Fault Line #5

[Ed. Note: this article originally appeared in reduced form in a recent issue of Mix magazine. It is still too short, and now has the added misfortune of having been edited into something thinner and flatter than what I would have liked. Please post, so that it might fill out!]

Incubate for Pleasure

Recently I was offered the chance to write ‘a cultural snapshot of Victoria’, something I’ve been both wanting and fearing to try since returning three years ago after a significant spell away. Something had changed in the three years since I left: the sense of immanent possibilities had shifted subtly but decisively for the better. Fear, because of course it can’t be tackled adequately…accordingly, I have focussed on recent developments in the visual arts in particular, as this is my home territory. It speaks to the thrust of this article that the more I made my rounds to collect names and notes, the more subjects worthy of attention seemed to spring up. Victoria’s streets meander -it’s one of the only cities of its size in Canada not built on a military grid-, culture collects in pockets like, well culture, as in an extended, bacterial life form…think here of ‘Victoriana’ as a fecund, mutable category, as in flora and fauna.

John Threlfall is the arts editor of Monday Magazine, the city’s weekly alternative press for coverage of local politics and entertainment. “When I started at the paper seven years ago, there seemed to be more of an exodus out of Victoria—lack of venues, lack of paid gigs, lack of small gallery spaces—while lately more outlets have been cropping up […] ten local theatre companies instead of two, for instance, or five indie art galleries instead of one”, he points out, “…artists of all mediums choosing to stay here rather than move away.” This last point is crucial in a city where the university tends to attract, but not necessarily keep younger people involved in the arts, once it is time to seek out a supportive milieu. More young artists and performers mean more productions, more spaces, and also more informed, engaged curators and administrators, ready to provoke flexibility in established venues.

As in so many provincial centres, The University of Victoria’s Arts Departments are rooted in a 60’s-era ethos in which the most ‘advanced’ manifestations of culture happened on campus, and the university – with its own on-campus media outlets and suburban location- has tended to seem remote from life and activity downtown. In recent years, there has been a discernable connection made between campus and city, whether it’s poets from the writing department reading in series and slams at venues like Mocambo Café, or film students who routinely use Lucky Bar – a local music hotspot - for screening parties. Programs are changing too. The Visual Arts Department has developed courses for curatorial practice mostly in the last five years that encourage students to act as independent curators, often seeking out downtown venues for exhibitions.

The Ministry of Casual Living is an artist-run-centre started in 2001 by two grad students from UVic. Located in Fernwood, a historically working-class neighbourhood on the Northeast fringe of town, the MoCL is a window front space ‘casually’ tucked in next to a corner grocery and video store, across the street from a Laundromat. The sign (a brilliantly inconspicuous mock-up of civil-service drab) and the art in the window are all that give it away. The resident curator or ‘Minister’ helps to fund operations by kicking in rent, living mom & pop-style- behind the storefront. Art openings are the only time the space opens up to the public, which is often a curious mix of artists and neighbourhood passers-by. The MoCL emphasizes this marriage of innocuousness and invention, hosting film series projected on the outside wall in the summer, and recently the wedding-as-art- performance of one of its former Ministers.

Another recent addition to artist-run culture is the Fifty-Fifty Arts Collective, a not-for-profit artist run society organized and operated by a small board of volunteer members. In their own words, the collective caters to, “a diverse group of folks working in Victoria's burgeoning arts scene [including] zine writers, clothing designers, filmmakers, visual and performance artists, music artists and folks working in genres not yet defined by the mainstream.” This often takes the form of activities that emphasize the celebration of milieu: art crawls, film screenings, sock-hops, and recently, a series of inexpensive workshops embracing a variety of activities from collage to free-form musical improvisation to practical sewing. Allan Kollins, founding member and full-time administrator, stresses the difficulties involved in operating with a free agenda, and without major funding, “if an artist run centre isn’t sapping the life out of you, you’re probably doing something wrong”, but adds, “On good days I am merely feeding my own insatiable need to keep my landscape dynamic. I suspect there are some psychotherapists out there that could say the same.”

In addition to the Ministry and The Fifty-Fifty, there are a series of loosely affiliated activities driven by the music scene, skateboarding and graffiti. Groups such as The Woodpile Collective, Anteism and PRMNT MRKR exemplify this tendency, hosting informal, densely sprawling shows that are as heavily attended as they are fugitive. Tellingly, PRMNTMRKR has begun a practice of publishing catalogues to accompany their shows: most recently a graphically lush edition of black & white imagery entitled The Feast. I’m tempted to draw on an old definition from painter/film critic Manny Farber, recognizing a “termite-tapeworm-fungus-moss art” that “goes always forward, eating its own boundaries, and, likely as not, leaves nothing in its path other than the signs of eager, industrious, unkempt activity”(1.) The difference between Farber’s 1960’s moss and Victoria’s is how industry translates into transaction: all of these groups seem to excel at drawing a crowd and managing their communications, with comprehensive websites exhorting memberships, submissions, donations, purchases and participation.

The Feast and similar events have taken place on the waterfront near Victoria’s Chinatown, once North America’s largest, now a dainty but colourfully pungent six square blocks or so, home to tattoo parlours, guitar shops, witchcraft suppliers and any number of artists studios. Gallery 16 ½ is a walk-up in Fan Tan Alley, the narrowest street in Canada, which in its one-block squeeze opens out into a rich profusion of shops and studios. “This place used to be an opium den”, grins Kirsten Wright, the Ottawa-born proprietor of 16 ½. Wright has at various times used the space as a home, studio, and now store and gallery. She sells work by independent artists and designers that often blurs the boundaries between art, craft, and commodity, selling vintage handkerchiefs with silk- screened silhouettes and glossy enamel toasters customized by sharpie drawings next to original hand-pulled prints and mixed media paintings. In the corner of the retail area is a gallery space that Wright prides herself on as a frequent venue for first-time solo shows. “Some of these people don’t know anything about having a professional career”, Wright comments, “and that’s part of what makes them such amazing artists”

Just through the alley is Flight 167, a store selling a mixture of drawing, paintings, cards, books and clothing made by local artists who rent space in return for a larger-than-usual share in the profits. As in 161/2, the space is not as slick as a typical retail environment, but there is a curious consistency to the mood, a kind of DIY-Dadaism comprised of flavourful vernaculars such as anime, activist graphics, ironic/unironic nature, and vintage. Owner/designer/yoga instructor Joanne Thompson has noticed a similar ad-hoc approach in terms of aesthetics, but also (crucially) business, in small shops and galleries in San Francisco and Montreal. She agrees that something is happening, “the timing is probably just right,” she says of the five-month old store, “maybe last year, but definitely this year”.

Similar words might be heard from Wendy Welch, the artist-turned-director/CEO of a newly accredited art college, the Vancouver Island School of Art, on the north side of downtown’s revitalized -if not yet gentrified- Quadra Village. VISA began in the industrial area of Rock Bay (also home to many studios), in fall of 2004 as a one-room operation with forty-five students. It now occupies a heritage-designated schoolhouse and boasts over two hundred students, darkroom and sculpture facilities, and an independent exhibition space, The Slide Room Gallery. “One of the benefits of having a young school is being able to employ recent MFA graduates, so they stay in the city”, says Welch, who herself started the school shortly after finishing graduate school, in response to a need she perceived for serious students to be able to learn on a part-time basis.

Welch says “contemporary context” frames VISA’s ongoing mandate, a phrase which resonates on the other side of town at Open Space, among Victoria’s oldest artist-run centres (only studio co-op Xchanges has been around longer), having had to define what ‘contemporary’ means for more than thirty years. The building, on the second floor of a converted turn-of-the century stables, was recently renovated to allow greater public access to an area devoted to research facilities. Director Helen Marzolf describes it as, “A place for investigation”, and while she concedes, “I know that’s the party line…” her refreshing candour does nothing to undermine the fact that the current show –a collection of digital projections, ad-hoc video games, found objects and mail art, worked around the theme of ‘failure’- projects its mixture of humour and metaphysics with discernable integrity. “Dowsing for Failure”, is the product of visiting curators, and Marzolf underscores the importance of maintaining a “casual” atmosphere for incoming creative traffic. She cites a new music group will be making ongoing use of the space in the new year, as well as “Roving Projects”, short-term, impromptu programming that allows artists and performers to realize an idea without the more lengthy submission and review process. Marzolf is interested in networking with other groups such as the MoCL to draw in as diverse and dynamic a crowd as possible, in her own words, “create something more robust […] to compensate for the long stairwell”.

Up another long stairwell Deluge Contemporary Art, is both gallery and new headquarters for the AntiMatter Film festival, run (respectively) by partners Deborah de Boer and Todd Eacrett. Deluge began as the Rogue Gallery located in old town’s retail centre Market Square, before moving to the top floor of an urban shopping mall, the Hudson’s Bay Centre, in a space defined by vast expanses of unfinished concrete. De Boer has been playing the independent curator game longer than most, and the latest reincarnation of her endeavour (a pristinely retrofitted former fire hall) feels like an important ‘next step’ for contemporary artists who have already paid their dues elsewhere. It is also a way for established artists (such as UVic art profs Sandra Meigs, Daniel Laskarin and Bob Wise) to show in their hometown on a solo basis, something that didn’t happen very often even five years ago. Deluge is a pristine white space that emphasises professionalism and doesn’t shy away from a commercial dimension of its operation, something that helps to lend its sophisticated shows a more accessible edge.

Anti-Matter is an experimental film and video festival that is going on its tenth year, with an increasing sense of international participation and prestige. The ‘screenings’ (held at Open Space) usually consist of several short pieces grouped around a given theme. Eacrett points out that much of the festival’s content defies the feature-film mould, to explore cinema’s roots in relation to visual art, performance and music, and emphasizes the importance of drawing a popular audience as well, “getting people together for communal experiences, and exploring the opportunities that arise out of that”.

“Communal experiences” also seem to be the emphasis of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria these days. In tandem with an energetic series of educational/recreational programs, the gallery has taken up the practice of staging openings in its various galleries (art rentals, the Lab, Asian galleries, etc.) on a single night, so that various elements of the art going public mingle to create a palpable sense of event. Since the arrival in 2000 of director Pierre Arpin, the gallery has made a concerted effort to clarify its role with regard to greater cultural concerns and its immediate public, installing infrastructural upgrades that have allowed for a greater range of significant visiting exhibitions, while inaugurating a new space for experimental projects, ‘The Lab’. Contemporary Curator Lisa Baldissera has been credited with bringing an ambitious, theoretical focus to shows featuring both local and international names…Incoming director Shirley Madill recently praised Baldissera’s survey of utopian art, Fantastic Frameworks, as a “curatorial masterpiece”.

It’s important in assessing a scene to recognize individuals (and too many have been left out here), because looking back, one realizes how contingent everything is. Stamina is required, but even more so is a willingness to merge with the efforts of others. “No one does it by themselves”, de Boer states, “find me the guy that tries that, I’ll throw him out the window”. In one way, Victoria’s isolation - it’s islandhood- contributes to the lack of territoriality. Citing the local alternative music scene as “eclectic and recognized”, Kollins says one of the unique features of Victoria is its openness to differing genres and the way it “incubates for pleasure”. As Threlfall notes, “in a bigger city, we could focus strictly on being an alternative, but Victoria is just too small for that and we need to represent as much of the arts community as possible […] Look at the faces you see at the various arts events—most of the time, they're the same whether it's at theatre, galleries or a literary reading. Performers/creators aside, that's Victoria's arts community

- J.L.

Notes

1. This quotation opportunistically lifted from Michael Duncan, “Opening Salvos in L.A., Art In America magazine, November 2006, p.83, from “White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art”, in Negative Space: Manny Farber on the Movies, New York, DaCapo Press, 1998, p. 135. I’d like to point out that while both Duncan and I make use of Farber’s analogy, we do so in order to describe very different models.