0:00

– [Moderator] When I was
chuckling in a way during these sessions was the
metaphors we’ve used to

0:07

convince the political leadership. We’ve had Star Trek. Star Trek, the Canucks,

0:14

and I had to use Ryan, the Oscar-winning film to
convince the mayor of Mississauga

0:22

that we should go in the
direction that I’d been suggesting as my vision, which is actually
to build a culture plan

0:29

that was digital, and looking
at the idea of the public realm, the new public realm,
which was the new digital

0:35

public realm, et cetera. Anyway, my office also
reported to the CAO directly

0:43

and the mayor, and luckily I was able to get half a million dollars
to do the first culture plan.

0:50

Anyway, I think these are
really interesting contexts and contrasts in the
three cases that we heard.

0:58

Fascinating. I’m just going to start
off the Q&A very quickly

1:03

with a question for each one of you, each one of the presentations.

1:09

Roseman, I’m going to start with you. Your presentation of the
curatorial intervention.

1:16

It piqued my curiosity,
we saw a lot of the work and how you referred to
it was really interesting, but what was the impact of the exhibition

1:24

at the Whitechapel? On its approach to future exhibitions,

1:30

on the audience for example. I’d be really interested to
know what kind of an impact

1:36

that kind of, your super
highway presentation had on

1:42

the way the Whitechapel moved forward even during that?

1:47

– Yeah, well that’s a really– – [Audience] Can you
give her the microphone? – Sorry.

1:53

Thank you, yeah. – That’s a really interesting

1:58

and complicated question
for the Whitechapel, because I think, first of all,

2:03

everybody has to understand that I’m not, I don’t work at the Whitechapel Gallery, but it’s a really interesting
problem for the Whitechapel

2:12

because they don’t actually have their own permanent collection. Everything they bring
in is really to try and

2:20

as you say, stimulate their own practice, develop their archive, and
then stimulate the work

2:26

that’s being done by other artists. And what they are able
to do is because of their

2:32

locatedness and because they are perhaps

2:37

more innovative than say
the Tate is able to be, although that has changed a
lot with the new Tate Exchange,

2:45

which could have been something
we could have talked about, what they are able to do is
they are able to bring in

2:54

sort of more radical exhibitions and involve their communities more.

3:00

I think overall what they did
with Electronic Superhighway are things that are outreach,

3:06

are things that are
normally done in the UK, so they had quite a few
symposia associated with it.

3:15

There are a number of
presentations online that you can

3:20

go and watch about the
exhibition that took place there,

3:25

but in terms of actually
affecting the space and the way they look at work,

3:33

I’m not sure if I can really say that anything was permanently
changed as a consequence

3:41

of that exhibition. But I do think that the
landscape of understanding,

3:46

that was the first time in
many, many years that there had been this kind of a show,

3:52

and then a similar show,
Big Bang, also took place simultaneously, and both
of those were landmark

4:00

exhibitions that really
I think changed the way other galleries and other
institutions looked at artwork.

4:09

– There was impact in
other ways that you could speak to I suppose.

4:15

I think Leanne, what I’ve
wanted to ask you was, and I was struck by this
because I think these are real

4:21

questions for galleries. You’ve obviously made a digital
media acquisition policy,

4:27

and I think it could be a model for other public art galleries. What are the two things you
would not do in hindsight

4:35

and what are the risks that you took?

4:47

– The feeling that I have
just doing the digital media, walking that path, is not looking down at,

4:54

never even occurred to me to look back. I just, it’s always been walking on air,

5:01

because there’s never
actually been a funding stream for the tech lab or the sound program.

5:07

It’s just, it had to be done and so we added it. We do about 18 exhibitions a year.

5:15

It’s always challenging,
I’ve never looked back. And I think that the biggest
lesson that we’ve learned

5:26

and I think it applies to everything we do is how important it is to listen. There’s such a stupidity
that comes with assuming that

5:35

you know something, and
there’s wisdom that comes when you listen.

5:41

That’s probably, maybe listening earlier. – Right. – Yeah, or knowing those things sooner

5:49

would have been helpful. – For Gordon and Sarah,

5:57

wow, what an amazing feat and like to reinvent the
gallery in that way, constantly.

6:04

I think we’re all in awe, but what is your critical assessment,

6:10

or what’s the feedback? What’s the critical assessment
you have on your own,

6:16

on the thing that you’ve created?

6:23

(laughter) – We’ll try. Hello.

6:28

– Well, maybe what I’ll do, just one thing that we
didn’t really talk about is that by being on the floor,

6:35

and essentially greeting
every visitor who comes in,

6:40

we have the best, most accurate
demographic information probably of any other, any public gallery.

6:47

We know actually by name a huge number of our visitors.

6:53

We know where they’re from,
we know how often they come, we know how many kids they have, we know everything about our audience

7:00

because we actually talk to them. In terms of critical analysis
of it or feedback that we get,

7:08

we’re shocked at how
positive our feedback is. The other thing is we get
a hundred people a day

7:15

telling us how great we are (laughs) which is really, really nice.

7:21

– I would say, tempering that, you have to have huge amounts of energy.

7:29

You have to be available all the time. This is a growth stage,
so we’re four years in.

7:36

It can’t continue forever. Then you have to start
looking at ways that you can

7:43

continue that energy and how is that done, and how do you add to that.

7:48

With passion and with
understanding of these goals that we’ve instituted.

7:58

– Okay, I’d like to
open it up to the floor. I know you all have burning questions on

8:04

what we’ve seen and heard today.

8:11

Yes. Now.

8:16

– Oh sorry. Given that last statement
that you guys have a lot of direct feedback from people,

8:22

I’m assuming that Roseman and Leanne, you also have some sense
of how people respond.

8:30

Given this kind of split that’s come up, I brought it up, between the new media world

8:37

and the larger art world, do you think that I guess it would be all
anecdotal as evidence,

8:44

but do you think that
people internally reconcile their experience of new
media art with other art?

8:50

With paintings, et cetera, or do you have a sense of that? Do you have any way to respond to that?

8:58

– [Leanne] Yeah, I just want
to tell just a little story. Silvia Grace Borda, one of our
first artists in residence,

9:04

her proposal was to photograph
every bus stop in Surrey, which was over 1,000 bus stops.

9:11

Surrey’s 300 square kilometers. And then she created,
she worked with ArtEngine

9:16

to create a website and
quite an interesting project. At the time that we presented it,

9:23

there were studies that had
been done about what people wanted to see in galleries, and it is as you would
know, landscape painting,

9:31

number one. The last thing, sort of
level G was digital media.

9:39

We weren’t sure what would happen. We also had her come
and give an artist talk,

9:44

an artist come and talk about
a digital media project. It took 40 minutes to sit
through the presentation

9:53

of the artwork. People stayed for the entire time. They would look at a painting for,

9:59

what’s the average for
looking at a painting? It’s like three and a
half seconds or something? 40 minutes with an artwork.

10:05

Who spends that kind of time? The other thing was the
artist talk, it was shocking.

10:12

It was a complete demographic
profile of our community came. It was so surprising, it
was completely contradictory

10:20

to what people thought they wanted, and what they actually did.

10:25

And it may have done something, had something to do with
what the subject was,

10:31

but that was the reality and that’s what we’ve repeatedly seen. People think that they want paintings,

10:37

but they don’t spend time with them. It’s a phenomena that we
see over and over again.

10:46

– I think in the case of the
Whitechapel there’s two things that I can say about the
Electronic Superhighway

10:52

that are really relevant. One is the curatorial factor. In the way it was curated,

11:00

downstairs you sort of had
this mad cacophony, anarchy, a space that somebody like myself

11:11

found quite daunting. Upstairs on the second level
was much more a historical

11:19

picture of where the art had come from and where digital media had come from.

11:26

And there were, remember
we’re talking about a gallery that is not enormous and
had over 150 artworks?

11:37

And Mohammed and I were
just talking about this, because downstairs it was crazy,

11:44

upstairs it was much more calm. But what it did was,

11:49

downstairs you found that
all the young people, the post-millennials were
totally engaged with what was

11:57

going on in the space. And people like myself are going upstairs

12:02

and having that more sublime
relationship with the gallery that we are used to.

12:09

There was that. But the second thing was,
because the exhibition was actually organized as a feedback loop,

12:17

when you were downstairs
you had that experience. You went upstairs, you had
a much more intellectual

12:24

experience and a much more
reflective experience.

12:30

And then when you went
downstairs the second time, because you had to move through
the space again to exit,

12:37

it became like a feedback loop, you actually began to
reflect on those pieces

12:43

in a way that you never would have when first encountering them. It was something to do with
the curatorial vision also

12:49

that created that kind of educational or didactic experience, yeah.

13:00

– [Sarah] We have audiences that are young that obviously engage with the works,

13:07

but we also have older audiences that are completely
engaged with this material.

13:12

Because we’re walking
people through the gallery and having conversations,

13:18

we’re able to talk to them
about the fact that this is art, this is material that artists use,

13:25

in a way that all artists
have used new media for thousands of years.

13:33

They’ve always pushed
boundaries with new media. Yeah, these are interesting conversations.

13:40

– I guess the thing that
Leanne was talking about, another thing with our
numbers is that the average

13:46

length for a visitor stay
in our gallery is 20 minutes to an hour, which is a really long stay.

13:54

And I think the other thing,
and it’s again touching a bit on what Leanne was saying is that

13:59

when we were pushing the idea, no one really knew what
a new media gallery was.

14:05

And what we were
convincing council was that it’s not that people know what they want,

14:10

it’s that people want what they know. And we were a big unknown to the city. They didn’t really have an opinion

14:17

about a new media gallery, because they didn’t have a clue what a new media gallery was.

14:22

That relationship with traditional art, I think initially when the
community wanted a gallery

14:28

they wanted paintings
and things like that, but now that we’ve been open, it’s hard for us to compare
to a traditional gallery

14:34

because we are actually a dedicated, focused new media space.

14:44

– [Audience] Yeah, so
Steve Daniels yesterday talked about the fact that stuff breaks. You’re a new media gallery and
Surrey has so much new media.

14:52

When stuff breaks, what do you do?

14:58

(laughter)

15:04

– [Gordon] You go ahead. – [Leanne] Yeah, doing it for awhile. We work with the artists.

15:10

We talk to them about
the smoke and mirrors. Because as I was saying about

15:18

easily changing from artist to gallery in terms of who bears
the risk and the pain

15:24

is we want to protect the
artists and we also want to protect ourselves. If we’re presenting ourselves
as showing new media,

15:32

it better be working. We partner with the artists.

15:38

Sometimes it might be an
interactive work responding to your presence, and sometimes
it might be a video.

15:46

Where it looks like it’s doing that, but it actually isn’t. We prepare the artists
that there are two layers

15:53

to most of the artworks. We do everything we can
so it always is working

16:00

or it appears to be working. (laughter)

16:05

What my rule of thumb in
working with an artist is

16:11

only we know what it was supposed to do. And the other thing is, we
don’t point to a problem.

16:19

We don’t say it’s not working. Those are the things that have,

16:26

those are our secrets. – [Gordon] We’re slightly
different in our approach.

16:33

If it breaks, it’s broken. But we typically, we’ve only had that

16:39

on a few occasions, to be fair. We don’t, unlike Leanne,
we don’t commission works,

16:46

we don’t collect works. We only deal with finished work and that’s partly a budgetary thing,

16:53

but it also means that the work we get is typically at least been
exhibited somewhere once before.

16:59

Generally we look for work
that is rock solid basically. But having said that, things go wrong.

17:07

I actually get very involved
in understanding how to, what to do when things go wrong

17:14

and we will typically repair it. We recently had a work
by Sokano and yangO2,

17:19

which was a robotic drawing on the wall that was down about 50% of the time

17:24

and we ended up sort of
taking parts off one, we had some spare robots
and rebuilding them

17:32

over and over and over
again to keep it running. And there are troubleshooting
things we have to deal with.

17:38

The fly revolver suddenly
stopped responding. We had to figure out why that happened.

17:43

It turned out that people had figured out that
they could activate the trigger by putting the shadow
of a fly on the target.

17:51

He had to turn up the resolution
of it to make the flies really black, much
blacker than the shadows.

17:58

And what had happened was there
was a dome over the camera and basically the flies
were pooing on the dome,

18:03

which was turning the
black of the flies gray. And the solution for that
ended up that we had clean the

18:10

dome, and the piece started to work again. Another piece, it was
just the air with the sofa

18:16

that balances on the point of one leg. It was spinning and collapsing, and it turned out that it
was because a class A gallery

18:22

and we’re doing six air changes an hour, the air currents were actually, it was so delicately
balanced it was spinning

18:29

and the cable was pulling it over. We had to redirect our current.

18:35

Another big problem we’ve had
with two robotic pieces is electromagnetic interference,
which is a really difficult

18:42

thing to fix. And sometimes, it’s just a
matter moving a power transformer

18:47

three inches over, and everything works. And sometimes you just can’t
fix it and it goes down, and it goes down, and it goes down.

18:55

With us, typically we will fix it. And if it does break, then it breaks.

19:03

We have shown a work called User Generated Server Destruction

19:08

that visitors would destroy (laughs) so it actually broke four times over the,

19:14

five times over the exhibition. – It was meant to– – It was meant to break, but
it was an interesting piece,

19:20

because after it was broken, we still exhibited it for several weeks as a broken piece in the gallery.

19:27

– And that was about technology breaking. – It was about people making
choices that would destroy the work, and deprive successive visitors

19:35

from having the experience. Depending on how people, how
quickly people destroyed it,

19:41

it would have to sit for
a longer period of time.

19:49

– [Audience] Thank you to all of you. You can just feel a bit of
electricity in the room, a little buzz.

19:55

Everyone is just thinking
through all of this. For Gordon and Sarah,
two things come to mind

20:01

from a leadership standpoint. One is just a quick question, and that’s can you share
with us a little bit more information about your decision

20:07

to focus on group exhibitions? And then the second is resources.

20:15

When I started here I
bought a stand up desk and my intention was to be
spending a lot of time working down here doing what you talked about,

20:21

and I’m embarrassed to say I think I’ve managed to
do it maybe three days. Can you talk about what
your team looks like

20:30

and you clearly prioritized it, I know, and I’m guessing you don’t have one, so this makes it a trickier question.

20:37

How do you make that priority? You’ve made it a commitment,
and how do you continue

20:42

to do it, which with what
must be mounting pressures and distractions in a
lot of different areas?

20:50

– We have a lot of energy ourselves. Our team, what does our team look like? Our team, we have two
fantastic technicians

20:58

who are at the moment
tearing down the gallery. Gordon is very involved in the technology,

21:04

he just actually built the four computers that we’re using in the next VR suite.

21:13

He has an incredible technical background and that is very helpful.

21:19

We take advantage of all the city workers. Those are provided to us, so that’s huge.

21:26

That’s an administrator,
that’s a registrar, part-time registrar, that’s all the cleaning staff,

21:32

all of that we don’t have to take care of, so that’s provided to us.

21:38

We have seven workshop
instructors who are part-time and we pull them in as we give workshops.

21:47

We had a programmer who’s just
gone onto another fantastic project, and she’s still working with us,

21:53

but we’re going to be
looking for a programmer. And then this work in the
gallery, being in the gallery

22:00

is shared between the three of us. We’re there each about a third of, maybe a day or two per week.

22:10

– I think as well, we, one thing that maybe didn’t
come across in our introduction is that all my work has actually
been in the private sector,

22:18

the colleges I’ve worked at or run were all private colleges. I worked at the Lisson
which is a private gallery,

22:25

and Sarah’s work work has all
been in the public sector. The gallery’s kind of a
hybrid of those two models.

22:31

And because this is essentially a startup, we took it on, when we took it on we said

22:38

this is going to be hell for
the first couple of years, but we treated it as a business startup

22:44

and wrote off two years and said let’s just focus on this. We’re now in our fourth year
and we’re coming out of that

22:52

phase finally. What was the other part of the question?

23:00

Oh, why do we show group exhibitions? That’s just us looking at, there are different types of galleries.

23:06

There’s academic galleries,
artist-run centers and public galleries. We think the role of a
public gallery is to really

23:13

give our audience exposure
to as much work as possible. If we showed solo artists, we
would have shown 19 artists.

23:22

By showing group exhibitions,
we get to show them 110 artists.

23:28

It’s a simple math thing, and we also, it’s harder
work for us I suppose

23:34

because we have to come up
with curatorial positions four times a year, based
on group exhibitions.

23:41

But it doesn’t seem right
to have a solo artist that we like.

23:46

Understanding how and why you
put a work in a public gallery I think is another kind of discussion.

24:02

– [Audience] I have a question or actually it is a real question. For scholars who’ve been
looking at the development

24:09

of contemporary art, one of the markers of
coincidence of contemporary art

24:16

and neoliberalism is the fact that institutions are encouraged
to not have a collection,

24:25

especially the new ones that start, and basically be a space that always seek the new and changes, right?

24:34

And in that way, the costs are kept low and the job of the curator
will become to constantly look

24:41

for new work. And as someone who worked
at the UBC’s AMS gallery

24:48

with a great collection
that went back to 1910, we had Group of Seven in
this student-run, basically

24:56

gallery, like Lauren Harris
all the way to Rodney Graham and other works.

25:01

But the value of the collection,
and actually this morning I had a chance to come in
early and go and look at the vault downstairs and look
at the section of all the

25:08

painter 11’s in the
basement, it was wonderful. You guys see yourselves
in sort of a new vision

25:15

to start a collection,
particularly in relation to Surrey that insists on having a collection,

25:20

because as someone who
look at these trajectories I think it’s very important. The public gallery needs to
insist on keeping a collection

25:28

because it’s a form of
material art history. It would be good to hear the
advantages and disadvantages

25:35

from you, these two galleries
that are in very close proximity, of how you guys deal with it,

25:40

and do you guys plan to have one because I think it would be great to see what you do with your
future permanent collection?

25:51

– Do you want to have a collection? – I come from a collection background.

25:57

I was a conservator. I love collections.

26:02

It is impossible for us to
have a collection right now. We’re in this growth stage
as we keep mentioning.

26:09

Eventually, perhaps, when the gallery becomes a
standalone gallery and it has

26:15

enough space, you have to
look at space is critical, but at the moment no.

26:20

I would say in the future yes, absolutely it would be very interesting. My personal point of view.

26:26

I think he’s different. – [Audience] What kind of collection–

26:32

specific advice from someone’s
collection, you guys could– – I don’t know, we haven’t really,

26:38

we haven’t had the energy
to consider a collection, but yeah, I don’t know.

26:43

It’s a great question and
I’ll start thinking about it.

26:49

– I think as well, we’re a small city. We’re 80,000 people. And we’re showing internet,
we’re showing significant

26:58

international artists. There would be a huge rift
between what we’re showing

27:08

and what we could afford to collect. What we could collect
would probably not be,

27:13

couldn’t really be representative
of what we’re showing. We do show emerging artists
and we could probably collect some work by them,

27:19

but again, because we have an
international mandate as well, we don’t have that local
connection that I think

27:25

Surrey has more of a local collection and they have that, they have a history of collecting.

27:32

We don’t have that.

27:39

– I think we’ve got one more question and then we’re going to end the session.

27:45

Oh– – Responding to that. – Oh sorry, I just
thought I’d hand it over.

27:51

– Yeah, well I did have a
thought that might be interesting for you to think about, and that’s the phenomena,

27:57

because as you know from
Zainab’s introduction to me I also dabble in public art,

28:02

which is how the urban screen came to be. And it’s the question of
public art and new media,

28:10

which is a form of a collection, and I think that that’s quite interesting. I know that the profession of public art

28:18

that they’re talking about it having a limited lifespan, which I think is really interesting

28:25

that the commitment to a
new media, public artwork might be very limited, like 10 years.

28:32

Although we all know long
ones, long living ones, like the one the tunnel
at the O’Hare airport.

28:41

Yeah, but that’s an interesting, another way that collections
are actually happening

28:47

with digital media. – Sorry, one more question
and then we’re going to

28:52

close up for lunch, but I think there’ll be many
questions that you should ask during the lunch hour,

28:58

because I know people want
to talk about where does the funding come from, and there’s other sorts
of questions as well.

29:06

– [Audience] I want to
tie this a little bit to yesterday, and also
to some conversations

29:12

that we’ve had outside. And one of the neoliberalism,

29:18

the biggest frame, the
biggest perspective. One of the things that’s
happening in the world today

29:26

is the shift from Big
Data to blockchain, right? And the idea, that’s technology speak,

29:32

but the idea is, can we
cut out the middleman? Can we create ownership
over our assets ourselves?

29:42

Our information, our data, can we share it and control it?

29:47

And we’re talking from money
to our very genetic code.

29:52

Talking about everything. I try to define art with the floor,

29:59

and we came up with this
huge space between a gift and a trap to control, let’s say.

30:07

What we saw today, just now, is an example of how what we might lose

30:14

if we cut out the middleman,
the tracker that brought the colonials in.

30:20

What we might lose if we remove mediators, because I see

30:30

in Surrey, and I’ve known actually in fact I can include Zainab, I see three old friends and new
friends who have contributed

30:39

from the middle space
in such a nurturing way that the answer to the
question what is art

30:47

seems to me to be more less in the artist, less in the audience, and
much more in the commitment

30:57

of the people in the middle who make the link between the two, who allow this beginning to flourish.

31:03

I want to just thank you
guys for what you do.

31:08

But also ask you to comment on that. That idea of connoisseurship, authority, curatorship, mediation, selection,

31:15

exclusion, it’s power place, it’s a place of power, but it’s also an important
place where you can do service.

31:29

– And just lifting from Willard
Homes from a long time ago who was once the director of
the Vancouver Art Gallery.

31:35

He made this comment to me,
and this would have been in the early 80’s. That he proposed this is
the mandate of the Vancouver

31:43

Art Gallery and it was
much contested by his team, but I still think it has currency,

31:50

and it’s something that I use
to guide my decision making, and that is,

31:56

I think our role is to serve art and the multiple purposes of art. And I think everything can
be organized from that place,

32:04

from that priority, and
that’s how my governance at the gallery has been organized.

32:12

It’s a curious and
something worth discussing,

32:18

but that’s my take on that.

32:24

– I think we are always very aware that we are in a very powerful position.

32:32

And you mentioned
listening is very important and this is a good deal of
what we do in the gallery

32:37

is listen to our audience, to visitors.

32:43

And let them guide the conversations. We bring in our curatorial knowledge,

32:50

the privilege we’ve had
of talking to artists, of understanding the work at that level.

32:58

We bring that to the conversation, but we don’t guide the
conversation after that

33:05

I don’t think, it’s definitely
discursive and wanders.

33:13

– I think the most difficult thing is understanding how something
gets into the gallery

33:21

in terms of power. What works get selected? What are the criteria for
deciding this artist should be

33:29

in a group exhibition in New Westminster? And we actually try this idea, we talk about curating from the work

33:37

back to the curatorial theme, helps us to remove ourselves
in sense from the process

33:43

as much as possible. Sometimes we’ll see works
that are linked by a process, by a material, by a
philosophical position,

33:52

by something else. And these are trying to diminish

33:58

our input as much as possible, almost trying to use formulas or algorithms to determine
the work in a sense,

34:06

rather than saying we like this work, let’s put this in the gallery, and everyone else will like it,

34:12

or we think this artist should be here. There is a kind of
arbitrary starting point

34:17

for any exhibition, which lies
with the curator I suppose.

34:23

It could be a point of
research they’re interested in or an event or something else,

34:29

but they’re essentially arbitrary things. Why is what I’m interested
in necessarily the best thing

34:36

to put in the gallery? And that’s a discussion
that we have all the time. I think because we’re
co-directors and co-curators,

34:43

everything we do is an
agreement between us, that then extends out to the gallery.

34:50

– We’re arguing all the time and we’re having to defend our
own positions to each other,

34:56

which I think possibly affects
the nature of the exhibition.

35:05

– [Roseman] Okay, that
is a very, very difficult and loaded question.

35:11

But I think we’ve been through a lot of different discussions

35:17

in curatorial practice
about the imaginary museum being at one extreme.

35:23

The artist curator maybe
being at another extreme.

35:29

But what we have to remember is that a human being is
an instrument of knowledge.

35:39

We ourselves are a form of technology.

35:45

Technology that has perceptual capacities, organizational capacities,

35:52

algorithmic capacities. We also fit within the
technological scheme somewhere.

36:00

And earlier, yesterday
I think somebody said

36:06

all technology is political. There is in a sense, even
the imaginary museum,

36:14

even the algorithmically
determined exhibition, even the exhibition determined by chance.

36:21

All of these denote value systems. And I think the important
thing for the curator

36:29

is one thing that you’re saying, which is looking at the work first,

36:34

and always curating from
the work to the idea.

36:40

And secondly, disclosing
the context of the curator. Disclosing the context of the museum.

36:47

Disclosing all those different factors. Disclosing the armature,
not just of the work,

36:54

but of how the work is put together, how it has been curated. And if we do that,

37:00

I think we’re resolving the
very deep, philosophical issues, because we’re allowing the
audience to make judgments

37:08

about that. – Yeah, I agree.

37:13

It’s a tough question, but I will wear my hat of the OAAG

37:19

and a little bit of my work, you are right that we are,

37:25

we’ve been operating
in those middle spaces. With the onset, and given
that we think that the use

37:33

of technology is all political
and with the onset of the systems like blockchain,

37:39

my question has been, what then will the public
art gallery even be?

37:45

Will it even remain? And will Canada, as you call
it the communist country,

37:52

still hang on and make it stay, even though the world will have moved on?

38:02

And I, like Leanne, also stay with my job always,

38:11

and I even said this to the Canada Council when I worked there, in all the decisions that
were being made I said

38:16

remember that it is the artist
that is the bottom line, it’s not the budget.

38:23

And whatever decisions were being made around budget and funding,
if the artist was not being

38:29

taken into consideration, then we we were in a problem, because we are talking about art.

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