Canadian Art: Vera Frenkel
Ironic humour is uppermost in new media artist Vera Frenkel's new HTML work The Institute™: Or, What We Do for Love. She has imagined a new cultural service organization called the National Institute for the Arts that inhabits closed hospital facilities. Its mission is "to provide physical care and professional studio support for the nation's leading artists in their retirement years." Staffed by former employees of the CBC, the National Film Board and the Canada Council for the Arts, it "hosts and protects the lifestyle and studio practices of the living cultural treasures of our time." As you click through the site, you note that the first facility has opened in Hamilton, the home riding of the former Heritage Minister Sheila Copps. Frenkel's institutional voices are dead- on parodies of rationalized managerial syntax, and there is a sense of farce in the wide-ranging picture she has made of the bureaucratic Canadian cultural scene. I found myself wondering, though, if The Institute™ was a critique as much as a plea. Canada's aging artists do not fare well in a country that regards international success as the ultimate measure of cultural achievement. What happens to localized careers when they wind down? Elsewhere, appreciative markets establish a level of respect and security for creative work. History books and academic institutions spin a narrative web that keeps work alive and builds an empowering cast of vivid cultural figures. Frenkel shows Canada's artists going into an institutional home. It is a sad alternative to an integrated, living culture.
Spring 2004
Vera Frenkel Screen grab of "Residential Floors" from The Institute™: Or, What We Do for Love at www.the-national-institute.org 2003
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