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Proposal (Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown) for Toronto

"Proposal (Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown) for Toronto" by Vincent Honoré, Spring 2010, pp. 68-80

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Opening. When asked, a few months ago, to propose a paper for Canadian Art, following a fruitful research trip to Toronto under the auspices of the Canadian Art Foundation’s Anne Lind International Program, I decided to resist the authority (the vanity?) that would have been implied by writing a linear essay that either narrated my journey or positioned my view on contemporary art and its current developments. Instead, I decided to try, perhaps and hopefully in an unresolved manner, to present, with the help of Micah Lexier,¹ a series of notes that could form a potential “written” exhibition— something that may or may not exist—the silhouette of a thought, the progress of a research project, fragments. I wish to address the retreat, drifting and repetition I felt were part of many of the works I experienced in Toronto, right up to the last piece I saw, a few hours before boarding a plane back to Paris: A Slowly Dissolved World by Stephen Ellwood, at Art Metropole. These directions are, it seems to me, at the heart of the practices of many international artists working today.²

This portfolio is an attempt to create bridges. It is also part of an ongoing project (here you will be entering a game of Russian nesting dolls) I have developed under the generic title A Fragmented Time, which consists of different chapters existing in different places and times. It could be an exhibition unravelling in time, or a collective tale still to be written. This project includes publications, interviews and exhibitions; it includes a series of “proposals” for different places. The first was realized in Norway in November of 2009: “Proposal (Nacht Und Träume) for Stavanger” included works by Walead Beshty, Karla Black, Bettina Buck, Nicolas Chardon, Kristin Oppenheim and Hannah Rickards, as well as interludes by the composers John Cage and Cornelius Cardew. “Proposal (Nacht Und Träume) for Stavanger” was not articulated around a single theme or notion but instead raised a polyphony of issues: self-processed works, post-minimalism (perverted primary structures), collapse and failure, moving surfaces and double images, impermanence, shifts between different modes of perception, representation and absence. Its title, partly borrowed from that of Samuel Beckett’s last television play, reflected the shifts of form and concept inherent in the works. Nacht und Träume is the title of a lied by Franz Schubert; he adapted the phrase from a poem by Matthäus von Collin. It was then borrowed by Beckett, and now indicates a space, a situation: an exhibition. The show explored how the dissolution of forms can generate new forms. The second “proposal” was for a fashion magazine. “Proposal (Pink Nude Seated) for Glass Magazine” was a virtual exhibition centred on Henri Matisse’s A Pink Nude Seated; it evolved over the course of a year. This is the third: “Proposal (Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown) for Toronto.” The group of projects I have gathered under the generic term “proposal” is not intended to be self-contained; the works operate within a flux of influences, conversations and encounters: they don’t have fixed borders, definitions or locations. They must participate in a bigger scheme and reflect a moving, self-reflexive dynamic, hence their fragmented forms.

1. Micah Lexier was commissioned to design this piece for Canadian Art. His presence resembles that of the author as described by Flaubert: “present everywhere, and visible nowhere.” Lexier’s work has much to do with retreat, and resonates absolutely with the issues raised in this essay.
2. Only a few are mentioned here. Others whose practices infuse this essay are Trisha Donnelly, Jiri Kovanda, Dora Garcia and Philippe Parreno.
3. Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves.
4. When no source is indicated, all quotes come from the author’s conversations with the subject.
5. J. G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition.
6. Bruce Nauman, “Notes and Projects” in Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art.
7. “A conversation: between Seth Siegelaub and Hans Ulrich Obrist,” published in TRANS> #6, 1999.
8. John Cage, quoted by Christopher Shultis in “Silencing the Sounded Self: John Cage and the Intentionality of Nonintention,” Musical Quarterly, 1995.
9. The seer Tiresias, to whom Zeus granted the gift of soothsaying, was blinded by Hera because, as some say, he disclosed the gods’ secrets to mortal men. Others say Athena blinded the young Tiresias by covering his eyes with her hands when he surprised her naked.
10. Vito Acconci, Language to Cover a Page.
11. Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: the time-image.
12. Giorgio Agamben, “Repetition and Stoppage—Debord in the Field of Cinema,” in In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni—The Situationist International.
13. The title is an indirect reference to Marcel Duchamp, an ongoing point of reference for Huws.
14. The notion of Idea in Mallarmé and his conception of language prefigures conceptual art.

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