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foreign

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[Music]

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we’re here with Emmanuel Madame a composer a sound artist

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he’s been one half of the user for I

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think since 1998 if I remember correctly has been working on solo projects all

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this time as well a curator but also wears a whole bunch of different hats as well as the national director of The

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Independent Media Arts Alliance has even worked as a program officer at the Canada Council so a real

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wide variety of experience and we’re

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here to talk a little bit about his work in the digital economies lab and some subjects that interact with these ideas

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and the work there how are you doing today really well good good I guess we’ll just

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start off with uh with some like a simple question of like given all of those different hats and those different

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roles that you played uh what is it that kind of Drew you to working in the in

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the digital economies lab in a project like this so I think uh you know the

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the questions the initial questions of the lab around uh around artist Prosperity uh are ones that I’ve grapped

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with in uh in a number of like from a number of angles as you

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mentioned I’ve I’ve held a variety of different roles in the Arts environment and

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um uh sustainability uh economic sustainability for artists especially

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artists starting out today is a huge concern for me um I I really like to think about like

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long-term viability I like to think about um how the Arts ecosystem is uh is a

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system you know it’s something that uh that potentially works together

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um in self-sustaining self-supporting ways and I was just really curious to

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take part in um what I think is too rare of a

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conversation these are these are questions that we should be thinking about all the time that more of us

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should be thinking about so I really welcomed the chance to uh to contribute to such a dialogue

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so um I think you jumped around to different projects here and there

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um do you want to give a quick overview of some of the projects that you worked

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on and then I think also talking a bit about ideas that emerge both in the

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conversation around those projects but that didn’t necessarily make it into the projects that maybe are extending beyond

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the the lab itself right well um I think the first thing that I got

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involved with uh was uh in partnership with swintech and it was

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a thing called crate swap in which we were kind of

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uh thinking about reuse and Recycling and repurposing of uh of a very basic

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piece of um of Hardware um of material for touring artists this

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idea that [Music] um you know there’s all there’s this like

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crazy economy of shipping crates that like uh circulates all the time all over

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the world and there’s always you know at any given moment an artist needs a crate

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that they don’t have and and that probably at a similar moment there are artists that have more traits than they

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need and we sort of tried to tease out some opportunities there

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with a longer term goal I think of thinking about like sharing and swapping

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economies more generally you know so like if we could make it work for a relatively generic piece of equipment

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like uh like a shipping crate then perhaps we could also make it work for

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um uh uh access materials or

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um or um you know various pieces of equipment that only come into play every once in a

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while or um so we we had you know we sort of developed a basic a basic framework for

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that and um afterwards I found myself uh in

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conversation with three other Dell members

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um uh in what eventually became known as

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our artwork local 404 which is a proposal for uh for

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um a cultural workers and artist Union um sort of a speculative Union basically

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uh that would that served as a served served as a discussion forum for

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um organizing generally you know like how do how do uh artists self-employed

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artists uh come together in the sorts of formations that we uh historically would

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definitely have called unions uh but those opportunities with sort of Remora

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kind of freelance model are not as simple

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um perhaps as they once as they once or perhaps not as they’re probably just as simple actually but they’re not as

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um they’re not as ready to hand so uh we spent

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um a bunch of time uh fleshing out a proposal for for what a union could look

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like and how we might constitute something that actually corresponded to to the needs of the of these workers uh

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so in those in some of those projects um certainly uh one was about resource

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sharing and another about um organizing uh the the Labor uh

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creating a sort of organized structure or imagining what that would be are there um ideas that did uh kind of emerge

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through those discussions that didn’t come into a project or that that wouldn’t fit in the scope of what the

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digital economy’s lab was doing oh one of the things that perhaps is less evident in the uh in the output from uh

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our group level 404 is it ended up being a kind of

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it ended up being an artistic Endeavor uh in a certain sense more than a more

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than a um and an economic proposal uh basically when

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we got to the point where we were creating a phone-based uh interactive interface

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for people for callers to uh to navigate uh that was when I really felt like you

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know the my usual predilections as an artist that is to sort of engage with

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software and really get into the guts of like how how systems are designed at the software level like that became like a

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really exciting uh thing uh for me to work on and and it was uh

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um Izzy and myself Prime primarily like is he sort of set up this this

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um development environment for uh phone based interface and uh it sparked a lot

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of I think really interesting uh ideas that that I look forward to carrying to

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caring on you know in in the future and sort of like it’s it’s

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there’s there’s a kinship with some of the projects that I’ve done as part of user where you sort of inhabit these

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like extremely uh extremely Technical and often quite

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sterile or even hostile uh environments like you know a phone interface push one

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push two push three like the like one of the most hated uh technological inventions of of this

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age um that’s really interesting for me to sort of get get into the gut sub and

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play around with and sort of think about like think about those constraints and that like extremely limiting logic and

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how you can nevertheless like arrive at something that’s uh that’s uh

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um imaginative and yet you know the one there’s a kind of nostalgia for

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a phone interface all of a sudden as that as much of that has gone away and then you also see the the sort of

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meteoric Rise of something like Clubhouse which suddenly became you know uh a kind of like fat of interest in

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audio like in this speaking so I wonder if there’s was there in those discussions was there something

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particular about because some of it was about leaving a voice message a kind of uh like what was it about the the phone

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that that and The Voice as a part of an organizing principle or a kind of

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connectivity in terms of thinking not just artistically but organizationally

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yeah well I mean there’s I guess uh there’s enemy you see about phone-based

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interfaces uh and it worked well I think with the um

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the the fictional proposal that we were making that like we were sort of representing a community of artists who

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would have who would have disappeared from online platforms and so we were kind of reverting to these

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um uh earlier you know um a more dated Technologies and uh like

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kind of re reanimating these spaces that had been uh had been abandoned uh with

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the arrival of of uh uh uh digital platforms

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not the phone interview I mean funny interfaces are ultimately a digital platform also but there’s something

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about the interface that feels quite different and as to the The Voice element I mean

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I’m someone who comes from from a background of of transmission

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based practices I spent a number of years uh working in radio as a

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broadcaster and uh you know uh a lot of kind of experimental uses of

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of transmission technology and so uh working with

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the telephone as a transmission technology was was an interesting uh and

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interesting exploration for for us I think yeah and uh as a transmission

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because it was it was to receive a message but also was it an exchange was it also just to send message was it a

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send and receive system or it was it was an interactive system uh so the but the

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the main thing that we developed as part of this project was um uh there are there are a number of

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pre-recorded messages uh and the user navigates through these messages by

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means of a of a touchstone interface so um the system is collecting responses

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from uh from callers um but those they’re digital responses

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they’re like numerical responses that are that can then be analyzed as sort of

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as data basically so what and the the thrust of the questions was

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um what kinds of challenges and and problems and and frustrations do you

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face as uh as someone who’s trying to make a living as a creative person and

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we we propose you know uh possible challenges that uh that people might be

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facing that were that are based on our own lived experience as artists so

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um and we were you know trying to we were using these as prompts to get people to think about

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um this situation that they find themselves in and some of that is is economic some of them you know has your

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work been stolen or have you been under work underpaid for the work that you’ve produced

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um have you lost control over your intellectual property but there were also other considerations other forms of

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exploitation other than economics so you know are you in in uh an exploitative or

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abusive relationship with with um your your employer or your our the

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the client that you that has contracted you um you know and what are the

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intersections of that with uh with other forms of exploitation around say uh

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gender or age or or or um racialization or or economic class

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we’ve had discussions over the course of the uh of the digital economies lab

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about thinking the the reinvention of of infrastructure for a different

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generation for different communities like how how do you think with all of these different experiences you’ve had

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at different scales of artistic production from policy uh down to you

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know working in the workshop like the one behind you how how do you think about this process

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of Reinventing organizational models or institutions you know do we need do they need to die

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and be reborn can they be transformed how do we think about that process right

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I mean I think that there’s probably a difference between

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[Music] um models and instantiations of those

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models so you know they’re the the model of the

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collective for example is uh is something that’s extremely versatile and

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you know and and and super resilient you know and don’t I don’t think that’s

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going anywhere anytime soon how uh a

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collective uh an artist Collective is actually implemented at how it’s

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actually um put into place by the individuals that you know that animate that that

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model is always going to be different but I think that the key is

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[Music] um being able to recognize uh what parts of a model are interesting

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and applicable and and should be communicated you know

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across communities or down Generations um because I think that a lot of that

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knowledge of like that kind of organization organizing organizing practice

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um does not make it down on the generations or across to new

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new uh new groups and as a result a lot of there’s a lot of you know perhaps

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unnecessary reinvention that has to keep happening because

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uh people don’t recognize uh what could be useful to them as they

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form their own thing and as they sort of embark on their particular

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um grouping or a project or or ultimately even Institution

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so I think that like like there there is uh there’s a kind of a of a Heritage you

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know and the The Artist Run Center uh that you know came in came to prominence

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you know a good 40 more 40 or more years ago like has a lot of benefit to it has

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a there’s a lot of accumulated knowledge there uh which I think is really worth

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uh valuing and transferring into

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um the sorts of um the sorts of structures that are being formed today

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yeah I wonder you know one of the great challenges and that we’ve seen appear as

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a theme uh in the Del this idea of transmission of knowledge and sharing

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knowledge and even you know why what we’re grappling with as we uh reach you

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know uh the end of a certain phase of the of this kind of research that we’re doing how do we

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share uh the ideas that have been developed but then I I think you’re

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you’re you’re drawing out a much you know a longer Arc of this issue of how to

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share and adapt knowledge over you know Generations not necessarily just age

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Generations but different cycles of uh of people who come into organizations

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when you think of a lot of certain the certain kinds of instability that might happen in an organization

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with people leaving all the time and having to relearn especially at small organizations so how like can is there

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ways that we can think of um or have you sort of

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um thought about different ways that we can approach this because because I

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think in this lab we’ve been we initially put up a proposal together

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that certainly centered or thought a lot of Technology as like something that you

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could use you could automate something you could do something and what the response from the participants has been

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thinking around technology and how to not resist it but think of other issues to

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be to be grappled with and then approach technology from this sort of second phase and trying to incorporate it

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so as you have identified these things like in your case there’s the idea of

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labor organization but this other one of of of transmission of knowledge of

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sharing of know-how sharing of skills sharing of how to put these models into

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the practice at the ground level how do we how do we think of different ways to

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do that that’s a big question and I think you know there’s so much of

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the importance is [Music] um

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um how the work gets done and who’s doing the work you know like I I was thinking a little bit uh about kites uh

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Almanac uh which is another of the projects that’s that’s emerged out of out of the

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deal and um I like I think it’s really really interesting the way that she’s going

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about putting us together uh initially I when I sort of saw the

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early stages of The Proposal I was like oh well actually the organization where I work already has one of these you know

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we have a thing called I’m a source which is really intended to to fit exactly this

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purpose but the fact of the matter is that you know no it’s not you know like

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it it the who is behind an initiative uh has everything to do with

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um what elements um they’re gonna they’re gonna find to to place into this

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this companion this this this uh this Encyclopedia of of of knowledge

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of experience and so I think that it’s really important that these initiatives

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proliferate and that they’re done um in close relation to the communities

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of practice that they’re that they’re intended to address but then what’s equally important is

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that we have [Music] um uh we have meaningful uh mechanisms for

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transference between these perhaps somewhat parallel projects that there is

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an interoperability between what everybody’s doing so that if if you know a particular instance instantiation of a

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model doesn’t quite work you could easily be directed to something something similar but not identical but

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you know that might be more suitable for your case and I think um I was just listening to the interview that you did

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with with Tim um uh and at one point he talks about a

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mesh Network you know I think this is like a really interesting model for decentralized

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yet coordinated um organizing uh I I think that also came up actually

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in um the discussion with Suzanne uh about where the the almanac has

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arrived or it is in this current state and this idea of a kind of modularity

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that stretches or nodes on a network that can be adapted to a community context

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um I I think that’s a really um you know it’s a really interesting

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part uh of the whole research project really is to see how important

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um sort of metaphors and ways of speaking uh are really uh important uh

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to the productive aspects of what will come next how important for you is it uh to find the right terms to discuss it I

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think even you know going back to uh that earlier point that I remember having in the first weekend of workshops

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saying like doesn’t it was one of the projects that I don’t think it turned into the the 404 uh was you know doesn’t

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this feel like you’re sort of Reinventing an organization that you work for uh but it

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was Reinventing it under different terms um and so I guess I’m asking like for you is that do you see that importance

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do you think it’s important to find the right terms that will actually redirect projects in new ways

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there’s no doubt I mean terms are vitally important choice of terms is very is is not trivial you know and uh I

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think that um it it has a huge impact on how things

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are perceived you know like uh uh I one of the things about art World

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art work local 404 is um

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it sort of if participates in the language of Union

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but I think it’s really trying to [Music] um

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is trying to get at the fundamentals of the idea of Union uh which have over

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time I think largely been forgotten uh I think sort of current understandings of organized labor

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uh are very institutionalized uh there there’s a connotation of of

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heavy bureaucracy top heaviness all that stuff right like this is why you partly

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why unions have such a bad rap in um in contemporary uh Society is

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there’s there’s all of this structure right like but I I think the

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understanding that that the four of us had in in proposing uh the union was

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uh we’re I think inspired by um

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non-institutionalized ideas about basic Union and solidarity right so I think

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like probably the the closest antecedent would be uh the iww

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um the the one big Union you know which which is really tries to keep away from

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um what ended up happening in the union movement which was a heavy Bureau

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bureaucratization and ultimately division right like the the fact that like you’re you’re in these very small

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negotiating units um is all is really very much counter to the fundamental idea of like we stand

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together the working class and the ruling class had nothing like those sorts of very

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basic idealistic sure perhaps even a little simplistic but like those are the

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Stark fun like founding realities of the union movement and I think it was important to

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to sort of re-center those understandings well and it’s I going back to the the

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the the the criticism that is often you know uh launched against the union the

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bureaucratic of that slowing things down is uh is a bad thing right that we like

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we have characterized that slowness as a problem where you know that it’s one of

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the I think um most challenging parts of of

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contemporary societies to figure out where we need to go slower and where we do need to go faster like we’re

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extremely slow in figuring out how we can care for a wider range of people how

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to you know deal with issues of well for instance access to water extremely slow

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um and yet there’s other places where we need you know whether it’s a bureaucracy or

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um to move slowly to actually resist that the speed in order to have

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different kinds of considerations so trying to figure out too a way where actually the slowness could is a value

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that is we need more of we need to slow certain things down um yeah I think it’s a really great

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point and you know deliberation basically is much it was what needs to

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take sufficient time and um and you know democracy is is is a slow

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process and and must be so in order to be meaningful um and so this is I think partly parcel

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of that yeah you know bringing it back to the project and actually the idea of uh of

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listening I don’t know I it’s I have this idea in my mind that the project at some point touched on people leaving

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messages that there was like an element of uh like just listening to what people

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needed like just listening to the stories or whatever that was part of the plan

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um but we didn’t actually make it that way it’s in it’s in the next phase it’s in the next phase yeah

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um to sort of shift over to the question of you know how we share

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um ideas and things that happen uh and in the program like this and we we you

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know we’ve taken on uh these conversations because we think it’s a more sort of nuanced uh approach to

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trying to uh talk about and share the ideas in the program I wonder if that’s

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um how you’ve thought about these ideas of of sharing knowledge and what different ways that we can approach

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um uh sharing outputs sharing projects and things like that

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yeah I mean um what should I say about this uh

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it’s uh I think it’s a real challenge you know I I think that uh like the the

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Amelia that I work in at the moment is uh [Music]

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research is is a huge part of the activity

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um and I think that there’s a lot of work that needs to

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happen um after the research is complete you know how do you how do you translate

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um that knowledge and and convey it in ways that are actually useful to uh to

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people who you know um would benefit from from fine about

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this stuff and and it’s I think there’s a there’s a huge level

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of skill there that that needs to be developed further where you’re able to

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[Music] um offer insights from all of this work like like as we were just saying you

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know if this is slow work it’s deliberative work it’s it’s uh it’s

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worth it that takes by in order to be useful it must take time uh so that

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means it’s probably also fairly voluminous as a as a body of you know of

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of output so how do you get from there from like

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the all of the complexity and Nuance of like a long

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um sustained learning period to um being able to

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interest uh someone who’s new to the knowledge

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um in in certain ways that will you know get get them interested in finding out more

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um so there’s there’s a lot to do there like I think there’s you know everything

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from um uh packaging pieces of information in ways

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that are engaging to to folks that you know just stumble across this in in in

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you know in whatsoever away like whether it’s you know a tweet or what whatever it may be

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but but things that are also not like reductive you know that that that point

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to further knowledge as opposed to trying to uh glibly summarize something

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that is maybe not so summarizing well that idea of sort of layering like

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giving people ways to dig to dig deeper into things rather than simply

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fragmentation you know like rather than simply cutting it up and dispersing it how do we make these different Avenues

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to arrive at you know and give people access to the tools I mean it’s a it

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seems like uh an increasingly complicated question although it it also seems

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um like there’s um a new like there’s a new not just even

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before the pandemic there was a a significant shift uh in the way people

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were thinking about Arts organizations or maybe we’re just getting old and we’re the the organizations we’ve been

32:35

involved in are dying off and new things are growing anyways but it did feel like there’s new ways of organizing that were

32:42

emerging even before um before the pandemic and that this has accelerated

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um obviously there’s a kind of a crisis at the heart of it for um for the world and then for you know

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for us within the cultural world it’s been this dramatic dramatic event but

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um I wonder if you have uh if you’ve seen other models through the work that

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you’re doing uh that are really inspiring around different ways of organizing uh and and sort of responding

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to a new generation of creators I think there’s a lot to be said for uh

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one-on-one conversation you know like basically the idea of the brain date um the organization that I run is is

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just embarking on like a a project um of sort of digital capacity building

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and I think one of the primary um techniques that we plan to use it’s

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really just like matching up this person with this other person you know and

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trying to figure out like intelligent ways to um

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to provoke conversations between people who you know are meeting for the first

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time or have have met but only in passing but somehow like determining

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that like these two folks have got something uh to say to each other

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um that you know there’s a kind of learning that happens in that in this

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kind of a you know one-on-one conversation uh that is difficult to reproduce in in larger structures so I’m

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I’m I really think that there’s um that that’s a big piece of of uh

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it’s an important part of uh This Moment especially you know in this in this sort

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of screen dominated world that we find ourselves in where larger groupings become logistically

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you know more complex the more people you add in and like coordinating people’s schedules and stuff like that

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is always difficult but there’s like that basic like human

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uh form of conversation is something that’s like I think really really

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valuable and really worth like putting a lot of energy into it’s it’s totally

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um I find it really fascinating because um that’s you know really like the idea

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that I was talking about what happened in the project of many people kind of uh zigging to the zag of us sort of

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proposing certain types of Technology that’s like the you know in some ways this antithetical component of like what

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is the most important element we need is this individual conversations we need individual interaction in order to build

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the kind of um organizational knowledge sharing um do you think that that is

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um do you think part of that comes from um a long history of working with

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technology in the creative menu like I know you know with with uh here at Art

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engine as we saw you know the pandemic take effect we felt like we saw a history of media art happen to the rest

36:03

of uh the Arts world and like the space of six months they were went through all of these different

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like cycles that we’ve seen over the the course of our of our time working with

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technology do you think that that is there’s a sense of um

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or is it something else I guess do you think it’s coming from the work that we’ve already done with technology in

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the organizations in our personal practices or is there something else that’s happening there

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well I think there’s you know definitely in in the fields in which we

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work like technology is a given and and we’re like it’s really like

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infused all of our conceptualization of the world around us

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you know like all of our metaphors are are uh heavily informed by digital tools and

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practices so I yeah I think we have a kind of we have a special kind of

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comfort with these ways of doing things um it also means that we’re maybe less

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patient you know uh when when things are poorly designed or or you know we’re

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we’re not willing to accept things as they are presented to to uh the average

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technological consumer and I think that’s a great thing because it it empowers us to sort of

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um uh modify or um tweak the tool so that it does suit

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our needs you know and to think like to to not accept

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um you know technology as it’s as it’s delivered as it’s marketed as the only

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the only possible way that that things can work well I I think that we’ve uh we’ve gone

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over quite a few interesting things in our in our time together um maybe we’ll uh close up our

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conversation here um and uh say uh aloha

38:15

thanks for joining me here and thanks so much for pulling this

38:21

whole adventure together it’s uh it’s been really really interesting and stimulating and uh and uh as as we’ve

38:28

just said you know I hope that the the results are something that will be uh

38:35

that will be um useful for uh other people that are that are just getting they’re just

38:41

finding out about it now well thanks for your uh your chat today and your contributions overall and uh we’ll talk

38:48

to you again soon thanks take care Ryan [Music]

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