Tag: Julia Mensink

Misinformed Informants: Maybe It Was Nothing

We were both there. Don’t you remember when I sang to you? Did you forget? That wasn’t the best gift I ever gave you. I always cleaned the toilet. You always said you wanted to. 

We forget to remember and remember to forget, choosing exactly what it was about ___________________that was significant. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was The Most Important Thing. 

This project explores the divergent versions of a single memory made possible once our experiences have been shaped, mangled and filtered by the art of human habit. The subject I have asked to be part of this experiment in memory is also my former boyfriend of four years, who is now a close friend. Through our lectures you will understand one day in our lives. One day we shared a bicycle ride; we shared food and we talked. This was just one day. You might say it was a day like any other. Why should it be different? It becomes an oddity only under scrutiny.

On this day we both had our cameras. We took pictures of each other, one talking and the other watching the sky, one sighing, watching the other, who might have looked troubled/pleased, and through these photographs we have constructed each other’s narrative.

Canada

Julia Mensink is an emerging artist who lives in Toronto and works as a high school English and art teacher. Her artwork includes sculpture, collaborative performance, sound/musical installation and other mixed media works that explore memory and its muddy parts, loss, the archaeology of language, lies and the determination of truth. She is currently interested in the space we give ourselves – in all its forms – cosmogony, pecan pie, zines, synthesizers, typewriters, your garbage and ugly art.

ARTISTS
Guillaume Adjutor Provost
Corina Kennedy
Sophie Castonguay
Julia Mensink
Stacey Ho
Joshua Schwebel (cancelled)
Michelle Lacombe
Henry Adam Svec

Misinformed Informants: Preface to the Performance
By Lisa Visser

Fragments, fleeting words, fights. You’re not listening to me. 

Misinformed Informants invites emerging artists to answer to the idea of miscommunication, misunderstanding, misplaced lines of agreement. Responses range from antiquated expressions of communication to suggestions, covert signals, mis-remembrance and the unapologetically false. Diverse interpretation converges into an overhead problem of mistrust. In trusting the informant (who may be misinformed) misinformation is communicated as true information. Truth and reality negate the very premise of this performance event. I begin to doubt the truth I communicated. And yet: I would never lie to you. But: this is about lies.

This curatorial premise acknowledges the complicated boundaries of curator-performer-audience relationships and pushes past them. These tensions are apparent in the work of Misinformed Informants, and can be as subtle as a gesture, as apparent as a role-reversal, or as confrontational as a slap in the face.    

Julia Mensink’s maybe it was nothing brings a tension to the audience/performer role by inviting her ex-boyfriend to be a participant. Both Julia and her ex tell a lecture-style story, based on their own experiences of the same event. Through the development of the story, what becomes clear is the absence of synchronicity in memories, the highlighting of the fuzzy parts and the uncomfortable inclusion of audience members into a breakup. The audience can choose between listening to Julia or her-ex’s side of the story: a literal choosing of sides. How terrible to be brought in to this. I would like us not to fight.

Joshua Schwebel’s piece deliberately misses the mark, or so it was meant to. Relying on the accuracy of Canada Post, Joshua mis-addressed his application to the call for submissions. However, a glitch delivered the package to the correct address in a sensible amount of time.  In following Joshua’s instructions, I rejected the dossier. Joshua’s cheeky approach to the premise has yet to play itself out, but his deliberate determination to accepting and then rejecting causes me to question my role as curator. What have I done in creating these intentionally missed formations of informants?

In a similar farce, Henry Adam Svec plays with the role of the lecturer and delivers a performance rooted in fiction. Stompin’ Tom Connors never wrote “The Lost Stompin’ Tom Song.” Did he? Henry engages the audience in an experiment that questions and abuses the influence of authority and the audiences’ desire to be patient, active and honest listeners.

Sophie Castonguay toes the line between performer and director, creating a confusion that arises from the conditioned reverence of the audience for the performer and the space of performance art. You took the words right out of my mouth puts audience members under the direction of the performer. The audience wants to know what is happening. The performer is in control. Is this the performance? Sophie withholds the one thing the audience wants: clear communication about what will happen next. Going beyond the unexpected is also the under-expected, the under-performed and the under-communicated. 

Stacey Ho invites additional participants in her GROOP MEDITEHSHUNS, a three-part piece that draws attention to breathing, blinks and beats. Each performance will have the participants respond to one another’s bodies with a gesture, a sound, or a slap in the face. By drawing attention to the subtleties of the bodies’ motions, Stacey is over-communicating in a way that is delicate and absurd, respectful and brutal.  

The obsessive nature of this over-observant performance is present in Corina Kennedy’s cheer sir or madam, a durational performance in which letters are typed out on a typewriter, only to be immediately rendered unreadable. Letters of love, protest, and rejection are destroyed upon their completion. What remains are mounds of lonely letters of the alphabet, without a structure or form. Both antiquated forms of communication and obsession elevates these letters until they are objectified and displayed, nearly fetishized.  

Guillaume Adjutor Provost’s fetishization comes into play in a different form, a covert and suggestive gestural work. Guillaume claims a subjective reinterpretation of historical moments, changing meanings and communicating a new history. SLOW READERS, argument no.1 is based on a song meant to inspire spirituality. Through the performance, the song and it’s intent is broken down in subtle movements, hidden meanings and secrets only the performer knows. The secret is there.  But we stopped understanding each other long before that. 

The performances in Misinformed Informants break down communication – reducing it to an elemental approach. What results is a step-by-step guide on how to mis-communicate and a deliberate delivery of misinformation. Each artist claims a unique response, playing with issues of trust, structure, defined roles, tensions and obsessions. These are common-place issues. Every moment we are faced with the authority of being an informant and of being the informed. Sweet lies for protection, small in nature, keep us from personal disaster. The authority of the speaker is consistently abused in a way that is difficult to place and even more difficult to accuse.

Your word against mine. But I know you’re lying. I would never lie to you.

Special thanks to Clive Robertson for the hook-ups, Johanna Householder for the coffee and advice, and Shannon Cochrane for a being a model of enthusiasm, dedicated support, and superior decision-making skills, to which I aspire. Also thanks to Sarah E.K. Smith for listening to all my lies. Big thanks to Matthew Williamson and all the staff at XPACE for their help and support.

Exhibition: December 17–19 / 12:00pm–8:00pm Friday & 12:00pm–6:00pm Saturday