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Ordinary Resistance Through Displacement: A Discussion of Intervention and Curatorial Practice
by Dermot Wilson
Date: 17 July 2005
Event: Banff
Dermot Wilson
Born in Dublin, Ireland, Dermot Wilson has worked as an arts administrator and director for several artist run centres as well as the W.K.P. Kennedy Public Gallery in North Bay where he is presently the director/curator. He has worked as an arts writer for several publications and as a media arts instructor at two Ontario universities. For the past decades or so, he has collaborated with the Windsor video artist, Chris MacNamara in a presentation collective called machyderm inc. He lives in North Bay, Ontario, where he is currently facilitating several new media projects through www.variflux.tv, and collaborating with the topologist Dr. Murat Tuncali on a new media installation called: Pseudo-Arc for the People (www.pseudoarc.com). Dermot's fiction and non-fiction writing has appeared in BlackFlash, C, Mix, the Antigonish Review, Grain and various gallery publications.
Abstract
Since the first manifestations of "installation art", artists have experienced the "aura" of the institution: the carpeted, cavernous, hermetic spaces, the pristine urinals of our public art repositories. In Canada, over the past 35 years or so, curators have become aware of this spirit of place, this claustrophobic and xenophobic ambience inside the white walls. But that "architectural prejudice" is not the only "authority" that contemporary artists and curators must consider when making art and exhibitions.
A history of resistance to authority and to the powerful in society would not properly begin with the Russian Futurist/Constructivists. However, their "agitprop" activities were early examples of interventionist art practice. Throughout the twenties, these artists threw out traditional artist/patron values and took their posters, music, and performance art events to the streets. Technological innovation was often essential to these experiments in agitation and activism. There is a direct relationship between "new" media and agitational art, what would later become situationist, interventionist and site-specific art.
My reasons for embracing projects that intervene or intrude upon the ordinary in my community have evolved from three motives: the agitprop mystique, i.e. the notion that art is activism; reactions against the "modern art gallery"; and the simple need for human contact and community awareness.
The "authority", the "power sources", that many curators are resisting is present and tangible in buildings that exhibit art, in corporate headquarters and in places redolent with certain kinds of respect. Some arts workers resist this presence through "displacement", i.e. art activities constructed and placed outside the gallery. As a curator for a regional public gallery, I have chosen to use various methods to "intervene" in my community, to enliven my gallery's programme by moving outside the institution. Initially, when considering this "leap into the unknown", several questions arise.
How do we displace art and ourselves from the institution and class traditions? It is important to secure alternative and inspirational sites that become exciting dramatic backdrops for the artworks. They set the stage for the drama. These sites should be able to draw and accommodate audiences.
The second question is, what are the effects of these attempts at displacement? How will local, regional, and national audiences receive this exhibit? The project will affect directly a few communities, businesses and elements of the local economy. It will also have an effect on the artists participating. When we bring artists together within a dynamic location, the curator takes on a much more creative role. She begins to see the artists as elements in the grand scheme of the project, colours perhaps in her palette.
Another question, what are the issues that make displacement difficult? Often, smaller galleries have the flexibility to attempt these interventions into the community, but are not allocated the funds to fully realize the project. Resistance in the regions is easier in some ways and harder in others. Interventions, site-specific works, and partnership projects in the community must be done sporadically and in the midst of "expected", "safe" programming. In the regions, a context for viewing non-traditional art can be nurtured by introducing projects that enter into and subtly resist the norm. According to Ernest Larsen in his essay, Ordinary Gestures of Resistance, "modes of micro-resistance to things as they are" are not possible inside the gallery.
[The gallery] edits out much, if not all, of the apparent randomness, multiplicity, and heightened potential of contradiction, not to mention the potential for violence. (Ernest Larsen, Ordinary Gestures of Resistance in Space, Site, Intervention: Situating Installation Art, ed. Erika Suderburg, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2000, p. 182)