency. The project that caught my attention was the one called Society is a Workshop, one to explore mutual education, collaboration and communal living.

Olivia Plender, Google Office, architectural installation (detail), 2010. Taipei Biennial, Taipei Fine Arts Museum

I've been paying attention to these things since meeting artist Scott Rogers in 2010, an artist having studied at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary who comes to Struts Gallery every now and then. More specifically, I have been most interested in his participation and creation of the Arbourg Lake Sghool on projects like Harvest (the first, second and third). With Harvest, the Arbourg Lake Sghool ripped up their suburbia lawns and planted crops of barley to harvest in the fall. Doing so, they violated regional bi-laws concerning how tall one's lawn can grow. The argument for the initial existence of this law is mostly of socioeconomic concern: Lawns that are "too long" are assumed to be unaesthetic and the result of neglect, reflecting badly on the neighborhood, making a property look "cheaper". Put shortly, the judgement in many ways is that a tall lawn is anti-social. However, the Arbourg Lake Sghool's long locks proved to be quite the contrary: At every step of the way but most of all at harvesting time, the unusual suburbian activity wiggled neighbors out of their living rooms and basements and into the street, many lending a hand to the folks from the ALS... and people who had lived on the same street since years met each other! And I hope municipal planners rethought their rules, since they obviously didn't account for people having ideas of better things to plant in their yards than grass. Oh, and they made beer with the barley. Shouldn't every happy story end this way?

Oh, great Canadian prairies. Here's some barley.

In the same patchwork of thought, I recently saw this TEDtalk by Dave Eggers. A condensed version is below. In it he talks about him and a group of writers setting up a tutoring program in their publishing studio. In the midst of it, they also ended up opening a pirate supply store for logistic reasons. Never thought you'd hear that sentence did you? Anyway the whole thing turned out to be crazily original and playfully successful. The kids loved being connected to the real-world application of their studies (they were tutored English) and they in turn invigorated an artistic community. Learning happens best when applied and socially motivated.

Anywho, this all goes to say how much I appreciate and recognize the role of community and connection in learning. So much of the time, doing "something meaningful" is actually just being engaged in the conversation, free of judgements, or at least adequately flexible so as to argue the judgements we strive to keep as individuals and communities. Thanks for reading.