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[Music] [Applause]

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[Music] [Applause]

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[Music] [Applause] um and i think michelle is going to start us off

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i am going to start and it is a shame that we missed recording uh

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that nice sort of like walk down memory lane trying to figure out how we know each other

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um and uh uh for me it has been amazing to think back to

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meeting you as a really young artist in the 2000s and um to see where your work has gone and um

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to see your success and this sort of amazing new format that you’re you’re

0:50

working with these days and i wonder if you could talk about um your origins as an artist

0:58

and that that arc of how you started out and where your art has has come to at

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this point i i feel i’ve been reflecting on this recently actually and just how lucky i

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think i was to have so much support early on from like both uh people who

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were teaching me at uh u of t at mississauga like the sheridan uh program

1:20

um but then also like people in the arts community like bill huffman like did have this award that he would give

1:27

to like a young artist and that really like connected me to v tape because it was like i made a video that was put in

1:32

the hallway and it was just so well placed because i everyone who worked at ptape would like pass it every day and then they ended up

1:38

like picking up that piece and then you know just kind of was

1:43

really lucky to have people who just told me kind of that i was an artist

1:49

like i don’t think that at that point i really even believed in it myself like i didn’t

1:55

know that i wasn’t a person who was like i’m an artist from the beginning i think i was just doing things and then people

2:01

were like you’re an artist and i i think that as my practice has continued i feel

2:08

like i still in that in that space where i’m just doing stuff and then people are like oh you’re and

2:13

you’re doing a theater piece and i’m like oh it’s it’s a theater piece okay because like previously i was doing performance art and i would define it

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that way but it’s theater now okay and so it’s like i think that my work has always been

2:25

kind of interdisciplinary and kind of interested in these in these different things and have been very fortunate that

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people have kind of been like oh this is what we’re doing too or like that they’ve found um

2:38

connections to to the things that i’m interested in and you know from the very beginning it was working with found

2:45

objects and things that have been uh items that people have kind of

2:50

given away or lost in some way and and objects that are very mundane and and for me are interesting

2:58

because i think that they just represent the human experience in a way that i think i’ve said this before but like a

3:04

memoir or a journal does vary differently and does in a more self-conscious way

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versus these objects that i’m interested are kind of more accidental or

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yeah like an answering machine tape it represents the day-to-day the quaternion um

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aspect of being alive and and tries to you know through my work and looking at these things trying to understand and

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connect to to people who i really don’t know and who are strangers so i feel like that’s been kind of like the through line and

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there’s been a lot of tangents outside of that practice as well but that’s kind of where i started and i i

3:43

keep going back to that in some way

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wonder if you could um talk a little bit about uh sort of the the expansion of the format and when you

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present your work sort of moving from single channel video to such complex

4:05

presentations that you’re working with these days i think i mean for me it’s always

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i like the term artist because it’s so big and and i think a lot of my work it just

4:18

really starts with the the piece that i’m working with and then i’m i’m just trying to make something out of it so to kind of say i

4:25

want to make a movie or something and then find the piece that goes to that form never really made

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sense to me it was always like spent like my process so much as i realized

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and it takes such a long time i think for people to actually understand what it is that they’re doing until they’ve done it for several years and they’re

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like oh that’s my that’s my process but it really is spending a lot of time with this stuff before even like doing

4:48

anything with it and i think in that time of just looking at it over and over listening to

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it over and over um i i think it’s kind of this time of like listening to what it wants me to make of

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it in a way um and so like the the form of this work is always like a response

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to kind of what is inherently in the material or or what is like a good pair to bring out

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what the material is so like for this early work dan carter which i think we have an excerpt of for the students you

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know it was an audio recording it was an answering machine and it just made sense to me that the thing that i could add to

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that was video because the soundtrack was already there in in completion and that piece um was the

5:33

unedited answering machine and so that process is very similar in so many ways i think to say something bunny which is

5:40

using a found audio recording from the 1950s again like using the unedited

5:45

sound and then like adding these layers to contextualize that and frame it and

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like make that kind of you know this family who no one who’s attending the show knows and

5:57

aren’t celebrities there’s not nothing that’s inherently like interesting about them to a stranger but

6:05

to really through that process of listening and creating context make those people feel extremely significant

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to the audience members so it’s weird it’s like i think that those two projects even though they’re

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separated by like 10 years are actually quite similar in some ways um in

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process but different in in form i love this conversation so much and i

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love the like ongoing trouble of genre and the way in which in some ways the work tells

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you what it needs to be or how it needs to sound or what it needs to look like and you know we definitely reckon with

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genre wildly in the field school and i would be so curious when we reached out

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to you and said you know we’re putting together this feminist art field school and we’d love for you to be a featured artist did you have any immediate

6:50

reactions to the container of feminist art field school as a concept and did you find yourself immediately identified

6:57

or repelled by or curious about any of those categories of of engagement

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i think that for me i am okay with multiple categories on me and i think

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that that’s you know it’s like i i grew up mixed race i think that in some ways from a very early age i just

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was like oh i’m both things and neither and all that like it’s just that like the more categories that you put on me

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actually makes me feel more accepted by more people and like i think in some of

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the research that i’ve been doing this past summer about like my dad’s uh side

7:32

of the family’s history with japanese internment in canada have just been thinking so much about exclusion and

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belonging and so when people in invite me into something that that feels that doesn’t feel bad to

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me if if you if that if it’s some way that it’s a way to connect to that person i think labeling

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can often be inclusive um and that usually feels like

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like a good thing for me i think if labeling is you’re that and that’s when it kind of feels like okay why do you

8:05

think of me in in that way but i think that in this context i’m like please yes like and and how do you see and i also

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like to understand how people see it that way too and how people are labeling

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it as like as feminist which is great like it makes me feel really happy that

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that that the work’s labeled that way um and yeah again like you you make work

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and sometimes you’re just making it and it’s not until you have space from it too that you even understand what it’s doing or how other

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people see it um and i think because i started making work when i was like 20 21 i don’t think i even understood

8:44

kind of like the artistic references um that or other artists that were making work

8:50

that was similar that people would compare it to like i didn’t even um i wasn’t like i kind of knew cindy sherman

8:57

but like i didn’t really know her catalog of work and then you know as

9:02

people made reference to her work or like sophie tal i was like oh yeah i love it there is an

9:07

affinity but like i didn’t even know that that existed and i felt like so um excited to even that something that i

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made would even reference these people in a way that have been making

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this work for years and years and years before me [Music]

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i was um reading an article in moments about bridget moser yesterday and um

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the the writer was talking about a tendency to

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dismiss her work because it’s funny um and uh you know sort of talking about

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the difficulty that certain critics have of accepting humor in

9:52

serious art and as we were getting ready for this conversation with you you were you came

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to my mind as i was reading that article as well and i was also thinking about when i did

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see your work back in the 2000s and um you know i was

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a little more than 10 years out of graduate school where we kind of practiced a very sort of um

10:20

rigid feminism maybe as as feminist theory was being introduced

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to the art history department at york it was done so with with certain rules

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and one of one of the rules was um that

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uh in order to avoid objectifying women you didn’t

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depict women in art so there was a

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kind of tendency towards the the conceptual as a way to avoid this and i

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can remember being like very sort of uh

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what’s the word like almost destabilized by your work

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uh when i first saw it because of this rule that i had in my head um

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but also uh you know contrary to that how much

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i loved it like how funny and engaging and compelling your

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work was and um uh you know is that is that something that

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um you’ve thought about you know you’ve just talked about how at the time you were just making

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work and you weren’t even calling yourself an artist so i don’t know how um

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how conscious you were of of how you were sort of really shifting um the way

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uh women usually you were depicted in art um or uh and if you

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weren’t thinking about it at the time are you thinking about it now [Music]

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i think that um there it’s so interesting like just uh starting off in like the the question of

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humor and um i think humor is such a narrowing force and it’s

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so um it’s like you really find a niche in humor i find like i i feel like for me

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my closest friends the people that i connect to the most are people who share a similar sense of humor um but i think

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all of the people that i know we can all say the same thing is sad but we can’t always say the same thing is funny or we

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can always say the same thing as dramatic like i find that humor is actually um harder to find like a shared humor

12:49

with people there i don’t think that there’s things that are objectively funny that’s also it’s like things that are funny to one person is offensive to

12:56

another and like it’s so there’s so many um

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points on that scale for humor but you know i think that if you make work that’s like serious or political it’s

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kind of um often we all agree that it is that but humor is just so

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more it’s i think it’s challenging and i think that i really love when artists incorporate humor in their work because

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it is kind of saying like who are the people who find this this funny and that’s not everyone um

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but yeah i think that when i was making work and kind of putting my own body in the work i think

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that also i had kind of a naive uh idea of what it was to be an artist and like

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when you put the na the tag beside the work it usually has one name on it so i was like i guess i have to do everything

13:45

i have to play all the parts and i have to um i did have people help me and my family members were like you know

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setting up like panning the camera or like talking like my sister at the time i think uh was

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such a huge collaborator on the work and giving me like music references and watching edits in it and

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um all of these things were happening but i was really like this is my my piece so i

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i just need to be all of the characters and i think that that was for me a way to to solve that issue of um

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you know just thinking that art wasn’t necessarily a collaborative process at that time um and i feel like in the last

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10 10 15 years that’s totally changed and i i think i really don’t want to make work like that um

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without other people i think that i i’ve just realized you can make such different work if you’re

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really having a lot of conversations and engaging different questions which i think is the the biggest thing that

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collaborators bring into that process um is the the questions they ask you about

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about you know for say something bunny the one of the first conversations with the carpenter about making the set piece the

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table is like what do you want the texture to be like what do you want it to feel like to the hand and like and

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and i didn’t even think about like i never made objects in my work that were immediately

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engaged with with audiences it was often filmed like i would make props and stuff but it was all often like through a

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camera and a screen or something so it was so interesting to just like have these questions be asked for the first

15:22

time um i guess this is not really so much uh talking about like representation of the

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body but i think that i i didn’t have the same um i don’t think that i had understood that

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that same history of kind of removing the the artist female body from

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the the frame um i don’t think i have that role yet

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and i think in not having the rule you helped shift the rule because i mean i

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think ultimately what i’ve come to really appreciate about your work um

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uh and the the range of um examples that you shared

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with the class is that um you sort of occupy this

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this uh space of ambivalence that um

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uh in terms of um how

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uh in thinking about feminist

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ideas or ideologies um you have to think

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about desire and you have to think about um

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um what’s the word i’m looking for like there’s there’s uh

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you know your interest in music and fashion and

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crushes and all of the things that you would sort of like

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pretend didn’t exist if you were one of those rule-following scholars of

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feminism in the early 1990s like i was of course that has to

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be incorporated um if we’re going to be realistic in the way we’re talking about

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the world and um uh the way we relate to the world as

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as women um uh i’m not sure if this is leading to

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another question or if i’m just closing off the conversation um i don’t know

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anything else for you i think i mean i think i’ve been thinking so much about desire

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recently and um just it’s funny i was listening to this episode of the dig it’s a really great

17:48

podcast but um andrea longchu uh this amazing writer was just talking

17:54

about desire and how it’s not always like kind of politically correct like desire

17:59

kind of exists outside of something that like aligns neatly with one’s political

18:05

beliefs or um and that it’s also constantly changing and that like we’re always kind

18:11

of living in relationship to our desire at that moment and how it’s not fixed and how it can change from

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like you know my desire as an artist and the work that i make is so different um

18:23

from when i started but it’s connected but it’s like i just like around

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collaboration on all of these things around like even how i understand my self um and that

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i think what i hope to do with my practice is to leave space for that change and to not

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um i try not to like necessarily have a strong opinion like i’ve always felt

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like wary of having like i think i have a belief system but i feel like i always want the chance to grow and to

18:55

change in some ways and to like hear other people differently and and have

19:00

that change who i am and so um yeah it’s i’m i’m kind of just trying to

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figure out like what it is to uh not be attached to one way of doing

19:12

things um and to have that evolve over time through one’s own desire and what

19:17

they’re seeing is like pleasurable also i wonder if i could pick up on that you

19:22

know i like to solidly identify as someone who was in the room in i think the early days of

19:29

say something bunny and it’s run in new york and what an extraordinary

19:35

piece of work and there’s so much to think about there as it relates to desire collaboration found

19:43

objects archives fabulation performance etc and i was wondering if we could

19:48

spend some time sort of unpacking that process because i think you watch an excerpt or you’re in the room and it’s

19:54

this gloriously executed curated story but of course it involves ongoing

20:01

collaboration with your partner and the collaboration of all of the bodies in the room to make that story possible

20:06

could you invite us into some of your early process in the making of that work

20:12

yeah i mean i think that say some like the timeline of say something funny um like you know the first probably five

20:19

years of working on that project like i think that i got the recording in 2011 and the first time i performed it which

20:25

was at gallery tpw in toronto was 2016 and that’s when it was really developed in a lot of ways

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but the first probably five years from like late 2000 like 2011 to late 2015 was

20:39

really just um listening to the recording trying to make a transcript of it just trying to

20:44

like understand it but not really like intensely working on it all the time it was like one of those

20:51

things where you pick it up work on it for really work on it for a couple of days and then put it down and like not think about it for six months but like

20:57

in that time it’s kind of there it’s in the background things that you encounter in life remind you of it and then it

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would just be picked up again um and then i think there was a presentation at

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union docs where i also work and um that’s a space in brooklyn that uh christopher allen who’s my collaborator

21:15

on say something bunny also founded and runs i did a presentation there and in that

21:20

presentation it was just kind of an artist talk but i played an excerpt like a three-minute excerpt of the recording

21:26

and then just subtitled it and the audience reacted to that and that weirdly seemed like something was there

21:33

with just not having to reperform it and dress up as all the characters in this which i think you

21:40

know my earlier practice that would have been an immediate way to deal with this piece but just

21:45

listening to it with people which was something that i had been doing for years and years and years and had found enough pleasure in just that act of

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listening um it felt like that connected to a live

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audience so that was like a really important learning moment and then you know kim simon from gallery tpw asked me to

22:04

do an exhibition in the space and you know supposed to she was really open with

22:10

what form it could be and um i think in in talking earlier about form

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um i think doing say something funny in an art gallery made it what it was

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because we didn’t have any of the the it ended up being kind of a theatrical piece of performance piece of piece

22:30

that’s you know you watch from the beginning to the end it’s something that you like sit down and there’s an intermission there’s something that’s

22:36

very like a theatrical form of it but because it was in an art gallery we didn’t have like

22:42

a stage in relationship to the audience like we didn’t have these kind of like already predetermined formal aspects of

22:49

the theater space to kind of design the performance around and so

22:54

that was so freeing because it was like okay so what do we have we have a room we what can we put in this room how do

23:01

we want to orient the audience in the room so it was like all of these questions that i think if you started in

23:06

a theater space those questions would be answered already and so you wouldn’t necessarily have the audience sitting

23:12

around the table and the table being the set and my relationship to the audience in that space so um

23:20

i think a lot about how like a lot of artists often

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have all these rules already set up for them that they’re kind of following without really questioning like the form

23:31

the form of the space that they’re making work in which i think is like part of a larger conversation that you you’re all having in relationships to

23:38

institutions and just kind of like the the art that’s made to be in an institution and how that art is really

23:45

like you know designed for an important institution if you know you are in an in a space that

23:52

has like 14 foot ceilings versus 20-foot ceilings that might change the work in a

23:58

lot of ways and and i think especially in in canada where you know you have to have like often to

24:04

get a grant you have to have a space that you will potentially show it in that was the case where say something

24:10

funny and our funding like we had the commitment of gallery tpw so that’s how we could get funding to do

24:16

the thing and and it’s so much about this like which i think is also okay like i’m not saying that that’s a bad

24:22

thing like i think that making something that’s specific is really interesting and like making

24:28

something that’s designed for a space that the table for say something bunny is 14 feet and it was that way because

24:36

the size of gallery tpw we could build a table that big and how far apart we wanted people to be from each other that

24:43

would be if we made that piece today with coven the table would probably be a lot bigger you know we just make it so

24:49

six feet apart or something um but it was just like you know i think that the space and having the

24:55

opportunity to show it at an art gallery gallery really made the work into this kind of like

25:01

quasi performance piece video media like we we

25:07

just could incorporate all the things that i had already been doing in my practice and like put it all in one thing

25:12

um that’s a bit of the timeline and also the process of the the production of the

25:18

work was actually like a very intense few months where um a lot of it came together in a short period of time

25:25

even though the work took about six years to from the beginning to the end that like

25:30

the production period was quite intense and short

25:37

thank you um as you just alluded to we are very

25:43

interested in thinking about the institution and uh

25:48

institutional critique and we would like to ask you a question

25:55

about what you think about whether or not institutions have a role to play in

26:01

crafting better futures but you know given that you’ve already uh

26:07

veered into um talking about granting systems and

26:13

granting systems in canada and that you live in the states now i wonder if you want to expand

26:22

the question beyond institutional critique and just think think generally about um

26:28

uh kind of the spaces in which artwork is made in canada versus the us

26:36

and um like what needs to to shift for you to be able to

26:43

do the greatest things that you can do yeah the um i mean for say something

26:49

funny we ran it in new york and chelsea and um ran up for three years and which is a

26:56

pretty long time for like a solo show um but also that was the result of kind of

27:02

creating our own space so instead of um you know christopher and i were like we

27:08

want to bring this to new york but like should we like we kind of uh reached out to people at um doc fortnight and we’re

27:14

like should we try and do this at the moment for like a week like what makes sense and then we’re like could we just

27:20

find like a big room and set up our own space and just like make a theater out

27:26

of a space that we used like we rented the olds um that were chase where you saw it was

27:32

like actually a building that the manhattan contact was it uh years years

27:37

ago it’s uh interesting histories there but you know we just really needed a room and so like kind of created our own

27:45

space or mini theater um and that really seemed to work because

27:51

we could extend it if it made sense if we got a we ended up originally only planning to run it for like maybe three

27:58

months and then got a review in the new york times and we’re like just sell more tickets to sell more tickets we’ll find a new space because

28:04

our lease was up and so you know it was just like completely responsive to if people wanted to see it and they just

28:10

kept wanting to see it so it was kind of lucky for us but um i’m i it’s funny yesterday i was reading

28:16

or i was listening to another episode of the dig which was about um counter culture

28:21

and and communes and was talking to this uh author fred turner who wrote a book

28:26

about um yeah basically like communes and like counter culture in the 1960s and how

28:34

they’re it was this like this one culture of people who were like protesting and like

28:40

interested in politics and we’re like we need to change the system we need to change the institutions and then also

28:46

these communes which were kind of like this like drop out of from the institution this kind of like we’re just

28:52

going to create our own world and our own reality and we’re just going to live in our own space and like i feel like

28:58

over the past years when i’ve done talks about say something bunny i’m like i’m we’re just like making our own theater we’re

29:04

making our own institution and then like listening to this um the podcast that it ended up being like

29:11

quite critical of those spaces because they’re often really like hum like if you look at like communes from the 60s

29:17

they’re like white people it’s just like they’re not diverse they’re often like

29:22

reproducing like heteronormative like relationships between women and women where the women are like barefoot and

29:28

pregnant and like it’s interesting how um there is kind of this ideal that also feels kind of like

29:36

yeah i don’t know like that there’s something i think to be said about continuing to try to work within

29:42

the institution and try to change those institutions and like um also i think

29:48

that the thing that’s fun is like we kind of did our own thing but people from the institutions came to our thing and they’re like oh this is a different

29:54

way to do it but sometimes you have to prove to the institution before they want to do it your way so

29:59

it’s like you know i think it’s kind of this back and forth and i’m not like a person who’s like i don’t want to work

30:04

with like museums but i also just feel like there’s a different sense of possibility in each of those spaces and

30:11

like go back and forth and learn different things from both of those spaces and like um and teach things back

30:17

to the institution from what you learned outside of it but like if you just are like i’m only interested in showing at

30:23

like these big galleries then your practice is going to be a certain way to accommodate the kind of

30:31

work that wants to be made and then if you if you try something different like the people in those spaces are actually

30:37

quite curious to see something that’s like trying to

30:42

do it another way there’s so many sparks and connections to what you’re saying to some of the

30:47

work we’re exploring with allison mitchell and deirdre logue and i’m reminded of their incredible banners

30:53

that say you know we can’t compete that were then installed in the hall of the art gallery of ontario and thinking

30:59

about the sort of consumptive logics of institutions but also the opportunity to be there and be in dialogue and the

31:06

irresolvable frictions that come from that kind of engagement and you know in the incredible showcase that

31:13

you’ve offered up to us for the field school you’ve included the union docs um inductive thread video

31:19

which i had never seen before and it strikes me that it is such an extraordinary opportunity to think about

31:26

institutional critique and to think about a kind of excavation or an anatomy of a space

31:33

and i wonder if

31:38

you know what is my question here i feel like i was just gonna ramble and tell you everything that i think is so interesting about that work but let me

31:44

do a better job of being an interlocutor here in what ways can we or do you harness

31:51

critiques through engagement with objects and trash or detritus

31:58

it’s fun the inductive threat and just like you mentioning the inductive thread piece and also in relationship to

32:04

uh talk about institutions like you know i’m like oh yeah like union

32:09

docs is an institution and like when you’re in it you’re just like it’s just this group of people doing weird things

32:16

like it’s just and it and institutions are structured so differently and i think union docs is like pretty

32:21

specific in that it is it feels very like artist run and is like quite weird

32:27

it’s kind of a weirdo space it’s like um i think that the board and the structure

32:32

of union docs is actually very supportive of the vision of the people that work there versus it being the

32:38

people who work there serving the vision of the board so it has a very different feel as an institution but that so many

32:45

of these institutions are like just relationships of people like it’s just really people and relationships and

32:53

hopefully those can grow in different and weird ways and i think inductive thread was really like the detritus of

32:59

like the bodies and hair and dust made by a lot of people who interact with

33:04

with that space but it’s like i think it really has so much to do with like how do we

33:10

um how do we see institutions like how do we see um a relationship to an

33:16

institution also to like make us feel like we’re outside of it when it actually is like individual or i

33:24

don’t know it’s a community i think institutions are often community but it’s like in in working for an institution it’s

33:31

like i don’t i don’t want like i hope that people understand that they can reach out to me and that

33:37

like it is a bunch of people working together but that’s not the what we were talking about we’re talking about

33:42

objects and and um i think you’re talking about trash

33:48

yeah because i think that there’s something so interesting about your archive if we want to use giant funny quotes around it

33:54

right and how in some ways we can consider your archive to be one of trash of discards of leftovers of remains and

34:03

that is to me strategically and formally a kind of

34:08

push away from the materials of the institution right the white gallery walls the canvas the

34:16

things that we come to associate with a kind of art market or an art culture and there’s a kind of thrifting mentality

34:22

that’s deeply embedded in but it’s also it’s also kind of the inverse too because like in so many ways the

34:29

institutions if you think about the museum is completely engaged in the trap and what is found in

34:34

the earth that’s the remains of like previous um like you look at what is on

34:41

display in like a natural history history museum in some ways it’s not always the most prized object

34:47

it’s kind of like the part of a boss that someone just used for cooking every day and like it is and i was reading um

34:55

sapiens um like just at the beginning i’m not through it yet it’s like a huge book but

35:01

um just talking they were talking about like this piece of um this like sculpture that someone made but it’s not

35:07

necessarily like the most beautiful sculpture from the time it’s just the one that survived and like i think so

35:13

much about um like about that and and relationship to trash and it’s not so much like the most

35:19

beautiful recorded song ever it’s just that the one that managed to survive and like how those are kind of the things

35:26

that we can use to understand the thing things that happened people’s

35:31

experience in the past and it’s a bit more democratic than just like the most precious thing that we all agree on um

35:37

as the most beautiful sculpted object it’s just the one that like was in the right place at the right time

35:44

and like didn’t get crushed into a million pieces um

35:50

i’m having a thought listening um to you talk about that and i’m not sure if i’m

35:55

going to be able to articulate this properly but um having worked most of my life in

36:03

kind of mainstream white cube galleries there is

36:10

you know there is a desire to no matter what happens during the run of an exhibition or the presentation of a

36:16

program there’s always a desire to return the white cube to its sort of pristine

36:23

state as though nothing had happened so

36:28

that piece becomes kind of a

36:34

a way of thinking about how to find the traces of the people really are the institution that for whatever reason the

36:42

institution tries to erase um

36:48

so i’m looking to the director to see if i’m reading the cues right that perhaps

36:54

i should ask the last question now sounds great i love our zoom communication [Laughter]

37:04

and the last question is just um you know simply what what is next for

37:10

you and um sort of within the larger context of the feminist art field school and the

37:17

philosophies and ideas it raises what do you think is next for all of us

37:23

oh my my i mean i try to be helpful in that space but i’ve been listening to and reading some

37:29

things that it’s not not looking so good for all of us but um you know i i feel

37:34

like it’s it’s funny there’s a and i just did a residency in in june and july

37:40

and just had the first time in a really long time to just think like what what am i going to think about next and what

37:46

am i going to work on next and um i think in earlier emails kind of initially mentioned this project and i

37:53

actually have the um the pdf here but like my my dad sent me an email

37:59

that was a link to this 192 page document which is um

38:04

all of the correspondence it’s a it’s a scanned microfiche of correspondence

38:10

between the government and my um my dad’s side of the family during their

38:15

internment during world war two and it’s you know it’s pretty heavy both as an object and like you know in terms of the

38:22

type of the the quality of the material as an artist that um tries to kind of bring human humor and play and pleasure

38:30

into my work this is kind of like an intense thing to encounter and something that i’m not

38:35

um so used to of dealing with such kind of like

38:40

yeah heavy and serious material that has such deep implications and have just

38:46

been thinking about that and um like the the short version of the story is like my dad’s family was um in

38:53

vancouver they lived in steve uh stevenson is that i i always want to say stevenson

39:00

but stephen um in british columbia and then during world war ii were relocated

39:06

to the um to manitoba and all you know they could take some of their stuff but their house

39:12

and all the objects in it remains there and then we’re sold and um

39:17

it’s really unfortunate but i just remember like reading this stuff and like just looking at this

39:22

this list this just lists an inventory of the objects that they owned like it’s just

39:29

so interesting i’ve never seen a photo of this home but like there’s lists and lists of of the things that

39:36

were in their house and i just was like have this epiphany where he’s like is this some sort of weird like

39:42

intergenerational trauma that’s like makes sense why my practice is

39:48

completely oriented around the objects that people left behind and are

39:53

disconnected from their original owners and like trying to really make sense of this thing that

40:00

someone owned that they’re no longer with and what that says about them and i have never pieced that together before

40:07

and i don’t know if that’s just me like projecting but there was this clique that just made so much sense and just my

40:14

interest in this um i was i was talking to my friend lauren who was hanging out with

40:20

her her cousin um who was who was pregnant and about to have a child

40:26

and she was saying that like when you’re born um all of the eggs that you will ever

40:32

release during your like reproductive time are already in your body when you’re

40:38

like a fetus or about to be born which means that you were as an egg in your grandmother’s

40:46

womb when she she was alive which was just such a i mean her telling me that i

40:51

was like so interesting that like i as a piece of matter as a tiny egg was in

40:58

my mother as a fetus in my grandmother and that matter that made me is

41:03

from the body of my grandmother and that that actually was a thing so it’s just i don’t know it’s like all of this stuff

41:10

and um really trying to understand a lot of complex

41:16

things about like my present moment around around exclusion around uh belonging thinking a lot about like

41:23

incarceration recently in relationship to this and and really trying to understand not only like i think i’m

41:30

less interested in the moment of trauma of the relocation and i’m very interested in what happens after

41:37

um which i feel like people might not be as interested in in

41:45

thinking about and maybe that’s kind of where like the joy can come from me is um

41:51

understanding how one gets

41:56

through that um in a way that creates family in a different way i don’t know

42:03

um it’s a very new project and it’s it’s so um it’s so much in these like early forming

42:10

stages but um it it feels so relevant to how

42:16

exclusion works um in relationship to fear and like

42:22

how we often want to push away things that we fear will happen

42:28

versus what is actually happening um which i think is just in like

42:34

the fear of japanese people japanese canadian citizens like turning on canada was the

42:40

reason officially why they were relocated but there wasn’t actually any evidence for

42:47

that anyway um it’s heavy it’s not funny i i like how

42:52

can i make this work i don’t know and i’d love to in our early conversations the extraordinary

42:58

connections to jordan stinger ross’s project landscape justice which is also

43:03

at uvic and oh great amazing and we will be sure to link to the project as well as a part

43:11

of our module so that students and participants can explore and and chart these connections

43:18

as well what an amazing feat um of research and um

43:24

digitize like just this is such an amazing book and just recontextualizing this history from like

43:30

a contemporary perspective and just like there’s this one chapter that’s just about like it’s like a character study

43:36

basically of the main administrator behind the dispossession which is like such a for me as like um an artist i’m

43:44

just like what an amazing way to talk about this thing that happened through looking

43:49

at like a personality of an individual who is like pushing this

43:55

stuff forward it’s really an amazing amazing book and also online archive and

44:01

yeah university of victoria thank you for spending time with us

44:07

today we deeply appreciate it and are ever energized by your work

44:12

there’s so much more to say but i appreciate you guys uh both talking to me and just taking the

44:18

time to even look at the work i appreciate your eyes on it and to the students as well

44:25

thank you so much it’s an absolute pleasure

44:30

great well is there anything that you um in your so much more to say that you

44:35

feel like you’re gonna log off with us and think like oh but i came on that

44:40

zoom in order to say the following thing no there wasn’t anything pre-planned i just appreciate i don’t i think that

44:46

when you were talking about the white wall um i was it just made me think about like we were talking about trash

44:52

and like the white wall and just kind of the inverse of that which is kind of the hoarder space and how like it’s

44:58

impossible to actually comprehend objects in a space that’s so dense and like how

45:05

like the use of the white wall how you know the white wall can sometimes be kind of like uh it’s so

45:12

i don’t know we want to work against that some ways but also how that can what it does like what it does to

45:18

something that um otherwise would be completely like unseeable in a different context

45:26

um but yeah i i think that i have i have all i mean there’s so many

45:32

different rants and stuff where i’m like i probably shouldn’t go into that thinking i don’t know if i

45:38

want to like commit to that officially on video but i i think that there’s like a way in

45:44

which um like this the feeling of i’ve just been thinking about like institutions and like my own

45:50

like coming back to desire like my own desire to be like in an institution and what that means for your ego in some

45:57

ways like i think it’s very much for me tied to that and how i think with the performance um i

46:03

think something really clicked for me and just doing it in my own space where

46:08

i could have these one-to-one connections to people and there was no pressure like i think a lot of times

46:14

people want to like optimize like how many people see the show so that they like it can just work in a different way

46:20

when you’re just like we’re just committing to 25 people at a time and and that’s what it is and

46:26

that that allowed me to have like a different experience with the audience that i really want to continue in future

46:32

works and whether that’s in an institution or not i feel like that was something that really

46:38

felt important to me and like certain i think levels of care

46:43

in creating a different space or a curious space or like

46:49

how we would kind of like train the person who is like taking the tickets and getting drinks like

46:55

that all was part of it which i also appreciated that in creating it creating a space of my own that i could train

47:01

those people myself versus having the institution train those on on my behalf because

47:07

i think especially with theater like the performance doesn’t start when like the lights go down the performance starts

47:13

when you like walk up to the space it’s the entire experience of like how you may especially in a piece that’s like

47:19

immersive and interactive like say something bunny there’s all of these things that you have to like do to make

47:25

the audience feel comfortable because if they’re like what’s going on what am i supposed to do

47:31

and they sit in that chair they’re gonna give a very different energy to me so it’s like all of this like prep work to

47:38

make people feel comfortable and and saved and cared for and um

47:43

these things extend even after the performance and like continuing to try to engage with people

47:50

or talk to them about um if they had an epiphany during the show like we i would still chat with people

47:56

after the performance and so it’s like you know what are the bounds of work too like it

48:02

doesn’t necessarily just um i think in performance your body is so

48:08

much part of the work that um i think a lot of people who work in

48:15

maybe object-based work might not have that same relationship to their audience where they like develop a relationship

48:21

by having actual shared time together say something bunny it’s two and a half hours where we’re physically together in

48:26

a room and that to me is very significant because you i really spend time looking in the eyes of these people

48:33

and i i’ve seen them on the street and i’m like how do i know you and then they’ll be like yeah i don’t know like that’s

48:40

happened a couple of times then we figured out that they just like came to the show and they’re like oh your hair is different or something i don’t know

48:47

so it’s just it’s a it’s a i think it’s a luxury to be able to to have that and have time with people who

48:54

are experiencing your work and in some ways i’m like i’m around like if you have this module

48:59

in a time and you want to have like i’d love to talk to the students if they have ideas and just

49:05

also hear where they’re they’re at and thinking i think um i really hope that like this

49:11

work can be useful in making people feel like there’s like different possibilities and the ways that they can

49:17

make work and so i really love sharing my work with people who are making um

49:22

but also not just making in terms of artwork but writing or like think thinking and like trying to

49:28

do that so just to say i’m i’m available if you guys want to jump on a zoom call

49:34

with your class if that’s if there are moments that are not um asynchronous

49:39

well we love that and i assure you that we are going to sign off of this zoom and i’m going to take you up on it okay

49:46

perfect thanks again

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