2010 Graduation Catalogue

Art Now How / Francisco-Fernando Granados

Recently, I was asked to participate in a panel discussion at 221A Artist Run Centre, which now houses the Helen Pitt Gallery. We discussed the Dinner Here project, a collaboration between Emily Carr alumni Jenipher Hur and Kyle Duske. In this project, Duske hosted a dinner for Hur, who walked all the way from Port Moody to the artist run centre. As part of the negotiation between the artists, it was decided that the sign announcing the show would be both in English as well as in Chinese. These formal choices point towards an attention to site specificity and demographics in work being produced in Vancouver, revealing the political dimensions embedded in the spaces that frame artistic practices.

The complex and often obscured relationship between art and politics has also been made visible to those of us practicing as artists in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland in the last couple of years. The Winter Olympic Games and their surrounding enterprises have profoundly changed the cultural, political and economic landscape of the city. This new landscape is the legacy we, the graduating students from Emily Carr University, inherit as the context for our practice as we begin our professional lives.

Artist-run centres have many struggles ahead of them in trying to develop new models of exhibition and community engagement. Emerging artists need support to develop their work in professional and public contexts. We have seen many artists and activists deploying a range of creative expressions to voice resistance to the Games, while many others have enthusiastically supported them. One could argue that there was a vibrant presence of the arts and culture during the Olympics, whether individual artists supported, opposed or had mixed feelings about the Games themselves. In these times, it becomes important, if not imperative, to reflect on the ways in which the work of artists relates to the larger social environment that frames it. This discussion needs to happen not only inside the arts community, but also as part of all the other social spheres in which art and artists exist.

Projects that appeal to the interests of the private funding sector may achieve greater exposure, while artists engaged in ephemeral, experimental, critical, communal and other kinds of non-commercial practices may find their opportunities to create and distribute their work greatly diminished. Overall, the multiplicity of artistic practices we experience, both as makers and as audience, may be significantly reduced.

This is our challenge. A challenge articulated by Governor General Michaelle Jean at a dialogue session that took place during her visit to VIVO Media Arts Centre in the Fall of 2009. Jean, who knows of the intricate dealings between representation and power, issued a call: keep making art relevant. If our position is indeed a privilege, then what are the responsibilities that come with it?

The very survival of art as a public arena for expression and dialogue is at stake. The argument that art can only exist as separate from the realities of everyday life has been put forward by certain schools of thought inside art discourse itself1, yet this position does not account for the multitude of reasons why an individual may choose art as a disciplinary path. For some of us, it is impossible to separate a passion for aesthetics from the curiosity to understand the things we see. For some of us, it is “the keenness of insight”2 derived from everyday realities, which drives us to articulate our voice as images, objects or experiences.

Art functions both inside and outside itself. In addition to its aesthetic lineage, the work of the artist can be located in one or more social, political and economic trajectories. We can never be fully in control of the ways in which the interpretation of our work is influenced by its context. Some of us are unapologetic, some of us are unaware, and some of us are uneasy about the ways in which we figure into this larger framework.

If art is reduced to a “niche”3 unto itself, the image presented is that of artists as a homogenous group of privileged individuals whose work is bound to be irrelevant to anybody outside the art world. This assumption fails to acknowledge existing differences among artists in terms of gender, race, age, class, culture, sexual orientation and ability, as well as migratory or First Nations status. To think of the artist as always already unaware, disconnected and privileged also denies the existence of the gender-outlaw artist, the racialized artist, the working-class artist, the queer artist, the disabled artist, the refugee artist, and artists whose subjectivities we are not yet able to read. It is true that many of us feel uncomfortable framing our work exclusively through rigid identity categorizations. It is also important to recognize that these identifications often function as strategies, many times of survival, and that the artist, like anyone else, simultaneously embodies a multitude of positions.

Attempting to navigate the current moment ethically, one might ask the following questions: Who can be considered an artist? Which people are given the opportunity to make themselves artists? If the diversity we see on the streets is not being fully represented inside art institutions, what are the reasons for this discrepancy? What are the gaps between sanctioned records and community storytellers? What other communities are being affected alongside artists?

Art has the potential to investigate, respect, and transform the creative depths in each of us and the many communities that gave rise to us. As such, it can be charged and vital, materializing as both the necessary and the unpredictable. I understand Governor General Jean’s call as an appeal for kinds of culture-making that are specific to time, place and situation: art that engages with the visual in ways that are connected and make connections. This engagement is enacted as artists, audience and citizens. In the face of this new landscape, the challenge is to maintain a diversity of practices that not only analyze, question and account for our circumstances, but that are able to imagine the possibilities of a future that is not yet here.

How would you like to respond?

Designing the Future / Dana Ramler

Design reflects development: constantly growing, changing and evolving. As such, the crusade continues to name, categorize and develop nomenclature for this creative process. And, as the concept of design gains popularity and acceptance, an exponential number of new voices becomes a part of that development. From where I stand, this seems rather chaotic—except for one small sliver of clarity: something exciting is happening.

Today, the world sees new ways to design, with new technologies and new ideas. We develop new ways to appreciate objects, conceive of them and interact with them—all very exciting, yet at the same time incredibly uncomfortable. As students for the past few years learning about what design is and was, we now struggle with how to fit our ideas into the discourse of what design could be. Many of us have felt pangs of anxiety, confusion, bliss and excitement in the past four years, precipitated, I believe, by the world I see—the world I stand on the brink of.

Full of extremely complicated challenges, this world causes us, as designers, to examine where our skills might apply. Over the years we have explored the topic of sustainability, not only in terms of the environment but also in terms of human interrelationships. We have also learned to design with competing complexities in mind: from aesthetics, production and materials to ethics, sustainability and communication. Increasingly complex societal and environmental issues compel us to explore cultural, ecological, economic and technical questions so we can tackle some of the mammoth design challenges of today’s world.

Though these challenges appear daunting, we can draw strength from Paul Hawken’s observations. He states, “When asked at colleges if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: if you look at the science that describes what is happening on the earth today and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t have the correct data. If you meet the people in this unnamed [environmental] movement and aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a heart. What I see are ordinary and some not-so-ordinary individuals willing to confront despair, power and incalculable odds in an attempt to restore some semblance of grace, justice and beauty to this world.” (Paul Hawken in his Blessed Unrest, Toronto: Viking, 2007)

Big problems call for a diversity of approaches. What we term “design” comprises many disciplines, movements and theories. As I enter the professional design world, I am unsure where my work will fit into that larger conversation. But lately I have shifted my way of thinking about this: I think less about finding a place to fit and more about making a space for myself. The anxiety ebbs; a surge of confidence follows; and I realize I can help create those disciplines. I can play a role in developing those design movements and theories.

Design embodies communication and problem solving and is also often thought of in terms of improvement, purpose and function. I sense many of us in the design program feel restricted by these accepted notions and general ways of thinking about design. What if we stopped thinking about function and purpose in such a literal, tangible way? What if we decided design should make us consider something differently? What if design’s purpose is to make us pause and scratch our heads for a moment while we contemplate our actions?

Design students from Emily Carr University ask these types of questions and embrace them. We can suspend preconceptions and design within that glorious, open-minded realm known to us as blue-sky thinking—where anything is possible. After four years of practise, we have become adept in this creative endeavour.

But we must contend with the stubborn, stifled reality of the real world. Sometimes we get the sense that our blue-sky ideas may not fit into that reality. These ideas may not be practical, feasible or materialize because the contexts needed for their development and acceptance may not yet exist.

Blue-sky design may not appear to serve an obvious purpose—at first. But it can get people thinking differently by opening their minds. It can act as a catalyst for change. With the complex, seemingly overwhelming challenges facing us in today’s world, we will need to generate big ideas to solve the big problems. We students who are becoming professional designers must not lose sight of the power of unbridled creativity. By continuing to design without limitations, our ideas will play an important role in effecting the reality of not only today but also tomorrow.

Film and Art / KARLO MELGAREJO

In 2009 the Toronto International Film Festival Student Showcase featured 13 works represented by 11 different colleges and universities across Canada. The jury, comprising industry professionals, elected three entries from Emily Carr University. In contrast none of the other institutes were chosen to submit multiple entries.

Within a school named after British Columbia’s most celebrated expressionist painter, the media department at Emily Carr may appear to be an anomaly in an environment renowned for its fine arts and design programs. Though film and media studies may not be the most widely recognized discipline, the department has consistently produced a unique catalogue of student work that defies and challenges the status quo. Although many film institutions provide programs that focus on perfunctory skill sets, Emily Carr’s commitment to the value of conceptual work has earned it a reputation for moulding artful filmmakers with the ability to deliver provocative work where critical thinking plays a vital role.

Over the course of my studies in film, I’ve had the opportunity to expand my skills and push my work conceptually in various areas such as editing, sound design and scriptwriting. I’ve also accumulated a portfolio that includes experimental art films, music videos and documentaries as well as traditional and non-traditional forms of narrative. One of the challenges that comes with producing films within the fine arts context is the need to fulfill discursive engagement with the text while respecting the rituals of the medium and the act of film viewing. It is a delicate balance of negotiation between two diametrically opposed forces: film as a tool for critical assessment versus the traditional film as a form of entertainment. Cinema should maintain a level of inquiry while preserving a grounded foundation in its tradition of storytelling. In this sense students at Emily Carr must adopt the roles of both filmmaker and artist to participate in discourse beyond the medium and into the realm of the socio-political forum.

I’ve had the benefit to create in an environment that nurtures the advancement of my artistic growth as a filmmaker without the hindrance to conform to standardized industry formulas. Much of the success of Emily Carr students can be attributed to the autonomy from industry-centric agendas that stifle the creative and critical process. Instead, students are encouraged to combine the theoretical knowledge with practical film skills into their own personal work while maintaining a critical stance of the world. It can be said that the Media department is an extension of Emily Carr’s art umbrella on par with the artistic expression attributed to fine arts.

Emily Carr University offers a unique perspective for students to foster critical thought and evolve beyond its institutional counterparts. One only has to attend screenings that showcase current students’ work or browse through the collection of undergraduate films produced since the department’s inception to appreciate the artistic diversity the school offers. Filmmaking has only been acknowledged as a legitimate form of art over the past 50 years, from its early beginnings as novelty and spectacle to its current status as an art discipline. It only makes sense that Emily Carr University would produce critically minded enablers as recognized by the professional film industry.