Cabin Fever (and Ecstasy)

Yet one more word about artist residencies.

This week I am doing an artist residency — an exceedingly rare occurrence for me, as it is something that my museum life had largely prevented me from doing from time immemorial.  I confess to feeling giddy—and even a bit nervous— at the idea that now I am alone in a large studio, in a rural area in the Catskills surrounded by summer foliage and chirping birds, with the only objective of thinking and making.

As I ease into this process I feel the need (as I usually do) to do a bit of an ontological reflection about artists residencies. But it is no easy task to say much that might be new because the literature on the subject is so incredibly vast, from manuals and sourcebooks of artists residencies to publications by the residency programs themselves to actual literature- novels and short stories about art residencies, some entertaining and others thinly veiled critiques of the surreal experiences lived therein. At the first dinner of my residency here I encountered seasoned fellow artists in residence who clearly know way more than I will ever do about this peculiar culture of which I only have a small insight and were happy to regale me with stories. There are the entertaining anecdotes of crazy parties and weird accidents, ghost stories of some of the oldest residencies (Yaddo and MacDowell); dangerous encounters with bears and other wild animals in rural environments, and tales of the famous, eccentric and otherwise notable artists who have stayed in the same bedrooms that us, the not-famous, sometimes occupy,  giving us a proxy sense of historical relevance, as if we inhabited a miniature version of the Lincoln Bedroom.

So what can I say about artist residencies that has not been said before?  I will only make a point or two about social time and tell a brief anecdote (and even though I am in a residency with technically ample time to spare, I paradoxically don’t want to spend the day writing because I really should employ my hours here to produce work, so I will be brief).

The artist residency is structured around what I would describe as parenthetical living— especially for those of us who live in urban environments and have complicated lives that primarily revolve around staying artistically active while simultaneously being able to generate enough income to sustain ourselves. In this kind of parenthetical living time becomes something else—it is no longer the regular work week schedule with a weekend; but instead an elastic  time capsule: in the residency all the weekdays meld into each other; schedules resemble something akin to monastic life in the medieval era, when time was marked not by clocks but by sunrise, sunset, praying, eating and other activities that would be in themselves the means to measure the day. Perhaps because of that space of solitude that residencies offer, the opportunities for social interaction become much more significant. Because of the frenetic pace of the art world, that which we consider social life is actually a distant semblance of what it used to be; we see a lot of acquaintances and talk to them at openings, but those interactions are by nature brief and abrupt, lasting only a few minutes before we are distracted by another person or thing happening around us. Artist residencies are one of the few places where you can have deep conversations with someone from within the art community for long periods of time. Last night for example at dinner we talked about the oddities and logical incongruencies of the Old Testament and religion in general, conversing among peers in a way that I had not had a chance to experience in a long time. In its best form, it is a culture of sharing and generosity: I was inspired to made flour tortillas for everyone last night, one of my only culinary abilities (everyone contributes in whichever way they can).

These parenthetical situations offer not only a different relationship with time and sociability, but they also become deeply engrained in one’s memory. One, in particular, still looms large in my mind.

Many years ago I was in a couple of residency cycles at the Banff Art Centre in Canada, during which time I produced some of the most relevant works of my career; a short but highly fruitful period that helped me identify and structure a plan for the two large branches of research that I would develop over that decade and even after: experimental/activist pedagogy and the social studies of the art world. But I want to talk about Banff.

The Banff Centre is located in one of the most beautiful parts of the world, the Alberta Rocky Mountains, adjacent to a ski resort that includes the majestic, turquoise-colored Lake Louise and several glaciers and ice fields. I first arrived during elk calving season, which is a time during which female elk can be extremely aggressive as they are very protective of their young; we received training to survive an elk attack. Then on the first night of my stay in Banff I had a very unusual dream— not so much because of its  subject matter, but because of the fact that it was extremely vivid and colorful (as my dad would say, “in Technicolor”) with a clear plot that unfolded as if I were watching a 2-hour feature film.  The following day I mentioned this experience to a Canadian artist who had been the lead technician of the ceramics workshop at Banff for many years.  He laughed, telling me it was a totally normal occurrence there. It might be the effect of the altitude or the very pure air that allows for a very oxygenated brain to function that way. I was also told at the time that Canada’s Indigenous Peoples, who have inhabited the area for 10,000 years, recognized the spiritual power of this site and the fact that it is now used as a spiritual retreat of sorts is no coincidence.

During my second Banff residency, which I attended with Dannielle, Dan Graham and Dara Birnbaum were invited as featured senior artists. I had never met Graham before and being with him during this period was quite an experience. Those who knew Dan know that there was little to no filter in what he would say—often speaking without making eye contact and making the odd gesture of seemingly scratching the back of his head as he spoke, always wearing an old T-shirt. During one of the daily communal lunches at Banff—served in a large dining hall— he sat with me and two other Mexican artists who were part of a separate government-funded grant. Dan started making off the cuff comments about Mexicans and Mexican culture—stuff that could be construed at best as disparaging and insensitive if not simply racist. My Mexican colleagues were incensed and furious at him, almost ready to punch him. I tried to calm them down, telling them later that he was an equal opportunity/unfiltered/eccentric offender.

Dan had a long history with Canada, in particular with the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design where he taught during the 1970s and where he produced many of his important conceptual and video works (Nova Scotia was a rare haven for experimenting with that new technology). He was also passionate about Canadian rock, of which he could talk about endlessly (often repeating the same anecdotes over and over again). But the main reason Dan was at Banff was because he wanted to complete a video he had initiated in the 80s about the West Edmonton Mall, which is officially North America’s largest shopping mall after the Mall of America, and fascinating to Graham because of its 1980s architecture based in the kind of reflective windows and metal that constituted a conceptual basis for his aesthetic (the final piece, which was co-produced by the Banff Centre, is titled Death by Chocolate: West Edmonton Shopping Mall). Anthony Kiendl, who was the head of the Banff art program and residency at the time, secured funds for all of us to come along with Dan to Edmonton to do the filming; all I remember is us wandering around the giant mall all day as they filmed and a moment after when Graham cajoled all of us to come along to Hooters for lunch— ostensibly to have an anthropological/cultural experience in a Graham, pop-culture kind of way. Later, once back at the residency, he also insisted to show us all the footage he had taken at the site— a screening that lasted several hours and which he made no effort to shorten it, seemingly unconcerned at the idea that it could feel a bit boring for anyone other than him to look at a video of metallic structures, mirrors and reflective glass for a whole afternoon (even though the final piece is only 8 minutes long).

Dan Graham, still from Death by Chocolate: West Edmonton Shopping Mall (1986-05), video, 8 min.

I never had a chance to see Dan again, and now he is sadly gone. But the time we spent together at Banff really allowed me to get to know him in a way that no typical social event in the art world would have ever permitted.  The same goes for practically everyone else I met during those times, developing deep friendships that remind me of those that I made during high school or college; intensely lived, shared experiences that generate everlasting bonds. I confess, however, that this is also something that gives me unease: who could possibly want to get to know me in such level of detail? But perhaps the problem lies with me, who can’t ever stop thinking of social dynamics, and perhaps overthinks such things.

And now it is time to take my cup of coffee, walk down the green path to the old barn that has been converted into a studio, and get some work done.