raillery at the CuMCuP 1
a few years ago, myself & a few no-account friends amassed a considerable amount of material that, as we discussed its existence, began to resolve itself into a rather excessive photography installation hinged around images of trains, tracks & the related iron that supports the railroad. what the hell do you do with such a large single document as this? the concept of "exhibit" would have been well-suited but the problems of "exhibit" weren't to be found in questions of mounting or other mundane considerations but in finding a place to do such a thing. among the places we considered & researched was the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. we studied the space (the appropriateness of its previous existence as a railway tunnel was too good!), which our installation could probably have been formatted to, but, more importantly, we studied the material the CMCP exhibited. it became clear over the course of just the few exhibitions that we saw (supplemented by our readings of all the propaganda material that we could get our hands on) that this was not going to be the place to approach about a contemporary Canadian photography project. the exhibition – for various reasons, if there is ever to be one – still has not taken place.
i mention all this not as a means of souring grapes but as context: an exhibition of train photography at the CMCP had been on my mind since fall'95. we have created & exhibited many other railroad-related photographic projects before & since & things happen when & where they do as appropriate: when & where this plan finally materializes, it will be as it should, as the others have been, ultimately to their benefit.
but imagine: this year, we hit the freights with just enough time to make it out to the Eye-Rhymes conference on visual poetry at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, go through the tedium of their 5 days of contemporary primitivism (gilded with the patina of technological "advancements" but really the same old letterpictures drawn with typewriters), continue on from there, training it around & back to Ottawa, exploring yards & lines & buildings & equipment & people, photographing as much as we could justify the expenditure of film on, picking up a newspaper after our return to find an ad headed "TRAIN. SPOTTING.". instantly galling, the cheap reference to a film that has no train references in it of any relevance: pop culture – itself an abuse of the credibility of its hapless consumers (&, in this case, i'd have to admit to a bias against the glorification of people incapable of achieving anything: dead people should just go lie down & living people surely have better things to do with their time than watch the surveillance monitors keeping tabs on them) – abused as a crass attention-getting device to lure in the short-attention-span crowd. do you really even want them cluttering the place up? well, OK, let's be generous & assume even an artsnob like me can have a redeeming feature or 2, or that Uncle Slug at least has the sense to spill his Labatts away from the offset Rockwell covering the crack in the wall caused by his last lurch headfirst into the frame that now contains the Rockwell replacing the proverb that was lacerated when his forehead pushed the glass right through the plaster. sure, let's get'em in here & give them the chance to examine some of the effects of culture firsthand.
but once you get them in the door, why go to such lengths to drive them out again?
[continue to part 2]
raillery at the CuMCuP 1
a few years ago, myself & a few no-account friends amassed a considerable amount of material that, as we discussed its existence, began to resolve itself into a rather excessive photography installation hinged around images of trains, tracks & the related iron that supports the railroad. what the hell do you do with such a large single document as this? the concept of "exhibit" would have been well-suited but the problems of "exhibit" weren't to be found in questions of mounting or other mundane considerations but in finding a place to do such a thing. among the places we considered & researched was the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. we studied the space (the appropriateness of its previous existence as a railway tunnel was too good!), which our installation could probably have been formatted to, but, more importantly, we studied the material the CMCP exhibited. it became clear over the course of just the few exhibitions that we saw (supplemented by our readings of all the propaganda material that we could get our hands on) that this was not going to be the place to approach about a contemporary Canadian photography project. the exhibition – for various reasons, if there is ever to be one – still has not taken place.
i mention all this not as a means of souring grapes but as context: an exhibition of train photography at the CMCP had been on my mind since fall'95. we have created & exhibited many other railroad-related photographic projects before & since & things happen when & where they do as appropriate: when & where this plan finally materializes, it will be as it should, as the others have been, ultimately to their benefit.
but imagine: this year, we hit the freights with just enough time to make it out to the Eye-Rhymes conference on visual poetry at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, go through the tedium of their 5 days of contemporary primitivism (gilded with the patina of technological "advancements" but really the same old letterpictures drawn with typewriters), continue on from there, training it around & back to Ottawa, exploring yards & lines & buildings & equipment & people, photographing as much as we could justify the expenditure of film on, picking up a newspaper after our return to find an ad headed "TRAIN. SPOTTING.". instantly galling, the cheap reference to a film that has no train references in it of any relevance: pop culture – itself an abuse of the credibility of its hapless consumers (&, in this case, i'd have to admit to a bias against the glorification of people incapable of achieving anything: dead people should just go lie down & living people surely have better things to do with their time than watch the surveillance monitors keeping tabs on them) – abused as a crass attention-getting device to lure in the short-attention-span crowd. do you really even want them cluttering the place up? well, OK, let's be generous & assume even an artsnob like me can have a redeeming feature or 2, or that Uncle Slug at least has the sense to spill his Labatts away from the offset Rockwell covering the crack in the wall caused by his last lurch headfirst into the frame that now contains the Rockwell replacing the proverb that was lacerated when his forehead pushed the glass right through the plaster. sure, let's get'em in here & give them the chance to examine some of the effects of culture firsthand.
but once you get them in the door, why go to such lengths to drive them out again?
[continue to part 2]