Week 21: byproducts

(Group greetings)

[Scott]: So great! Welcome Marisa to our humble weekly chat.

[Marisa]: Thing?

[Scott]: Thing.  Talk.  Here, let me turn that down a little bit.  The audio is a little bit whacky today.  But, we'll try to make due.  Just let us know if it gets so crazy on your end that you can't understand what we're saying and we'll adjust it.

Yeah, so for everyone who doesn't know, we want to welcome Marisa Jahn who has been in the process of editing this publication called "Byproducts".  I'm not going to explain too much about it as an introduction.  Although, Steven could since he wrote the preface.

(Laughter)

But, a, I don't know.  Oh wait, is Steven on the call?  Oh dear.  Let's add Steven back.  That's really ridiculous.

(Audio feedback)

Ah, Steven, you're back.

[Steven]: Marisa! Hello!

[Marisa]: Hello? Steven?  

[Scott]: Hey.  Hi.

[Steven]: (inaudible and 0:01:56.4)

[Marisa]: Hi.

[Steven]: How are you?

[Marisa]: Steven, I'm good but I can't hear, hear coming in and out in really kind of fuzzy.

[Steven]: I'm going to mu my audio because I'll be listening to you mostly.

[Marisa]: Okay.  So can everyone confirm that my sound is okay?

[Scott]: Yeah, you're great.  So, yeah, it's awesome to have you. For everyone listening, Marisa has been and involved with the Plausible Artworlds for…  Oh geez.  This is going really crazy.  Oh, I see.  I think, David do mute your audio if you're able to hear this?  Thanks.

So Marisa has been involved with the plausible Artworlds series for this year.  It has really been only going for a few months now but the project has been going on for a few years.  Marisa has been involved for at least the last four years and in a long-term discussion with us.  So it's great to be able to have you in this series to talk about all the stuff that you've been doing.  I know "Byproducts" doesn't cover everything that you were doing this sounds like we might talk about that and some of the artist activist networks that you have been involved in over the past couple of years.  If we have time.

[Marisa]: Yeah, I thought I would kind of play the part by ear.  What I thought I would do is talk about, stuck by talking about how it is that I got interested in this topic and why, which relates to my personal other vocational engagements i.e. like the active is kind of things. Um, and then I thought I would go through and give examples of some of the things that are in the book they have kind of further developed these kind of ideas that I am thinking about.  I bet Steven is coming back.  Steven, are you there?

[Steven]: I'm here now.

[Marisa]: Okay, good.  So I was just saying that I was going to talk a little bit first about how it is I got interested in the topic, which will also kind of introduce me.  Then I will talk about some of the projects in the book and kind of delve into the themes or things that come out through example.

[Scott]: Awesome Marisa.  That would be great.

[Marisa]: So I just want to make sure that everyone has this link or URL to the images that I have online.  You don't need to look at them right now. How do I communicate that Basekamp?

[Scott]: We have that.  Are you going to plan to keep that up forever and ever?  Like should we… (Laughing).

[Marisa]: No I'm going to take it down also because some of the photos have permission rights and things like that.  So as we're done I'm going to delete it.

[Scott]: Gotcha.  So no need to spell it out in audio.  I think that everybody can see that text chat. Yeah.

[Marisa]: Okay, so everyone has the URL link is what you're saying.

[Scott]: Yep, it's right up above.  I'll paste it again for everybody.  Cool.  Yeah, we're looking at that now.

[Marisa]: Well, I first started thinking about byproducts and it was in dialogue with Joseph DelPascoe.  We had both been involved curatorally and myself personally as an art maker in shop dropping.  So shop dropping being the idea of reverse shoplifting.  Instead of taking from the store, you're gifting it back or you're giving it back.  There was a few, I think that structure, and there are a lot of stellar examples of shop dropping.  But I also found, discouragingly, that they were a lot of examples in which the art maker was producing something and was shop dropping it for context and they are photographing it and then they are running away with the photograph, displacing the object itself and that they were putting the photograph and the gallery.  So, like it wasn't really an existing in the context in kind of an authentic way.  I mean, authentic (inaudible 0:06:49.4) that knowledge is a problematic word, but whatever.  It was kind of (inaudible 0:06:52.7) or uprooted from the context in which it was actually intended.  

So there's kind of this disjunction between the intended audience, i.e. the passerby, and the gallery goers.  The white box gallery goers.  So I and Joseph both were starting to look at other examples of what I began referring to you as "embedded art projects".  So artworks that are embedded in a context and they often don't make it back into the art, like the mainstream hegemonic commercial art world.  For example, I don't know, it's not necessarily clean.  But oftentimes the artworks are producing meaning or the kind of signify within a certain context.  And I was looking at the problematic of that.  So for example, sometimes those artworks kind of, because they're so context based and they often involve the people in producing the art work itself, kind of begin to disappear.  Or they are in fact invisible.  There's no documentation other than a kind of rumor or conversational way of communicating what happened.  So that's where this book kind of comes from.

For me, I think this interest in this kind of, there are two other personal strains that for my interest in it.  One of them is, and not to like collapse everything by bio graphically, but for me, I'm half the Ecuadorian and half Chinese, and so I feel like I grew up adapting to different context.  I just felt kind of like maybe an outsider or an interloper into another context but also comfortable in kind of adapting and being interested in this idea of alterity or otherness.  Also for me, this idea of being in another context and perfectly adapting kind of camouflaging and that challenge of doing that is something that's interesting.  And I became aware when I was at MIT, I was aware statistically something like 90% - 95% of the women at MIT as if they are interlopers in that context.  To suggest that they don't feel qualified or they feel like an outsider but yet, of course, the women who were there are perfectly qualified.  So, I don't know.  For me that's a personal thing that is relevant, in some way, and you can tell me, if by virtue.

Also, can I make a request?  Now I am somebody that when I'm speaking I like audience feedback.  So I can't see people's eyes or people nodding.  I guess I see people chatting a little bit.  OK, so if you make little (inaudible 0:10:10.9) things here it helps me.  You are not sleeping, I don't know.  Something.  This is a new medium for me

[Scott]: One thing I did not see was Steven's, uh, Steven got dropped again because we're looking at the website.  We'll don't worry, we're not just looking at the wall cat stuff.

(Laughter)

Were listening to what you're saying.  But yet we can definitely give feedback back and forth anytime.  I'm just curious about what you're saying too.  It would be good, since to put up these images, to connect with some of these.  Like, you know what I mean?

[Marisa]: Sounds great.

[Scott]: Like when you were just sort of talking about some of this stuff.  Because I've scrolled through the first three just for, I don't know, because number three has a lot of things to look at and read that are funny.  You know, and interesting.  

[Marisa]: Go.

[Scott]: Yeah.  1, 2, 3...GO!

[Marisa]: 1, 2, 3...So, okay, so looking at the URL of images I want to say that the book is divided into two sections.  This first section is art in (inaudible 0:11:19.2) some artists that are embedding themselves in industry.  And the second part, it's called performing politics and its art, it's less sector specific in a way that we think of industry as a specific sector.  So it is less bounded.

To begin, some of you guys may be familiar with the work of Artist Placement Group.  I think that those of you guys who are familiar with their work may also be familiar with the kind of surprise when one is discovering them given the scope of their ambition.  A Stephen, we are talking about APG and I was beginning to talk about the images on the URL and was saying that I think one of the things when first learning or people who are familiar with APG's work along with that you learn about the relative kind of like, not invisibility.  Especially in the States that they're just not as well historicized as they ought to be. so Artist Placement Group was started in the late sixties by Barbara Steveni and John Latham in London.  They created this kind of agency that would place artists in industries

The first image is here is one that john produced well he was a research institution, a non art research institution, and it's called "Big Breather".  It's an image of, well it's a work, it's not as known as some other images for example.  I think it's absolutely fantastic.  And what it is, if this kind of big bellow and the gravity…  It's a bellow and there is water inside and twice a day the gravitational pull of the Moon makes it so the bellow goes up and down.  And what is going down a kind of leaves this big sigh.  You know, hence the "Big Breather".  You know, I think, right.  There are a lot of projects with an APG's work that is actually less object oriented.  Around the same time, in Canada as a group called Anything Company which was started by... Is anybody here familiar with the work of anything company?   I know like everybody in Canada and their mother knows, but they tend to be less well known in the States.

[Scott]: Yeah, Ian Baxter isn't really as well known here from my point of view.  Just because something seems low on the radar for most of the time I've had my feelers out doesn't necessarily mean that there isn't' a huge following somewhere that I just don't know about.  But, you hear them come up here and them. I'm aware of him mainly through, a couple different outlets, but mostly for Steven's writings and examples. Yeah it would be great if you could describe them and also, like, maybe after that, David Goldenberg was asking about the interest in…  

[Marisa]: Explain APG?

[Scott]: Yeah.  So maybe in whatever...

[Marisa]: Okay, okay.  Thank you for the clarification David.  I appreciate your feedback.

So, the reason that APG was, was because they, and I, sorry.  I totally did not, the kind of being thrown off the loop by not being able to see people in the audience.  You know, having PowerPoint things, you know.  But the interest in APG is because essentially the work that APG did was they involved artists and placed them in different industries.  So governmental positions, British Airways, like the range of different industries.  I am really impressed by the way in which Barbara, who seemed to be the main person negotiating and meeting between the individual and the institution, was able to both frame what were, a lot of times, investigations in conversations as artwork.  And also the scope of their work because they had quite a lot of placements.  When I was editing Barbara's work I had suggested that they were successful placements and she corrected me.  I think that the thing about APG's work and something that is quite so experimental and, in fact, entirely open ended is that the idea of success is a different criteria or value of criteria that you would use to judge something like this, that is really process based, and often evading documentation. (Inaudible 0:16:40.3) for example, normative artworks that exists in kind of a commercial art market.  I'm impressed by her work and her and insidiousness and also just the sheer confidence, it's a really bold move.  And also, on Barbara's behalf, but then also there seems to be by and large a kind of readiness or an openness or willingness to hosting on behalf of these institutions.

Am going to skip down to the next set of images.  The first one is, so these two images are from Anything Company which started in the late sixties by Ian Baxter and Ingrid Baxter.  The first image is of Ian and this is in the DPMA conference, data proc...  Let me look up for a caption here.  But it's a conference for data, people involved in the Data Processing industry.  They set up this trade fair, a booth in a trade fair and in this case they were both recruiting companies to offer their services.  So their services ranged from what they refer to as ascetic sensitivity, which is pretty vague, to things like…  They also found that there was a lot of success on behalf of industries when they offered things like installing a fax machine, which was new at the time, and then offering these different services to go along with it.  Ingrid has this nice, she speaks of that time, and the fax machine is quite interesting.  She said the faxes were fantastic because you can fax them stuff in the middle of the night and then people come back to their corporations and you could kind of penetrate the companies, was the verb that she used, and then they would come back to work and they would have this piece of art through the fax machine.  The fax machine also became an artwork.  So that's me is kind of emblematic of their larger interest and in kind of been involved and offering these kind of viable services.  And also recognizing or seeing aesthetic sensitivity as a kind of service.

The folder, it kind of, one of the documents that they use.  You can see where they are using the language of corporate businesses but it's kind of loopy, right?  So that they want to this trade fair in setup this booth is interesting to me, and I don't have this image up here...I'm thinking about Experiments in Arts and Technology also came up about the same time in New York and was started by engineer Billy Kluver, who was at Bell Labs, along with Robert Rauschenberg and a host of other people too, but those were the main components of the organization.  And there is this equally kind of gripping image also, sorry, I'm distracted.  So experiments in art and technology they also would set up trade fairs and EAT Conf, it's like this industry standard fair for electrical engineers.  Hi Steven.  So and they (inaudible 0:20:58.3) art and technology when they set up this booth in the trade fair, they garnered hundreds and potentially thousands of engineers who are interested in being directly involved with artists.  And so EAT did a lot of innovative, they again like Barbara Steveni from APG; they did the work of kind of suit stringers.  Stitching together and actively kind of matchmaking between artists and industry.

The image that I have here, the first one is, um...  At first they were this kind of transactional relationships so that the engineer what kind of perform the technical things needed to assist the artist and eventually they found more integrated ways of collaborating.  So this is from one of their earlier images, it's from 1966 and it's an image of an engineer's drawings for (inaudible 0:21:53.4) Faulstrom's performance.  So this is the kind of electrical and engineering document and then below is kind of the performance as well.  So you see they're a little bit separated.  But I think through this they eventually found that the engineer successively began to work in a more integrated fashion with the artist.  I think that's kind of a good indicator, not indicator, but that's like the ideal thing that these groups wanted to have happen.

So at this point I should clarify that when I was doing this book, there is a lot of examples of artists that work with industry.  There are two sets of criteria that I used to kind of choose and kind of bound when I was looking at.  One was I was not interested in artists that perform work or create work and services to corporation's primary goal.  That's to say that if an artist goes to work in a rug factory and then produces rugs.  I wasn't interested in that.  I was interested in those examples where there was kind of like a friction.  I think I'm (inaudible 0:23:21.1) that too.  And then the other kind of criteria was there is a lot of examples, there's a fair number of examples, of institutionally initiated collaborations between artists and people in a certain industry sector.  I'm interested and when the artist goes to the industry and initiates or instigates that kind of collaboration because what happens is the artist has to qualify why they are doing what they're doing.

So, moving along to the images.  So on the one hand, the images that we saw above is like artists working with personnel and people involved in industry.  There's this image of two girls hugging and what is suggested as a vat of oil at a Kentucky Fried Chicken and this is by the group named Au Travail, or at work, which I think was on last session.  Did Bob go through these images?  Scott or someone from BaseKamp?

[Scott]: No, not these.  There might be a few.  We can go through all of your images yet. But, this is new to me.  This is pretty incredible.

[Marisa]: Okay.  So these are Au Travail does this project where per their manifesto they insist that artwork should be done from one's place of work because the workplace is often alienating and want them to produce work from that context.  And this image here, and it's sort of unknown art it's something sort of mythical about Au Travail because it's unclear about how many people are involved with their organization or whether it's in fact mostly prompted by a few people or a core of people.  And this image its girls in an oil vat at KFC and it looks like they are taking photos of themselves.  The one below that is an (inaudible 0:25:21.9) and somebody who had submitted images to Au Travail worked in an (inaudible 0:25:27.9) and rather than teach them some kind of traditional lessons in English, she educated them and how to fill out complete forms.  Bureaucratic complaint forms which is, in fact, a mastery of legalese and perhaps more valuable than learning how to get to the beach or how to shop for beating suits or something.  And I think there's something about their work, Au Travail, that's interesting and also kind of problematic in the sense that kind of abandoning this idea of transforming the workplace and too systemic, it's not a systemic approach to making subversive artwork.  It's an approach that is given this sets of constraints and then all do this or this is a way to, like, go around.  So I find it problematic.

So going down to the next set of images you see this little bird sign that says "Harkopod".  Those are a set of two images.  This is by an artist named Thomas Johnson who lives in Canada.  And he was doing this project in Estonia in a small town of 400 people, which felt like 40 people, and he was buying…  He got $100 from the Canadian Council to do this project.  And he took that $100 and he bought goods from a grocery store, kind of like these little General Stores, and he sat at this little table.  They were goods that people buy all the time.  He sat at this little table on the main street, there was only one street in that this town, and he was selling these items for the exact same price that they were being sold for in the stores.  He would take that money that he received or earned and he would restock his store.  So he was never making a profit.  So it is a kind of economic or redundant project that kind of foregrounds a kind of economic exchange as a means of social exchange.  He kind of playfully refers to…  It also, like, whose personal way of integrating himself or finding a meaningful role in this community.  And he playfully refers to himself as this magpie that is in Estonia in this harkopod.  And a magpie is a bird that steals the eggs of another bird nests and sits on them as if they are his own.  So he's kind of appropriately inserting himself in this way, he's kind of camouflaged.

So I think that's what's interesting in these kind of embedded practices is that these artists are camouflaging themselves in ways where they may be entirely imperceptible or alternately their differences are kind of fore grounded in a playful way.  Is there any questions so far?

[Scott]: I'm really into the fact that he sold these for the exact same price, these items.  That's not a question though.

[Marisa}: Steven is asking a question about the use of some terms and is pointing out to me that I am hijacking or retracting them.  So I'm going to read his question.  He says "I'd like to ask you about a couple of them or generally ask you what you think about those whole vocabulary questions where you call yourself an interloper.  What's that?  You explain byproducts right off the bat, but is clearly a case of repossession of that word as an in embedded.  Do you see my point?" Um, Okay.  That's a good series of questions.  I don't know if you heard the first part, Steven, about the interloper.  The interloper, in kind of pointing to these examples that we just talked about like the Thomas Johnson one and his harkopod.  You know, it's kind of like he is cognizant and that he is playfully referring to himself as this magpie.  This bird that contextualizes itself in other contexts and is kind of self consciously attracted by camouflage.  I think that for me bio graphically, what I had explained as one of my interests and the genre of work is that I often feel as if I am an interloper.  To be honest I didn't really see that as (inaudible 0:31:01.5) until I, I still am considering it, but until I went to MIT and I understood that women often have this interloper syndrome.  I don't know, I guess for me, one of the things I see.  To me there's an interest in the challenge and adapting and I see that in a lot of these artists working where there's this kind of playful approach to adaptation and kind of co-opting and repossessing of signifiers of legitimacy and sometimes a quite self conscious way.  Actually, so the idea of embedded, that I think is borrowed from the idea of embedded journalism which is the most common kind of colloquial use of that term.  Journalists are embedding themselves and the context of reporting from within.  There's a kind of danger of upsetting that context.  There's this kind of ethical concern about betrayal and the challenge is kind of too authentically were meaningfully document the work that is produced in that context.

So jumping back to the set of images.  That's a set of driver's license and it's Kristen Sue Lucas on both of them.  So Kristen, she's an artist who lives in Beacon, New York right now.  A few years ago, she felt that in her life she needed a refresh as in she had reached this kind of turning point in her life and she needed some other kind of, she needed it to be publicly acknowledged in a way.  So the solution that she came up with was that she went to the county court and filed for a name change.  She felt that she wanted to change her name from Kristen sue Lucas to Kristen Sue Lucas with the same spelling.  And so when she wanted the judge, the judge asked her why it was that she was doing this.  And she said, this is recorded in the court transcript, and she said " your honor, I really feel as if I'm the same person but different and this is a way I thought that would acknowledge that".  In she had explained that it's kind of like a refresh in the sense that the analogy she used as a technical one.  You know when you're looking at a web page when you hit refresh its recalling data from a central server but the page looks the same?  The data hasn't changed.  So it's the same, but different.  So in the same way, by referring to this she is kind of playfully conceding to the central authority of the court to grant her this name change.  And the judge granted her, after kind of much back and forth and thinking about it.  Well I should say there some rough stuff in between.  The judge didn't immediately grant her the name change.  The judge said "Okay, but you're going to have to come back in a few months.   I'm going to have to think about it".  So when she came back the judge granted her the name change.  So was interesting about this, as Kristen not when she's describing the sense of being in a court and been told that her name was being changed or that she's been granted this request, she felt that the blood had rushed out of her and rushed back in.  So she kind of semantically felt this change.  And then she went about her life in making the name change in her life like the DMV, which is what you see here.  Also she refers to, she acknowledges her name change as her second birthday.

 So in the second set of images are (inaudible 0:35:37.4) baby and that is her first birthday when she was one years old.  And the one below that is her second 1st birthday.  So it's taken a year after her name change.  So she celebrates both birthdays.  One of the outcomes of this project, besides having to explain it to the people in the DMV for example, which gets them involved and talking.  If you can imagine her going into the DMV and kind of explaining it, she's very earnest, and then everyone in the DMV Office is kind of explaining it.  You know, having to explain to each other what is going on.  And some people are more sympathetic and it prompts these kinds of debates.  But the other thing that was interesting that she said was that prior to that time she had felt kind of alienated from her mother.  But her mother was excited about her second birthday because it now made her an Aries, at least for second birthday fell within being an Aries (inaudible0:36:44.1).  So her mother and other people in the family along with friends started having an Aries birthday party.  And that's one of the ways that her life had changed.

 I also think that some of the other works in "Byproducts" that are interesting if this kind of emphasis on what the linguist John Carol refers to as status indicators i.e. these kinds of official documents that legislate change.  And so that's kind of a theme throughout the book as there are a lot of these ones.  I think that the emphasis on it is because oftentimes no one knows about these projects and then the status indicators are ways that people do know about it.  The invitation has been like fixed or legislated.

And then I'll go through the last set of images a little bit quicker.  Similar to Kristen Lucas 'project is um, are you guys familiar, yeah I think you guys are familiar with the Janez Jansa?  The Janez Jansa project which is three...  Yeah?

[Scott]: I was just been afraid to send some information about that.  But yet that would be great if you could tell people about that a bit.  

[Marisa]: so the Janez Jansa project started I think two or three years ago and it was by these three artists.  It was during that time when the right wing prime minister Slovenia by the name of Janez Jansa was running for reelection.  And the three artists change their name to Janez Jansa.  Like Kristen, they went through the links of changing all of their legal documents.  The media started referring to them this way.  It started building their own artistic acts this way.  They had Janez Jansa Facebook pages.  One of them got married and there's an image of one of them getting married.  So in all of these kinds of steps what happens is it immediately subversive and humorous.  If you can imagine "Janez Jansa gets married to new blah blah ".  And it's like this person, you know, she something very pleasant lady or a woman, you know.  And it's like these people are clearly not the Prime Minister.  If you can imagine why, Facebook page just by virtue of the fact of them even listing their hobbies.  Like planting, going to the beach on Sundays with the kids or shopping.  If you can imagine the Facebook update it's just like immediately funny and subversive and kind of (inaudible 0:39:54.3) the Prime Minister Janez Jansa.

And then there is some moments in their work, I mean a really timed their whole thing fantastic.  Just really great about anticipating the kind of political residence of what otherwise were ordinary gestures.  So for example, this is not the most ordinary of examples, they published a biography on Janez Jansa.  They kind of describe the three lives of these three artists and it was timed at the release of this book that was revering the Prime Minister.  What was interesting was that the project was quite controversial in Slovenia and they never explained what their gesture or the meaning of their gesture and so would force the media to explain their gesture for them.  So they came up with a million different examples of why and then people went so far as to suggest that it was the media, in fact, that produced the artwork.  So people were always talking about the media's obsession to live the artwork on this project and one of them was sense of vocational imperative on behalf of journalists to cover.  When you're covering issues as a journalist you have to cover both sides of the spectrum.  So for example you're going to report on a policy change or whenever then you would ask both the president and you also ask the prime minister and then you also ask the artist Janez Jansa.  It was picked up also out of this (inaudible 0:41:41.1) journalistic objectivity.  

So kind of along the same wavelength there's like every step pointing out the kind of artifice and the constructions of these institutions that one otherwise takes.  For example, Mr. Peanut who in the mid seventies and Vancouver ran for mayor.  So Mr. Peanut as you may recall, is this kind of icon from Planters Peanuts.  And two artists, Vincent Trasov and Michael Morris, ran as this peanut character.  So one of them is the tap dancing silent peanut and the other one explains the gesture of the peanut.  So here's an image of Mr. Peanut in front of City Hall.  The one below is where Mr. Peanut is walking.  I think the image is of him walking with one of the other candidates.  And just by virtue of someone silent is standing next to you, the "straight" candidate derails the other candidate.  And what's interesting is that Mr. Peanut garnered 11% of the vote in Vancouver.  Larry Baggett in his book called "Gorilla Electoral Theater" writes about how when this kind of gorilla electoral performance projects happens it's often indicative of a sense of disenfranchisement among the voting constituency.  But it is a way to kind of garner a movement build.  It's often kind of happening at these times where voters are (inaudible 0:43:39.3) stuck, as in they don't have any options and nothing to do, so these kind of moments arise.  And his book is fantastic, I have to say.

[Scott]: I'm sorry, what was the name of the book again?  Because I don't…

[Marisa]: "Gorilla Electoral Theater"

[Scott]: Oh great, thanks.

[Marisa]: And Larry wrote the introduction with me, actually.

So I think most of you guys, it's likely that you guys are familiar with the Reverend Billy recently ran for mayor of New York City.  He was running for mayor when Bloomberg was essentially buying his third term in kind of rewriting the laws of electoral politics.  You know, bought himself his third term essentially.  So it was likely that he was gonna win so in a sense there was nothing to lose.  I think Larry writes about Billy and people involved in that campaign including the director of (inaudible 0:44:54.7).  During that time when they go through this sense of like not knowing whether they should.   For example be as outlandish and just had this wildly utopia proposition or whether they in fact should be pragmatic and eventually they decided to (inaudible 0:45:08.9) utopia because they lost a lot of their own support when they started coming up with a viable solutions for hotter run the city.

The last set of images, one is broken, is Camille Turner.  Are you guys familiar with Camille Turner's work?

[Scott]: I don't think so.  

[Marisa]: Okay.  Camille Turner is of Caribbean descent and she moved to Canada.  When she first moved there she described the sense of being received as a foreigner.  Of course Canada is proud of having a really wildly diverse population.  That's just some biographical background that informs her practice.  Your references this character called Miss Canadiana and the word Canadiana is equivalent in American English to Americana.  So I think that's kind of kitchy, maybe kind of curio in Americana it's like kitchy a little bit.  As Miss Canadiana she shows up at events unannounced, well sometimes she's invited, to kind of officiate in a sense.   Show up and say a few words and bestow grace on, you know, officiate.  But sometimes she shows up unannounced.  Her unannounced appearance is including the training ground for the royal Mounties in Canada.  So that would be like showing up at the, I don't know, West Point.  And they received her very graciously and they were excited to have this beauty queen figure show up and in fact she got invited back.  And so she's able to kind of create this new kind of access through this invented persona.  She was describing this moment where she was in northern Canada and she was getting this lecture performance to a group of people.  She was nervous about the whole thing because they seemed like maybe they could be hostile and she didn't know how the performance was going to go over.  And she remembers at some point the audience started stirring and someone turned on the lights and they said to her a little bit abruptly "so what is this?"  And she goes "what do you mean?" And they said "well what is this?  What is this?" And she explained that she had invented this character.  And so the person in the audience said to her "oh you mean we can do this too?"  And so it was like this fantastic moment of just recognizing that kind of constructiveness of things and that, in fact, in doing so you could have a similar kind of agency.  So to me it's this moment of recognizing that institutions made up of humans.  It's this moment of re-sensitizing one's self to a political agency and recognizing, uh, just taking it all.

Steven Wright is saying "this is all the funnier as the governor general of Canada, our head of state, is herself Haitian born.  So there's an automatic confusion between Miss Canadiana and the queen's representative" That's funny! Yes, "so there is a real Yes Men twist in the terms of race relations".  I think also was funny about Camille is her presence.  She doesn't' fit normal. She's such a graceful and at that data that Jeff Tackett said it smiling person and she doesn't fit normal beauty queen standards.   So what happens is you don't judge her on that, you judge your idea of what beauty queen standards are.  You know what I mean?  So it kind of forces you to re-evaluate those.  

Now, what questions do you have (laughing)?   

[Scott]: We're just looking at these websites Marisa.  There's a lot of material on here to look through.

[Marisa]: Yeah.

[Scott]: I was curious how your role as an artist and an activist has led you in the direction of these other artists' works?

[Marisa]: I know that in the conversations I've had with you and Steven about that, I never quite know how to answer that.  So to explain the background, when I'm introducing myself or some other introductory kind of thing I say that half my life is in the arts as in artist/writer/curator and the other half is in working with different grass roots, like a community organizer with grass roots for activist or advocacy based organizations.  I mean, I really do spend, it really isn't a 50/50 kind of split and sometimes it is or is not kind of overlapped.  For this book I think I'm interested in the ways, for example, and the way that a lot of these practices are self conscious in kind of like investigating new forms of documentation and this kind of interest.  I'm interested in these artists, their interests, and kind of finding these impuracle ways of verifying that a thing existed.  And I guess for me it's kind of this interest in looking at the outcomes or impuracle indicators that this work has taken place and it comes from my work is a community organizer where I'm involved in campaigns and has very specific outcomes.  And were also always trying to measure and evaluate what those successes are.  So for example, one campaign has been very dear to me for quite some years is working in this coalition of people who are opposing the privatization of this pavilion on the north side of Union Square in New York City.  You know the outcome is on the one hand saving up a pavilion and there are all the steps in between really.  And I think for me, on the one hand, activists and community organizers and advocates are really good about naming those impuracle things but can be saved and they can be in the nonprofit industrial complex.  You key used to doing things like finding or indicating or articulating those things in between that are the work of movement building.  And for me, this is also the works of art does.  Like sitting within a space of and knowing and anticipating these ways of which thing signify and for really subtle shifts.  Like in movement building account the numbers of people that you reach out and connect with and build into your organization your constituents.  And in artwork that scope is different sometimes.

I don't know.  I think that's one kind of overlap between are enacted this practices.  And I think the other one is just simply being.  You know sometimes artwork, I don't disenvow things being shown in a gallery, and I think it serves a function.  I think oftentimes when people are really anti gallery and anti museum it's like throwing the bathwater out with the baby.  I would like to remind people that the first public museums came out of the French Revolution and this idea of making it accessible to people.  And to be privatizing these kind of cultural legacies or whatever.  But to be honest, I get really grumpy oftentimes with the way with things are shown in galleries and I have found that I'm just always interested and practices that go beyond that aggressively and rigorously.  I guess that's where this book comes out of as well.  Does not make sense?

[Scott]: Yeah totally.  Someone else has a question here too.

[Kate]: Hi Marissa, this is Kate.  I was just wondering if you at all explore commercial art as byproducts of societal discourse in your book or not?  

[Marisa]: Um, so, I'm sorry.  So just to make sure that I have you correctly.  So whether I explore commercial works as a byproduct of conversations that take place in society.  Um, that's a good question.  I think that's when (0:56:44.5) my scope too is artworks that are produced within a non artworld sector.I should have clarified that in the beginning.  So, because for example, themes a lot of works that are produced within art institutions themselves.  Like for example, the genre of institutional art or kind of seventies through nineties genre work that investigates art institution itself and the politics of (inaudible 0:57.14.9) structures.  I'm not looking at that.  Actually because it's pretty well documented and kind of (inaudible 0:57:19.7).  And so I feel like that's the work of (inaudible 0:57:23.8) and a kind of work has been done...  I am looking at those that tend kind of invading the contextion oftentimes.  Also, I'm looking at work where the artist is embedding themselves in the context and it's the system and the rhythms and the patterns of that context that itself produces the work.  So, in answer to your questions, no.   

But for example, Kristen Lucas' project, that was shown in a gallery.  It has been shown in galleries and museums.  So it's not like totally separated from that world, do you know what I mean?  But I'm looking for context, I'm not really looking at the kind of documentation so much in a (inaudible 0:58:17.9) gallery context, I'm looking at that moment in which it was produced.  I'm kind of focusing on that.  Also Janez Jansa work has been shown extensively in museums and galleries and a lot of their work incorporates this kind of institutional art dialogue.  And am not focusing on that aspect of their project because it is (inaudible 0:58:37.4).  I'm focusing on their work in the moment of its production, in which the context is producing the work itself.

Um, if someone is saying, they did is saying "what about artworks that take the place inside and outside of institutions but do not produce material evidence such as Ian Wilson's?"  Um, I don't know Ian Wilson's work.  I would like to know.  I think that I am looking at stuff where there is not material evidence.  Like APG's work really.  Barbara, in one of her interviews, acknowledges that there's kind of shoddy documentation of her work in fact.  One of her contemporaries and colleagues are in Joseph Boyd's exemplary self documented.  And she remembers that APG as a group, in fact didn't have very many photographs.  They saw their own group being documented in Boyd's work and then they recognized they not only should that should have been documented.  Well, should have been documented.  Self documented.  So I think I'm looking at, I think a lot of these works really exist as... On one hand I am interested in status indicators and these kinds of material documents and I'm also interested in and the way that a lot of these projects really operated by and large verbally, through oral passage.  You know, through language.  Rumor or snippets of conversation.

Sorry.  Sorry I started looking at Ian Wilson's work. Um, okay well um...

[Scott]: Yeah, so Marissa.  I wouldn't want to guide you too much but I am definitely super curious about your, I mean, you've been involved in art and activism for quite awhile.  But not specifically artists who only choose to instrumental themselves and the service of activism and the ways that are most predictable.  I wouldn't say so anyway.  It doesn't seem like it.  I think it would be interesting to hear about that.  You know, maybe some your strategies.  You know, a lot of "art activists" are involved in making directly political zines and posters probably or involved in protests or attempt to use their art competencies in those ways that don't necessarily make conceptual art projects with that material.  It seems like you have been involved in this project called "Pond".  You had been for a long time.  It's sort of labeled as art activism and ideas, right?

[Marisa]: Mm hmmm.

[Scott]: And, I don't know.  Would you be in to talking about some of that because you're networks have become more expensive sense then I think what that kind of work right?  

[Marisa]: Yeah.  I think it started with....  For me my interest in being engaged in a kind of atavistic or atavistically, whatever, politically.  A lot of people just kind of solidified.  When I went to Seattle WTO in 1999, that was one of the most fascinating experience of my life and everybody was like, you know.  Reality.  Everybody just pales since then.  I acknowledge that I, I think for a lot of people who want there, it easier to romanticize.  It was fantastic and all some at the same time.  For the past 14 years I have been involved in K through 12 education and I sometimes consider going into a college level teaching.  K-12 education teaching and literacy and also art to underrepresented youths.  And my interest in that is, I will, you know, I feel privileged to be in this country.  I'm the first person to go to college on my Ecuadorian side so I, you know, I'm cognoscente of that.  I think that I'd like teaching and I think that I have a lot of patience, or so people have told me that.  I think one of my favorite applications of patience is teaching people how to read.  I mean, anyways.  What a curious thing for an animal to be doing. Teaching (inaudible 1:04:40.2) reading books.  So I was always kind of involved in K-12 education and I still am here and there.  Last semester I was teaching a group of teenagers in Brooklyn about the Red Guidelines Board, which is a specific body in New York that makes decisions about red regulating units in New York.  There are a million red units and so they're making this project about that kind of involved investigating what this policy, this body of politicians do.  There are nine people in the RGB and they're all handpicked by the mayor.  Anyway, it's kind of curious, one of those curious bureaucratic monsters in New York.  I guess from that I also got involved in different advocacy based work.  I guess I thought that when I was younger that I would get into education or being involved in the field of education as an advocate.  Instead what I think I started doing is I got involved with this group...

The first advocate based organization I started working with a few years ago was called Eye Witness Video. They document the policing of protests in order to ensure the first amendment right of people to protest which is a kind of civil liberty that is increasingly, especially after 9/11, gets cramped down.  So what that work involved doing was taking videos of police at protests and also documenting their badges or whether they had them or if they were covering them.  Documenting undercover cops, how they (inaudible 1:06:40.4), how they approach the protest itself, what weapons they use and kind of following that through all the steps of a protest.  For example, the lead up to the protest or how they litigate or prosecute activists after it.   So mounting these kinds of long term investigations.  Then in 2004 a witness was able to prove that 1/3 that out of the 1200 tickets they had issued were digitally fabricated which resulted in dismissal of 1200 i.e. thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of dollars that would otherwise be revenue.  When I joined them it was in the lead up to the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention in Minneapolis, St. Paul and Denver.  That involved, you now, documenting all the stages along with all of the kind of historic moments that just sound totally stupid describing them now, but involved (laughing) the harassed all the time, having cell phones tapped, having the house be overrun by FBI agents pointing guns at you, having to be threatened with door being run down with the battering ram and all that kind of psychological paranoia that goes along with that.  I have since been involved, besides that organization.  

Right now I work with a program called Street Vendor Project and we advocate and we have the street vendors.   Well, I should say, the interesting thing for me about advocacy organizations is that they not only involved advocating on behalf but they also really involve often times in encouraging and fostering.  So if you can imagine what for eye witness before people go to protest, people would want to make sure that eye witness was there to make sure that their backs are covered.  OR people would also send their tapes to us to use in mounting this long term forensic investigation.  Right now I'm involved in Street Vendor Project and it's a vendor led organization in New York with 1000 members and we advocate on behalf of organized street vendors.  So it's centrally like our union.

Then another group that I've been working with for quite some years is NYC Park Advocates and they've been really effective in terms of... well, they advocate on behalf of, they advocate for equitable access to parks.  And in New York, public parks are something that is very contested because people need green space and recreational space and people are in their cramped quarters and, you know.  So that's a quite heated and cross classed and cross sectored group.  It's been interesting working with them because I've been really affected actually in being a thorn in the Bloomberg Administration's side and effectively getting parks open.  We're drafting policy and enacting kind of like a change, these changes that are perceptively and probably felt on an everyday level in people's lives.  So last weekend, I was on a park inspection at this park in Queens and it had been shut down despite the fact that it was only $5,000 to maintain normally.  So, there was like some new pieces that were on the local news channels and that drew attention to the fact that our Governor's way of getting legislators to, it's kind of holding the parks ransom in a sense.  So, it's kind of like drawing attention to public policy, you know, the politics of what's happening.  And also for example in park inspections, we talk with people who were in this neighborhood that was surrounded by mosquitoes and tons of weeds and dumping and things like dead dogs were dumped in front of these poor people's front yards.  And we had told them that we had launched this news piece five years ago about this very neighborhood and we had gotten the parks department to say that they would be accountable for their property, which was their front yard, and clean up the space.  In fact, it was kind of precedent for them to come back and there is this negatism for accountability.  You know, that's like affecting someone's daily life.  The fact that in the future could not be bitten all the time by mosquitoes or the smell of dead dogs or see a bunch of weeds.  And it's like "why shouldn't these people have a Central Park in front of their yard?"  It's like, you know.  It's endless.  The Park's Department.  Their kind of failures and it's an endless supply of (inaudible 1:12:35.1) (laughing) things to work on and projects.

[Scott]: Yeah, Steven.  Did you want to sort of ask what you were saying out loud or do you think your connection is too poor for that?

[Steven]: No, my connection is really good now because (inaudible 1:13:07.1)

[Scott]: They've stopped watching porn?

(Laughter)

Awesome.  Welcome back.

[Steven]: It's great.  All of a sudden I can hear everything.  It's crystal clear where as before I just wasn't, you know.  Anyways, I think that David has a question which kind of took up a thread of what I asked earlier.  And I think it's a crucial time because we've got some (inaudible 1:13:30.2) and I have this sensation when I was talking to you before too.  You know, you're sort of extremely articulate but slightly have a strange type of vocabulary which sort of pulls us along further.  We understand the words but we don't quite...  But maybe you have to come back to it because I think there is something very key about using that kind of language to read into these practices.

 But actually, my question is a bit different, or maybe it's a bit linked as well.  When I was listening to you talk about your eye witness privilege project.  I can sort of see there was something linked to what art in a certain kind of, I don't know, a forensic art that is kind of procured over its long history.  And now a kind of focused process that has developed like lobbyists do.  Like look very closely at things and document them very accurate, you attempted to (1:14:37.0) you know, escape.  I think that's a great case to be made for art.  Which is making and witness bearing then what will be, in fact.  That's one of the greatest arguments to be made for not giving up art actually because it really does have a strong case.  But then when you got to the end of your presentation, you were talking about people being like arrested and having their rights absolutely (inaudible 1:15:09.6).  This is something which is very unfamiliar.  Even to radical art producers.  So, I was wondering to what extent you think that kind really...

I have another question but I'll give you a few seconds about that.

[Marisa]: So, um, okay.  So is your question, Steve, about for example, radical art producers are not subject saying often times...Well, for the most part, radical art producers are not subject to the same kind of consequences as something like what happens in other forms of avocation or social engagement?  Or in the case of Eye Witness, which is somewhat extreme, of being harassed or physically harmed.  Is that what you mean? Is that your question?

[Steven]: Well, that's for sure two of my (inaudible 1:16:15.1) whole question, that's definitely the case.  Maybe I can put it this way.  If you really beyond that specific example, what are art related practitioners really bring into the mix and why are these advocacy groups and activists bringing into their mix?  Another one, one that's close to art and a little but further back from activism.  The artist might be a little bit further from art but a little closer to activism.  How does that crossover or that (inaudible 1:16:50.8).

[Marisa]: Okay, okay.  So what is each? What is activism bringing to the mix and what is art bringing to the mix.  Well, I think that this idea of kind of like a forensic look or a long-term investigation is to me, I think what art has to offer is this sense of subtlety or resensitizing to otherwise (inaudible 1:17:19.7) processes or otherwise these really subtle ways of looking at new connections.  I mean, Kristen Lucas' is one really good example where, I guess, you know...  I some of these practices what happens is that over time something new happens and then all of a sudden it recontextualizes all of the moments proceeding it and make them somehow resonate in a different way.  And then another thing could happen.  And it's shifting.  Like in the case of Mr. Peanut or Reverend Billy.  It's like because these are...I would actually say less than this, you know, this idea of sudden shifts and were like fractions.  It's less so in Miss Canadiana's case because she's not involving herself in an institutional practice that unfolds narratively.  For example, an electoral campaign unfolds in a familiar way.  In those ones where it's really, really scripted and someone is exerting themselves and taking these on and what happens is it automatically is resonating against the other person who has been unwittingly cast as the other player.  So, it resonates against our responses.  So, for example, if Janez Janša the Prime Minister does a gesture also, he suddenly becomes encompassed in part of the artwork.  Do you know what I mean?  So when like Janez Janša the Prime Minister updates his Facebook page, that becomes part of the artwork.  So it's just kind of this solemn way of looking is what one of what these practices can bring.

On the activist side, the activist practices remind us of these larger stakes and scope of things and the scale.  I mean, it's like when you're involved in organizing protesters or involved in consistence through teaching.  I don't know.  It's like you really count numbers a lot oftentimes.And the fact that like, for example, the art and non profit and industrial complex you certainly count numbers when going through the gallery of (inaudible 1:20:05.8) whatever.  It's different.  It can be quite different.  Yeah.  I think activist practice is also the way that they bring in ideas of consequences or consequentiality and an outcome is something art practices can learn from.  I think the engagement with impuracle information and information from the ground is something that activism and advocacy groups bring to art.  And also really knowing how to work with communities, which is a very, it's a skill and it's something that...  On the one hand it's like a knack, but also like a skill that one can learn how to do.  I think that is something that, especially social engaged practices, more specifically embedded our practices needs to know.  How in fact to meaningfully engage themselves in a way where it's not the art activist taking the photograph of the thing going to the context and then they, you know, they have their documentation and the thing happened and the art piece happened and they went away and can put it in the White Box Gallery in the community.  It's like "where did the artist go?" That, um...

[Steven]: Thank you, thank you.  For sure. That was great.

[Marisa]: Collective autonomy.  So something art is not too good at.  Oh, well, I think the thing about artwork is that often... Okay, look. Yesterday I was at these crypts. A friend of mine, Lauren Connor is teaching and I was visiting her class.  And I was reminded about art.  I sometimes forget, but in fact, but I was re-reminded about how art institutions (inaudible 1:22:24.7) reinforce individuality.  And they don't often teach or emphasize an artist knowing how to work with each other collaboratively or alternately learn with contacts.  And I think that in meaningful ways, or in committed ways.  Um, yeah.  Also, I was reminded about how artists oftentimes need help or training in learning how to deal with evidence or information or things impuracle.  Information about the world.  Worldly engagement.  Which I don't see, for example, in the like education institutions that teach architecture.  To me it seems a lot like the strength of that training is a lot of times I feel like architecture students get that training on working with land information and people.  And artists don't often get that training but I think that we should.

Did I sound too despairaging (laughing)?

[Scott]: No, not at all.  Actually, Chris here has a question for us.

[Chris]: Hi.  I was going to ask about that sometimes I wonder looking at the thing for the Up Against the Wall people, I thought that maybe sometimes they might come across as being way too aggressive.  When their actually not or something.  Yeah.

[Marisa]: So, is your question about like groups being (inaudible 1:24:16.9) or what do you mean? Or like (inaudible 1:24:22.0) or kind of tone?

[Chris]: Well something is saying, yeah.  Having a group called Up Against the Wall (expletive 1:24:27.5) might be considered to be a bit way too threatening to people.

[Marisa]: um hmmm.  Well, I think Steven can maybe talk about these interests in that.  I think it's the way, well okay.  So you're question is about being confrontational or aggressive or being agro?

[Chris]: Yeah, something like that.

[Marisa]: Um, well I think I okay, well.  I'm interested on the one hand.  Okay.  Do you mean activist practices in general or do you mean like that particular example Up Against the Wall (explicate 1:25:12.7)?

[Chris]: I meant activist practices in general.

[Marisa]: Oh, well I think, I mean I think one of the problems of activist work, activist artwork not activist work; activist artwork is that it airs on the side that they feel.  The problem I feel that is with activist work is that it often feels like it has to look like leftist artwork.  Kind of like it has a syndrome of this embarrassment of riches where it feels like that it can't take pleasure in essential.  It has to be this left looking artwork and it drives me nuts.  You know, um, and I think that's the problem with the left also.  Besides art activist practices' problem with the left, it feels like its identitarian based politics.  It's like politics rooted in an identity and all the accoutrements with it instead of being more open minded about what that is.  Um. Yeah. I don't have a problem I guess, I think that's your question right? I personally don't have a problem with.

[Chris]: Yeah. Yeah.

[Marisa]: I don't know.  Did that answer your question?

[Chris]: I also was thinking, like you know, would it backfire, yeah, would it like scare the general public off of it?  And, yeah.

[Marisa]: I think that when the strengths of art is, I mean, I think that one of the strengths of art is when it can get somebody to look anew at something or to look again deeper at something.  I agree if I'm kind of corruptly understanding what you're saying that when something looks like it's going to be (inaudible 1:27:21.8) then the general public is turned off.  And when art uses its strengths and is presenting something in a luxurious way then its illusive then interrogates something then it's successful.  Or makes something more interesting or sophisticated than something that's afraid to not be like...

[Chris]: Yeah.  Yeah.  Okay.

[Michael]: Hi, this is Michael at BaseKamp.  I was interested in what you were saying about kind of going to an art school and their not necessarily being a conversation about how artists interact in the world with their practice.  So what do you think about programs that are attempting to move in that direction with social practice or something like that?  Like Portland or San Francisco.

[Marisa]: I think it's a case by case thing.  I think it's super important to have those kinds of classes.  In my opinion I think those classes are successful or those kind of (inaudible 1:28:43.4 - Lost most of audio feed here) engagements are successful and they involve like a really diverse mix of people who can inform the students in different ways.  I think artists always like, the organizer side of it in me sometimes wants to encourage... It goes with (inaudible 1:29:05.1).  I'm not jaded by art because there are so many examples but I obviously get grumpy about certain things.  And the same thing goes about art.  But I think, I don't even like to emphasize for, well, for artists not to be (inaudible 1:29:24.6) about what they're doing.  You know what I mean?  And then I think also, like sometimes, artists, it doesn't always have to be their own art project.  They could do something and it doesn't have to be an art project.  And I think that in both cases, you have to let yourself go and just go with this.  For example, when you're doing an art project in a way that one wants an artist to really get into what they're doing and find that.  For me, I always think of it in terms of finding a certain kernel of logic and kind of unraveling it and extending it.  I think in the same way, if you're involved with a community that you'd have to be, you'd have to let yourself go.  And that's more of a question of commitment to the issue and that community.  And I think that sometimes they're at odds in the sense that like even in an artworld there's (inaudible1:30:19.5) structures that you have to be, for certain art careers it helps to be really mobile.  Do you know what I mean?  To do the certain art practices involve this kind of looking about like internationally without ever really being involved in the community. And I think that a (inaudible 1:30:37.7).  So I think that when we talk about social practice we have to think about finding something where you're not organizing a community, where you're not just being involved in a topic because it's like a class assignment, but you're really committed to that thing.  And so that's a question also of like understanding one's self and what topics you're super (inaudible 1:31:01.4) in.  And that starts with self knowledge. Did that answer your question?

(Either question from lost audio feed or text)   

Hi. Um, I finished "Byproducts" as a book, I wrote the introduction but it's an embology of essays.  So, I wrote parts of it and other people wrote other parts of it. In December of 2009 I finished a book called "Recipes for an Encounter" and that's a meditation, drawing on examples from art (inaudible 1:32:11.4) and architecture that look and consider the propositional nature of recipes.  So a recipe, as in a magic spell can be a recipe or from an architectural point a diagram can be a recipe.  A list for a certain kind of art project can be a recipe.  So looking at all these kinds of things that are schematized and looking at their propositional nature and then also looking at the difference between a recipe and what's inactive.  So, a recipe invites improvisation and they are open ended by nature.  There is an improvisational aspect to them.  So, that was the first book.  They're not exactly too related.

(Either question from lost audio feed or text)

It's called "Recipes for an Encounter".  And then if you, let's see (inaudible 1:33:19.4).  Yeah, if you Google it, it comes up.

[Steven]: Marisa?  I have kind of an art historical question.  It's really a question because it's something that I also deal with.  A lot of your examples, historical examples come from the 1960s.  Thinking of Ian Baxter, Anything Company, Artist Placement Group, Mr. Peanut and then all of a sudden the examples are all young artists today.  I mean, Reverend Billy isn't exactly a young artist but he's pretty cutting edge.  So my question is what happened in between?  How come all this stuff happened in the sixties and then early seventies and then nothing happened?  And then it's kind of... Is anything cool in those years?

[Marisa]: I don't know.  You know, I'm not saying it's a very good excuse for (inaudible 1:35:13.9) on my behalf.  Perhaps I should have worked at that a bit more.  I don't actually consider myself an artist so I mean... Pardon?

[Steven]: That's to your credit.  I mean, it wasn't like that.  If you noticed that, maybe it's just me (inaudible 1:35:37.4) really exist but...

[Marisa]: No. I certainly noticed it.  First of all (inaudible 1:35:51.0) I'd be interested if you had examples or if somebody else had examples of an in between.  I don't know what that is or what that... That for example, did institutional critique you know, things that happened in the 1990s?  Did that soak up people's anti-institutional reflex or antiauthoritarian reflex?  I don't know.  Is it like in the eighties and the seventies like the punk movement happened and that soaked up people's anti -authoritarian reflexes?  I don't know.

(Inaudible question from group 1:36:30.3)

[Marisa]: Oh yeah?  Miss Solid States?  Miss Altered State.  And was that... Huh?

(Inaudible response from group 1:37:03.00)   

[Marisa]: Interesting.  So it's like a character.  That's interesting.

[Steven]: It's not like nothing was happening in the eighties obviously.  You know, there was the (inaudible 1:37:13.7) revolution.  I mean, there was a lot of political activity going on in Central America. There was the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Like very, very important political events that challenging (inaudible 1:37:28.9) all over the world. But the funny thing is, that often times in our accounts, and I'm wondering if this is at least grounds for some sort of self critique, is often our accounts of these things we draw with examples from these really great examples from the world we are just discovering now.  So it's not like this has been going on for a long time.  This is like anything (inaudible 1:37:51.5).  Nobody was talking about this stuff a year ago.  It's news that has come up on our radar screens.  But the funny thing is that it would be easier to find stuff and remember the things that were happening in the eighties than it would be to dig up stuff that was happening in the sixties.

[Marisa]: mmm hmm.  Um.

[Steven]: (inaudible 1:38:15.7) it was different for sure.

(Inaudible/Audio feed lost 1:38:25 - 1:40:19.3)

[Marisa]: Well, you know there is the art historian Vincent (inaudible 1:40:27.3).  I don't know if you know him Steven Wright, but he's quite interesting and (inaudible 1:40:35.8). He suggests that 1968 is the year when the Sony Portapack was invented and that was also the time of a (inaudible 1:40:55.9).  So Sony Portapack that made video cameras portable spurred this interest in technology art.  In Canada, the Canadian Council had funding initiatives not only for the usage of this technology but for artists to use, I forget the name, it's a look and pilnib.  It's a funding initiative for artists to work in acknowledged art sectors.  A lot of times was what that meant was the artists were going to do media.  And this was an initiative that was taken up by the Baxters in Britain and also spurred some similar but not has prominent engagements with mono sectors.  Any kind of like rejuvenating spur of artistic innovation and technology innovation rolled together.

(Inaudible question from group 1:36:30.3)

Vincent Vonin. First name is Vincent.  He actually just published a book about, called, (inaudible 1:42:18.6) documentary protocols.  It was (inaudible 1:42.23.5) gallery in Toronto, I'm sorry.  Montreal?

[Steven]: It was a great show.  A really great sow

[Marisa]: Yeah.  A really good archivist.  So, on the Canadian side, I think there is an interest in that.  For example, Ingrid's fascination with the telefax and the able to penetrate companies is kind of the most heightened emblem of this initiative. Yeah.

[Steven]: Maybe this is a topic we can pick up at another location because it's kind of late here for me.  It's just a little after 2:00.  And I would love to continue this conversation because actually didn't even think of it before.  I'm really just thinking of your examples and they way we talk about them it seems like we're doing the splits for about a decade and a half.  And it's maybe why that would be and then maybe directed by it or else at least to (inaudible 1:43:46.7).  I also am somebody who became politically and artistically aware in the 1980s so of course I know a lot about the 1980s and I never talk about the stuff that formed in my youth.   Anyway, maybe there are more things to be said but I think I'm going to have to duck out at this point.  I want to thank you very much for your presentation and your thoughts and for joining us.  I hope you'll come back, before the book gets out, for another potluck and before I read the book

[Marisa]: That sounds good.  I look forward to reading the book (laughing)

(Laughter)

Why don't we close it there altogether and leave on an inquisitive note (inaudible 1:44:54.0) and more for later.

[Steven]: Okay, goodnight!

[Marisa]: Goodnight! Thank you Scott.  Thank you guys!

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