this is not a medieval dreambook

Proposal

Show and Tell Vancouver is the collaborative creation of a durational community art piece by Genevieve Cloutier, Grant Hash, and Anna White. As the conference theme is Dislocation, Displacement, Diaspora, and the Creation of the New Village, we want to specifically address the housing crisis in Vancouver through the lens of social sustainability. Our goals are to encourage personal urban narratives, to encourage connectivity, and to encourage the sharing of resources. We are interested in the borders that are created in urban landscapes: between public and private, waste and commodity, man-made and natural, night and day. We are interested in exploring the depth and ambiguity of these binaries, and aim to bridge connections between communities of individuals in Vancouver by creating a space where people can share their knowledge and experiences. In line with a relational aesthetic, showandtellvancouver acts as art and activism and uses grassroots organization in that we are relying on all participants becoming performers in their engagement with the piece.

Show and Tell Vancouver currently exists as performance, installation, and ongoing traces. The three projects proposed are an interactive deck of cards, a blog, and video. Fort makin' is a video installation and documentation of our overnight group performance created for this event. fort makin' is a material intervention activating a dormant time-space through creative community engagement and activism. The three of us will meet at 11 p.m. on commercial drive and ride together on bicycle and a tandem bike with a 10 foot long bamboo trailer and safety gear throughout the alleys of east vancouver looking for materials and a possible location to build a shelter. Between 12 a.m. and 4 a.m we will build a structure and occupy it, sharing a meal cooked over a camp stove. We will tear down the structure putting everything back where we found it. The video will also be posted on our blog www.showandtellvancouver.blogspot.com for which we have created a deck of cards with tasks that embody the projects goals. For example:
-befriend and unlikely stranger
-what is your favorite mom and pop shop?
-walk/ride to the center of the lions gate bridge and watch the sun set
-go to queen elizabeth park, on a full moon, even if it's raining
-what kind of waste is created in your workplace? take responsibility for finding it a home.
Each person who receives a card has full access to co-authorship of the blog and is encouraged to document and share their personal urban narratives.

budget: $500.00
immediate expenses of the ongoing showandtellvancouver project: website registration, printing of directive cards, purchase of non- invasive seeds, worm casting, and powdered clay for guerilla gardening group session to take place during the conference
expenses for fort makin': dv tape, snacks, tea, propane, hot chocolate, and whiskey

technical requirements:
internet access, printing access, paper cutting, video and still cameras, bicycles, bike trailer, helmets, sun gun, laptop, t.v, editing equiptment

venue:
Vancouver city and online space, Gallery Gachet, and back alleys/ parks at night when everyone is sleeping

documentation:
ongoing documentation on blog from community participants in various projects
nightime performance will be documented in a short video and stills

CV:
GENEVIEVE CLOUTIER CURRICULUM VITAE
604.708.1761, gcloutier@eciad.ca

Born in 1983, Ottawa, Canada
Lives and works in Vancouver, Canada

EDUCATION
2005-2008
Bachelor of Fine Arts,
Film, Video and Integrated Media Major,
Emily Carr University of Art and Design,
Vancouver, British Columbia

2007
Film Studies
Carleton University
Ottawa, Ontario

2006
Development Studies
Queen's University
Kingston, Ontario

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
2009
Intern/Writer, Front Magazine
Vancouver, British Columbia

2008
Cinematographer/Editor, Gabriela Albergaria
Vancouver, British Columbia

2007-2008
Videographer/Editor, Emily Carr University of Art and Design,
Vancouver, British Columbia

2008
Intern/Journalist, CBC Television Programming,
Vancouver, British Columbia

2006-2007
Production Assistant, Cheap and Dirty Productions Inc.
Vancouver, British Columbia

VOLUNTEER EXPERIENCE
2007-2008
Installation assistant/videographer, VIVO Media Arts Centre,
Vancouver, British Columbia

2006-2007
Floor help, Downtown Eastside Women's Centre,
Vancouver, British Columbia

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2009
Abraham J. Rogatnick Media Gallery, I am not Paul McCartney,
Vancouver, British Columbia

2009
Abraham J. Rogatnick Media Gallery, f

-sh

m,
Vancouver, British Columbia

2008
Abraham J. Rogatnick Media Gallery, YTV Audition Tapes,
Vancouver, British Columbia

2006
Abraham J. Rogatnick Media Gallery, Pear Tree,
Vancouver, British Columbia

GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2009
VIVO Media Arts Centre, Net(work),
Vancouver, British Columbia

2009
The Brow, My Mother Worked in a Factory,
Vancouver, British Columbia

2008
VIVO Media Arts Centre, Pressure to Perform,
Vancouver, British Columbia

2007
Gogo Gallery, Bush Party,
Vancouver, British Columbia

2007
Concourse Gallery, enGENDERed,
Vancouver, British Columbia

2006
Abraham J. Rogatnick Media Gallery, TransMotel,
Vancouver, British Columbia

CURATORIAL PROJECTS
2009
VIVO Media Arts Centre, Net(work)
Vancouver, British Columbia

2009
The Brow, My Mother Worked in a Factory
Vancouver, British Columbia

AWARDS
2008
Gwyn and Aileen Scholarship

2005-2007
Queen Elizabeth Aiming for the Top Scholarship

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Published Writing by Genevieve Cloutier
Billboards, Self-Published, 2007

Published writing on Genevieve Cloutier
Front Magazine, Reflections, May 2009

Francisco's ode to a loved one encompassed double meanings that grew out of political and phonetic sportiveness, in the softest sense. Cross cultural implications seemed to come out of the word play. The rose petals, along with the chant-like repetition of the phrase "He loves me, He loves me not" in spanish became the symbolized dislocation.

I am not Paul McCartney

I have a video installation up at the Media Gallery (upstairs above the Concourse) until the 9th of this month if you guys can check it out. I'd love to hear what you think.

Installations and Traces

What made the collectivity of the show shine through for me is directly related to the performed object or lack thereof in the case of Jennifer's installation. She performed the absence of objects, the white wall, white chair and white clothing acted as symbolically void tools to search within. Meanwhile however, Francisco performed and embodied gold leaf and maple syrup, and Patrick performed a bunny mask, robe, silly string, and an egg. These gestures created individual political, economic and cultural resonance. Derya performed pornography and Grant, a tube and sink. Both of these performances seemed to negate the notion of a closed body. Anna's practice station, although not through her own body, made it possible for the audience to perform the designated objects. Mariana facilitated the performance of two contrasting outfits. Similarly did Jennifer explore materiality and performativity by facilitating the performance of fabric. These installations resonated with the intention of sharing experiences together and with materiality.

I am Square, You are Square

(A Shadow performance at the net(work) performance night)

I saw net(work) as a fair that wanted to challenge and embrace the capabilities of a relational art that aims to connect artist and audience member. My own interest in collaboration stems from a desire to negotiate our differences. These differences are linguistic in nature, cultural, and most obviously, spatial. Relational art exists without institutional barriers and at its best allows for real human contact, as defined by those experiencing it. Most importantly to me, it confronts anxieties created by borders. These borders are political in nature. They exist as a pre-discursive core to identity. With that said, I proposed to project a square of colour in the center of the room. In the square it read: “By casting a shadow on this projection I thereby agree to honour those next to me.”

The Prisoner in Plato’s Cave

There is an anthropological interest in shadows. It becomes an an existential quest for knowing where one begins and where one ends. In the ancient town of Qibao in Shanghai, they performed shadow plays based on regional historical events using local dialects. In Thailand, Nang Yai shadow plays were performed for the Aristocracy. The performances originate from the Ayuthaya period. Historical records indicate the art of Nang Yai may have been influenced by Khmer culture in the 15th century, and Indonesian culture between the 8th and 13th centuries. For the Greeks, the shadow was a metaphor for the psyche and the soul. In heraldry, a charge was shown in shadow. In all of these examples, the body was known to function in relation to a culture.
(Stoichita, Victor. Short History of the Shadow: Essays in Art and Culture. Reaktion Books)

Even though contemporary post-modern shadow art has formally changed today, it continues to function in a similar manner.

Event (Kai Althoff)

I have a crush on Kai Althoff.

I confess. If I were to marry a German, it would most definitely be him. His show at the VAG was refreshing. I Will be Last was a collaborative dance/theatre piece that was performed live at the show's opening and then remained as a video for the duration of the show. One by one did the dancers emerge from a hand-crafted room divider. Dressed in medieval looking hip-hop garb, they swayed in a sort of ancient uprock, moved to the pre-established sounds of Kai's band The Workshop. The music was minimal synth pop. Sometimes the dancers would come out with plastic boom boxes. Sometimes they looked like mimes, like paintings of mimes. Their choreography was like someone who goes to a dance not expecting to do any of it and ends up rocking the show.

Archival Performance (Randy Lee Cutler)

I volunteered as one of the waitresses in Randy Lee Cutler's Hors D'Oeuvres (I'm at the top of the image :), a relational performance which mimicked a cooking show featuring Cabbage Head, a woman with long luscious black eye lashes and a large plastic yellow bob. As the audience members ate orderves, she went on about the politics inherent in the food, the absurdity. In an explorative "digestion" of westcoast food culture did she tackle issues concerning our own estrangement from that which we consume.

Archival Performance (Tanya Mars)

On October 27th 2007, Tanya Mars performed In Pursuit of Happiness, a durational piece that went on for twelve hours in the Vancouver Art Gallery's rotunda. A buffet table was set up. Cascades of decadent and expensive cakes weighed heavy on the soft white table cloth. Tanya Mars wore a sexy little black dress. Her hair, done up, and her lips red. Her accomplice, Alissa Firth-Eagland, was just as done up. They paraded themselves lavishly while consuming cake after cake after cake, taking naps when they felt tired and fixing their hair when it got fuzzy. The piece successfully portrayed a society that runs the risk of drowning in its own wealth.

Archival Performance (Devora Neumark) #2

I just think her ideas are powerful in their simplicity and candor.

The Art of Conversation (2000) consists of a public installation that happened every tuesday between 12:00 and 16:00. Furniture was arranged at a Montreal street corner and the oncoming public were invited to sit and have a chat, a chat about the political order, childhood memories, domesticity, the notion of choice... whatever came up. I imagine that the hope was that people could engage themselves in honest conversations, free of institutional and spatial barriers. Thus, very concretely, private and public spaces were blurred.

Archival Performance (Devora Neumark)

Devora is a Montreal-based performance artist whose work reflects a desire to explore community and ritual. One minute monuments (2000), a relational and community-based piece, includes 30-50 partipants joining together within a seven block gradius in order to share a gesture, a pose, a silent reflection. Together they inhabit a space, and therefore begin a process of feeling empowered in a big and sometimes impersonal cityscape.

Federation of Students and Nominally or Unemployed Artists - $1k Giveaway

We all learn art in school. Every kid loves to draw at some point. People get fascinated with the details of their new camera, or spend free time writing poems. Eventually, there’s a not a teacher telling you how great your are, or the camera gets put away, or you just plain get busy and stop. Years could go by before you start again, if you ever do at all.

The FSNUA aims to re-inspire creative thinking and action in everyday people by removing a small barrier and providing encouragement. We give small, unsecured grants in the form of $10-$60 for creative projects thought up on the spot by everyday people. In the past this has included a merchant marine, two 10 year old girls, a US soldier on leave from Iraq, an accordion player from Alaska, and around 40 others. We funded their new paintings, drawings, knitting, and photojournalism projects, and the repair of one accordion. Projects they may not have happened had they not come across 10 people in the park to support and inspire the thought.

Beyond the small amount of money, the project encourages people to see themselves as something other than workers or consumers even if it just for the length of time required to apply for a FSNUA grant. We also hope to re-inspire dormant desires to create while presenting an example of generosity without an ulterior motive.

Our money is earned by the members of the federation. We each raise $100, pool our money together, and give it away. It’s fair to say the result is a beautiful, motivating, friendly and a bit chaotic experience (in an exciting way).

http://confluxfestival.org/conflux2008/1k-giveaway/

Interesting relational public art piece (right here in vancouver!)

onlymagazine.net

Culture-Jamming and Activism (links provided)

Suspects (Performanc e for the Police)
Warren Arcan, Shelley G uhle, Josh Schafer, Teri Snelgrove, Susan Stewart

Stan Douglas
«Monodramas»

Attack #15

Krzysztof Wodiczko

my mother worked in a factory

Host:
The Brow

Date:
Monday, January 26, 2009

Time:
7:00pm - 10:00pm

Location:
ECUAD (4th floor of the south building)
1399 Johnston Street, Granville Island
Vancouver, BC

Description
I've curated a small show at the last minute, but it looks like it'll be fun. It includes work by Benjamin Larose, Caroline Ballhorn, Francisco-Fernando Granados and myself.

And it's Francisco's birthday, so come and enjoy some music with us! Perhaps some live performance will be in order. The Cruz brothers will hopefully make an appearance.