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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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Last weekend I went to a talk about art and time with physicist Lee Smolin and artist Robert Linsley (part of Power Plant's Hubbub series at the Rivoli). Daniel Cockburn's film Metronome was screened as an opening act.
Most physicists carry as many superficial assumptions about contemporary art as most members of the general public (art is for beauty and illustration, abstraction is some kind of elitist gimmick, artists are flighty creatures of imagination that flit about, freely dropping jewels of creative inspiration hither and yon like glittery bird turds decorating the grim grey landscape of hard work and responsibilty that everyone else must endure). Lee Smolin, by contrast, seemed surprisingly interested and conversant with art issues, especially as related to the culture at large. Robert Linsley was up on his physics, and the two had obviously had several good conversations under their belts. As per usual with Hubbub, the talk was unstructured and free ranging, which, in this case, worked out okay.
Here's some of the stuff I'm still thinking about:
There was some discussion of the fact that all our descriptions of time are actually spatial. This observation has come up a few places lately and I don't really get the implications yet.And a couple of notes:
Smolin said that artists imagine their artworks into the future. In this "world which is change", artists produce a "human-made thing that is intended not to change." Smolin said he could not "think of anything else people do with this intention." Like any self-respecting contemporary artist, Linsley poo-pooed this idea of art not-changing over time, claiming that all readings of art are context dependent, etc. Smolin said, well what about Greek Sculpture? And Linsley, after making obvious comments about missing paint, noses and limbs, made the extraordinary statement, "I don't think there is a past in art." He explained himself, conflating temporal and spatial terms, saying that Greek sculptures are "farther away from us," and therefore there are "more mediations we have to go through " to understand them. "All art is present and contemporary," but the universe has expanded, the population of the world has grown, and each individual point of view must be factored into account. There is a now "a greater distance we need to go through" between artifacts — more cultural "mediations." Linsley's conflation of the expanding universe (picture a ballloon with dots on it, etc, etc) with an expanding world population may be an audacious leap, but it makes for an intriguing and unusual cultural model.
Smolin was clearly on a mission to combat postmodern despair. He also decried "nostalgia for the absolute." (In an off-hand comment he cited the mutiple universe theory—which really gets on my tits: "of course there is life on other planets, the number of universes is infinite therefore anything you can imagine does indeed exist..." blah! dumb — as an example of such nostalgia. Yay.) Smolin insisted that there is a third option, an "ever-evolving network of relationships that defines what things are." There is an "increasing complexity in what it means to be a person" an increase in diversity, and an "opening for a hopeful point of view."
Daniel Cockburn's film Metronome had lots of Fight Club reference, including a very clever segue in which Cockburn's drained and driven voice-over melds into Ed Norton's. I related to Fight Club, and I related to Metronome. Cockburn pounds himself repeatedly in the chest, not to injure himself, but to establish a rhythm, continued all day, that becomes a narrative position from which to bear witness on overwhelming contrapuntal beats of footsteps, traffic lights, hollywood movies and, basically, culture, nature and all things of the world. Cockburn's character is uhappily trapped in his linear rhythm, aware of the miasma of related information but unable to escape the metronome and apprehend the full dynamic onslaught of the universe. "Sameness is the enemy of the soul."
Smolin attacked Cockburn's film for mistakenly conceiving of culture as an ordered, oppressive sameness when in fact, according to Smolin, it is a burgeoning myriad of diversity and opportunity. It is much more up-to-date as far as physics goes to think of time as networks of relationships than it is to think of linear tracks. I liked Smolin's attack on despair, and his investment in hopeful futures, but I think he misread the film somewhat. Cockburn was in the audience and opted to defend himself during the question period. Articulate and self-assured he spoke up, "I appreciate your comments. It is rare in this city that anybody says anything publicly negative about a work of art. Howeer, the film is not really about time but about thought." He explained that the film did depict a circular trap, but he was showing a "reverse role model, and not making a 'true' statement aobut the universe." Smolin, a cocky New Yorker with gift of the gab, actually seemed somewhat remorseful, and said that he thought the film was really good, as a film, but that he still felt Cockburn's despairing point of view was off the mark.
Intelligent design came up and Smolin had four extremely interesting things to say. First he said that "society is just begining to digest the implications of Darwinism as slow metaphor of change," and that there "should be skeptics" as the idea is a "wild scheme." Secondly, however, the real question is whether or not natural selection in the "modern framework" including molecular biology and genetics, is "explanatory of everything we know about life." And the answer is yes, "overwhelming evidence and opinion is that the framework of modern biology is fully explanatory." Thirdly, the thing that frightens him most about the American Christian fundamentalist attacks on Darwinisim are not the threat to research — stem cell research can continue in other countries like China — but rather the "splitting of culture into pieces that have less and less to do with each other in a common cultural conversation." And lastly, he suggested that the Chrisitan right has a functional story that is "explanatory and hopeful in the world they want to explain," and prosthelytized that in the scientific and secular world we also need to start telling a story that is explanatory, positive, and hopeful.
There was mention of current work in physics looking into the possibility that the laws of physics may be mutable. Linsley, with his its-all-context agenda was super excited about this, but Smolin reminded him, quite eloquently, that both art and science share the dreadful possibility of failure. "New concepts or questions are hard to implement fully. I might play with the idea that laws evolve but to implement that in the physics I do has so far been impossible." [UPDATE: I removed the quotes around "its all context" above as Robert Linsley has quite rightly pointed out to me that he did not actually say that. All the other quotes in this report are directly from my notes and should be mostly okay...further, I did not mean to give the impression that Linsley was offhand about his position on deconstruction, merely that he was enthusiastic. Further reading here.]
Xtra Note: The only two physicists (besides Smolin) invoked in the discussion were Brian Greene ("string theory is a confusing mess," says Smolin. Hah!) and Julian Barbour. Barbour's book, the end of time, was recommended to me years ago by my friend Chad and is one of the reasons I got into all this damn physics stuff. Barbour irritates physicists because his theory — time is a bunch of overlapping instantaneous moments and our perception of linearity is an illustion based on our physiological constraints— is preposterous, yet plausible enough (and the math works out okay) to warrant debate. I was very interested to hear that Barbour is, according to Smolin, a "philosophical guru" to himself and a number of colleagues.
cool! Quantal Strife got a 4-N review in NOW magazine!
Join us for two catalogue launches of the little art book A Beginner's Guide to Quantal Strife
(more details at the Doris McCarthy Gallery website)
Launch A: If you haven't seen the show, come on out and pick up your copy of the catalogue at Doris McCarthy Gallery on Sunday, Feb. 5th from 2-5pm. Artists and curator will speak informally about the project around 3pm. There's a free bus tour that also goes to Art Gallery of York University, Koffler Gallery, and Blackwood Gallery UTM. For seat reservations and info call (416) 636-1880 ext. 270.
Launch B: If you prefer to stay downtown, join us at the Cameron House (480 Queen St. West) on Tuesday, Feb. 7th, at 7 pm for a free party with musical selections by DJ Von Bark...door prizes...free snacks...easy games...suprises...other things...and one very cute little art book/catalogue for sale!
vote.
Anthony Easton's Top Ten Art 2005
1. Allyson Mitchell Lesbian Sasquatches Paul Petro Toronto
Walking into the narrow spaces at Paul Petro, the three eight foot sasqutches, the fake fire, and the elaborate wall hangings seduce with well-crafted oddness. Thinking about the work fully, one realized the epic theory about gender, history, sexuality and personae that exudes. Best one-two punch of the entire year.
2. Justine Cooper. Trophies, Online at http://www.kashyahildebrand.org/newyork/upcoming/exhibition014.html
There is a certain thrill in the whole behind the scene shtick, w. its moody, theatrical lighting dramatizes cold museums. That is a relatively easy thing to do. The best thing about this one photo though, with its dozens of stags and sheep trophies, is how it refuses the differences between sports and science, the implications of taxonomy, and the aesthetics of death that permeates these places. It also makes it look like some kind of pagan temple.
3.Paul Freeman MFA Show, FAB Gallery. Edmonton
His repurposing of kitsch decorative elements, into transhuman horrors are politically and aesthetically radical.
4. Sammy Harkham—Poor Sailor
A small, smart, comic. Features Farmers, Pirates, Amputations and Axe work, exciting and solemn in equal measure, with some of the best uses of blankness and silence in recent memory.
5. Tabloid Photos, Daily Mail, Kate Moss
Amidst all the sound and fury about her as a bad mother, and the obviousness of supermodels doing drugs, critics forgot three things.
a) The photos themselves were well composed, with the coke in the middle, and Kate hovering over it, had enough of a crowded/blank, light/dark chicoursou. It was almost classical.6. Christian Patterson's Blog
b) The lighting, and the lo-fi paparazzi aesthetic, had a skuzzy charm, made even better with thoughts of ubiquitous surveillance culture.
c) The triumph of vernacular, digital photography. When camera phones and amateurs do the best celeb shots, there has been a seismic shift in the way of looking at the famous.
He is an emerging photographer, in the Shore/Eggleston vein, but one of the strongest of that sort. His blog regularly updates, but has a stern editing process, that doesn't overwhelm with thousands of things that look the same.
7. Mark Chamberlain Batman and Robin
The best thing about this work is that it is a fine art history of low art eroticism. Batman and Robin fucking has been a staple of the Tijuana bibles a few years after the first image, and there has been a concurrent shadow history of this eroticism ever since. Chamberlain comments on the clichés, the mirror stage stripping, and the tension of these two thoughts. A law suit made him famous, but the work is stronger then that.
8. Personal Alphabet No.3 by Jose Parla
A garish, sort of ugly, high end area rug, made of scrawled graffiti.
9. Sol LeWitt Installation AGO
The bad thing was that it was in the ersatz gift shop. The best thing about this winding rainbow is how over the top camp it was—Sol LE Witts move away from minimal rigor is stranger and stronger—and this is the wildest yet. Looked like it belonged on a teenage girls bedroom, to complete a unicorn and pink ruffle motif, and that is a good thing.
10. Danielle MacDonald, Ceiling Paintings, Toronto
A painter in her fourth year at OCAD, her functioning between sign and signifier work without the usual pomo theory claptrap. How she exchanges meanings between photographs and paintings, her colour sense, and her realism pushed into hyper-drive, made me excited about painting in a new way.
For everyone who had fun on the DMG bus last night (thanks to Von Bark for MC-ing the ride) there is more bus fun to be had next week, as Andrew J. Paterson will conduct Lucky 13 on the ride to AGYU for Fiona Tan's opening. Bus leaves AGO at 6:00, departs York U at 8:30 to return downtown. If you happen to be in Kingston this weekend look for Andy there too! He is performing monologues from MONO LOGICAL at Queens U tonight, and he will be in attendance for the launch of Gary Kibbins' incredible book, Grammar & Not-Grammar, edited by Andrew and published by YYZ Books. The launch will occur at the opening for Matt Rogalsky at Agnes Etherington Art Centre. Kibbins is brilliant (so is Andrew) and so is the book. This Rogalsky character sounds pretty interesting too.
More things happening! I was very lucky to be at Tin Tin Tin in February of 2004 for an early version of Maggie MacDonald's Rat King Opera. The full-fledged production is showing this weekend and it is SOLD OUT. arg.
Too bad I couldn't be in two places at once! I think I would have enjoyed the InterAcess opening last night. If anyone was there, please report! Finnish art is cool, the new InterAccess is cool, and so is the curator of this show, Nina Czegledy. I'm looking forward to the exhibit.
YYZ has a big show on about art and activism with a bunch of screenings and workshops. I'm very curious about this one, will make a post once I get to see the show.
The Quantal Strife Opening was great! And Sally requested that I post a satellite image of the approximate location where the artists (and their many admirers) can all be found, currently brawling over String Theory. (someone bitch-slapped me when I mentioned the possibility of 26 dimensions, so I left in a huff)