Introduction

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good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us for the fifth artist conversation organized as part of the programming to

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complement the exhibition of the 2020 governor general awards and visual and media arts

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currently installed at the art gallery of alberta my name is catherine croston and i’m the executive director and chief

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curator of the aga i would like to begin by acknowledging that we are hosting the exhibition and this webinar from 3d6 territory

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and region 4 of the metis nation of alberta we acknowledge this as the traditional ancestral home of the

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nihiwak kri anishnabe soto nisitappi blackfoot nakota sioux dene and metis

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peoples and we also acknowledge the many indigenous first nations and inuit people who make alberta their home today

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we recognize that this acknowledgement is just one small recognition of the work we need to do to address and reverse the ongoing

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impacts of colonization the governor general’s award in visual and media arts is a lifetime achievement

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award that recognizes an artist’s career body of work and contribution to the visual arts media arts and fine

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craft in canada in 2020 eight honor artists were honored for their exceptional careers and

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lifetime achievements the 2020 winners are deanna bowen dana claxton ruth cut hand

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michael fernandez jorge lozano lorsa ken lom anatorma and zainab virgi this afternoon

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we are very pleased to welcome ken lum ken lum is an internationally recognized artist having participated in numerous

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important exhibitions such as documenta the venice finale the sao paulo biennial

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binal and the whitney biennial a long-time professor he is currently the chair of fine arts at the university of

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pennsylvania’s weizmann school of design in philadelphia ken lam is co-founder and founding

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editor of the yishu journal of contemporary chinese art he is a prolific writer and has given

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keynote addresses at the 2020 markham public art conference in marcom ontario the 2020 stick team ddsm worth

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conference in amsterdam the 2010 world museum conference in shanghai the 2006 biennale of sydney in sydney

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australia and the university’s university’s art association of canada in 1997.

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since the mid-1990s lum has worked on numerous major permanent public art commissions including for the cities of vienna

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rotterdam st louis lydon utrecht toronto and vancouver a book of his writings titled everything

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is relevant writings on art and life 1991-2018 was published in 2020 by concordia

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university press more recently he has completed a feature-length movie screenplay dealing with chinese contract laborers

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in the immediate post-civil war era lum also has a curatorial record including co-curating

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shanghai modern 1919-1945 the shanghai biennale is beyond biennial

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number seven in the sharjah biennale seven in sharjah united arab emirates and monument lab creative speculations

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for philadelphia he was project manager for the oakwe and mazor curated exhibition

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the short century independence and liberation movements in africa 1945-1994 london is also the co-founder

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and chief curatorial advisor to monument lab a public art and history collective founded in philadelphia

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this afternoon ken lum is in conversation with william wood william wood is an art historian and

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critic he holds a doctorate from the university of sussex and has taught at universities and colleges in england british columbia

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ontario and alberta his research has focused on contemporary art and its display the history of conceptual and minimal

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art of the 1960s and 1970s aesthetics and cultural criticism since

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1984 what has published on recent art in journals anthologies and exhibition catalogs

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as well as holding editorial positions with c magazine public vanguard parachute and magazine

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woods research and writing has been supported by grants from the canada council the ontario arts council the henry moore foundation the social

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sciences and humanities research council of canada and the ubc hampton research fund wood

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was a research fellow at the national gallery of canada in ottawa in both 1993 and 2007

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and in 2002 he was awarded the inco award for curatorial writing from the ontario association of art

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galleries before i turn things over to our speakers just a few notes ken and bill will speak for about 60

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minutes following which we will answer questions please enter any questions that you have using the chat function

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i would also like to take this opportunity to thank epcor who support aga online programming through their

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heart and soul fund and also the canada council for the arts for their support of the governor general awards and the exhibition at the

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aga please join me now in welcoming ken lum and william wood

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thank you catherine it’s great to see you ken hey good to see you bill long time yeah

The Governor Generals Award

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um i want to start with the talking about the prize itself i mean you’ve received several

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recognitions in terms of prizes from the netitian foundation the gershon iscovitz

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foundation and things like that but this comes directly from the federal government

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i mean i know you’re already a member of the order of canada but what does this mean for you

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well it me it’s it’s an honor to be uh recognized as a as a

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an artist worthy of the governor general’s uh award um it’s as simple as i mean it doesn’t it

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doesn’t change me in any way um and it doesn’t um but you know it’s it’s nice to have uh you know no i

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think that’s great i also think i mean don’t you think it’s uh a sign of changing times that

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of the cohort that you have with several black indigenous people color

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immigrants well i mean possibly but then i i’ve

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been working like as an artist now 40 years and uh if you look at my cv it’s got a lot

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of entries in it so you know i’ve i uh no it’s not that i just mean do you think that it’s a sign

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of as i say of changing attitudes towards the type of recognition uh well i i hope so but i mean i i know

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not answer that because i’m i am an artist of color and and um but was that one of the factors

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in it i have no idea oh i don’t i’m not trying to i’m not trying to integrate that i just meant that

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um i’m very interested in that question right i wouldn’t have co-founded monument lab if i hadn’t

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and obviously uh well maybe not so obviously to people who aren’t familiar with my work i’ve been interested in the

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question of uh identity formation uh you know subject positions uh how

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uh how you know negotiations of the self from another perspective into

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communities and other groups and so on that’s been uh almost a light motif of my work since

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the very beginning yeah and we’ll get around to that i also i was in reading your book

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i was uh which is very good i was uh struck by you talking about

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um art being an aspect of self-definition that seemed

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very interesting and and kind of counter-intuitive given some of the uh non-subjective aspects of your life

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well i i mean it in terms i guess i meant it in a very philosophical sense because

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you know you as an artist you can’t always control the path you’re on you know you can’t control whether a

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gallery drops you in all the kind of prosaic aspects of of being in the art system right and also the art system itself can

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is not something and i’ve i wrote about this extensively in my book where many moments where i really had

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serious doubts whether i could continue on as an artist precisely because it was so

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uh linked identified with the art system so that i had to uh try to find uh you know uh the

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peripheries of the art system you might say and and to re reinvigorate my my my love

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of art in the first place and so i went i guess i uh what i meant by

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uh that was a philosophical uh path as an artist i of course you try to

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make good work you know i try to make good work all the time but some some works i have to go

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through maybe not so good works in the opinion of others to get to better works and um i like to think of uh my work

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as an earth as something as a kind of totality as opposed to you know what what was the last hit i

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did in terms of um in terms of an exhibition you know and which is which i would say is probably

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a little bit counterintuitive to the what to the kind of business side of um of how art is directed

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and so on so but it’s kind of um but by taking this kind of philosophical

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position i’ve i’ve uh i’ve found a new purpose for art and that’s why i’ve kind of

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not so much deviated but kind of extended myself and all kinds of other roles was still within the larger realm of art

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think that’s interesting also i mean you’re talking about the business side of art um in the sense that it’s something that

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art and language spoke about is that people artists don’t make works anymore they make exhibitions

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and i think that and as you say i mean that’s one of the ways that and you’ve very much worked in serial

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fashion right um yeah then well well they do both right but

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because you can also make you know spectacular iconic works which

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is which also has its negative aspects the pursuit of something iconic the pursuit of something spectacular

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which more often than not requires uh a lot of monetization in terms of its production

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so like that can also be a another good thing as well that’s true so do you want to look at

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some slides sure okay uh helen so i thought we’d bring in this early

Identity

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work right she’s a gg winner by the way i know that’s exactly why i brought her in this is zainab zergy and it’s

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and it’s backwards by the way this is what came off the slide with us off the site so i apologize for that i

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haven’t seen it for a long time but um it’s very i mean this is

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a work about identity in a strange way right because it’s a corporate type logo

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it looks i think sort of like what canada trust uses it was it was down the trust logo yeah and this

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doesn’t exist anymore yeah it’s td canada trust now but um

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but the idea of combining this very flattering um studio portrait

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well very uh conforming i would say i don’t know it’s firing but it’s very

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yeah that’s right um and this sort of corporate identity and the individual identity

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sort of being i’m not sure if you’d say they’re matched up against each other or well i think they’re brutally

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abundant up to each other sure okay because some of the other ones like the one of

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ed gibson that was kind of friendly you know even though it was based on the cp i believe logo at the time

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um you know demko uh temco capitals okay company but also i mean the

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media i mean and i think this is interesting is that um in our one of our previous

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conversations you said uh of your student work which i don’t really want to go into but you

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said i was working out the sort of typical minimal conceptualist framework

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of the immediate past because i mean conceptual art was maybe dying when you came into art

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school um in many ways i’m still working it out i mean i think i think those lessons

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an artist can draw from the avant-garde movement of america and also europe are still not totally

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resolved and and but also they provide a kind of fecundity of um possible procedures for for making art

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right it it it has become in its kind of neo-conceptual form a kind of linger function for that

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permits a kind of globalized language of art and and thus uh there’s a there’s a kind

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of uh you know transmissibility in terms of uh artists from all all corners of the

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world make art and and be legible no and i also i mean

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i know we didn’t teach together but we did studio crits together at ubc and we saw

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our students doing exactly that right so running through the motions yeah but in my case in an interesting

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way that’s not a negative thing no no but in my case i was you know i

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i didn’t i i didn’t i didn’t go into art until my last year

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undergraduate right and so i didn’t know anything about art and and i was so excited that

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i felt i had to know as much as possible i was first of all shocked by the uh by the claims of art right

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performance art male art all this kind of these forms of art which i

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i couldn’t believe uh i thought it was a bit of a ruse or something right because i always had some ability to draw and

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because i was a florian illustrator for the bc government and um and then i meet met all these colleagues

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and i thought well you can’t draw why are you even trying to be a mother it doesn’t make any sense

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i can draw a horse but then i realized there was a there’s a logic to to the kind of uh what i

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thought was the kind of irrationality i think it’s also interesting that um out of that period

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and in many ways for a long aspects of your career you followed

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i guess robert smithson talked about as a post studio practice um and i know that people like smithson

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and dan graham and joseph kasooth are all very important to you as models i guess um

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well i mean i wouldn’t say i was totally post studio i did i did have long periods of studio and where i actually

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made work i always made drawings you know i i made a lot of drawings one day i’m going to show them

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like smithsonian he also did yeah he was he was like jimmy hendrix he never yeah

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huge after he passed away right and so on so i have a lot of drawings um so i never it was never entirely like without

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the hand somewhere in there um but i often but also you know i to be

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honest i never had money for a long time so even having a studio was like just

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you know i was always working part-time time you know burger chef uh i forget uh computer

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something as the uh you know this summer name job and i had all kinds of jobs like that so and

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i had that from very young on so you know and and then um yeah it was just it was just

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uh not possible for me for long stretches to have a studio i get it

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but i mean also but i was thinking on the other hand um works like this or i’ll go to the

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next slide this are

Furniture

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maybe expensive to make in terms of the uh no i say logo and then and then this is

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uh a take on the ready-made the french sculpture and the idea that you’re you depend very

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much on standard two to three-dimensional uh

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media yeah i was extending the logic of how furnitures arranged within the kind of

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rational spaces of the domestic of of homes right but um you know i rented the furniture here

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from some company called grand tree ferns to rental and uh it took me about you know i was

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working part-time and saving up i think it was only i mean only but you know because the dollars changed obviously but

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for me it was expensive just to make this piece just to rent yeah just to wrap this up

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and no one liked it everyone hated it well i remember uh the first show i think i saw of yours was the yyzet in

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toronto where if i remember correctly you had andy patton order the furniture over

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the phone yeah it was kind of a take on um the telephone paintings by maholinage

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right and then i have a very nasty review i won’t mention the name in uh c magazine or one of them i know i published that

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and um okay well no i didn’t rick rhodes you were right he was a publisher

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i mean people just uh i actually and you know i mean i actually thought that elka town did

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i kind of well i was referring to something else oh another one yeah no no we don’t want

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to talk about that no i just made about the first about that piece about between affirmation and

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contempt or something like that she called it and i or we called it right and i thought that was yeah

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let me tell you a quick anecdote about this uh i you know i presented a a talk this is maybe 10 years ago now

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at a certain uh museum and the uh curator there is very quite

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well known i won’t mention his name i i should because i’ll just hint that there’s a scandal around him a few years ago

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and but um and uh afterwards at dinner he he he was staring at me and i and i looked

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over and he said i don’t believe you right and i said what don’t you believe well you know

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during your talk when you showed uh this work here he said you know you said that you you

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picked the furniture because uh your mother would have really loved to have this

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i i i can’t believe that because it’s clearly so ugly this is what this guy said oh god right

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and uh and i remember thinking it was like that was like one more uh you know microaggression but one more

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moment where i went okay this is a lesson in terms of being being an artisan in the art world

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with its demographics and you know taste and so which which is often under spoken about well that’s what’s

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funny about i mean just thinking about the work with zainab and this work um

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how class is an important aspect of your work and continues to be in many ways

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class and region yeah um probably more authentically than before before me perhaps i betrayed

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my class by becoming bourgeois petty bourgeoisie like i said it was a

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function of how much or how little money i had as well right yeah like somebody said well why

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didn’t you make those the cena pieces bigger why didn’t you make more of them because i couldn’t afford it you know

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but it is true that after i’m not sure of the date of this piece but um this is a 1980.

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wow okay so it’s that early i was thinking that uh later in the mid 80s um you moved into

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hi making furniture sculptures out of pretty high-end rosh wool and things like that right

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yeah and those and i mean and those had a totally different you know i don’t want to agree with that

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curator but there is something kitschy about this type of arrangement

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uh and that may be class based too yeah i think it’s class based right because

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if you i was more interested in the inventory of variation you might say

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according to class and taste which is endless well that’s what i’m more interested in than

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the idea of um you know uh uh you know kitsch or you know that’s that’s you know heinz steinbeck’s friend mine but

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you know it was always kind of kitschy you know like you had this you’re you know you go into a gallery and you’re actually swimming in terms of

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you know the the tide box on top of this lava lamp yeah and so on but i was never i was

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really interested in uh something that was authentically effective at least effective in my own life which i which

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inspired uh this work and that’s why i think i or i i just i hope that it it it uh fomented some

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degree of um of unease among the among viewers

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yeah i think as as one of them and also of course um your the arrangement here

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and this is kind of a standard type of arrangement i mean you did other things too but it’s totally closed off i mean it’s

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uh and you’ve taken i think elements particularly from robert morris’s minimal work

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and and use that with the combining with the ready-made and again it’s kind of mash

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up of yeah i was drawing i was drawing lessons from minimal art right but obvio but in a way

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kind of um um you know making it more explicit it

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kind of contained you know psychological language of that work which was always about closure and hermeticism and so on but in a way

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and then making that hermeticism explicit all right because you know the private home the private space is also hermetic

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in its own way as a unit of consumption as a unit of all kinds of private um compartment and so on so i was

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interested in all those questions i was also interested in the kind you know the kind of transitioning of space uh you know that works of art um

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uh uh uh you know uh moves through right the exhibition space the home

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space the collector’s space and so on sure and also i mean i was thinking in

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many ways that’s taking off from themes that were raised by dan graham in homes for america

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and um not and at the time not a well-known piece

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of writing compared to what it is now um yeah maybe but i was deeply influenced

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by at the time well no no that’s what i’m getting at is it i mean it was very very forward-looking in that sense

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and and in advancing your critique yeah i mean it’s funny now because i get you know i i’ve probably shown

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variations of furniture sculptures uh eight or nine times last year right

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because oh this is terrific i love it can you do a furniture work right now are you still following them um

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the rental model when you do that um no uh there i mean for example i did one

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that’s the swisses to new york last year and uh they just bought it on wayfair

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you know but it’s also kind of interesting because it means the labor that went into it was

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is is so little in terms of what you know our competitor received to make

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these these works you know yeah and i i think it’s i mean also this is a very much the post studio

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in the sense of a danvaven or a carl andre mode if you put together in the gallery if it

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doesn’t sell it goes back to the hardware store or the furniture store or something okay let’s move on let me see um

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is this next so i was thinking about these works that

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sort of come out of the portrait logos um but

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i mean are more declarative in some ways um and about people identifying with

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different figures like this little girl tracy bond meeting a mascot

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on on the street i’m pretty sure that’s granville street in vancouver i think it is yeah um

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and these seem like well how do you think about these are these in terms of kinds of moments of everyday

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life well yeah i guess because i was interested in the quotient and the

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prosaic as well um but uh you know they were obviously uh misonsen

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uh pictures but i was also interested in um uh you know the relationship between uh

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textuality and pictorialism right like the text itself as you know like when

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you have a caption to it to uh to an image that caption is is is only associative because of

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proximity but that caption doesn’t contain the image and neither does the image contain

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the text because it’s you can substitute the text a multitude of of captions for this image just as you

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can substitute a multitude of images for this text right so there’s a kind of uh oscillation in

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terms of the opening uh uh you know the kind of multivalent uh interpretive threads that it can be uh

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produced by by each side so i was interested in in that as well as as well but i was

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also interested in this kind of slightly um i don’t know it’s kind of slightly deadpan

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uh you know um psycho or maybe deadening uh kind of quality quality to to urban

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spaces and so i mean the ideal viewing position of this work is right at the right at the fissure between the two

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halves right and so on but the work itself specifically i drew from um drew from an experience

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uh you know i was just having a coffee at starbucks or somewhere on denman street and the a w wood bear waldo down the street

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all right and i was handing out coupons like free fries or free root beer i’m not sure and a little girl looked like goldilocks

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ran out and grabbed the uh root bear by the leg and said i love you a

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w root bear right that’s amazing yeah it was amazing and i went oh my god right

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because you know there and i remember thinking okay this is weird and why was it weird because of the kind

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of usurping of the enchanted you know a spree of the of the little

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girl towards the animal the bear she made light root beer but i don’t think she’s

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enchanted by root beer right so but and yet it became appropriated by for commercial ends and so that inspired

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this work and then you also i mean the the typeface typefaces

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um that you use are well how would you where did you find these and how did you

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what do you think of them um well i i actually more recently i have invented my own typeface later on

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uh um i may have done one here like pepe pig but the um tracy bond those ones are you know

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there’s a gazillion uh typefaces and uh i don’t know it’s just partly like oh that i think that works

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you know that doesn’t work and not move the meats over or the meats is bigger or the and so on well i guess also i mean they

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the same like the the portrait logos you’re getting kind of advertisement aspect into it these look

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like kind of typefaces you might find in the back pages of the newspapers yeah and i but i also was thinking of

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like the variations of uh fonts and um as cadences in speech you know like somehow with the

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color you know the chromatic key shifting somehow it’s like speech and uh it slows

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you down or speeds you up in terms of in terms of the duration you spend uh

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even reading five five words yeah and it’s either i mean it’s very clear here where the

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the two nouns between proper nouns um linked by the verb but the verb is the

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smallest sort of least you know kind of compressed in a way

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and anyway by the way i designed a pig costume too that’s especially made so that’s great

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okay let’s um so out of those somewhat later

Phone

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this is the mid 90s uh no uh 93 or

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93 okay 93 um what is that thing that she’s standing

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at i don’t recognize it it says telephone but it’s very weird

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it’s too big to be a phone yeah it’s really big yeah i’ll just carry it with her i don’t get it but okay

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that’s good too i like that but you made these these are um

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on canvas laminate photograph and canvas we’re not on canvas they’re on uh powder

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coated aluminum oh really okay um

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maybe that advertising mode into a kind of confessional or

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recording of a subject in this case in crisis they’re not old yeah i mean they’re monologic in this

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case right many of them are more monologic and so it became um i was interested in um uh you know uh

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you know limits of speech because you know like the lacanian rule is that you know we’re made by

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language right we’re produced by language and that’s the tragedy of uh of uh identity right and subjectivity is

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like can’t escape language and so on but but and yet you know the real which

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is out there beyond language is always there and so i was kind of interested in that in that uh that that space

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as well right and so because she’s losing her uh capacity to try to convince her

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i suppose her bull from um you know coming back to her um she she’s

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she’s losing her sense of selfhood so i was kind of interested in all these types of questions but i was

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also interested in you know you know these kind of matrix lines where you know there’s variations

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in terms of the text but you know you you you know there’s quite a number of words but it’s

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not but as soon as you see it you can apprehend that there aren’t a lot of different words right and so

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certain things get reinforced and because the kind of matrix quality of the text um you

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end up in a kind of circular moment or movement back between image and text and so on and uh one

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undergirds the other constantly so i was and as a way and i was also at the time

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i remember reading anne hollander of the governor it was a kind of interesting figure because she was the kind of amateur

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uh art historian she never actually you know has a phd or any i’m not even sure she

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had a graduate degree and she wrote this great book on what she called duration in dutch

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landscape painting and dutch uh paintings of little towns at night and the lighting and and so on was to

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enhance the sense of duration in front in front of painting and so i i kind of like i took that and was inspired by

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that and i thought well if this text keeps kind of repeating itself in variation then you always return back to her stuck

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in the phone booth and back in the phone booth yeah no that’s good i want to show another

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one of these just to make it clear that you’re not just dealing with crisis um and this is you know very

Building

31:33

in some ways one could say sentimental but um um bringing your dignity to the sort of

31:42

every day yeah i mean she’s i mean she’s a little girl and she’s smoking

31:48

so yeah which is probably not for not proper

31:54

and so on and and it’s a kind of what is it an institutional building it’s vaguely institutional and

32:00

and you know i was kind of interested in neoclassical space which is somewhat shallow like a proscenium and

32:06

then the heavy heaviness of the granite and the heaviness of the brick the masonry and

32:12

and even the slightly discomfortable way of sitting on steps all of that right while

32:18

she’s biting her time weighs down on her as a kind of you know allegory through the material through

32:25

the quotation of the materials in the building right and so she’s just wowing her time

32:32

yeah and it’s well it’s also interesting as you say about uh she’s smoking because there’s a book

32:39

called cigarettes are sublime by a guy called uh robert richard klein and it’s about

32:46

smoking and what it says is that smoking is the time to is a time to be out of it you know like you do it um

32:53

it’s just sort of a break from everything else one of my favorite rock bands is cigarettes after sex

33:03

now i want to turn to these works which again have this miroric aspect that you’ve actually

33:10

been quite fascinated by um

33:17

i do remember this picture being critiqued because it was an attractive gallery assistant that was looking at

33:22

the work um but that was in the battle days of the 80s now the photographs here are i i have

33:30

one of a man another gallery assistant as well nobody ever mentions that when i show people

33:37

no it just seemed i mean you know i knew i just meant it she was a friendly way she was like sean

33:42

landry’s wife so the artist john lander’s wife so yeah no i just meant it i just was raising it to

33:48

to raise say the stakes of some of the pettiness that particular time

33:53

and the photographs here i mean they’re stuck in a mirror the way that you might

33:58

do it in your home or school or something as a kind of memento they’re both anonymous and

34:08

poignant i’d put it that way right yeah and and they don’t necessarily come from one

34:13

source by the way you know right they in fact these pictures they all come from multiple sources

34:18

but as soon as you put them within the frame you read them as okay they are linked

34:24

within some cosmology of one person right one one family one individual whatever

34:31

and so on so i was interested in that but i was also but then and the images that the pictures are are clipped

34:37

permanently uh uh this in a special way underneath and they’re always at a 90 degrees they never

34:43

they’re never sloppy they never you know just kind got haphazardly placed there

34:49

believe it or not i was kind of interested in like uh referencing in my own way

34:55

some uh works by jose litzki and even michael snow these kind of monochromatic paintings with little you

35:01

know that it’s lots of of different color along the edge right so you know as a kind of just as a kind of

35:08

procedural lesson but not not you know having anything to do with it

35:13

it’s content of those artists and so on but i was also obviously i was interested in the camera

35:20

but uh but not um but making a kind of work that because the camera is nothing

35:26

but mirror chambers anyway right i’m talking about home camera and so

35:31

i was interested in um in doing that without um without actually taking a picture

35:38

right and when in in the exhibition you would see many of these works with uh portrait size uh

35:44

mirrors with a single image uh photograph and um and of course you see yourself uh you know it’s

35:51

recursive right you see yourself in the act of looking you see other people in the act of looking and it’s

35:57

like recursivity after recursivity yes and then they also i mean

36:02

this is photographed in a certain way so that it doesn’t catch the other ones but other the installation photographs you can see mirrors within mirrors

36:09

exactly which is quite quite a nice effect for an installation but this also i mean this takes you a

36:14

bit back to minimal art certainly dan graham’s used to mirrors yeah

36:22

he’s okay but he’s more outdoors and you know in in in relationship to glass

36:28

and yeah yeah yeah i’m just thinking about that idea but also of uh what so yeah capturing explorer

36:36

michelangelo

36:42

so from that i wanted to move on to one of my favorite pieces um which is this is the outside

36:49

which is the mirror maze signs of depression with 12 sides of

36:56

depression and this is in a documentary in 2002

37:01

yeah yeah and so inside there you get the maze effect

37:08

of mizona beam of being disoriented or running into things and here you can’t read the text but i

37:16

did bring on one of the features so here we have i have no friends

37:21

right and this is quite i mean i find this a remarkably effective piece um maybe it was because i suffered from

37:27

depression for a long time and also i was alone in castle which is not a fun thing to do

37:33

um but i think that this uh this is one of the first i guess even though it was

37:39

temporary public pieces that you did per se um

37:45

but it also referenced i mean after those sorts of monologic pieces then this references

37:51

aspects of mental health and also creates both uh as they say the kind of confusion of

37:57

being in a maze with these yeah feeling depressed or yeah alluding to them it was quite a

38:05

trying piece in some ways yeah i was well i’ve as i said i’ve gone through my own periods uh maybe i don’t

38:11

know it was depression i never went to one to a a specialist would say but

38:16

well you know periods of uh profound uh despair and and whatever for sustained periods and

38:23

so but also but i wasn’t i wasn’t even so specifically interested and i was kind

38:28

of interested in that kind of a symptom a despairs on a societal level or you

38:34

see it i mean i’m in america that’s like basically the you know the the mother roost of of of all that stuff

38:40

right so many people are just you know uh it

38:46

acting out in strange ways because there’s they have no avenue to properly express it except

38:53

maybe through you know killing people or something like that or or drugs or drugs and and so on

39:00

and so i was kind of really interested in kind of this kind of psychological

39:06

damage and psychological affliction that you know the system of social economy

39:11

political economy you know bestows on on people on a very massive level right you know if you’re if you’re

39:18

poor you know you you may not even be clinically depressed because you would because you would never have time to be

39:23

depressed you’re just worried about you know to work dunkin donuts for shift

39:30

right so i was kind of interested in all these types of questions and and it is a kind of sub theme within

39:36

within my work i i did i don’t know showing them but i did like necrology series more recent works uh where i just

39:43

basically wrote uh kind of very uh florid uh obituaries of fictional figures and so on which i’m

39:50

showing uh soon at the philadelphia museum of art and so on so um yeah i mean

39:56

and even you know if you go back to that earlier uh one of the uh young woman in the uh phone booth it’s it’s a kind of

40:03

desperation right it’s a kind of you know if if you leave me i’m finished and so and so i guess and then death

40:10

have to say you know finality founder thought the echological

40:16

has always been um a subset uh sub theme yeah yeah that i’ve treated my

40:21

work on a very uh on off on many levels someone said how many works on death would be that i said one or two and i i counted it it

40:29

was like close to ten no well if you count these necrologies just close this even more yeah

40:36

um now i mean here’s one of your

East Fan Monument

40:42

permanent or mostly permanent unless they’re are they still talking about moving it

40:47

i have no idea no one’s communicated with me i know that they’re building a building in front of it but

40:54

yeah but this is the east fan monumentees fan um east vancouver yeah east vancouver

41:01

and someone said actually said uh what is evan street

41:08

that’s pretty good but this was i’m i grew up on the west side uh near

41:14

denmark park it shows it shows the riley park boys would come

41:20

and put this all over the community center in the park right and when there were basketball games at point grey

41:26

high where i went then do you see it the next day right stuff like that so really what’s the mark and i mean although

41:31

people say it’s a gang symbol which is kind of erroneous i think no i think some gangs probably did did adopt

41:37

definitely the gang and it was larger than the gang it was it wasn’t because of the gang

41:42

either yeah i think it i think it had something to do with the kind of catholic uh immigrant populations

41:48

in east vancouver at that time with the cross definitely yeah and and also and as he’s also wrote

41:56

about this you know it’s often followed with these fan rules right right right kind of a real strong assertion well

42:03

it’s uh it’s a it’s also ironic because they don’t rule oh yeah and yeah it’s the dublin tone

42:11

right like rules you you you you’re now you’re an east fan you live by our rules and it’s also a

42:18

matter of its faces west i’m correct yes it does so i mean it’s a it’s a kind of a it’s a property it’s a

42:25

dividing line on clark drive yeah between east and west yeah and and you know i’m pleased to say

42:32

that as soon as it went out it was embraced right yeah i was going to say it’s a very popular piece even though it’s

42:39

it um is unlikely let’s say is public art it doesn’t seem

42:45

to address things but then it’s become very popular and yeah as we say at least historically it really has

42:50

right because i think it taps into a sense of um beleaguered i won’t necessarily say

42:57

grievance but believer men uh on the part of a lot of working people

43:02

right or mostly uh you know residents on the east side more so than

43:07

the west side yeah and also i think um you know when this was going up was

43:14

a certain amount of gentrification of east van was happening and it’s only accelerated now so having

43:20

this kind of marker of that old yeah i mean people people kept saying to

43:26

me oh you’re it’s really about pride in that you’re just proud of uh growing up in these family and i’d say

43:33

i’d always say to them i would have rather have grown up in the west side

43:40

it would have been a lot easier you know well i like this as well because i mean

43:45

as i say it’s sophisticated but it’s also popular it’s not like uh off-putting yeah um

The Lower Mainland

43:53

now this is a temporary piece you did uh do you want to talk about this and

44:00

wow and this this has to deal with other another history of the lower mainland yeah it was it was

44:07

well it was during the uh mud flat uh days uh in the 60s and 70s and um it was it was during

44:15

the kind of uh tidal uh uh zone uh in north vancouver where a lot of people

44:21

uh including uh david strang of one of the founders of um of greenpeace

44:27

and tom burrell’s and uh lowry malcolm lowry right all three of

44:34

them their homes are were reproduced here to scale and um

44:40

along georgia street as part of that uh bag i’ve got what space is called insight i think off-site offsite outside and so inside

44:48

outside insight is uh is a show and uh but anyway so

44:53

i was kind of i was interested in um in recalling that moment not because it was

44:59

um i’m nostalgic for it because i was you know just a kid then but i was interested in in this possibility

45:06

of living otherwise right which was and the reason why they couldn’t get rid of

45:12

these mudflat homes for a long time was because it was unclear what was proper

45:20

uh borders proper to north vancouver right it was never formalized it was

45:25

never in terms of like it was up and so because you know it was intertidal the water came in the water went out and it

45:32

was kind of marshy right there was never no one actually said okay this is uh civic territory right and because of

45:40

that you had alternatives that eluded that kind of zoning because that zoning

45:46

didn’t exist and then the only reason why it eventually became raised

45:51

burnt down in fact was because um the municipality of north vancouver

45:58

including with deep cove and other municipalities formalized um language that said

46:04

water that extends out beyond the tidal area belongs to the city once that became

46:10

formalized it was like a put in terms of living otherwise but this uh the title is

46:18

shangri-la frank yeah from shangri-la right now because of the location in downtown

46:25

vancouver right next to the hotel yeah hotel and stuff like that so you were bringing the kind of as you

46:32

say the title the peripheral areas somehow uh memento of that

46:38

into the center also to right yeah right but as you well know bill i mean

46:44

people are giddy in terms of uh you know real estate rise and the kind of monetization is kind of

46:49

crystal city made out of money right crystal glass city and yeah i wanted to call up this moment

46:56

of you know where people didn’t seek that people were going okay we’re going to recycle we’re going to

47:02

uh you know live within our means where we’re going to salvage things and and so

47:07

on and also i mean very much bohemian lifestyle i mean yeah you know and

47:12

on anti-work sort of anti-cult corporate and so on yeah well you’re bringing that work

47:17

because they worked hard to build this right but it wasn’t it was a kind of anti-capitalist way

47:24

of defining uh and temporalizing work and especially about claiming a space

47:29

without it being property per se um no i think it’s very interesting because i mean it is

47:35

as you say very much about that specific real estate uh situation that’s still going on

47:42

there i mean and maybe oh well it must be changing now in the united states in some ways

47:47

people talking about um people moving out of the big cities because of covet

47:54

yeah i mean uh the hottest uh one of the hottest markets for uh homes is actually new northern new

48:01

jersey because so many new yorkers are just leaving right yeah more affordable than you know

48:06

hudson valley so and even philadelphia is is booming real estate the periphery of philadelphia

48:13

because you know you can take an amtrak train ten minutes from where i live i live in the suburbs and get off at

48:19

penn station within an hour and 10 minutes no that’s i mean i think that’s that’s

Walterdale Bridge

48:25

very interesting the idea both of the overheated market that this piece helped to represent and also um

48:34

it’s possible at least aggravation let’s put it that way something like that

48:40

um why i was also something mnemonic right because you know vancouver

48:46

especially uh you know don’t doesn’t believe in mnemonic aids you know they’d rather just forget or just kind

48:54

of bury it under money and and we’ll deal with it you know that’s very true um now i want to return

49:02

turn to edmonton now this is the walter dale bridge and you’re involved in a pretty

49:09

interesting unique as far as i know type of public art project where you

49:15

were part of the design team yeah yeah it was my idea to add to passerell

49:22

it’s a very i mean i i drive over a lot and it’s very very nice and certainly replaces

49:27

something that was pretty dreadful um but of course there’s

49:32

the part of that that is not completed this is a bridge in downtown edmonton over the north

49:37

saskatchewan river heading between one of the three or four connections between the south side of

49:43

the city and the north just for for people who may not know it but there’s also this which

49:51

you designed cast had a model made it had cast and

49:59

was too much you need the plaster the original plasterers for it uh i’m very small and then some other guy enlarged it and enlarged

50:06

it but i mean and this is was to be installed on either side of the bridge right

50:11

it was it was meant to be meant to be yeah intended it’s been it’s been

50:16

sitting in a uh in this kind of uh chain-link uh lot for

50:22

uh i think owned by the admitted arts council for many years yes i know and i mean i remember i asked

50:28

you about this a few years ago um where is it where is it because i know um

50:34

catherine croston who um was on the call earlier was on the public art board when it was

50:40

approved um now you that is a contentious piece of land right

50:49

contentious piece of land what do you mean where around the walterdale bridge um no no no the the

50:56

you know i i went through um you know vetting i went through community input uh including with uh

51:01

several uh first nations uh communities and that was um that was directed that i should meet

51:09

by the edmonton arts council that was part of the procedure and so on and um for whatever and then i didn’t

51:16

hear from them for a long time because partly because the bridge was delayed like three or four years yeah yeah and then um i get

51:22

this um email that said um you know after a long time saying uh you know uh you know

51:29

maybe uh maybe this is not the right time for this to be interpreted

51:35

uh wrongly as as colonial and so on and i said what is about coloniality

51:41

right it is it’s about it it’s called the last buffalo in the last buffalo hunt no no um the the buffalo and the buffalo

51:49

fur trader oh for trader okay yeah he’s he’s it’s actually the the fur traders actually

51:55

he’s sitting on uh buffalo pellets yeah it’s a famous picture right really at the apogee of um the

52:02

demise of the buffalo the near demise of the buffalo and um and i wanted to have

52:08

one side of the river and and the and the other one on the other side of the river and they’re very tall they’re like you

52:14

know 11 half feet to 13 feet tall and um and they’re looking at each other as you uh cross the passerallis as a

52:21

pedestrian and i wanted to speak about this dialectic can i still use that term or

52:26

that people could do well no no no no we’re not post marxist yet

52:32

okay i want to speak uh about this dialectic um about um you know

52:39

um one way of uh you know little of wisdom about how we should live

52:47

you know epitomized by the buffalo and so on and then the kind of rapacious you know business person

52:54

on the other side you know which is still the relationship we have colonizer and colonize

53:01

nature nature itself is also colonized and so what i thought that’s right yeah so i was interested in

53:06

that that question right and uh and that but you know in the judgment of the edmonton arts

53:13

council they say that they’ve talked to all kinds of groups and so on including first nations and

53:19

and uh it may be read as as uh as a kind of affirmation of

53:26

colonialism which i want i don’t know well what’s interesting is uh that

53:33

in the old uh royal alberta museum you would go in and there were huge bronze

53:38

statues and celebrating colonization spirit which is still really active here

53:45

and um i can’t i guess i just can’t imagine it’s pretty brutal

53:52

anyone ever done a kind of brutal depiction of of someone that was a buffalo killer on

53:57

mass for money right so is it about like i said earlier is it about

54:04

coloniality yeah it’s about that condition sure well being the real condition

54:10

that’s what it’s about right but i also found it interesting that with this and with this piece and there you are

54:17

charmingly um you know you’ve gone from i mean by the way i’m in the blue coat well

Retired Draft Force

54:25

yeah you’re not the horse um how you’ve gone from

54:30

as you say a kind of reliance on strategies from the neo

54:36

avant-garde of the 60s and 70s and with these two pieces you’ve returned you’ve turned two and in other

54:42

pieces you’ve turned to one of the most classic and conventional modes of monument

54:50

right yeah and and and if you look at kenny wiley and all these kind of american artists they’re all doing bronzes too

54:57

yeah i know i think right mark quinn and so on and so i i no i was uh but but you know

55:04

to be uh you know clear i’m working in the public realm which is which has different demands i’m

55:10

not working at you know uh you know some uh sculpture park you know i’m working in a context which

55:18

is very widely public right and so i it requires different registrations of accessibility

55:24

and legibility yeah i was going to say to make it intelligible and this too i

55:30

mean like the buffalo piece this is a kind of piece about colonialism yeah well it’s

55:37

about the kind of uh yeah it’s called the retired draft force and the last pull log what you don’t see is

55:43

maybe about the 10 meters behind is a is the is a log with a big chain that’s being

55:48

snapped off the yoke presumably uh somehow broke and and the horse is kind of in this improbable position of

55:55

sitting like a sentinel taking in the passing traffic which is uh king’s way in burnaby so i was

56:02

interested in this moment of um you know when kingsway was a very important uh agrarian uh you know

56:10

by a conduit for transporting of goods right and of course before that it was just it

56:16

was forced it was first nations and and so on so i was kind of interested in that transitional moment

56:22

yeah and this is also i mean i know something about horses from my partner and our daughter riding

56:29

horses don’t like to sit like this no they in fact they don’t sit like that and um you may see pictures of horses

56:36

sitting on on the internet but that’s only because the camera captured the horse on the way

56:41

from up yeah one way upward one all the way down way down yeah so i mean i think i think it’s quite an

56:47

interesting piece in that stasis as you say that legibility um

56:53

which not all public art addresses at all um

57:01

maybe this is time to talk a bit about monument lab sure um it’s a very interesting project

57:07

you want to describe what it is yeah monument lab started when i first moved to philadelphia in 2012 it’s

57:12

almost a decade there now it’s interesting monumental uh inventory that dotted the city there’s

57:20

over a thousand statues in philadelphia you know because philadelphia was founded in 1640s

57:26

or 47 something like that and what’s the most powerful city in the in the united states until

57:32

the early 19th century uh it was one of the most powerful new york already you know uh more powerful at

57:40

some point right in the 19th century but it was certainly very important right if you look at the philadelphia

57:46

story spencer tracy and kate hepburn you know it’s it’s basically that in new

57:51

york right and um and so uh but i was kind of interested in the

57:57

unevenness i guess uh in the system of representation i was interested in the questions of

58:03

well who gets represented who doesn’t get represented i happened when i first moved uh uh there with my family i i live very

58:10

near the uh uh home of uh billie holiday you know the great jazz singer really yeah

58:15

this beautiful voice and so i saw his little marker right oh this is billy holliday’s home

58:21

was born here and it’s kind of stuff philadelphia and so i went oh wow okay great right and then i

58:27

uh walked up to city hall not not that far away and i see this big statue of john wanamaker whom no one

58:34

would know but you know he was a department store uh business person who of the name of the

58:40

eponymous lawmakers department store and of course you know i’m not saying he didn’t deserve recognition i suppose i’m

58:47

saying billy holladay certainly did you know and it was that unevenness i was kind of interested in

58:53

that that sparked um a dialogue i had with a a professor i met

58:58

in urban studies at penn and uh he was teaching about this and and then

59:04

i said you know you know what i’ve always been interested in is doing a kind of exhibition uh called the negative history

59:10

exhibition and just about the negative history history that’s you know that should be should be better

59:16

known should be acknowledged should be voices that should be heated and has never been heated

59:22

and so on and um well it it it’s a long story but it the result

59:27

was monument lab and it’s uh and it’s become incredibly um gratifying

59:33

right because we’ve uh you know received a four million dollar uh melon foundation uh that’s great

59:39

right we are uh probably going to get uh i can’t i’m not supposed to say but it’s a million a quarter from another foundation and so

59:46

on and uh we’ve grown to uh maybe about 25 to 30 people it’s a collective and

59:52

and we’re doing all kinds of projects including in uh antwerp munich uh you know amsterdam

59:58

so across the pond it’s also incredibly prescient yeah we’ve been seeing the the

1:00:05

protests monuments and yeah and also i mean i don’t i’ve only been in philadelphia twice

1:00:12

but i was kind of struck by it and washington dc too as being quite southern in a way

1:00:21

yeah well the accents and the the accents and the some of the layouts of the streets and

1:00:27

things like that well philadelphia was just north of the mason-dixon line which was basically the

1:00:32

historical line uh dividing north and south and in fact if you cross the delaware river

1:00:37

into south jersey which is parallel with philadelphia they were they were on the side of confederates

1:00:43

right so it’s uh right and um yeah so you know like since october i’ve done 42

1:00:50

uh webinars right and probably about over 30 of them work was on around monuments and

1:00:57

including uh just you know disposing of confederate monuments and renaming projects and and so on

1:01:05

no i think it’s it’s a very interesting and um

1:01:11

nicely public revisionism you know it’s not just like oh no i’m always interested let’s change

1:01:17

the institution the museum yeah i’m always interested in reinventing myself you know i mean i think that’s all i’m

1:01:24

also interested in in personal reinvention right because you know like like the uh like the buddha says if you

1:01:30

do not change direction you may end up where you are heading right yes well talking about that

1:01:38

i mean i this was this only slide i could find from the early or gallery and it just happens to be your

1:01:44

work that you did you curate this yourself yeah of course did you think about it

1:01:52

i was running the space yeah yeah and so someone who writes a face like i thought

1:01:57

hey i got a right to show my people i was living in the back and upstairs yes and this was

1:02:03

in the ore gallery on franklin street before it received government funding it was

1:02:08

self-funded no funding in fact the canada council actually wrote to me uh thinking the

1:02:15

gracious of them i guess it was well we know so you’ve had this gallery now and and uh you know we’re really

1:02:21

interested and you know you can uh get funding for this and i said no thanks and they said what they said you can

1:02:28

apply for a grant you and i said i’m not interested you just have to that’s right they were confounded by that i was not interested

1:02:34

in any funding i funded it myself i i made the i mean there was it was a

1:02:40

for a short time a gallery uh for uh la juan and uh sarah laden had called the

1:02:45

courage of lassie’s band but i was the one that put in lights i made the space much more perfect

1:02:51

gallery-like the gray floor i was the person that did all that and then also had a real program

1:02:58

yeah and of course it did get started getting funding a few years later after it went

1:03:03

down historic yeah story of my life uh you know it’s like i’m not like manuel i i i told my

1:03:10

partner there paul farber said i can’t get my keep get i don’t have enough time and energy to

1:03:16

be so involved now i’m so successful they’ve received so much funding right

1:03:22

yeah but sure there’s a lot of administration you need to pay me and stuff

1:03:27

anyway i thought i’d bring this in because of your history in curating and also i believe

1:03:34

maybe i don’t remember you did a show in a shopping mall poco rococo in um

1:03:41

port coquitlam where you took youngest young school students students and to show

1:03:49

their work yeah from poco high school oh okay we already know high school and you showed other

1:03:55

professional artists working with artists from you know like uh what’s the name jim cummings and

1:04:00

remember bro brain eater leader yeah all the kind of artists i thought um not necessarily i liked the work i

1:04:06

liked him but that i thought had some relationship to to suburbia to high school kids no i

1:04:13

thought that is again a terribly prescient project now from that

1:04:21

i think uh we’re probably close to limit just just in case i think yeah we’ve just got a couple slides left but um

1:04:27

maybe just talk a bit about um not just the charger you know in 2005 where you were

1:04:34

the a co-curator and you write a beautiful diary about the

1:04:39

situation of being a curator and it reminded me of quatermark medina saying that curation is the um art of

1:04:47

compromise and i thought that’s a good thing and also um but you were

1:04:53

very involved well maybe it’s a compromise of art

1:05:00

in um you taught in places like in martinique

1:05:06

you travel to africa you worked with oakwood on an african show you did this to be an

1:05:12

owl and stuff like that so you’re part of that global i did a i organized a conference for the uh

1:05:18

havana biannual um and uh yeah i taught in china and hangzhou

1:05:24

and uh you know i lived i spent a lot of time in in um in sharjah for uh you know close to two

1:05:30

years um yeah i mean one of those one of the kind of cosmopolitan

1:05:38

art people of the arts i don’t know i don’t want to be and i

1:05:44

don’t mean that in that i grew up in strathcorner to you know i don’t know if i’m cosmopolitan right

1:05:50

but i meant in terms of this travel and uh collaboration and

1:05:57

um yeah you know the sort of and mostly on i would say on the good

1:06:02

side of exhibitions as opposed to the art fairs being the other side yeah um where you often decry the art world

1:06:10

in your book in the earth system as you say which you see is financial as opposed to call it

1:06:17

commercial um i hope it was more these places

1:06:23

places like the emirates and china are now very contentious

1:06:28

politically they were contentious at the time i mean the uh exploitation of especially you know uh dark skinned

1:06:36

people in in the uae is really terrible and you said i think in your diary you said that many

1:06:42

of the workers were from india is that right yeah from kerala which is in the south of india

1:06:47

oh yeah yeah yeah okay and i’m not a very and they have they have health care yeah no rights right but they were there

1:06:53

of course because uh you know the money they get there which is a fraction of what emiratis got

1:06:59

is still way more than they would get if they were in south india but their spouses could not be there

1:07:05

their children could not be there so they’re there for the duration of the multi-year contract

1:07:11

okay i just want to touch on that maybe someone else asks questions but i want these two publishing projects

1:07:19

you were the founding editor of issue the journal of contemporary chinese art

1:07:26

and you’ve just published this book everything is relevant writings on art and life now i

1:07:32

was looking at that subtitle and of course what did it come into my mind but someone i wouldn’t associate you with

1:07:39

which is only cap realm the blurring between art and life in his

1:07:44

his collected writings um i thought you’re going to say peter berger or something

1:07:50

oh the sublation of art life no i wasn’t thinking of that but anyway

1:07:55

um it’s i mean it’s interesting you did turn to writing mostly in the 90s

1:08:01

um i remember the first thing i read of yours was in the 1989 catalog from winnipeg with those

1:08:07

three sort of autobiographical pieces that really sort of reset certainly my ideas

1:08:13

about what you’re up to um and then you’re continuing on with this some uh

1:08:19

a quite good uh art or historical article on the raft of the

1:08:24

medusa by jericho um appreciations of

1:08:30

fellow artists um and then some a lot of uh discussion about

1:08:36

globalization and nationalism including quite a good essay on canadian nationalism

1:08:44

and uh cultural nationalism um

1:08:50

yeah it’s a big yes and i see also i mean you you talked at the beginning about the path

1:08:56

and so we can see here a path of sorts yeah it’s it’s a path in

1:09:02

paralysis cemetery in paris i thought

1:09:09

and the idea about with issue about going to in the 2000s turning towards writing uh

1:09:15

having a journal explicitly given over to in english to contemporary chinese art

1:09:24

but which you also write about and their education system and so on in a very interesting way um

1:09:31

now these are i kind of kind of parallel

1:09:37

your position but also as you say you record uh some moments of dissolution

1:09:44

um i remember actually being you being with you in paris in 1996 when you were teaching your day

1:09:51

call and um you were having i remember you were confessing saying you were having a rough time yeah

1:09:58

um and this is also when you started turning more to international projects i mean that would

1:10:04

be in paris for a year i mean that must have been great but i mean going to farther afield i’m actually in

1:10:09

paris two years but really okay but the yeah i mean

1:10:15

i wanted this i i was still interested in art at least the ideals of art right and um

1:10:21

and i was not in a good mental state at that time and uh

1:10:28

i wanted to recuperate something of uh what was it about art i liked and uh and so i

1:10:35

started asking myself uh questions about where else is there art is this all there is to art and um i

1:10:43

remember meeting oakley and wesler at that time in paris and uh he was like i had to buy him a

1:10:48

meal because he had no money his new guy and no one went to his talk right uh and uh i went to it was a lunch

1:10:56

hour talk and i want this guy’s amazing right and i remember

1:11:01

i wanted i said i i said to myself i need to know this guy and i need to be uh you know i need to work with this guy

1:11:09

you know as a it was more like a kind of lifesaver i saw something in him that made things

1:11:14

possible for me that’s great i think katherine’s going to come in with some questions but i

1:11:20

just want to finish with this which is kind of congratulations on this right the renaming of the vit of it uh

1:11:27

as the constitute melee yeah based on this piece yeah that’s a whole other story that’s a real honor i think

1:11:35

thanks as an anti-colonialist project as well so it keeps on themes that you’re

1:11:40

interested in hi catherine hi thank you both um

1:11:46

actually there are no questions in the chat so um okay

1:11:51

if you want to talk ken about the name the new naming of the wit bit with this that would be i think people

1:11:58

would be interested in that and bill you need to sit close to the camera because you’re in the dark now

1:12:03

i told you it’s going to get dark this happened only a few days ago the formalization of the name change because

1:12:09

the it was the formerly known as the victovit center for contemporary art uh was named

1:12:17

after not named after with david who is like uh which by the way means whiter than white

1:12:24

that was a colonial officer with the east uh dutch east india company and which was a

1:12:30

proponent of um you know transactions of bodies right slaves and so on and so a problematic figure but the

1:12:37

reason why uh it was named with david at that time was um

1:12:42

in 1990 was uh it was situated on with strat or

1:12:49

street and at that time this building uh was in a very somewhat

1:12:57

sketchy part of town quite isolated from downtown and now

1:13:02

it’s virtually the center of hipsterville there and and so on so you know because of the

1:13:08

kind of uh social reckoning uh that’s taking place worldwide

1:13:14

right uh blm and uh by park and and me too and so on um

1:13:20

you know they they had they did a search for a new name uh starting a process

1:13:26

started about three years ago and uh and then in the end they they said they called me and said we’d

1:13:31

like to call it the art muse or the kunst institute or the art institute nelly

1:13:37

right i said great and it’s because you know this work has been on the side of the museum since

1:13:44

the inaugural exhibition that was the inaugural exhibitor for the formerly known as with the center for contemporary art

1:13:50

and it was a billboard there was a there was a billboard frame there and they had this idea to um they had

1:13:56

this idea to uh you know advertise the show right and for whatever reasons i have no idea

1:14:01

i’m glad i did make that decision um they they said well we’d like to show like uh an image belly shaman you’ll

1:14:08

have your names and mom and dates of the show and so on and now accompany every show and i said

1:14:14

um how about just the work without my name without any other extraneous information and they said

1:14:21

sure so they put it up and then when my show came down two and a half months later they the billboard came down and then when

1:14:27

the billboard came down uh the width of it received a lot of

1:14:32

phone calls and even letters demanding it be put back

1:14:37

obviously i didn’t anticipate and then i received a phone call in vancouver and from one of the

1:14:44

officials not the curator one of the officials there and and and uh i said after a conversation i said why what’s going on

1:14:50

right i remember being stunned by and he said well the best uh reason uh

1:14:56

for the demand to put it back up is came from one woman who said every city needs a monument to people who hate

1:15:02

their jobs [Laughter] you know so it’s been up since and since

1:15:09

then it’s been hundreds and hundreds of images on flickr facebook page and

1:15:14

um you know it’s uh there’s a conference in terms of job dissatisfaction at harvard university a few years ago

1:15:20

and they they use this money they asked the rights for the image to as part of the poster and

1:15:26

it it’s taking on a life of its own so it’s great it’s now the melee art institute

1:15:32

that’s great so any questions yeah there is a question that just came in um the question is hi

1:15:39

ken i wonder your work is a straightforward response to racism and stereotypes of all races

1:15:47

for example your artist book speculations there is no place like home 2010

1:15:52

and coming soon and also some of the works in the portrait text series um

1:16:01

it’s a it’s a response to the uh to the fact that humanity is comprised of

1:16:06

many many different shades of color and and many differences in terms of gender and many other differences in

1:16:13

terms of whatever and so it’s a response to to that right but i but i am also also very

1:16:20

interested in the way in which uh you know certain imaginings of race

1:16:26

takes place and they become internalized become naturalized and they become even uh tropes so i’m interested in that

1:16:33

but i’m also but i’m not just interested in replaying that i’m interested in

1:16:39

challenging it upsetting it right so the way to upset that is to dislodge the fixity of those

1:16:47

tropes is to um is to you know throw doubt into uh your stereotypic forms

1:16:56

thank you uh there is no other there are a number of thanks but no other questions

1:17:05

so should we wrap it up yeah well with that i would just thank you very much ken yeah thank you

1:17:11

bill enjoyable thank you family yeah come to

1:17:16

philadelphia where it’s uh cold and uh two degrees celsius here

1:17:23

anyway on behalf of um the art gallery of alberta and all of our audience members thank you both

1:17:30

uh for being here today i want to give a shout out to serge gobold i can’t see his name there if he’s still there hi

1:17:35

sarish how are you and michael turner as well yeah michael

1:17:41

turner actually had a question that maybe i’ll convey to you

1:17:47

through the chat um yeah anyway again thank you both thank you very much

1:17:52

ken and thank you for um all that you are doing for artists for in canada and abroad and

1:18:00

it’s wonderful to have this opportunity to have you here uh speaking with us thank you so again thank you very much and congratulations

1:18:06

on the constitute mellie and also on the governor general’s award thank you cheers goodnight everybody

1:18:14

see you later

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