Art within the Arctic Circle (1969, 2009)

I’m working on a new-ish project re: the ‘happenings’ performed by Lawrence Weiner, Harry Savage and Iain and Elaine/Ingrid Baxter (N.E. Thing Company) in the Arctic Circle. (I blogged about their 1969 expedition to the Canadian Arctic here and here and here – a few months ago — since it served as material for my own performances in the Swedish Arctic in February 2009). I’ll be using this blog to post about the project over the next few months — and maybe longer? Images of my Arctic performances can be found on my website. Here’s some formal writing on it:

In February 2009, I traveled to the Arctic Circle in Sweden where I carried out feminist re-interpretations of ‘happenings’ by Lawrence Weiner, Harry Savage and Iain and Ingrid Baxter of N.E. Thing Company. This group of four conceptual artists organized an expedition to Inuvik, NT in 1969 to make work for an Edmonton Art Gallery show organized by Bill Kirby, a Canadian curator. They were accompanied by Kirby, Virgil Hammock and Lucy Lippard. Lippard recorded the details of the expedition and published the document under the title “Art Within the Arctic Circle” in The Hudson Review (Vol. 22, No. 4) Winter 1969-1970. I came across Lippard’s article before I arrived in Sweden. While I considered carrying out adaptations of the 1969 ‘happenings’ at some point, an opportunity presented itself during my trip to Jokkmokk, Jukkasjärvi and Årrenjarka. In the course of these performances, I wanted to use the 1969 work as a template or radiant lens to consider the significance of the artwork and the gendered body of the artist-performer in the radical north.

Next, I plan to develop a mixed media installation that places the 1969 performances alongside my 2009 performances in the context of questions about contemporary art produced in the polar north (Canada and Sweden), exploration to the space/place of the Arctic, its fraught history and environment. Art Within the Arctic Circle (the project’s title) builds on recent work I’ve undertaken into the value of process over the finished art work. Another recent project, Death Valley (2009), for example, examined romantic notions of nature, American westward expansion, and scientific progress in the visual & literary arts. Its centerpiece was a love affair that ends during a road trip through the California desert. By inserting the itinerary of Leo Aury and his anonymous companion into a body of appropriated text from mid-century travel guides, cowboy westerns and historical accounts, Death Valley attempted to document the indeterminate violence of love, knowledge and language in the context of the American twenty-first century. It also set out to problematize the uneven transmutation of relationship and sign in contrast with the ostensible timelessness of the desert – which was the setting of the series. The project began as a blog but was developed into a series of large-scale drawings (using photographs by Ansel Adams as well as personal photos) at the Banff Centre for the Arts (Thematic Residency 07: The Wanderer). My realist drawings sought to create a collage of Adam’s and my photos of Death Valley producing a ‘magical realism’ effect – complimenting the style of the blog story described above. On an esoteric level, Death Valley is part of a series of investigations into the confluence of language, image, drawing and code, and our interdependence on technologies to make as well as to receive visual art forms. When conceived in this way, Death Valley is a boundless visual exercise as well as a finite ‘product’. Art Within the Arctic Circle continues to this process-oriented approach to art-making.