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On Administration and Hospitality@CiCA

May 28, 2022
Talking

Hosted by the Conversations in Contemporary Art lecture series and 4th Space at Concordia University, for this talk Nicole Burisch, Director of the FOFA Gallery, hosted a dialogue with Franchesca Hebert-Spence, Shelley Ouellet, and Geneviève Wallen on how curators, artists and institutions can practice hospitality and care in their work together. For this informal conversation, we discuss strategies for welcoming people to a space, think about how to acknowledge and value the unseen and unglamourous administrative labour that goes on behind the scenes, and ponder how budgets and artist contracts and policy can exist alongside (or help create) warmth, welcome, silliness, fun, and community.

Warm thanks to Maya Rae Oppenheimer for her generous hospitality and assistance in coordinating this event.

The New Politics of the Handmade: Craft, Art and Design

November 28, 2020
Publications, Research, Writing
1 Comment


new_politics_cover-1The New Politics of the Handmade: Craft, Art and Design is a publication on contemporary craft politics edited by Anthea Black and Nicole Burisch.

The New Politics of the Handmade examines the role of contemporary art, craft and design as part of a dramatically shifting global economy. Current interest in virtually every aspect of the handmade appears in Do-It-Yourself, Craftivism, sustainable living, decolonial practices and aesthetics, and a new focus on labour and materiality in visual art and museums. The handmade has become inseparable from capitalist modes of production and consumption, and this change demands new understandings of objects, aesthetics and labour. New writing and artists projects by international scholars and practitioners look at the politics of scarcity, hoarding and sustainability, craftivism and ‘ethical’ consumption, urban space and new technologies, race, cultural heritage and sovereignty. The authors offer a radical rethink of the politics and economics of the handmade, and claim craft as a dynamic critical field for thinking through the most immediate issues of our time.

Table of contents
Introduction, Anthea Black (California College of the Arts, USA) and Nicole Burisch (National Gallery of Canada)
1. From Craftivism to Craftwashing, Anthea Black (California College of the Arts, USA) and Nicole Burisch (National Gallery of Canada)
2. Ethical Fashion, Craft and the New Spirit of Global Capitalism, Elke Gaugele (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Austria)
3. Selven O’Keef Jarmon: Beading Across Geographies, Nicole Burisch (National Gallery of Canada)
4. The Making of Many Hands: Artisanal Production and Neighborhood Redevelopment in Contemporary Socially Engaged Art, Noni Brynjolson (University of Indianapolis, USA)
5. That Looks Like Work: The Total Aesthetics of Handcraft, Shannon R. Stratton (Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists Residency, USA)
6. Craft as Property as Liberalism as Problem, Leopold Kowolik (Sheridan College and York University, Canada)
7. Zahner Metals: Architectural Fabrication and Craft Labour, Peggy Deamer (Yale University and Deamer Studio, USA)
8. Capitalising on Community: The Makerspace Phenomenon, Diana Sherlock (Alberta University of the Arts, Canada)
9. Morehshin Allahyari: On Material Speculation, Alexis Anais Avedisian (NYC Media Lab, USA) and Anna Khachiyan (independent, USA)
10. From Molten Plastic to Polished Mahogany: Bricolage and Scarcity in 1990s Cuban Art, Blanca Serrano Ortiz De Solórzano (Institute for Studies on Latin American Art, USA)
11. Things Needed Made, Nasrin Himada (independent scholar, Canada)
12. Secret Stash: Textiles, Hoarding, Collecting, Accumulation and Craft, Kirsty Robertson (Western University, Canada)
13. Shinique Smith: Lines that Bind, Julia Bryan-Wilson (University of California, USA)
14. Margarita Cabrera: Landscapes of Nepantla, Laura August (independent scholar, Guatemala/USA)
15. The Sovereign Stitch: Re-reading Embroidery as a Critical Feminist-Decolonial Text, Ellyn Walker (Queen’s University, Canada)
16. Ursula Johnson: Weaving Histories and Netukulimk in L’nuwelti’k (We Are Indian) and Other Works, Heather Anderson (Carleton University Art Gallery, Canada)
17. ‘The Black Craftsman Situation’: A Critical Conversation about Race and Craft
Sonya Clark (Amherst College, USA), Wesley Clark (artist, USA), Bibiana Obler (George Washington University, USA), Mary Savig (Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, USA), Joyce J. Scott (artist, USA) and Namita Gupta Wiggers (Warren Wilson College, USA)

Reviews
“This exciting new anthology is an engaged and comprehensive overview of the political and ethical debates of contemporary craft and its pervasive social commitments.” –  Jenni Sorkin, Associate Professor, History of Art & Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA,

“The New Politics of the Handmade jumpstarts a sorely needed discussion about the unexamined claims that surround craft as a progressive political movement, a form of anti-capitalist consumption, and a sustainable practice. In this volume Anthea Black and Nicole Burisch have orchestrated an insightful conversation with a diverse group of scholars, artists, and curators about the role and power of craft in the contemporary art world that charts a more nuanced way forward.” –  Elissa Auther, Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs and the William and Mildred Lasdon Chief Curator, Museum of Arts and Design, USA.

“After a year riven by global pandemic, economic collapse, political turmoil and demands for social and racial justice, an anthology exploring relationships between contemporary craft and politics seems particularly timely. Canadian editors Anthea Black and Nicole Burisch have compiled just such a volume…These two editors bring a breadth of experience and currency to their selection of 17 essays addressing topics such as craftwashing, a term that describes the appropriation by commercial products of moral qualities associated with craft. There are also texts on socially engaged art, makerspaces, political and economic theory, and accounts of craft functioning under marginalized or traumatizing conditions. Throughout the book, craft is positioned as an aesthetic and cultural product, as well as a manifestation of ‘broader social and economic structures.’”  – Amy Gogarty, New Politics of the Handmade : Anthology reflects on social and economic issues related to craft, art and design, Galleries West.

Acknowledgements:
Black and Burisch wish to acknowledge the support of Canada Council for the Arts, Grants to Independent Critics and Curators, Ontario Arts Council Craft Projects – Connections, and The Center for Craft Creativity and Design.

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Autumn Knight: Documents @ Knot Project Space

December 12, 2019
Curating

Situated within an empty wood-paneled Courtroom in the Arts Court, this iteration of Knight’s speech-driven performance work, Documents, responded to the weight and force of this former space of legal proceedings. Knight’s presentation was the third and final action in a short series of events and workshops coordinated by Knot Project Space from December 10-12, each reflecting through performance on the gravities of vocal utterance, the laws of language, and the language of law.

Documents uses dialogue, gesture and the voice of both the artist and the audience to uncover and critique structures of power. Troubling the division of labour between the performer and the audience, Documents involves a public reading of the documentation that serves to authenticate or legitimize citizenship. Central to this work is a filing cabinet that both holds the props required for the performance, while also serving as a portrait or trace of the artist. The interactive reading of the documents in the files addresses the embodied specificities of race, class, gender, sexuality to contest whether these categories accurately reflect the bodies they are meant to represent—while underlining how different audiences and relationships to power may influence this reading.

Autumn Knight is an interdisciplinary artist working with performance, installation, video and text. Her performance work has been on view at various institutions including Krannert Art Museum (IL), The Institute for Contemporary Art (VCU), Human Resources Los Angeles (HRLA) and Akademie der Kunste, (Berlin). Her performance and video work is held in the permanent collection of the Studio Museum in Harlem. Knight participated in the 2019 Whitney Biennial as a performance and video artist.

Co-curated with Neven Lochhead.

I’ve Only Known My Own publication

November 21, 2017
Writing

IOKMO_bookcoverThis publication gathers together traces from the first iteration of this exhibition, which took place in Houston in the spring of 2016. It is intended to offer a bridge between that exhibition, and the one at Optica in the spring of 2017.

Cette publication réunit des traces de la première itération de l’exposition, qui s’est tenue à Houston (É-U) au printemps 2016. La publication se veut un pont entre cette première itération et celle qui a lieu à Optica au printemps 2017.

For hard copies, please contact nicoleburisch(at)gmail(dot)com.
PDF copy available to download here.

From Objects to Actions and Back Again

June 16, 2016
Publications, Research, Writing
From Objects to Actions and Back Again: The Politics of Dematerialized Craft and Performance Documentation, TEXTILE  Vol. 14, Iss. 1, 2016

Invited contribution for Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture (Taylor and Francis) special issue on “Crafting Community” edited by Kirsty Robertson and Lisa Vinebaum.

Abstract
Traditional craft practice has long emphasized features of function and materiality, with the useful and skillfully produced object at the center of the way craft is read and understood. However, a number of recent exhibitions and artworks have included not just objects, but also craft set in motion through participatory projects or performances. Correspondingly, the crafted object has undergone a shift in its once-central role, serving instead as a record of an event or process, a prop or tool, and in some cases disappearing altogether. Through a consideration of select projects and curatorial strategies from Common Threads at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery in Calgary, AB (2008), and Gestures of Resistance at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, OR (2010), this article argues that it is necessary to consider how the histories and theories of performance art are intersecting with contemporary craft practices, with a particular focus on the role of documentation and ephemeral traces.

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Instant Coffee, Bass Benches. Common Threads, curated by Lee Plested at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Calgary, AB. November 22, 2007 to January 5, 2008. Photo courtesy of Illingworth Kerr Gallery.

I’ve Only Known My Own

March 8, 2016
Curating, Performance

Nadège Grebmeier Forget, Ursula Johnson, Autumn Knight,
Michelle Lacombe, and Mikhel Proulx

Wednesday March 30 – Saturday April 24, 2016
She Works Flexible: Flex Space 2608 Dunlavy St, Houston, TX 77006
Opening Reception: Saturday April 2nd, 7-9pm

I’ve Only Known My Own is a group exhibition of new performance works that explore how the materiality of the body is translated or communicated through measurements, process, technology, and documentation. This exhibition looks at how the matter of the body might become a tool or force that generates or expresses its own (il/logical) systems, and thinks through how this material embodiment might function as a form of resistance. Rather than presenting a fixed set of works, the exhibition will evolve over the course of its three-week run, with objects, props, and works being set in motion during the presentation of each of the 4 performances. Inhabiting the quasi-domestic architecture of the gallery, the artists will work within the rooms of She Works Flexible’s Flex Space, gradually interacting with the space and leaving traces behind.

Nadège Grebmeier Forget‘s (Montreal, QC) ongoing series One on one’s for so-called fans involves private performances that are then translated through oral accounts and performative re-tellings, highlighting the role of documentation and technology in mediating access to her performing body. Ursula Johnson (Dartmouth, NS) will present a new work that continues her investigations into the ways that indigenous cultural practices such as basket-weaving or leather tanning are now transmitted from body to body, and place to place. Autumn Knight‘s (Houston, TX) new performance Documents will compile a reading of the documentation that serves to legitimize (American) citizenship, while holding space for the embodied specificities of race, class, and gender to contest whether these documents accurately reflect the bodies they are meant to represent. Michelle Lacombe (Montreal, QC) will present excerpts from her project Of All the Watery Bodies, I Only Know My Own, where she used a monthly measurement of the volume of blood in her body to determine the placement of a tattooed water line around her calves. Mikhel Proulx (Montreal, QC), a scholar who has written about the ways in which queer bodies are (re)presented in online spaces and through self-imaging practices such as web-camming and selfies, will be on site to research a text that will be published following the close of the exhibition.

SCHEDULE OF PERFORMANCES
Ursula Johnson – Saturday April 2nd, starting at 2pm
Michelle Lacombe – Thursday April 7, sunset (approx. 7:45pm) – 9pm
Autumn Knight – Friday April 8th, 8pm-9pm
Nadège Grebmeier Forget – Saturday April 9th, 3:30pm

I’ve Only Known My Own was presented by the Core Residency Program, Glassell School of Art in partnership with Dan Fergus, Brasil Café, and She Works Flexible. Nadège Grebmeier Forget’s project has also received support through Diagonale’s La Soupée event, and Michelle Lacombe would like to thank Centre Sagamie for supporting the production of her images. Sincere thanks to all those who have offered advice and support along the way: Anthea Black, Andy Campbell, Rachel Cook, Joshua Cordova, Lily Cox-Richard, Danielle Dean, Dean Daderko, Taraneh Fazeli, Peter Gershon, Joe Havel, Collin Hedrick, Kerry Inman, Mary Leclère, Val Mayes, Lynne McCabe, Michael Murland, and Olya Zarapina.

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Ladies Invitational Deadbeat Society

January 15, 2016
Other Projects, Performance

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The Ladies’ Invitational Deadbeat Society (LIDS) was founded in 2006 as a closely-knit affiliation of then-unemployed cultural workers, not working, but still bustin’ ass within Alberta artist-run culture. Their activities made visible and politicized women’s roles in the arts economy through tactical laziness, crafty collaboration, over-performance, and wild hilarity. They announced their intentions to DO LESS in a series of works produced between 2012 and 2014, and to completely withdraw from art-making at the Calgary Biennial 2015. After a decade of non-activity, they officially called in quits in 2016. LIDS was Anthea Black, Nicole Burisch, and Wednesday Lupypciw.

An archive of projects can be found on the LIDS site.

Never Enough / Jamais Assez

October 2, 2015
Research, Writing
Never Enough / Jamais Assez: on documentation, proximity, and Nadège Grebmeier Forget’s SUITE  from the series One on one’s for so-called fans
A text responding to a performance by Nadège Grebmeier Forget, published in the 2015 Core Program catalog

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“In describing the challenges of writing about performances “in absentia,” Amelia Jones has argued that, “the problems raised by my absence… are largely logistical rather than ethical or hermeneutic. That is, while the experience of viewing a photograph and reading a text is clearly different from that of sitting in a small room watching an artist perform, neither has a privileged relationship to the historical ‘truth’ of the performance.”[1] Building upon this claim, I am interested in thinking through what it means to work with/within the logistical problems of absence. This text uses multiple and multiplying forms of documentation to negotiate my distance from the performance, less with the goal of providing a conclusive account of the event, but in a way that might hold a space for all the conflicting, affective, awkward, messy, unofficial, intimate, embodied, compromised, personal, and subjective versions of the performance.”

Download the full PDF here.

[1] Amelia Jones, “‘Presence’ in absentia: Experiencing Performance as Documentation,” Art Journal 56, no. 4, (Winter, 1997): 1