Parachute, 1 janvier 1976, Janvier - Mars

[" ARACHUT rSKfi: r;y-yt y fmsj -*/v V 'v'V #4#¥f y< j*\u2022*.\u2022:V f \u2022' \\V \u2022;> Ù ,*7r.\u2022¦&¦&\u2022\t:: ,\u2022¦ \u2022 \u2022 w^j U>ft gjfr iVr*1 !i)id'\tr1 \",î:;\u2022*«\u2022\u2022\t*\u2019 * ¦.!>'< ¦>**.» >\\> '4 \\ ' V » \u2022\u2022* *\t' ¦\t' jJ H \u2022¦«* * 7 '1 ;i \u2019r.-> ft'- i'Q-Ti Â'^,4 ¦\u2022W >A K- \u2022' « & ;?¦!\u2022\u2022:-*:.f # ; 'V +*i &¦ \\mn &&>\u2022*.V w- w V* \u2022J \\\\ _ V-».IliEMidMSri ¦LA-; i;*.\u2022*\u2022 «Nt c- A'Mk 4^! T * , %\u2022 * Tarpaulin 4, 1975, 13\u2019 x 7\u2019, gesso, oil, rope and wire.One of iiolettis i fundarne lntfieCi lseven Hj S % ¥ S¥ ¦B» ¥®¥ I\u2014 as ISMBl y-j*-\t' ; Jill® .ligNHim : \u2022 ¥$ \"Y, % ift ,v * .: ~ '' Z' l¥¥ ¦* i¥t% » -jÿjÿa \u2022t ' ¥ .-\u2022 .\u2018 W>i *\\ Hvl» ¦Hsl Tarpaulin 5, 1975, oil and rope, 10\u2019 x 8\u2019.Tarpaulin 2, 1974-75, 7\u2019 1\u201d x 8\u2019 2\u201d, gesso, pencil and rope.One of the most stubbornly upheld shibboleths in esthetics is the existence of two fundamentally different arts.Kant described the duality between the external senses which would be particularly receptive to spatial experience (the \u201cfine\u201d arts) and the internal sense that responds to a linear, rythmic flow of stimulus, to the sense of time that is the primary structure of literature, music and film.Neat as it is, the duality is too confining an approach to a large sector of contemporary painting, to those works where the artist\u2019s presence in the form of gesture or process is an organic part of the work\u2019s content.In the case of Betty Goodwin\u2019a art, the duality is even less relevant than usual.Not only is Goodwin\u2019s fundamental theme time - time\u2019s passage as perceived by its effect on material and memory, on physical and psychic tissue -her objects constitute mnemonic narratives whose content is almost wholly free of spatial considerations, except for the inevitable pre- sence of the support which is, in any case, subverted by the art process.\u201cWe exist only by what we possess; we possess only what is really at hand and so many of our memories, and moods, and ideas go away far from us where we lose sight of them.Consequently we cannot add them into the total that is our personality.But they can return to us by secret paths\u201d.-Proust Between 1969 and 1974, the first truly mature phase in her production, Goodwin worked on the Vests series, prints that were made directly from pieces of clothing.This approach to printmaking concentrates on the primacy of the original act and precludes the production of an edition, a useless excercise for this artist for whom the repetition of the essential adventure would only mock the original triumph of wresting a usable, meaningful image from the inert and ungiving object.A second or third identical copy would be, at best, a stagy retelling of the drama: reheated emotion.For Goodwin, the vests \u201care covering, skin enclosure\u201d.They are moulds and casts at the same time, fragments that bear within them their wearer\u2019s presence.From them the artist extracts through a process of sculptural anc graphic manipulation, as much of these presences as the objects are willing to yield, wmcn is by no means an.Memory is, after all, a mere fabrication of the mind, the \u201cclearest\u201d memory being the one that is the most esthetically plausible within the frame of the present.But there is always enough in each print to furnish the imagination with a sufficient number of clues to a common past, enough to kindle both desire and regret: the two requisite components of the Romantic experience.\u201cNot only do we fail to grasp at once reaily rare works of art, but even within each of those works we first notice the least valuable parts.Unlike life, those great masterpieces do not disappoint us by giving us their best first\u201d.-Proust 5 \t\t mmËÊSÈÊËÊËÈSËm v 5 'Jws&*'fa'i& Tarpaulin 3, 1975, 9\u2019 9\u201d x 7\u2019 8\u201d, gesso, crayon and rope .| i.^ \"'f'V - ' With the recent Tarpaulin pieces - there are seven to date - the scale expands and so does the reading time both in historical and psychological terms.Historically, the least time-consuming part is the detour we must make around the immediate association these loose-hanging objects evoke with the painting-objects of the Support/Surface movement.Goodwin's historical ancestors are elsewhere, not in readily identifiable individuals, but in a Symbolist hybrid of Proust and Cornell, Wallace Stevens and Mallarmé.These works begin with old tarpaulins which already contain a number of narratives of their past: seams, wrinkles, blots, discolorations, grommets, hand-sewn repair tears.\u201cThey retain their own history\u201d, says the artist, \u201cto which I add my own history\u201d.The additive process includes the folding and refolding of the material, a gestural activity that can take weeks or months to complete and whose signs remain visible.There are slight structural alterations as well, seams tightened to alter curves, bits of rope added; the creative process by which the mind fabricates memories tailor-made to fit the needs of the present is reproduced and objectified.The material is then impregnated with thin washes of gesso, an embalming process which preserves and highlights the visual anecdotes already in the canvas - no other incident is added.The results are keepsakes, effigies of time lived, compelling narratives that in succesive readings recount the most meaningful adventure artist and spectator can embark on: the preservation of time, the search for that tiny part of the past that can be retained.* Georges Bogardi 6 Joan's Apple Turnover, first exhibited at the Carmen Lamanna Gallery in 1970, is in many ways Royden Rabinowitch\u2019s earliest major effort as a serious and mature sculptor.It represents the first time that the artist had successfully integrated an original conic permutation with a wholly satisfying and self-contained sculptural form To fully experience this work in time is to bear witness to the gradual unfolding of a powerful and inseparable conjunction between a geometric concept with its physical manifestation in formed steel.While our initial impression of the brightly enameled Turnover is that of a wholly compact material object with a distinct gestalt all its own, we soon become aware of the smooth and inevitable transition from one clearly defined section to another.However, it is not long before we begin to suspect that its contours which expand and contract and expand again in an inspired sweeping horizontal arc inches above the floor are not there merely to elicit a pleasing visual sensation from the viewer but are there primarily to display the various discrete instances of a single ideal geometric concept of some sort.It is at this juncture in our viewing of the work that we see its crisply articulated and dynamic rhythms in terms of just such a principle: a point at the apex of a supine half cone expands to the full diameter of the cone's base and then diminishes to a single point again at the apex of a second, conjoined, half cone.It is now apparent that the success of Joan\u2019s Apple Turnover rests in its fusion of the mental with the essentially physical - that is to say, an abstract idea, in this case, that of the trajectory described by a point as it is rotated in space, is brought into contact with the imperatives and special exigencies inherent in transforming a pure idea into a concrete material thing.Rabinowitch achieves this fusion by completing this operation of extending a point in space and also simultaneously closing the partial volume of the two attached half cones in one and the same act.He rotates the point a full 180°around to the opposite end of the sculpture thereby forming in the process a fast\u201d semi-circular blade-like edge and an elegantly slopped flying wedge.Thus, what could have been a mere exercice in elementary Euclidean geometry is made into a distinctive, if somewhat ominous, sculptural form, one that is emphatically felt by the viewer to be sculpture and not a mathematical model.The grease cones (1971) are Royden Rabinowitch\u2019s last and most complete statement of the conic volume to date.Though a singularly brilliant and audacious invention in itself the grease cone is, in effect, a kind of cul-de-sac, an impasse which necessitates a significant change in the direction of Rabinowitch\u2019s art.As Rabinowitch himself has pointed out, while the grease cone seems to provide an especially effective means of presenting an unmodified full conic in an arresting and indeed, a compelling manner, it leaves the issue of volume itself problematic and unresolved.The layers of thick, opaque industrial grease arrest our perception of the interior volume of the grease cone at the level of its outer skin.We simply cannot penetrate beyond it.Could it be that, for Rabinowitch, the internal physical areas bounded by the walls of an object had become, in some primitive, deeply felt way, as real for him as an actual physical property of things as the shell that contained and gave them form and as real as the external surface which rendered them both tactile and visible.Indeed, it should be pointed out that grease cones as well as the Turnover and its predecessors, Conic Topography ( 1 968) and Red Conic (1 969), articulate a conception of volume which is fundamentally classic in character.For all these works are, in their very different ways, attempts to give form and substance to Rabinowitch\u2019s intense and private intuition of bound volume in general That is, in them, especially the Turnover and the grease cones, volume seems to be regarded as that aspect of any work of sculpture which gives dimension and body to its shape and surface and hence gives to that sculpture as a whole its full presence in the world In the Turnover volume (i e .the interior space of an ideal conic form) seems to have been pulled out and extended laterally creating in the process an altogether original form that keeps its essential identity as a conic and at the same time makes possible an entirely new and authentic vision of the conic interior.The grease cones, on the other hand, clearly and dramatically project a deeply profound awareness of the extreme modulation of interior space inherent in the basic conic form The rapid and inevitable diminution of this internal area from the cone's broad circular base to its tip is controlled by the degree of slope of its sides.The unmistakable sense of \"speed\u2019 of this closing in of space in any given grease cone seems to have a kind of tactile analogue in the slick, \"quick quality of the grease itself.¦ -¦ : \u2019 '\"Tv.; mÊÊm.WÊtSÊKÊÊKKÊÊÊÊm « '¦' ***** ¦ : : V *¦ ' iiiiirn| C lO x 7 GREASE CONE tt1 1970, steel and grease, mmsst fife ;5*-'^ !>V x;\u201e-\\ * ?fllllfl JOAN\u2019S GREASE COA/E, 1970, steel and grease 96\u201d x 12\u201d.JOANS APPLE TURNOVER, 1969, painted steel, 12\u201d x 96\u201d x 54\u201d.This rather perverse negative physical property known as volume and the desire on Rabinowitch\u2019s part to invent objects which clearly indicate its parameters and various conditions soon seem to gain an urgency for the artist which very quickly exhausts the possibilities of the conic itself as a suitable container.In fact, in the works that the grease cones for the next three years the cone is abon-doned by Rabinowitch in a concerted effort to make a totally unambiguous representation of volume.Rabinowitch takes up a method of construction in these pieces, i.e., tack welding thin plates of cold rolled steel together, which effectively indicates on the surface of the metal the actual condition of the sculpture\u2019s interior, namely that it is hollow.No doubt he chose the rectangular box for the standard shape in these works because it is as basic a form as there is and because it is ideal for those works containing several units, such as the hollow/solids (1973) and the volumetric sculptures (1974).As a modular unit the conic would have been altogether too unwieldy - it would have presented Rabinowitch with enormously involved technical problems and at the same time would have resulted in an inordi-nantly complex structure only diverted attention away from the main issues at hand.While the tack welded boxes may in the end be a bit all too pat and standardized a solution it does allow the sculptor to invent new and, I think, definitive models for situations involving any hollow object and to make concrete and tangible aspects of volume as a real physical condition in a precise and almost literal manner.Royden Rabinowitch\u2019s \u201cvolume pictures\u201d, shown the year after the grease cones, may collectively represent one of the most original and successful attempts to make a completely independent and logically inevitable wall sculptures in contemporary art history.What makes them even more important as wall sculptures than say Donald Judd\u2019s innovative cantilevered progressions of the mid-1960s is that the Rabinowitch pieces take full ironic advantage of the traditional convention that what normally goes on walls are pictures, which by custom are flat surfaces, hung flush against the wall, and whose framing edge has, in the course of twentieth century art, attained an increasingly crucial significance to the work as a whole.Between two small steel plates Rabinowitch has inserted short segments of metal along the edges and then sealed the plates together by mean of a rope weld.The ostensibly blank surface of the top most plate, the \u201cpicture\u201d as it were, has been discoloured by the heat of the welding process thereby calling attention to the real character of its construction.The indentations along the border edge of the plate subtly and unobtrusively indicate that there is a back, a front and sides to what at first appeared to be a simple flat image.But one has to finally move to one side and check the actual thickness of the edges in order to verify one\u2019s impression that the erstwhile \u201cpicture\u201d contains a shallow volume.By this simple but necessary physical act on the viewer\u2019s part one tacitly acknowledges the work s three-dimensionality, i.e., its salient sculptural quality.Despite their modest proportions and unassuming presence, the volume pictures\u2019 thorough invertion of the conventional distinctions between sculptural and pictorial art exhibits an exclusively contemporary attitude toward what are the legitimate possibilities of \u201cmeaning\u201d available to artists working today.If traditional sculpture treated volume more or less figuratively since the Renaissance, i.e., in the sense of roundedness and full proportions of the sculpted form, then Rabinowitch\u2019s presentation of it is, in contrast, relentlessly literal and direct.The gap between the artist\u2019s notion of volume and that of the scientist and the engineer has now after several centuries been closed by contemporary sculpture.It seems to me reasonable to say that something like Rabinowitch\u2019s wall plaque invention was virtually impossible before at least the 1960s.The hollow/solid sculptures (1973) may perhaps appear to take this kind of post-minimal fundamentalism a bit too far - their demonstration of certain basic conditions which occur to contained volumes seem at first to be all too clear focus.They seem to be devoid of the larger emotional resonance, the latent complexity and the sheer imaginative power of Rabinowitch\u2019s other work.Nevertheless, the hollow/solids do enlarge the scope of the sculptor\u2019s investigation of representing volume in significant ways.By placing the aluminum block on top of a welded steel box of equal size (all these sculptures are 12\u201d square and are from a total 1-1/2\u201d to 8\u201d in height) Rabinowitch presents the viewer with an absolutely unequivocal and lucid distinction between mass and volume.It\u2019s almost as if Rabinowitch had wanted to put an end once and for all to the inevitable and nagging question of whether a thing was really hollow or dense by showing the viewer both conditions in their purest states together in one and the same instant.One doesn\u2019t have to go up to the piece and tap the aluminum block or kick the tack-welded steel box to know the answer; one can tell simply by looking at their outer surfaces.If this primitive concatenation seems almost too obvious as an idea to carry much conviction, one has only to encounter the sculptures themselves to experience the intense and unique compression each of them projects.Indeed, curious and quite intriguing complications set in when we see a group of .ISSÎ! > 11 ¦¦HE '\u2022y.- : ;/ ' : ?î ¦ : ' ; : /.-V «¦¦11 8 Pijglj |ii | v f : \" B\u2014 ¦¦lli SfliflN ¦ll P'ypypp \u2022Mas Ml S&Ï .,.,;; ¦ ' ' ; ' p Wm.¦¦¦» - sOte* 4dS0S*f:;: these pieces together: it seems that merely by varying the height of each Rabinowitch can create a distinct presence and a specific \u201cmeaning\u201d in each individual piece However, it is only in the middle-size sculptures that Rabinowitch achieves an equilibrium between the mass above and the volume below, for in these particular pieces not only is the tack weld construction clearly visible but its implied volume (hollowness) is felt to be a palpable and separate entity in itself so that it seems to counterbalance and not merely suspend the aluminum mass above it.These are the only variations of the hollow/solids which totally succeed in projecting a stark dramatic constrast between the two extreme pure states of material being - both in the different ways each state presents itself visually to the viewer and in our fully intuited sense of their difference.The smaller versions; on the other hand, are virtually negligible in regard to this demonstrational aspect of the hollow/solid sculptures.They seem dominated by the clean, hard surfaces of their aluminum top sides.Their primary visual impact is that of a surface plane which is emphatically grounded to the floor.There is a wonderfully subtle tension created by the sculpture's overall impression of holding the tendency of its surface to hover or float above the floor, securely in permanent check.The aluminum section is just thick enough to exert the necessary downward pull.Because the weld marks on the steel box are difficult to distinguish from a distance we do not visually tend to regard it as a separate kind of entity from the aluminum.It simply creates enough of an apparent gap between the thin aluminum block and the floor for us to \u201cfeel\" the mass of the block The smaller hollow/solids are interesting in their own right because they are able to project a distinct if somewhat eerie presence despite its extremely modest scale.In the larger pieces we are made acutely aware of the oppressive mass of the aluminum block inspite of the fact that both the block and the box beneath it are of equal dimensions.This concentration of matter in the block seems so dense that we are forcefully reminded of the intense pull which gravity must have on it: it belongs directly and aquarely on the floor.The placing of a hollow steel shell between it and the floor effectively intensifies our impression of the steel box\u2019s resistence to the full force of the block as well as emphasizes the real tensil strength of the steel construction itself.Because of this the larger hollow/solids call attention to the actual physical properties of what in the other versions of this sculpture we automatically read as an ostensibly hollow container.Generally speaking The larger hollow/solids are extremely instructive insofar as they successfully counteract the tendency inherent in Rabinowitch\u2019s use of the tack weld markings (in order to indicate a hollow interior) throughout the works of this period, i.e , the volume pictures and the volumetries as well as the other hollow/solids, to become an altogether too external and too facile convention - to the extent that, after a while, one tends to lose sight of the physical side of what are afterall steel objects.In other words, we learn to recognize the outward sign and ignore the material thing it really is.UNTITLED #8, 1972, welded hot rolled steel.16\u201d x 14\u201d x 1/2\u201d.Finally our understanding of the significant differences between the various hollow/solids also helps us to appreciate Rabinowitch\u2019s keen and highly selective sense of experimentation.All he has done is alter one variable (the height) within an entire series of sculptures to produce distinct individual works that can stand on their own.His evident need to see what the variations on a given format would look like calls to mind the single question which seems central to all of his work so far, that is, the question of what would happen to an idea, clear and complete in and of itself, when it was made into te * iMÉP mv& u\" \" /* ?JSSI - v.A* «**?* ; îlM»*iÉ - ¦ *- 'WQ&l?v* Av \u2022-> fs ¦ UNTITLED *10, 1 973, welded cold rolled steel and aluminum, 1 2\u201d x 1 2\u201d x 1 0\u201d.*-1rSF flPpiP!ili§ UNTITLED 1974 #1, sandblasted steel -tack welded.7\u201d x 48 3/4\u201d x 132 3/4\u201d.4*\t^ -r\t¦ WSmiSmBs.' ®sgss ' .?^ -mm '*raj?7W .» ft?r* jg %f\tL i : MsÉSÉ * 4- mà \u2022: tS\u2018 m UNTITLED 1974 #2, sandblasted steel - tack welded, 5 3/4\u201d x 36 3/4\u201d x 108 3/4\u201c a concrete material object and was forced to occupy a real rather than an exclusively mental space.Thus, in the end, it is the viewer\u2019s perception and felt experience of a particular sculpture rather than his mere cognition of the idea behind it that is of primary concern to the artist.This aspect of the hollow/solids will be stressed even more in the succeeding works.As for the hollow/solids themselves, in respect to the issue of perception, they are so low keyed and unobtrusive that they not only test our normally lazy habits of seeing but tax them.The volumetric sculptures (1974) further extend Rabinowitch\u2019s depiction of volume beyond his two previous works in that these pieces do more than indicate the hollowness of an object by its external appearance; they provide a model of the fact that volume is also a specific well-defined area - an interior space which is something in itself quite apart from the walls of its container.What this amounts to of course is being able to make an essentially invisible roperty visible and Rabinowitch\u2019s solution in the volumetries is one of striking clarity and simplicity.His method of structuring the long tact welded steel boxes in a rough approximation of a rectangular shape is the key to understanding the work as a whole, in fact, to making any sense of the work at all.Imagine, for example, that you have two narrows of empty rectangular boxes and that the sum of the internal areas of all the boxes in both rows are exactly the same.(N.B.: the internal area is determined by measuring the area of a box from its inside walls.) If one row contained more boxes than the other row it would be slightly longer than the latter and the difference between the lengths of the two rows would be equal to the thicknesses of the walls of the additional box (or boxes).Because of this principle you can account for the indentations that occur along the outer edge of the volumetric sculptures simply by comparing the number of boxes in the adjoining rows.In this way we are made aware by means of drawing inferences from the ex- ternally visible signs that volume is the space contained and not the container.The volumetries also are the very first time that Rabinowitch has worked from the inside of a sculpture to the outside, for it is the interior dimensions of this piece which determine its exterior dimensions as well as its final form (shape).In this light then, the base-frame of these sculptures has to be regarded not as a kind of mold into which the various box elements have been fitted but simply as a means of fixing and securing as it were, finalizing, what is in effect the direct consequence of sculptures straight-forward additive procedure.But it is finally one\u2019s own experience in actually walking around these pieces that allows one to understand that the volumetries have a significance apart from their being astonishingly lucid demonstrations about the nature of volume; for it is only in this manner that we can truly appreciate their very special and important treatment of the perception of complex configurations.In Untitled #1, the larger of the two sculptures shown at Carmen Lamanna in 1 974, both the long expanse of more or less uniform grey close to the ground and the numerous in-divudual units cause one to lose one\u2019s bearing in the work.And because Rabinowitch has also arranged several units across the rows as well as length-wise in this piece one is forced to refer constantly to the edges rather than the top in order to understand the piece.Because of the greater complexity of the large volumetric's appearance we also find ourselves (again aided by the clues provided by the edges) having to assume that there is some standard unit of measurement used throughout the piece (as it happens the boxes vary by increments of one foot but of course there is no telling this by the eye alone).We also have to assume that the ultimate arrangement of the boxes is based on some undecipherable scheme of proportions.The large volumetric makes a significant statement because it sets up a distinction between a knowable kind of order, as defined by the parameters of the piece, and a perceptually unknowable order, that of the in- terrelationship between the individual box elements viewed from above.This reminds one somewhat of certain early works by Judd, Smithson and others in which a specific system such as an exotic mathematical series like the Fibonacci numbers were used to determine the arrangement of the individual parts of the work.These internal orders resulted in such a high degree of visual complexity that the viewer in most cases had to be told of their presence in the work in order to know it.Rabinowitch\u2019s large volumetric, on the other hand, supplies all the needed information about its internal structure within the work itself.More importantly, it informs us about the limits of one type of perception (direct vision) by making us use another type of perception (seeing by means of rational inference).In order to account for the extreme departure Kharakorum represents from the works which immediately preceed it, one can only speculate that the artist had begun to feel that all his attempts to contain and locate volume - even when they succeeded - had the effect of bringing into the world yet another nor\\-internally necessary object.Perhaps Rabinowitch had begun to suspect that the authority and conviction which his simple rectangular box and conic solutions once carried was due more to psychological considerations than to purely material ones: the reason for their validity and powerful generality might be that most viewers, including the artist himself, subconsciously always accept such forms as ultimate archetypal gestalts and feel confortable with the belief that no physical form could be more absolute and necessary than these.One can see oparating in Kharakorum, I think, the new and far more extreme assumption that really significant sculpture at this point in history has got to concern itself with the basic physical forces and conditions which effect the existence of all three dimensional things: the way, for example, gravity does.This assumption, once accepted, places a premium on justifying all instances of ver-ticality in a sculptural work and severely under- KHARAKORUM.1975, 1/4\u201d hot rolled steel - blued and oiled, 3 1/2\u201d x 66\" x 102\u201d - - * , ; ; 4 ¦AiéÊÈ > \u2022MWU& 11 mines one\u2019s belief in the primacy of certain elementary configurations such as the cone or the cube.(Furthermore, the shift to an emphasis on gravity and its imperatives effectively renders Rabinowitch's long-standing preoccupation with volume in general, largely surperfluous.) Under such premises a sculpture must justify within its own self-defined terms the building up of vertical dimensions above its horizontal plane, the horizontal distribution of the work's mass being the one thing granted as the inevitable starting point for the work In Kharakorum Rabinowitch has decided to combine the physical necessity of the flat sheet of hot-rolled steel with the logical necessity implicit in a geometric abstraction, in this case, the development of a plane in space.In other works, Rabinowitch, in effect, imposes upon the prone, solid steel plane a conceptually elegant superstructure based on what is essentially a (kind of) Euclidean abstract concept.(Never before has Rabinowitch so emphatically and so clearly separated the physical imperatives in a work from its essentially mental aspects.This isolation of the two, as we shall soon see, is absolutely crucial to his underlying intentions in this piece.) Again, the conceptual origin ofr each and every elevation in Kharakorum has to do with illustrating, \"demonstrating\u201d, the various possible ways a plane can be vertically extended in space and still retain its essential character as a flat plane.It is important that none of these elevations suggest volume.We can see by inspecting the sculpture from various points of view that all inflections and vertical developments in it rise up above the floor but do not enclose space to any appreciable degree.By restricting himself to these premises (contexts) Rabinowitch has become engaged in an impressive feat of imaginative compression in which a single idea (the flat extended plane) and the concentration of its possibilities (the various individual developments) are fused together in the same self-contained unit.Largely because of this compression, the new work requires, as none of Rabinowitch\u2019s previous works have, a radical reorientation on the part of the viewer in the way he perceives and in the quite special way he comes to finally understand it.Indeed, the nature of perception and how one is sometimes forced to look beyond immediate appearances of things is an issue which the artist treats with great originality in Kharakorum.Rabinowitch\u2019s sculptures of the previous three years accustomed the viewer to expect that the artist's intentions in a work (and hence the \"meaning\u201d of that work) would be revealed in the visible marks (such as the tact welds) of its actual process of construction.In Kharakorum, however, while we can clearly see how the piece was put together that information in itself does not tell much about what it is.The source of this sculpture\u2019s difficulty and complexity is that one\u2019s full experience of it is effectively distanced and stretched over a long period of time so that one must work one\u2019s way gradually into it from the outside, inwards, as it were.That is to say, a separation has been induced by the artist between what one initially sees and the idea (rational) behind the work as a whole: the two are no longer one and the same thing.The fact of the matter is that our immediate involvement in the work is basically perceptual and hence primarily with the stunning compositional effects it possesses.In contrast to the continuous flow of Joan\u2019s Apple Turnover, Kharakorum confronts the viewer with an ever changing series of altogether discrete views as he moves around the work.Its \"visual center of gravity \u2019 shifts significantly which each change in position and, while some are more interesting than others no one view seems to have priority over the others, i.e., there is no starting point visually in the piece.It is something of a paradox that this frag- mentation and essential discontinuity of the spectator's experience is brought about by a work that is so physically compact and whose internal structure has been so superbly and tightly organized.Rabinowitch has shrewdly selected and located all of the individual elements in Kharakorum.The large and imposing elliptical shape is in itself an inspired stroke of imagination.At the most acutely angled corner of the sculpture (see photograph ) the tip of this illepsis, ever so slithtly yet emphatically askew, lies in dramatically close proximity to the converging outer edges of the major plane.Here, compressed into a single epiphanic instant of total lucidity, the powerful dynamics and complex internal tensions within the work unfold before us and offer us a prime example of the exquisitely constructed views in Kharakorum.After a while one begins to lock beyond the purely compositional function of such elements as the accreted planes, i.e., the large illepsis and the open center parallelogram, and starts to see them as the totally autonomous and ulterly mysterious shapes they are in themselves.Each seems to have a compelling and ultimately inexplicable existence of its own.It Robinowitch has concentrated the exciting visual stimulus, which intially captures our attention, in the constructed views, he has more or less isolated what most disturbs and moves us in this sculpture within the curiously fascinating shapes of these two planes.They strike us as emotional or psychic absolutes rather than as purely geometric paradigms.As in the case of the conic overtones inherent in Kharakorum, as mentioned earlier, the pungent memorable, shapes of the accreted planes are proof that Rabinowitch has in effect, followed certain elementary geometric configurations beyond their existence as pure intellectual entities which seem to possess a seemingly independant life of their own to the place where they live deep within the imagination of us all.In the end, one must come to the conclusion that the composition, that is, the setting up of distinct views, and shapes of the accreted planes are, for all their calculated effectiveness and subliminal power, the results of essentially arbritary choices.They are not in themselves, despite their obviously deliberate appearance, the final justification (reason) for why the sculpture has been constructed the way it has.For example, the structured views seem to be permeated by an underlying cohesion and the tough integrity of a central core of identity which suggests to the viewer that are they not there primarily for the striking visual effects they present, as they certainly would be in a formalist sculpture say by Caro or Murray.One is in effect expected to seriously ask himself why things are the way they are.This question calls attention to all the individual elements in Kharakorum, the flatness of the major plane and its inflection, all the planer developments, as well as the shapes of the accreted planes, and hence to their justification: the idea of the development of a uniform plane in space and the unavoidable restreint on all material things by gravity.In this respect, one realizes upon reflection that the shapes of the accreted planes are not ends in themselves for all their salient presence - and that they could have theoretically been exchanged for other shapes and really any number of other shapes - for the only absolute requirement made upon the accreted planes per se is that they be flat and parallel to the major plane.Seen in this light, Kharakorum becomes a brilliant model for aesthetic decisionmaking in general: it analyzes the distinct phases (areas) and parameters of this process and puts them all together in a single work.The viewers experience of the work is such that he is lead step by step to each separate and clearly defined level of this process - not as it relates only to this piece itself but as occurs in any work of art.Looking back overRabinowitch\u2019s total output during the past decade one can detect an almost inevitable succession of deeply interrelated shifts in the artist\u2019s basic concerns as a serious sculptor which lead from one work to that which follows it.From a restless and intense preoccupation with trying to create a definitive and emotionally compelling model of bound volume, which was to culminate in Joan\u2019s Apple Turnover and the grease cones, Rabinowitch goes on to isolate and give concrete form to the highly illusive and intangible characteristics of volume itself.In attempting to clarify and extend our understanding of volume Rabinowitch discovers for himself an important distination between an object as it exists in the world and the viewer\u2019s perception of it.The assumption inherent in the early work from the Turnover up to the hollow/solids that the two were, for his purposes at hand, virtually equivalent are increasingly challenged in his later work Rabinowitch\u2019s growing critical awareness of the vagaries of human perception and his understanding of how that awareness can be put to use in the making of new sculptures really begin in a general way with the larger volumetric and are focused and deepened in Kharakorum.The simple, discrete gestalts of all his previous works give way to visually more complex and essentially non-iconic character of the two recent pieces.This awareneas, however, is not treated as an end in itself but becomes a means whereby Rabinowitch can extend his work as a whole in an entirely new direction.He is now free to enter into a concentrated investigation of the nature of art objects in general - not in terms of their essential physical properties as before but as the cumulative product of a series of conscious aesthetic decisions on the part of their maker.Confronting a work such as Kharakorum, the viewer is forced to draw upon the resources of his own imagination and perception in order to discover and re-enact the mental acts which have made the sculpture the way it is.With the grease cones, the volume pictures, and, to a lesser extent, the larger volumetric, Royden Rabinowitch has unquestionably produced sculptures fully capable of taking their place in con-tempary art by virtue of their own achievement.Kharakorum, on the other hand, decisively marks the start of a profound new phase whose implications and real significance will only be made truly clear by the work Rabinowitch himself will do in the next few years.a 12 ¦MM : ; WÊtm iiliÜ 'lê\ty ' \\ i ; WËÊê: \u2014 ¦ - i V: ;\t'\t¦: ¦\t.\t: ' .¦ .In regard to the Black Paintings (Pretext and text) by Philip Fry Beginning June 7, 1 975, Ron Martin had a one-man exhibition at the Carmen Lamanna Gallery.The works shown had a great deal to do with a literal use of paint as substance.The main body of the following text - printed here in regular type - was written in late June and early July, 1975.While I was doing the background work, I wrote Ron Martin asking for clarification of certain points that I then felt had some relevance as facts.Martin replied, refusing to supply answers and raising serious doubts about my approach to his work.Taken aback by this response, I abando ned the project for a while, attempting to reassess my purposes and attitudes.I finally decided to finish the article, but with some misgivings.There was, after all, something quite right in what Martin had to say.About a month later, mentioning my uneasiness, I asked Charles Gagnon to read the text.We had already talked about Martin\u2019s work.He pointed out what he felt to be a wide gap between what I had written on Martin\u2019s paintings and the kind of questions I raised about them in the secure context of friendly conversation.In fact, rather than raising questions, the original text side-stepped the central issues by adopting a relatively impersonal, formal approach.But it seemed that the text nevertheless had some validity as a symptom of my difficulties in coming to terms with writing about work that is couched in an essentially subjective reality.The facts - whatever facts may be - also remain.The upshot of all this was my decision that, if it were to be published, the text would have to stand as written.Some kind of commentary would be added as a corrective device.These additions have been printed in italics.LOOKING There were twelve paintings in the show; all of them were executed with black acrylic paint on canvas and all measured 84\u201d by 66\u201d (1).The paintings did not however, seem to constitute one, unified series.The earliest work in the show, dated July 3, 1973 and entitled The Last Painting, stood more or less alone.Four other paintings, dated from November 1973 to January 1974, resembled each other with that kind of likeness that helps identify members or a family in a crowd; through forming a homogeneous group, each was nevertheless easily distinguished from the others, mainly by the arrangement o4 surface patterns.The remaining seven paintings, begun in November 1 974, would seem to constitute a series that perhaps has not yet been completed One of the reasons I became involved in this descriptive exercise was that I felt a definite need to sort out my first impressions of the Black Paintings.My questions arose from a visit I made to Martins\u2019s studio about two months before the show.The main issue concerned the focus of Martin\u2019s work: Are the paintings \u201cfinished\u201d works that stand on their own in virtue of their material and formal qualities, or are they better understood as some kind of document that refers to the artist\u2019s subjective experience?If, as suggested by the context and the artist's own statements, the latter should be the case, what does the idea \u201cpainting-as-record\u201d imply?Martin might, for exam- INSTALLATION SHOT One Man Exhibition at the Carmen Lamanne Gallery - June 7-26, 1 975. .1 11 \\V- ' ; \", - ¦ « -J \u2022 ' H m4- \\, ' ~ 'j ?;:V'ÏÀi, mmm 4 THE LAST PAINTING, 1973, black acrylic (aquatec) on canvas, 84\u201d x 66\u201d IRON OXIDE - MARS BLACK #1, 1 973, black acrylic (aquatec) on canvas, 84\u201d x 66\u2019 pie, feel that the activities of working with a definite quantity of black paint at such and such a time and piace is essentially a growth process, aimed at augmenting and/or perfecting his own experience.Should this be the case, the resultant paintings are little more than by-products, the left-overs of an activity that originated and terminated within the same subject.In that event, the difficult thing to understand would be why Martin would want to show his left-overs to the public.crease in the amount of paint used in the group of four paintings, but even this is considerably less than the quantity employed for the most recent works.For each of these, up to seven gallons of paint taken directly from the container were used.Several small portions of bare primed canvas, while setting up visual opposition between covered and non-covered areas, accentuate the over-all articulation of the image.The other possibility is that Martin takes steps to organize the process so that it terminates with an and product.It seems to me that part of this is done when he postulates the conditions that govern a given set of paintings.In some previous works, the artist\u2019s actions as he applied paint can be traced to some degree, and to that extent the idea of calling the painting a \u201crecord\u201d of the process seems appropriate.But it seems to me that the quantity of paint used in the new work calls for a revision of this idea., what, in fact, is a record that erases itself, or document that obliterates its own content?I should also add that when I was in the studio, I saw some drawings pinned on the wall.They were of human figures - heads I think - swallowing themselves.That is very much what I felt was happening in the paintings - the paint was swallowing itself.Why would Martin - or any artist for that matter - bother to make a painting that \u201cswallows\u201d itself if he cares about it as a \u201cproduct\u201d of his efforts?The most readily apparent, objective difference between the earliest and the latest of the works in the show is the quantity of paint used in their production.In this regard, The Last Painting appears to be related to Martin\u2019s One Colour Paintings in which approximately one gallon of paint mixed with gel and acrylic medium were used.There is a distinct in- To avoid further confusion, I should perhaps mention that the purpose of this text is not to inform the reader about the appearance of Martin\u2019s paintings, as if words could be a substitute for actually seeing the works.The questions I had in mind were concerned with how to pin down the various differences between the paintings while trying to come to some conclusions about whether the way these paintings look really matters at all.If the appearances are deemed important, then the problem would seem to consist in discovering which differences really do make a difference when trying to understand the works.In The Last Painting, long, sinuous strokes tend to group in a dominantly vertical arrangement, frequently crossing each other and creating localized incidents either of overlapping or of partial erasure.Although also subject to partial obliteration by subsequent strokes, contact points where the brush first encountered the canvas and termination marks where the brush lifted from it, punctuate the image with a slight excess of paint and muddled areas resulting from an arrested thrust of the brush.Slightly above the middle, there is a dense group of what appear to be finger or knuckle mark spreading across the canvas, establishing a strong horizontal axis.These relatively small-scale squiggles have obliterated some of the larger strokes; conversely, there are clear passages in which the hand or arm-scaled activity has wiped out the finger marks.Both kinds of mark have been applied with a degree of force, leaving streaks of relatively thin paint; these streaks are perceived as having a lighter value than the paint itself.If The Last Painting is seen as a loosely-woven network of streaks and marks, the organization of the image suggests that it is a record of the sequence of the artist\u2019s activity as he applied paint to the canvas.The closely related notions of applying, spreading out and covering would seem to dominate this work even if the more detailed small-scale marks indicate some concern about the appearance of the final image.With the four paintings dating from November 1 973 to January 1 974, there seems to have been a shift in emphasis from applying paint to the surface of the canvas to the process of working with paint on the canvas.There are, as might be expected, some similarities with the older piece that go beyond the questions of colour and format.The artist has continued to leave a few small uncovered areas and there are some finger grooves that force their way through the paint almost to the surface of the canvas.But there the similarities end.In all the paintings of this group, finger marks are predominant, usually in the form of parallel furrows that appear in sets of four, five or even more.These sets are grouped and tend to break up the image into fairly distinct areas of activity knit together by overlapping marks at their loosely defined edges.They nevertheless appear as focal points of the artist\u2019s work with the paint.Smooth, hand-width strokes-do appear in Conceal Honestly, but they end up as finger marks or are partially obliterated.A-Face-Facing-A-Face #5 and Iron Oxide - Mars Black #1 , incorporating a number of loose, sometimes DIONYSOS TORN LIMB FROM LIMB, #16, 1075 black acrylic (aquatec) on canvas, 84\u201d x 66\u201d.-mm.> scratchy marks, are relatively busy paintings when compared to Use, a more tranquil work in which a fair amount of paint has been allowed to accumulate along the contours of several sweeping strokes as well as at attack and termination points.To a great extent the sheer quantity of paint used to produce ihe seven more recent works determines their visual impact and suggests the qualities of massiveness, abundance and serene opulence that are their most striking characteristics.The finger marks that were so evident in the previous group now appear as partially absorbed traces: their definition is much less clear, their edges rounder, as though the substance of the paint refused to stay put while the artist was working.Arcs and troughs somewhat wider than a hand's length, repeatedly plowing through the paint and massing it in some areas, have been used to arrange the main elements of the image.In Dionysos Torn Limb from Limb, for example, an arc curves away from the center of the painting in contrast to the more angular furrows found in the same area of the work.Along the edges of the main troughs and at their intersections, there is a considerable build-up of paint that seems to be on the point of sliding back into the hollows.The accumulation of paint continues over and wraps around the edges of the canvas.Towards the top and bottom left corners, pools of paint have seeped over the furrows; elsewhere ridges of paint have been partially reclaimed by the paint body.I think that it would be excessive to suggest that Martin has allowed the paint to actually \u201ctake over\" the painting, but he seems to have arranged a state of affairs that \u2019\u2019captures\" a moment in which the paint as a quasi-subject is on the point of taking over, begin- ning to assume its rights and threatening to advance into the territory marked out by the artist.All of this seems to suggest a relationship between the artist and his work that cannot be reduced to a new version of Abstract Expressionism.There does not seem to be any common measure between personal experience as grasped within the confines of a subject having the experience and the actions by which or in which this experience is geared to external realities.If the notions of \u201crecording\u2019\u2019 or \u201cdocumenting\u2019\u2019 the actual sequence of the artist's activity break down because the paint itself is allowed to cast doubts on the permanence of the external activity-marks, could this not be so in order to permit the paintings to stand as sheer evidence of the fact that other, purely subjective, events have taken place?Tempting as it may be to use works such as \"bending\u201d and \u201cfolding\u201d to describe certain things that happen in these paintings, they suggest attributes that are too brittle and dry to convey the feeling of an advancing, oozing edge that separates areas retaining the imprint of the artist's activity from the masses of paint attempting to establish their own equilibrium.These works are embodiments of the artist\u2019s experience working with a given quantity of paint.It is not at all irrelevant that the works used to describe subjective feelings about this group of paintings spontaneously tend to be strongly affective, sensual and based on a metaphor of the body.CONNECTING When coming to grips with an artist\u2019s new work, one of the things that can happen is the discovery of connections with the artist\u2019s previous work (2).At first these links might be vague and tenuous, perhaps no more than a hunch about format or a suspicion about the way paint is used, but if they are pursued they contribute something to an understanding of the work.Tracking down relationships of this sort is not so much a question of trying to discover the artist\u2019s personal motives as it is an attempt to determine what concerns are manifested in the whole body of work attributed to the artist (3).Whether Ron Martin\u2019s Black Paintings mark the end of a work sequence that included, among others, the One Colour Paintings and the Bright Red Paintings, or whether they are the beginning of a new sequence does not seem as important right now as the fact that they do seem to have a lot to do with our way of understanding his past work.Martin tends to formulate his ideas in binary terms that bear some seed of contradiction; his work would seem to consist in resolving these contradictions, not on a theoretical plane, but through the process of enacting a bond between these terms in a group or series of paintings.The main sets of terms that he has talked about are reality / appearance, original / copy, subject / object, body / mind, evidence /truth and self / other (4).Several of these sets function within any given series of work and the importance attributed to any one of them depends to a great extent on the viewer.When writing the original text, I tended to avoid questions about the self/other relationship.It made me wonder about Martin\u2019s motives and I felt that that was none of my business.But the inescapable fact bound up with the impact of the recent works is that there seems to be something gratuitious about his approach.Even if it is not a put-on-an idea that comes from the fact that the work is entirely postulated, I think - and if it is centered on serious self - exploration, what earthly good can the results of such activity be to someone else?The situation created is unusual.For one of these paintings to be of some importance to me, they must be the occasion of something happening to me that I value.Now, if they are no more than sheer evidence that something subjective has happened to Martin, then, to appreciate the work, I must already be concerned about Martin in more than a remote way.I can respond to \u201csomething\u2019\u2019 happening to one of my friends or a culture hero, but not to an anomymous subjectivity.In such a context, the question: Who is the artist?is linked very closely to the other: What is art?Another possible approach could be that Martin, while working, creates a kind of theatre set which, after serving to modify and explicate his experience, remains after the fact as a prop for the viewer's exploration of his own feelings and attitudes.Beyond the strong sense of presence created by these works, there does not seem to be any attempt at \u201ccommunication''.What they seem to do is throw the viewer back on his own personal resources in order to \u201cdeal with\" the presence.Not such a tough thing with these paintings because of their open sensuality.Before he began working on the Conclusion and Transfer series, Martin painted landscapes and domestic interiors on plywood with enamel (5).But, as he has pointed out, even if he liked the colours just as they were shown on the Cilux paint chart and the flat, hardedged forms he was using, he felt that these paintings were only one way of getting at more important matters having to do with feelings and attitudes.He found something particularly bothersome about the fact that the landscape paintings only dealt with the appearances of things, leaving aside essential questions concerning the reality of the artist\u2019s work as an expressive process.The first set of contractions, reality/appearance, was tackled in the form of the opposition between original work and its copy in the Conclusion and Transfer series.Around 1967, Martin began to make abstract collages which he called Conclusions, apparently to indicate that they were the end product of a process initiated within his own person and therefore truly original in the sense of being at the source of the beginning.Each of these Conclusions also bore a name printed with a rubber stamp - Matisse, Brodzky, 15 Rans - that, with obvious exceptions, denoted people in the artist\u2019s immediate locality.To make a Transfer, the artist copied the original collage with enamel on a piece of plywood considerably larger than the collage.The differences between the Conclusion and its Transfer were immediately evident, permitting the viewer to identify and then distinguish the original from the copy.In another group of paintings dealing with the same problem, the Conclusions were hard-edged, geometric works executed on shaped canvas; they stood in much the same relationship to the artist as the earlier Conclusions except for the exclusion of the rubber-stamped names that served to anchor the artist\u2019s subjective activity in a definite context (6).But in this new group of works, the same paint, the same visual elements and canvas of the same shape and dimensions as used for the Conclusions were likewise used to make the Transfers.Exacting as they were, these Transfers were nevertheless copies: the main difference had to do, not with the elements given to perception after the fact of production, but with the way judgements could be made about them.The significant differences concerned the Conclusion\u2019s immediate and prior bond with the originating activity of the artist as opposed to the Transfer\u2019s secondary, mediated position in regard to the artist's work schedule (7).Once produced, each painting\u2019s material or substantial singularity was expressed by little more than its temporal and spatial coordinates.Around 1 969 Martin noticed that the appearance of a group of intersecting lines changes according to the position or view-point of the viewer.At that time, he was working on water colours, using a number of parallel, distinct brush strokes about one inch long within a grid system.He subsequently modified this approach, using two sets of brush strokes, one com- posed of two vertical strokes almost joined by an oblique to form a tight N configuration, the other of two horizontal and an oblique, forming a flat Z configuration.The strokes in each set were of one, two or three colours and were laid out on the grid by alternating the vertical and horizontal sets in some of these works, penciled numbers appear behind the strokes, indicating the placement of colours according to a code relative to each piece.When viewing these works from quite near, the underlying order and the individual brush stroke elements are very clear.In a sense, that is their reality.From further away, however, they are perceived as something else, that is more or less intricate patterns of colour (8).Martin\u2019s World Paintings work with the same principles on a larger scale; the question of reality and appearance constantly recurrs but the artist s concern with the respective roles of mind and body also comes to the forefront (9).Two works from 1969 and 1970, Close-foot and Foot-close, use the same elements as the water colours, alternating one-colour stroke sets in a grid of two-inch squares.Although loose, the patterning effect is clear.No colour code numbers are apparent.The size of the grid was reduced to one-inch squares for the World Paintings, tightening the patterning effect of the image.Martin varied his approach to the colour code to be used in each painting to some degree.In some cases, the numbers represent individual colours; in these instances, when a stroke set used only one colour, only one number appears in each square.If the sets admit of two or three colours, the appropriate numbers appear together in the square, apparently with no concern for their order.In other cases, one number represents a complete set of strokes no matter how many colours it contains.For example, in World #37, the following code was used for both the vertical (left to right) and the horizontal (top to bottom) strokes: 1.\tViolet, blue, blue 2.\tBlue, green, green 3.\tGreen, brown, brown 4.\tBrown, rose, rose 5.\tRose, red, red 6.\tRed, orange, orange 7.\tOrange, yellow, yellow 8.\tYellow, violet, violet The importance of the order used in this system is underscored by an apparent exception in World #35: if the numbers and order used for the vertical sets are taken as a base, then, in regard to certain numbers, there are variants in the horizontal sets for oblique stroke only.For example, No.2 is brown, black, blue on the vertical, but becomes brown, red, blue on the horizontal.The most obvious principle behind the code development would seem to be the identification of the last colour stroke in each number with the first stroke in the subsequent number and finally the last stroke of the series with the first The actual use of the code by applying numbers to the grid is a subject of debate.According to some affirmations, it would seem that the actual placement was guided more by the artist\u2019s intuition than by an idea of what the resultant pattern would actually look like.The results obtained in World #18, a smaller work than those usually associated with the series, suggest that on the contrary, considerable care was taken in view of the final image.The colour code, for example, is worked out so that relative values can be attributed to the different sets: DETAIL DRAWING, 1970.WORLD #37, 1970.acrylic on canvas, 60\u201d x 84\u201d.*&*¦*'* raft» \u2022few*/ Tii\u2019j, 5\t% &; ; r«r, ;\t: r\t- \u2022;:vx - \u2022 ^ & a ,\t' \u2019 .y M V '\t7 ax there is an increase in doubt about its purpose which generates a situation of extreme ambiguity.A distinction between substance and colour seems to be implied by a series of water colours without colour that Martin painted in the summer of 1973.These works involve no pigment whatsoever; water was simply brushed onto the paper and the resultant wrinkles formed the image (12).Even if the \u201csubstance\u201d of this paint evaporated once it was used, it still was the major element in the painting process.A similar distinction would seem to be reflected in one of the Black Paintings in the recent exhibition: Iron Oxide - Mars Black 1.In this title, \u201ciron oxide\u201d designates a component of the paint substance and seems to indicate the paint\u2019s reality as a thing in itself; \u201cmars black\u201d refers to the perception of the paint as colour, recalling the problem of appearance and the paint\u2019s existence as a thing for vision.Only recently it has occurred to me that a number of notions I thought I understood are really very fuzzy and need a grat deal more exploration.\u201cDocumenting\u201d, \u201crecording\u201d, \u201cenacting\u201d, \u201cperforming\u201d and \"embodying\u201d have to do with \u201cevidence\u201d and \u201cprocess\u201d as ex- ternally perceptible functions of current \u201creality\u201d.They nevertheless have something to do (by way of reference?) with \u201cexperience\u201d which, because it is a dimension fo subjective existence, always escapes exteriority in some way.If the bond between exterior and interior reality has to do with our sense of presence in the world, then Martin\u2019s work would seem to have a lot to do with the manner in which this sense is triggered.FEELING Considered within a context that also contains works with the limpid, rational clarity of the World 'Paintings, the Black Paintings appear all the more opaque to the spirit, holding reason at bay.They are massive, imposing physical presences, goading, urging and recalling a mind only too prone to dispel a sense of place by naming names: sweep, furrow, trough and overflow.These works are for the eyes that are of the body but mainly for being here, being here that is this way and no other.As if Rilke s ascending angels had come down to earth.notes 1.\tThe show also contained an object entitled Dedicated to Jackson Pollock that contained a tube of Aquatec Mars Black paint immersed in water contained by a glass jar and presented on an ornate, antique-gold wall bracket.The work suggests relationships that haven\u2019t been developed here, notably Pollock\u2019s and Martin\u2019s common tendency to seek in-put from written sources.2.\tConnections with other people\u2019s work also appear and raise legitimate questions.My feeling is that these questions are rarely well answered unless the artist\u2019s work is grasped in the first place as a set of internal relationships that can be used subsequently for comparative purposes.3.\tWhen they can be ascertained from credible sources, an artist\u2019s intentions can serve to orient this kind of investigation to the degree that they are effectively manifested in the work.In this sense one could speak of the \u201cobjective intentionally\u201d of a body of work - if it didn\u2019t sound so self-contradictory.Three texts of Martin\u2019s have been used here: \u201cFor Pierre\u201d in the 18 J.:- warn lg| Ri SJB ' ill .jffP O ¦*> ¦*y*+ ,# *,****»' .H .\u2022\u2022\u2022\u2022:\u2022/ : .T m : \u2022¦ ¦' -: ;¦ ¦;¦ :#ép** GUELPH TRIP - ONE & TWO #17,1975, black acrylic (aquatec) on canvas, 84\u201d x 66\u201d.catalogue Boucherville Montreal Toronto London.The national Gallery of Canada, 1 973; \u201cConversation, October 12, 1973, Between Ron Martin and Anne Garwood\u201d in the catalogue Ron Martin, London Public Library and Art Museum, 1974; and \u201cJoan Murray interviews Ron Martin\u201d Canadian Forum, L111 (Feb.1 974).4.\tThere is another set of terms that has to do with the relationship between the texts Martin has written or dictated about his work and the work itself.Potential contradictions appear mainly in those parts of the texts that deal with the viewer\u2019s approach to the work.While claiming to address the works to the viewer\u2019s sense of liberty, he is curiously directive about how they should be seen and what values they represent.5.\tSee Anne Brodzky\u2019s review of this work in Artscanada, No.108 (May 1967), p.5.6.\tDavid Rabinowitch reviewed this work in Artscanada, No.134/135 (Aug.1969) p.36.7.\tOne of the interesting things about these works is that if they are considered on a different level as a pair, the Transfer has a kind of originality that reflects back on the Conclusion as one of its conditions.8.\tThe water colours were reviewed by Ross Woodman in Artscanada, No.148/149 (Oct.-Nov.1970), p.81.9.\tThe World Paintings were reviewed by Gary Michael Dault in Artscanada, No.154/155 (April-May 1971), pp.66-68.10.\tMartin discusses these paintings with Gary Michael Dault in \u201cTalking with Ron Martin\u2019\u2019, Artscanada, No.166/67/68 (Spring 1972), pp.90-91.11.\tOne aspect of these works that is of considerable interest concerns the socialization of the viewer\u2019s experience of colour.If red has a fairly good chance of triggering notions of fire, heat, blood danger and revolt, white, at least since Melville and Joyce, is particularly ambiguous.12.\tThis use of substance also brings the ideas of evidence and truth into play.The gesture by which the water is brushed onto the paper is the immediate, \u201ctrue\u201d, sign of the artist\u2019s personal, expressive activity; the wrinkles left on the paper, while being conditioned by the water, are only the evidence of what once happened there in a substantial manner.Because they stand as it were between the viewer and the artist\u2019s non-mediated act, the wrinkles conceal the truth of the original act at least partially.In the Black Paintings, the same relationship remains a central problem, but it is approached somewhat differently because the substance does not disappear.The artist's gestures while painting (truth -personal expression) are embodied in the shifting and moving about of the paint; the record of this activity (evidence -the form given to the paint while painting) is however only partial because the paint, in flowing back upon the forms, tends to conceal the truth.On the question of truth and evidence, see the brief text: \u201cRon Martin - October 3, 1 973\u201d in Six London Artists #2, Catalogue, The London Public Library and Art Museum, g 19 CLAUDE MONGRAIN entretien avec France Morin NOTES Bien qu\u2019elles découlent de la perception que j\u2019ai de la réalité, mes sculptures ne visent pas à projeter une image de cette réalité.Le sens d\u2019une sculpture sera la résultante de l\u2019organisation matérielle de ses composantes.Chacune est perceptible pource quelle est et compréhensible sans références extérieures.L\u2019énergie en présence s'exprime réellement et aucune illusion ne contribue à créer une image métaphorique.Toute sculpture qui affirme la primauté du sens sur la forme est nécessairement idéaliste, animiste et anthropomorphique.Toutes les relations (des parties entre elles et de chaque partie au tout) sont nécessaires à la configuration de l'ensemble.Le réel en sculpture, c\u2019est la matière.Dans la mesure où la sculpture est liée à l\u2019utilisation de la matière, le sculpteur ne peut échapper aux caractéristiques fondamentales qui la déterminent: la forme, l\u2019ordre et la position.Assumer la \u201cmatérialité\u201d de l\u2019oeuvre, c\u2019est s\u2019inscrire dans une problématique où le sens se définit à partir de l\u2019information véhiculée par la sculpture même et non pas par référence immédiate à une réalité qui lui est extérieure et qu\u2019on pourrait lui associer de fa- çon métaphorique ou symbolique.Un système est un assemblage plus ou moins complexe d\u2019éléments en interaction.Tous les systèmes ont une tendance inhérente au changement.L\u2019état statique serait la phase ultime de ce processus, l\u2019expression d\u2019un niveau d\u2019ordre supérieur résultant de l\u2019équilibre de l\u2019énergie à l\u2019intérieur d\u2019un système.La création artistique, prise comme l\u2019expression d\u2019une liberté individuelle et la résultante d\u2019un travail auto-déterminé dirigé vers la connaissance ne saurait être confondue avec les modes de production capitalistes et les valeurs bourgeoises qui le sous-tendent, non plus qu\u2019assigné à une fonction utilitaire à l\u2019intérieur d\u2019un système socialiste.L\u2019art, dans la mesure où il a pour objet le développement de la pensée, devient incompatible avec tout système qui ne SANS TITRE.1975.bois, aluminium, béton, 92\u201c x 48\u201c x 30\u201c sa §j ¦ iis ^ fin llSi mmgm ¦ JS *\u2022 .4- .\t/- ', '*¦ silflil ITT* S* -\t- i:,- ¦ i ¦ ' éSÊÊÊÊ Sés! , * %% WÊÊ&!|MKJ «fia mm I® * mm * ¦é».20 % SANS TITRE, 1974, bois corde, roche, 6\u2019 x 7\u2019 x 8\u2019.\tSANS TITRE, 1974, bois, corde, roche, 4\u2019 x 40\u201d x 8'6\u201d.r \\ WBSÊHt :: ¦ , TT\"**w\t- r-\"1 liü mmm x mmSmm, IMP mmë- propose pas une définition nouvelle de l\u2019activité humaine.Car ce qui est en cause dans la question de l\u2019insertion de l\u2019art dans la société, c\u2019est la définition même du travail.Toute idéologie qui vise à perpétuer la notion de travail (l\u2019homme au service de la machine pour la production de biens consommables) comme activité essentielle, entrera inévitablement en conflit avec la pensée artistique.La seule possibilité de réconciliation réside dans le développement de la machine qui, en assurant la production, permettra à tout homme d\u2019exercer librement l\u2019usage de sa pensée et de déterminer librement les moyens qu\u2019il entend prendre pour développer cette connaissance de l\u2019univers vers laquelle doit tendre toute activité humaine.Claude Mongrain, septembre 1 975 Extrait d\u2019un entretien entre Claude Mongrain et France Morin réalisé les 9 et 11 décembre 1975.Les questions posées ont été supprimées car elles n\u2019avaient pour but que de permettre à l\u2019artiste de parler de son travail.Dans mon travail, il y a un lien inséparable entre la structure et la forme, la structure prise comme l\u2019ensemble des relations entre les éléments.De l\u2019utilisation des éléments premiers, à partir de leur forme, leur contour, leur volume, leur densité et de leur combinaison, découle une image; mais à ces éléments, aucune image n\u2019est rattachée à priori, aucune référence extérieure.Une image globale se crée, qui découle de la structure même de l\u2019objet, qui est conséquente à son organisation et qui peut sembler en contradiction apparente avec la structure de l\u2019objet.Pour revenir à la subjectivité dans mon travail, dans le choix des matériaux, il y a sûrement une part subjective; au début je travaillais avec des objets trouvés mais il s\u2019est posé un problème de transposition: ces objets trouvés imposaient une limite de format, (une brique par exemple) et aussi le fait que je ne veux pas au départ, comme je le disais tantôt, qu\u2019il y ait de référence extérieure de rattacher aux composantes de la sculpture.Mais le choix des matériaux, leur coloration, c\u2019est finalement secondaire.Ce qui est subjectif, c\u2019est le choix de l\u2019image globale qui résulte de la manipulation et de l\u2019organisation des éléments premiers.Que la sculpture fonctionne n\u2019est qu\u2019une condition première et l\u2019assemblage ne vise pas à démontrer de façon quantifiable que ça marche vraiment, l\u2019assemblage ne vise pas à une simple démonstration.A partir des mêmes éléments, il pourrait y avoir différentes organisations possibles, et sûrement que certaines pourraient être plus descriptives que d\u2019autres.Je pars de certains éléments et je les combine en laissant suffisamment de place au hasard pour que puisse apparaître une configuration inattendue.A la limite, pour que ce soit strictement objectif, on pourrait incorporer à la sculpture des instruments de mesure, indiquer des déplacements possibles ou faire une série de constructions qui soient des variantes possibles d\u2019une organisation donnée et où la série véhiculerait des informations sur le fonctionnement de la sculpture.Mais je ne travaille pas dans cet esprit-là, je ne le fais pas dans le sens strictement didactique d\u2019une démonstration qui viserait à mesurer ce qui se passe, c\u2019est intéressant dans la mesure où le fonctionnement peut générer une organisation qui soit imprévisible et ambiguë.Pour revenir à l\u2019élément hasard, il occupe une place importante dans mon travail.C\u2019est à dire que mon approche doit laisser place à des développements plus ou moins prévisibles mais que je peux intégrer après coup dans la mesure où ils sont conformes aux règles que j\u2019ai déterminées, bien qu\u2019ils ne peuvent être déduits à partir de ces mêmes lois.Je choisis des éléments que je manipule de façon systématique et auxquels je confère une fonction propre.Cette manipulation, qui 21 : i ' .' 'rv :: 9 - ' V;', .est ma façon d\u2019aborder les éléments, laisse suffisamment de place au hasard pour que surgissent des événements inattendus, comme l'idée de précarité peut découler d'une structure que l'on sait stable.A propos des minimalistes, l\u2019intérêt de leur travail réside dans leur affirmation de la matérialité de l\u2019objet.Par contre, chez un type comme Judd, cette démarche I a amené à une réduction de plus en plus grande de l\u2019objet, dans le but d\u2019éviter toute allusion à des réalités extérieures à celui-ci.Je vois cela comme un point zéro.Pour moi, affirmer la matérialité de l\u2019objet c\u2019est une position qui doit aller dans le sens de la complexité et non de la réduction.L\u2019information véhiculée par l\u2019objet et la place laissée au hasard étant fonction de la complexité.Dans ce sens, il m\u2019apparaît curieux que Marcel Saint-Pierre (1 ) rejette en art une approche qui passe par la matérialité, où le sens se définit par la matérialité de I oeuvre.Ce faisant, il adopte automatiquement une position idéaliste qui est incompatible avec le marxisme, à moins que son marxisme ne soit idéaliste?Pour ce qui est de la dimension de mes sculptures, je considère que les perceptions sont différentes selon qu\u2019elles sont très petites ou très grosses, mais personnellement je ne veux pas accentuer la charge psychologique comme c\u2019est le cas chez Serra par exemple.Ce n\u2019est pas un aspect que je tiens à accentuer.Je veux que cela soit suffisamment gros pour que la pièce ait une présence mais je ne tiens pas à terroriser le spectateur parce que ce serait de le mettre dans un état de non réceptivité au niveau de l\u2019analyse de la sculpture.Parce que en ce qui concerne mon travail, il n y a pas seulement l\u2019impact global, il y a aussi le démarche que je fais, je pense que la perception de mes choses doit jouer sur une espèce de dualité entre ce que tu sais de la pièce et ce que tu perçois de cette dernière, voir dans quelle mesure ces deux perceptions sont contradictoires, alors que si je les faisais monumentales et terrorisantes, on n aurait probablement pas envie de décortiquer le processus, de comprendre cette dualité entre une chose que l\u2019on sait tenir et une chose qui a l\u2019air de ne pas vouloir tenir.Je considère personnellement que c\u2019est un faux problème de faire une séparation radicale entre internationalisme et nationalisme.On ne peut évidemment pas nier qu\u2019on est sensible aux informations qui viennent de partout, on ne peut faire l'autruche et se mettre la tête dans le sable.Mais je considère que mes influences décisives sont locales (Comtois, Saxe) et non ce qu\u2019on appelle \u201cinternationalistes\u201d.Par contre, là où l\u2019on pourrait définir le régionalisme, c\u2019est dans les mécanismes qui sont critiques de l\u2019information qui nous parvient.Ce qui définit une réaction propre à un milieu ce sont les mécanismes critiques qui sont propres à ce milieu et c\u2019est dans ce sens que je peux dire que Comtois et Saxe sont des influences parce que ce sont eux qui ont servi de modèle et de filtre à un moment donné.Mais encore là, la question reste posée: En quoi, Comtois, Molinari, Saxe, etc, sont-ils proprement québécois?Je crois qu\u2019au Ouébec on traverse une crise d\u2019identification et on semble vouloir se rallier à des valeurs plus folkloriques qui semble-t-il nous correspondent plus?Ou\u2019est-ce qui est authentiquement québécois par rapport à ce qui vient de l\u2019extérieur?Je pense que ce sont les mécanismes critiques québécois (oeuvres et transmission verbale) qui le définissent et que de toute façon ce n\u2019est pas une notion statique et immuable.1.Marcel Saint-Pierre est peintre et directeur du département d\u2019histoire de l\u2019art, à l\u2019Université du Québec à Montréal.note biographique CLAUDE MONGRAIN est né au Québec en 1 948.Il étudie à l\u2019École des Beaux-Arts de Montréal de 1 966 à 1 969 et à l\u2019Université du Québec à Montréal en 1 969 et 1 970.Il séjourne en Europe en 1 970.Vit à Montréal et enseigne à l\u2019Université Laval à Québec.Il participe au mois d\u2019octobre 1 975 à l\u2019exposition Québec \u201875 au Musée d\u2019art contemporain.SANS TITRE.1975, bois et béton, 48\u201d x 33\u201d x 16\u201d.22 Les Levine in Cape Dorset, 1974.LES LEVINE We are still alive Introduction You have made something new that is different from anything seen before anywhere, and which will never, once it is gone, be seen again.Because you have done this and still do, you can be called an \u201cartist\u201d.Canadian Dept, of Indian and Northern Affairs Publication no.QS-301 8-000-HE-A-1 Have you ever wondered what the world would be like if it were run by artists, if our entire economy were based on art?In other words, if the only job around were the production of art, what would our society be like?For the Eskimo artists living in the Northwest Territories in Canada, these questions have already been answered.Cape Dorset is a settlement of approximately 700 Eskimos.For most of the inhabitants of the settlement, the production of arts or crafts is the only possible means of employment, and over the! pastl 5 years Cape Dorset has surfaced as one of the most important art producing settlements in the arctic.Amongst themselves the Cape Dorset Eskimos have formed a cooperative called the West Baffin Island Cooperative Ltd.The Co-op approach was introduced by the Canadian government to give the Eskimos a marketingfvehicle for their carvings and prints.Before the cooperative existed they would sell their carvings to the Hudson\u2019s Bay Co., but when the co-op started they began to buy all the work.In the summer of 1974, I went with my wife Catherine to Cape Dorset to work on the project entitled \u201cWe Are Still Alive,\u201d which will be shown at the Galerie Gilles Gheerbrant in Montreal from January 6 to 31, 1975.What follows here are my impressions of that experience along with those of Mary Hunt, a 30-year old Eskimo woman, who was born and raised in Cape Dorset.WE ARE STILL ALIVE by Les Levine I had the impression before I came that Cape Dorset was more problematical weatherwise.I thought it would be a bit more arctic, more snow and stuff like that.I didn\u2019t realize that it would be all gravel and dry.I thought it would be more mucky, like a movie I had seen of the Klondike.And I had the vision that maybe the Eskimos would be living in rustic type houses.I didn\u2019t realize that no trees grow here at all.Because when I\u2019d seen that movie, there were things like log cabin restaurants.There was the assay office which was made out of log cabin and had a swinging door, and so that was the image one had.And then the Eskimos were all living in sort of huts that were semi-igloo shaped.That was the kind of vision I had and also the notion that the Eskimos had very strange customs.But they look pretty much the way I thought they would look*, the women do anyway, with the things they\u2019re carrying on their backs.I\u2019ve seen many Eskimo carvings.And that image is depicted all the time so that image was in my mind.The men seem to be very much into a kind of clothing you\u2019d see at gas stations or in a lot of North American cities.It either goes between ex-army surplus or high-styled Hudson Bay hunting outfitters\u2019 equipment.They either have these parkas that are in extreme bright colors, as though they were made for a Sears catalog, or else they have the look of all American teenagers which is denim clothing or ex-marine jackets, but there\u2019s nothing in between.It\u2019s hard to believe that it\u2019s handicraft in anyway because it all looks the same.It looks as though it\u2019s mass-produced item that they buy somewhere.Then I had the impression that one might be in a situation where you might be asked to do something that you would not be able to cope with yourself as a concept, and that would freak them out.Like you might be asked to sit down to a meal in which it was raw whale that was being offered, and it would freak you out to eat raw whale, and it would freak them out if you didn't.I thought that situation might come up, but it didn\u2019t.There were a couple of other impressions that one got from talking to White people.And one was that the Eskimo did not like to be called an \u201cEskimo\u201d.That that was offensive.I think it was put to me in one case that calling an Eskimo an \u201cEskimo\u201d was the same thing as calling a Black man a \u201cnigger\u201d.And that they looked at it that way.That they preferred to be called Inuits.So I was getting myself all ready with that word.It was like I didn\u2019t want to make the mistake of calling anybody an Eskimo.And I was told that they\u2019re very drunk all the time.And that they only work when they want to eat.The impression I was given was that they make enough carvings to get a skidoo, and then when they\u2019ve got the skidoo, they don\u2019t have the money to run it because the way their reasoning runs is, you make carvings to get money and when you\u2019ve got what you want you stop making carvings.So they wouldn\u2019t take into consideration the cost of running something.This is an impression that I got from talking to White people in the South.They gave me the impression the Eskimos just do it purely to get money and that if they want a hi-fi set then they make a carving, and as soon as they\u2019ve got the hi-fi set, if you say to them, \u201cCan you make another carving?\u201d they\u2019d say.\u201cWhy?I have the hi-fi set\u201d.You see that was the impression I had.I realize it\u2019s not a right impression now.I also had the impression that when things break the Eskimos throw them out.Which is something that I never expected to see, realized in the form that I saw it.You walk around Cape Dorset and you see parts of skidoos all over the place.Broken skidoos, whole ones that just don\u2019t work, are abandoned all over the place.It was hard for me to visualize when somebody told me when I was in the South, \u201cThat when a hi-fi set breaks, they just throw it out and get a new one when they can\u201d.They have no concept to repair anything I was told in the South, and I didn\u2019t realize that it was true.I couldn\u2019t put that together in my head.And when I came here it certainly appeared to be true, but not for the reason I was told.I was told that they do it because they have no concept of saving things or repairing things.But it seems very obvious to me that in most cases it\u2019s impossible to get anything repaired here.So what else can you do.But you wouldn\u2019t know if you were in the South the difficulties of getting a hi-fi set repaired in Cape Dorset.And how in fact, given the transportation problem, the weight problem, it might be cheaper to throw it out and get a new one than get it repaired.Another impression I had was that they were extremely primitive people.And that they were hunting and fishing all the time.And that they were very shy people.If I was told that they were shy once, I must have been told it a million times, that they\u2019re shy.And that they don\u2019t understand the White man\u2019s way of looking at things.I was told that a few hundred times.And I didn\u2019t find most of them to be shy.I find their sensibility is different than our\u2019s, but it\u2019s not really a shyness.They like other people, they really like to see other faces come to Cape Dorset.The idea that a lot of people have, that you would be an intruder, is totally ridiculous because a lot of the younger people have heard phonograph records and they\u2019re into so-called North American teenage culture on some level.That\u2019s the biggest shock of all, to find that there\u2019s a teenage culture here which is almost identical to all of North American teenage cultures.They wear all the same clothes, they have decales that all the kids are wearing, they\u2019re listening to the exact same records that all the kids are listening to.That amazes one because that is not an image of an Eskimo that you could have in your mind if you live in the South.I don\u2019t know where you would get that image from.I think the people in the arctic are fascinated by anything that comes in from the outside.When I asked Mary Kudjuakju, the old woman sculptor-carved, what she would like to see happen in her life at this point, her answer was very simple and direct, \u201cAnything new always amazes me\u201d, which I thought was a very sophisticated answer.And so when people say to you when you come into this situation that you are an outsider and you\u2019re a Whttfe man in this situation.But they\u2019re fascinated by you.You bring in information to them.When a plane comes in to Cape Dorset a whole gang of people go out ot meet it.A whole gang of people who have no possible reason to go out and meet it.Why?It\u2019s very simple.Because they\u2019re cut off.They have no television.They have no radio, they have no newspapers.Your face is the news for the day when you get here, your face.That new face walking around town is the link with the outside world, that\u2019s the national news of the day in Cape Dorset.When we got to Frobisher Bay and we were talking to the man there who was the ticket agent for this charter flight which we came in on, he told us that Cape Dorset was an extremely troubled community.That there was a lot of serious drinking going on here \u2014 out of control drinking \u2014 a lot of out of control gambling \u2014 a lot of out of control promiscuity.A lot of general social mix ups.And he said that it was an extremely artistic community.That because it was an extremely artistic community, one would expect to find those kinds of things there.So the apprehension was there, before one even got here, you know, and when one got to Cape Dorset, one was immediately bombarded by a number of white people telling you, be careful with the Eskimos, don\u2019t approach them.Don't get involved with them too quickly.Be cautious.You could make the wrong move.You could freak them at all.I found that my impression of what was going on was that the white man who had been here wanted you to leave here with some impression that they had developed rather than your own impression.They wanted to keep a very status quo situation here vis-à-vis the while man\u2019s relationship to the Eskimo.I couldn\u2019t understand why they wanted that, except that at some point they were all semi-officials in some form, and I assumed that that was the Canadian Govern- 23 merit\u2019s attitude in the situation.Simply don\u2019t mess around with that thing.Keep it the way it is because we re not ready to deal with any serious changes there yet.There seems to be an extraordinary uptightness about people coming in here.The place looks in actual fact like one of the worst slums you\u2019ve ever seen, It\u2019s a total welfare, wrecked, depressing environment from the point of view of the housing and the way it's been handled.Plywood structures with the paint peeling off them.Ten people fitted into a home, if you can call it a home, a clapboard house that would only fit one comfortably, maybe two at the most.And I know what the uptightness is about.It s like everybody here is guilty about something and you don\u2019t know why they feel that way.Part of it is they think they are intruding on the Eskimo, and the other part of it is that they think the Eskimo is stupid and can\u2019t do it for himself and needs their help, and that they\u2019re going to make sure he gets it on some level and try and keep other people from interfering with them.That may not be true \u2014 it\u2019s an impression I got.The Eskimos are varied from that in my opinion.Some of them, the older ones maybe, genuinely are amused by you, but they wouldn t care to get too involved with you.The middle-aged group would like to not have much to do with you at all.The younger group want to get as involved with you as possible.Because you represent what they want to be, in some kind of way.But that whole idea that people keep on saying to you, be careful what you do, and so on and so forth, is ridiculous.Because it doesn\u2019t really matter.The people accept you on whatever level you present yourself.Some people don't but other people do.And that would be the same wherever you were.If more white artists would come in here, of course they would change it radically.In the various talks that I've had with Kumakuluk, he has been relating to me ideas of art that most of the other artists in town would not consider.Weil, it only takes a few more artists to come up and have some form of communication with people at Kumakuluk\u2019s age level to change the so-called art scene.It wouldn\u2019t happen in a second, it wouldn\u2019t happen in a week.But if there were a constant flow of artists coming up here it would certainly happen.If artists were to come here, it would obviously create problems as much as it would loosen problems.In the long run it would be a very good thing.In the short run it would have a complicated effect that's hard to consider in most other situations other than this one.Most of the art that is produced in this community is based by its nature on the producer of it not understanding what he\u2019s doing.And on the other hand, the seller of it involving it on some level of Canadians or of craft or something like that.If other artists were to come up here they would obviously change the view of some of the artists here over a certain period of time, and those artists would start to think more seriously about what they were doing.They would probably start to take the same approach that some of the Southern artists do.And they would become less Eskimo in terms of Eskimo art, and more just pure artists.One of the things that is bound to happen is that in ten years an Eskimo artist will be an abstract painter.It\u2019s bound to happen.Because most of the young kids have none of the culture to relate to that we see in Eskimo art right now.The young kids only see that culture, those legends in the Eskimo prints the same way that we do.They see it for the first time when they see an Eskimo print.They\u2019ve never witnessed it themselves and they never will because all of those things are dying out.And what the young kids are seeing today on some level exactly what every other young kid is seeing.It\u2019s a more impoverished situation here, but nevertheless they\u2019re seeing it.So they\u2019re more likely to make art at some point from now based on that experience.People might be afraid because they might think that it would damage the Eskimo art market.That it would damage the structure of the way Eskimo art is made.Eskimos make art not because they want to make art, but because they don\u2019t have any other means of living.One has heard fifty times if you\u2019ve heard it once that the reason most of the carvers do the work is because they have no job.Most carvers would say to you, \u201cIf I hadfe job I wouldn\u2019t do this\u2019\u2019.They don\u2019t really like doing it.It\u2019s very hard work and it's physical, manual labor that\u2019s hard on the body.The one who comes in with the knowledge here is going to be the Southern artist, because the Southern artist has seen Eskimo art all over the south, whereas the Northern artist, the Eskimo, has never seen Southern art.The Eskimo is an extremely versatile workman.Generally one can see that a good carver is also a good carpenter or a good plumber or what have you.So that most of the ideas that the Southern artist can bring in could be adapted in many, many ways because Eskimos are very adaptable.They just make this one thing because people have told them to make it.You know, people have said, \u201cYou make this.\" or give them some idea of what should be made.And they have seen that when somebody makes this they get paid.And that when it\u2019s highly polished they get paid a little more.And when it\u2019s nicely shaped they get paid a bit more.And people like polar bears more than they do birds.They\u2019ve done it on that basis.They\u2019ve had no access to other art information.White people have been very definite about keeping that information away from them.So that their view of what is good is based on what brings the most money.In other works, the carver in town who is making the most money and buying the most skidoos and whatever, would be the one they would likely want to emulate.They have no critical view of anything beyond that.There\u2019s one important consideration to make in the arctic.Art is not a luxury which people have in their homes the way it\u2019s considered in the South.Here art is the main industry.Art here is the coal mines in Birmingham.So you can\u2019t expect it to be viewed in quite the same way as in the South.Art is the main industry in this area.Art is where most people are employed and it\u2019s a totally different scene.The notion that you have when you see an Eskimo sculpture in Toronto, New York or in any major city in the world, is not something that is related to anything you see when you get here.I\u2019ve been totally misled, it\u2019s not anything like I\u2019ve seen before.But to add to that, the social problems involved in an art community, and the structure of the way the art is made, how it is merchandised, how it is critisized.The motivations involved in making it, the social structure surrounding how it\u2019s made, are very much a part of what I see as an artist in any situation, be it a painting in a New York gallery, be it a Henry Moore sculpture in Toronto, be it an Eskimo sculpture.I find that all the appendages to the making of art are very much a part of the art.And if the social structure is bad, and the reasons that the art is being made are bad, and I\u2019m not saying that it is bad in this case, but if they are bad, then the bad reasons become a part of the art.And in time they devaluate the art as an honest experience.It is my position as an artist to use media to effect changes in language.Be they perceptive language, oral language, visual language or any other kind of language.So one would hope to be able to make a document that would clearly give the Eskimos a look at themselves that they have not had before.And also to show the Southerner some reality of the art experience that he thinks he may be having when he views Eskimo art.He should understand how the art is made.He should understand all the problems and all the reasons if it is going to have any real meaning to him.There is an aspect of journalism in my work.There has been for quite some time.I feel that the artist should not get himself involved in something which he does not feel deeply concerned about.Therefore, I would say that an artist should not sign petitions, although I have signed a number of them in my life.But the realization came to me a few years ago, that signing petitions was too easy.That the artist had a Recently finished prints are hung on the wall in the block printing workshop in Cape Dorset.Finished carvings wait to be shipped out of the storage room of the West Baffin Island Eskimo Co-op in Cape Dorset.Les Levine and Eskimo artist Kumakuluk stop for a smoke in the lithography workshop in Cape Dorset.Catherine Levine behind the camera during the production of the video tape We Are Still Alive in Cape Dorset.24 role and that the artist should attempt to fulfill that role.Instead of signing petitions he should get behind concerns he feels strongly about and he should attempt to use his art to effect those concerns.Now initially one was cautious about it because one felt that art and politics don't mix.I mean one had heard that till it came out of your ears.Art and social ideas don't mix, art and behaviourism don\u2019t mix.Any number of things like that.But at a certain point it became clear to me that art was going to have to deal with these things if art was going to survive, for me anyway.Then it became even more clear to me that it wouldn\u2019t be enough for the artist to be simply acting as a mirror which is a popular cliche about the artist being the mirror of society, but that it would be necessary for the artist to be pragmatic about something if he felt strongly enough.Not only say that this is happening.But to put together something that would express his own particular anxiety in it happening.And assuming that he's a reasonably well-tuned artist, it wouldn\u2019t merely be his anxiety, it would be a societal anxiety that he had read clearly enough to make it his own anxiety.So that put more simply, what the artist would be doing would be simply acting our for society an anxiety that they had at the moment.And to do that I felt he would have to take a more pragmatic position.So it wouldn\u2019t be a question of saying, here are the Eskimos, this is what look like, or here is Northern Ireland or whatever, but this is what I think about what I see in this situation.I have always felt that the artists role was a very defined role in society.That his part in society was to be perceptive about what was happening in society.To some way ferret out the points in society that might be aching at that moment or might be causing underlying neuroses or anxieties and get them out.The idea of preserving this situation in the arctic is not only ridiculous, it\u2019s ludicrous.If you\u2019re talking about preserving the situation the way it is, first of all, you\u2019ve got to consider that you have an impossibility on your hands.Because this situation is changing rapidly just by natural causes.People have seen the white man\u2019s way of life, they like it and they want it.Particularly the younger ones.So you\u2019re not going to preserve that unless you do something which is totally reconstituted and synthetic, in order to preserve a society which is dying of its own natural causes.So the only alternative, when you can\u2019t preserve a situation like this is to start making sense of it.Is to start making it work for the people who are here.The people here live an extremely hard life.They've been given a new way of life which at this point in time they can\u2019t afford.They don\u2019t have the means to support that way of life.They don\u2019t have the means to work, the means to produce what is necessary to get the goods that they now want because they\u2019ve seen them.It\u2019s a question of taking a look at this structure and saying what can you do to make it more economically viable.The old way of life here is dying a natural death.There s a lot to be said for letting change develop on its own here.But most of the government people who are up here are doing quite a good deal to prevent the change from happening here too quickly.If it's a question of allowing the Eskimos to go ahead and make their own choice, the choice would be very simple.They will say, \u201dWe want the white man's way of life.We know it's better than ours.We know we're not cold in the winter.We know we can have motors for our boats.We know we can have guns to shoot the seal we want to shoot.\u201d So it\u2019s very obvious what choice they\u2019ll make.They already have made it.They would make it on an even grander scale if the white man was to get out of their way.But the white man suspects that they\u2019re not ready for the total change yet.He\u2019d better slow them down a bit.25 When I came here first I really wanted the opportunity to work with some Eskimo artists and exchange ideas Possibly even produce a work with an Eskimo artist if that were possible But I was confronted with such an uptight situation that even to approach that became almost impossible.Then there was the language barrier which was considerable finding that most of the carvers and drawers here are older people who cannot speak English.I found that so many of them had been given this kind of welfare mentality, told they should not communicate except if they get something out of it.You can\u2019t just work with an Eskimo artist who has always been told that as soon as you lift up a tool you are going to be paid.The Eskimos don t make art for the sake of making art like a Southern artist.A Southern artist might make a work of art with another artist as a way of creating a dialogue with the other artist.No intention to sell it maybe, but as a way of creating dialogue.But these people are not in terested in talking about art, they don\u2019t have art in their homes, they don\u2019t have their carvings in their homes.They\u2019re not interested in that level of involvement.They get paid for working, and they see it that way.So they see your involvement in wanting to exchange artistic ideas with them as some form of work.That\u2019s an impossible barrier to break down.The Eskimo Co-op is a good idea.If the Co-op were not here it would be possible for white people to come in here and buy the Eskimos' sculptures from them at very low prices.The Co-op helps to pull all of it together and make it an industry.So that aspect of it is very positive.And the fact that all the members of the community who produce art are Co-op members and stand to benefit from any profits that the Co-op might accrue, is an excellent idea Whether it\u2019s a dollar or a thousand dollars, everything the Eskimos produce they get paid for.That does not happen to any white artist.He may produce a lot that he doesn\u2019t get paid for, and so that whole concept of buying everything that the carvers do continues the industry and helps pull it together.In some sense, one might say that the Co-op has been a bit naive because lot of things that have been bought in the arctic have been sold in the South for a lot more money.So that the dealers in the South make most of the money.The Co-op is also expanding into oil, expanding into retail stores into weather station contracts, various things like that.So that the Co-op, whether it would admit it or not, sees itself as eventually becoming the large conglomerate in this area and controlling all the funds that are coming in, controlling all the profits.I feel that without the Co-op that this place would have little hope.I see the Co-op as a positive force for the people here.Even if the Co-op only provided a ready-made market, that would pull the community together to some degree.But it does a lot more than that.It merchandises the material, it helps control it to some degree, it helps it appreciate, it helps keep up interest in what the people are doing so there will be a continuing market for what they do, and provides them with ready cash when they need it, if they\u2019re willing to make the product that the Co-op wants, Eskimo art! The people generally don\u2019t seem to like making carvings.As an individual who is an artist, one cannot help but be a little outraged at the idea that most of the people who are producing art in this community don\u2019t like doing it.They merely do it because it\u2019s the only means of survival that they have.And that if they got up the opportunity to have another means of survival they would stop carving very quickly.An artist down South might say, \u201cI don\u2019t like making art.\u201d There is always the opportunity that he might do something else, there are industries around, there are offices to work in, there are other places to do things.But here in Cape Dorset, there is no possibility to do anything, there isn\u2019t one industry here.You couldn\u2019t even repair a pair of shoes here.There isn\u2019t even a restaurant here where you could get a job as a dishwasher.There\u2019s nothing.So there\u2019s no way to support yourself unless you make art.And if you don\u2019t like making art there\u2019s no alternative, you just go on welfare.They have no alternative If they decided tomorrow that I\u2019m not getting enough satisfaction out of making this art, there\u2019s nothing else they can do.WE ARE STILL ALIVE Part 2 \"Mary Hunt\" in conversation with Les Levine I used to enjoy going to school here.Both of my brothers and I.And after school we used to go out a lot on our own.We had lots of freedom.We didn't go to stores and buy things like my kids do now.Now my kids goes out to buy few things like pops and chips.We would play out doors.I would play with my girl friends.Play in the tent, like play hunting, you know.Nowadays the kids play cowboys like in the movies.That has changed.We played dolls and dollies.We lived in a government house and in the summertime we used to move into a tent.My parents used to like that, I guess they were used to that.They used to live in the hut or in the igloo all winter long and when the summer came, they used to move into the tent, and they still used to do that after we moved into the town here.We used to live in the tent in the summertime even if we had a proper house.They don't do that anymore.We used to go camping early in the spring and live in an igloo for a while.Then move into the tent from the hut.My father used to make a house out of old crates and then put some moss on it between two tents, it used to be pretty warm.I don't really recall what it was like to live in the igloo.It's cold, I find it really cold when I went out with my friends.I don't know how my folks used to live in them all the time in the olden days.I used to live out in the camp, too.But those days I can hardly remember.My parents moved here.My father helped with power plant operating here.The guy who used to be the Northern Officer, he asked my father to come in and he was helping out with power plant.He used to make money pretty good then go out hunting again.I think they'd rather live here right in town now, but yet they seem to like living outside in the camp.I don't think they'll ever go back to the camp now and live in the old way of life \u2019cause they know that they can enjoy themselves, you know, like with the skidoos and dog team?The dog team is much slower, but safer though; if you break down in the skidoo, you lost.It really takes a long time to try to go back to your place if you break down with a skidoo.But they seem to like the skidoo better because it goes faster.They used to go out hunting for weeks, now they only take a few days to go out hunting if they are going out caribou hunting or seal hunting.But there is more lack of food now like the country food.I don\u2019t think the skidoo has really improved the people.They get sick easier now than before.Maybe because they are in the public places all the time or lack of meat.Maybe that's why, no proper foods.Now they have to have money to buy some food from the store.Some of them don't really bother with proper things to buy like with proteins in it.I care about protein a lot myself.They used to hunt the seal and the caribou which are full of protein.Now they don't do that so much.Only when they feel like it they go out hunting and get some as a recreation more than anything.There never used to be any card games, that changed the life around here a lot.And gambling with money.I guess it's their sickness now.I don't like it myself.I Eskimo Doy holds microphone while he picks up the sounds on the headset of the chipping his mother makes during recording session with Les Levine.guess they just can't help it anymore.They would say they don't want to do it, but once they see other people play they join them if they have some money with them.They play with the money, all they got and forget about their little ones.I don't like that at all.So the little ones are undernourished.They get tired while the mother and father are playing cards.They get dirty and hungry.Maybe that's why the housing is really poor here, too, because they hardly stay home.They go to somebody else's house to play cards.They'd like money like everybody else and yet they lose money all the time when they play cards.I don't know what they want.They'd like to live better, but they don't try.They can't help it I guess.You know with gambling and drinking.A lot of them would like to live out in the camp again like olden days.They will say it's much better, but yet they rather not live out there all the time now.They get better and more food and they don't think about money or playing cards, movies, stores.But still they come back and go back to same old thing.But there isn't much hope.I mean, a person who lives here knows that.What can he work at?He can maybe make something for the Co-op.Maybe work for the power station, it only employs a couple of people, and then what else can he do?Nothing else to do.No, they are not educated.There's nothing they can do unless they do something for the white man.A lot of them are usually employed helping out the kadloona wives or doing some labor work that would last a week or month.I don't think they have any courage to start something going on themselves.No, they don't have any organization to think with.They're too weak to start something themselves.I'm sure they could do it if they tried.I don't see any hope at all here.I wish there was something they could do, but like what?There's nothing to do here.I don't know what the television thing is going to do around here.That's something new for them, too.Maybe the kids will stay home more if they have television sets in their homes rather than running around.The Eskimo never drank before the white man came in.That's why they don't know how to take it.Downing it all at once.It makes you drunk.I guess they don't realize what is the law.To me I wouldn't want to have a name in the RCMP.After drinking too much they put you in the jail and put you in the records and everything.I don't like that for myself.I think a lot of them don't understand that.When somebody walks around drunk, RCMP picks them up and puts him in the jail.I guess in a way it's the best for them to pick the drunken people before they get into trouble like in hurting other people's feelings and hurting them physically.It hurts my feelings when I see them like that.I never used to see them before like that.I wish they had .taken this booze thing more slowly.Maybe they think it's a modern way of life.You know, like a hippy, like nothing to do, freedom.¦ 26 STEVE REICH Steve Reich est aujourd\u2019hui l\u2019un des musiciens les mieux connus de la nouvelle musique américaine.Sa présence à Montréal en janvier 76 pour deux concerts (programme inclus) constitue l\u2019événement musical le plus substantiel de l\u2019année.L\u2019accessibilité (par le disque/en direct) aux musiques du monde entier est un phénomène relativement récent.Tout musicien sensible et intelligent ne peut en faire abstraction.Il lui faut cependant assimiler ces influences et s\u2019inventer une musique à soi (pour tous), ouverte mais identifiée, habitée, incarnée: processus d\u2019ethnicisation.\u201cPlus l\u2019homme s\u2019éloigne de ses origines, plus sa mentalité se développe et plus aussi ses besoins augmentent.\u201d Alexandra David-Neel, En Chine/Pour la Vie.\u201cThe mixing of races and the mixing of cultures creates the greatest of all things.This is my theory.This is what I really believe in.Not only in the 20th century our period.Just check out the countries from which the greatest intellectual and artistic giants came.They have always been from countries where a great amount of mixing was going on.(.) So the further the races go apart, the greater the freshness of the blood.\u201d Joe Zawinul, Down Beat, janvier 75.Durant les années 70, en réaction contre les musiques commerciales dégénérées, la musique contemporaine hy-perspécialisée (trop souvent une négation du corps biologique, une division du corps et de l\u2019esprit suivant le principe: diviser pour mieux régner) et par saturation des formes éculées d\u2019une musique occidentale surdiffusée, les groupes d\u2019improvisation se multiplient partout à travers le monde.Hors institutions et pour I a plupart non subventionnés, ils assurent eux-mêmes la viabilité de leur entreprise, la visibilité de leur musique: regroupement en coopérative ou autre forme d\u2019association, festivals auto-gérés, production indépendante d\u2019enregistrements, animation etc.C\u2019est une reprise en main manifeste de la musique afin de réinscrire toute pratique dans la vie quotidienne, son contexte socioculturel/historique, et compte tenu de l\u2019origine de toute musique, son rôle agissant dans une société saine, informée, re-liée.Les musiques ethniques traditionnelles, enracinées, sont dès lors revendiquées par la plupart des musiciens d\u2019expérimentation, par un public d\u2019auditeurs croissant.On en redécouvre l\u2019actualité.La musique de Steve Reich, bien que non improvisée, est le résultat, la manifestation avouée de cette ouverture de l\u2019esprit aux musiques ethniques (plus spécifiquement d\u2019Asie du Sud-est et d\u2019Afrique et sans pour autant renoncer à renier la tradition occidentale).\u201cI\u2019m very conscious now of returning to the western classical music tradition as a source of new ideas, and I\u2019m moving back to a western ensemble which includes all parts of the orchestra.(.) I want to create a new orchestra which includes the voice to play the new chamber music that I feel I am and always have been composing.\u201d Steve Reich (1).Raymond Gervais \u201cI left New York in 1961 because I wanted to get out of a production line syndrome: you go to Juliard you get your M.A.you get a fellowship from the Ford Foundation teaching music in the high schools, you get your Fullbright, you study with Nadia Boulanger, you come back to get your gig at a university and that\u2019s that.I did take my master\u2019s degree at Mills thinking that if all else failed, I could go back and get a job teaching, but that wasn\u2019t the reason I became a composer.I became a composer because I love music and wanted to compose it.I didn\u2019t want to get caught up in the machinations of the musical world and toe the line.The idea of teaching three days a week and still having plenty of time for musical composition is fallacious.I\u2019ve taught at community schools in San Francisco at the New School and at the School for Visual Arts in New York, but I\u2019ve always found teaching to be a burden.So when I got out of Mills with my M.A.I drove a cab because it left my mind freer for work than having to put out the energy necessary if one wants to be a good teacher.(.) I believe that I teach by \u201cdoing\u201d.I believe that it\u2019s more honorable to take your chances out in the world than to sit in a university and give classes and have a little built-in audience, have your work performed by the university orchestra and have other university composers perform you.The historical proof of the pudding is that very little significant music has come out of the university.Charles Ives didn\u2019t teach; neither did Ruggles.Aaron Copland hardly taught at all.The best music grown on our home soil has not come out of institutions.The same holds true for Europe.Bach was a practical musician.Bartok was a pianist and ethnomusicologist who didn\u2019t believe in teaching composition.Igor Stravinsky didn\u2019t teach.Webern was principally a conductor.Only Schoenberg taught.\u201d Steve Reich (1) 27 \u201cIn the summer of 1968, I began thinking about what I had done musically, primarily about the phase pieces.I began to see them as \u201cprocesses\u201d, as opposed to compositions.I saw that my methods did not involve moving from one note to the next, in terms of each note in a piece representing the composer\u2019s taste working itself out bit by bit.My music was more of an impersonal process.John Cage discovered that he could take his intentions out of a piece of music and open up a field for many interesting things to happen, and in that sense I agree with him.But where he was willing to keep his musical sensibility out of his own music, I was not.What I wanted to do was to come up with a piece of music that I loved intensely, that was completely personal, exactly what I wanted in every detail, but that was arrived at by an impersonal means.I compose the material, decide the process it\u2019s going to be run through, but once these intitial choices have been made, it runs by itself.(.) And that\u2019s what makes the piece interesting; there\u2019s more in it than I put in.That\u2019s the joy of working with processes.If you follow your personal taste, you get your taste back.But if you follow a musical process you get your taste, plus a few surprises that may educate you to make some other music.\u201d Steve Reich (2) Music as Gradual process-1968 \u201cI do not mean the process of composition, but rather pieces of music that are, laterally, processes.(.) I am interested in perceptible processes.I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music.To facilitate closely detailed listening a musical process should happen extremely gradually.(.) John Cage has used processes and has certainly accepted their results but the processes he used were compositional ones that could not be heard when the piece was performed.The process of using the I Ching or imperfections in a sheet of paper to determine musical parameters can\u2019t be heard when listening to music composed that way.The compositional processes and the sounding music have no audible connection.Similarly in serial music, the series itself is seldom audible.(.) What I\u2019m interested in is a compositional process and a sounding music that are one and the same thing.(.) The use of hidden structural devices never appealed to me.(.) The distinctive thing about musical processes is that they determine all the note-to-note details and the over all form simultaneously.One can\u2019t improvise in a musical process - the concepts are mutually exclusive.While performing and listening to gradual musical processes one can participate in a particular liberating and impersonal kind of ritual.Focusing in on the musical process makes possible that shift of attention away from he and she and you and me outwards towards it.\u201d Steve Reich (3) \u2018\u2018There\u2019s a certain idea that\u2019s been in the air, particularly since the 1960\u2019s, and its been used by choreographers as well as composers and I think it is an extremely misleading idea.It is that the only pleasure a performer (be it musician or dancer) could get was to improvise, or in some way be free to express his or her momentary state of mind.If anybody gave them a fixed musical score or specific instructions to work with this was equated with political control and it meant the performer was going to be unhappy about it.John Cage has said that a composer is somebody who tells other people what to do, and that it is not a good social situation to do that.But if you know and work with musicians you will see that what gives them joy is playing music they love, or at least find musically interesting, and whether that music is improvised or completely worked out is really not the main issue.\u201d Steve Reich (3) \u201c(.) we\u2019re serving the music.I believe performers are happiest playing music they love whether they are improvising or reading.As far as audience participation is concerned, there are, for example, groups that pass out whistles or other instruments to the audience who can join in when they feel like it.I think this is degrading, certainly to the music and to the audience as well.\u201d Steve Reich (1) \u201cThe pleasure I get from playing is not the pleasure of expressing myself, but of subjugating myself to the music and experiencing theecstacy that comes from being a part of it.\u201d Steve Reich (3) \u201c(.) there are different kinds of control.I\u2019m not that good an improviser and I never was, so that\u2019s undoubtedly part of it.Consequently, I\u2019m also not interested in solo music, because I\u2019m not a virtuoso type of performer.I\u2019m interested in the virtuosity being the arrangement of people within an ensemble where the parts are all exactly equal and extremely simple.But by their arrangement, what is produced is something really phenomenal.The virtuosity is in their ensemble relationship to each other.This is something I feel very committed to both on physical and mental grounds.In some program notes recently I wrote this, so let me repeat some of it to you now: A performance for us is a situation where all the musicians, including myself, try to set aside our individual thoughts and feelings of the moment, and try to focus our minds and bodies clearly on the realization of one continuous musical process.Focusing in on the musical process makes possible that shift of attention away from he and she and you and me outwards towards it.By voluntarily giving up the freedom to do whatever momentarily comes to mind, we are, as a result, free of all that momentarily comes to mind.The extreme limit used here then have nothing to do with totalitarian political controls imposed from without, but are closely related to yogic controls of the breath and the mind.\u201d Steve Reich (2) \u201cI feel it is very important that my music come out of my body as well as my mind and ear, so I limit what I write to what I can play.The music cannot be played by non-profession-nals, however.The difficulties are not in being able to play notes all over the keyboard very fast.The difficulties are being able to play a limited number of tones in a complicated rhythmic context precisely right, because the slightest error is immediately noticeable.Steve Reich\u201d (1 ).\u201cThe avant garde dance of the 1960\u2019s focused on non-dance movements to be performed in concert situations.Walking, running, working with objects, and performing specific tasks were among the genuinely new alternatives to the modern dance of expressive movements of an earlier generation.The basic idea (.) could be summed up as any movement is dance.This is the precise equivalent to the basic idea of the composer John Cage: any sound is music.(3) (.) that\u2019s what I mean by all music is ethnic music; it grows out of where you live.Therefore, for people to do electronic music, particularly in the \u201860\u2019s when the novelty and delight in electronic toys was at its peak, was a natural expression of Western humanity, as natural as organic foods.It just happened to be electronics which were giving people that excitement.When people say that ethnic music has to do with drums, they\u2019re simply looking at another culture from a distance.And someone who looks at this culture from a distance would see that electronics are peculiar to this way of life which manifests itself in its music.And now, as our culture is shifting away from electronics, towards concerns about keeping the world unpolluted, perhaps it is stepping back from technology and that\u2019s also reflected in the music; it\u2019s apparent in Drumming.I wasn\u2019t thinking about those things as causology, but I was aware of it because I am alive now, and of course my mind and body will mirror these things.\u201d Steve Reich (2) \u201cAny music student or composer owes himself an awareness of other musics, and I still hope that all music schools will one day offer courses at least in Indonesian, African and Indian music.If you studied only American and European history in school today, you would be considered racist and stupid.However, I think that studying non-Western music presents a real danger, a kind of tightrope you have to walk.On the one hand, anyone who doesn\u2019t listen to non-Western music isn\u2019t putting his feet into the water.On the other hand, he may find out, as I did when I was in Africa, that this is really big music, that it\u2019s thousands of years old.It\u2019s a whole continent\u2019s worth of music, and I\u2019m just one puny little individual representing an individualistic culture.\u201d Steve Reich (1 ) \u201cI believe that non-Western music is presently the single most important source of new ideas for Western composers and musicians.Although earlier generations of Western musicians listened to many non-Western musics, live or on recording, it is now becoming increasingly possible to actually learn how to play African, Balinese, Javanese, Indian, Korean and Japanese music, among others, directly from first-rate African, Balinese, Javanese, Indian, Korean or Japanese musicians right here in this country or abroad.A Western musician thus begin to approach non-Western music as he would his own; he learns how to play it through study with a qualified teacher and in that process can also analyze the music he is playing in detail to understand how it is put together.During the process of performance and analysis he will find basically different systems of rhythmic structure, scale construction, instrumental technique and tuning.Knowledge of these different systems also V0ICC5 on*** n«Aî%U& ftjl flrPk »lllL______________________________ p j | pr?> q#> ?^ u g _ ®\t j-t+vt[ftTtftg Mtvs/'c for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ (1973) ; bars 1 and 2 sheds light on our own Western system, showing it to be one way among many.(.) A very real interest in non-Western music can be seen now in many young composers, some young performers, and a few universities, where the interest in electronic music, so marked in the sixties, is gradually giving way to an interest in world music.Along with the obvious benefits of this interest, which include a strong belief in live performance, and the aural or rote teaching of music instead of the exclusive use of scores, there are also some problems.The most difficult of these is the problem of Western composers, like myself, absorbing non-Western music.What can a composer do with this knowledge?(.) The least interesting form of influence, to my mind, is that of imitating the sound of some non-Western music.(.) Imitating the sound of non-Western music leads to \u201cexotic music\u201d; what used to be called \u201cChinoiserie\u201d.(.) Alternately, one can create a music with one\u2019s own sound that is constructed in the light of one\u2019s knowledge of non-Western structures.This is similar, in fact, to learning Western musical structures.(.) This brings about the interesting situation of the non-Western influence being there in the thinking, but not in the sound.This is a more genuine and interesting form of influence because while listening one is not necessarily aware of some non-Western music being imitated.Instead of imitation, the influence of non-Western musical structures on the thinking of a Western composer is likely to produce something genuinely new.\u201d Steve Reich (4) (1)\tEntrevue réalisée par Stuart Liebman, The Boston Phoenix, 29 avril 1975 (2)\tEntrevue réalisée par Emily Wasserman, Art Forum, Mai 1 972 (3)\tWritings about music, Steve Reich, 1974 (4)\tSteve Reich, New York Times, 2 septembre 1 973 note biographique STEVE REICH est né en 1 936 à New York et a vécu en Californie et à New York.Il termina des études de philosophie à l\u2019Université Cornell en 1957, étudia la composition à la Julliard School of Music de 1958 à 1961 et reçu en 1963 une maîtrise en musique du Mills College en Californie, où enseignaient Darius Milhaud et Luciano Berio.En 1966, il forme un ensemble de trois musiciens.Depuis lors, il travaille avec cet ensemble, Steve Reich and Musicians, qui comprend actuellement douze musiciens, aux Etats-Unis comme en Europe.En 1971, les premières de Drumming composition d\u2019une heure et demie, eurent lieu au Museum of Modem Art, à New York, à la Brooklyn Academy of Music et à Town Hall.Il collabore avec Laura Dean, présentant des concerts de musique et de danse à Berlin, Bremen, Pampelune, Rome et New York en 1972.Pendant l\u2019été 1970, il étudia la percussion africaine (drumming) avec un maître de la tribu Ewe à l\u2019Institut d\u2019Etudes africaines au Ghana.En 1 973, il étudia le Gamelan Semar Pegulingan balinais avec un professeur balinais à la American Society for Eastern Arts Summer Program à l\u2019Université de Washington.En 1974, il fut invité par le D.A.A.D.à être artiste en résidence à Berlin.discographie It's Gonna Rain (1965), Columbia MS-7265 Come Out (1 966), Odessey 32-1 6-01 60 Violin Phase (1967), Columbia MS-7265 Phase Patterns (1970), Shandar 10005 Four Organs (1970), Shandar 10005, Angel S-36059 Drumming (1971), Deutsche Grammophon 2740-106 Six Pianos (1973), Deutsche Grammophon 2740-106 Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ (1973), Deutsche Grammophon 2740-106 Piano Phase (1967), RCA Victor japonais Drumming (1971), Live performance/Town Hall/John Gibson and Multiples inc., New York 1 972, une édition signée et numérotée à 500 exemplaires, incluant la partition complète de l\u2019oeuvre.références discographiques Pour Drumming et Works in Progress, Steve Reich fait référence respectivement à la musique de la tribu Ewe du Ghana de même qu'à Pérotin.Pour qui s\u2019intéresse à vérifier ces parallèles, deux enregistrements existent sur le marché: Ewe music of Ghana (Folkways, Asch Mankind series, AHM-4222) Pérotin: Sacred Music (Vanguard HN-ISD) bibliographie Writings about music, the Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, New York University Press, New York 1974.Disponible au Canada de: L\u2019Alternatif 1587 St-Denis, Montréal, ou Art Métropole, 241 Yonge Street, Toronto.Writings about music regroupe pour l\u2019essentiel, la plupart des textes, entrevues, partitions déjà publiés par/sur Steve Reich dans VH-101 no.4, Soundings, Synthesis, Source, New York Times,' Ballet Review, Musical Times, Art Forum, parfois modifié ou complété d\u2019inédits.Steve Reich a aussi publié dans: John Cage: Notations, the Anti-illusion Catalog, Aspen magazine, Interfunktionen et Artitudes.m 29 LISA STEELE Looking very closely by Peggy Gale cutting free of the past cauterising wounds .preparing oneself for the trials to come.Lisa Steele's new work suggests a background of all these factors, and yet continues to respond to potent elements of life as it flows and continues .the recurring cycles of nature itself, the great unknowns of femaleness, sexuality, the rituals of season and activity.\u201d1 have looked so carefully .\" Lisa Steele has been working with video since 1972, and with photography and personal imagery for longer She has not always seen her work as 'art', but it has always been an interior and mythic exploration.Hers is a female sensibility, one fascinated by growth and natural processes, by identity and self-knowledge.Her photographs also reflect these preoccupations; a 38-photo sequence of 1973 entitled Divination By Dream positions fruits and plants, seeds, stones and people from her life in highly-charged \u2018'natural\" juxtaposition.The inanimate becomes meaningful, suggestive, explanatory in its muteness.Her early works on tape investigate the boundaries of the medium, the nature of our perception through the video eye, the range of subjects worthwhile for study.The titles give summary indication of the contents - Juggling, Turtletape, Know Your Turtle, Earthworms, Foodcraft - and images of a daily environment are a backdrop for technical experiments, provide a home setting for scientific interests.Other works, The Ross Street Tapes, Lisa With The Egg, manipulate ordinary actions through the unconscious, work juxtapositions of image and sound towards a highly charged unity.The last of these early works, undertaken before a break of over a year in her creative use of the medium, was the prophetic Sleep/Dream Vigil.For the first time Steele's interest in non-conscious decisions, activities, perceptions, is joined explicity with her desire for specific coherent information within a framework of scientific verification.It demonstrates that simple, fundamental human activités, so common as to be beyond interest, could in fact contain important information about motivation, personality, the more complex issues of life, Sleep/Dream Vigil (1973) is a 30-minute two-channel piece, in which one camera closely studies a sleeping figure while Lisa Steele, in an adjoining room, is seen and heard on the second monitor reading from various texts on the nature of sleep, the content and context of dreaming, the physical and subconscious activities involved.By isolating a process as simple and enigmatic as sleep, she was to discover how rich such a close study could be.Complementaries and contrasts of interior/exterior thought and activity, known/unknown, seen/unseen are all brought into play.The visuals at this poir.t are still smoothly-flowing \"real time\", without editing, but now the subject documented has also become focussed, single-minded; everything seems very clear and simple In September 1974 came her next finished tape, Birthday Suit - Scars and Defects, and the plans for three more pieces.A Very Personal Story, Outlaws, and the three-channel Internal Pornography, all completed in early 1975.It was a difficult time, with many personal relationships to be clarified.Old ties, long assumed to have dissolved, reappeared and clamored for attention; all four tapes were a response to this need to specify her identity and establish her territory, reassert her uniqueness and explore her isolation.Birthday Suit is straightforward.\u201cSeptember 22, 1947 to September 22, 1974 In honour of my birthday I am going to show you my birthday suit, with scars and defects\".But it is a remarkable document; in the twelve-minute piece we are shown each mark in its chronological turn, from surgery at birth through scars from barbed wire (falling off a horse), stitches for cut tendons (broken milk bottles in the school cafeteria), breast surgery (benign tumour).Through this precise information, we feel that we are able to intuit a great deal about this person, and about her acceptance of and interest in commonplace but revealing detail.Similar structure, A Very Personal Story has a more compelling effect.In it the artist reveals, as simply and unemotionally as possible, the story of the day in 1963 she found her mother dead at home.Throughout the telling of the tale her fingers twist nervously, shielding her eyes from our scrutiny, until finally, the story over, she drops her hands to face us directly.She notes that it\u2019s not a story we really want to hear.Yet we accept its importance for understanding what kind of a person she is and, more broadly, for divining and defining knowledge of self and others.Outlaws is more opaque.The 20-minute piece comprises five segments, each one a lingering view of a person in some non-context, with a voice-over reading of a text composed by the artist: He was an outlaw.The loneliness of bathing alone in the ice-cold Guadelupe River did not bother him, but he did not do it often.Once in San Antonio he picked out the prettiest woman in the place, and shot the light off her cigarette at fifty yards.She was favorably impressed, and the rest of the night was pure pleasure.His eyes were the colour of the Rio Grande at Matamoros where it began to flow into the Gulf a hundred years ago.There is no evidence of this, except for a few old magazine clippings kept by friends.His vision was so acute that he could spot an armadillo on the horizon, ride to within twenty feet of the horny creature, and drop it with a blinding wad of spit between the ears.It was known that at irregularly-spaced intervals, a spotlessly clear starlit night would occasion a spontaneous flow of tears from his river-blue eyes.Once, a graceful pair of mating gila monsters was caught in this outpouring.He forever after laughingly referred to his lizard tears as being a bath for fertile friends.The voice-over commentary is repeated for each person in turn, with only the pronouns changed.Cash wears cowboy boots, looks us over cooly as he smokes a cigarette.Judy does not look up at all, but is intent on whittling at a piece of wood.Tom\u2019s hand fiddles with radio dials, adjusting his sound system, and only at the end does the camera move slowly to his face with its quizzical stare and bushy beard.Colin stirs a cup of coffee, his eyes large and incredibly alone.All are examined slowly, curiously, but what is finally revealed?The tape ends with Lisa gazing levelly out at us, reporting that these are all real people, those are their real names, and that if you see her, Lisa, on the street you will know her, you can recognize her by her face.These are portraits of people important to Lisa Steele, but we outsiders are left to piece together the fragments of information on our own.We wonder at the connection between these five, on how many levels are they outlaws, and the same?And does the information reflect on us?All the external details given cannot supply the answers, and reflecting back on our sense of intuition fulfilled by Birthday Suit, we begin to wonder whether in fact external details can ever reveal those things that are most meaningful.The case is not so simple after all.Then comes Internal Pornography (three channels, simultaneous running time 30 minutes), a complex and important piece both explicit and veiled in its message.The whole is introduced by a separate segment on the central monitor, Lisa Steele gazing off-camera and baldly stating certain of her opinions on sexuality, her fantasies and practices.Its content is deliberately shocking, forcing the viewer to weigh what she is saying, placing the information in context with the face we see speaking and with the rest of the piece.For the body of the work, each of the three monitors presents a discrete image and a milder overt message.On the far right we see the artist\u2019s nude torso and hear her reading descriptive and explanatory extracts from sexual handbooks and medical journals.In the centre we look closely at various plants; disembodied hands help us to see the most interesting pieces of foliage, the hairs and tendrils and flowers.The far left screen shows us a low-angle view of the artist\u2019s face as she lies in a tumbled bed; she musingly tells us bits of her dreams.This complex of images offers several openings for interpretation.The separation of elements permits us to concentrate upon each aspect in turn, while also suggesting that each strand interact with and comment upon the others.The whole is a comprehensive exploration of the membrane between conscious and unconscious, the details of content almost submerged by the fascination of the pro-cess-of-learning we experience.And yet we know we must reckon with the content.Perhaps human sexuality can best be explored by intimation and metaphor, objectifying and expanding the intimate information.Facing South, Lisa Steele\u2019s most recent tape, continues this investigation of female activity and response.Facing South begins with a close-up view, a visual and verbal urging to \u201clook closer\u2019\u2019, and the artist\u2019s musing note that she at times looked too closely, saw things in too much detail.And yet we are urged to focus on fine details, see everything as clearly as possible.The tape progresses; we see under magnification flowers, petals, leaves.We chart growth day by day of the angelwing begonia, nasturtiums, all the while aware of the progress of seeds, germination, nurturing into maturity.When the next close-up, a little blurry, focusses onto a long slit, surrounding hairs, and the comment about how difficult it is to see well here, it does not seem unusual or surprising to be examining a clitoris and vagina.The connecting links had already been established, with women as part of a natural system, fruitful beds of daily functions and desires.The planting of seeds in fertile ground, the eventual germination and flowering to become food for humans and other animals.Flowers after all are more than merely visual pleasure.They are an important part of attraction for reproductive purposes, they are receptive, inviting, and are to be sniffed, fondled, admired.They are food.The camera backs off, takes a long view of rooftop gardens, shadows moving imperceptibly from left to right.We watch.The tape ends as \u201cat noon, rising, locate the distance to view.\" In the three years documented in these videotapes, FACING SOUTH, 1975, b/w, sound, 22 minutes.lilllilS s « I A VERY PERSONAL STORY, 1974, b/w, sound, 17 minutes.pit/;;; 111111 lii ¦ I II Lisa Steele has travelled a long way.She began with an amused and personalised comment on the art world, in line with then-current interests and approaches as seen from an outside viewpoint.The next series of works shows her looking more closely into meanings - finding out what real and significant information about the world could be found in searching through scientific data, the external natural world.If bits of nature are examined in laboratory terms, what can we discover of substance?The answers seemed to be limited.Lisa Steele then turned the same scrutiny and analytic technique upon her own experience and personal history, but Birthday Suit, Outlaws, and A Very Personal Story only appeared to give us answers.Somehow clues to deeper realities remained hidden by civilised surfaces of what was common to all of us, what was acknowledged by all to be suitable for public discussion.More fundamental truths were closed off.Internal Pornography begins to break through that barrier of acceptability.She searches deeper, looks for information that is more raw, closer to source.And Facing South, while returning to the external world (begonia blooms, germinating nasturtium seeds), continues deeper into an unconscious world of desperate needs.We see her eating the nasturtium leaves, barely fourteen days old, craving their freshly green vegetable taste withwhole-grain bread and butter.With the evident care and knowledge she had lavished on the young seedlings, this jolts on us as a cannibal act, a greedy devouring of newly-born innocents, a primeval demand deeper than knowledge, somehow both a shameful urge and an atonement.A sacrifice.And in the end.after much looking, much waiting, she has at last acquired through inestimable, unspoken pain, a distance to view.Only a distance to view.I feel it takes courage to embark on such a search, courage to seek an unknown truth and face whatever answers may come forth.Courage to see oneself clearly, and to begin to deal with that self in open and understanding terms.Lisa Steele has found something, still not quite defined.But our reaction to her discovery is visceral and moving.We also want to make those discoveries.A ritual may be a private thing, but offered publicly its patterns offer clues to hidden realities.Daily, monthly, seasonal cycles - the lives of plants and animals seem potentially within understanding, knowable, enclosed as they are within the longer and more complex human span.If we return again and again to the same spot, the same activity, will we see more with each experience?Experience more with each viewing?The final decision is not made, the summary not yet possible, but each of Lisa Steele\u2019s works is an interim report.* Videotapes by Lisa Steele 1972\tJuggling b/w, sound, 6 minutes Ross Street Tapes b/w, sound, 15 minutes Lisa With The Egg b/w, sound, 10 minutes Turtletape b/w, sound, 15 minutes Three Women b/w, sound 20 minutes Know Your Turtle b/w, sound, 20 minutes 1973\tEarthworms b/w, sound, 20 minutes Foodcraft b/w, 8 minutes Sleep/Dream Vigil, 2 channels, b/w, sound, 30 minutes 1 974 Birthday Suit - Scars and Defects b/w, sound, 1 2 minutes A Very Personal Story b/w, sound 1 7 minutes Outlaws b/w, sound, 20 minutes 1975 Internal Pornography, 3 channels, b/w, sound, 30 minutes Facing South b/w, sound, 22 minutes note biographique LISA STEELE est née, à Kansas City, au Missouri, en 1 947.Elle vit présentement à Toronto ou elle travaille la photographie et le vidéo.Elle exposa ses travaux à la galerie A Space de Toronto en 1973 et en 1 974 et a participé à de nombreuses expositions de groupe dont \u201cCanada\u201d Trajectoires \u201873\u201d, à Paris, \u201cWomen and Film Festival\u201d, Toronto, 1 973, \u201cToronto Video\u201d, Syracuse, N.Y., 1974, \u201cVideoscape\u201d, Toronto, 1975, et \u201cVideo Art\u201d, exposition itinérante aux États-Unis, 1 975.31 Québec 75 postface de Chantal Pontbriand Dans son premier numéro, Parachute publiait une interview de Normand Thériault au sujet de l\u2019exposition qu\u2019il organisait depuis près d\u2019un an: Québec 75.Cette interview était intitulée: Québec 75, une stratégie.Pour citer l\u2019organisateur de l'exposition, dans son introduction au catalogue (1), Québec 75 se voulait une stratégie appliquée au \u201cmilieu montréalais de l'art, une intervention dans le champs de la pratique artistique, une exposition, et plus qu\u2019une exposition, un concept global.\u201cNous croyons que l'art québécois a besoin présentement de confrontations sérieuses, d\u2019evénements nombreux de façon à forcer chacun à préciser son rôle et sa place dans le secteur culturel.\u201cCe qui , sans doute, incita dès le départ les organisateurs à mettre sur pied parallèlement à l\u2019exposition une série de débats\u2019\u2019 pour que le spectateur comprenne que la problématique de l\u2019art n\u2019est pas faite que d\u2019objets\u2019\u2019, lesquels débats devaient toucher des thèmes tels que la notion d'artiste, les groupes, les galeries, les musées, la critique d\u2019art, l\u2019objet d\u2019art.Susciter des débats, des polémiques, Québec 75 ne manqua pas de le faire.Pendant une semaine, l\u2019atmosphère du Musée d\u2019art contemporain fut à la frénésie collective.Dans d\u2019autres salles que celle des débats, languissaient, portant en quelque sorte le deuil, les objets d\u2019une exposition qui, elle aussi, aurait pu être.\u201cLa problématique de l\u2019art n\u2019est pas faite que d\u2019objets\u201d.en effet, ceux-ci deviennent peut-être trop vite le prétexte à une mise à nue d\u2019un milieu inarticulé, peu défini, ayant des relations historiques avec des mouvements qui, selon certains', pourrait donner une continuité à l\u2019art québécois, victime d\u2019interrelations avec l\u2019art \u201cinternational\u201d, un milieu limité aussi du point de vue nombre et services (critique, galeries, musées, etc.), et pauvre idéologiquement (sans penseurs d\u2019envergure).Bref, une situation ambiguë, laquelle devait inévitablement mener à l\u2019énorme confusion que fut Québec 75.Que dire de cette tour de Babel, où tour-à-tour, on applaudissait sans discrimination, celui qui osait parler le plus fort, d\u2019une façon plus articulée qu\u2019un autre, sans se soucier s\u2019il fut conséquent avec lui-même, cohérent, pertinent, informé.Outre une telle confusion dans les esprits des \u201cspectateurs\u201d de Québec 75, ne faut-il pas mentionner avant tout celle de certains panélistes et celle de la critique, qui dans les quotidiens montréalais se laissa aller à maintes spéculations sur l\u2019art \u201cquébécois\u201d, remettant en question, sans scrupules, l\u2019art qu\u2019elle prétendait défendre (?) auparavant.\u201cA major illusion of the art system is that art resides in specific objects.Such artifacts are the material basis for the concept of \u201cthe work of art\u201d.But in essence, all institutions which process art data, thus making information, are components of the work of art.Without the support system, the object ceases to have definition; but without the object, the support system can still sustain the notion of art.\u201d -Jack Burnham (2).Il me semble que ce court texte de Burnham décrive assez bien la véritable problématique autour de Québec 75.Québec 75 est un serpent qui se mord la queue.Les idées maîtresses apparues tant au cours des débats que dans les journaux, se développaient par rapport aux axes suivants: na to nalism e/internationalisme, historicité/production actuelle, intervention/panorama, artiste/société.Ce sont en fait, et depuis toujours, les axes de pensée à la base du \u201csystème\u201d qui prévaut ici au Québec, dans le domaine des arts, (il s\u2019agit de contextes similaires dans l\u2019ensemble du Canada, ou dans tout autre endroit où il n\u2019y a qu\u2019une faible concentration de l\u2019activité artistique: la Californie, Chicago, la Belgique, l\u2019Espagne, les pays d\u2019Europe de l'Est).Occasionnellement, dans un semblant de désert, on assiste à un soulèvement, une explosion d énergie, un regain d\u2019intérêt, toujours cependant, l\u2019histoire le dit, grâce à quelqu\u2019un (Borduas, ici?).ou quelques-uns, peu importe.Ainsi, le Mouvement Dada est originaire de Suisse, mais combien de suisses compte-on parmi les dadaïstes?Ce que l\u2019on retient de tout mouvement, ce n\u2019est pas la biographie de ses auteurs, comme leur créativité, leur inscription personnelle et individuelle dans l\u2019histoire des idées.L\u2019art a une fonction sociale qui est loin d\u2019être évidente et unidimensionnelle, mais qui existe et agit très certainement.Il n\u2019est pas nécessaire pour cela de continuellement se demander: \u201cIs Politics Art?\u201d (3) ou inversement.Cela ne correspond à rien.Le milieu ambiant, érigé par Burnham en système, supporte l\u2019art et définit l\u2019objet.Que signifie cette affirmation dans le contexte actuel?Le milieu.on pourrait le qualifier de réduit sans tromper personne: quelques galeries, un petit musée, quelques centaines d\u2019intéressés et encore, des collectionneurs, non.De quelle relation sociale les artistes ici vivent-ils?Aucune.ou presque.Ils exposent en l\u2019espace de cinq ans partout où cela est possible, y compris le Musée d\u2019art contemporain, la Galerie nationale souvent, les galeries subventionnées, les galeries commerciales.et puis rien.Il ne se présente aucun défi (challenge) autre que ceux mentionnés, ni aucun feedback de la part d\u2019une critique informée et qualifiée idéologiquement.Il y a cependant un très fort système de bourse qui entretient l\u2019espoir.Ce qui mène très vite à conclure que le \u201csystème artistique\u201d est une immense illusion entretenue par les politiques fédérales et provinciales.Triste et inévitable conclusion.Quelques bourses et un salaire de professeur, voilà ce qui semble définir, socioéconomiquement, l\u2019artiste au Québec, et pose la question: être artiste, un luxe ou une discipline?Le professorat est un pis-aller, à interrompre s\u2019il-le-faut, pour une année sabati-que, où, si possible, on bénéficie d\u2019une bourse.C\u2019est ce que le Québec offre actuelle-ment de mieux aux artistes.Et on (universitaires, critiques) se demande ce que l\u2019artiste québécois a à offrir de mieux à la société dans laquelle il vit (question fondamentale des débats, ne l\u2019oublions pas.).Affirmer la nationalité québécoise, exiger des oeuvres un contenu politique, de quel droit peut-on l\u2019imposer aux artistes.Traiter l\u2019art qui se fait ici maintement d\u2019art dégénéré (ce ne sont pas les termes employés, mais c\u2019est bien ce que l\u2019on sous-entend) est une aberration, et peut bien être qualifié de nazisme.Le premier \u201cmouvement\u201d à naître au Québec revendiquait justement l\u2019ouverture d\u2019esprit, la liberté, la la libération de l\u2019énergie créatrice, le refus global de toute imposition idéologique, venant de toute part (gouvernements, académies, universités, institutions).Aujourd\u2019hui, quelques décades plus tard, on voudrait à nouveau instaurer le despotisme idéologique sur la production idéologique.Spontanément, on se méfie.Spontanément, on réagit.Quelques artistes se retirent des débats de Québec 75 (Champagne, Mihalcean, Mongrain, Poulin).Leur manifeste (?) est court, peu explicatif, maladroit.Mais le geste y est.Faut-il se surprendre de l\u2019absence des artistes quand le discours de l\u2019oeuvre elle-même ne tient aucune place, quand une chapelle veut faire du musée le lieu de discussions politiques, alors qu\u2019elle est incapable d\u2019agir politiquement là où il le faut, i.e.en dehors du musée.Va-t-on comprendre que la force de l\u2019art au Québec doit venir des artistes eux-mêmes, de leur énergie rassemblée?La seule chance de survie ne serait-elle pas dans l\u2019auto-organisation?N\u2019est-il pas clair que ce qui a véritablement marqué l\u2019art au Québec de 1970 à 1975, ce sont les galeries Media et Véhicule, à leurs débuts?Ces deux galeries furent mises sur pied par des artistes.L\u2019une exposa les tendances ludiques, pop et folfloristes de l\u2019art québécois, l\u2019autre des tendances conceptuelles et néo-formafistes.Media eut toujours la volonté de s\u2019inscrire très fortement dans le milieu québécois et fit de nombreux efforts pour y démocratiser l\u2019art, offrant au public des gravures et des multiples, des termes d\u2019achat avantageux, des expositions où dominaient l\u2019humour, la gaité, la couleur.Véhicule est né d\u2019un besoin de communication entre un certain nombre d\u2019artistes qui se trouvaient isolés dans le système qui prévalait alors, où des oeuvres se rattachent plutôt à des mouvements d\u2019art pauvre, d\u2019art minimal et d\u2019art conceptuel, n\u2019avaient pas leur place.Il n\u2019est donc pas étonnant que Véhicule ait cherché à se rapprocher d\u2019un réseau d\u2019information international, où son travail trouvait plus de répercussion et d\u2019affinités que dans la communauté immédiate, qui offrait peu de sympathisants.Sentant à prime abord le laboratoire, Véhicule devint une chasse-gardée.Dès que les artistes qui avaient donné l\u2019impulsion du départ se furent retirés, ces deux coopératives perdirent leur intérêt.Pourtant, fortes de leur subventions annuelles, elles continuèrent à exister tant bien que mal et existent encore, malgré une orientation de plus en plus difficile à définir.Aucune de ces galeries n\u2019a su appuyer à long terme un groupe d\u2019artistes qui lui soit propre.Aucune continuité n\u2019est apparue dans les efforts déployés par l\u2019une ou l\u2019autre.Une mentalité qui voulait donner la chance à chacun, a prouvé son ineptie.C\u2019est pourtant à Media et Véhicule que l\u2019on a vu les premières expositions de la plupart des artistes inclus dans Québec 75, sans parler des exclus.C\u2019est à Véhicule qu\u2019on a vu les seules expositions nous venant d\u2019Europe ou 32 des États-Unis pendant un certain temps, offrant ainsi à l\u2019artiste québécois quelques possibilités de se situer par rapport à d\u2019autres recherches que les siennes dans le domaine de l\u2019art actuel.Ce sont Media et Véhicule qui ont préparé le terrain pour les quelques autres galeries contemporaines à Montréal.Comment négliger ou rejeter facilement ces facteurs dans l\u2019histoire des cinq dernières années?Est-ce que les forces \u201cdynamiques\u201d du milieu, que l\u2019on réclame de part et d\u2019autre, n\u2019étaient justement pas là.Cette intervention que l\u2019on cherchait tant à susciter avec Québec 75, n\u2019avait-elle pas déjà été pratiquée par les artistes sux-mêmes quand ils organisèrent Media et Véhicule?Québec 75, une intervention?Plutôt une officialisation du déjà vécu.Un enterrement, du point de vue de la pratique artistique.Les objets de l\u2019exposition semblent muets.bien sur, ils n\u2019étaient que le prétexte.Des oeuvres commandées pour servir un objectif du domaine de l\u2019administration de l\u2019art.Rien de plus.Un à un, la plupart de ces objets deviennent oeuvrent et se justifient.Ensemble, c\u2019est le cirque, le bazar, l\u2019absurdité.Leur rassemblement est inutile parce que vide de sens, sans idéologie cohésive.Le lien entre les pièces ne se fait pas.Faut-il citer Documenta pour reprendre un exemple d\u2019esposition cohérente, imaginative, originale, offrant des concepts inusités, pour prouvé qu\u2019une exposition de groupe peut offrir autre chose qu\u2019un morne étalage d\u2019objets?On a voulu implanter une stratégie, provoquer et ce qu\u2019on nous propose tessemble à un panorama incomplet.Que serait-il arrivé si Thériault y avait mis du sien?N\u2019est-il pas temps de réclamer de ceux qui s\u2019occupent d\u2019art ici (critiques, administrateurs de galeries, musées) un engagement, surtout de l\u2019imagination et de la créativité?Ce rôle leur est imputable autant qu\u2019aux artistes.\u201cThroughout history fairly constant pressure has been applied to the artist, restricting his out put to some set of \u201chigher\u201d (read \u201csocially useful11) truths.In this respect the nineteenth century concept of \u201cart for art\u2019s sake\u201d is relatively unique, since even at the beginning of the the present century it was mainly considered irresponsible and frivolous.So one can begin to understand why there is so much disdain directed towards contemporary artists who are not primarily concerned with object-making.Yet it is precisely those artists involved in the most naked projections of their personalities who will contribute the most to society\u2019s comprehension of its self.\u201d -Jack Burnham (4).Tout artiste honnête qui travaille au Québec y est forcément engagé et y trouve ses racines; il se rattache automatiquement à des mécanismes critiques et historiques locaux.Ses problématiques sont aujourd\u2019hui autres que celles de ses prédécesseurs.Le changement est une vérité inscrite dans le temps.Le renouvellement est inévitable et désirable.On associe beaucoup d\u2019oeuvres exposées dans Québec 75 à des mouvements venant de l\u2019étranger, n\u2019ayant pas d'appartenance au Québec, ou de signification.Support-Surface en France.Le Minimalisme et le Conceptualisme américains.La ressemblance est indéniable.Faut-il pour autant taxer ces oeuvres d\u2019internationalistes et n\u2019accorder aucune crédibilité a leurs auteurs?L\u2019internationalisme est une grosse machine entretenue par le système capitaliste américain, on le sait.Les artistes voyagent (?), les foires annuelles sont d'énormes conventions, les biennales, des instruments de prestige.La communication et l\u2019information a une échelle internationale est pourtant une réalité, et l\u2019internationalisation est un phénomène et un paradoxe, dont l'artiste québécois, a moins qu\u2019il ne soit stupide et naif (certains semblent y croire), se méfiera.Que l\u2019on songe au paradoxe de la survie matérielle pour l\u2019artiste, et l\u2019on comprendra mieux les contingences qui soustendent ce phénomène dans le contexte local au cours des dernières années.Sollers disait a propos de Joyce récemment: \u201cJoyce, lui, trace les limites de toute langue nationale, maternelle.Qu\u2019est-ce qu\u2019un sens en langue de mère-patrie?La propriété privée de la parole infantine, ce qui fait des groupes d\u2019adultes, des enfants en sursie.Mais aussi: un fonctionnement référentiel du sujet vers sa matrice corporelle et un barrage vers l\u2019inconscient élevé par le pré-conscient.Joyce dit: Finnegans Wake, c\u2019est le language et récriture de la nuit, en rêve.La langue nationale, maternelle ne se rêve pas, elle fait rêver un sujet dans son rêve.Mais le rêve d\u2019une langue peut être la veille d\u2019une autre, et quant il fait nuit sous une latitude, il peut faire jour sous une autre.Joyce rêve donc d\u2019un livre qui serait indistinctement rêve et interprétation, passage sans fin des frontières.Or, c\u2019est là, précisément, le réveil.On croit naïvement que Joyce n'a pas eu de préoccupation politique, parce qu\u2019il n\u2019a rien dit ou écrit à ce sujet en langue morte.Nous en sommes encore là, l\u2019art d\u2019un côté, la politique de l'autre.Comme s\u2019il y avait une place pour la politique, et d\u2019ailleurs pour quoi que ce soit.Mais le refus de Joyce de se livrer au moindre énoncé mort est justement l\u2019acte politique même.Cet acte explose au coeur de la polis réthorique.Au coeur de la reconnaissance narcissique du groupe humain: fin des nationalismes décidée par Joyce au moment ou les crises nationalistes sont les plus virulentes (le fascisme en Europe).Le nationalisme peut être caractérisé comme une double obstruction vers l\u2019inconscient et le champ international: c\u2019est pourquoi (même paré d'une bannière \u201cmarxiste\u201d) il est toujours fondamentalement régressif, et ouvre sur toutes les exclusions racistes.Joyce veut détruire le nationalisme, mais il va plus loin que l\u2019internationalisme abstrait, \u201coecuménique\u201d (qui ne peut se supporter que d'une langue morte: latin pour l\u2019église, stéréotype \u201cmarxiste-léniniste\", délire fasciste).Ce qu\u2019il est en train de construire avec Finnegans Wake, de 1921 à 1939, c'est un transnationalisme actif.Il désarticule, réarticule, et en même temps annule le maximum de traces linguistiques, historiques, mythologiques, religieuses.Dans ce qu\u2019il écrit, il y a plus que des différences: il met donc en question toute communauté (on appelle ça son \u201cillisibilité\u201d).\u201d (5) Que l\u2019on songe aussi à la survie spirituelle, et l'on comprendra que la connaissance ne saurait s'accomoder de frontières.Ici, les artistes apprennent par expérience indirecte la plupart du temps.Ils ont accès à l\u2019art par voie de catalogues ou de revues.Leur expérience n\u2019est pas concrète.Les Automatistes et les Plasticiens sont des mouvements historiques, classés, qui sont très loin de la dynamique actuelle.Ils prouvent heureusement la viabilité de mouvements artistiques ici.Mais n\u2019est-il pas temps pour l\u2019artiste québécois d\u2019aujourd\u2019hui de regarder en avant plutôt qu\u2019en arriéré, comme le réclame tant les critiques.C\u2019est le propre de tout artiste partout dans le monde de produire en fonction de ce que la société dans laquelle il vit est en train de devenir et non l\u2019inverse Et si cela veut dire ici, sauvegarder une culture qui nous est inhérente et qui est menacée, cela aussi est une tâche a remplir en fonction de l'avenir.Autant que possible, c\u2019est du présent que l'artiste tirera de l\u2019énergie créatrice, par une extreme conscience du présent.Cette conscience s'étend de nos jours à tout l\u2019occident par la force des choses; l\u2019occident ne forme-t-il pas une unique civilisation?Comment ne pas voir alors les ressemblances inévitables entre ce que produisent les artistes d\u2019ici et d\u2019ailleurs?De là à croire que l\u2019artiste québécois est récupéré et avalé par le système impérialiste américain.A toutes ces questions, Québec 75 n\u2019a rien changé.Une fois de plus, le milieu artistique n\u2019a fait que se regarder le nombril.\u201cIdentifier le milieu.\u201d \u201cmontrer les facettes dynamiques\u201d \u201cforcer l\u2019artiste à préciser son cheminement et être le premier juge de son art\u201d.(catalogue Arts, Québec 75) Identifier le milieu, est-ce qu\u2019un véritable panorama n'aurait pas réussi davantage?Montrer les facettes dynamiques, quant à être subjectif, pourquoi ne pas y aller de front?Forcer l\u2019artiste, à préciser son cheminement et être premier juge de son art, n\u2019est-ce pas justement inhérent à tout artiste?Québec 75 a voulu forcer l\u2019art québécois à se définir.Il est vain de chercher une définition de cet art a même tous les textes que cette exposition a provoqués, il est vain aussi de la chercher à même les oeuvres.Car, ensemble, elles ne révèlent rien.Chacune parle individuellement, si on ose regarder.Mais personne, à commencer par les promoteurs/organisateurs, n\u2019a osé regarder, gênés par un language plutôt silencieux (spécialisé, exigeant, discipliné) et, en soi, peu polémiste.Bonne ou mauvaise, chacune des oeuvres est une révélation, et un mystère.! notes 1.\tQuébec 75/Arts, \u201cManifeste pour une exposition\u2019\u2019, introduction de Normand Thériault, Institut d\u2019art contemporain, 1975.2.\tBurhham, Jack, Great Western Sait Works, \u201cReal Time Systems\", George Braziller, New York, 1974, p.27 3.\tTitre de l\u2019oeuvre de Robert Walker.4.\tBurnham, Jack, Great Western Salt Works, \u201cThe Artist as Shaman\", George Braziller, New York, 1 974, p.1 40.5.\tSollers, Philippe, Joyce et Cie, Art Press 20, septembre-octobre 1975.33 INFORMATION cinema LE PUIT DE LUMIÈRE, film de Vincent Grenier lorsque je tournerai la caméra dans une autre direction.Dans Catch, un trépied à \u201ctête sèche\u201d permet de brusques panoramiques, juxtaposés avec des prises de vue rapides de d\u2019autres sortes de mouvements.Je me suis intéressé à la découverte, l\u2019illusion, les sources et les directions des mouvements, et aux tensions.Je me suis intéressé à l\u2019organicité que j\u2019aime à contempler, à découvrir ou à continuer.J\u2019apprécie cette organicité spécialement si elle occupe un espace qui est capable de la contenir, mais on lui a rarement donner ce prévilège.L\u2019Art est peut-être une façon d\u2019écouter les choses et/ou les gens en vue de fabriquer une réponse qui consisterait à mettre en évidence ce que l\u2019on voit comme important dans les réalités perçues par chacun, de façon à extrapoler mes propres conclusions constructives.Plus celui qui écoute colle à sa propre réalité dans sa réponse et plus cette dernière est juste, la quantité d\u2019énergie engagée se révélera d\u2019autant plus grande, plussaisissante et plus vitale.Vincent Grenier, New York novembre et décembre 1975.Vincent Grenier projetera ses films à la Galerie Véhicule Art (Montréal) Inc.au mois d\u2019avril 1 975.Le cinéma hérite de l\u2019inévitable besoin de représentation que notre civilisation avait auparavant demandé à la peinture puis à la photographie, il hérite aussi, surtout après l\u2019arrivée du son, de l\u2019infirmité occasionnée par la transposition des moeurs et des oeuvres tirées du théâtre et de la littérature.Evidemment, le théâtre et la littérature, même transposés sur film, restent une forme d\u2019expression.Mis à part les quelques rares sursauts d\u2019emploi duement cinématographique qui ces modes d\u2019expressions aient bien voulu endurer du cinéma, il faut bien se rendre compte de la fausseté et de l\u2019ircnie impliquées dans ce qu\u2019est devenu la notion de cinéma, en s\u2019applicant pratiquement uniquement à ces genres.(C\u2019est à cette unique notion que de nombreuses histoires et anthologies du cinéma, entre autres, veulent bien nous faire croire.) Il faut ajouter à cela que, puisque le cinéma est présentement l\u2019un des moyens de reproduction de la réalité (!?) les plus efficaces, il est assujeti aux définitions et aux pressions d\u2019une industrie de corporation florissante; c\u2019est à dire que la plupart des énergies dirigées dans le Motion Picture le sont au profit de produits et des formules faciles à vendre, de l\u2019impersonnalité et de la médiocrité.Le cinéma peut exister sans tous 34 ces prétextes et distorsions qui amoindrissent des potentiels beaucoup plus réels, plus puissants et plus personnels.Tout comme la peinture, le cinéma a une identité propre que le cinéaste se doit de comprendre et de respecter, tout en avançant son propre geste et ses propres émotions.Il existe une facture cinématographique, à travers laquelle l\u2019artiste/cinéaste peut s\u2019exprimer: à partir du moment où il manifeste le désir de rendre disponible un acte de voir et possiblement un acte d\u2019entendre, jusqu\u2019au moment de la projection du rectangle de lumière et, facultativement du son amplifié.Dans La toile, Le puit de lumière et catch, j\u2019ai essayé de rechercher et de lier, d\u2019une part, les qualités et les possibilités des contrôles de la caméra et, d\u2019autre part, de l\u2019objet filmé, avec mon propre mouvement.Je me suis intéressé au maniement des contrôles de la caméra et de la lentille, i.e.diaphragme, focus, angles de vision, vitesses de tournage, cadrage, sortes de trépieds, etc., comme s\u2019ils étaient des extensions physiques de mes mains.Dans La toile, la toile poussée par le vent devient un diaphragme qui bouge en confrontation avec le diaphragme de la lentille que je contrôle.La même chose se passe avec le focus.Dans Le puit de lumière, en plaçant adéquatement le trépied, une pièce de ciel changera de forme HOLLANDE Johan van der Keuken, cinéaste hollandais de passage à Montréal l\u2019année dernière, vient de compléter un nouveau film, produit par le Comité hollandais pour la Palestine.Le film avait été tourné au Liban juste avant son séjour à Montréal.Depuis la fin du tournage, Les Palestiniens a été présenté aux festivals de Lyon et de Leipzig.\"The film The Palestinians opens with a statement about the Jews in nineteenth century Europe.They lived in isolated communities, virtually deprived of rights.Under the pressure of the prgroms against the gettos in eastern Europe the idea of a return to the Promised Land acquired a political shape.But the Promised Land was already the home of a people: the Palestinians.Then the camera moves to South Lebanon, to the border area where the peasant population is being shelled every night by Israeli artillery.Their government doesn\u2019t protect them, the interests of the Lebanese ruling classes lie elsewhere.A parallel is drawn between the poor Lebanese peasants - who are being oppressed by the local feudal rulers with their bands of armed hirelings and menaced in their existence by the Israeli pressure -and the Palestinian refugees.For the Palestinians are also essentially an agrarian people with a traditional lifestyle, but there\u2019s one great difference: they have no land.Poor and faceless they live in their camps, many of them lost in the large urban centers. LES PALESTINIENS, de Johan Van der Keuken : \u2014 «il .s Through the explanation of the social contradictions in Europe and the contemporary Arab world the film tries to give an identity to the Palestinians: for a Western audience the dispossessed who act as a fuse that can set off an explosion between the haves and the have-nots, in the Arab world and in Israel.The Palestinian struggle, aimed at a return to their homeland and the foundation of a democratic Palestine in which Jews and Arabs can live and work together, must be seen in the perspective of a social revolution.\u201d.Johan Van der Keuken camera: Johan van der Keuken son: Chris Brouwer musique: Willem Breuker montage: Fred van Dijk, Johan van der Keuken production: Chris Brouwer texte: Johan van der Keuken (45 minutes, couleur.) ¦ Anthony McCall LONG FILM FOR AMBIENT LIGHT Performed at The Idea Warehouse, Reade Street , New York City, from 12 noon, June 1 8th, through 1 2 noon, June 1 9th, 1 975.This work used no actual film or film-projector.Three distinct elements combined to form the \u2018film\u2019 and not one of these is regarded as being prior to the other two: 1.\tA time-schema, on the wall, covering fifty days (photo no.1).A the centre, the actual time-period of the presentation is indicated.2.\tAn altered space.A single electric light hangs in the centre of the room, at eye level.The windows were covered with white paper, limiting them to being light sources during the day and reflective surfaces(screen) during the night (photos 2 and 3).ONKani:\t* ¦¦JLaHHMIjj / WUJSU! NL\tTill RS fUt M mm ;i ¦i WSmmm 1.\tLONG FILM FOR AMBIENT LIGHT: Time-schema (detail).2.\tLONG FILM FOR AMBIENT LIGHT: Installation, 3 pm, June 1 8.3.\tLONG FILM FOR AMBIENT LIGHT: Installation, 3 am, June 1 9.3.\tThe following statement, on the wall: LONG FILM FOR AMBIENT LIGHT NOTES IN DURATION This film sits deliberately on a threshhold, between being considered a work of movement and being considered a static condition.Formalist art criticism has continued to maintain a stern, emphatic distinction between these two states, a division that I consider absurd.Everything that occurs, including the (electro-chemical) process of thinking, occurs in time.It is cultural habit that persuades us otherwise-perhaps a function of intelligence, that breaks up perception of continuous time into \u2019\u2019moments11 in order to analyse them.Our insistence upon static, absolute lumps of experience, as opposed to continuous, overlapping, multiple durations, shows a warped epistomology, albeit a convenient one.Art that does not show change within our time-span of attending to it we tend to regard as \u201cobject\u201d.Art that does show change within our time-span of attending to it we tend to regard as \u201cevent\u201d.Art that outlives us we tend to regard as \u201ceternal\u201d.What is at issue is that we ourselves are the division that cuts across what is essentially a sliding scale of time-bases.A piece of paper on the wall is as much a duration as the projection of a film.Its only difference is in its immediate relationship to our perceptions.A static thing, in terms of impulses to the brain is a repetitive event.Whether the locus for consideration is \u2019\u2019static\" or \u2019\u2019moving\", we deal with time-'spans of attention, the engagement of cognition and memory within the context of art behaviour.Neither objects nor events are for the most part, accessible.They are rarely \u201con show\u201d.Since they are intentional, meaningful signs, this is of no consequence: once an idea is established \u201din mind\", it has entered the circuit of (art) ideas, and it won\u2018t go away, except through debate within the circuit.The apprehension of any artwork, static or moving, is a fleeting moment, as are all experiences.It is their mental residue that is important.One of the norms of film presentation has been \u2019\u2019limited, group access\".It has been necessary to assemble at a particular time to see the work, thus forming the social group, \u2019\u2019audience11.This group has specific behavioural characteristics.With \u201cFire Cycle\u201d (MOMA, Oxford, June 9, 1974, duration: 13 hours) and \u201cLong Film for Four Projectors\u201d (completed\u2019November 1 974, N.Y.C.), I established to my satisfaction that extending the duration could significantly alter the kind of concentration possible on the part of the spectator.Because the time-span of attention was not prescribed, the works being advertised as merely \u201copen\u201d between certain hours, people came and went in their own time.The structure of each of them, though continually shifting, had s systematic evenness.No special viewing positions were dictated, and in each case the entire space was utilised such that there was no particular 35 WSm WÊÊÊÊÊÊ axis of attention (unlike earlier films like \u2018Line describing a Cone' where, though there was an infinite set of possible viewing positions, there was nevertheless, a one-line axis running through space, which in terms of eye direction, always ended at one point, the lens of the projector).When there were several people present at one moment, the scale was sufficient to provide spatial separation.These formal characteristics made possible a one-to-one relationship between spectator and work.I am now interested in reducing the 'performance1 aspect, in order to examine certain other fundamentals, viz temporality, light.I am presently assuming that it is possible to do this without using the customary photochemical and electro-mechanical processes (which have the disadvantage of being expensive, ie slow).I am aware of the dangers of back-tracking, that behind every'first principle1 lurks another, and I do not rule out the possibility of continuing to make \u2019films1.However, for the time being I intend to concentrate less on the physical process of production and more on the presuppositions behind film as an art activity.Anthony McCall, New York, June 1975.infos CINÉMA PARALLÈLE La Coopérative des Cinéastes Indépendants (Montréal) annonce la reprise des activités du \u201cCinéma Parallèle\u2019\u2019 dès janvier prochain.Lieu de projection encore à déterminer.Ouvrir l\u2019oeil! ¦ DORE NEKES ET WERNER NEKEI Les 4 et 5 décembre dernier à l\u2019Institut Goethe (Place Bonaventure, Montréal), Dore O.Nekes et Werner Nekes, cinéastes \u201cunderground\u201d allemands, présentaient leur travail respectif à l\u2019aide de quelques films; elle: ALASKA (1968), BLONDE BARBAREI (1972) et KASKARA (1974, film en compétition au festival international de Knokke-le-Zoute en 1974); lui: DIWAN (1973, qui regroupe une série de courts-métrages); JUM-JUM (1966): en collaboration.L\u2019Institut prépare pour l'automne prochain une série régulière de projections de films allemands expérimentaux.¦ FESTIVAL DU FILM ETUDIANT CANADIEN Lors du Septième Festival du Film Etudiant Canadien organise' par le Conservatoire d'Art Cinématographique de l\u2019Université Concordia du 24 au 28 septembre dernier, dix films ont été sélectionnés dans la catégorie \u201cexpérimentale\u201d.C\u2019est Lome Marin, auteur de RHAPSODY ON A THEME FROM A HOUSE MOVIE (7 minutes, n/b, sonore, 1972), qui s\u2019est mérité le second prix ($300) pour son film SECOND IMPRESSIONS (9 minutes, couleur, 1974).Aucun premier prix n'a été décerné dans cette catégorie.¦ AU WHITNEY MUSEUM A New York, le Whitney Museum of American Art présente chaque semaine des films indépendants dans le cadre d\u2019une série intitulée \"Les Nouveaux Cinéastes Américains\u201d (The New American Filmmakers), D\u2019autres salles offrent de façon permanente des programmes de cinéma parallèle: The Anthology Film Archives, The Millenium Film Workshop et Film Forum.THE VERY EYE OF LIGHT, tel est le titre du \u201cfestival \u201d du film que vient d\u2019organiser pour la seconde année consécutive * la Pacific Cinémathèque (Vancouver) à la Vancouver Art Gallery.L\u2019exposition a eu lieu du 6 octobre au 6 novembre 1 975.Un programme imposant qui cherchait à retracer grosso modo l\u2019histoire du cinéma expérimental: Le film absolu (the absolute film): dadaïsme et surréalisme; expressionnisme; impressionnisme et néo-dadaïsme; Cocteau/Vigo; animation représentation et abstraction; le film comme danse; the graphic/kinetic interface (Len Lye, Maya Deren, Alexandre Hammid, Shirley Clarke, Stan Vander-beek, Ed Emshwiller); Kenneth Anger I et II; abstraction du graphisme à la lumière pure (Hy Hirsch, Jim Davis); événement spécial: Ondine en personne présente Warhol; du psychodrame au film personnel (Christopher MacLaine, Stan Brakhage); Harry Smith, Stan Brakhage I et II; événement spécial: Morgan Fisher présente une sélection de ses films; artistes-cinéastes I (Michael Snow, Robert Smithson); cinéastes de la Côte Ouest (Bruce Conner, Robert Nelson, Bruce Baillie, Scott Bartlett); the underground: improvs and expanded realities (Ken Jacobs, Bob Fleischner, Jack Smith, David Bienstock); autobiographie sexuelle (Frans Zwartjes, Steve Dwoskin); Stan Brakhage II; jeunes cinéastes canadiens (Raphael Bendahan, Lome Marin, Keith Lock); cinéastes de Vancouver (David Rimmer, Keith Rodan, Rudy Wrench, Kalle Lasn, Jim Johnson, Al Razutis, Torn Braidwood, Rick Parron); artistes-cinéastes II (Bruce Nauman, Frank Owen, Ed Rusha); le film en tant que film (Barry Gerson, David Hykes, Colen Fitzgibbon, George Landow, Antony McCall); le film en tant que journal (diary)/ le film en tant que lumière (Kames Herbert, Andrew Noren).* PERSONAL FILM CONTENT & CONTEXT avait déjà obtenu un immense succès en 1974.Cf: catalogue de l'exposition: Personal Content & Context.(A Vancouver Art Gallery Exhibition organized by Pacific Cinematheque), November 4-1 1,1974.Illustré, avec des interviews ou propositions des cinéastes participants.¦ A PARIS Le premier Centre Vidéo, fondé par des membres du Vidéostone (Canada), vient d\u2019ouvrir ses portes à Paris.Il s\u2019agit du Vidéographe, 1 7, rue des Grands-Augustins, Paris, 75006.¦ QUÉBEC 75 VIDÉO Vient de paraître dans la série des catalogues publiés par l'Institut d\u2019art contemporain pour l\u2019exposition Québec \u201875: Québec 75 Vidéo, qui n\u2019a rien d\u2019un catalogue habituel.Réalisé par Yves Chaput, Gérard Henry et Michel Van de Walle, il constitue l\u2019une des meilleurs sources de renseignements sur la pratique du vidéo au Québec dont nous disposions jusqu\u2019ici, et un instrument indispensable pour quiconque s\u2019intéresse aux possibilités du vidéo.L\u2019importance de ce document réside également dans le fait que ses auteurs, demeurants sans cesse très critiques par rapport aux conditions de la pratique du vidéo, ont échappé (enfin!) au regard neutre et/ou esthétisant du critique/historien d\u2019art ou de cinéma.\u201cLe tout débute par une histoire: celle de la ma-gnétoscopie demi-pouce.Une histoire souvent mouvementée qui nous est partiellement racontée par ceux qui l\u2019ont vécue de l\u2019intérieur.Mais cette histoire ne se développe pas en dehors de l\u2019infractructure qui l\u2019a déterminée: l'économie.Ni, non plus en dehors d\u2019enjeux politiques, de pouvoir, d\u2019enjeux idéologiques.L\u2019histoire n\u2019est pas neutre.\u201d Mais cette histoire a aussi des assises concrètes que sont les centres de production, les lieux où se réalisent concrètement les vidéogrammes.C\u2019est l\u2019inventaire, plus \u201cexploratoire\u201d qu\u2019autre chose, que nous avons pu rassembler avec quelques données de base pour quelques-uns des centres.Cette histoire s\u2019est développée aussi dans des pratiques: des pratiques d\u2019intervention où nous avons rassemblés quelques textes produits par les groupes vidéo et les télévisions communautaires, textes qui rendent compte de leurs activités d\u2019organisation et d\u2019utilisation du médium.Enfin, nous nous sommes brièvement attardés à scruter quelques aspects du développement de l\u2019utilisation du médium tant chez les groupes, les organismes gouvernementaux que chez les câblodistributeurs.En somme, la pertinence de ce livre réside peut-être en ce qu\u2019il permet de voir historiquement comment s\u2019est développé le médium, comment on l\u2019utilise et, en dernier lieu, provoquer peut-être un débat autour de l\u2019élaboration éventuelle d\u2019un réseau populaire de communication.Yves Chaput, Gérard Henry, Michel Van de Walle (extrait de \u201cprésentation de l'objet\u201d page 5).Ce catalogue peut-être obtenu à l\u2019Institut d\u2019art contemporain, 1025 est, de la rue Marie-Anne, à Montréal, Québec.¦ BIBLIOGRAPHIE Voici une liste à peu près complète des livres qui traitent du cinéma expérimental, la plupart disponibles à la Bibliothèque Nationale du Québec, département de cinématographie, 360, rue McGill.BRAKHAGE, Stan (cinéaste).- Metaphors on Vision (Manifeste), 1963, paru dans Film Culture, no 30, Autumn 19653, 62 pages; introduction de Paul Adams Sitney; illustrations.BATTCOCK, Gregory.- The New American Cinema, New York, Dutton, 1967.CURTIS, David.- Experimented Cinema (A Fifty Year Evolution), New York, Universe: A Delta 36 Book, 1971.Republié en Angleterre par Studio Vista en 1 971.GRUEN.John.- The New Bohemia: the combine generation, A Grosset Special, Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 1967.HEIN, Birgit.- Film inn Underground, Ullstein Buch, Berlin, 1971.MEKAS, Jonas.- Movie Journal, New York, Collier, 1972.MITRY.Jean.- Le Cinéma Expérimental, Paris, Seghers, 1 974.MICCHICHE, Lino.- Il Nuovo Cinema degli anni \u201860, Turin, Eri, 1972.Ouvrage complété d'une bibliographie de 60 pages.RENAN, Sheldon.- An Introduction to the American Underground Film, New York, Dutton Paperbacks, 1 967.SITNEY, Paul Admas.- The Film Culture Reader, New York, Praeger Publishers Inc., 1970.Réédité en Angleterre sous un nouveau titre: Film Culture (An Anthology), London, Seeker and Warburg, 1 971.SITNEY, Paul Admas.- Visionary Film, New York, Oxford University Press, 1974.TORRI, Bruno.- Cinema Italiano; dalla realta alla metafore, Palerme, Palumbo, 1973.TYLER, Parker.- Underground Film A Critical FUstory, New York, Grove Press Inc., 1970.YOUNGBLOOD, Gene.- Expanded Cinema, New York, E.P.Dutton & Co.Inc., 1970.(Cinéma et vidéo) WHEELER, Dennis.- Form and Structure in Recent Film, Vancouver VAG and Talon Books, 1972.VOGEL, Amos.- Film as Subversive Art, New York, Random House, 1974.COLLECTIF.Atti del seminario internazionale di studio sul cinema underground, Palazzo del Cinema-Lido, 19-23 Maggio 1970.A cela, il faut ajouter quelques périodiques tels que Film Culture (New York), Filmmakers\u2019 NewsLetters (New York), The Village Voice (New York, interrompu en 1975), Canyon Cinéma News (Berkeley), Cantrill Filmnotes (Melbourne, Australie; cinéma expérimental et vidéo), ainsi que Cinim et Cinemantics (Londres, tous deux interrompus depuis quelques années mais qui demeurent valables parce qu\u2019ils couvrent les développements du cinéma \u201cunderground\u201d en Europe (Allemagne, Angleterre, Australie plus particulièrement, 1970-71).Sans oublier: les catalogues de festivals ou d\u2019expositions comme celui du festival international de Knokke-le-Zoute (Belgique) qui se tient tous les sept ans ou celui de l\u2019exposition organisée par An-nette Michelson à Montreux, du 3 au 24 août 1974, New Forms in Films, pour ne mentionner que ces deux exemples.Sans oublier non plus les catalogues des différentes coopératives qu\u2019on peut se procurer en écrivant directement aux adresses suivantes: Coopérative des Cinéastes Indépendants, 2026 est, Ontario, Montréal (tél: 523-2816); Toronto Filmmakers\u2019 Cooperative, 341, Bloor Street West, Toronto; New York Filmmakers\u2019 Cooperative, 175 Lixington Avenue, New York, NY 10016; Canyon Cinema Cooperative, c/o Industrial Center Building, Room 200, Sausalito, California 94965; Paris Films Coop, 19, rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Paris, 75001 - Hamburger Film Coop, Rosenstrasse 18, 2 Hambourg 1, Deutchland; The Other Cinema, 12-13 Little Newport Street, London, WC2 H 7JJ.¦ Suzanne Danis-Hébert BANQUE D\u2019ART Le numéro d\u2019automne d\u2019Artscanada porte sur la Banque d\u2019art, important programme d\u2019acquisition d\u2019oeuvres d\u2019art du Conseil des Arts du Canada, auquel on a jusqu\u2019à date consacré cinq millions de dollars.Au terme de ce projet de cinq ans, Artscanada a confié la tâche de faire le bilan de cette expérience particulière du gouvernement fédéral à l\u2019écrivain américain Dale McCona-thy.Celui-ci, dans un volumineux compte-rendu du programme, a constitué en dossier qui couvre plusieurs aspects de la Banque d\u2019art, son histoire, sa collection, sa valeur, ses répercussions.Ce numéro est intitulé: The Canadian cultural revolution, an appraisal of the politics & economics of art.m GUIDO MOLINARI Une rétrospective de l\u2019oeuvre de Guido Molinari aura lieu en juillet à la Galerie nationale du Canada à Ottawa.La Galerie nationale publiera un catalogue de l\u2019exposition, dans lequel on pourra lire des textes de Molinari, un des chefs-de-file du mouvement des Plasticiens dans les années cinquante à Montréal.! BIENNALE DE VENISE Greg Curnoe représentera le Canada lors de la prochaine Biennale de Venise, en juin 1976.GOODWIN, RAINER\u2019 BEUYS La galerie B présentera en mars sept nouveaux dessins de Betty Goodwin, alors que l\u2019exposition du mois de février regroupera plusieurs travaux de Joseph Beuys et de Arnulf Rainer.! CHARLES GAGNON En janvier Yajima expose les photographies de Charles Gagnon, peintre et photographe.» RENÉ BERGER, LUCY LIPPARD, RAOUL JEAN MOULIN Vers la fin juin 1 976 aura lieu, à Montréal, au Musée d\u2019art contemporain, le Congrès national de l\u2019Association internationale de la critique d\u2019art.Participerons à ce congrès: René Berger, Lucy Lippard et Raout Jean Moulin, à titre d\u2019invités.Le thème de ce congrès portera sur la critique d\u2019art: pour qui?pour quoi?comment?.Sous-thèmes: la critique d\u2019art et les mass-media, la critique d\u2019art et le féminisme.» BARRY LE VA En décembre dernier, Barry Le Va occupa le studio du Musée d\u2019art contemporain avec une installation intitulée: ORGANISATION SPATIALE Nous reproduisons ici un texte de Barry Le Va paru dans le catalogue de l'exposition (traduction de Alain Parent).Barry Le Va est né à Long Beach, Californie, en 1 941 et vit à New-York présentement.Cette premiere exposition au Canada avait lieu parallèlement à une exposition de dessins à Espace 5.Barry Le Va La surface du sol est divisée en deux ou trois espaces d\u2019organisations diversifiées, par des petits morceaux de bois rectangulaire ou des baguettes (points centraux et longueurs par points de tangence).A premiere vue, les espaces isolés semblent être deux ou trois oeuvres séparées, mais en fait il s\u2019agit la d\u2019une seule oeuvre intégrée par un plan sous-jacent de surfaces circulaires localisées, qui recouvrent toute la surface du plancher, et dont les positions dépendent des limites de cet espace, sur lesquelles elles sont fondées.Que les surfaces localisées soient le produit d\u2019un réseau d\u2019organisation sous-jacent, qui peut se définir très généralement comme \u201csystème\u201d, ne signifie pas nécessairement que l\u2019oeuvre soit à propos de ce système, ni d\u2019aucun autre système impliquant fabrication ou construction, qui offrirait toute son information \u201chistorique\u201d, qui la rendrait disponible immédiatement.L\u2019oeuvre est une construction perceptuelle spécifique, a l\u2019intérieur, et a propos, d\u2019un espace qui se subdivise, créant des aires spatiales séparées, non définies de manière visible, et qui deviennent apparentes que lorsqu\u2019elles sont découvertes par l'expérience.Bien que l\u2019oeuvre soit \u201cprésente\u201d visuellement, et qu elle occupe un espace physique, elle doit être approfondie mentalement.D\u2019une information visuelle et physique (points centraux et baguettes), qui sont seulement des indices, l\u2019espace et l\u2019oeuvre s'activent par la perception du spectateur, qui circule physiquement autour, dans l\u2019espace, recevant ou rassemblant les données, ajoutant mentalement les données absentes.On sait que chaque \u201cpoint central\u201d localise une aire circulaire spécifique sur le sol, mais ce que l\u2019on ne sait pas, c\u2019est: 1)\tla localisation en relation avec d\u2019autres aires circulaires localisées.2)\tla surface que cette aire circulaire circonscrit.3)\tsi cette aire dépend de, ou est indépendante, d\u2019autres aires circulaires.Les aires circulaires peuvent seulement être localisées et définies plus précisément en séparant chaque point central d\u2019autres points centraux, et en essayant de lier chacun avec sa longueur correspondante sur le sol.En marchant autour de l\u2019oeuvre, dans l\u2019oeuvre, on essaie de reconstruire les surfaces sur des suppositions vagues, fondées sur les données perçues, selon la position du spectateur.En effet, l\u2019oeuvre occupe une grande surface du plancher, et on peut seulement la percevoir par sections, en séparant l\u2019oeuvre en surfaces ou en aires visuelles.Celles-ci sont davantage fragmentées, seulement du fait 37 ' Ipflll % ||| ; % '\"T' ^ îi f§iM§|g ¦ \u2022'À\t.:¦ \u2019 ¦\t' :\u2019 qu elles occupent des situations très proches les unes des autres On essaie le processus de reconstruction, en décryptant l'information reçue des positions des elements sur le plancher Ce procédé suppose que Ion dégage points centraux et longueurs, individuellement ou par groupes, les groupant ensemble en diverses combinaisons, essayant de reconstruire et de faire des liens rationnels entre les éléments et le plan sous-jacent.Les liens se divisent, les aires visuelles que I on n a pu voir que partiellement fluctuent, créant d autres aires circulaires, causant un sentiment d incertitude dans les suppositions précédentes Une fois qu une aire spatiale est localisée, sa position spécifique, en relation avec d'autres surfaces, ne peut pas être retenue en mémoire pour un temps déterminé.L'observateur intuitionne constamment des structures pour la compréhension de I oeuvre, les confirmant, ou les abandonnant, dans le processus d une visualisation continuelle.Les éléments visuels cedent la place a l'intuition d aires localisées.La surface du sol devient un grand champ d'aires circulaires auto-déterminees, chacune séparée mais en relation avec les autres, organisées logiquement dans cet espace spécifique sur lequel elles se fondent.» MICHAEL SNOW Michael Snow vient de publier un livre intitulé Cover to Cover, aux presses du Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.Le Musée d'art moderne de New York exposera dans sa série \u201cProjects\", du 19 février au 25 avril, dix travaux photographiques de Snow et présentera une rétrospective de ses films.» CHICAGO Running Dog Press and Michael Crane (Chicago, U.S.A.) are publishing an international anthology of works titles, Running Dog One and Done, to be released in February, 1976.The book will include conceptual pieces, dada, poems, writings, photos, etc.some of the contributors to the publication include; Alan Bealy (Canada), Klaus Groh (W.Germany), Michele Perfetti (Italy), Phil* Hitchcock (U.S.A.) A.G.Devdas (India), Suzy Lake (Canada), Jacques Lennep (Belgium), Western Dakota Junk Co.(U.S.A.).The book will be available from Editions Véhiculé in Montreal soon.* Tom Marioni et publiée par le Crown Point Press-Tom Marioni dirige le Museum of Conceptual Art a San Francisco depuis plusieurs ann®®s.V|S|om est disponible de Crown Point Press, J 555 San Pab TORONTO GENERAL IDEA CAPTION \u2022 * - SCENE 1 (see above) LOCATION: Sculpture court at the Art Gallery of Ontario.TIME: The evening of October 18, 1975.General Idea is holding \u201cGoing Through The Motions\u201d, a rehearsal of the audience for the opening ceremony of the 1984 Miss General Idea Pavilion.That ceremony is, of course, the \u201884 pageant.Seventies occupied by General Idea as their winter HQ The place has just been visited by robbers.File layout sheets and video gear strewn all over thefloor.TIME: A week before X\u2019mas '75.ACTION: Surrounded by AA Bronson, Felicks Partz and Jorge Zontal a weary New York cop-played by John Coplans-is making an inventory of missing effects.FELICKS: (Groan).\u201cThe character generator on loan from Syracuse U.\u201d AA: \u201cVan Sehly\u2019s 56\u201d Screen colour monitor\u201d.(Mean) JORGE: \u201cThat rare special effects box from Rain-dance\u201d.FELICES.(Sigh of relief) \u201cThey never touched the eight hours of color tape from \u201cGoing through the Motions\u201d.FADE OUT.»\tGeneral Idea LANGUAGE & STRUCTURE IN NORTH AMERICA Cette exposition, présenté au mois de novembre à Toronto par le Kensington Arts Association, regroupait des oeuvres d'au delà de cent cinquante artistes canadiens et américains.Richard Kostelanetz signe l'introduction du catalogue, \u201cWriting Degree Zero\u201d, de même qu'il assume la responsabilité du contenu de l'exposition.De plus, on peut lire un article intitulé \u201cLanguage Art\u201d, dont l'auteur est Beth Learn, organisatrice de Language & Structure, dans Queen Street Magazine, Volume 3, No.7, 8, 9.Cette revue participait à l'exposition par la présentation de conférences d'Acconci, Yvonne Rainer, Agnes Denes et de Beth Learn (sur Yeats/Smithson).¦ CARMEN LAMANNA À Toronto, Carmen Lamanna expose en janvier lan Carr Harris, en février Murray Favro, et en mars, Royden Rabinowitch.» FRINGE RESEARCH AT A SPACE VISION VISION est une magnifique revue qui vient de paraître à San Francisco et dont les exemplaires sont numérotées ($10.00 chaque numéro, $25.00 pour une souscription annuelle).La revue paraîtra trois fois l'an et sera consacrée chaque fois a différents lieux d\u2019activités artistiques.Le numéro deux portera sur les pays d\u2019Europe de l'Est.Chaque numéro est constitué de quelques textes ou interviews et de participations personnelles d\u2019artistes.Ce premier numéro sur la Californie offre une interview avec Oldenburg \u201cAbout California\u201d, un texte de Torn Marioni sur la Californie et l\u2019art \u201chors métropole\u201d., un compte-rendu de Vito Acconci sur une série d'expositions qu\u2019il a montées en Californie récemment, et une vingtaine de participations d\u2019artistes californiens.Cette revue est éditée par ACTION: Six massing studios for the pavillon are sliding down the center ramp to the throws of \u201cStyle\u201d.Original mqsic by Toronto\u2019s \u201cRough Trade\u201d.Six hundred extras are playing the part of the exstatic \u201884 audience.Granada Gazelle's voice over: \u201c.Made out of miles of the finest aluminum slats, these urban armours of the future keep us barricaded behind the sight lines without losing our point of view.Cultural formats containing our meat natural impulses.High facade, low profile.Ideas with legs-we call them at the pavillion.\u201d CUT.SCENE 2.LOCATION: A confortable flat in Manhattan\u2019s West This certainly had to be one of the best-attended and most fun-filled openings in recent years.Several hundred people jammed A Space for an evening of hologram, slide shows, and musical performances sponsored by Fringe Research.People in white lab coats scurrying about with clipboards and slide rules added a slight science fair flavor to the evening.Rick Simon\u2019s demonstration of obsolete electrical apparatus called \u201cThe Violet Ray Machine\u201d seemed like a traveling medicine man\u2019s performance as a curious crowd gazed in awe.Ooohs and Aaahs were frequently heard as he demonstrated the wonders of electricity.A 3-D slide show which required Polaroid viewing glasses was well received and the evening came to a close with a performancè by Toronto\u2019s art-style vocal group the Hamel Sisters, who seemed strangely out of place.38 mmm ' \u2014 Ml ¦ £ \u201d ?v.ïtÊSÊÈÉÊSaMtÊi Dorothy Cameron became the first art collector in Canada to purchase an artist\u2019s hologram, a small plate \u201cstill life\u201d composition which included an egg cup.Several real scientists were present in the crowd and were seen enjoying the festivities.A laser was on display in a specially-darkened chamber along with a number of larger, more sophisticated holograms.Drawings and explanatory graphics were hung on the walls along with a number of \u201cwhite light\u201d holograms, which, although not as sharp as those which require laser light only for viewing, are visible in ordinary room light.The lighthearted atmosphere of the evening was a refreshing change from most art events which involve prominent technological hardware freaks stealing the spotlight, the evening\u2019s humor provided a focus on the meaning of the activity rather than merely the means, The exhibition was held in Montreal\u2019s Véhiculé Art gallery in December.! COLOR XEROX Several Toronto artists have recently begun to explore the properties of Xerox Corporation\u2019s remarkable new color copier.Michael Bidner of London, Ontario\u2019s Canyon Productions, Flavio Belli, and Michael Hayden are among those who have already done extensive work with the new process, which provides color copies nearly instantly.The machine is not yet readily accessible, with only a few locations in Toronto and none elsewhere in Ontario.Bidner and Hayden have managed to rent one for installation in Hayden\u2019s Shuter Street art complex.A number of commercial reproduction houses in Toronto have the machine, but so far have not been able to make it even pay for itself.One problem is the relatively high cost of the copies, some places as high as $2.50 each.Despite the machine\u2019s lack of commercial success in such locations, artists have siezed upon it with enthusisam.Flavio Belli has already received two commissions for works using the machine.One, an outdoor mural in Montreal, was done several months ago.The other, a corner mural for Toronto\u2019s Ritz Cafe, was conceived, completed, and installed in the same day.The piece is quite unusual as it replicates the old floral wallpaper which had previously occupied the corner in which it was installed.Bidner seems to have done a great volume of work with the machine, and has worked extensively from photographs.For Hayden, the machine is a potential production aid in the creation of his sculpture, electronic works, architectural applications, and numerous other projects.Joe Bodolai has begun to use the machine in the creation and simulation of commercial graphics and printed information such as magazine ads, imaginary covers, etc., including one for a \u201cmagazine\u201d entitled \u201cPopular Aesthetics\u201d ART GALLERY HAPPY HOUR Try this on your next visit to the Art Gallery of Ontario: At five o\u2019clock on weekdays, when the gallery closes, the member\u2019s lounge charges half price on all drinks until six (or maybe even later).The catch is that somebody has to be a staff member of the AGO.Meet a four guide and go for a drink.You\u2019ll actually hear curators talking about important things.Besides, the view of the sculpture court is breathtaking, especially for a buck a drink.i TORONTO ART SCENE ON TV Many people involved in Toronto\u2019s art community have been seen recently on Rainer Schwarz's late-night video atrocity, Nightmusic.For anyone who was in a coma during the late Sixties and missed psychedelia, all the worst aspects of this glorious period survive nightly on this curious Educational TV program.The show generally features flashbacks to the early days of Video Art (anybody remember \u201cfeedback\u201d?) rambling mindless ravings and funny faces by the show\u2019s host, and lots of con-temporaty acid rock.For some reason, lately a lot of artists have shown up on this show, presumably seeking publicity.Marien Lewis discussed Video with the show's alternate host, clown Rosie Sunrise, (that sounds better than it is, by the way), General Idea talked about whatever one talks about on that show, and the Hummer Sisters appeared with Rick Simon and Fringe Research on an exceptionally-hilarious episode that left everyone looking pretty silly.Now the amazing thing is that all these guests know full well how terrible the program is and they think they can all survive it.So far, the show has a perfect record - it has claimed all its victims.But it's always fun the next day around A Space when everyone decides to talk about the program.(REAL television is so much more exciting than art video, isn't it.) The producers of the program, in their constant search for Redeeming Social Merit (after all, they have to justify why it's on an \u201ceducational\u201d station) will probably continue to exploit local artists and genuinely creative people as long they are willing to put themselves up to it.The one good thing about ali this is that nobody with any sense can take the program for more than ten seconds anyway.So the only people watching it all (other than friends) don't realize they're watching television anyway.(Wanna smoke a joint?)¦ RADIO'S THE THING Radio plays have become a popular art form here lately.Well, not real broadcast radio, but tape recordings of live performances that the promoters call radio plays.Vic D\u2019Or and Hank Bull have figured prominently in several of these events, one of which was held in conjunction with a poetry festival at Hart House which also included William Burroughs.I\u2019m told some of these are quite fun, and more are certainly underway, including one using 3-D slides tentatively titled \u201cThe Red Menace \" i ANDY WARHOL ON HIS WAY Word is that author Andy Warhol will make a personal appearance at the Art Gallery of Ontario bookshop to sign things on November 28 and 29.He supposedly will sign not only copies of his new book but also anything else people want him to sign.A number of artists are presently furiously completely drawings in his style for him to autograph and it looks like there may, be a few more silly moments in store at the Art Gallery of Ontario this month a GENERAL IDEA STAG NIGHT An all-night honest-to-goodness stag party, complete with cigars and sex films, was held at General Idea's Toronto headquarters, above a Yonge Street body rub parlor.Smoking, a poker game, dancing, drinking, and much masculine camaraderie carried on through the night.Amazingly enough, there were no females present (as far as anyone knew) except for a television appearance by Linda Lovelace in her role as an anatomical genius in Deep Throat.(This is bad journalism, by the way.I wasn\u2019t there.)» Joe Bodelai ITALIE MAGMA Magma is the name of a group show organized by Romana Loda (Director of the gallery Multimedia in Erbusco near Brescia), and sponsored by the municipality of Iseo.This comprehensive exhibition opened on November 29 in the Castello Oldofredi in Iseo and is a review dedicated to art trends of the past ten years with 33 women participaling.A small catalogue has been prepared for the occasion with an introduction by Romana Loda, and with biographical profiles on each artist.The show\u2019s dual themes are \u201dArt:Latest Trends\u201d and \u2018\u2018The Woman:Condition/Protest\".Of the 33 artists, 1 2 are Italian, while the others represent North and South America, East and West Europe.Magma included works by Marina Abramovic, Anna Candiant, Carla Ceratt, Lygia Clark, Betty Danon, Hanne Darboven, I ole de Freitas, Valie Export, Nicole Gravier, Rebecca Horn, Suzy Lake, Ketty La Rocca, Paola Mattioli, Marisa Merz, Annette Messager, Verita Monselles, Natalia LL, Giovanna Nuvoletti, Stephanie Oursler, Gina Pane, Lucia Pescador, Marianne Pitzen, Diana Rabito, Edda Renouf, Andreina Robotti, Dorothea Rockburne, Ulrike Rosembach, Franca Sacchi, Suzanne Santoro, Katharina Sieverding, Berty Sku-ber, Nando Vigo and Dorothee Von Windheim.DEL MILIONE In Octooer, Galleria del Milione in Milan inaugurated an exhibition of works by the Canadian artist Otto Rogers, In November, the gallery presented recent paintings by another Canadian artist David Sorensen.Sorensen exhibited only a few smallsized canvases of the well-know \u201cbars\u201d series, however, the major part of the show consisted of large-sized paintings whose extremely pure surfaces are interrupted where strips have been cut out of the canvas, and then restructured by applying a strata of canvas behind the cut out and replaced elements.Also at the same gallery, in a show running to mid-December, Claudio Olivieri presented 18 canvases many of them more than 1 meter X 2 meters in dimension.These works have vertical application of very deep tones of blues, greens and reds.Approximately 1 2 of these recent works will be exhibited in February 1976 at the Galerie Espace 5 in Montreal.39 AZIMUTH Studio Luca Palazzoli in Milan opened with an important documentation show called \u201cAzimuth (October 30-December 6).Co-ordinated by the critic Lea Vergine, this show was also presented in Rome at the Primo Piano.Along with works by Enrico Castellani, Heinz Mack and Piero Manzoni, there was also documentation on display with excerpts taken from the magazine Azimuth published with texts in four languages and edited by Castellani and Manzoni, of which only two issues came out in 1 959 and 1 960.though actually of very short duration, the Castellani-Manzoni team worked as one of the most important catalyzers of a conception of making art from which there was no turning back.In their magazine Azimuth and in the gallery of the same name which they openedshortly after publishing the first issue of the magazine, they gave space to those who, conscious of a language crisis, felt the need to \u201cventure beyond\u201d.As well as those of Castellani and Manzoni, there were contributions and participation by Klein, Boriani, Mavignier, Dor-fles and many others.This show with its well documented catalogue gives us the opportunity to understand something of that brief story which engraved a date on the visual culture of the \u201850s, and which became so clearly marked during the \u201860s.PHOTOGRAPHE PAINTERS Piero Cavellini, Director of the gallery Nuovi Stru-menti in Brescia, inaugurated his season on November 6 with a group show called \u201cPhotographers-painters\u201d, taken as an attempt to analyze, and a moment on which to reflect regarding those artists who use photographic means in their work.Eighteen artists representing America and Europe were exhibited in three groupings as follows: Haka, Lachowicz, Natalia LL, L.Sosnowski (Poland); Ag-netti, Altamira, Carpi, Cavellini, La Rocca, Guerzzoni, Parmiggiani, Vaccari (Italy); Baldessari, Beckley, B.& H.Becher, Collins, Graham, Gravier, Goldstein, Hutchinson, Le Gac, Oppenheim (other).CLAUDIO COSTA At the gallery Massimo Valsecchi in Milan, Claudio Costa exhibited recent works titled \u201cFor an Inventory of Cultures\".These were a series of dark-stained, wood and glass, shelved, 6-foot high and narrow cabinets similar to museum display cases containing many utensils and small objects faithfully remade by the artist, out of clay or plaster for the most part.The effect is appealing, mysterious and evocative, in that they recall characteristic moments, gestures, habits of a remote cultures, which phenomenon devolop between two poles: the object and the spectator.So that the gesture, the behavior, the symbol, acting on the viewer allows him to relive that phenomenology characterized by them, and through the pure forms, the undefinable may be defined.ENGLISH ART TODAY From February 1 8 to May 1 6, the exhibition \u201cEnglish Art Today (1960-1976)\u201d will be held in the Palazzo Reale in Milan.This elaborate show has been organized through the collaboration of the British Council Institute and the City of Milan.Works by more than 50 artists, each represented by a certain number of selected pieces spanning a 15 year period, will offer a wide panorama.Complementary events are programmed to run simultaneously.There will be film projections showing eighteen artists work.And in the octagonal center of Milan\u2019s downtown Galleria Vittorio Emanuelle II there will be performance events by Stuart Brisley, Coum, Roland Miller and Shirley Cameron.Furthermore, artists Paul Huxley, Kenneth Martin, Tom Phillips, Richard Smith, Joe Tilson and William Turnbull have been commissioned to create flags and banners which will be hung in Milan\u2019s central Piazza del Duomo.Some of the many artists participating are: Keith Arnatt, Art & Language, Victor Burgin, Alan Charlton, Robyn Denny, David Dye, Gilbert & George, Richard Hamilton, John Hilliard, John Stezaker, William Tucker, etc.ANNETTE MESSAGER \u201cCollectionneuse, Artiste, Truqueuse, Femme Pratique\u201d, is the name of Annette Messager\u2019s show held from November 18 to December 6 at the Galleria Diagramma in Milan.It is a complex diary created to restitute poetry to every day occurrences, by an artist among the most significant working in this field of research.Seven works, each composed of numerous elements, fill the walls, often with a tapes-try-like effect.Works on display: \u201cMa vie pratique\u201d par Annette Messager femme pratique (47 written and drawn works in black and white and in color); \u201cMa collection de proverbes\u201d par Annette Messager collectionneuse (91 small pieces of white cotton with proverbs embroidered using colored thread); \u201cMon mariage\u201d par Annette Messager artiste (5 color photos); \u201cMotifs gais\u201d par Annette Messager artiste (18 color photos with the original drawings on the renverse); \u201cLe bonheur\u201d par Annette Messager artiste (66 pastel drawings); \u201cLes effroyables aventures de Annette truqueuse\u201d (96 photos plus the original drawings); \u201cAnnette Messager truqueuse\u201d (21 little booklets with original drawings on the covers, with two to four black and white photos inside).Annette Messager collectionneuse, Annette Messager femme pratique, Annette Messager truqueuse sont trois de mes appellations qui correspondent à mes trois activités actuelles.J'aimerais à mesure que les années passent me constituer une< collection d'appelations qui représenteraient la marque de toutes mes activités passées; je veux tenter un peu dérisoirement de compenser la diminution du temps de ma vie par l'augmentation de mes appellations.La collectionneuse qui veut aussi faire penser à une femme dont la vie serait assez douteuse et peu sérieuse, cherche à posséder la vie et les événements qui arrivent jusqu'à elle.Comme toute collection qui est l'appropriation pour soi-même du monde extérieur, celles-ci s'enrichissent continuellement et se dépassent elles-mêmes toujours avec le temps.Ni achevés, ni définitifs, les albums-collections qui partent presque tous du collectif sont pour Annette Messager collectionneuse la meilleure préservation possible et semblent alors se prendre pour sa propre vie illustrée.Annette Messager femme pratique, elle, voudrait avoir le sens des réalités - elle ne cesse de consigner par écrit toutes les affaires de la maison et de la vie Annette Messager truqueuse, LA FEMME ET LA MORT, Galleria Diagramma, novembre 1975.courante qui devraient servir en cas de nécessité, mais ces notes seront-elles jamais utilisées?Annette Messager truqueuse est pleine d\u2019adresse -petites tricheries sur sa vie, sur ses sentiments, sur son travail, divers tours de main lui permettent de se distraire toute seule - rien ne doit se perdre - un cheveu tombé par terre servira à dessiner un éléphant - une tache d\u2019encre sur la peau deviendra un Monsieur très sérieux etc.Ainsi la truqueuse (mais les artistes ne sont-ils pas tous des truqueurs?) n'est jamais désoeuvrée et ne manque jamais de matériel puisqu'elle joue avec elle-même et sur elle-même.Annette Messager \u2014 October 1974 STEPHANIE OURSLER The American artist Stephanie Oursler who is currently living in Rome, had a one-man show of 1 974-75 works at the gallery Multimedia in Erbusco (Brescia) which opened on November 22.A second exhibition called \u201c5 Cuts\u201d was held in November-December at the Studio Barozzi in Milan.A recent book published titled \u201c5 Cuts\u201d is an almost actual-size facsimile of the five sequence pieces (the first piece is made up of 1 3 elements, the other four, of 6 elements each).AMELIA ETLINGER The gallery Mercato del Sale in Milan continuing its activity of exhibiting what might be loosely grouped as Visual Poetry works, has organized a show called 40 ¦mm mm ; \\ '¦ x | $$$%\t.MmmÊÊiÊm wSmm \t musiques au présent \u201cSomething is happening\u201d with works by the American artist Amelia Etlinger at the University of Pavia beginning October 1 7.(A similar exhibition was held at the Mercato del Sale in early 1 975 and in October of the same year in Genoa at the Art\u2019s Transformation Gallery).Included in the show are tapestry poems, box poems, letter poems, packet poems and threads poems.A 16 page booklet has been put out for the occasion containing a series of written works by the artist.ANTONIO PARADISO Beginning October 21 for a two-week period, Antonio Paradiso had continuous projections of his recent films along with a videocassette piece by Sandra Sandri called \u201cHypnosis\u201d (video, b&w, sound, 60 min.).Paradiso\u2019s ground-floor, large studio space lended itself well to such screenings and was just one of the many recent instances of available alternative space currently being utilized in various Italian cities to present artists\u2019 work.Paradiso\u2019s \u201cFilmed Sculptures\u201d recently incorporated to form 1 50 minute film series (1 6 mm., color, sound) included \u201cTerrestrial Navigation of Doves\u201d, \u201cPortrait of the Sahara\u201d, \u201cTarantati\u201d and \u201cSleepwalkers\u201d (By Paradiso and Sandri).FRANÇOISE LAMBERT Françoise Lambert in Milan opened her season in October with a Katharina Sieverding show of spectacular and large-scale photographic wallmurals in color.Following this, the gallery showed recent works by Bill Beckley consisting of color photos and texts.(Previously, at the Milan Lambert gallery Beckley had a one-man show in 1 973 and a performance piece in 1 974).On December 1, James Collins presented a series of recent photo works.NARRATIVE ART 2 Studio Cannaviello in Rome opened the season in October with a group show called Narrative Art 2.The same exhibition travelled to the city of Caserta (near Naples) and is scheduled to be shown at the Galleria Diagramma in Milan beginning mid-January.Artists included in this show are David Askevold, Didier Bay, Bill Beckley, Christian Boltanski, Cioni Carpi, Robert Cumming, John C.Fernie, Roger Cutforth, Jochen Gerz, Peter Hutchinson, Jean Le Gac, Franco Vaccari and Roger Welch.Enzo Cannaviello has selected excellent examples of works by these artists.A catalogue edited by Achille Bonito Oliva and Filiberto Menna has been printed, and contains reproductions of the works presented in this show, together with an anthology of critical texts on Narrative Art which have appeared over the past few years in international publications.VICTOR BURGIN This seven part piece \u201cHussonet\u201d by Victor Burgin executed during the summer of 1 975 while the artist was teaching at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, was exhibited in October at the gallery Daniel Templon in Milan.Future Burgin shows include one at the I.C.A in London in January 1976 and an important group show called \u201cEnglish Art Today (1960-1976)\u201d scheduled to open on February 18, 1976 at Milan\u2019s Palazo Reale.Eve Carpi Bill Beckley, Roses are red, Violets are blue, Sugar is sweet.1974, 3 pannelli 40 x 60\u201d cad.y .y- / \u2022' \u2022 & \u2022V'V:\t' 4\t., : .\tV\t' ¦ s:v; mm m EN DIRECT Don Druick/Greg Simpson (flûte-percussion, piano, ruban magnétique) à Véhicule Art Inc.Samedi 11 octobre 21 h.: Musique par coeur.Toru Takemitsu dit que pour lui toute musique doit devenir prière.Personnellement je crois que cette idée indique la direction essentielle pour que la musique puisse survivre.des rythmes qui ne sont ni métriques, ni pulsés; des mélodies qui ne cherchent nullement à séduire ou à dominer; des modes de communications auto -révélateurs, des formats de développement de textures.\u201d -Don Druick Trio: Yves Bouliane (contrebasse), Robert LeRiche (clarinette basse, saxophone soprano), Patrice Beckerich (percussion), à la Galerie Média: 970 Rachel est, 20h., entrée libre.De l\u2019improvisation comme méthode d\u2019investigation à la fois scientifique et intuitive.Un premier album de ce trio devrait paraître début 76.Birmanie: Danseurs et musiciens du théâtre national dans le cadre de la Semaine mondiale de la musique, salle Claude-Champagne, vendredi 3 octobre 1975.Première visite nord américaine d\u2019une troupe de Birmanie.\u201cLa troupe est composée de quinze musiciens et danseurs.Les instruments utilisés comprennent notamment le pat-waing (cercle de tambours), le chi-waing (cercle de gongs), le maun-zaing (gong), divers types de tambours, de cymbales et de claquoirs, ainsi qu\u2019un instrument à vent.\u201d Notes du programme.Les exercices solos du début:technique de la danse birmane, mouvements féminins (3), mouvements masculins (4) furent particulièrement captivants.Tibet: L\u2019ensemble folklorique du Tibet, théâtre Maisonneuve, du 1 er au 4 octobre 1 975.\u201cLe Dalai Lama quitta le Tibet (envahi par la Chine) avec des dizaines de milliers de Tibétains pour se réfugier aux Indes où ils fondèrent la Société Tibétaine de Musique, Danse et Théâtre en un ultime effort pour préserver le mysticisme de leur culture.Aujourd'hui les membres de cette société sont les uniques représentants de l\u2019héritage artistique et culturel du Tibet.Ce sont les seuls professionnels qui interprètent les danses folkloriques tibétaines et le \"Lhamo\u201d, l\u2019opéra traditionnel qui date de plus de 500 ans.\u201d -Notes du programme.Discographie/référence: Tibet Songs and music of Tibet, (Folkways 4486).Tibetan folk and minstrel music, (Lyricord 7196).Tibetan ritual music, (Lyricord 7181).Tibetan Buddhist Rites from Bhutan: Rituals of the Drupka order, (Lyricord 7255).2-\tSacred dances of Nyingmapa, (Lyricord 7256).3-\tTemples and public ceremonies, (Lyricord 7257).4-\tTibetan instrumental & Folk music, (Lyricord 7258).The music of Tibet-Tantric ritual, (Unesco 4005).The music of Tibet vol.1-2-3, (Unesco 2009-10-1 1).Le Tibet, rituel boudhique, (CBS 65174).Ceremonial, ritual and magic music: Tibet, (Phillips-Unesco 6586007).Tibetan Budhism, (Nonesuch 72005).41 WËBËËm.Musique tibétaine du Sikkim, (Vogue, musée de l\u2019homme LULX 1 87).Musique rituelle tibétaine, (Ocora no.49).Musique et théâtre populaire tibétaines, (Ocora 62).Musique sacrée tibétaine, (Ocora 71).loisirs: US%»\tH -il,; ; .£»f*yî»sré f»r\tn du #«« Victor SortatKitttU Coik-ctim hAmè& fH&mm# MW i Troisième festival de musique traditionnelle, à la salle du Plateau, 1 7 au 21 novembre.La tradition au présent.Cinq veillées/rencontres: Québec & Aca-die/Bretagne/Louisiane/Irlande présenté par le Service d\u2019animation socio-culturelle.U.Q.U.A.M.Projet Musique prévu pour Québec 75, subvention refusée par le Conseil des Arts du Canada.Budget suggéré: $3,600.Contenu: un catalogue d\u2019information sur les musiques nouvelles locales/internationales, 2 journées d\u2019auditions commentées, 5 concerts non lucratifs avec Dionne/Brégent, le Komuso, Yves Boulia-ne/Robert LeRiche, Bernard Gagnon/M.P.Chabot, Brian Highbloom et Raymond Torchinsky, (musiciens de recherche, composition/improvisation.) Le Sonographe: Nous parlerons plus en détail dans notre prochain numéro des 9 nouvelles productions québécoises sur cassettes produites et distribuées par le Sonographe, 1604 St-Denis, Montréal.TORONTO Le 15 novembrel 975, un groupe de peintres/graveurs/photographes.de Toronto donnent un concert à Montréal.Ils enregistrent un album double: The Artist\u2019s Jazz Band, gallery éditions (disponible de Coda publications, P O.Box 87, Station J, Toronto, Ontario).Michael Snow appartient à ce groupe.Il espère d\u2019ici peu ouvrir une galerie à orientation spécifiquement musicale.Son premier disque doit paraître ces jours-ci sur Chatham Square, la firme phonographique de Philip Glass.Michael Snow: Musics for whistling, piano, microphone and tape recorder (Chatham Square).Toronto: le C.C.M.C., Canadian Creative Music Collective (Casey Sokol-piano, Ai Mattes-guitare basse Larry Dubin-batterie, Bill Smith-sazophones/flute, Nobuo Kobota-saxophone, Greg Gallager-saxophone, Peter Anson-guitare) nous annonce la parution prochaine d'un premier album de leur musique.Ils seraient directement impliques dans ce projet de Michael Snow: Music Gallery (fabrication d\u2019instruments, ateliers, concerts, participation de non-musiciens etc.).Toronto- Onari Productions en collaboration avec la galerie A Space (85 St-Nicholas Street) organise une série de concerts de musique nouvelle avec musiciens canadiens/américains.Au programme de janvier à mai: The Artist's Jazz Band, Sonny Greenwich, Oliver Lake, Joseph Bowie, Dollar Brand, Richard Teitelbaum, Joseph Jarman, Karl Berger, Barbara Ackerman Ensemble.Renseignements: A Space ou Jazz and Blues record center, 893 Yonge Street, Toronto (929-5065).DISQUES D\u2019ARTISTES Il serait éventuellement intéressant de discuter toutes ces productions enregistrées, ces musiques réalisées/interprétées par des peintres, sculpteurs, photographes ou tout autre artiste dont le travail relève avant tout et plus spécifiquement des arts visuels.(Par exemple Jean Dubuffet: Musical experiences, Finnadar SR-9002, du JCOA).La revue Musics (no.3) nous parle de trois d\u2019entre eux.Alan Davie: Music Workshop (disponible de Gimpel Fils Gallery, 30 Davies Street, London W-1).Suite for prepared piano and mini-drums, avec Frank Perry (percussion), 1971, ADMW002.\u201cSounds quite like the Cage on sonatas and interludes but free-er.\u201d(1) Phantom in the Room, piano-clarinette avec Daniel Humair (drums), 1971, ADMW 004.ADMW 005 avec Tony Oxley (percussion), en préparation.Sur Alan Davie lire aussi: Jazz Magazine août 1 975, page 10.Dieter Rot (& Ruhn et Wiener): November Symphonie (double, 1973) \u201cIt\u2019s a kind of spastic musical orgy carefully stuffed into classical symphony structure.(.) Their inability to play music produces moments which somehow approaches the kind of instrumental exploration that real musicians are doing now.\u201d(1) Berliner Dichterworkshop, 1973 \u201cA time passing indulgence (.) sounds mostly like a group of drunken tone-deaf Germans vocalizing together.\"(1) Tom Phillips: Words and Music \u201cSide two is just Phillips voice reading pages from A Humument.(.).Side one has four items of music.(.) Nothings, inelegant, irrevelant, nothings.\u201c(1 ) (1) les notes sont de Peter Riley (Musics) Les albums de D.Roth et T.Phillips son distribués par Compendium Books, 281 Camdem High Street, London NWI.LIVRES Pierre Boulez, par Vérité et par Hasard, entretiens avec Célestin Deliège, Tel Quel, édition du Seuil, 1975.Merce Cunningham, Clarke Irwin & co.ltd, Toronto et Vancouver, 1975, $11.95 (incluant textes d\u2019Yvonne Rainer, John Cage, Earle Brown, Gordon Mumma, Christian Wolf, R.Rauschenberg etc.).Léo Smith: Notes-(8 pieces), P.O.Box 102, New Haven, Connecticut o6510, $3.25 U.S.ou Coda Toronto.Libérer la musique: de Jean-Claude Lartigot et Eric Sprogis, collection Citoyens, éditions universitaires, Paris (Musique et politique/vie quotidienne).Free Jazz: Ekkerhard Jost, edition Universal, Vertriebseges, MBH, A-1015, Vienne, Autriche, Postfach 130, 214 pages.Collection \u201cSeries in Jazz research\" (analyses strictes du matériau musical, techniques etc.Trane, Ayler, A.A.C.M.).Coltrane: C.O.Simpkins, Herndon House publishers, $8.95.Music Outside: Ian Carr, Latimer 1973, $10.00 (Contemporary Jazz in Britain).Billie\u2019s Blues: John Chilton, biographie de Billie Holiday, England, 1975.Modern Jazz: M.Harrison, A.Morgan, R.Atkins, M.James et J.Cook.Aquarium Books, Londres.Distribué par Argus Books, Station Road, Kings Langley, Hertfordshire, Angleterre (1945-70, les disques essentiels).Pieces: An Anthology de Michael Byron, 142 pages.Partitions et articles de Peter Garland, Victoria Brown, Torn Nixon, M.Byron, Marion Brown Harold Budd, Frederic Rzewski, Richard Teitelbaum, David Rosenboom, John Grayson et James Tenny.$4.50 de: York University, departement of music, 4700 Keele St., Downsview, Ontario.Immeasurable Equation: a book of space Wisdom, de Sun Ra, El Saturn Research P.O.Box 7124-Chicago, Illinois 60607 - U.S.A.MAGAZINES: Radio Free Jazz, 3212 Pennsylvania Avenue, S.E.Washington D.C.20020, U.S.A.Bells: Henry Kuntz J r., 1921 Walnut no.1, Berkeley, California, 94704, U.S.A.$2.00 (U.S.) pour six numéros, un numéro par six semaines.L\u2019Indépendant du Jazz: 86 rue du Faubourg St-Denis, Paris 10e, France.Cadence, the American review of Music, P.O.Box 5, Oxbow, N.Y.13671 ($7.00/an).FILMS Jean Carignan violonneux, de Bernard Gosselin, 1975, O.N.P., 94 minutes, avec Ti-Jean Carignan, Paul Gosselin, Léo Plamondon, Arcade Gosselin et sa famille.Une présentation de la Cinémathèque québécoise, 1 5 octobre 1 975.Un document essentiel sur notre musique traditionnelle et l\u2019un de ses maîtres incontestés.42 warn ïM g ] The Rise and Fall of Charlie Parker (produit par Ray Lofaro et Stewart Levine-en préparation).CRAMPS RECORDS Cramps Records: Série Nova Musicha, Milan, Six albums parus, notes en italien seulement.Distribution au Canada: P.J.Imports 1635 Sismet Road, Unit 30, Missisauga, Ontario.A Montréal, à l\u2019Alternatif, 1 587 Saint-Denis.John Cage: Music for Marcel Duchamp (1947), Music for Amplified Toy Pianos (1960), Radio Music (1956), 4\u201933\u201d, en trois parties (30\u201d, 2\u201923\u201d, 1 \u201940\u201d) (1952), 62 Mesostics Re Merce Cunningham (fragment) (1972).CRSLP 6101.nomisusm Juan Hidalgo: Tamaran (1974), Gocce di sperme per dodici pianoforti.\u201cTamaran è un opera di 40 minuti di durata (più le risonanze finali) per solo suoni armonici prodoti da 12 pianoforti a coda.In questa esecuzione le dodici parti sono state registr-ate seperamente e poi \u201cmixate\u201d.\u201cJuan Hidalgo, extrait des notes de l\u2019album.Interprète: Juan Hidalgo, claviers J.Hidalgo forme avec Walter Marchetti à Madrid en 1964 le groupe Zaj, affilié à Fluxus.Hidalgo travaille aussi avec Cage.Deux livres publiés: Viage Argel (1967) et Juan Hidalgo de Juan Hidalgo (1971 ).CRSLP 6102.Robert Ashley: In Sara, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven there w ere Men and Women (1972), d\u2019après un texte de John Barton Wolgamot (1 944) avec la participation du Center for Contemporary Music (C.C.M.), Mills College, Oakland, Californie, et Paul de Marinis, Moog synthétiser (1973).Le texte est restructuré, permuté, récité sur deux faces consécutives: \"In its very truly great manners of Leudwig Van Beethoven very heroically the very cruelly ancestral death of Sara Powell Hardt had very ironically come amongst his really grand men and women to Rafael Sabatini, George Ade, Margaret Storm Jameson, Ford Madox Huefer, Jean-Jacques Bernard, Louis Bromfield, Friedrich Wilhem Nietzsche and Helen Brown Norden very titanically.\" CRSLP 6103.Robert Ashley: directeur du C.C.M., un des organisateurs du Once Festival, 1961-1968, directeur du Once Group Theater Enseble, membre du Sonic Arts Union.Compositions: \"She was a Visitor,\u201d Odessey 32160156, \"Untitled Mixes\", ESP 1099, \u201cThe Wolf man\u201d, Source , In Memoriam Crazy Horse\u201d, (Advance 5), avec le Sonic Arts Union (Mainstream 510) Walter Marchetti: La Caccia (da \"apocrate seduto sul loto\u201d 1965).Musique qui ressemble aux bruits inarticulés d\u2019un environnement rural, aux chants d\u2019oiseaux minimalistes, sans développement narratif.Quelques mots tirés ici et là du texte explicatif de Marchetti.\u201cReminiscenza/lmaginaria/Memoria/Ri-memorazione/Apparenza/Metamorfosi/Simulazio-ne/Furtive.\u201d CRSLP 6104.Walter Marchetti: né en 1931, autodidacte, exerce plusieurs emplois, forme en 1964 avec Hidalgo le groupe Zaj, un livre J\u2018Ac-pocrate seduto sul loto\".Paolo Castaldi: Finale (1961-73) pour piano, CRSLP 6105.Interprète: Giancarlo Cardini.Néoclassicisme sans intérêt.Nova Musicha?Cornelius Cardew: Four Principles on Ireland and other Pieces (1974), piano solo.CRSLP 6106.Interprète Cornelius Cardew.Les titres ne laissent aucune équivoque quant aux motivations et position idéologique de Cardew: Four principles on Ireland.Bring the land a new life.The east is read.Soon (there will be a high tide of revolution in our country), Long live chairman Mao/Revolution is the main trend in the world today.Musique populaire traditionnelle, tonale, folklorique, chants révolutionnaires communistes, chinois.Sans ces références explicites, il ne resterait guère plus qu\u2019un recueil de mélodies simples, accessibles.Cornelius Cardew: membre du A.M M.et du Scratch Orchestra, \"The Great Learning\u201d (DGG 2561107), avec A.M.M., \"Improvisations\u201d (Mainstream 5002).Livres .\u201cTreatise Handbook\u201d, ed.Peters, Londres 1971; \"Scratch Music\u201d, (MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1972, 1974; \"Stockhausen sert l'impérialisme\u201d, Londres, 1974.NOUVEAUTÉS DISCOGRAPHIQUES MUSIQUE NOUVELLE COMPOSÉE/IMPROVISÉE Richard Beirach: Eon, ECM 1054.Richard Beirach, piano, Frank Tusa, contrebasse, Jeff Williams, batterie.Dans l'esprit de Paul Bley, S.Khun ou le Chick Corea des débuts, un premier album très réussi.Mélodies angulaires / impressionisme / swing / décontraction / rigueur: du temps qui passe.Lee Konitz (saxophones): Lone Lee, solo, Steeplechase 1035.Jackie McLean: Antiquity, duo saxophone, percussions, Steeplechase 1028.Duke Jordan: Two Loves, Steeplechase 1024.Steve Kuhn (piano): Ecstasy, solo, ECM 1058.Trance, ECM 1052.Les deux albums les plus \"achevés\" de Steve Kuhn.Mil! 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