About The Critique
Links in blue will open the glossary, in a new window.
General
The virtual critique in CrossTalk is one half of experiencing the exhibition.
You're invited and encouraged to participate by leaving comments, criticisms and questions about the artwork and related issues on the message board in the righthand frame of this website.
The critique is open to all from:
February 1st at 12:00 AM EST until February 3rd at 11:59 PM EST
Registration is free.
Guest Critics
An accomplished group of six international critics from various art and art theory backgrounds have been invited to both start and then stimulate the critique over the three day period. In addition to direct commentary on the net artworks, the guest critics have been encouraged to post external links and other media that they see as relevant.
Candidacy for critics was based on pre-existing experience making, curating or writing about new media art, and a familiarity with conventions of an art critique.
Those critics are:
Doug Jarvis [ + ]
Doug Jarvis is an artist and curator living in Victoria, BC. He is a
founding member of the avatar performance art group Second Front
(www.secondfront.org) and the Noxious Sector Art Collective
(www.noxioussector.net). He recently co-directed the Digital Art Weeks
2011, OFF LABEL Festival in Victoria, BC, and was the 2010-11
Artist-in-residence Fellow at the Centre for Studies in Religion and
Society, University of Victoria.
Doug has presented projects and exhibitions recently at; TRUCK, Calgary, AB; DAWX10, Xi'an Academy of
Fine Art, Xi'an, China; Harbourfront Gallery, Toronto, ON; Richmond
Art Gallery, Richmond, BC; Latitude 53, Edmonton, AB; Subtle
Technologies, Toronto, ON; PAVED Arts, Saskatoon, SK; Open Space,
Victoria, BC.
Doug holds an MFA in studio art from the University of
Guelph, ON. In 2010-11 he was Program Coordinator at Open Space,
Victoria, BC and is now a sessional instructor in the Faculty of Fine
Arts at the University of Victoria, BC.
Frenchy Lunning [ + ]
Frenchy is a Professor of Liberal Arts at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, there she has focused on design, popular culture and cultural theory throughout her work. She has written magazine, journal articles, and book chapters and is currently working on two books, one on fetish and fashion, and the other on cosplay for Berg Publishers in Britain. She is also working on a book she began on a Fulbright to Japan in 2008 on the shôjo as a global character.
Frenchy is also director of SGMS: Schoolgirls and Mobilesuits: Culture and Creation in Manga and Anime, an annual workshop at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and the annual Mechademia Conference, the only academic conference currently in the US focusing on Asian popular culture—schoolgirlsandmobilesuits.com She is the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Mechademia, a book series published by the University of Minnesota dedicated to Asian popular culture, but primarily on manga and anime. Mechademia 7: Lines of Sight, will appear in fall of 2012, Mechademia 6: User Enhanced is available at mechademia.org.
Frenchy's latest endeavour is a film production business with some colleagues called Moving Walkway Productions, which although now works primarily on music videos, has a script for an adult animation feature which they hope to eventually produce.
Helena Reckitt [ + ]
Helena is the current Critic In-Residence for the Clark Collection at the University of Victoria in Wellington, New Zealand. Before her residency, Helena worked as Senior Curator of Programs at the Power Plant in Toronto, as Senior Director of Exhibitions and Education at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, as Head of Talks at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, and Associate Commissioning Editor at Routledge publishers. She has taught courses on contemporary art history at Emory University, York University and at the Atlanta College of Art. Helena has also written for a variety of publications, and is the esteemed co-editor of the comprehensive Art and Feminism by Phaidon Books.
Leigh-Ann Pahapill [ + ]
Leigh-Ann Pahapill (BFA York University, MFA University of Chicago) is a sculpture and installation artist based in Toronto. Her works look at how language and thought influence our experiences of objects and space. Exploring these affect-rich and highly metaphorical mediations, Leigh-Ann creates interventions, recordings, assemblies, and disassemblies that are simultaneously alienating and seductive.
Leigh-Ann has won several awards for her work including a 2010 Claire Rosen and Samuel Edes Award for emerging artists, the 2007 Graduate Teaching Award from the University of Chicago, and numerous undergraduate awards from York University including the Convocation Award for Academic Distinction. The Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts have also generously supported Leigh-Ann's work. Recent and upcoming exhibitions include The Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Florida (2012), and Galerie Catherine Bastide, Brussels (2011). Recent group exhibitions include Labyrint 09 - Writing and Observations, Botkyrka Konsthall, Sweden (2010), and Titles V, Art Metropole, Toronto (2009).
Michelle Jacques [ + ]
Michelle is Assistant Curator, Contemporary Art and Acting Curator, Canadian Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, where recent projects include exhibitions of the work of Brian Jungen, Shary Boyle and Luis Jacob. She is a member of the board and editorial committee of FUSE, a Toronto-based magazine that explores politically-engaged art practices and issues, and she is also a board member at Mercer Union, A Centre for Contemporary Art.
During a recent sabbatical from the AGO, Jacques resided in Halifax, where she held the position of director of programming at the Centre for Art Tapes (CFAT). She has an extensive history working with artist-run centres in Toronto, and has collaborated with Gallery TPW, V tape and Interaccess Electronic Media Arts Centre.
Michelle holds a B.A. in Art History and Psychology from Queen�s University, Kingston, Ontario, and an M.A. in Art History from York University, Toronto.
Ted Hiebert [ + ]
Ted is a Canadian visual artist and theorist. His artworks have been exhibited widely in Canada and abroad, in public galleries and artist-run centers.
Recent exhibition venues include the Kirkland Arts Center (Kirkland, WA), Shift Collaborative Studio (Seattle, WA) and the Xi'an Academy of Art (Xi'an, China) as well as collaborative projects with Noxious Sector Arts Collective at Paved Arts (Saskatoon, SK), Latitutude 53 (Edmonton, AB) and Truck (Calgary, AB).
Ted's theoretical writings have appeared in, among others, CTHEORY, Performance Research, Technoetic Arts and The Psychoanalytic Review. He is the author of In Praise of Nonsense: Aesthetics, Uncertainty and Postmodern Identity, forthcoming (Spring 2012) from McGill-Queen's University Press. He is a member of the editorial board of the journal CTHEORY and an Assistant Professor in the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences Program at the University of Washington Bothell.www.tedhiebert.net
Permissions
Each registered member gains equal access to features and functions of the message board system.
These include:
Ԧ View forum statistics
Ԧ View the memberlist and groups
Ԧ View online status of other members
Ԧ Search posts and topics
Ԧ View others' profiles
Ԧ Read and send personal messages to other members
Ԧ Choose a custom title
Ԧ Upload your own avatar
Ԧ Start new topics
Ԧ Announce new topics to the board
Ԧ Add voting polls to topics
Ԧ Split topics into separate conversations
Ԧ Merge similar topics
Ԧ Edit your own posts
Ԧ Remove your own posts
Ԧ Edit the posts of others
Ԧ Delete the posts of others
The lack of hierarchy created by giving this much control to each user is intended to foster a critical and social engagement. When every member has the same amount of power, arguments and expressions must be judged by the merit of their resonance with the online community of the critique. A level playing field is set for a truly democratic dialogue to occur.
After The Critque
Following the conclusion of the virtual critique on February 4th, the curator will make a gesture of software philosophy, and figuratively hand over the keys to the message board for anyone to take up. The login information for the administrator account will be publicly posted, allowing anyone to change and reshape the entire purpose and appearance of the message board, should they so choose.
Background Information
Critique in art is a particular kind of discourse. Certinaly, it has similarities to other acts of speech. However, unlike a political or historical debate that has a linear argument, critiquing art evolves organically. Some structure and strategy are involved, but ultimately it is resolutely irresolvable. Because experiences of art are subjective, there are no verifiable answers; no inherent rights and wrongs. Therefore, the act of critique suggests that its participants should abandon the logic of winning or losing—a logic of positivism or absolutism— in favour of the proliferation of ideas, obstacles and propositions. This willingness to examine alternatives and explore the critical differences between perspectives and experiences of art is crucial to the concept of critique. In this way, it creates an agonistic speaking environment, where conflict is seen as a positive and productive force.
The virtual critique in CrossTalk adds to this agonistic train of thought in the way that every registered member has the same amount of access to the message board's features. This is an intentional gesture by the curator to get rid of conventional hierarchies in large critiques, like moderators and expert panelists. It is also a gesture to give more control to the viewer, the figure of whom is regularly involved in exhibitions of contemporary art, but whose presence and voice are sometimes reduced to fodder for fullfilling an institution's philanthropic or pedagogic mandate. In CrossTalk, at least half of what's on display (literally the lefthand frame of the website) is public real estate. Control over that frame's content and ultimate message or meaning is handed over to be developed at the user's discretion.