© Bernadette Corporation, Hell Frozen Over (2000), in the context of D’un discours qui ne serait pas du semblant/Actors, Networks, Theories (2014). With the collaboration of Electronic Arts Intermix. Photo : Sara A. Tremblay
D’un discours qui ne serait du semblant/Actors, Networks, Theories
25 September – 22 November 2014
Dazibao, Montréal
Text by Cécilia Bracmort
D’un discours qui ne serait du semblant/Actors, Networks, Theories (DDSSANT) denominated Vincent Bonin’s two-part exhibition, focusing primarily on the impact of French theory in contemporary art. The Montréal based independent curator took different aims for each section of his project, with a first show at Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery (14 November 2013 – 25 January 2014), looking at French thinkers’ influence on North-American artists and writers from the 1970s onwards. Sub-divided into five rooms, this first act confronted works of art with the very texts that inspiring their creation. Alternatively, Bonin’s second program installed at Dazibao (25 September – 22 November 2014), highlighted changes after this assimilation of theory in art became reflective of wider social and cultural developments. Here the Francophile curator adapted his project to Dazibao’s open space to thus enable a perceptible connection between the actors and theories within contemporary art networks. Although the presentation of theory as creative material might have intimidated some viewers – with exhibition constituents involving tightly messed networks of aesthetic and philosophical references – the task was not impossible according to Bonin: “it is not real obscurity, it’s just a lot of homework.”
As a point of reference, a video archive of Part I of DDSSANT was displayed by the entrance of its second iteration, to this way maintain a connection between exhibitions. Upon entering the gallery, audiences were confronted by Bernadette Corporation’s Hell Frozen Over (2000), projected on a hanging screen and blocking the general view of Dazibao’s open space. The work presents a two-frame narrative, juxtaposing DIY fashion photo shoots alongside French theorist and Semiotext(e) founder Sylvère Lotringer, talking about another French man: the poet Mallarmé, standing on a frozen lake. While Lotringer explains Mallarmé’s style and positivist notion of nothingness, strange associations rise up between his speech and the neighbouring frame, underlining the vacuity of fashion. Covered by mirror wallpaper, the wall behind Hell Frozen Over brandished Steve Lyons’ Towards an Anthropology of Influence (2014) which scanned and pasted every pages of Artforum mentioning Semiotext(e) in the last 15 years, reflecting the affluence of this publisher standing ‘between high theory, art and life in America’.
Beyond its tribute to French theory, DDSSANT further demonstrates the important contribution of these thinkers to Western society in arguing for new life potentials and perspectives. Michel Foucault, for one of course, vigorously challenged and denounced modern power structures as much as he contributed to the emergence of feminist and Queer discourses. Correspondingly, Universal Declaration of Infantile Anxiety Situations Reflected in the Creative Impulse (2013) by the My Barbarian collective (Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon and Alexandro Segade) illustrates parallel efforts in visual arts production. This 29 minutes film explores mother-child relationships and feminist legacies through five different stories, narrated by five different women. Each member of My Barbarian asked their own mother to tell these stories, along with two other 1970’s feminist art veterans. The resulting work clearly chronicled the milestones of feminist heritage from its origins until today.
These and other vital interconnection abound between the many artworks and text works of DDSSANT. As American critic Craig Owens testifies in Craig Owens: An interview (1984) – Lyn Blumenthal and Kate Horsfield’s 80 minutes film – the system of art and its relations between people and events are more important than the intrinsic qualities of art object. By extension, these conclusions lead to changes in our notion of essence, to redefine things in less stable and immutable manners. This way we return to Lotringer’s contribution in Hell Frozen Over, to re-read his analysis of Mallarmé in all its complexity as it is likened to a wall of words: the reader never traverses this wall but is halted by its substance, a “cosa mentale” helping to witness the infinite possibilities of meanings in Mallarmé’s oeuvre, and works of art generally.
© Kevin Rodgers, The Free Dependent (2014) and In Reverence, In Friendship, In Love (2014), in the context of D’un discours qui ne serait pas du semblant/Actors, Networks, Theories (2014). Photo : Sara A. Tremblay
© Jason Simon, In and Around the Ohio Pen (2014) and Collection: Materials of Chris Marker (2012) in the context of D’un discours qui ne serait pas du semblant/ Actors, Networks, Theories (2014). Photo : Sara A. Tremblay
© D’un discours qui ne serait pas du semblant/ Actors, Networks, Theories (2014). Exhibition view. Photo : Sara A. Tremblay
© Bernadette Corporation, Hell Frozen Over (2000), ) in the context of D’un discours qui ne serait pas du semblant/ Actors, Networks, Theories (2014). With the collaboration of Electronic Arts Intermix. Photo : Sara A. Tremblay
D’un Discours qui ne Serait du Semblant/Actors, Networks, Theories (PART II)
Curated by Vincent Bonin
Artists: Bernadette Corporation, Sophie Bélair Clément & Philippe Hamelin, Lyn Blumenthal & Kate Horsfield, Steve Lyons, My Barbarian, Jeff Preiss, R.H. Quaytman, Kevin Rodgers, Jason Simon
25 September – 22 November 2014
Dazibao
5455, avenue de Gaspé,
rez-de-chaussée
espace 109,
Montréal QC H2T 3B3
Canada
dazibao-photo.org