Fillip

A Spectrum of Difference / Randy Lee Cutler

The feminist label has often been the kiss of death for an artist, curator, or critic because of its implied resistance to easy commodification and essentialism. In this text, the author explores contemporary attitudes towards feminism through encounters with the Elizabeth A. Sackler Centre for Feminist Art, and the Vancouver Art Gallery’s presentation of WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution.

Water Versus Objects: Reproduction or Dissemination, or How Did Pop Music Become Ubiquitous? / Diedrich Diederichsen

It might also be possible to look at Paul Valéry’s essay, “La Conquête de l’ubiquité “ as a founding document for a specific theory of pop music in the same way that film, media, and other visual culture studies have claimed Walter Benjamin’s essay, “Art in the age of mechanical reproduction,” as fundamental to their discourses and fields. But Valéry, unlike Benjamin, was not very interested in a theory of reproduction or of the technology and the apparatus of media since, for him, the technical prerequisites were secondary to the magic of dissemination.

Lightly Illegal: A Letter from the Most Elegant Public Bathroom in Southeast Portland / Molly Dilworth

The following are thoughts written in response to the conversations the author had, both public and private, around Suddenly: Where We Live Now, a project by curator Stephanie Snyder and writer Matthew Stadler that exists as an exhibition, a series of texts, and a reader. In addition, the project included meals, screenings, readings, panels, and symposia organized by Snyder and Stadler, all inspired by the writings of German urban planner Thomas Sieverts. The exhibition opened at the Cooley Gallery at Reed College in September 2008, travelled to the Pomona College Museum of Art in January 2009, and will disperse and travel to locations around the world over the next several years.

If You Aren't Mad as Hell You Haven't Been Paying Attention / Lea Feinstein and Christian L. Frock

Vancouver from the Outside In: Part Two / Dan Graham and Cliff Lauson

The influence of 1960s and 1970s international conceptual art practices on the development of art in Vancouver is by now well understood. More contentious is the degree to which the relationship between the local and the international is brought to bear on interpretations of the work and how accurate a characterization the centre/periphery dyad was in the first place. Cliff Lauson spoke with Lawrence Weiner and Dan Graham, two American artists of the post-minimal generation who visited Canada repeatedly during this time, to discuss their personal experiences of Vancouver as well as the art and artists associated with the city. The following interview took place in New York on 25 February 2007. The first interview, with Lawrence Weiner, was published in Fillip 7.

Wait to Wait / Boris Groys and Andro Wekua

This conversation is an except from a longer interview between Andro Wekua and Boris Groys published in Wait to Wait, edited by Christoph Keller, forthcoming in April 2009 from Christoph Keller Editions and JRP/Ringier Kunstverlag, Zürich. Groys and Weckua compare and contrast the artworlds in the West and the Former East across their generation gap.

From Yosemite to the Group of Seven, with Some Flatness in Between / Maegan Hill-Carroll

Hill-Carol, an MFA candidate at UCLA, uses narrative to contemplate her landscape photography practice. She contemplates her relationship to the subject in relation to the male artists who conquered that terrain and her Canadian background.

Best Case Scenario / Steve Lambert

On 11 November 2008, a fourteen-page special edition of the New York Times mysteriously appeared on the streets of New York. Its headline, “Iraq War Ends,” introduced a collection of articles under the rubric of “All the News We Hope to Print,” an alteration of the paper of record’s actual motto, “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” Among the many organizers of the special edition spoof was Steve Lambert, who sat down with Fillip to discuss the project.

Althea Thauberger's Carrall Street / Joni Murphy

On the night of 30 September 2008, on Vancouver’s Downtown East Side, artist Althea Thauberger presented Carrall Street, a piece completely defined by light, for Artspeak gallery. According to press materials, the project consisted of a “site-specific performance” and a public forum. Thauberger did not merely present a performance—she also tapped into a rich mesh of metaphors, historical references, and current problems by illuminating this public space.

Screens of Film, Video, Memory, and Smoke / Ana Balona de Oliveira

Chantal Akerman’s current exhibition at the Camden Arts Centre, London, constitutes the artist’s first in a public gallery in the United Kingdom. The exhibition encompasses two video installations— Marcher à côté de ses lacets dans un frigidaire vide (2004), and Femmes d’Anvers en Novembre (2007)—together with one of the filmmaker’s first experimental films, Hotel Monterey (1972), shot in New York four years after her Brussels-inspired, first, short film Saute ma ville (1968).

Other Uses: Boolean Searches in the Martha Rosler Library / Shepherd Steiner

Consisting of over 7,700 books drawn from the personal collection of the artist, the Martha Rosler Library has been on an extended exhibition tour that began in New York in November 2005 and was variously installed and accessible for public use in Frankfurt, Antwerp, Berlin, Paris, and, most recently, Liverpool and Edinburgh.

This essay was originally delivered as a lecture at Site, Liverpool, and was supposed to focus on close reading, rather than interpret the library. This went against the founding precepts of the practice of close reading as the author had come to know it explicitly through use.