Marc J. Léger
Within the parameters of "littoral art"
and "the art of giving," Halifax,
Nova Scotia-based artist, writer and theorist
Bruce Barber invited Katherine Grant, a homeless
resident of Calgary, Alberta, to become a "Squat(wri)ter"
for a temporary exhibition at the Walter Phillips
Gallery at the Banff Centre. On view for eight
weeks in the summer of 1999, Squat transformed
the gallery space into a resident's living quarters
and linked the room to an Internet Web site.
Through the Internet link, virtual visitors
could engage with the Squatter in a chat room,
post questions and comments, or obtain information
on housing rights and squat advocacy. The Squat
Web site included two texts by Barber on new
directions in critical community art practice:
"Littoralist Art Practice and Communicative
Action" (1996) and "Sentences on Littoral
Art" (1998). In these texts, Barber's approach
to art production draws from Pierre Bourdieu
and Jürgen Habermas in articulating practices
of giving and communicative action that are
premised on "ethical, socially responsive
and politically efficacious art." I interviewed
Barber on the subject of the Banff, Alberta
exhibition and its continuation abroad in Poland
and New Zealand.1 This interview was carried
out by email in the summer of 2000.
Marc J. Léger: Squat seems to me to
be produced in large part through the agency
and performance of the person who occupies the
gallery space for the duration of the exhibition.
The project began therefore not only with a
series of concepts for a critical art intervention
but also with a pre-existing situation involving
a complex set of social circumstances and individuals.
Could you tell me something about how you came
to meet the Squat(wri)ter and what she wanted
to say about the situation of homelessness and
housing in Banff?
Bruce Barber: Before I arrived in Banff in
the summer of 1999 I had submitted a handbill
design for general circulation and publication
in the local Calgary street journal and other
venues. It stated that the Walter Phillips Art
Gallery at the Banff Centre was seeking an itinerant
or presently homeless writer to occupy a squat
(designed by myself) for a period of eight weeks
during the summer to communicate with other
writers on the World Wide Web. This advertisement
had circulated for at least two weeks prior
to my arrival and the gallery personnel had
set up some interviews with prospective squatters
for me during the week prior to the exhibition
opening. I was also taken to Calgary and distributed
other handbills to homeless people. At one of
the Calgary drop-in centers for the homeless
we established a time to meet with Katherine
Grant whom the coordinators recommended as someone
who would both contribute to and benefit from
the project. Katherine, a woman in her late
forties or early fifties, lived in an old car
and traveled regularly between Alberta and British
Columbia to maintain contact with her two sons.
She had little formal education and recounted
a particularly difficult life history, which
I did not feel comfortable discussing with her
or representing in this context without her
express permission. She disclosed that she was
receiving disability payments and rejected the
idea of receiving payment for her role as a
squatter, as this would have jeopardized her
social security payments. She did take the opportunity,
however, to receive the hospitality of the Banff
residency program - food vouchers, the opportunity
to sit in on various workshops, access to exercise
facilities - to become in effect (without conventional
symbolic capital) just like any of the other
artists and writers invited to become part of
the Banff residency program.
Instead of occupying one of the special architect-designed
studio pods provided in the Centre grounds,
Katherine was provided with a squat in the gallery.
She informed me that she had previously taken
one continuing education course in writing (in
B.C.) and although she was "always writing"
she had not yet had the opportunity to publish
any of her work. During her residency in the
squat she managed to publish one piece locally
and received invitations to publish others.
She began work on her life history. She also
learned some aspects of videomaking and became
a popular member of the Centre community, making
friends with everyone she encountered. She personalized
the squat space with her stuffed toys and bed
quilt. She invited people to sign the walls
of the interior of her bedroom, which many did,
leaving messages of support and friendship,
drawings and poems that were subsequently documented
on video.
MJL: Did you do any work on the subject of
homelessness and squatting before the Banff
project?
BB: Yes, the Walter Phillips Gallery version
of Squat was preceded in March 1999 by a non-virtual
Squat installed in the so-called Closet Gallery
of the Khyber Centre for the arts here in Halifax.
I was approached by Michael Fernandes, a Khyber
curator and fellow artist, about whether I was
interested in using the so-called "Closet
Gallery," and after inspecting the space,
which is a regular-sized closet with an ongoing
exhibition program, I decided to return the
closet to its original condition as a closet,
and to instead use the vacant room adjacent
for an installation. I placed an advertisement
in The Coast, the local and widely distributed
free newspaper, with a Squat logo (a squatting
gentleman wearing a hat, a cane and eyeglasses
on the ground before him) and the following
text:
"The Khyber Centre for the Arts is seeking
a homeless writer to inhabit a squat for a month
and to collaborate with Bruce Barber on the
production of a Closet Drama for the Ides of
March (March 15). Call or visit the Khyber Centre,
Barrington Street, phone, fax, etc."
Handbills containing the same information were
distributed and posted throughout the downtown.
While I was handing invitations out in the street
I met Jon David Welland, an artist and writer
as well as a self-described street person and
managed schizophrenic. I knew Jon from many
years ago when he took a class I taught at the
Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD).
He read the handbill and suggested that although
technically he wasn't homeless at the moment,
he had been on many occasions previously and
considered himself to be a person of the street.
I told him that he would be expected to inhabit
that squat I had designed for the top floor
of the Khyber space. In the space (approximately
10 x 8 feet) I provided a bed, bedding, a fridge,
coffeepot, hot plate, tea, coffee, pots and
utensils. After the opening, which he attended,
he committed himself to living and working in
the space for a month. I met with him regularly,
discussing his writing and drawings with him
at length, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes
and occasionally taking him out to lunch or
dinner. I also purchased a membership for him
at the Khyber Centre for the Arts, so that he
could submit work to the members' exhibitions
and participate in other events associated with
the Centre. On the evening of March 15 we read
our respective writings from the squat. At the
conclusion of the exhibition, we formed a Khyber
Centre Writers' group that subsequently me every
Saturday afternoon for several months until
an unfortunate confrontation between two of
the most vocal (and volatile) members of the
group ended the meetings. Jon was interviewed
by CBC radio and read two of his squat writings
on the air and two writers profiled him for
their respective newspapers. He is a volunteer
with the Nova Scotia Hospital, a psychiatric
care facility that he has been associated with
for many years, and he used their outpatient
resources to publish a magazine containing his
writing and drawing in the company of examples
from present and former patients.
Sometime after this exhibition, I was aksed
by Jon Tupper, the Director and Chief Curator
of Walter Phillips Gallery, to consider participating
with Park Bench, a New York-based public and
virtual art group, in the gallery's forthcoming
Web video exhibition titled "Streaming
Laboratory." During the next few weeks
I worked on-line with the gallery and Web master
Pedro Mendes from Winnipeg to create the Web
site for the actual and virtual version of Squat.
Pedro and I did some research on the Web about
other squat sites and then set about linking
these to my Web site. My recent Squatlink installation
for the Interactions Festival in the city of
Piotrokow Trybulanski, Poland, linked with other
squats throughout Europe. During the performance
series I placed the international squat sign
on the exterior of the building and publicly
declared the installation room a squat, open
for business to the homeless people of Piotrokow
and the surrounding environs. Again the room
looked more like a regular squat, a 12' x 6'
"cell" containing a bed and computer.
Washing and toilet facilities were nearby.
MJL: The various squats' use of rooms as framing
devices or as means of transforming what can
be made visible furthers your previous work,
for example, in E (1978), Revolve (1978), Work
to Rule/Worker Rule (1980) and the Reading Rooms
projects (1984-92). These works emphasize the
conjuncture of everyday architectural conventions
with social relations and relations of power.
In the case of Squat, it would seem to me that
the Internet links modified the somewhat "pressurized"
dimensions of your use of a delimited space,
bringing about a varying tension between place
and placelessness. How did virtual space inform
the question of place-boundedness and property
vis-à-vis homelessness and what is sometimes
referred to as the "deterritorialized"
space of the Internet? What did the squatters
or viewers say about the different time-space
relations that were being negotiated and what
did they think about their activity in that
situation?
BB: These are very good questions. Yes, of
course we like to believe the World Wide Web
is "deterritorialized," stochastic
(leaky) and Deleuzian (rhizomatic) in form,
but its virtual spaces (homepages, chat rooms,
etc.) are becoming increasingly segmented, and
subject to various forms of commoditization.
One of the excellent features of virtual squat
sites (virtual journals, homepages, chatrooms,
etc.) is that they provide a rich matrix of
free information on-line to anyone in the world,
from Berlin to Manilla, from Johannesburg to
London. Some of the more politically sensitive
sites are however encrypted and only available
to certified squat users. Squat.net, the international
on-line magazine for squatters and squatting
has daily updates on property struggles and
human rights issues throughout the world and
provides relevant book, magazine and news references
and many links to other relevant sites, including
my own.
Most visitors to the squat were stimulated and
impressed by the real (material) elements of
the work, that is, viewing the squat, which
had a certain sculptural presence in the gallery
space and the projected Web site on the wall.
Many explored the Web site either in the squat
itself or at a computer installed in the gallery
for this purpose. I like to think of the facades
of the "box" in art historical terms,
as like Ad Reinhardt's black paintings and the
cube as a piece of minimal sculpture by for
example Tony Smith, Don Judd or Robert Morris,
circa 1964. The squatter colophon I have used
as a logo of sorts and a screensaver that site
visitors may download to their own computers
was appropriated from one of Reinhardt's montage
cartoons from the 1940s which he produced for
P.M. magazine. Visitors to the space enjoyed
meeting Katherine and discussing the work with
her. They explored her thoughts about homelessness,
writing and her feelings about living in the
space for two months and asked her practical
questions like "where do you eat?,"
"do you sleep here?," etc.
MJL: Were you or the squatters interested in
recording visitors' responses and questions,
such as the writings on the walls of the squat?
The visitor of Squat had to share with the Squat(wri)ter
the situation of display and perhaps in the
process broach a barrier of distinct conditions,
if only temporarily. It seems then that the
project works to enact a virtual and socially
poignant exchange of positions between the supposedly
fixed categories of "propertied" and
"homeless."
BB: Yes, the Web site had a section for submissions
and comments, a chat room for Katherine to chat
on-line with visitors and she also turned the
white walls of the interior into frames for
written and drawn responses from people who
visited her in her room. Many of the drawings
and comments on the walls are documented in
a videotape that she produced for me as she
was about to leave the squat.
MJL: By expanding the Walter Phillips Web site
with an essay on the "art of giving"
and a détourned reworking of Sol LeWitt's
"Sentences on Conceptual Art" (1969)
(titled "Sentences on Littoral Art"
[1998]) you've incorporated a rigorous theoretical
element into the squat projects and I'm excited
by the many motifs of "littoral art"
which I understand as a kind of critical community-based
art practice. Could you say a few words about
littoral art and its grounding, if at all, in
the context of Halifax and the work that takes
place at NSCAD? What strikes me is the relationship
of the projects of littoral art, involving people
from all walks of life, to highly developed
political and theoretical concepts that are
nurtured by cultural work.
BB: We do not (yet) have a public or community
art program at NSCAD but certainly over the
last 30 years or so, beginning with the so-called
"Conceptual Art period" at NSCAD (1967-73)
and subsequent forays into post conceptual work
in the 1980s, the idea of working outside of
conventional institutionalized art spaces, galleries
and museums, and artist-run centers, has been
on the agenda in many class projects. Studio
discussions centered on public art, political
art and art politics have occured across the
divisions and not simply within specialized
programs such as environmental design, media
arts or art education. These discussions have
been stimulated by many visitors to the school
including art world stars like Adrian Piper
and Hans Haacke and of course the NSCAD Press
Publications of Martha Rosler, Alan Sekula,
Michael Asher, Dan Graham, et. al. There is
evidence of interest in work that operates between
and across both the public and private spheres
among the faculty and at the undergraduate and
graduate levels within the institution. A few
faculty and a small number of students are producing
Web sites to extend their dialog with communities
outside the college environs. As well, a small
number of regular events such as the Ceramics
department initiative, "Hungry Bowls,"
and other "Free Food"-based exhibits
have tended to raise the consciousness of those
within the school that there is a public sphere
beyond the walls of the institution.
MJL: Your "Sentences" affirm that
littoral art lies outside the conventions of
the institutionalized artworld. Littoral art,
for example, may or may not become art; it may
or may not engage with institutions. I find
once again some correspondences with your interest
in the architecture of the door and the turnstile,
or with aspects of contemporary poststructural
theory. There is an analogy in your working
of the concept of littoral art with Bourdieu's
argument that the act of giving may or may not
necessarily be returned, which contrasts with
instrumental and calculated exchanges or with
a closed system of reciprocity.
BB: Yes, these issues are explored in several
of the essays I have published on performance,
intervention, littoral art and related practices
since the early 1980s. The two essays "Littoralist
Art Practice and Communicative Action"
(1996), and "The Gift in Littoral Art"
(2000)2, on the novelsquat Web site (currently
in place for the Eyelevel Gallery window squat)
and a similar site in New Zealand explore many
of your questions in historical, critical and
theoretical terms, probably more adequately
than I can address them here. I will say that
the process that I am involved in is less dialectical
than dialogical; in other words it is always
in a process of becoming, that is, it is never
forced into what I would consider to be a premature
resolution or synthesis. I have likened my method,
if you call it that - perhaps it's against method
- to a revolving door or periscope. Jacques
Derrida's notion of finding the "truth"
in painting, outside the frame, is a commonplace
of contemporary criticism now, but his critical
strategy - injunction - of going four times
around the work in order to know what it is
all about, is still not fully understood. Perhaps
it is an impossible task but I think that his
critical deconstructive project can be applied
to both the production and the reading of a
work.
MJL: You mention in one of your essays the
strategic aspect of working directly on social
reality rather than indirectly on forms of representation,
a statement that could be criticized from the
point of view of poststructuralism. Nevertheless,
your writing gives many good indications why,
for instance, you make use of Habermas's theory
of communicative action. The fact remains, though,
that Habermas's defense of rationality and the
separation of spheres (aesthetic/ethical/conceptual)
continues to be used as a wedge to separate
different kinds of critical work. I also have
in mind how Bourdieu's approach to giving would
be different from Georges Bataille's or Gilles
Deleuze's. How would you describe your approach
to theoretical limitations and inconsistencies?
Perhaps this is equivalent to asking what is
your approach to theory.
BB: Yes, many poststructuralists don't like
dealing with material reality. I think the challenge
in making operative art is like the challenge
in education. One must first recognize one's
own position as a political agent, that whatever
you do, perform, say, write or give, can have
effects beyond those you may have originally
projected or anticipated. The problem is how
one engages with material reality, not necessarily
with which, or toward what, one engages. I think
this is what I find attractive about Bourdieu's
position about the contrariety in the practice
of giving, the simple acknowledgement that things
may not proceed according to rule and the cycle
of reciprocity therefore is broken.
For the past 10 years artists have been attempting
to come to terms with how to make political
art more educational and not simply provocative
in the old avant-garde sense of exhibiting the
three As (antagonism, agonism, activism) articulated
many years ago by Renato Poggioli in his book,
The Theory of the Avant-Garde (1968). Artists
like Suzanne Lacy, Rosler, Fred Londier, Carol
Conde/Karl Beveridge, Piper and artist groups
like Group Material, REPOhistory, Border Arts
Workshop, Projects Environment and other so-called
littoral groups, have been creating works that
are both multi-layered and extensive, often
constructed ("engineered") in such
a way that they stimulate public dialog and
educational exchanges, works that enrich the
opportunity for participation and collaborative
learning. There are no watertight theories of
political praxis that are without contradictions
and limitations. Theory is always an ongoing
practice; that's what makes it necessary and
interesting for me to pursue.
A separate interview was conducted with Katherine
Grant, Squat(wri)ter and participant in the
Banff residency program. Among the works Grant
produced while in residence are a memoiristic
piece on homelessness and an editorial response
to a review of the exhibit that appeared in
the Globe and Mail. This interview took place
over the summer months of 2000.
Marc J. Léger: What was your initial
response to the prospect of becoming a participant
in Squat?
Katherine Grant: I was pleased with the opportunity
to get a chance to write.
MJL: How did you feel about visitors' responses
to meeting you within the parameters of an art
gallery?
KG: I found myself feeling embarassed for them.
Initially, many of them were uncomfortable about
my situation but I greeted them with a smile
and invited them in to hear more about why I
was there.
MJL: Do you think that Squat's unusual means
of representation were effective in presenting
social issues like homelessness and squatting
in ways that are different from more conventional
forms of representation, such as that of the
news media, for example?
KG: Yes and no. Some people were outraged that
a living person was on display and wouln't listen
to anything I had to say. They walked out as
close-minded as when they wlaked in. But the
majority walked away with a totally different
view of the poor, not only in Canada but world-wide.
They were seeing and talking face-to-face with
someone who lived below the povery level. A
real person, not just a statistic.
MJL: Did becoming a Squat(wri)ter change your
personal perspective on questions of home and
the way that property relations organize how
and where people live?
KG: Being a squat(wri)ter didn't change my
perspective. I've always had strong feelings
about the elderly and ill among us being forced
to live in slum conditions. I don't think that
it's real estate that organizes how and where
people live, I think it's money and class distinctions.
MJL: Did working on this project provide you
with the opportunity to communicate some of
the ideas you already had about these issues?
KG: Yes, being in the squat provided me with
an opportunity to "pontificate" on
the subject! But I made a clear distinction
between squatters and the poor, ill and elderly.
When people came into the gallery, I made it
clear that I disagree with squatters and squatting
and that my purpose in being there was to be
a voice for the poor, ill and elderly, not the
lawless. Many visitors left the squat saying
they had a totally changed view of the situation
and wanted to make a difference where they could.
MJL: There is at the moment a heightened interest
in surveillance, voyeurism and related practices
of "othering" people through either
visual, symbolic or aural means. What are your
thoughts on the condition of visibility, of
being "on display," either in the
gallery context or through the use of the Internet?
KG: This was a tough one for me. I'm a very
private person and spend most of my time alone.
Whether shopping, eating, going for a drive
or a walk, I go alone. I like to be alone. I'm
friendly and outgoing but only in a superficial
way. So the process of othering others sort
of leaves me shaking my head and wondering why
people don't get a life and find something better
to do. I was surprised when people would get
in touch with me and say they saw me on the
Web-cam, (or more often than not) asked where
I was and why all they ever got to see was teddy
bears. To be honest I thought they were a tad
strange to want to watch an old woman sitting
in a box in a gallery, writing.
As for the idea of someone being visibly on
display, I think that it's OK if it's done with
taste and respect. I actually got some complaints
because I wasn't "living" in front
of the camera: i.e., changing clothes, washing
myself, brushing my teeth and the like. I simply
explained that I was there to be a voice for
those who weren't able or couldn't speak for
themselves, not a peep show for voyeurs, and
that to do otherwise would lack respect for
the gallery, for the artists who put me in the
squat and myself.
MARC J. LÉGER is a doctoral candidate
in Visual & Cultural Studies at the University
of Rochester. He is currently conducting doctoral
research on the aesthetic writings of Henri
Lefebvre.
NOTES
1. Documentation of the Banff and Piotrkow projects
can be found on the Web at: www.banffcentre.ab.ca/WPG/nmsc/squat/intro.htm
and www.wizya.net/bruce.htm.
2. "The Gift in Littoral Art" in Symposium
2000: Aspects of Post-Object and Performance
Art in
New Zealand from the 1970s to the Present (Christchurch,
NZ: Robert MacDougall Art Gallery, 2000).
First published in Afterimage 29:1 (July/August
2001) 10-11.
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