Interventions


/ Why the past, why not now?
/ Impossible to archive
/ Portrait collection
/ Meeting-Minutes Smoothies
/ Floor plans for storage
/ Name collection
/ La pierre
/ Deep views
/ Archival weight evaluation
/ Spitball Stalactite of Desire
/ Appendices
/ Chalkboard
/ Outsider from within

Interventions /

Why the past, why not now?
Manager: Jasia Stuart
Site: Centre des arts actuels Skol


Les archives, les aimons-nous ? Sont-elles bonnes ? Les considère-t-on comme un materiel ? Un document ? Are we doing this for personal gain? To be part of the archives? To be remembered? Are archives boring? Should we burn them? What goes in an archive? Les archives sont-elles, de nature, completes et terminées ? Est-il possible d’archiver le futur ? Comment un projet d’archivage en serait affecté ? Can something exist only as an archive?

Interventions /

Impossible to archive
Manager: Karen Elaine Spencer
Site: Centre des arts actuels Skol


This work constitutes an attempt to record that which cannot be archived.

A decomposing, living entity, such as an orange, cannot be properly contained in an archive because it fails to retain its shape. On the other hand, the experiment showed that an orange can archive itself by leaving a mold-imprint on paper.

Findings- round, wet things do not archive well.

Interventions /

Portrait collection
Manager: Anne-Marie Proulx
Site: Centre des arts actuels Skol



With the goal of gathering information about people who contributed to Skol’s history, every portrait contained in the archive boxes was isolated and collected. This study revealed that the images in the printed archives do not necessarily correspond to people who contributed to the centre. Archives of the early years contain many more portraits of artists, while archives of recent years are relatively void of images of people linked to Skol.

This project was conducted in conjunction with the collection of all names listed in the archives.

Interventions /

Meeting-Minutes Smoothies
Manager: Emily Pelstring
Site: Centre des arts actuels Skol


This research reflects on the convention of privileging a text-based, paper archive over any other form. In an attempt to expand what physical materials might be considered archives, food was used to create a record of the OAR’s meetings.

After each of five meetings held at Skol in Summer 2009, samples of every type of snack food served were saved, frozen, and then blended into Meeting-Minute Smoothies representing each meeting.

The sharing of food is often a central part of social gathering. This project suggests that what was eaten at each meeting may be as important as what was said.

Interventions /

Floor plans for storage
Manager: Maria Raponi
Site: Centre des arts actuels Skol


Photographs of each archive box were arranged to take the form of maps or floor plans. These plans have the potential to be cut out and re-built into the original three-dimensional shape of the boxes. These models offer a visual index of the collection without the weight of the original boxes. This index brought attention to a missing box which was later recovered to complete the collection.

Interventions /

Name collection
Manager: Anne-Marie Proulx
Site: Centre des arts actuels Skol



For each box containing a year of Skol’s history, a list was compiled of every name found in the archives. This list highlights the people who passed through Skol, but also contains the names of people unrelated to the centre. The order of these names, seemingly haphazard and without any formal heirarchy, reflects the researcher’s process of discovery and allows for unexpected connections between people. Carefully handwritten, each page serves as a memorial and an attempt to connect with all those directly or indirectly linked to Skol.

This project was conducted in conjunction with a collection of portraits from the same material.

Interventions /

La pierre
Manager: Karen Zalamea
Site: Centre des arts actuels Skol


This construction was mailed with a personal letter written to Katherine Lapierre in response to documentation of her exhibition Folies, which was presented from September 5 to October 11, 2008. In the letter, the consultant wrote:

What resulted in my sculpture is a paper terrain, which I would like to believe remains in the spirit of the infinite possibilities of representation you mentioned in your research. Your stone, or my terrain, imagines topography amongst folds and bonded seams. Parc LaFontaine emerged as your stone and transformed back to my terrain. This lineage of representation has turned in on itself.

Refabricating folie XIV, a paper maquette of a stone, incited an investigation of Lapierre’s spatial and representational concerns at BIA/OAR’s Ministry of Historical Reconstruction and Imitation.

Interventions /

Deep views
Manager: Sabrina Russo
Site: Centre des arts actuels Skol


Drawing on video documentation of past exhibitions, two-dimensional images were assembled to recreate 3D views of these events. This work aims to overcome the flattening effect of photographic documentation.

Interventions /

Archival weight evaluation
Manager: Karen Elaine Spencer
Site: Centre des arts actuels Skol


August 2, 2009

Ms. Bertrand
Artistic Director
Centre des arts actuels Skol
372, rue Sainte-Catherine Ouest, espace 314
Montréal, QC h3b 1a2


PURPOSE: to address and remedy discrepancies between Skol’s mandate and the exhibition archives currently under investigation by The Office for Archival Review

Dear Ms. Bertrand,

In the course of my assessment as an artist-researcher for The Office for Archival Review it has become apparent that certain conditions require immediate attention if Skol’s exhibition archives are to continue to function within Skol’s mandate. The Office for Archival Review met on August 1st and during this meeting the situation was discussed. as such i am writing to inform you of my intent to water archival box marked 04-05 and to document any subsequent growth. all growth and contents of the box would remain the property of Skol..

The watering of archival box marked 04-05 is deemed urgent and necessary as Skol, in its own words, “founds its stability on its openness to renewal…”1

As renewal implies a revitalization and regeneration of an originating source it is vital that Skol’s archives create the basic conditions where renewal can occur. however, it has been established that Skol’s exhibition archives are dry and do not contain moisture. Moisture is a condition required to sustain life.

For example, if you put a goldfish in a box and put a lid on the box and then shelve the box, chances are by the time you reopen the box the goldfish will be dead. Likewise if you put a person in a box and then put a lid on the box and shelve the box, chances are by the time you go back and re-open the box the person will be dead. renewal or rejuvenation is too late at this point. The goldfish will not be revived, the person will not be resurrected.

In order to insure the continued renewal of the archives it is vital to ensure conditions are implemented that will sustain life. to this end it has been deemed necessary to commence watering the lightest and emptiest archival box—the archival box marked 04-05.

As the situation is time sensitive i thank you in advance for giving this matter your immediate consideration.

Sincerely,

Karen Elaine Spencer
Investigative Consultant
The Office for Archival Review

cc Sabrina russo
    Karen Zalamea

Interventions /

Spitball Stalactite of Desire
Manager: Emily Pelstring
Site: Centre des arts actuels Skol


The Product Transformation Specialist was given the task of reviewing and reflecting on the print archives. Instead of considering their content, she chewed them up, mixing them with saliva, and shot them at the ceiling through a straw. This action was repeated until the spitballs accumulated and formed a stalactite on the gallery’s ceiling.

Excerpts of an interview between Jasia Stuart, Information Officer (JS) and Emily Pelstring, Product Transformation Specialist (EP).

JS: Could you explain the role of desire in this research project?

EP: The creation of this stalactite required the continuous production of saliva. In order to induce salivation, I called to mind all of the things that make me salivate—I daydreamed—and thus escaped the comparatively dry task of reading the endless memos, contracts, promotional material and artist’s statements that make up the archives.

JS: What is the theoretical basis of this research?

EP: Shooting spitballs at the ceiling is something that kids used to get in trouble for in primary school. I adopted the playful, but harmlessly transgressive act while thinking of Hakim Bey’s “Wild Children” from The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terroism (1985, 1991) in which he champions “a delirious and obsessive play.” The thoughts put forward in that text came to mind specifically as I reacted to the questions posed by BIA/OAR: “How is an archive useful? How useful is an archive?” I thought better to enact a cliché (and fun) mis-use of paper than attempt to determine the archive’s function, and in Bey’s words, “sink beneath the event-horizon of a tedious ‘usefulness’”.

Interventions /

Appendices
Manager: Jasia Stuart
Site: Centre des arts actuels Skol



biaoar.wordpress.com

Interventions /

Chalkboard
Manager: BIA
Site: Centre des arts actuels Skol

Interventions /

Outsider from within
Manager: Anne Bertrand
Site: Centre des arts actuels Skol