By Michael Birchall
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Photo by: Lucie Couillard
In November 2012, I was fortunate to attend a four-week residency at The Banff Centre. Titled ‘The Decapitated Museum’, it was led by Vincent Normand, a Paris-based curator. After attending the Banff Centre in 2008 as a curatorial work-study, I was eager to return: situated in the Canadian Rocky Mountains in the small town of Banff, two hours from Calgary, the centre is surrounded by snow-topped mountains. It provides a quiet context for research, practice and discussions.
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Photo by: Vincent Normand
Normand led the residency with a series of lectures in which he traced the genealogical roots of the exhibition back to zoological gardens in Europe and the use of dioramas in natural history ingemuseums in the early 20th century. Along with guest faculty member Etienne Chambaud, he presented their collaborative film, Counter-History of Separation (2011), which suggests a connection between the emergence of the guillotine as a means of destroying the aristocracy and the opening of The Louvre in 1793. The film concludes with the end of capital punishment in France and the opening of The Centre Pompidou in Paris (1977). This Franco-centric analysis of the creation of museums and the French Revolution is of course not without its limitations, as it omits other key events, such as the opening of MoMA in 1934, to give one example. But it helped provide a starting point from which other areas could be discussed throughout the residency.
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Photo by: Kate Williams
The residency included 11 artists and six curators, and each week included a series of lectures and seminars for participants to engage in. Nomand devised a series of seminars that included the presentation of a ‘stake object’ – that is, a key concern in someone’s practice. This caused some contention, as both artists and curators reduced their practices to a series of drawings, lines and text. In order to facilitate more discussion time, several groups or ‘clusters’ were formed; which attempted to find conclusions to the problems that were presented. The ‘cluster’ I participated in was concerned with ‘publics’ – a primary concern for artists and curators. Fortunately we could agree on Hal Foster’s essay ‘The Artist as Ethnographer’ (1996) as a key text for us to address. Written before texts such as Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics (1998), Foster focuses on site-specific art – which can provide a temporary community – and examines a range of problems that arise when art attempts to follow the ethnographical principles of the participant-observer. This feels quite timely now given Okwui Enwezor’s Paris Triennale 2012 at the Palais de Tokyo – which explored the areas where art and ethnography converged – and ‘Animism’ (2010–12) curated by Anselm Franke.
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Banff River. Photo by: Michael Birchall
The ‘underground’ history of exhibitions, as proposed in the initial description of the residency proved problematic to address with such a large group of participants, although more of an effort could have been made to ensure fluidity amongst peers. Delivering a residency to a group of artists and curators from various background and levels of education is of course tricky to manage. The successes of the residency were more the personal interactions and the exchange of ideas that took place organically. As well as the intensive time spent in the studio, the Banff Centre has some of the most incredible facilities for artists – printmaking, photography and sculpture just to name a few – as well as the newly refurbished onsite library for researchers and curators. Specialist facilitators are on hand, aided by work-studies to assist artists who require technical support.
Toronto-based artist Maria Flawia Litwin produced a video work Syzyfa (2012), in the winter landscape of Banff; unravelling a large bundle of yarn used in an earlier performance work. Litwin was assisted by a team of residents who happily ventured out into the cold to assist her. New York-based artist, David Court produced a video work using the recorded voice of a fellow resident, Rosa Aiello. Toronto-based artist Xenia Benivolski invited a group of artists to critique art reviews written by established art critics, as part of an ongoing work that works in the ethos of institutional critique. Collectively a group, including myself, formed a noise band – initiated by British curator, Victoria Brooks – that culminated in a one-night-only performance, using handmade contact microphones and synthesizers.
In these informal collaborations, a real sense of community was created – one that was fostered by the context of the residency. We all cooked, ate, drank, made fires and watched movies together – this was just as crucial as the time spent in the studio or in the seminars. I am certain the connections made during this residency will continue to be just as fulfilling in the future, and would encourage anyone who is interested in a thematic residency to apply.
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