July 27, 2015
#portraitoftheartistonhiatus

 

July 27, 2015
Barkeep: I´ll have a Manhattan, if you will.

 

July 27, 2015
In Between

I’ve been photographing graffiti covrup for a few years. I particularly enjoy this one. I captured this image in an alleyway I traverse daily between home and Grey Tiger. Here I find myself very relaxed. It’s my me time, away from everyone and everything. I find solace in alleyways in general. It’s quiet there. …

 

July 27, 2015
This Inspires That

This is Becky papering the walls in our washrooms. The streetart back-and-forth we had in front of the shop – you know, the vandals and making art to coverup their tags – inspired her to create this really great repeat pattern. And it turned out to be a really cheap and easy way to make our washrooms pretty delightful. (It just took time, basic laser copies and homemade wheatpaste.)

In a way, the whole thing was a kind of blessing, so to speak. I mean, without that engagement, we wouldn’t have this awesome design. And what’s even more interesting, the streetart thing actually helped us develop our brand. It helped us visually articulate the magical energy behind the project. It helped us maintain a certain ceative edge, too, which is essential and not always easy to achieve when you’re up to your eyeballs in drywall and plywood.

Really, we’re quite grateful to have magic in our lives and to be rooted in creativity and not just running a business in a total business frame of mind. We’re artists and Grey Tiger is truly a labour of intense love and devotion to a shared concept. It’s a magical collaboration. It’s blood, sweat, tears and screams of joy all in a space of our own making. You can feel it when you walk into it. 

And that doesn’t happen everyday in the hospitality industry. So we’re pretty ezcited to bring that to the public. To open our place up to good people who want to interact with a special vibe, to be one with it, and to participate in its positive growth. I know it’s a day-dreamy kind of perspective to have as a business owner. But it’s crucial. We’re artists first and foremost – and that’s what’s gonna make a successful space.

It’s the only way we’re gonna be happy and keep the magic stoked. 

 

 

 

July 27, 2015
#eatthis

 

July 27, 2015
#drinkthis

 

July 22, 2015
There´s art after RFAOH

We are always super happy to receive news from our ex-residents-on-hiatus — Congratulations, Farid Rakun, he will be a part of the Creative Time Summit in Venice (11-13 August 2015). Go meet him if you are traveling to the Venice Biennale!  http://www.e-flux.com/announcements/the-creative-time-summit-the-curriculum-at-the-56th-venice-biennale/

 

July 21, 2015
The End is Nigh!

I just looked at the calendar and realized that my time in RFAOH is drawing very quickly to a close. I only have 2 more days in which to not make art!!

Instead of art, these last few weeks since my last entry here, I have been doing a lot of “research”—social research, ethnographic research, and regular old research. I just finished a 4 day run of non-performances, where I used realtime online dating apps to try to lure people to see public art.

Then I started some work as an “artistic ethnographer”, attending meetings about the arts in my city and gathering data/documenting/intervening creatively.

Now I’m gathering some information for the first artist’s talk I’ll be giving in over six months on the evening of the 23^rd (a few hours after my residency officially ends), and am about to go deliver the first framed-on-the-wall work I can remember showing ever for an exhibit that opens on the 24^th (don’t worry, I made it before I started RFHAO!)

 

I’m not sure what I should say here and what I should leave for my final report, but I guess I want to note that whether it was coincidence or not, it feels like what has happened here is that by trying with all my might not to make art for six months, I somehow catapulted myself into a state where every aspect and moment of my life is now steeped in art to a degree that it never has been before. It’s like I was holding my breath and trying to stay underwater for as long as possible, and then noticed at some point that instead of holding my breath, I was just underwater and getting oxygen wasn’t really a problem. The new problem is that being underwater means having to swim all the time.

 

Now that I understand it better, I want to do the residency again someday and really not go anywhere near art. Except the funny thing is that when I think about what that would mean—when I imagine taking a real retreat from the pace of things set by this new state of non-stop-art-immersion I’ve found myself in—the first thing I think is: maybe I could teach myself watercolors or something. So right now, even an imagined genuine break/vacation from art, involves art making!

 

 

July 8, 2015
13

 

                                                                                                                               Ad Reinhardt, 1966

 

Hay algo en estar inactivo que permite ver y tener a la mano lo que se persigue y al mismo tiempo no poder tomarlo, o atraparlo.  Está en todas partes, en la vida diaria, en ciertas conversaciones y lecturas, y está presente al recorrer las imágenes del mundo desde internet o el cine, y no obstante, no es clara su presencia. Lo tenemos a la vista más permanece escondido. Presentimos su importancia, su relevancia, como evoca el título de la película de Wim Wenders: ¡Tan lejos y tan cerca! (In weiter Ferne, so Nah!)

A los 62 añios tengo una carrera hecha y un pequeño lugar en el mundo del arte, entonces no siento urgencia de perseguir su presencia y atraparlo, como lo hice en otro tiempo y lugar. ¿O si?

No sé. Sé que no intento cazar este fantasma ni me asusta su manifestación. Pienso que sería una mala estrategia si me obsesiono por atraparlo, y estoy seguro que no lo lograría. Entonces más bien me mantengo a la espera, atento, mirando de reojo todo lo que me interroga de mi alrededor. Mientras tanto hago anotaciones, guardo documentos, acumulo archivos.

Pienso-siento que estoy preparando lo que será mi última incursión por las territorios subjetivos que he visitado siempre, y me agrada verlos diferentes al tiempo que invariables. Es un gozo que tiene lugar desde la vida vivida. Me siento cerca de empezar una tarea solitaria que me tomará dos o tres años, probablemente hecha de narraciones y dibujos (o lo que venga después de empezar).

Mi inactividad viene de una crisis alrededor de 2005, una severa crisis en todos los sentidos. Y lo mejor que me pudo haber pasado en aquel entonces fue irme cuatro años a Cholula, Puebla en 2006 a estudiar un doctorado. Allá muchas cosas retomaron sentido. A mi regreso a Monterrey opté por localizarme en nuevos planos de actividades, y por eso decidí renunciar a la educación en la universidad en 2013.

Entrar en la residencia Hiatus en 2014 me ha fortalecido en un aspecto que no me imaginé: me ha servido para repensar acerca de mi situación, acerca de mi construcción como sujeto, y escribir acerca de ello. También me ha permitido observar mis ideas de otro modo a través de los otros. Y además, descubrí que puedo traducir al inglés mis ideas bastante bien (eso creo, jeje).

Ha sido enorme esta pausa de 10 años y sin embargo no siento que haya perdido el tiempo o que haya estado ocioso o desocupado.

No es tampoco procrastinación. Me parece que procastinar es algo deliberado, o voluntario. Es algo que concientemente se decide dejar para después: mañana lo pago, mañana voy, mañana empiezo la dieta. En mi caso no se trata de eso. Más bien ha sido un largo período de incertidumbre, una perplejidad que me ha invitado a reflexionar y meditar para desentrañar sus propios cuestionamientos y su enunciación. Es algo muy cercano a pensar en lo esencial que concierne a lo vivido, un proceso un poco en el modo de una ascesis, lo que conduce a desocultar el conocimiento del sí mismo, a buscar y buscarme en las palabras y en las imágenes que flotan por todos lados. Buscar lo que soy de lo que he sido. Buscar en el laberinto donde todo es uno entre la memoria, el presente y los deseos.

Hiatus es la reflexión de una no-producción que por paradoja implica la preparación de la misma producción. ¡Tan lejos y tan cerca! es como un mantra. La espera no es tranquila. Es un pendiente que no está resuelto en su forma de ser pendiente. No se trata de un plazo que se va a cumplir, ni tampoco es una actividad definida que se puede reactivar cualquier momento. Es algo indefinido en su esencia, en su potencia, en su expresión. Es una sombra. No es lo que dejo de hacer porque soy capaz de dejar de hacerlo, sino algo que no fluye, algo que está escondido, acechando, reclamando atención.

Para producir objetos o eventos artísticos es necesario que se vincule la “necesidad” de hacerlos con la “posibilidad” de hacerlos. Lo que está en juego en la hiancia es la desorientacion, la sensación de inutilidad. Es decir, la necesidad está disminuida aún cuando haya posibilidad de hacer cosas. Se requiere algo más que actitud, planeación o disciplina.

Creo que ha llegado el momento de empezar a producir de nuevo algunas cosas.

 

• • • • •

 

There’s something about being on hiatus that guides us to view and have on hand what we have always persued and at the same time it doesn’t allow us to catch it. It’s everywhere, in everyday life, in certain conversations and lectures, and is present to be unvailed out of the images of the Internet world or the movies, and yet its presence is unclear. It´s at one’s glance but still hiding. We have a presentiment of its importance, its relevance, and it evokes us something similar as the title of the film by Wim Wenders: Faraway, so close! (In weiter Ferne, so nah!)

At 62 yeaRs I have made a career and a small place in the art world, for that I don’t feel urgency to pursue its presence and catch it, as I did in another time / place.

Or do I?

I don’t know. I know I don’t attempt to hunt this ghost, neither its manifestation scares me. I think that it would be a bad strategy if I get obsessed with it, and I’m sure I won’t catch it that way. So instead, I keep waiting, attentive, eyeing everything that surrounds me with questions. Meanwhile I write down everything, I keep documents, I accumulate files.

I think-feel that I’m preparing for something that will be my next (maybe the last) foray into subjective representation territories, the sameones that I have always visited, and I like to think that I will find them unchanged, while different. It’s kind of a joy that takes place from within my lived life. I feel-think that I’m about to start a lonely task that will take two or three years to be complete, probably made of stories and drawings (or whatever comes next after I begin).

My inactivity initiate in a crisis around 2005, it was a severe personal crisis in every way. And the best thing that could have happened to me back then was to go to Cholula Puebla in 2006 for four years, to PhD courses. There, many things resumed sense. When I returned to Monterrey in 2011 I chose some new activities, and I decided to quit teaching at the university in 2013.

My Hiatus residence in 2014 has strengthened me in ways I didn’t imagine. It helped me to rethink about my situation, my build up as a subject, specially as I began to write about it. It has allowed me to see my ideas differently. And I discovered that I can translate my ideas into a foreign lenguage (or so I think, hehe).

It has been an enormous pause, 10 years, and yet I don’t feel I have wasted my time nor have I the feeling of idle or inactivity.

Also it isn’t procrastination. Procrastination is a deliberate behavior. It’s something you consciously decide to put off: I’ll pay that tomorrow, I’ll go next week, I start the diet later. In my case it’s not about that. Rather, it’s been a long period of uncertainty and perplexity that has invited me to think over and meditate about my things to unravel their own questions and its enunciation. It’s very close to thinking essentially about my lived life, similar to a process of asceticism, which leads to uncover the knowledge of oneself, and to search about what am I from what I have been. It’s like searching in a labyrinth where all is one: memory, present and desires.

Hiatus is the ponder of a non-production status, that paradoxically may involve the preparation of a future production. Farawey so close! it’s like a mantra. Waiting is not a quiet thing. It’s a to-do thing that is unresolved in its way of being a to-do thing. It’s not a term to be enforced, nor is a defined activity that can be reactivated any time. It’s something undefined in its essence, its power, its expression. It’s a shadow. It’s not what I stop doing because I am able to stop it, but something that does not flow, which is hidden, lurking, demanding attention.

To produce artistic objects or events it’s necessary that the “need” to do that links with the “possibility” of doing that. What is at stake in the Hiatus is the disorientation, the feeling of worthlessness. That is, the need is reduced even when there is a possibility of doing things. It takes more than attitude, planning or discipline.

I think it’s time for me to start doing a few things.

 

July 7, 2015
Briefly- AA Report- Day 68

Briefly, this is a photo of a letter I wrote in June. I wrote the letter so that I could participate in a meaningful way in a 10 year anniversary for an art gallery, not as an artist but as an individual who once exhibited there. I wanted to participate in a meaningful way but also in a way where I wasn’t breaking the framework of the residency. Perhaps pushing the boundaries a little bit, the letter indicates that it is not an artwork: 

“Please don’t confuse this for an artwork. This is not an artwork, just a letter. (…) “Because the framework of my residency stipulates that for 6 months I not make or present art I couldn’t formally submit an artwork to exhibit so I wrote this letter.” 

I was nervous about contributing something this way, the residency parameters still had me confused so I thought I should get permission.  After discussing my predicament wtih the co-directors I decided to go ahead with the idea and I emailed my letter to the gallery. I believe when I emailed the co-directors about this my mind was already made up but I still wanted to talk it through. My initial contact at the gallery didn’t think it would work because it wasn’t an artwork, however the hanging committee decided to hang it! I got to participate as a non-artist, presenting myself as an artist on hiatus. I confused a few people at the opening who wondered where my artwork was. 

The reactions of people when I tell them the nature of this residency is always interesting,  an extreme type of Lent I’ve heard. A few have taken great offense, equating it to becoming a nun (not a pleasant thought for some), while others compare it to a spiritual awakening, a tapas. Tapas? The word tapas was new to me, I didn’t know it as anything other than the Spanish cuisine! However, it was explained to me as a yoga term. It is a self-discipline technique and a  quick search on Wikipedia lead me to the Sanskrit, meaning “deep meditation, effort to achieve self-realization, sometimes involving solitude, hermitism or asceticism (…)  “the fire that burns within.” 

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//Tapas_(Sanskrit)

For now I’ll leave it at that. 

 

(Briefly- A(rt)A(nonymous) Report- Day 68) 

           

               The letter Blink Gallery decided to hang, the letter indicates it is not an artwork 

                

 

July 6, 2015
From RFAOH Co-directors

Mary Kroetsch’s 6 month on-hiatus residency ended on June 30, 2015. We thank Mary for her participation as our 2nd round resident, and for sharing, through her steady reports, a rather personal on-hiatus activity.  RFAOH sincerely wishes her the best of luck in her post on-hiatus life, (hooray for going back to art school!) and hopes to hear from her once in a while.

Click “Final Report” to read on her experience at RFAOH.

 

July 5, 2015
An almost detour – AA Report- Day 66

Thinking about my art practice today. I’m not sure if I should be. Does that make this a confession?  

Yesterday when I was on my way to the train station (heading back to Ottawa after spending some time working at the house),  we passed a series of brightly coloured round objects on the side of the road. They looked like Christmas balls. Three of them. I caught myself thinking how nice it would be to have them and to incorporate them into an artwork. I haven’t worked with objects like this in a long time, why don’t I anymore?  I was very close to asking my driver to turn around so that I could go and collect them. Would it be wrong to pick them up? I had a brief dialogue with myself: “We’re early, it would only be a little detour and they are just garbage at this point, I would be doing the community a service.” I wondered and we passed them by. 

In my third month on hiatus I haven’t thought as much about my art practice as I am today. I suppose I did enough of that before going on hiatus. Thinking. Thinking about why I’m disillusioned and why I wanted (needed) this hiatus. A social media stream from my last art show also appeared today, popped up unexpectedly. A reminder of a period not that long ago. I remember, but I’m not tied to this memory. Here I am now thinking about making something new. Is it wrong? Within this thought stream I am also asking myself:  Is there something special about an artist’s brain, that I would want to create something with such mundane objects? Or maybe my brain has been trained to think this way. After years of art school and working around artists is it now impossible for me not to think this way?  Is it formula or instinctual? The artist’s curse? Geesh, when did not making art become so complicated? 

(An almost detour – A(rt) A(nonymous) Report- Day 66) 

 

                                                            Image from Google Images

                          

 

July 3, 2015
Getting into it-AA Report- Day 64

Something to note before I get into it

Days late (did I really not write a report in June?),  I apologize to the co-directors Matthew and Shinobu for making them wonder if I was still in this! I wrote to them yesterday to assure them that yes, I am indeed still in this! Time does seem to be passing by rather quickly though. It reminds me of when I was a child and school would let out for the summer, summer always flew by and here we are now already in July! I’ll start my second report by giving a brief update on June. 

June

A lot happened and I can honestly say that I’ve been writing in my head for the entire month but for some reason not writing things down- the words are mostly lost now. It seemed easier, I guess, to just work through everything without taking the time to sit down and write. It’s funny because I found myself speaking to a lot of people about how wonderful the writing aspect of this residency is; that it enables the residents to be creative in other ways. Writing is something that I’ve always enjoyed but I don’t spend much time doing, with the exception of writing some poetry (here and there) and an artist statement, bio etc. I’ll be watching myself more carefully this month, making sure I take the time to physically write. It’s a fantastic way to process thoughts. I believe I have a whole chapter in my head right now about how I’ve been negotiating being an artist on hiatus while working in an art gallery, so look for a report about this in the future! June also presented me with the obstacle of how to find a place within the artworld as an artist on hiatus while not comprising my hiatus status. More about this later too. 

Yesterday

Yesterday I went with my mom to pick up a building permit (it cost $100). I didn’t know that this would be a requirement to do work on the house. The house is owned by my family so why would we have to pay the town to renovate it? It turns out that that’s the law. Watch for it- there might also be a report coming about bureaucracy. 😉

The building permit covers the right to build as well as the right to demolish (take down). We’ll be taking down a balcony and another part of the house where the fire was and building around that. The balcony this summer, the other part I’m not sure when, time is limited. Interior work will be done as well.

Yesterday my partner, mother and I also spent time clearing away wild grape vines that have overgrown, growing over and around the house, suffocating the clothesline and a telephone wire. The removal of brush from around the house is integral to the prep work; before doing anything to the exterior brush must first be cleared away. I’ll be focusing on this for the next little while as well as figuring out how to bring a large balcony down! (see photos for more)  

Closing notes

Reading other residents reports has made me recognize how much of my own project is tied into memory/history, and so I would really appreciate some direction from the co-directors (readers too) about whether they would like me to write more about this. 

Until next time! 

 (Getting into it- A(rt) A(nonymous) Report-Day 64) 

 

                      Covered Clothesline                                    How do we approach these?

    

 

            The grapevine attached itself by tendrils that seemed to mimic the wire of the clothesline

                                   

 

                                          Getting a closer look at how the porch is attached