Intervention
December 10th, 2009
High on my long list of Spacing posts I’ve not yet had time to make is one on Richard Serra’s “Shift” sculpture. It sits in a field near King City, north of Toronto. As of today I no longer have to make the post because Derek over at BlogTO wrote an excellent piece on it. When Spacing Review’s editor Jessica Duffin Wolfe and I went out to see Shift on a sub-zero Sunday afternoon last February, the future of this crazy-wonderful piece of art was unclear. However, as the Globe reported a few days ago, it’s future may be secure. Derek at BlogTO writes:
“Shift” is challenging in the way that almost all good modern art is. It doesn’t reveal its meaning or its beauty quickly. But given the chance to dwell upon it for a while, it’s impossible not to acknowledge the seamlessness by which it’s incorporated into the landscape. In speaking of his intentions for the installation, Serra reveals that what he “wanted was a dialectic between one’s perception of the place in its totality and one’s relation to the field as walked. The result is a way of measuring oneself against the indeterminacy of the land.”
Though Serra’s work has at times been termed monolithic, nothing could be further from the truth here. Not only is the boundary of “Shift” defined by the “maximum distance two people [can] occupy and still keep each other in view,” but the structure also emphasizes the natural curvature of the terrain, rising and falling in direct proportion to the land itself. Its scale is thus determined by a sort of parallax effect, whereby the most distant reaches of the sculpture blur with the land.
“Shift” is also a profoundly human structure. The maximum height of each shifting wall is five feet and hence at eye-level. At no point does it ever disregard the viewer or the land. But this human quality also extends beyond the formal elements of the sculpture.
Read the rest of his post. We were also in a bit of a daze when we finally found the sculpture. We knew what to expect but when you see it in person it overwhelms and we visited it for an hour or so before walking back to the car. What follows are photos of our journey to see a snow-covered Shift (part of the motivation of this mini-post is that our fingers froze to the point of pain while taking pictures, so they need a full public viewing to make it worthwhile). One question some of our readers may be able to answer: where is Roger Davidson now, the wealthy art collector who first commissioned Shift in 1970? Google searches only pick up mention of him in stories about Shift (proving the only way to hide from Google is to have done things before, say, 1993). Beyond checking the links in BlogTO’s post, pick up a copy of Coach House’s 2007 book Concrete Toronto and read a short essay on Shift by Toronto artist and architect Adrian Blackwell.
November 12th, 2009
Toronto’s DK Photo Group are an “urban exploration” photography collective made up of Russell Brohier, Steve Jacobs, and three Spacing contributors in Sean Galbraith, Laurin Jeffrey, and Mat Merrett. In addition to …
October 16th, 2009
Berlin artist Jan Vormann is transforming World War II damaged buildings around Europe with his version of a quick patch job. The project, called ‘…
August 11th, 2009
I have to admit that the first time I visited New York, I hit a lot of the tourist must-sees; the Empire State Building observation deck, walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, and visiting …
July 16th, 2009
The Hug Me Tree, the infamous tree stump on Queen West at Peter and felled almost one year ago, has returned to it’s original location.
Since Nuit Blanche in 2008, a paper maché version of the tree had occupied the original tree’s place. During that time, the tree was moved to a gallery, and plans were hatched to weather-proof the tree and figure out a system that could keep it in place on the sidewalk. While a network of roots used to keep the tree upright, a metal plate now occupies the base for added balance, sturdiness, and durability. And as some of the images of the new installation show, a few more features have been added to the tree that will allow passers-by to interact with the tree.
There are more photos if you follow the link.
June 28th, 2009
Moonwalkers from Sam Javanrouh on Vimeo.
When Michael Jackson’s death was announced, I never gave any thought to the possibility that Spacing would somehow be …
May 2nd, 2009
The French are renowned or notorious, depending on one’s point of view, for their public protests, getting huge numbers of people out on the street at regular intervals to force their government to back down …
March 17th, 2009
Carnival or Mardi Gras celebrations — the big party before the 40 days of fasting leading up to Easter in the Catholic Christian tradition — have been going strong for many centuries, and still take place in many European cities, as well as in Latin America and some islands in the Caribbean. Elaborate public carnival festivities first developed in Europe in the late Middle Ages, as cities became prosperous and well-organized. They involved parades through the main streets and squares of the city featuring groups in elaborate matching costumes, music, lights, floats, and often social and political satire, followed by feasting and dancing.
In Toronto, unfortunately, it’s generally very cold when Carnival time comes around, usually sometime in February. That’s why Caribana, which is inspired by Caribbean carnivals, happens in August. I had always assumed that meant there were no actual public carnival parades in Toronto, but recently, to my delight, I was talking to a friend whose father is Swiss, and she informed me that in fact the small Swiss community in Toronto has been holding an outdoor carnival parade every year since 1976.
For some reason that never became entirely clear to me, the Swiss hold their Carnival parade very early in the morning (as opposed to late in the evening like most places). The Toronto version used to take place in the dark at 4:00 am, as it does in Basel, Switzerland, but now it is done at 7:00 am — on a Saturday!
I was eager to see this event despite the discouraging time, so I agreed to be picked up by my friend at 6:00 in the morning on Saturday February 28th and driven out to The Musket, a German restaurant in a business park in Etobicoke that serves as the meeting place, headquarters, and refuge from the cold for “Morgestraich”, the Swiss carnival parade.
It was too cold to hold the whole parade at 7 that morning, because the instruments would freeze, so there was just a brief outdoor concert at that time, followed by an indoor concert.
The parade itself began at 9:30, led by the band with the band leader marching out front, circling a long block in the business park while playing a selection of rousing music to the steady beat of drums. It was funny to see startled motorists trying to figure out what was going on. There were about 25 people in the Canadysli Guggemusig band which is the heart of the parade, and I think about 100 spectators/followers.
The parade followed carnival traditions — the band members all in different sets of matching costumes (voluminous ones so that they could wear warm clothes underneath), and many with brightly painted instruments. Two in particular had real old-style carnival costumes — an old lady costume, with a crazy elaborate head of grey hair with a hat, and the band leader wearing a huge head.
March 11th, 2009
Trafalgar Square, in the heart of the city of London, England, is famous for its statue of Admiral Nelson (victor of the Battle of Trafalgar) high at the top of a column. There are also …
November 18th, 2008
ED: Spacing is pleased to publish this guest post & interview by Montreal writer Alexandra Redgrave.
This year marks the tenth anniversary of interventionist art collective Action Terroriste Socialement Acceptable (ATSA), the brainchild of dancer Annie Roy and visual artist Pierre Allard. Over the past decade, they have been redefining Canadians’ understanding of the urban landscape, changing the way we interact with our cities through public art. ATSA’s work is equal parts cheeky (Warhol’s iconic Brillo boxes are taken out of the museum and put back into a laundromat for free public use), and radical (“civilian tickets†have been handed out to the owners of gas-guzzling SUVs across the country). Torontonians will remember their bombed-out SUV parked in Dundas Square in 2005. Last month, the collective opened Change, a temporary store that will serve as retrospective and “marketing guinea pig†until it closes on December 20th. For those who can’t make it to the physical location (4351 Saint-Laurent Blvd in Montreal), Change has a permanent home on the web.
Alexandra Redgrave: Coming from your backgrounds in dance and cinema, how did you and Pierre start ATSA?
Annie Roy: When we first met there was an energy between us that sort of exploded into a series of ideas and gave us the courage to go further, bigger, and more spectacular. ATSA didn’t take off right away, though. For our first meeting, we made labyrinths out of dead leaves on the mountain and watched to see if people would walk through the sculpture, around it, or jump right into it. Even though our resources were limited, there was already the idea of putting something in the urban environment and having fun with it. Later, as a couple, we started talking about the future and having children. We wanted to take ten or so years of aesthetic baggage and turn it into something useful for our society.
What really pushed us to start ATSA was while we were watching the news one night. A report stated that the Maison du Pà¨re [a refuge for the homeless] needed 107 pairs of socks, and right after, the announcer said that Canadian banks were making millions of dollars in profit. As artists—and citizens—it was a great indignation. The symbolism was very strong for us. So we put our heads together and made a debit machine that dispensed warm socks, calling it a “Banque à Bas†or “Sock Bank.†We illegally put it in front of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, and that’s when our whole “terrorist†strategy came about. The media didn’t know who we were, and the name was very shocking and provocative at the time. It was an artistic form of terrorism, in the sense that it was a work of art that exploded in the urban environment. Of course, it’s not real terrorism at all, but rather, a sublimation of violence, an aesthetic and civilized gesture.
