Courtesy of the artists.
Making It Work explores the idea of collaborative process and how it manifests itself uniquely within collectives. I invited the collectives involved to self-reflexively examine their collaborative process and, in whatever way best suits their practice, present that process in the gallery. Essentially, this project turns the regular exhibition premise inside out and features process, rather than final results, as the main focus of the exhibition.
The collectives participating in Making It Work are all local, more or less, to Montréal. By inviting these collectives, I wanted to acknowledge a current cluster of collaborative practices springing up in Montréal, which I myself am a part of as a member of Leisure Projects. From an acknowledged non-objective or “insider” curatorial perspective, I see Making It Work very much as a multi-faceted exercise rather than a traditional exhibition. I left the decision of how to represent their process up to the collectives themselves, aware that by doing so, I was asking them to take on a very introspective and perhaps for some, a challenging assignment. I was also interested to see how the collectives, who have existed side-by-side in the Montréal art scene, would respond to being brought together to share their inner workings “officially” under one roof.
The manner in which individual subjectivities come together to form another unique single identity is transformative, creative, dynamic and multifaceted. Artists working together develop a collective imaginary, another entity. This process varies from collective to collective: within the collectives involved in Making It Work, there is diversity in structure, location, as well as chosen media and approach and these factors all impact the creative process in one way or another.
For instance, BGL produce very materially based work, PME-ART functions in the world of performance art and experimental theatre, Leisure Projects merges curatorial and art practice, Knowles Eddy Knowles are conceptually driven, CRUM describe themselves as a research group, and the Discriminating Gentlemen’s Club (DGC~CGA) operate as a private club. These descriptions however are simplifications; in fact each collective has a complex and developing practice, which is continually informed by the growing interests, skills, experiences and desires of its members. The collaborative exchange between individual personalities/subjectivities is the site where art making is actively complicated. Discussion, cooperation and debate coalesce to shape something new within a process that is fascinating, rich and essential to the collective being.
However, the managing of individual subjectivities and the production of work within a collective can be a complex and delicate task. Power struggles can ensue; members can feel pigeonholed to particular roles or tasks; directions might begin to take shape that certain members are not interested in pursuing; collectives can sometimes struggle with long distance communication if members are located in separate cities (Knowles Eddy Knowles, CRUM, PME-ART and BGL all experience this circumstance). Some collectives deal directly with these potential issues and integrate them – for example giving each member a role or title (CRUM), or writing a social contract or charter outlining how the collaborative participation should work (DGC~CGA). But, more often than not, collectives muddle through these complications, internalising, learning and building upon them within their processes and projects.
But in spite (or because) of these complex interpersonal dynamics, collectives are able to produce work which none of the members would necessarily be able to make on their own. There is a shared roster of skills, experiences, references, personalities and energy that together can take projects to ambitious and unexpected places. Collaboration can provide an extra level of confidence, thoroughness and, conversely, a level of spontaneity that a lone artist might not allow him or herself. In this sense, collectives function as heterotopian bubbles – invented communal spaces of both engagement and retreat. The process of being in a collective is sometimes where the most interesting work arises. Indeed, by combining their strengths collectives are in their own way making it work.
– Susannah Wesley
Produced with the support of the Frederick and Mary Kay Lowy Art Education Fund.
Curator: Susannah Wesley
Exhibition produced by the Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery with the support of the Canada Council for the Art
THE ARTISTS
Jasmin Bilodeau, Sébastien Giguère, Nicolas Laverdière
I was born, by accident, in 1996, of an uncertain friendship between J. Bilodeau, S. Giguère, and N. Laverdière, during their heady studies in the lucrative field of visual art. Surprisingly, obtaining a single diploma out of three opened doors for me: galleries, artist centres, museums, local events throughout the province. This is where I learnt the trade, and where I met the inspiring family of Quebec art, which I quietly promote abroad. I do the best I can in the inscrutable art jungle. I’m having a blast, and hope it goes on for a while, because, for all three of me, the rummaging is swell.
Our gallery projects generally follow an unfolding trajectory and take the form of installations. We derive considerable pleasure from transforming spaces and, through the use of various strategies, situating the viewer at the centre of our work. We seek to reactualize and destabilize the viewer via active physical experience.
THE WORK
Préparatifs pour postérité, 2009.
Préparatifs pour postérité
EXPLORE
- participation and the multiple levels at which it functions in this work;
- the ways in which notions of physicality are addressed in this work.
Chris Carrière, Matt Killen, Alexandra McIntosh, Douglas Scholes, Felicity Tayler
The Centre de recherche urbaine de Montréal (CRUM) is a symbiotic (parasitic) research group with no exhibition space of its own. It uses pre-existing networks to present diverse projects. The CRUM is composed of five members with varied backgrounds — architectural theory, information science, experimental sound composition, urban aesthetics, and universal maintenance — who share a common interest in collaboratively exploring links between art and urban space.
THE WORK
CRUMIFESTO, 2009.
Public performance, installation, dimensions variable.
CRUMIFESTO is a public performance and installation that involves the creation of a manifesto for and by the collective through the technique of exquisite corpse. Employed by the Surrealists, the technique is a group activity that involves writing part of sentence on a piece of paper. The paper is then folded to partially obscure the text and is passed to the next person, who continues the sentence without knowing what preceded it.
CRUMIFESTO is composed on five typewriters. Essential instruments of office environments for much of the 20th century, typewriters recall burgeoning bureaucracy and circulation of information, as well as an increased presence of women in the workforce. Once complete, the manifesto is signed and sealed by the members of the collective, and made available for reproduction.
With CRUMIFESTO, the CRUM signs over authorship of its own statement of artistic intent to the arbitrary and the collective, producing a communally authored, if slightly absurd, public declaration, a call to arms, a revolutionary creed. CRUM-approved. Ready for reproduction, dissemination, and distribution to the masses.
EXPLORE
- the exquisite corpse and its importance in this work;
- the various objects that constitute this piece and the types of ideas that they evoke.
François Lemieux, Robin Simpson
The Discriminating Gentlemen’s Club ~ Le Club des Gentilshommes Avertis (DGC~CGA) is a private order in the form of an artist collective. The club’s presence is manifest in two distinct ways. First as a public façade constituted of varied social events, the planting of public gardens, kite flying, film making, sculptural ephemera and the like, and second as a closed aesthetic inversion of the club’s public customs performed to a select audience and shielded by legally binding non-disclosure agreements.
THE WORK
The Association Charter of The Discriminating Gentlemen’s Club, 2009. Framed document.
The DGC-CGA presents its Association Charter (Charte d’association), a protocol of discriminating nature meant as a testament of the club’s shared values. This charter governs the role and procedures of the Club and its relation to other organizations and contexts. As a legally binding document it is signed by the DGC-CGA’s Montreal contingent and those associated with the present exhibition – consultants, the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery staff, and the curator of the Making it Work exhibition. By both disclosing and limiting access to the particulars of the club’s mechanisms the document functions as an indisputable representation of a shared and private creative process.
EXPLORE
- the legal document as a vehicle for examining artistic identity and practice;
- the club, the order, the collective, their characteristics, similarities, and differences and the ways in which DGC~CGA makes use of these.
Robert Knowles, Michael Eddy, Jon Knowles
Knowles Eddy Knowles formed in Halifax, Nova Scotia during the winter of 2004, and have continually investigated the rudiments of collaboration with an attentiveness towards the dynamic forces of space, context, the serendipity of chance circumstance and unforeseen contingencies. They make productive what most would deem a digression.
In 2004, Robert Knowles, Michael Eddy, and Jon Knowles dispersed to various points on the globe, and are now currently based in London, Beijing and Montreal. As a collaborative group they work remotely from each of their own particular localities, and periodically, come together to produce exhibitions, commissions, research projects, performances and other discursive situations.
THE WORK
My other office is a bistro table, 2009.
Installation, mixed media, dimensions variable.
For Making it Work, Knowles Eddy Knowles speculate on a method that promotes not-making-it-work within the greater capitalist society, searching for a definition of autonomy in the “fickle art world”, and performing an image of a “non protestant work ethic”.
EXPLORE
- the ways in which space and context come into play in this work;
- the questioning of notions of work that occurs in My other office is a bistro table.
Meredith Carruthers, Susannah Wesley
Leisure Projects is an artist-curator collaborative practice begun in 2004, which explores popular imaginaries of leisure through curated exhibitions, performed events or published texts. Leisure Projects is the delirious brainchild of artist/curators Meredith Carruthers and Susannah Wesley.
We see the collaborative process of Leisure Projects as an ongoing, shifting conversation – a dialogue between kindred spirits. Although we each contribute different things to the creation and building of Leisure Projects, and at times experience that process very differently, we also bring remarkably similar interests, experiences, and references to the shaping of leisure. This shared frame provides us with an opportunity to imagine and invent together and produces a trait of quite literally finishing one another’s sentences – deftly picking up where the other left off. As we do Leisure Projects in our “leisure time” the ability to both collaborate but also take-turns, is essential. When one is flagging, the other takes the lead. The practice of finishing each other’s sentences is thereby also reflected in our collaborative process.
THE WORK
Folie à deux, 2009.
Video, 55 min.
Within our practice, our projects are often inspired by images that enchant or disquiet us, and capture our imagination. These images become for us tools to imagine worlds that overlap, echo or stray from their original contexts. We elaborate on these images, building new experiences, concepts, exhibitions, texts and performances. The performance/video we have made for Making it Work, expresses the ongoing constructive visual conversation of Leisure Projects as our individual subjectivities and ideas come together to create an-other, shared, entity.
EXPLORE
- the images presented in Folie à deux and how they might function as a collaborative tool;
- the performative nature of this work and the ways in which it engages the viewer.
Caroline Dubois, Claudia Fancello, Jacob Wren
An artist working in visual arts, performance art, dance and theatre, Caroline Dubois collaborates with artists such as Julie Favreau, Belinda Campbell, Silvy Panet-Raymond and Antonija Livingstone. Her work has been presented at Dare-Dare, Clark, Tangente, Theatre La Chapelle, La Vitrine (Paris), etc.
Claudia Fancello is a choreographer, performer and teacher; she collaborates with Ame Henderson/Public Recordings (Manual For Incidence, /Dance/Songs/), Martin Bélanger (Grande Théorie unifiée, L’Ère des Ténèbres) and Katie Ewald (Praise, God bless). Many creations she was part of are touring in Canada and abroad.
Co-artistic Director of PME-ART, Jacob Wren is a writer and maker of eccentric performances whose work has been seen in Canada, the USA, Europe, Asia and Australia. His books include Unrehearsed Beauty and Families Are Formed Through Copulation. He frequently writes about contemporary art.
Through performances, installation, public process, and theoretical and practical research, the Montreal-based interdisciplinary group PME-ART confronts its contemporary practice via local, national and international artistic collaborations. Combining creation, exploration, critical reflection, dissemination and casual yet significant interactions with various publics, the work is an ongoing process of questioning the world, of finding the courage to say things about the current predicament that are direct and complex, of interrogating the performance situation.
THE WORK
The Title is the Question, 2009.
Video installation.
The Title Is The Question examines a single collaborative process from three distinct angles. Over the course of one year the three members of PME-ART (Caroline Dubois, Claudia Fancello and Jacob Wren) experimented by playing music together. They were definitely not musicians and placing themselves on unfamiliar terrain was an essential part of this undertaking. The music was not to be an end in itself, but rather a way for them to meet, to approach the theme of working together in real time and start to feel their way through how collaborative decisions might be made apart from the use of clear spoken language.
In this video installation each of the three participants attempt to answer the question: ‘What was your experience of doing the music?’ Their answers reflect both the extremely disparate experiences individuals can have while undertaking a collaborative activity and how the attempt to put such experiences into words can fundamentally alter them. In doing so, questions are raised about the nature of collaboration: Do we need to have similar experiences and understandings of what we are doing in order to work together? Or is it equally important to protect and cherish our contrasting, sometimes even contradictory, versions of a common experience?
EXPLORE
- the process of questioning as it is expressed in this work;
- accepted notions of the distinctions that exist between audience and performer and how these are challenged in this work.