Ten Conversations on Public Art // Powered by PechaKucha

I will be giving a 5 minute talk as part of the upcoming Culture Days event called "Ten Conversations on Public Art // Powered by PechaKucha", organized by The City of Richmond Public Art Program. Apparently, this is indeed a PechaKucha sponsored event, a one-off, considering Richmond does not in fact have a PechaKucha chapter. So if you feel like making the treck to the Richmond Cultural Centre to listen to me (or the 9 other artists) speak, it would be great to see you!

Participating artists: Ruth Beer & Charlotte Wall // Javier Campos & Elspeth Pratt // Thomas Cannell // Chris Charlebois // Eric Fiss // Ross C. Kelly // Jeanette Lee // Rina Liddle // YarOn Stern // Norm Williams

Where: Richmond Cultural Centre
             180-7700 Minoru Gate
             Richmond, BC

When: Friday, September 28th, 2012, 7-9pm

To RSVP this event: click here

*bring cash for wine :)

Hammock Residency

I did a residency in the Hammock with Heidi Nagtegaal a couple of years ago. It was a fantastic experience because it gave me the space to workshop ideas without the stress of producing work for an exhibition. And the reason why I am bringing it up again is because I was recently interviewed, along with Heidi and two other residency-ees on CBC radio to explain why this residency in particular is so fab.

Here is the link to the interview. 

London [de]tour guide 2012

View London [de]Tour Guide 2012 in a larger map

So I've recently started working with a collaborative group on a project that brings me full circle on the social media olympic theme. You see, I started to learn everything I could about social media in order to get participants for my We Are Watching art project that was in tandem with the 2010 Olympics, here in Vancouver. At the same time a group of friends and colleagues had started a collaborative mapping project called [de]tour 2010 that served to propose an alternative points of interest map to the official, tightly governed and packaged view of Vancouver during the Olympics. It was simple, people were invited to add their own points of interest to a Google Map. People were also encouraged to have "mapping parties", of which I had an opportunity to participate. Now, here we are on the Open Ceremonies Day for the 2012 Olympics in London, and I have been asked to put my social media skills to use to help launch a new version of this project in the UK.

So, I am back to following Olympic hashtags and persuading people to participate...so if you would like to participate, here is how:

Our goal is to make these the most popular user-created maps on Google.

Click to our maps:

Enjoy our maps by following our links, the more you click, the higher our Google ranking will increase.

Add to our maps:

Add your favourite and topical point of interest to our map.

Link to our maps:

Send your friends to our maps by adding links to our map on your website or blog to help our Google rating and to increase our traffic.

Add our RSS feed to your reader: 

Any new additions will automatically sent to the RSS feed reader of your choice.

Rate our maps:

You can rate and comment on our maps by using this link:http://ow.ly/covzq

But, following Google’s Terms of Service (ToS), don’t click or link to the maps through any automated process (such as having a computer program click the links for you). Not only will Google detect these attempts and ignore them, Google may also block any site they consider to be in violation of their ToS.

Basically, share, share, share, so that our SEO goes through the roof and places us within the mainstream search results.

Follow this link to the website.

Find us on Facebook.

Follow us on Twitter.

Suspended Moment - a collaborative participatory work with Anna Ruth

Suspended Moment is a participatory drawing project and installation by Rina Liddle and Anna Ruth created specifically for the Quinary Art Projects pop up gallery. Rina and Anna have been working together since 2003, over a great distance. Anna’s arrival to Vancouver from Finland a month before the exhibition provided a great opportunity to work in close physical proximity. This site-specific work looks at notions of the in between by inviting viewers to trace the ferry route between Hornby and Denman Islands, two popular summer destinations for relaxation and rejuvenation. Viewers engage with BC Ferries GPS system and give visual meaning to an ephemeral moment. This process-driven project builds upon both Rina and Anna’s respective practices by creating a framework for human and technical interaction.

We Are Watching - Video Documentation

Liddle from Marianne Bos on Vimeo.

Just Another Artist Statement

DIY Lover (Portland)

The performance consists of a textual reading that directs the onstage construction of a lover. The text Liddle delivers is compiled from a number of different dating guides, self help websites, and how to manuals. Semczyszyn reactively builds the lover from objects solicited in advance from participants who were asked to donate something they considered gendered. DIY Lover (Portland) is a performative inquiry into the material configuration of contemporary dating advice.

Part of the project was concerned with exposing the absurdity of these texts and their essentializing of gender in laying out rules to get a partner. The interplay between the text and the construction highlights the focus on control and responsibility in the dating advice, and the implications for identity in acquiring and maintaining a relationship.

Liddle and Semczyszyn are Vancouver based artists who have both shown internationally. They have an ongoing collaborative relationship using art practices as a methodology for analysis and criticism of social structures.

DIY Lover --the Not Sent Letters Show

So, I didn't get into detail about the project in the last post on account I didn't want to spoil it. Some people think that you can experience the work in the same way by watching the video without having to be "there". Personally, I disagree because there is just something wonderful about how performance works on your body. And you have agency over where you look, the details you focus on and the moments you gloss over. In fact, Nola and I had a long conversation as to whether we were happy showing the performance in its entirety online. For now, we have decided that future DIY Lover performances will be discrete, stand alone pieces, so for now we will leave it. And YES, that is correct, DIY Lover will be reinvented in Portland on February 19th, for a special Valentines Day performance. Stay tuned!

Rina out.

DIY Lover --the latest collaborative project with the lovely Nola Semczyszyn

Part of Jeremy Todd's ongoing project called Not Sent Letters, DIY Lover, had its origins, for me, in a collection of personalized email letters I received over the last year from Christian Carter, an expert in finding the perfect man. He intended, and succeeded, I believe to pray upon my insecurities around being chronically single, by repeatedly making the situation unacceptable and wholly my fault. Here is a small taste:

Ok Rina,
    Do you have the love and the kind of
relationship you want in your life right now? As you know, the holidays are for spending 

time with family and those you love the most. How are you going to feel when you're there 
with your family and friends over the
holidays 
and everyone else has great partners and 
committed relationships or marriages? What about you? Why haven't things fallen into place for you?

This style of rhetoric goes on for about 500-750 words, with "OK Rina" thrown in at intervals. Receiving these emails for a period of about 6 months started to make me think that I should indeed shell out $100 bucks for the 4 set DVD. After all, $100 is not that much if he has already sorted out the mystery of relational happiness, and is going to give me the goods and I will find that man and be happy and desired forever!
Nola has a fascination with dating didactics. Her contribution to the text came in about 10 short bursts of practical, in the moment, what to do exactly to "get the girl/boy". An example is:

6. Never call the next day. You will appear to be desperate with nothing better to do. You want to project that you are "in
demand" and that you are busy, which will make you seem exciting, fun and mysterious. If you game a woman effectively
during your initial meeting with her, chances are you won't need to call her at all because she'll call you first. On that note, it
would be wise to always exchange numbers with a woman rather than only getting one from her. This is easily done by
handing her your cell phone and telling her to put her number in it, then once she's finished you simply call her immediately
so she has your number as well.

We have integrated both texts, and with all the mentions of "tools", "steps" and "skills", the construction metaphors became evident. I will say no more, but hope you can make it!

Rina signing out.



NOT SENT LETTERS
& GUESTS



@ dharmalab, Vancouver, 1814 Pandora (N. of Hastings, E. of Commercial @ Salsbury)

Friday Night, January 14, 2011, 8pm SHARP!


Please join us for an evening of interdisciplinary works by:

Anaka Schofield & Lori Weidenhammer
Katherine Somody
LeanneJ & My Name is Scot
Rina Liddle & Nola Semczyszn
Ron Stuber Colin McLaine
Soressa Gardner & Dennis E. Bolen
Jeremy Todd w/ Margot Leigh Butler, Natasha McHardy, Dinka Pignon, Yi Xin Tong, Dennis E. Bolen & Andrew Short
postlude music by CORNER & friends.

$5 suggested donation (toward production expenses)

Anaka Schofield & Lori Weidenhammer (two Vancouver-based interdisciplinary artists & friends) expand Schofield's dialogue w/ Helen Potrebenko's 1975 Vancouver novel Taxi! through an embodied exploration of transaction involving readers/listeners. Weidenhammer's Security Guard examines these encounters by providing "market research" on various sitters.

Katherine Somody (part artist, critic, skeptic & cautious romantic) screens the first in a series of self-portraits exploring relations between music & video, memory & storytelling, textual & somatic language - while trying (perhaps in vain) to disentangle the personal from the socially prescribed.

LeanneJ & My Name is Scot (two interdisciplinary artists engaging issues of class, identity & agency while living in Vancouver's DTES) screen Calculating 63: More than 15 years, over 63 lives, way too many excuses, endless questions, zero good reasons & only 1 perpetrator? Something in this equation doesn’t add up. This collaboration sifts through the statistics, looking for feeling & m Leaning behind the numbers and finding out that poverty, violence & exploitation can disappear just about anyone.

Rina Liddle & Nola Semczyszn (two interdisciplinary artists exploring art making as a methodology for analysis & criticism of social structures) present DIY Lover, a performative inquiry into the material configuration of dating guides.

Ron Stuber Colin McLaine (a drummer/percussionist & visual artist/composer) perform Shed, a work composed in a Strathcona shed for electric guitar and drums that might also involve the shedding of light, skin and inhibitions.

Soressa Gardner & Dennis E. Bolen(a singer/composer/performance artist & novelist/editor/teacher/journalist) combine prose, poetry and electronica within a new collaborative work @ Not Sent Letters & Guests.

NOT SENT LETTERS is an ongoing series of epistolary detours by Jeremy Todd (an entanglement w/ technologies of the self & the politics of meaning) involving online image/text posts, digital film shorts & multi-media performances. The dharmalab letters set will include live scores by ANDREW SHORT, image projection, & letters selected from the project blog (notsentletters.blogspot.com) & read by Margot Leigh Butler, Natasha McHardy, Dinka Pignon, Yi Xin Tong, Dennis E. Bolen

Explore previous Not Sent Letters & Guests events here: www.notsentlettersandguests.blogspot.com
Email Jeremy if you'd like to host or contribute to a future N. S. L. & G. event: jeremytodd [at] shaw [dot] ca

Hello, my name is Rina, and it is nice to meet you!

By now, you have seen me with my message on live stream CCTV. Will we date? 604 722 1264. More to come later.

Rina

So things have a way of working themselves out, n'est pas?

Giving up on the Libra Room happened a long time ago, it feels. And in hind sight, I am not all together disappointed for two very separate reasons. First: when I was introduced to a certain person, he immediately grab his chest, pushed whatever flesh he had in reference to my bust, which in all honesty is a bit on the ample size, and says to Davide "I love artists". Naturally, I ignored the lewd gesture and made my face of disapproval, accompanied by a very large eye ball rolling. And then we were back onto business. The second reason is purely practical. If the venue closes at 11, and daylight disappears around 10, then really, this project is not going to be as fab as it will if mounted in the fall or winter.

Project #2 is officially shelved and a new venue is in the works.

So how to write about a collaborative practice when there are no projects on the go you ask? Well, one of Davide's amazing qualities is that he is very social, and therefore, he has many friends and acquaintances, so many so that art opportunities just fly into his inbox, which simultaneously impresses and annoys me, specifically because neither does he have to try very hard to get great gigs, and nor does he bother with them in a timely fashion. And even after a proposal is 4 days late, or everyone else has confirmed a meeting schedule promptly, he still gets the gig. People generally wait, and for some reason, they are happy to do so. In this case, I make my I-can't-bloody-believe-this-guy-face, throw my arms in the air and tag along for the ride =)

Project #3 is also in the works, another collaboration as described by the forementioned dynamics, specifically my tagging along, that will be later revealed, as we are under a gag order, but it could be very exciting for many participatory artist in the Vancouver area...stay tuned!

And last but not least...

Project #1 a.k.a Working with What is Left

There has been so much going on that there has been a lack of time to sufficiently blog every workshop, but I will sit down and do that hopefully tonight for the simple reason that I do not know most of the people that I personally invited tonight, nor did I the other night, and the result is that the workshop was quite quiet, so I might have some time to write. Which brings me to the next important fact:

It is too much to have 2 workshops per week when you work than full-time. And what has suffered is my marketing efforts to get participants, no! say it isn't so, and whatever you do, don't tell my clients, although their marketing is going just fine ;-)

But in usual fashion, Heidi and I have come up with a brilliant plan that will help me continue my research on this project and get me out of Heidi's way so she can make room for Natalie Doonan and the collaborating team of Kristina Lee Podesva and Joni Low.

Here is The Plan......The Hammock goes offsite, as hammocks often do! We are both very excited to plan the first mobile residency. In July I will hold 3-4 more workshops with various groups, all unconfirmed, and in August, the build and public installation will take place -more on that later- and the open house / celebration, will be in early September, most likely the weekend after Labour Day. Heidi has also assigned a volunteer assistant, Lauren, who has just joined the Hammock, to help me carry out my plans. Yay Lauren!

Now off I go to see what's transpiring in the Tin Can!

What Was Once the Libra Room is Now ?

Boys, boys, boys . Now I am not going to say that my boy was completely at fault, but I am not witness to the fact that he was not. Anyhow, long story short, we will not be showing at the Libra Room. And my advice to artists, make sure you don't piss the one in charge off, no matter who started it. At least it wasn't me this time. My mother always warned me not to get involved with Italians, although she was swept away with the kindness of this one just last night at my Dad's birthday party...but that's another story. Anyway, there will be lots of this from both sides I expect on account that we are both firey Italians.

Am I disappointed? You bet. Am I expecting that another venue will be found? Indeed I am. Will it be I who finds a venue and coordinates with the bar owner? Not a chance in hell.

So here we are at our first block in the collaborative process, and because I would still like to get laid tonight, I am forced to reconcile my own annoyance and pick the most tender words for a person who has had a difficult time lately. But I am not fixing it. And I wonder what he will think of this post.

Call For Researchers, a.k.a, Join Me in the Hammock

Working with What is Left speaks to the detritus of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, both figuratively and literally. Figuratively, the promised addition of social housing and arts programming, two of the benefits pitched by the City of Vancouver prior to the referendum, that were considered left wing, were reneged while the developers were bailed out of their financial losses. And literally, the detritus, the blue visa sponsorship posters that were distributed and displayed in many downtown retail and restaurant windows. These plastic laminated, stiff cardboard posters are a perfect building material, and will be fashioned into individual, portable housing structures / pods that will simultaneously solve the problem created by the lack of funding for artist projects and low-income housing.

Researchers are asked to participate in one or many of the workshops outlined below. Find a category that appeals to you, and please join us in the Hammock between 6pm - 10pm on the following nights.

Researchers are asked to participate in one or many of the workshops outlined below. Find a category that appeals to you, and please join us in the Hammock between 6pm - 10pm on the following nights.

June 1st: Artist's Friends and Balcone Reading Group - Making It Critical

June 10th: Art Students - Making It Exciting

June 15th: Suburban Ladies Over 60 - Making It Palatable

June 17th: Geographers and Urban Planners - Making It Functional

June 22nd: Landscape Architects - Making It Pretty

June 24th: No Fixed Address, Alternative Spaces + Off-the-Grid - Making It Practical

June 27th: Open House, 4pm to 8pm

Find the Hammock at: 1923 Graveley Street.

Enquiries can be made by contacting the artist at: liddlethought at gmail dot com.

Kind Regards,

Heidi and Rina


View Larger Map

Basic Logistics

So now I have two projects on the go, and Blogspot is not really great for threading through multiple projects in a linear fashion, nor in clusters, as I am able to see. Any organizational tips would be greatly appreciated.

Here is the info:

Project I -- Title: Working with What is Left

Place: Hammock Residency

Synopsis: Taking the remnants of the Olympics and using them as both the subject matter and the material stuff with which the project will be built. The "remnants" include the condition of life in Vancouver as a direct effect brought about through hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Details: In case you have, for whatever reason, not been following my seriously entertaining Blog posts, I will fill you in, as this is a project that follows out of a particular trajectory of work that looks at the way we look, including: surveillance, sousveillance and other controls of public space.
See: We Are Watching

Project II -- Title: Untitled Collaboration
with Davide Pan

Place: The Libra Room

Synopsis: Working with the frustrating City of Vancouver by-laws that serve to regulate the many small neighbourhood music venues, such as the Libra Room, Davide and I will play with what we can and cannot do, poke a little fun and have a little party. The Libra Room will be magically transformed in ways formerly unimagined by the proprietors of the art-hanging cafes, bars and restaurants. Issues of private and public are visited from the proprietor's perspective. What are the rules that serve to govern behaviour? What are the consequences for such transgressions?

Details: Davide and I are new lovers. And this tenuous relationship makes this project the perfect first try at de-sanitizing the participatory and collaborative practice, which, as mentioned in my last post, lives on as an after fact, by photography or other means of documentations, with all the messy bits edited out. There you have it, I said it publicly, and yes, it could go either way, and you get to decide what "it" is (and yes, I have asked his permission to blog about our process).

Incremental Time and my practice

Process-based art-making is traditionally disseminated through displaying the remnants, detritus, tracings, photographs and other forms of documentation. But if the process is the emphasis, or the point of art-making, then doesn't it stand to reason that the process should be made explicit in the moment? Of course, writing is a reflective practice, and therefore cannot be considered within the parameters of what constitutes real time. As a way of undoing the tidy package of documentational exhibition that often, through circumnavigating a particular aspect or editing out the things that don't make sense, I am less interested in providing a nice sum-up, like I thought I started documenting this is public art. Now that I look back, the Alternative Methodologies class I was taking at the time, had already seeped into my psyche, and in the ever important re-read, I see already my interest in blogging in the moment, not editing out the difficulties in case they should make me look bad.

Instead, this blog, at this point is defined by me as a space for communal reflection on the process as it happens, not in real-time, but in incremental time. It is my hypothesis that if the process is the focus because its parameters ultimately determine how the work manifests (its material form), then the incremental time needs to be in the forefront, not just assumed within the methods; the messy bits, the moments when decisions are made in response to those messy bits, are integral to the process because they are ways reacting to the life of the work.

Revamping and Moving On...

We Are Watching came to an end in Vancouver with the closing of the Paralympic games. All in all, I was pleased with my work and the audience response. Enough said about that. At this very moment, Danna, Kristina and I are creating the content for the second half of the book. I will keep you updated on its progress, specifically, when you can expect your copy, if you have already bought the first one.

If you are still interested in buying the catalogue/archive, there are still a few copies left, and I would be happy to mail you your very own for the small cost of $20. Please email me your request at weRwatching2010 [at] gmail.com. And yes, I am still accepting video submissions at the same address.



Since the last time I have posted, We Are Watching has gone to and left Finland as part of an exhibit curated by Anna Ruth. Originally from Vancouver, Anna has been living in Europe for the last fifteen years curating and art-making. She also showed work during the Olympics. To read about her mapping/drawing project, called Sensory Maps, click here. Anna also runs the gallery project called Äkkigalleria, that usurps spaces not in use and turns them into a temporary gallery. And this is where We Are Watching ended up along with my other project...

Working with What is Left is a participatory sculpture project that provides some musings through the detritus of the Olympic Games. The following letter of instructions/explanation was provided with a desk for the viewer to work at while they added and responded to the research. In an attempt to draw on "Finnish" design expertise, the viewer becomes the researcher/designer of homeless shelters made of the Olympic Visa sponsorship posters that were on display in many of the retail businesses during the games.



Dear Researcher:

The grumbling of the city started as soon as the Vancouver Olympic Committee first assembled for the intention of proposing to host the 2010 Winter Olympics. At first glance the proposal was rosy, with extra money to be spent funding a large number of arts programming in addition to the current civic and provincial funded art programs. There was also a promise that the Olympic Village, an area slotted for development (a.k.a. Concord Pacific style condo development) situated along the south shore of False Creek and which for the most part has served as Vancouver’s industrial district, would include mixed-market residencies after the Olympics were done. Specifically, there were to be a substantial number of units set aside for low-income housing. On this platform, the city passed a referendum by 51% in favour of hosting the events.

Of course (in my opinion), the extremely conservative provincial government under the head of Gordon Campbell and the vast number of profiting developing corporations sighed a breath of relief at the economic downturn as it provided the perfect excuse to back out of the social commitments made, and in fact, the City of Vancouver passed legislation allowing it to borrow more than it is usually allowed (and increase property taxes to cover the added expenses) to “bail out” the developers and consequently the developers and City reneged on the housing and cut the Arts funding by 92%.

This project speaks to the detritus of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, namely the worsened social conditions to be faced by Vancouverites and British Columbians and the physical waste, in particular the Royal Bank Visa sponsorship posters. The plasticized corrugated posters are perfect building and art material. Therefore, Working with What is Left will work with these conditions and detritus to provide an Olympic critique by fashioning the posters into life-sized homeless shelters, thereby solving the problems created by a lack of funding for artist materials and low income housing.

The research you see before you has been started by the artist. Please add notes directly on the pages, comments, highlight what you perceive as important, comment on the comments, add pages, make drawings, and literally contribute Finnish design solutions for these problems in Vancouver.

The notes will be synthesized into one design solution, and units will be built and put out in the streets of Vancouver this summer and documented for gallery presentation later this year.

Thank you in advance for your contribution!

Kind regards,


Rina Liddle

The Paralympics are coming, get your cameras ready!

Well, the Paralympic Games are almost here, and I am looking forward to the added video footage! Also, if you missed my "Change in Plan" section above, The project will NOT be up until tomorrow. So sorry if you came by this week. Apparently, I was not in the loop regarding scheduling. I have had a few perplexed callers, and one insisting that our invitation card "implied that it would be running" which I tend to agree with. Apologies all around! Please let me know if you were one of the unfortunate people who made a special trip to the DTES.

I did not receive any footage of the Paralympic Torch Relay yet, if you are in possession of some clips, please send them my way.

We still have a few books left, if you are interested in reading about the project through the ideas of Danna Vadja and Kristina Podesva, please come by the gallery.

And for my good news!

We Are Watching will be travelling to Finland for exhibition, yay!

Tonight's the night

Tonight is the last evening that I will be keeping gallery hours between 6-10pm, so if you are interested in seeing my project while I am around, drop by and I will make tea. Otherwise, the project is still viewable from public space, and alternatively, I will make myself available by appointment only. Of course, the gallery is open regular hours during the day, if you are interested in purchasing the book, but the projections start at dusk. To make an appointment, please email your request to weRwatching2010 [at] gmail.com.

...and in the Georgia Straight

read it here

Juho Jäppinen, book designer & photographer

For about 2 weeks prior to the show, I completely ignored my dear and lovely friend Anna in favour of her husband, Juho (a very Finnish name pronounced "youhoe"). "Hello, is Juho there"? "Can I please talk to Juho"? "I have a few changes for Juho" had replaced my usual girly and arty banter with Anna. I almost felt like I was having an affair, not because I was spending time with my friend's husband, rather, because my usual time and energy allotted for art-speak and collaboration with Anna, was now being spent talking art-speak and collaborating with Juho. I felt a bit dirty. However, the book part of the We Are Watching project is now available (and well received, thank goodness!). There are limited numbers, so please come by the Jeffrey Boone Gallery and take a look. The video contributors for the first half of the project are listed. All the others will be credited in the second book (which incidentally, is covered in the cost of the first book, $20). We will arrange pick-up or drop-off for the second part when you come into the gallery.

Three days in a row without a technical glitch, whew!

So, friend, collaborator, friend's husband, curator, and as previously mentioned, book designer and photographer is hereby credited with the following photographs taken at the opening.

Smooth sailing and enjoying the ride :-)

It seems that Nathan has worked around the bugs on the player version we are working with. Even though I know first-hand, and have heard from others that technology is just plain finicky and can act up at any moment, I am going to say that all is well. The project is loading as it should and there haven't been any crashes as of late. On the down side, we have had to give up on the sound component. If I had this to do all over, I would have updated the OSX right from the get go, alas, hindsight...

It pleases me to spend time in the gallery during the evenings when people are Bright-lighting their evening away. I am an unexpected gallery component, but really, I have met the most interesting people, and it is really worthwhile for me to see how the audience interaction works. One observation that I find predominates, yet is not surprising, is the fact that almost all the walking traffic approaches from the west and impacts on the viewers' experience by making them work harder to tie the installation together. With the Vancouver Sun in hand, they know that there is a projection in the courtyard, but unfamiliar with the area, it takes a search to find, followed by a doubling back to the gallery to put it all together. I am intrigued by this doubling back aspect, although I am not sure why quite yet...

As I mentioned in the previous post, submissions were slower than I expected, yet there will be about 20 new clips added today. Come by to see the new footage, it is not like the rest ;-)