Simon Rabyniuk on the division of practice and real life

movement (time spent) Maps : part III - 1 by Cara Spooner

This is part of an ongoing set of one-question emails sent to people we know, or would like to get to know, about things that interest us and inform our collective practice. They’ll be featured on the site weekly, usually on Fridays. These questions are more about unfolding ideas than about the people we’re asking, but we do ask those kinds of questions too.

We’re pleased to continue this project with a question for SRSI and Homework alumnus and one half of the Department of Unusual Certainties, a Toronto-based research and design collective, Simon Rabyniuk.


Where does practice end and real life begin?

There is no division between practice and life. My first reading of this question situates it as something about the experience of the individual, and because of the context I’m receiving it in, something about the experience of the individual artist. Although I think it becomes a more interesting question dealt with in broader terms.

What is practice? For an individual a practice is a personal commitment to an action (i.e. the practice of active listening). I would propose that a fundamental quality of a practice is a conscious intent expressed through the process of trial, reflection, and learning; while routine may be part of one’s practice, intent keeps it from becoming route behaviour. For an artist I would propose that commitment be understood as a lifestyle of exploration in the production of material or embodied relationships. I would also propose that there is a distinction between the singular and plural use of the term. An individual can have many personal practices, while they have a professional practice.



movement (time spent) Maps : part III 5 – by Cara Spooner

 

What is real life? Life is form changing through time. Enacted on a sensing being, this change in form becomes a sequence of experiences. Organized as memories these sequences form a narrative and a sense of identity. This definition fails to articulate the social character of a human’ life. Somehow ‘real life’ is different then that. Real life is nested in the colloquial, the work/leisure/boredom cycle, desire, and responsibilities. A day in one’s real life is bisected into what you sell, and what you keep for yourself.

Real life somehow refers to artists having jobs beyond their practice as an artist. The question “Where does practice end and real life begin?” perhaps asks if when an artist’s time is not going towards making things do their practice and real life become separate things within them? Again, I would propose they do not. There are many prominent examples of artists who use their art practice to reflect on and respond to the experience of their present situation. Two examples that may represent a spectrum of approaches are Michelle Allard and Adrian Piper. Allard explores the formal constructive properties of the office supplies she uses in her day job. Piper explores the reaction raced/classed bodies produce in social spaces. One’s experience, including their real life, becomes a source to parse through in ones practice as an artist.


Simon Rabyniuk is a Toronto-based visual artist and member of Department of Unusual Certainties. His work often draws upon performance, video, drawing, and sculpture to explore cities and their systems.

He has presented work across Canada including as part of Hammering Away, Workers Arts and Heritage Centre (Hamilton), Meet us on the Commons, Art Gallery of Mississauga, 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art (Toronto), the Harbourfront Centre’s Hatch Emerging Performance Series, at Ryerson University’s Modernity Unbound Symposium, and as part of Broken City Labs’ Storefront Residency for Social Innovation(Windsor). In 2011 he recieved support from the Ontario Arts Council through their Emerging Artist Grant .

Cara Spooner has been involved in performance related projects as a dancer, choreographer, designer and curator. She has presented work at Toronto’s Nuit Blanche, XPACE Cultural Centre, The Harbourfront Centre’s HATCH Emerging Performance Project, Pleasure Dome, The Mississauga Art Gallery, The Festival of New Dance, Badass Dance Fun and Stromereien 11. caraspooner.com

Writing Art * A ‘Critical Writing’ Group

 

From an email from Artcite Inc… you should consider doing this!

Urge to write about art? Please check out the NEW…

Writing Art * A ‘Critical Writing’ Group Sponsored by Artcite Inc.

So many artists pass through our city un- or under-sung that a few folks at Artcite thought we might form a group devoted to writing about art in Windsor [and beyond], to exploring, in dialogue and in print, local exhibitions and performances, happenings and openings.

With an eye to broad cultural and political concerns, and to informally developing and refining our skills, some of us thought we might get together to think, reflectively, about art practice and exhibition here in Windsoria, our great, good city.

The form of the group is open, as is its membership, but Artcite hopes that students and practitioners, critics and faculty, lovers and discerners find their way to our only artist-run gallery at 109 University Avenue West on Wednesday, 7 March 2012, at 7pm to start to start to think about thinking and writing about art.


Just to avoid any confusion, BCL isn’t directly involved in this, but I know I’m going to try to show up for this initial meeting!

Contribute to our Upcoming Book!

From Walter's Homework sketchbook

We received this from our friends (and Homework artists-in-residence) Brennan and Chloé, who have been compiling content for our upcoming book on our latest conference and residency, Homework: Infrastructures & Collaboration in Social Practices.

Hi All,

I hope all is well.

We have received a number of contributions from most of you, but there are a few of you we are still hoping to get some materials from.

If any one had an interview, reviews, essays, photographs, sketches, notes, etc. that they would like to add to the publication still please let me know.

A dropbox was created and last I checked it had not been used all that much (if any). If you do have files to contribute, they can be added here, or (smaller) files can be sent to us directly at oerogue[at]gmail.com

I encourage anyone with any leftover materials to send it our way so it can be included in this publication.

Thank you!

Brennan

If you attended Homework and have anything you’d like us to consider adding to the upcoming book, please get in touch with us or Brennan and Chloé ASAP!

BCL Report: February 24, 2011 (back to Lebel)

We spent Friday back at Lebel, reminding us of the meetings we used to have a couple years ago when all this was just starting up. Given the size of the school and the resources readily available (like tools, multiple desks, ample light), we split up into smaller groups to tackle some “next steps” for each project on the table.

First though, we watch parts of the interview that Michelle and Rosina did with Stephen Lynn for How to Forget the Border Completely.

Continue reading “BCL Report: February 24, 2011 (back to Lebel)”

Editing Over Distances

From way away in Toronto, Cristina sends edits through the magic of Tracking Changes after some good old fashioned hand-written editing. I did the same while waiting for the flight back to Detroit.

We’re getting so excited about this project, we’ll have to figure out a way to pull it off … funding or no funding.

A New Project Begins: Cardboard, a projector, and lots of editing

In what feels like the first time in months, we got together and worked on making something (that is, as opposed to planning something). We’re getting started on what is going to be an epic project, time-wise. We’re making a bunch of large 3D cardboard letters.

Collaborative Apartment Studio is very fun.

Continue reading “A New Project Begins: Cardboard, a projector, and lots of editing”

Public 41: Gardens

Sorry — it’s late, this documentation is rushed, but I just received a few copies of Public, issue 41, Gardens, edited by Erin Despard and Monika Kin Gagnon, which features our Removable Garden project on the cover, and as a nice spread inside!

We wrote the text, which outlines some of process and ideas behind the research developing the magnetic planters, as well as some discussion around what led to wanting to develop the project in the first place.

Anyways, it’s beyond exciting to see our project in print… you should pick up a copy. There’s a huge number of great articles and discussions on the creative, resistive, and productive uses of artist and activist gardens, including selections from Adrian Blackwell and Oliver Kellhammer … highly recommended. And, while you’re at it, you could pick up a copy of Public 40, which features an article written by Dr. Michael Darroch and Kim Nelson (colleagues at the University of Windsor) on Windsor (including BCL and Green Corridor).

Later Nights, since it’s summer now

Michelle and I spent hours and hours together yesterday. With everyone’s schedules fairly ridiculous at the moment, we’re trying to steal what little time we can to keep working. Lately, the time that we’ve all spent together has been framed exclusively almost exclusively by planning for Save the City or organizing the Storefront Residencies for Social Innovation, and so we’re usually burned out after a couple hours of that. Last night though, we pushed past the moment of getting burned out, and I think we got somewhere because of it.

We started our Friday night with a Skype call to Chris from the Department of Unusual Certainties regarding their project as part of the Storefront Residencies for Social Innovation (they are very enthusiastic, and their projects is going to be really, really great), had some dinner, tried to imagine what will come after SRSI, and then moved on to sorting out the billboards for the last part of Save the City.

We had a lot of bad ideas. Had we stopped earlier on, today and tomorrow would have been filled with some scrambling efforts to find the finish the design, emailing it out to everyone, trying to integrate everyone’s suggestions (and likely failing to do it well), sending it out again, getting more input, etc., etc., etc. Not entirely effective, nor can that process really capture the really great sparking moments of working together in the same room (the reason, I love collaborative work).

We really want these billboards to not just cap off Save the City, not just describe or some how summarize what we’ve learned, but continue with this conversation that we’ve been having. So, we had some terrible ideas for a long while, but we moved through them, we wrote them all down, then crossed them all out eventually, and it was the process of doing that, of really talking about where we were trying to go without knowing where we were going that was entirely worth it. I think we started the billboard brainstorming around 7:30pm were ready to give up around 9pm and we were there until 11pm still finalizing things. And, they’re still not finalized yet, but they’re close.

And we didn’t just brainstorm, we did the preliminary layout(s) together, we critiqued as we went, and it was so completely worth the exhaustion. Danielle called, thankfully, so we could check our work with someone outside of that room to make sure we hadn’t missed anything obvious, and then we were done, and we’re very, very excited to see these go up.

I hope the summer allows more opportunities for this — a lot of time spent together doing things, working through problems together, in the same room, until we get somewhere better than where we started.

The artwork goes out Monday, and I think the billboards launch mid-month.

Broken City Lab: Save the City is generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council.

A Conversation with Josh Mehler from White Space Collaborative

Josh, Cristina, and I spent a part of the afternoon yesterday speaking with Josh Mehler, formerly of the Windsor/Detroit area, now studying at Florida State, working on a PhD in Rhetoric and Composition.

It was a great conversation, and as always, these kind of casual interviews help us to articulate what we’re trying to do in an expanded manner. We talked a lot about why we use text, how the idea of composition can move into a physical space, and what the potentials are in connecting artists and writers more often and in alternative spaces. My favourite interviews are the ones where I learn something too, which in this case, I definitely did.

I think Josh will be posting excerpts from the interview on his blog, so be sure to tune in there.