Introduction

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[Music]

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flat

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[Music] hello and welcome uh my name is remco

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and today i’m talking to jerry mcgrath uh jerry is a strategist an organizer

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and sometimes agitator with a wide range of experience uh

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ranging from japanese automobile manufacturing through the band center for the arts

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artscape launchpad and since recently a more alternative uh independent

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platform called ukai through which he has provided opportunities for a range of artists and

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creatives uh jerry welcome thank you very much uh so

How do we organize

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looking at your experience and the things that you’ve done over a range

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of years it seems that there’s a clear thread in your work of how do we organize how

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do we gather which is a question that is of course particularly pertinent uh at

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the moment so what are some of the uh lessons so far

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that you have learned about ways to organize i mean i think it’s interesting that you see a thread

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through the work and i imagine like over time there has been a thread that’s emerged but most of it started by

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accident um when i finished university i uh i couldn’t find work uh i think i applied

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to 120 different jobs i ended up getting two interviews uh one with a security company where i

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would walk around the warehouse district in toronto looking out for trouble and the other teaching english in japan and

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so i opted to go to japan for a year uh ended up just loving the experience

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of having my own ignorance revealed to me on a daily basis and made a made a home there for for quite a few years and

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as a part of that i i got to do some work in the automotive industry as you mentioned um and really came to acknowledge and

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recognize that there are lots of different ways of organizing to get things done

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i worked with mitsubishi during um a period when they were looking to be acquired by daimler

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chrysler that ended up not happening that transaction um but i got to work with uh their their

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sort of senior leadership team where their up-and-coming leadership team within the organization and learned a

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lot about how they organize to get work done and so i think if there’s a pattern to it i think it’s generally just that that

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we tend to fall into habits or routines without critically reflecting on what we’re doing

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we’re exposed to models we’re socialized to relate to other people in a particular way

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and then we don’t really spend a lot of time interrogating those routines over time because they’re comfortable they

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provide an easy way of filtering new information um and even if they’re no

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longer adaptive to the world that we’re in it’s it’s sometimes very difficult to transition into other ways of of being

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with other people and so i don’t i don’t really have a preference in terms of how we organize to get things done but i think we do

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have a responsibility to to call into question some of the assumptions that we hold about how we are organized um by

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the systems that we’re in and i think that’s particularly true right now um because some of the the

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uh we’ll say some of the shifts in terms of how algorithms are playing a more critical role and how our

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world is organized will make it a lot harder to sort of extract out some of the assumptions that

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go into designing these systems and so if we’re not critical now um it’s going to be much more difficult to be critical

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down the road and uh what you’re uh talking about a little bit as well is uh

The limits of organizing

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sort of the the limits that when you are trying to uh reorganize uh embedded ways of

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organizing right you’ve been in um a lot of the the places that you’ve been

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in are fairly large and hierarchically structured

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did you did you feel that tension or that friction in trying to devise new

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ways of coming together within those circumstances

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yeah so i’ll say i’ll talk first about the banff center um i spent eight years working at the vamp

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center i got there shortly before the the great recession um in 2008 is when i started working

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there um and so my mandate shifted very quickly i came in as a program manager

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um but then all of the programs that we had grown used to running [Music]

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well they disappeared and so my responsibility was to generate new business and one of the commissions

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was well we have these different communities we have um we have indigenous leaders indigenous artists we

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have four thousand artists coming through a year we have energy sector companies who are

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investing money so oil companies we have the local community we have environmentalists

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and so how do we create a space that doesn’t doesn’t privilege particular ways of knowing that allows these communities to come into conversation

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with each other the assumption was that by leveraging the diverse communities that call the vamps that are home we might we

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might be able to do different things particularly around uh reconciliation um between indigenous and non-indigenous

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people in canada but also um around social innovation generally

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and yeah of course there’s there’s resistance because i think there are certain patterns that develop over time certain

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assumptions about how you’re supposed to treat people or how you’re supposed to show up that can that can create moments

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of of challenge um so one i’ll give one example

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uh in our programs we we tend to so we we like to center an indigenous

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elder i worked a lot with um elder dallahuel who was an elder um a

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blackfoot elder that that we worked with at the banff center and uh we did a program at the university of alberta that uh involved

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former prime minister of canada kim campbell and uh and both the elder and in this case it was actually sorry i

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have to go back here and that’s okay we can always edit these things but the we were working with uh elder corley

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powderface from the sony dakota nation and with the former prime minister of canada the right honourable kim campbell

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both of whom had expectations about how they would be treated in a public event

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and there were opportunities for conflict and disagreement and the institution’s reflex was always to

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support um the the politically connected um the folks with access to money and wealth um

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but the moral position of the organization was that we needed to prioritize um indigenous participation

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and voices in programming and that always led to tensions because there wasn’t an easy way to reconcile the the

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different needs that folks had um with artscape launchpad uh was involved in helping to set up the the

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new space and the programming a thirty thousand square foot facility here in toronto um

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and of course artscape exists um in partnership with with real estate development

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and toronto is is increasingly becoming uh unaffordable particularly for

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creators and for artists you have an arts organization that’s in partnership with

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with real estate development and this all this creates a lot of opportunities for for confusion for conflict um

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when you’re when you’re taking money from a group that’s forcing artists out of community in order to create spaces

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for artists in community um you know there’s necessarily uh attention there and i don’t i don’t think that’s a bad

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thing but i think the challenge is that drawing attention to these like recursive patterns of

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meaning making can can get you in a lot of trouble um and so how do you ensure that you have the protection and

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security that you need because there are a lot of spoken and unspoken rules about what’s okay to discuss or

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not in context like that yeah that’s it reminds me of the situation in montreal a little bit where

No incentive to make space

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there’s a lot of money and effort flowing into sort of the core of the city

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in order to create a vibrant cultural artistic scene whether it’s through

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installation works or commissioned works or festivals but the flip side of that is that a lot

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of more independent art making and artists are getting pushed further and further out because

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there is no point of entry if you are not already part of the system that is creating that those

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opportunities and i think i think oh sorry go ahead no no go ahead yeah i should say i think i think you’ve

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exactly hit on it here and there’s no incentive for those who currently have access to

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resources to make space like even if they morally want others to take part in this there’s a finite

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number of resources there there’s a scarcity mindset and so to allow others in actually can feel quite threatening

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um and so although we see in the sector folks saying the right things about about wanting to to support decades of

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like oppressive systems and exclusion um there really aren’t a lot of incentives to to make room because

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um the the assumption is that by making that space i will lose opportunities and and i did some work with dance in canada

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um around the decolonizing canadian dance project and it’s the same situation where we have all of these forms of dance that

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have been excluded mainly because we have assumptions about what what professional dance looks like

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there’s a stage there’s an audience there’s tickets um and as soon as you start allowing in baranatrium or other

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forms of culturally specific non-western dance um you’re putting an even greater strain on

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presenting spaces on resources on training on mentorship and and dance is already struggling um

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without without an influx of of new forms and so yes there’s this pull of

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like morally we need we need to be more inclusive and representative of the the populations that see in our cities and

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in our country um but then what happens to the opportunities that i used to have access to and i think that that’s that’s

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a hard conversation that we’re not quite willing to have yet mainly because it can be very scary

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especially if it happens in public yeah and then then

Politics of togetherness

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you start thinking about let’s say the politics of togetherness

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right who decides um it’s not just how together but also

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where together and who is doing the gathering uh that still exists within hierarchical

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structures rather than more a self-organizing or uh networked way of uh coming

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together yeah and who who faces where the as you say who holds the space is where people

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come together who decides like one of the critiques of banff was that even though

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there was a commitment to having a more diverse cohort of artists present at the institution that

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they were often cherry-picking um prominent examples of of individuals and not really supporting

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grassroots or emerging artists who are drawing on different cultural traditions

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and that’s a challenge right particularly when you don’t have an institutional

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capacity to reach communities because you’ve historically targeted a different group of folks and now

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suddenly you’re being asked to to reach out to communities that you don’t have a traditional relationship with

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that’s a lot of work and sometimes organizations don’t have the commitment to

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to actually exploring what those pathways actually look like yeah but even even on that level

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um and maybe we’re going too deep into the weeds here but

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um exactly as you say we’re being asked that in itself is already again um

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your own system within a larger system that is a relationship of dependency

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where you make choices based on basically

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the people who butter your bread and whether that is done for through which

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motivation are you then making those changes or trying to make those changes and can

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can they actually take hold um if you’re doing it for those reasons

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well and i think being asked to doesn’t necessarily have to be an external ask like i think like

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in my in my practice at least like the the motivation to

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[Music] to focus my attention on places that i i haven’t traditionally

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focused is is uh is is internally generated and so i’m

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being asked by by i’m being asked by the moment like i’m being asked by a world that’s suddenly

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coming to terms with with these systems of oppression in ways that that are new even though the systems have been there

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for a very long time um i think your point is is an important one though that that we don’t always know what what is

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motivating the shifts that organizations and individuals are undertaking and we may not even know like i i may think

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it’s coming from something that’s internally derived but really you know the funding system is sending

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out clear signals and i need to accommodate that as well if i want to persist and so it’s never like there’s no simple

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explanation for for the choices that we make um but i i guarantee that if if we have

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that sort of nuanced conversation that the the current the current discourse doesn’t really

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support that kind of that kind of uncertainty or or hesitation around around motivation

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um so it would yeah i think i think your point is is a fair one and i i would say

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i think one of the challenges we face is this sort of binary like we’re either doing it for the right reasons for the

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wrong reasons or we’re either doing the right thing or we’re doing the wrong thing but of course it’s a tangle

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uh amongst various factors um but picking them apart is a lot of work it doesn’t actually

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um isn’t actually supported by the ways that we we communicate with each other in the world right now so

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um yeah i mean that’s not really an answer i guess it’s just a point that i think it’s it’s incredibly complicated and i

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don’t think we live in a world that has much tolerance for complicated things right now were some of these considerations uh

Kai Uchi

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motivating factors in founding or starting ukai as a way to

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um be at least partially outside the system that you found yourself in and

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experiment with new forms yeah i think so kai ukai just to provide a bit of background

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is is um so the word ukai uh is refers to a kind of fishing that’s

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popular in in japan but also in well popular but comes from japan and southeast asia and china and other areas

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where cormorants which are big black birds um have a ring put around their neck

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a metal ring uh a tied to a string and then there’s like eight or ten of these cormorants swimming alongside a boat uh

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in the boat it’s at night they have pine burning uh a thing called a kagadibi i think it’s called um the fire draws fish

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up these sweet sweet fish they’re called iu um the cormorants catch them but then they can’t swallow them

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because of the ring around their neck uh but they keep fishing which i think is interesting and then their their their

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neck fills up with fish um the usho like the fisher the people who are fishing they pull the bird in they they dump the

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fish into a bucket and then they serve the the fish to the community but also to tourists it’s often used for for

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tourism um charlie chaplin thought it was like the the ultimate essence of like

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japanese aesthetics and art but others are a little more ambivalent because it does seem quite hard on the

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on the birds but i was taken to see this when i lived in japan as a relocation

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trainer and um and i must admit like my first instinct was to try to sort it like to make sense of it

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um and so i i saw it and i looked and i’m watching and i turned to my friend and i said well it’s a bit cruel isn’t it

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and and she gave me this look i didn’t quite understand um you know and and to me it was always a

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regret that rather than actually being present for this encounter this event this

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experience i had to sort it like good bad i had to find a bucket for it um and it denied me the possibility of

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actually diving deeper into it and so the organization is an opportunity to continue to ask some of

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these questions and maybe hold back a bit from from making a decision about whether a particular way of doing things

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is is right or wrong um i’ve always understood ukai the organization as an

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art project um we work fairly steadily with 20 25 artists i’m very proud that since the

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start of of um covet arriving in north america we’ve we’ve given out close to

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85 000 and sort of grants and commissions and and other supports to to various artists

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um and we we try to work with folks that feel a little bit like ukai the fishing where

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you you see it and you’re like well this doesn’t quite fit what i believe to be true i don’t know where to sort it i

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don’t know where this goes but rather than just sorting it anyway it’s like all right let’s let’s hold off

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on on making sense of this for as long as we can and and explore what possibilities exist

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in in in the form and so like concretely we’re doing work around uh financial precarity in the gig

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economy because a lot of artists that we work with you know they work part-time at uber they’re working under the table

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cash jobs you know like they’re they’re making a go of it in different ways and we’re working with a credit union to

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explore the day-to-day precarity of of being in the gig economy we do a lot of prototyping work so we’re we’re

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supporting um like culturally specific non-western performance to go digital they get asked

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to go digital like everyone’s gotta go digital everyone’s gotta go digital um but of course all the tools and

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platforms are set up for western european or corporate sort of use so if you’re a tyco group like you you’re not

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going to take your tyco onto spotify because no one’s going to go to spotify and say geez you know i really i really want to listen to taiko so how do we

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find ways of like of honoring um the core of the forum and so like with with the tycho we we ended up building a

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haptic feedback suit so that people could actually feel in their chest um a performance and they could actually

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make their own performance using just the keyboard and feel it um and we’ve done some augmented reality work we’ve

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done some calligraphy work working in a kind of sufi dance tradition um but yeah so anyway these are the

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types of projects that we get we get interested in i’m particularly interested in when you say

The Gig Economy

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you make sort of a shift to rather the artistic field to the gig

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economy uh broadly uh for the the creatives that you work

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with even though they are artists designers

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uh as well so you see um a connection between uh their way of working and

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their situation in a more uh broad economic uh situation

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then yeah i mean i mean obviously we’re interested in the work that they do but we’re also just interested in them in

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being alive and continuing to do the kinds of things that they they want to do um like ukai as a as fishing is really

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interesting because it’s it’s sustainable right it doesn’t actually degrade um the ability of these freshwater

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systems to regenerate provides some income it provides attention it honors a connection to

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nature and so i i don’t think we can sort of isolate out like the creative practice the money like it’s all it’s

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all tangled up together it’s so we want to understand the full expression of of being

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whatever and i think a lot of these folks is interesting like you say artists or creators um i think they only self describe in

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that way when it’s useful like i don’t i don’t know that many of them go home and say i’m an artist but i think when

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they’re applying for funding sure they’re an artist and if they’re applying for a commission and they’re a creator or whatever is useful for that

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context um and so yeah the categories are are very fungible as well that’s

Musical Chairs

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interesting because um there it has been over the uh

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a good number of years there’s been sort of a glorification of of the hustle

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uh from mostly the startup community and that this is a noble and honorable thing

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uh to do um and more and more uh people being in

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uh sort of a gig worker situation um might not experience it necessarily as

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heroic when they are practically in that situation yeah i know and i think i think we have to be careful about

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who benefits from from that story right that that each of us is accountable

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to ourselves and that each of us are in constant competition like i i think i

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you know this but i use musical chairs like as a as a metaphor for the world that we’re in and

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it feels like if you’re not familiar certainly most people are but musical chairs you know there’s one winner multiple losers uh

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there’s scarcity as a part of the game mechanic um it it honors like it rewards

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aggression it rewards um you know violence it rewards speed um it

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punishes compassion it punishes people who are differently abled

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um and it seems like we’ve sort of internalized this model of musical chairs in all aspects of life um that

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each of us is responsible for for finding our own space to sit and if

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you don’t make it then that’s that’s your own failure um and you have to stand to the side until

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the game is over and i don’t i just don’t know like some people like that game i was never a fan

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of it um it feels like we should have other games that we’re allowed to play like i got nothing against the hustle i

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got nothing against sort of the startup world it’s it’s when those moral positions become hegemonic and

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everywhere else if they start to define everything or access to water our access to knowledge you know that that’s a

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that’s a problem for me um and so for me it’s it’s like i don’t i don’t care how people fish for the

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most part um but i would like to know that there are options in terms of how we get our fish um and in the same way

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like how people decide to earn their money that’s cool but again i think there needs to be

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choices there fortunately we seem to be in a culture that doesn’t really um

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it prioritizes the ideas of sort of assumptions the assumptions of of scale

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of growth of efficiency um and if you want to prioritize anything else in your work well well too bad the systems

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aren’t really set up to support you in that you you either get big or get efficient or or you fall behind

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um and if you want to build an artistic practice around compassion or around generosity um it’s an uphill slog and so

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that’s part of the work is how can we actually model systems that center different values in their in their

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implementation yeah i want to come back to uh the the topic of compassion and and care that

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you mentioned but a very brief uh side track there

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um you mentioned the musical chairs uh the fishing in your writing uh for ukai and and just

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as a private consultant um you use imagery of

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uh tree root systems uh or of mycelial networks uh most recently what do you

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see as the role of metaphor in reaching people with these ideas

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metaphor is in a useful way to get people

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to understand situations differently um so i’ll give like a bit of an example and then talk specifically about the

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work i do now um metaphor a way of organizing the universe so that we can make sense of it

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and as a part of my my undergrad i was interested in how fairy

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tales came to influence how people saw the natural environment so i looked at the evolution of the

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story of little red riding hood over the years um and in its original inception it was probably orally transmitted but its

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first written version um little red riding hood is told to not go

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off the path she goes off the path she gets eaten by the wolf end of story like there’s no redemption there’s no

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man with an axe you know and so the meaning is fairly clear like the forest is scary

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listen to your mother over time the story evolved

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to a point where you know little red riding hood is sexually assaulted in versions of the story particularly the end of the 19th

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century and the reason for that is because of of sort of industrialization

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um factories were moving into somewhat rural areas and men from the city were were more frequently traveling and so

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the warning became nature is a place where bad men hide and so you you need to be cautious

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um you know that they introduce an introduction of the man with the axe like his this idea of a nuclear family

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and a woman needs a man to protect them from the dangers of the world and then the new versions of of little red riding

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hood are very much about you know her own emancipation her own self-authorization

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uh and the lesson being that that you know we we must sort of inhabit our own our own power

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um and nature is is a foil or as a like a character in that story and so i think for me metaphor

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is a way to invite people to reconsider the evidence of the world around them uh

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it allows them to sort of filter through and so like i do a lot of work around the idea of decay

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i’m really interested in in and sing and like the mushroom at the end of the world this idea that

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we have a culture that loves growth we have a culture that loves disruption

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and transformation um but it doesn’t seem all that interested in the process by which

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living things die and then are transformed into new ingredients for new beginnings um and so and it’s saying she

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writes in in mushroom at the end of the world about how

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in in the pacific northwest for example they’ll clear-cut a stand of of pine

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and then they’ll abandon it because there’s no profit to be had there but eight to ten years later matsutake

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mushrooms will start to sprout and they’re extremely valuable in in japan

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but in the far east as well and so pickers will sneak into these abandoned

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sites and pick matsutake mushrooms and then sell them to intermediaries usually vietnamese who will then sell them into

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the the japanese market and this is all done illegally um because it’s it’s trespassing but everyone knows it’s

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happening like it’s a it’s a very formalized structure and so i think if we start thinking about decay

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decay of culture or decay of systems and inhabiting those those systems that are no longer occupied by capitalism

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what possibilities start to to emerge and i i think that the metaphor is an

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entry way into that sort of mental game right because if we only understand growth or scale or efficiency then then

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we look at the world and we process information through that lens but if we start looking for decay we

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start seeing it in more places and it starts suggesting different ways of conceptualizing of

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things and so that’s that’s for me the the importance of metaphors it just it’s a way of organizing sensory experience

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in new ways and maybe suggesting different pathways or opportunities and that reminds me of uh some of your

Death

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writing where you had i believe as the title stop watering

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dead plants uh which points to that idea of decay

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you’ve also uh brought up uh previously ideas of corals

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and uh and lychen can you talk a bit more about ideas of death and decay

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um and how they play out in your in your practice so

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when covid you know when when when quarantine started in march um adukai we

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we had to decide how we we might respond and one of the conversations we had was around what happens

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um what happens when people die and we’re not allowed to gather to mourn the dead

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and so in in service to safety in service to you know the sanctity of health

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um we were going to allow certain rituals to collectively die

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um and so the question became all right with

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with the energy and intention that used to go into gathering to mourn our dead or other sort of

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rituals that don’t contribute necessarily to public safety how might we inhabit those spaces in

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order to reveal some of the the things that we’re losing so we worked with a burlesque dancer for

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example and burlesque obviously isn’t something that’s viable under under covid um and she had originally planned as a

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part of an art project to deliver a set of sort of domestic vignettes of her burlesque character

30:33

trapped in domesticity and she thought that this would be a fun exploration of of what was happening to her and the

30:39

losses she was experiencing but over the course of the residency she

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came to acknowledge that that she she needed to mourn into grief like she couldn’t always just transform

30:50

this character into something else she had to let it die and so we tried to create a space and an

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opportunity for her to artistically like through her her practice to mourn

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this loss and this dying and what does it mean to gather to mourn the loss of something like intimacy or or an

31:07

imaginary character working in the form of burlesque i i also think on the economic side

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we’re seeing

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so we’re working with a credit union and

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they started uh interestingly enough as a service for dutch immigrants to

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toronto duke a credit union um and when dutch immigrants came to canada they didn’t

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have a financial history so they were not eligible to receive mortgages loans

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other financial products so duca was founded as a way to provide financial solutions to people that weren’t

31:46

eligible because the system didn’t recognize the good work that they’d done over time they’ve become more and more

31:53

like a traditional bank or credit union i mean they’re still a b corp they still return to their members they’re

31:58

cooperative but their core business

32:05

remains committed to growth and profit in the pursuit of growth and profit they

32:12

are creating labor conditions where fewer and fewer people uh can rely on steady income there’s

32:18

more and more precariously employed people in toronto they figure it’s about 15 to 20 percent are relying on the gig

32:24

economy as their as their core income and so

32:29

what that means is that fewer and fewer people by their own standards become eligible for mortgages or for financial

32:36

support because their income isn’t something that’s recognized by the bank in the operation of their work

32:42

and so what we’re seeing is an organization that’s

32:48

basically creating the death of its own model and normally what a bank or credit union

32:54

would do is is they would just they would just give money to causes so that people wouldn’t be angry at them for the

33:00

harm they were creating um but the opportunity is to say well like what

33:06

what potential does this situation carry for us to occupy things differently and so what they’re contemplating

33:13

um is is a return to that that early history

33:18

where they want to create a peer-to-peer lending platform so if folks are experiencing volatility or precarity you

33:25

can you can then provide a short-term loan to support others in your community

33:30

um but then use that evidence as a criteria for eligibility for a mortgage

33:36

or to own a home or or whatever it is you want to do and so to me these these are like

33:43

these are ways that that our approach can actually address not just the symptoms of the situations

33:50

that are being created but actually trying to generate models that that that make use of the existing

33:56

energy in the system to imagine a different way of doing things that’s super interesting uh and also the way

participatory systems

34:03

that that is then currently being co-created by

34:09

the the people it is meant to serve by by the sound of what you’re uh what you’re saying so again

34:16

sort of more a distributed model um of uh creating in that sense yeah i mean it

34:22

is it is participatory and i and i think that that’s important but i worry that when then when we have participatory

34:29

systems we’re just putting the onus on the consumers to change their behavior to fix things

34:35

you know it’s like the old um [Music] uh they were gonna they were gonna actually force all the bottling

34:40

companies like coke and pepsi and all that to set up a a very aggressive sort of recycling or

34:47

reuse campaign i think it was in the 60s maybe um but then they convinced the us government to allow them to handle the

34:53

problem and they put all their money into marketing the fact that it was us as individuals who have the responsibility to clean up the mess that

35:00

their core business model is creating right and so i i think that there’s there’s a

35:06

an important sort of dance there where where i don’t want the artist that we work

35:12

with to feel like it’s their job to fix the systems that are up like it’s

35:17

it’s that yes there has to be a relationship on the institutional side but ultimately like it is the the profits that are

35:24

driving the decisions that create these conditions and so how do we how do we

35:30

how do we intervene at the at the at the point in which the the the death

35:35

or dying is being created rather than than sort of turning it over to

35:40

turning it over to the individuals that are that are suffering in those systems and what could the role of the of the

35:46

artist and the creative be at that uh at that point yeah and and how do we do that in convivial

35:53

structures right like i think i think one of the i think one of the challenges is that we

35:59

tend to create useful things for useless people um and we don’t have any incentive to

36:04

actually help people be more useful and i don’t mean useful in the sense of creating value i mean

36:12

more active participants in the stories like more sovereignty over the decisions that are that are being made around them

36:18

but we don’t we don’t actually support technologies and i don’t mean just like technology technologies but like ways of

36:24

organizing or ways of communicating that facilitate that and so

36:30

one of the fears i have is that we we seem to be turning over

36:36

things that that make us human like compassion generosity that we’ve talked about we’ve turned them over to institutions and systems

36:43

um [Music] with covid you know in the name of health

36:48

we turn over decision making to medical expertise and at least on the left in the circles

36:54

i’m in and then we ridicule those who who might disagree with with

37:00

prioritizing medical expertise in that way or if we see if we see someone on the street who’s street involved or

37:06

homeless we say well it’s not my problem right like that’s that’s there’s an there’s an institution that that takes

37:13

care of that or if i see someone wearing not wearing a mask

37:19

you know i immediately look for law enforcement i look for someone in a position of power authority

37:24

with the capacity to leverage violence to intervene on my behalf and so we

37:29

don’t we don’t actually own our own [Music] responsibility to turn toward each other

37:36

and the gift of that right like the ability to show love to someone i don’t know um i don’t want to lose that i want to

37:41

own that um but we seem to be in systems that that really want us to turn over

37:48

that agency to to to either non-human

37:53

automated systems or to institutions that that can feel inhuman and so part of the work is also like how do we

37:59

how do we give how do we show people ways that they can they can own their own potential for for

38:06

grace if you want to call it that like their own ability to to turn towards other people and then the tools to do

38:11

that to do that effectively um and so it isn’t like it isn’t necessarily about owning one’s own success but i think it

38:18

is about owning one’s moral obligations to other people so maybe a good uh way to go back to those themes

38:26

of care and compassion and you already mentioned the the mushroom at the end of

38:33

the world a book where there’s also some talk of moving

38:40

certainly away from hierarchy but then through

38:45

networks with nodes to into a more uh to into entanglement let’s say

38:52

with uh knots and an entanglement and from the idea of the again from the

39:00

sort of uh startup let’s let’s just say broadly

39:05

startup idea or or silicon valley tech idea of fixing things

39:10

uh there’s a there’s a we’ve identified a problem and we’re going to fix that through technology

39:17

um to caring for things and to nurturing for uh things

39:23

so maybe we can talk a little bit about that idea of uh care in the way we come together yeah

39:32

yeah it’s it’s interesting so i’m sharing a lot of stories here but i uh when i was growing up

39:39

um my father used to always tell a story about how our family

39:44

was in northern ontario but we started a fire and burned a town to the ground and so

39:50

we had to move south uh to toronto to aurora um and i always thought it was it was

39:57

apocryphal or i i didn’t think it was like a real thing and then

40:02

more recently my father perhaps due to isolation you know has dug more deeply into the family history and it turns out

40:08

that our family was involved in the matheson fire of 1916 which burned 500

40:14

000 acres and killed hundreds likely more uh people

40:19

in northern ontario and the fire started when a number of of

40:26

um people that were trying to establish homesteads there uh burned

40:31

uh in july they were burning the woods and uh these small fires all joined together and created one massive fire

40:37

that then followed i guess along the railway corridor uh and ended up destroying multiple towns and hundreds

40:43

of lives and there was no transportation so many people just walked south like they just

40:48

they just left and you know you talk about entanglement you know they didn’t feel any sense of

40:54

obligation to the territory they burned like they just moved they just grabbed their stuff

40:59

and went south and to me that’s sort of like suggestive of the mindset that creates these

41:05

conditions right where we we we don’t see ourselves as being entangled with other people we don’t see

41:11

ourselves as being entangled with landscapes we don’t even see ourselves as being entangled with our own bodies

41:17

um you know then of course we we operate from a set of assumptions that that

41:23

tends to alienate us from from what’s going on around us and so a return to sort of compassion

41:29

and generosity isn’t isn’t about explicitly centering this value it’s like a reminder that actually we do

41:36

have responsibilities to each other and to the land we’re on and to the stories we tell

41:42

um and we can center that in the work even though it’s not particularly profitable because right now there’s there’s

41:49

you know burning a lot of forest down and then walking aways is a business model like it’s not even a you know it’s not even a

41:56

i always joke that the silicon valley model is like you you have a river and you’re fishing it you walk two kilometers upstream and start fishing

42:03

there and then call it an innovation right like all you’re all you’re doing is is bypassing

42:09

the way things have been and so yeah i think

42:15

i think the opportunity is to create spaces that acknowledge that

42:20

sense of connection which i think we do we do feel and then prioritize and reward values that that aren’t currently

42:27

elevated um i think you know the the covid moment is is asking us

42:36

to understand the experiences of frontline workers you know we’re being asked to empathize with with a part of

42:42

the labor force that had been mostly invisible um

42:47

you know it’s asking us to interrogate some of the assumptions and the broader systems that we’re a part of

42:52

and whether or not you know what what we’re willing to give up in order to feel differently

43:00

i’m not super optimistic um but i think if enough people organize

43:06

around a set of values and they show that it can work then at least it’s a viable alternative right like at least

43:12

we can we can say oh there is another choice i don’t have to i don’t have to play that game i i can play this other game that feels

43:19

a little more aligned with the world i want to be in um but to do that requires a a rethink

43:25

in terms of of connection and and entanglement and john burroughs is a

43:32

legal scholar from victoria well he’s not from victoria’s initiative but you know he he basically argues that

43:40

but denying our entanglements is the source of evil um you know as soon as we pretend that

43:47

we’re not connected to other people to histories uh to what came before to what’s coming ahead

43:53

um that’s when that’s when we become capable of of really morally outrageous behavior

43:58

um and so yeah i think i think mycelial networks uh metaphors that that

44:04

point to the the way that the natural world is is inexorably entangled um is a

44:10

useful reminder to people that they they’re not they may feel isolated but they’re not that we’re actually

44:16

connected to each other into the world in really profound ways

44:21

and that we have systems that are asking us to forget that to forget the body um to forget

44:27

the natural world around us to forget our culture um and so yeah that’s that’s that’s

44:33

ideally where the work will point to and some of the things that you just mentioned even so you already mentioned

tools for conviviality

44:39

conviviality technologies it reminds me of the ivan illege’s

44:46

book tools for conviviality in which he talks about uh the

44:52

the uh if i paraphrase correctly the his idea of conviviality is

44:57

um personal realization through interdependence and which it was written

45:02

in the early 70s and his idea of tools

45:07

echoes what uh what you’re saying as well that a technology is not necessarily

45:13

an app or a platform or something but um spaces can be a technology organizations

45:20

can be a technology and in in in this book a tool uh how can technology and tools play a

45:27

role in some of these systems of care and these uh let’s say networks of

45:34

uh effective uh togetherness yeah and i think i mean i think

45:41

there’s a really interesting resurgence and interest around illite and some of that work um

45:47

i’m a huge fan obviously but i mean i wonder one one of the

45:54

concerns i have and i guess that we respond to in the work is that there are so many things that are asking us to be

46:01

objects like if if a particular system is going to work efficiently then

46:06

understanding us as as conscious subjects is is a problem and so it’s like well

46:11

how do we how do we make people as bot-like or machine-like as possible in

46:17

order to ensure the efficiency of these broader systems and conviviality like you say it isn’t particularly efficient

46:24

um it actually invites multiple subjects to be in conversation with each other and that that can be time consuming and

46:30

that can be clumsy and that can can be messy and difficult um and what we’re

46:36

seeing like i think on both the right and the left is this this move back to

46:42

authoritarian authoritarianism like this this idea that

46:48

that the best way to generate community and solidarity is

46:55

through conforming to a set of ideals that have been pre-selected for use and and so we

47:01

become objects of of ideology um and and i think social media contributes

47:07

to this and sort of the platforms available to us to talk about these things because

47:13

um they as they mentioned like they don’t they don’t support nuance in a particularly useful way and and they’re

47:18

incentivized to [Music] to keep us either satisfied or angry

47:24

and so all we ever get is information that confirms the views that we hold

47:31

or information that’s guaranteed to motivate us to respond

47:36

um and to comply to sort of whatever reflexive uh trigger we’ve been

47:42

presented with and so i i yeah i mean i i feel

47:49

i feel like it’s hard to have a conversation around autonomy and agency during a lockdown

47:55

um but my guess is that we’re gonna have to have a lot more conversations about this

48:01

um once things start to become figured out um because

48:07

right now it doesn’t feel like any of the sort of dominant

48:12

discourses are particularly tolerant of of multiple subjects acting

48:18

from a place of their own agency and that that scares me a little bit um that the logic of sort of algorithmic culture

48:26

is also being translated into into political and and social culture as well

48:32

um yeah and so i think it’s interesting that you bring up village because i definitely think that he was responding

48:38

at the time to what he saw as the as the encroachment of education

48:44

uh into into all aspects of life and now we’re seeing something very similar

48:50

around health um and there’s historically like the eugenics movement

48:56

came out of a sort of an elevation of medical expertise that that was

49:02

drawing on some deeply deeply flawed and racist assumptions and so i although i

49:09

i acknowledge the current need to prioritize particular kinds of expertise

49:15

we should also be aware that that there’s a risk to that and we do need in the arts and everywhere um

49:21

folks that are willing to to complicate or or make entangled some of these these

49:27

patterns and assumptions do you feel that there that there’s space for that that there’s room for that for artists and creatives

49:33

to still do that maybe not in canada um i i do think the canadian art system is

49:41

like i think the the high levels of funding that the arts system receives in canada is both a boon and can also be a

49:48

challenge you know it’s it’s a career for folks sometimes um which means that

49:55

the choice is about what positions to take publicly are balanced by a variety of sort of

50:01

concerns and criteria i think absolutely we’re going to see

50:07

different voices different responses emerge

50:12

i’m not confident that the canadian art system is is

50:18

currently available or open to that um but i think because everything is so

50:24

interconnected that that eventually we will we will be asked to hold a position or take a position in

50:31

that conversation necessities of the moment play of course into that as well i don’t know if you’ve

job creation in the arts

50:36

seen the recent announcement from the canada council for the arts

50:43

about new monies being allocated towards job creation

50:49

within the arts and i i remember that you have talked about this

50:56

a while ago that you saw that as something that was coming up that the idea of job creation

51:03

and job security was going to play an important role in uh in the next

51:10

couple of years at least and and and then we’re gonna see institutions that have effectively shut their doors and

51:17

laid off massive numbers of staff then accessing this funding um to be

51:22

able to to come back uh and and that to me is

51:29

it doesn’t it doesn’t really incentivize innovation or

51:35

experimentation or pushing the limits of the field right when what you’re being assessed on is how many steady jobs can

51:42

you produce um i mean it’s i think it’s good for the institutions i don’t know if it’s good

51:48

for the art um and so i i do i do worry i mean i as you say this isn’t a surprising thing

51:55

um [Music] it may be a few years before before there’s a willingness to reopen

52:01

that conversation but my worry is that that folks that have something to say

52:06

through their art that aren’t currently able to access public support um they’ll find other means uh they’ll

52:14

find other ways of getting done what they need to get done and that will likely involve corporate

52:19

partnership and and that’s a different kind of bargain altogether and i’m not saying it’s it’s a worse one it’s just a

52:25

very it’s a very different one um and so we’ll have corporate art that reflects a particular point of view

52:32

in the world and then we’ll have funded art which reflects a particular set of government priorities either directly or

52:38

indirectly um and i’m not sure that the two worlds will necessarily come into conversation

52:44

all that often um because they’ll have different priorities and different goals in mind and that and that doesn’t i don’t know

52:50

that that that worries me a little bit as well yeah so the the work then is to

52:55

uh is maybe to find a third way uh

53:03

yeah i mean to make things messy right like i you know i’m in the process of of

53:10

writing a book because that’s what you do when you’re in quarantine and you don’t and you’re privileged um

53:17

but it’s effectively an argument for more localized moments of of disorder

53:26

and not not necessarily disorder in the sense of disobedience or like public property destruction

53:33

but more just developing habits of identifying what a particular moment or

53:40

system is asking us to do and then deciding whether or not

53:45

we we want that thing um and we need more of that like we just need more questions about well hey why

53:53

why why are we putting a price tag on water you know or or why

53:59

why are we allowing certain patterns like the lack of clean drinking water in indigenous communities

54:05

to persist for for decades while others are addressed with much more promptness i guess the the the force that’s acting

54:12

against that is that we are it feels less tolerant

54:18

of multiple positions like we’re demanding more and more conformity

54:24

to to a set of beliefs that that may that may be helpful like i’m

54:31

sure they come from a place of caring but in the absence of of intelligent

54:39

discourse like or resistance or or disagreement they they don’t really actually get refined or improved over

54:45

time um we sort of hold on to them and and everyone around us confirms

54:51

the same story and then we’re never asked to grow like richard senate uh

54:56

1970 wrote a book called the uses of disorder and [Music]

55:02

he argued that in a lot of white middle-class communities when we’re in our teen years we we adopt

55:08

these identities uh in order to process information to not be overwhelmed by the feelings and experiences of being an

55:15

adolescent but eventually the complexity of the world proves

55:21

that those sort of identities are inadequate so we have to discard them or revolve them but his argument is that in

55:28

more privileged communities um folks like me are never asked like we never have to experience a

55:35

reality that actually challenges the identity i’ve assumed uh and so i i grow well into adulthood

55:42

acting like i did when i was 17 or 18 years old and with social media the

55:48

opportunity to be sort of insulated um from other ideas is even greater

55:54

and art’s role has traditionally been to expose people to uncomfortable or previously invisible

56:02

sort of ways of seeing the world it was the idea of feeding our own culture back to us

56:08

but if it forfeits its responsibility to do that work then then i don’t know who will right like who who will

56:14

challenge um entrenched belief if not if not for the artists and so i think part of it is also about

56:21

making spaces for artists that want to complicate the conversations that we are having

56:27

um either because they they just want to mess with stuff or or just because their work naturally

56:33

does um and so that’s that’s yes that’s part of this as well and to earn a living doing it like i think we need to

56:39

reward that i think we need that kind of complication like they shouldn’t be ostracized or punished for for

56:46

for stepping outside the bounds like i think that’s that’s the work um

56:51

yeah that sort of leads into the

possibilities

56:57

the last question or the sort of close this off was uh the idea of

57:03

possibility what what are some of the possibilities or one great possibility that you see in

57:09

this moment for artists and creatives and when you talk about this moment like do you mean

57:15

specifically the the sort of the conflicts of conditions that we’re operating in yeah

57:20

sort of the whole uh complicated sphere of influences that we that we

57:27

find ourselves in there’s two or three things i think one

57:33

um there’s a lot of uh of debate

57:38

and demands for change in how the art system works and that’s really encouraging

57:44

um i think too often the demands are that sort of the power just invert that that

57:51

we sort of turn over the systems we have to new ownership and i think that that can be helpful and useful

57:58

um but i also think that there’s an opportunity to reimagine [Music]

58:03

what art systems look like like our art will be fine art institutions will will fail and

58:09

struggle and collapse um and right now the canada council’s investment seems to prioritize the institutions

58:16

over the art but that may not always be the case uh so i think that there’s an

58:21

opportunity to reimagine um there’s an opportunity to reimagine what

58:27

what arts work looks and feels like

58:32

i also think there’s a lot of spaces for that to happen in um

58:38

like our system our economic system it it empties out a lot of spaces um and to me those are opportunities uh

58:45

that we can we can move into and not just not just um like physical spaces

58:52

but digital spaces as well i always loved the story about how there was a drought in california

58:59

that uh led to a bylaw that people couldn’t fill their swimming pools so he had all these empty swimming pools but then the

59:05

skaters like the skateboarders moved in and occupied the swimming pools and developed a whole subculture of of sort

59:12

of um around skateboarding in these in these spaces and sites and i feel like that’s

59:18

there’s hope um we just need some creativity and we need a willingness to

59:24

not break rules but force force people to to be clear about what the limits are

59:31

because the default right now is exclusion um there are mansions where everyone inside is dead uh but the

59:38

windows are locked and the doors are closed so we don’t use it and so i think reoccupying those spaces

59:45

both symbolic and literal um is a possibility it’s a source of optimism

59:50

and possibility um i think

59:57

i think the technologies that too often are are

1:00:02

leveraged in support of um sort of hegemonic discourses can also be repurposed and reoccupied in

1:00:10

interesting ways and so i i remain optimistic that people prefer a

1:00:15

more complicated existence to a simpler one like the simple life is tempting but there’s always that doubt right and so i

1:00:22

feel like there’s a possibility for a shift there um and then another big one is that that

1:00:27

i think we can start imagining work outside of canada uh i think that

1:00:32

the geography like the the the mapping of of art practice has often been east west um sometimes

1:00:40

north south into the u.s or across the ocean to the uk uh but a lot of the more interesting

1:00:46

partnerships that i’ve been involved with are you know they’re in tijuana or in in um

1:00:52

in hong kong or in ghana like there’s there’s just

1:00:58

there’s just a lot of really creative people getting access to tools right now and i think at least in a canadian art

1:01:05

system if if we can enter into those relationships uh humbly

1:01:11

then then really really cool things will happen um

1:01:16

yeah and so i think that that’s that’s a site of possibility um

1:01:23

and then i think the

1:01:28

i it almost i’m starting to feel like there’s less um

1:01:35

we’ve spent the last 20 years it feels like arguing for art’s value like the all of these different rationalizations

1:01:41

or justifications for why investment in the arts is is desirable

1:01:47

i’m starting to get a sense that that argument doesn’t need to be made quite as often anymore

1:01:54

uh it depends right where you’re getting your money from but i do believe that there’s a general sense of awareness

1:02:00

that having a more diverse and richer culture helps all of us

1:02:07

um and not having to to necessarily get into the details

1:02:12

of how that shows up in an economic model and so i feel like

1:02:17

that might free up um that might free up space for people to pursue projects that normally

1:02:23

would have been would have been excluded from consideration um because they they sort of contribute

1:02:29

to our collective inheritance um and are therefore of value uh and and i do think

1:02:36

covet is in some ways reminding of us reminding us of our of our interconnectedness and the fact that we

1:02:43

need to draw on some shared common resources i’m also really interested in

1:02:48

the idea of poaching so if this is i think this will be i feel possible

1:02:54

i think the more the more that the less human our economic system becomes the easier it will be to morally

1:03:01

justify poaching as a practice and for like 200 years in england poaching was the most

1:03:07

popular practice in terms of both frequency and public approval and so i do feel like we’re going to move back to

1:03:13

poaching and i think artists can lead the way in terms of what what poaching looks like it’s a kind of occupation but temporary

1:03:20

that’s why i’m excited about that as well well poaching artists is a wonderful way

1:03:26

to close off this this terrific conversation thank you so much for

1:03:31

taking the time and for sharing your insights and your uh experiences with us and we look forward what uh to what ukai

1:03:39

is going to do in the in the near future so people can uh check you out online

1:03:44

i’m sure yes we are we are somewhere on the internet yeah

1:03:51

dot ca to begin with and uh and you’ll take it from there exactly

1:03:56

gary thank you very much [Music]

1:04:12

is

1:04:25

[Music]

1:04:31

you

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