By now all ARCCO members have launched their first exhibitions and programs in this busy fall season. ARCCO’s Annual General Meeting and Members Forum, which takes place in Toronto this year from November 18 to 20, will provide an invaluable opportunity to come together to share information and gain new perspectives on important issues and challenges facing artists organizations. This issue of ARCCO's e-bulletin contains the general schedule for the action packed weekend that includes forums, a meeting with our core funders, Best Practice Series, Part 3: Governance Workshop Day, and the ARCCO AGM. More detailed agendas will be coming out soon – please reserve these dates and begin to make your travel plans. Membership renewals are also being mailed out so please return them promptly. This issue of the e-bulletin includes exciting new content provided by our members. Some of it is useful for administrators and programmers such as the review of Heather Young’s book and the presentation on reaching audiences. The new ART ACTUEL section will become a regular feature that highlights and celebrates artists’ projects presented by ARCCO members throughout the province of Ontario. SEE YOU IN TORONTO ON FRIDAY NOVEMBER 18, 2005. arcco e-bulletin vol.3 #1 contents:
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ARCCO AGM Weekend: Members' Forum, Face to Face with Funders, Governance Workshop Day, and AGM Friday November 18 to Sunday November 20 in Toronto November 18: 10:00 am – 5:00 pm Members Forum includes an afternoon meeting with the Funders. Location: Ontario College of Art & Design, 100 McCaul Street, Room: tba November 19: 10:00 am – 5:00 pm Governance Workshop Day, Best Practice Series, Part 3 Location: Toronto Arts Council, 141 Bathurst Street, tbc November 20: 12:30 pm - 3:30pm Annual General Meeting Location: Ontario College of Art & Design, 100 McCaul Street, Room: tba The weekend’s complete
schedule and registration information will be coming to you soon!
If you need to book accommodation book early! November is busy season
in Toronto!!
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Membership
Benefits ARCCO Membership Benefits The 2005-2006 year is upon us! With your new season underway, it's also time to renew your ARCCO Membership. We're excited to announce that this years ARCCO membership offers even more benefits: NEW BENEFITS • The first ARCCO Members Directory goes to print in early November, and will be disseminated throughout Ontario and to key organizations nationwide • The eBulletin now features a new members section: Art -Actuel, featuring an artists project presented at a member centre • Professional Development tools are being developed exclusively for ARCCO's newly updated website • Discounted CARFAC Ontario membership rates are available to full ARCCO Members (see sidebar) MEMBERSHIP BENEFITS • Access to professional advice, advocacy, and lobbying support for individual centres • Receive information on current and relevant ARC issues through ARCCO e-Communications • National dissemination of your program information and media releases to key organizations and the art public • Discounted registration fees to ARCCO conferences and workshops • Travel subsidies to attend the Annual General Meeting • Full members receive assistance securing travel funds to attend National ARC driven/organized conferences • Discounted Association Health Plan Rates for your employees, and your artist members • Discounted rate for ARCCO Members and their artist members at Holiday Inn Express Downtown (111 Lombard Street, Toronto) Ensure that your annual membership is up to date to enjoy these benefits and support the only arts service organization dedicated to artist run culture in Ontario.
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Review Finance for the Arts in Canada, by Heather Young, Young Associates, 2005 by Jeffrey Matt Heather Young’s book Finance for the Arts in Canada has been generating some interest in the non-profit community recently. What can you expect from Finance for the Arts in Canada? This is not a book about financing or running an artist-run centre, but a how-to guide for a very specific (and largely unglamorous) aspect of management and administration. There is no attempt to give a general picture of federal, provincial, or municipal funding agencies, no arguments made for paying artists a living wage, and no tips on reducing installation or shipping expenses. While these are the skills that make for great administrators in artist-run centres, Finance for the Arts in Canada focuses on bookkeeping, accounting, and financial management. It outlines the best practices for resource management, tracking, and planning in any institution, mandate-driven or otherwise. This book fills a niche in bringing these ideas to the non-profit arts organization. The material Young covers is neither controversial nor persuasive. No real arguments are presented. The language and style in her book are therefore best described as technical writing. Going through the chapters is akin to reading the federal government’s income tax guides, with the same cheerful buoyancy, but with mercifully few exclamation marks(!). Rather than damning with faint praise, this is an endorsement for the clear, easily digested writing covering nominally technical and often maligned material. The author lightens the mood with quotes from popular culture belittling the exaggerated importance of capital, but the topic is inescapably money and numbers. Finance for the Arts in Canada is very clearly structured, with a thorough table of contents. Important terms and phrases are bold-faced and included in the glossary. The first half of the book is suited to reference use, with frequent definitions and bulleted lists. The remaining chapters on budgeting and reporting are concept-driven and warrant a read through. I found these sections the most useful; they are well thought out and well worth the read. (One glaring oversight, however, is the omission of chapter titles in the header or footer — this book will be used frequently to quickly look something up, and not knowing what section you’re in makes finding information unnecessarily difficult.) The book will be best used by new administrators who find themselves emerging from a studio degree and faced with the daunting task of budgeting, reconciling back statements, preparing reports and balance sheets, and reading income statements. They can simply read the relevant chapters and gain a working understanding. The chapters are fairly self-contained, with few references to preceding chapters, so reading-on-demand works fine, although reading the book straight through is recommended. This book is not the last word on any of the topics discussed, but it is concise and imparts plenty of information for day-to-day use. For more experienced administrators who nonetheless learned on the job, Finance for the Arts in Canada will probably correct at least a few misunderstandings. If nothing else, it will concretize their existing knowledge. If you need to sell this expense to your board, I have no doubt that the consistent application of the recording, planning, and reporting structures presented in this book will improve the understanding of the financial health of your centre and make your auditor much happier. Rating: 7.5 out of a possible 10, or 75%, or (as a reduced fraction) 3 over 4
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 Arab translation from Art Star Video Art Biennial  Focus on the Family campaign spoof for the exhibition Opposition Party  Focus on the Family campaign spoof for the exhibition Opposition Party |
10 Easy
Steps to Reaching New Audiences by Jason St-Laurent, SAW Video Club co-ordinator/artist/activist Excerpt from Jason St-Laurent's presentation at the Curators in Context symposium, a collaborative project co-presented by the Ontario Association of Art Galleries and ARCCO, featuring curatorial mentoring roundtables in Banff (July 15-17, 2005) and Toronto (Dec. 1-4, 2005). During a curatorial conference at the University of Toronto in 2003, Walid Raad coined a new expression for curatorial work: experience management. This tongue-in-cheek phrase connotes an often overlooked aspect of curating — the acknowledgement of the audience for whom we construct a viewing experience. But who is the intended audience for contemporary art and media? How do we reach different communities through our work as curators? Should audience development and outreach be of concern to curators working today? Although my paper comes from an artist-run-culture perspective, it should be of use to any institution willing to engage with new, young, and diverse urban audiences. The ideas I have developed below have been applied to all the programming and community initiatives at SAW Video, Galerie SAW Gallery, and Club SAW. The centre is now one of the most well-attended artist-run centres in Canada, with audiences exceeding 30,000 people a year. 10 Easy Steps to Reaching New Audiences: 1. Accessible texts and didactic material: finding the right balance Academic texts should be restricted to certain kinds of publications, such as catalogues and didactic gallery material. All other print material distributed to the general public should be in clear, non-specialized language. 2. Off-site projects: choosing the right location It is often thought that bringing art into the public realm provides a good initiation for new audiences, but without meaningful collaborations with the community, these projects can fall flat. SAW Video's site-specific project Home Movies, with video installations projected from within homes in one of Ottawa's poorest neighbourhoods, was an attempt to create a meaningful art experience for an unaccustomed audience. The programming choices were made with the cultural and social makeup of the community in mind, which includes the largest Inuit community outside of Nunavut and Ottawa's oldest French-speaking population. 3. Translation into languages other than English and French: speaking to others In major urban centres, the need to translate material into other languages is important. In the past two years, SAW has translated material into French, Arabic, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Inuktitut, and Japanese. Based on programming choices, the translations become an effective outreach tool. For example, some minority-language newspapers in Ottawa have published our texts in their entirety as they have no art writers on staff, and embassies can send out our material to their contacts without need for translation. Audiences are visibly more diverse when we resort to translation. 4. Diversity in the centre’s artists, staff and board: being inclusive in all aspects of operations and programming To fully engage your community, diversity in your staff, board, and artists is essential. Although the Canada Council for the Arts has pushed for these changes in artist-run centres, some galleries remain unresponsive. Surprisingly, there are centres in 2004 that have had exclusively Caucasian boards, Caucasian staff, and Caucasian artists. In this age of multiculturalism and new global connections, it is frankly disturbing. On the other hand, most centres have adopted progressive and proactive stances in regards to diversity, particularly in Toronto. 5. Multidisciplinary openings: creating dynamic social spaces and networking opportunities Many centres in the country have reshaped their vernissages into happenings to great effect. New audiences respond well to more convivial settings, while the art scene appreciates a social space for exchange. With DJs, live musicians, and performances, these types of openings can also generate much-needed funds by running a bar. Having a dedicated space for performance, such as Club SAW, can really enhance multidisciplinary programming. 6. New practices: considering all practices of the visual and media arts The cachet of new practices can definitely capture the imagination of the general public. Often, cash-strapped ARCs have difficulty supporting new technologies, which can lead to fruitful corporate collaborations. Most companies want to be associated with cutting-edge technology, particularly the small or new ones. 7. Innovative collaborations and partnerships: targeting festivals and large public events for audience development initiatives and engaging in cross-cultural exchanges In the past year, SAW has initiated collaborations with Winterlude and the National Arts Centre, and, in the near future, Lebanorama. Ensuring artistic freedom is of great importance to SAW, and these major institutions accept the fact that we tend to program more challenging and sometimes controversial works. Both collaborations this year have broken attendance records and have introduced new audiences to SAW. 8. Thematic programming: developing themes that engage a wide range of people or specific communities Perhaps the most obvious example of thematic programming is SCATALOGUE: 30 Years of Crap in Contemporary Art, an exhibition that garnered international media attention and record audiences. This exhibition also had art critics and writers sharpening their knives, but in the end, the critical response was overwhelmingly positive. This indicated to us that you can actually please everybody with contemporary art programs that are smart, unpretentious, and capture the popular imagination. 9. Contemporary politics: responding to current events Maintaining a reserve fund for special initiatives can have a real impact on your social relevance as an alternative art centre. From the child porn bill to the gay marriage act, SAW was able to quickly organize panels on art and politics that gave the cultural community a space to express themselves in a timely matter. We have even responded to political situations in our promotional material. 10. Media and public relations: making journalists and the public more responsive to your communications Tailoring your press releases and announcements is an effective way to reach media and audiences. Again, the key is to restrict specialized texts to the art scene while using different voices for different people. For example, if an artist is queer, send out a queer-specific announcement that has more legs to circulate on queer listservs, etc.
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tim dallett's flowchart
Artspace, Peterborough July 29 - August 20 A live audio-visual performance and installation dealing with notions of technological change, obsolescence, and time. The work was performed nightly for an outdoor audience, with video projection and a live soundtrack simulcast on Trent Radio FM. The video installation of the performances were on display at Artspace in Peterborough. tim dallett's flowchart is a process-based intermedia installation and performance I have presented four times, each incarnation having evolved and developed from the previous. A gallery with street-level windows is used as a stage set for a live nighttime performance process I carry out, and the audience views and listens to the work outside of the space through video and audio, rather than being physically present in the same space with the performer. This is accomplished through live rear-screen video projection onto the inside surface of the windows of the gallery space, which is then viewable by anyone passing by on the street. The imagery consists of the switching and mixing of various camera views of the space as the performer moves around in it. Live concrete sounds of these actions are gathered by microphones and transmitted outside the space for the audience to listen to, not by means of loudspeakers, but by radio transmission. The concept is that both intentional and accidental audiences are addressed or called into being in the course of their movements through the city or across the radio dial, and that a crossover or overlaying of video and audio mediation can occur in the spectator's private perceptual space (for example, when listening to a radio with headphones). Spectators choosing to stop outside the gallery to watch the projections also encounter each other, leading to unforeseen interactions and situations. Initially, the project was based around a mass of electronic debris I had accumulated in the course of previous performances, and had a heavy preoccupation with notions of obsolescence and circularity of time, using a literal flowchart drawn on the floor of the gallery to highlight a routine of processing, reclaiming, or recontextualizing the detritus of obsolete audio-visual apparatus. As I continued to present the work, the imposition of my own material onto the gallery site began to seem less relevant, compared to work on the relations between the inside and outside spaces, and the simultaneity or displacement of events between one space and another. Accordingly, a previous presentation at Latitude 53 in Edmonton used exclusively items found in the gallery's storeroom as material for the performance, and the Peterborough presentation at Artspace was further focused on working with the architectural and spatial effect of the gallery's suspended ceiling tiles. These tiles I systematically took down, piled up, and then replaced over the course of the seven nights of presentations. The action of doing this circular, apparently futile, labour not only provided the movement image seen by the array of cameras trained on the space, but produced palpable changes in the architectural environment of the gallery over time. Following the performances, the space was left with documentation in the form of video recordings with an audio soundtrack that daytime visitors could listen to on a wireless headset, thereby recreating the audio environment of movement and activity in the now-empty space. The Peterborough presentation of the work at Artspace was greatly facilitated by the collaboration of Trent Radio, which generously allocated a portion of its broadcast day to the live simulcast of the audio soundtrack. |
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Fashion Plate, by
Cindy Baker Produced by Fado Performance Inc. July 22 - August 4, 2005 11 am - 7 pm August 4, 2005 6 pm: Fashion Plate 2005 Summer Collection launch and reception The Drake, Toronto Fashion Plate was a two-week residency project featuring Saskatoon-based artist Cindy Baker. Framed in the context of Fado's identity-based IDea series, Fashion Plate was an interactive project that asked audience members to think "about a large woman's body, about someone else's body, regardless of size, about that body in relation to their own and in relation to fashion (a visual translation of society's rules or standards about bodies)." The artist, working with her assistant Megan Morman, set up shop (with sewing machines, fabrics, and pattern samples) for 10 hours a day at the Drake, a boutique hotel and Toronto cultural hot spot. Audience members were invited to drop by and design clothing for the plus-size artist, testing their own comfort levels in dealing with her body in a hands-on way. Visitors were asked to take the process as far as cutting out the fabric, and then Baker and Morman would finish the sewing, culminating in a launch of no less than 30 outfits. No doubt part of the frisson of Fashion Plate derived from the choice of sites. The Drake, accessible to the low-income downtown art crowd, is also a watering hole for many of Toronto's mainstream designers and “beautiful people.” At least as important as the close contact Cindy had with those game enough to design an outfit were her daily conversations with a wide range of curious Drake patrons, not to mention the unsuspecting dinner-goers who witnessed her low-key fashion launch of a collection that ranged from debutante to diva, from darling to daring.
In her notes for the project, Cindy wrote: "One of my interests … is in examining the dance people will do between wanting to create something that will fit (and look good) on my (relatively enormous) body, while avoiding creating something so large as to be farcical.… "This project gives people permission to look at me, to literally size me up. In fact, it requires them to, to look at me and really think about what they're seeing. This is the most challenging part of Fashion Plate, I think — for the audience, to be asked to look at me and really think about it; and for me, to be looked at so critically by all the people I encounter." In assessing the project afterward, Baker had this to say: "Before I started this project, I hypothesized that everyone would want to please; that the crux of the performance would be in the conversations and the awkward attempts to guess a correct fit. In fact, one thing I could not predict was that those who were willing to engage did so wholeheartedly, and were not afraid to get their arms around me, to wrap me in fabric, to hold things up to see how they'd look. I thought I'd be a more active participant in the process than I often ended up being; in many cases, I was asked to stand, lift up my arms, turn around — to be a mannequin. "But the other thing I could not predict was that the participants, regardless of where they were coming from, seemed to take this as their opportunity to create a fabulous work of contemporary art-clothing, and instead of trying to make something that fit by selecting a simple design, they pulled out all the taffeta and the organza and made the most elaborate designs and really tried to make me into their diva."
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| ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ARCCO members please forward this to your membership! ARCCO P.O. Box 44026, Market Tower Lane Postal Outlet 141 Dundas Street, London, Ontario N6A 5S5 email: jewel.goodwyn@sympatico.ca
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