Haegue Yang Domestics of Community - Version Toronto 2008 Courtesy of the artist and Susanne Vielmetter, Los Angeles Projects / photo Rafael Goldchain.
Next Maria Lind, now director of the graduate program at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, and author of Taking the Matter into Common Hands: Collaborative Practices in Contemporary Art, delivered a powerhouse presentation attempting to outline the diverse subspecies of collaboration in art. Suzy Gablik’s connective aesthetics, Suzanne Lacy’s new genre public art, Wochen Klausur’s context-kunst and Pierre Huyghe’s No Ghost Just a Shell all got a mention—to name just a few. Lind did say that “collaboration is a central theme in contemporary art today,” but also took pains to note that collaboration can be used for ill as well as for good. In her view, “who, what and for whom” are issues that must always be assessed in evaluating collaborative art.
Final speaker Saara Liinamaa, a PhD candidate in social and political thought at York University, brought to light the international Complaints Choir project as a means of collaborating and creating community both through singing and through negative commentary. York University professor Janine Marchessault led a brief discussion following with both Lind and Liinamaa.
Near the end of the proceedings came a screening of Nicoline van Harskamp’s video To Live Outside the Law You Must be Honest, in which a male narrator walks through the town of Christiania, a radical free town at the centre of Copenhagen, and speaks to concerns around maintaining a balance between order and liberty.
The symposium closed with a reception at the Power Plant, which besides Möntmann’s exhibition features two other shows riffing on the idea of community and network: Goldin + Senneby’s “Headless,” which offers a cryptic installation on global capital flows, and Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby’s “Beauty Plus Pity,” which consists of video projections and sculptures suggesting gaps and collisions between the animalistic and the humane.
It’s an open question whether the symposium’s 100-some attendees—curators, students, artists and writers being their own form of “community without community”—felt a suitable balance of cohesion and isolation following the event. Still, it’s certain similar issues will resurge this Saturday, January 31. That’s when Prospect 1 curator Dan Cameron speaks at Harbourfront Centre in association with the Power Plant, and a dispersed array of personalities will once again gather to debate the possibilities of togetherness.
Hadley+Maxwell Gloomy Sunday 2006 Courtesy Jessica Bradley Art + Projects Toronto / photo Rafael Goldchain.
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