Antonia Hirsch, ANTHROPOMETRICS, November 2006 — February 2007
Marina Roy, TRAPPINGS, September 2006 – March 2008
Jillian Pritchard & Dan Starling, TWELVE SUBJECTS, September 2006 – September 2007
Kathy Slade, FIFTY-TWO WEEKS OF TRANSACTIONS AT THE LENDING LIBRARY, September 2006 – September 2007
Laiwan, CALL NUMBERS: THE LIBRARY RECORDINGS, January 2007 – March 2008
Mark Soo, LAMP, AFTER UNDP HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX, January — July 2007

Group Search considers our use of the library in many ways. Library visitors are looking for something; we enter a system in order to find it, and welcome surprising discoveries within our often-solitary search. We are active, inquisitive viewers in a visually complex environment that includes the architecture, the systems of categorization, the stacks and the furniture, the machines and signage, the escalators and glass, and the movement of people within. The artists in Group Search use artistic strategies of interruption, and integration, of embedding artwork in or through the systems of the library, diverting an accustomed search pattern and giving pause. Their work infiltrates the collections, the electronic catalogues, and the reading and gathering areas as it examines the library as a site for contemplative work, a system of organization, and a symbol of democracy.

These temporary works are produced by artists whose curiosity, research methods, and formal approaches relate to the contemplative and active spaces of the library, to the containment and exchange of information found there, and to the activities of searching and locating, borrowing, reflecting and returning, that library users undertake. Diverse in age, cultural background and in the media they use, these artists have been invited to develop work to be strategically sited within certain appropriate zones of the library. Whether they work with texts, or create installations or performances, the artists have a fascination with languages, language and organizational systems, and popular and specialized culture in all its forms. They pose important questions about how meaning is made, and what counts as knowledge in contemporary society.

Curated by Lorna Brown

Group Search was made possible through the invaluable contributions of The Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, the Spirit of BC Arts Fund, the Vancouver Foundation, Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and Generation Printing.

Vancouver Public Library

September 2006 — September 2007

Kathy Slade undertook a 52-week performance, beginning in September 2006, resulting in a unique bookwork. Once a week, on an appointed day and time, she visited the Vancouver Public Library to choose and borrow a book. Each transaction receipt, which clearly states the date, time and book title, was digitally scanned and saved. Because the receipts are printed on thermal paper, they will slowly fade. At the end of the year, these documents from the performance were assembled into an artists’ book that was donated to the Vancouver Public Library Special Collections.

This project is at once simple and complex. It touches on numerous on-going themes in Slade’s practice and responds to the contract of exchange between the borrowing individual and lending institution. A dossier of her movements once a week, for one year, Fifty-two Weeks is a self-portrait formed by the artist’s selection of materials to consume. This ordinarily private transaction is presented for the speculation of the viewer – did she, in fact, read the books? Was her choice influenced through the knowledge that it would be made public? Is there significance in the sequence of her list, does it contain a secondary index beyond the chronological record? How might these borrowed books have influenced her thinking, her next choice, her actions? Are her choices correct, or trivial, or pointed?

Through inverting the terms of the lending policy, by disclosing what library procedures guard as private, Fifty-two Weeks draws attention to the routine and everyday negotiation of technological surveillance by individuals and by institutions. Encouraging our speculation as to her reading choices, Slade sets up an expectation that we might learn more about her by tracking her transactions. Her weekly visits, each indicating a new page, accumulate in a serial, predictable pattern of behaviour – the performed creation of a book.

In collaboration with Trapp Editions, an offset version of the project 52 Transactions was produced and distributed internationally.

Group Search was made possible through the invaluable contributions of The Canada Council for the Arts, the BC Arts Council, the Spirit of BC Arts Fund, the Vancouver Foundation, Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and Generation Printing.

Related Links

Anthropometrics [Antonia Hirsch]
Call Numbers – The Library Recordings [Laiwan]
LAMP [Mark Soo]
Twelve Subjects [Jillian Pritchard + Dan Starling]
Trappings [Marina Roy]

Vancouver Public Library

September 2006 — March 2008

A library is one of the last refuges for the democratic potential of a shared cultural consciousness, a true public commons. Reading takes many forms here — at times it is a very directed, instrumental pursuit of particular forms of knowledge, at other times it is more intuitive, a mental wandering, where one book leads to the next, through footnotes and bibliographies, and through browsing in the stacks.

Trappings is a series of discreet interventions into the VPL print collection. They trace the research conducted by the artist for her writing, teaching, and art making. Roy researches and collects information for particular projects, such as one related to the letter X, and more recently, one related to the letter Q. More generally, her research interests include concepts such as nomadism, nature, portraiture and property. In Trappings, Roy imagines a book as a temporary location where a nomadic researcher lingers, exploring how the slips of paper, small images and notes might find another reader of the same text at different time. These subtle book interventions create new mental paths to follow, by inserting information related to the topic of the book, or by leading the reader to the other books in which she has intervened. These ephemeral messages, seemingly accidental, speak directly from one reader to another and add another voice or point of view to the published text. Thoughtfully produced, they engage the curiosity of fellow readers within the labyrinth of the collection, and may contradict or complicate the original author’s intentions. Over the course of Group Search, Trappings maps the book collection with the path of her inquiry, and shares the many pleasures to be taken in her work. Roy documents her on-going process by noting the call number, title, and other classification data; the condition of the book, a description of what was left inside the book and/or a photograph of her intervention.

Related Links

Anthropometrics [Antonia Hirsch]
Call Numbers – The Library Recordings [Laiwan]
LAMP [Mark Soo]
Twelve Subjects [Jillian Pritchard + Dan Starling]
Fifty-two Weeks of Transactions at the Lending Library [Kathy Slade]

Vancouver Public Library

September 2006 – September 2007

Twelve Subjects

Displays, created by library staff and community groups, can be found throughout the many areas of the library, drawing attention to national days of remembrance, seasonal holidays, and topics of interest to library users, and highlighting different books and resources. Often found on the escalator landings, framed by the Copier room wall, these displays use familiar materials and presentation techniques to animate the space of the library.

Jillian Pritchard and Dan Starling were intrigued by these rotating displays, which might be seen as ‘exhibitions from the collection’. The ‘curator’ of the display chooses works from the VPL holdings, and places them together with lettering, fabric, paper and other materials to lend an interpretation of the published works. Distinguished by their accessible, clear communication, and economy of means, the displays employ the language of art – colour, texture, shape and form – to catch the eye of the library patron.

The artists replicated, within their studio, the red wall of the photocopy room and the surrounding area. Having constructed a set, they created twelve displays of their own, and photographed them using a standard camera distance. The large-scale photographs were then installed on the red wall in the library, rotating monthly for one year. Twelve Subjects uses the language and materials of display-making to tackle subjects of concern to artists, such as accessibility and meaning, the relationship of form to content, and other issues artists face as they set out to communicate with an audience. Presenting a photograph of the display, rather than their display itself, introduces a critical distance from objects and materials documented, frames the work as ‘art’, and provides a humorous take on the role of the artist in contemporary culture.

Group Search was made possible through the invaluable contributions of The Canada Council for the Arts, the BC Arts Council, the Spirit of BC Arts Fund, the Vancouver Foundation, Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and Generation Printing.

Related Links

Anthropometrics [Antonia Hirsch]
Call Numbers – The Library Recordings [Laiwan]
LAMP [Mark Soo]
Trappings [Marina Roy]
Fifty-two Weeks of Transactions at the Lending Library [Kathy Slade]

Vancouver Public Library

January — July 2007

Lamp, After UNDP Human Development Index, With Knot

In the West, light bulbs are iconic symbols of illumination. They also symbolize ideas, knowledge, enlightenment, modern progress, and the eureka! moment. They evoke our desire for innovative thought in constructively re-imagining contemporary life. Edison’s invention, may have different connotations in parts of the world that face minimal skills of reading and writing and lack of access to public systems of knowledge. The 2005 United Nations Development Programme Report on global literacy rates the nations of the world in a list of ‘most’ to ‘least’ literate. Using this list, Mark Soo began the development of his “Lamp” with the impracticable task of contacting the nations at the bottom, in an attempt to source, ship and display a light bulb originating there. Fashioned into a reading light, the process of its acquisition reflects the many complex political, economic and social forces played out over both local and global spheres. As the library user pulls up a chair to study within the circle of light, we are made aware of those that cannot, (or those who read by candlelight, lacking access to electricity) and ponder a global economy that can distribute a standard product around the world but fails to achieve similar access to written knowledge.

The Library’s commitment to free access to information and knowledge for all levels in the community is a testament to our society’s many freedoms and civil liberties, many of which we have come to accept as cornerstones of our social fabric. By inverting the logic of the ‘most-to-least’ index of the UNDP report, Soo’s work both honours the civic achievements of the library itself, and draws attention to the histories of colonization, empire and industry that have made these very achievements possible. Faced with the familiar, fragile light bulb, and an understanding of its origins, to sit within its glow is no longer a simple act, and its symbolic function becomes complicated by the contingent circumstances of its use around the world.

Group Search was made possible through the invaluable contributions of The Canada Council for the Arts, the BC Arts Council, the Spirit of BC Arts Fund, the Vancouver Foundation, Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and Generation Printing.

Related Links

Anthropometrics [Antonia Hirsch]
Call Numbers – The Library Recordings [Laiwan]
Twelve Subjects [Jillian Pritchard + Dan Starling]
Trappings [Marina Roy]
Fifty-two Weeks of Transactions at the Lending Library [Kathy Slade]

Vancouver Public Library

January 2007 – March 2008

Call Numbers: The Library RecordingsCall Numbers: The Library Recordings allowed viewers to turn their catalogue searches into musical compositions. Using the Vancouver Public Library’s on-line catalogue at www.vpl.ca, viewers performed an author or keyword search. Entering the call numbers according to the guidelines on the Call Numbers: The Library Recordings website translated the data into a musical composition and created an audio file. Pasting call numbers from the list into the Call Numbers: The Library Recordings music engine became compositional choices. Viewers could enjoy their search results musically, along with other users, as a downloadable file — a collection of musical works composed by library users.

Laiwan is interested in improvisation, translation, and the effects of technological culture. “Call Numbers: The Library Recordings” explores what the Library collection ‘sounds’ like, as it is translated from words to letters and numbers, to musical notes, tempo and style. Her project summons up the image of a fluid mass of data, routed and re-routed through a sequence of organizing systems – our languages, the physical books themselves, the catalogue index, the digits of the call numbers, music notation and sounds. Along the way, each system bears a set of meanings that we de-code and re-code to make new meanings in new forms.

The on-line catalogue is one of many ways we enter the space of the Library, and this portal to its collection reflects our changing concept of access to information in a technological society. As in her previous work, Laiwan suggests the curious contradictions of our embrace with the digital world. “Call Numbers: The Library Recordings” creates a space for collaborating with other users in building a collection of music, a forum for connection, improvisation and exchange. At the same time, it highlights the distance between the players: the shared aural space of a musical performance is delayed through time and space. As “Call Numbers: The Library Recordings” grows in unpredictable ways, this call and response between the artist and the audience echoes the seemingly endless volume of information and our drive to contain it.

Presented by:

Group Search was made possible through the invaluable contributions of The Canada Council for the Arts, the BC Arts Council, the Spirit of BC Arts Fund, the Vancouver Foundation, Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and Generation Printing.

Related Links

Anthropometrics [Antonia Hirsch]
Lamp, After UNDP Human Development Index, With Knot [Mark Soo]
Twelve Subjects [Jillian Pritchard + Dan Starling]
Trappings [Marina Roy]
Fifty-two Weeks of Transactions at the Lending Library [Kathy Slade]

Vancouver Public Library

November 2006 — February 2007

The visual economy of Vancouver streets includes both official and unofficial modes of public address. In transitional locations, such as hoardings that surround new construction or buildings slated for demotion, one often sees advertising posters. This ‘grey’ marketing practice occupies such contingent real estate on a temporary basis, using a strong visual impact and a sense of urgency to convey time sensitive content. Aside from their intended message, they remind us that the streets, the most public of spaces, are strongly contested sites in the negotiation of ownership, free speech and assembly. Cultural institutions such as the library share a similar interest in the principles of democracy and access to all forms of expression and information. A non-commercial space, it must assess the interests of a multitude of individuals and organizations when regulating its visual environment.

Into this arena, Antonia Hirsch has placed Anthropometrics, a series of six large format posters. Hundreds of copies are postered throughout the city, and twelve line the windows that lead to the main entrance of the library. They picture solitary figures posed in rather mysterious gestures. At first sight, they might easily be taken for some sort of clever (yet decidedly out of place) advertising campaign. Should a viewer investigate further, they will learn that Anthropometrics is an inventory of colloquial forms of measurement. These formulas are not scientific, yet have arisen through personal economic interactions such as the spontaneous commerce of street markets where an improvised index of the body’s geometry compensates for unfamiliar sizing or unlabelled goods. A scientific mode of notation –the inventory– has been applied to a system in which each body sets is own standard and is not accurate nor repeatable in the scientific sense. Neither purely commercial nor scientific, Anthropometrics make temporary claims on both the library and the street, reinforcing and contesting the democratic ideals associated with such public spaces.

Group Search was made possible through the invaluable contributions of The Canada Council for the Arts, the BC Arts Council, the Spirit of BC Arts Fund, the Vancouver Foundation, Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and Generation Printing.

Related Links

Call Numbers – The Library Recordings [Laiwan]
Fifty-two Weeks of Transactions at the Lending Library [Kathy Slade]
Lamp, After UNDP Human Development Index, With Knot [Mark Soo]
Trappings [Marina Roy]
Twelve Subjects [Jillian Pritchard + Dan Starling]