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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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Just a quick note to say that I am very much enjoying the Toronto art and related topics blog: Ron Nurwisah, Boy Reporter. Nurwisah is a good writer, and he casts a sharp, politically oriented art-eye on the city.
Murray Whyte had a really good story in the Toronto Star yesterday about performance art and activism, describing the generative phenomenon of public street interventions in Toronto. Refreshingly, he mixes together the work of people who identify as fine art artists (like Germaine Koh, Free Dance Lessons, and Jillian McDonald) with urban activists (like the Toronto Public Space Committee, Reclaim the Streets, and Critical Mass). In between are those whose self-labelling is more blurry (like The City Beautification Ensemble ... and of course many others, some not specifically mentioned by Whyte).
In an earlier post, there was some discussion of "the general public" and how we artists do or do not need to strive for more popular appeal. But the idea of a general public is in many ways a false construction. Why, exactly, do artists so frequently extract themselves (ourselves) from their (our) neighbours to posit this "them-not-us" relationship? Whyte's article celebrates a batch of urban activity that explicitly sets out to break down such boundaries. Here are some of my favourite quotes from the article:
Jillian McDonald:"I've done some of these kinds of projects in sanctified art spaces, like galleries, and it's always less successful," says Jillian McDonald, a Canadian performance artist in Brooklyn. "People who come to those kinds of spaces know what to expect. And I really love the delight that is possible for myself, as well as the audience when you're outside of that, in public, because anything can happen."
Germaine Koh: "I'm not interested in somebody coming to the work with the question `is this art?' The more interesting question is simply, `What's going on here? Why is this person in the storefront, and do I need to call the cops?' They jump to the issues right away, rather than being able to push it aside into a definition that's more comfortable."
Dave Meslin: "Any time you do anything in public space that goes beyond this monotonous habit of non-engagement is an intervention," he says. "It's a culture jam just to smile at someone, or make eye contact."