“Spaceless Place.” KAPSULA Magazine, Issue 2.1 (2017)
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This issue is produced in collaboration wtih LINDSAY LEBLANC · editorial KOHILA KURUNATHAN the South Asian Visual Arts Centre (SAVAC). ZACH PEARL · art direction MARINA FATHALLA Contributors were selected through an open SARA ENGLAND · comm. and outreach NADIA KURD call for submissions. The selection committee LUCAS CABRAL · marketing RAJEE PANA JEJI SHERGILL comprises: Nahed Mansour, Artistic Director, YOLI TERZIYSKA · development SANDY SAAD SAVAC; Lindsay LeBlanc, Editor, KAPSULA; Ricky Varghese, University of Toronto. In Consultation with: On the cover: CAOIMHE MORGAN-FEIR TAZEEN QAYUUM FRANCSICO-FERNANDO GRANADOS As part of the exhibition Info Bomb: The KATHERINE DENNIS Subcontinent Newsroom. Co-present- NICK WHITE ed by SAVAC and Art Metropole. At Art MATTHEW KYBA Metropole, Toronto, Canada. 2013 This document is an interactive PDF titles and headers are set in House Gothic created using Adobe InDesign CC Bold Number Four and Baskerville. Image 2017. Extra content, such as footnotes captions are set in Calisto MT. and image captions can be accessed using your mouse or touchscreen. Se- DISCLAIMER curity features and interactive graphics KAPSULA is published under the Creative in this document are compatible with KAPSULA acknowledges the views and Commons Canada BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. Adobe Acrobat 9.0 and later. For op- opinions expressed by our contributors Subscribers are legally and freely permitted timal functionality we recommend you are not necessarily those of the mast- to redistribute this document without penalty. download the latest version of Adobe head, and that all text, images and illus- However, subscribers may not attempt to edit Acrobat Reader. trations published herein are done so or sell access to its contents. For more infor- with the permission of their respective mation on what this entails and/or the various The KAPSULA logotype is set in House owners, or that to the best of the pub- types of Creative Commons licences,visit: Gothic Bold Number Four. Body copy lication’s knowledge reproduction rights for this issue is set in Cosmos. Article have been granted. KAPSULA is an imprint of: Are you involved in an arts or community-based organization and looking to complete a publishing project? Perhaps we can help. KAPSULA provides affordable rates for professional and collaborative 44 Hedges Boulevard editing, design and distribution services. Toronto, Ontario M9B 3C4 Leaky Archives Lead to Slippery Histories When presented with the opportunity to partner but probably a few different reasons too. From there with the South Asian Visual Arts Centre, known forward, I felt the weight of the task ahead: to facil- by their acronym SAVAC, on a special issue ded- itate this archaeological exercise, finding a way to icated to mining the organization’s archives, all support a group of five writers whose perspective of us at KAPSULA agreed that their mandate and fluency in the subject matter greatly exceed- and model of exhibition-making complemented ed my own. Fittingly, each of the contributors have our goals as a publication. We identified with the something to say about borders and the way they’re decision to operate in tandem, relying on sup- used in generating information about the space they port and collaborative work to fulfill our aims. We define. The in-between isn’t always shaped by over- identified with the desire to unpack the archive, laps—the comfortable simultaneity of two or more, sift through its dusty documents, and acknowl- an area cast in grey. Sometimes, the in-between is edge the role of historical testimony in shaping determined by its being unwanted, orphaned, with- an organization’s identity. Most importantly, we out. An editor with a disposition toward vague, snarky identified with the proposition that a place—its wordplay (the preferred tool for casting the world in qualities, its feeling, its participants—doesn’t al- grey), here I found myself without words. This issue ways own space, and equally, space doesn’t required something different of me and the maga- always generate meaning according to its bor- zine, where the discomfort of existing in-between ders. Around this time, the magazine was in the was not only acknowledged, but underscored for its process of making some big administrative de- revolutionary potential. The SAVAC archive offered a cisions, which would culminate in a publishing series of artworks, exhibitions, and writing that moti- model that focuses our practice exclusively on vated this discussion—some of the examples used in special projects with partner organizations. This the issue come up more than once, a reminder that issue marks our first collaboration under the new the archive itself is unfixed and multiplied by these model, and additionally to the shared priorities types of analyses. of SAVAC and KAPSULA, it has its significance as a landmark in the publication’s history. We know that the trouble with transnationalism arises in its initial assumption of identity: that the actors It wasn’t until reviewing the range of proposals (continents, countries, states, cities) who are impli- submitted to our call that I realized I’d been lost cated in this process of working-across were ever in the overlaps, the commonalities between our working in isolation. The crude act of breaking land two organizations, our shared commitment to apart during Partition of India (which informs and working on this project for many of the same, underlies several of the artworks and exhibitions discussed in the issue) revealed that while adding Thank you to Nahed Mansour and Ricky Varghese, who borders seems generative at first, the implemen- not only assisted in selecting our writers but provided tation of these borders simultaneously produces some key editorial feedback early in the process. Thank great chasms that threaten the safety of current you to the team at SAVAC, for initiating this meaningful transnational exchanges. This is to say, informa- collaboration, providing support throughout the various tion can be lost at the border—stepping outside phases of issue production, and for the work your orga- of one’s borders is stepping outside of the flesh, nization continues to do. And most of all, thank you to shedding one’s skin, a change in state. Geogra- Sandy Saad, Kohila Kurunathan, Rajee Paña Jeji Shergill, phies are felt, under foot and under skin. Histo- Marina Fathalla, and Nadia Kurd for their ongoing pa- ries are felt, in memory and in bones. If you’re tience, and for the many things I have learned from their not sure, read on, because these writers will contributions. convince you. For those of you who have been following SAVAC’s activity as an artist-run centre Lindsay LeBlanc and know its mandate intimately, it is my sincere hope that these papers reflect, at least in part, what the organization means to you. If you’re un- clear about the role and importance of SAVAC as an institution, if you’re not yet attuned to the community-driven and intellectually rigorous art practices it supports, or if you, like me, are com- ing to this publication with limited knowledge of the histories it speaks to, then the content to follow should be viewed an invaluable resource (for which I can take little credit). However, what’s written here is only a starting point to un- derstanding the slippery histories it represents. All are encouraged to continue down one of its many fluid paths. Sandy Saad In 1976 Artforum published a series of articles ipation, which was the impetus for the establishment of the by Brian O’Doherty entitled “Inside the White South Asian Visual Arts Collective in 1997. The group original- Cube,” now well-known by artists, art historians, ly came together to program the visual arts portion of Desh and critics. The essays outline O’Doherty’s ex- Pardesh, a Toronto-based multi-disciplinary arts festival and ploration of the modernist white cube gallery conference dedicated to providing a venue for underrepre- space and its effect on the art object and viewing sented and marginalized voices from the South Asian dias- subject. He describes the white cube as a space pora. Throughout its eleven year history Desh Pardesh would in which the outside world is omitted; windows evolve into an annual five day conference/festival made pos- are usually sealed off, walls are painted white, sible through a series of strategic partnerships with various and the ceiling becomes the source of light. organizations, drawing in over 5000 attendants from Canada, O’Doherty argues that space itself becomes the the U.S., the U.K. and India (Fernandez 2006). The South Asian prime focus of the gallery experience, and sug- Visual Arts Collective aimed to support South Asian artists by gests that the supposed objectivity of the white curating and exhibiting their work, providing mentorship, and cube, built to be a place free of context, is a po- facilitating professional development. Following the final year litical staging ground reflecting mechanisms of of Desh Pardesh in 2001, the collective would continue to inclusion and exclusion. He parallels the twenti- work in its own capacity. In 2008 the group became federally eth century modernist structure to that of a me- incorporated and changed its name to South Asian Visual dieval church, which refuses entry to the outside Arts Centre (SAVAC), reflecting its organizational purpose and world. O’Doherty critiques the institution by im- structure as an artist-run centre. Operating without an exhi- plying that participation within the authoritative bition space, SAVAC would work in a similar spirit to Desh realm of galleries and museums is reserved for a Pardesh and implement a collaborative model of institutional small selection of voices that have a sophisticat- partnerships to program various spaces and fulfill its mandate.