April 24, 2023 • 46 mins
If you're a Brock student, employee, or even visitor, chances are you have tried to navigate Mackenzie Chown Complex at some point and possibly even gotten lost. But have you ever wondered why it is built the way it is, or wondered about the art work inside it? Today's guest, Lesley Bell, has, and she's done the research to find the answers.
To mark the 50th anniversary of Canadian artist Michael Snow's 1972-1973 art installation in Mackenzie Chown (then called the Academic Staging Building), we talk with Lesley about the artist's work and his collaboration with the building's architect Raymond Moriyama. Lesley also shares some of her experiences as an art student at Brock in the 1980s, her decision to become an art librarian, and the changes she's experienced during her long career with Brock's Department of Visual Arts and the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts (MIWSFPA).
Stay tuned for an upcoming bonus episode when Lesley takes us on an audio walking tour of Mackenzie Chown Comlex and Michael Snow's art.
LinksTimed Images: Michael Snow, 1972. Documentary by Lesley Bell and Tracey Van Oosten, 2021.
A flock of geese fly again at Toronto's Eaton Centre (CBC Here and Now, 8 March 2023)
Acclaimed artist Michael Snow remembered with campus art (Brock News, 13 Jan. 2023)
Celebrated Canadian artist Michael Snow's contribution to Brock revisited in new documentary (Brock News, 18 Aug. 2021)
Michael Snow's work featured at MIWSFPA (Brock News, 27 Sept. 2018)
Beloved Visual Arts staffer inspires Art History award (Brock News, 31 Aug. 2018)
MIWSFPA calls for donations to revive zine culture on campus (Brock News, 27 July 2018)
Teutloff loved art — and how it looked on Brock’s campus (Brock News, 25 Aug. 2017)
Brock University Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts
Brock University Department of Visual Arts
Brock University MIWSFPA Learning Commons
Related Episodes
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Foreword is hosted and produced by Alison Innes for the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.
Series four sound editing is by Serena Atallah. Theme music is by
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
Have you ever been lost inBrock's Mackenzie Chown Complex?
Perhaps you were looking for aseminar room or an office, or
perhaps an entire department.
I think you could argue that youhaven't truly visited Brock until
you've had that experience at leastonce, and some of us are still having
that experience a decade later.
Well, today's episode of Foreword, weare going to be speaking with somebody
(00:26):
who knows a lot about MackenzieChow Complex and some of the amazing
art that has been in that facility.
Welcome to Foreword.
I am your host, Alison Innes, asusual, and this episode I'm bringing
you a conversation with a recentlyretired Brock employee who will be very
familiar to some of our VISA graduates.
Lesley Bell started herBrock journey back in 1983.
(00:51):
She graduated with an honors BA in VisualArts and then continued her studies
to earn a master's of library sciencedegree from Western University in 1993.
Over time, her job at Brock wouldevolve to include oversight of the
Brock University Art Collectionand the former Sean O'Sullivan
Art Gallery on the main campus.
(01:12):
And then when the visual arts departmentwas moved down to the Marilyn I.
Walker campus Lesley Bell wentwith it and she was involved
in conceiving and designing thelearning commons in that new space.
And her duties expanded to includemanaging the equipment kiosk and
supervising student monitors.
She constantly worked to developopportunities for the space to further
(01:35):
benefit students and the community, andnever stopped striving to make it a more
inclusive place to study and congregate.
And while Lesley was doing all this, shewas also doing her own research into the
now late Canadian artist Michael Snow,who was involved in some art installations
around Brock's Mackenzie Chown.
So I am super excited to bring Lesley toour listeners today as our featured guest.
(02:00):
Welcome.
Hi.
Thank you, Alison.
Well, you know, um, the journey withthe art collection began for me,
as you said, it was became, uh, anadditional responsibility to me in
around year 2000, maybe 1999, 2000.
And that actually on that very day thatI sort of went down to the other end of
the school, one of my first duties I wastold was something was happening down at
(02:23):
the, um, mezzanine level of the pond inletand big renovations were underway there.
I knew the space very well from beinga student, but I hadn't been to that
end of the school in a bit, so thereI was with my camera and there was
a big renovation being done of thewall, like the mirror wall being taken
down and that, that's when I realizedthat there was a work on that wall.
(02:48):
It was part of that mirror wall.
It was like an exposed darkframe, rectangular frame.
It exposed the brick wall beneathwith a mirror all around the
outside and a mirror in the middle.
So we had this black frame,but the wall was disappearing.
I was there because there were a numberof artworks that had been displayed there,
and they were taking display cases away.
(03:08):
The, the cases were being ripped upand I was busy bundling up these little
artworks, but I looked up anyway withmy camera and snapped a picture of that
wall before it was, um, taken down,and that ends up being probably the,
one of the only recordings of frameone, and it was called Frame One of
the Installation by Michael Snow thathad been part of the building when
(03:32):
it was first made or built in 1972.
And so it has a really, that was justvery superficial knowledge I had of it
because even as a visual arts studenthere and Michael Snow, the artist
had come and given an artist talk.
I knew him as a visual artist.
I knew he was a filmmaker and we'dseen a few of his films, but I,
I really had no knowledge of thissculpture within the, within the,
(03:56):
the building within Brock building.
And so taking over the art collection,it became my job at that point to figure
out what was the art in this collection.
And a survey had been done earlier about1987 with rudimentary information and
a picture of each work that would'vebeen part of the art collection,
(04:16):
but no backstory to any of them.
And who knew where all those pieceswere at this point, 11 years later.
So I, I had to start locating everything.
And yes, there was a picture of one ofthese bits and pieces from an installation
that was labeled as Michael Snow.
And so I thought, yeah, that had somethingto do with that mirror, that mirror wall.
(04:38):
And so I began with curiosity justtry and find out more about this work.
And it occurred to me that eachone of these artworks have their
own story, and each one of them isembedded in the history of Brock too.
So that's what I felt like as Istarted to gather information about the
artworks and about the Snow installationthat I was looking back in time.
(04:59):
Mm-hmm.
So the building that we now knowas Mackenzie Chown Complex, was
originally called an academicbuilding, something like that.
It was built in 1972.
And Michael Snow's originalart, multi-piece art
installation was 1972 1973.
So this is actually the 50thanniversary, um, which is one of the
(05:22):
reasons I'm really excited to haveyou, um, talking about Snow's art.
And we also lost the artist, um, himself.
He, he, he passed away in January.
So for people who maybe aren't familiarwith Michael Snow , or the name, or
some of the pieces, um, could youtell us a little bit about who he was?
Oh, you know, um, Uh, film studiespeople are, are very well versed
(05:45):
in what Michael Snow can do.
He's known as a, as a filmmakermore than anything, I believe,
but he was a, what's he called?
A polymath.
You would call that person a polymath.
I think he's primarily, and this is justbased on my own opinion now, a musician.
Mm-hmm.
He's a musician and, and when hedescribes a lot of his art, art
statements that I've read, they, thereare a lot of illusions to musical terms.
(06:09):
He talks about something, evenin this installation, having
a fugue element to it.
In other words, repeating, uh,patterns over, you know, repeating
and repeating or nested patterns,which are musical patterns.
And he calls this a composition likea, a, like a multipart composition and,
talks about taking a reading of thecomposition as if it's like a piece of
(06:29):
music that you're going to enter into.
Snow was at that point in 1970 to72, he was representing Canada in the
Venice Biennale um, the first soloartist to do so, he had a solo exhibit
of his work at the National Gallery.
Um, but even Canadians mostlyknew him from way back.
(06:51):
And I did when, when we went to Expo67, when I was a teenager and there
were Snow's sculptures of a walkingwoman, there was like a cutout
figure of a walking woman and she waseverywhere, all over the expo site.
She was on the, the Montreal Metros.
Um, and so people were, Kind ofgot, got familiar with the idea
of Snow as a sculptor really.
(07:11):
But then he left and went to New YorkCity for about 10 years then and, didn't
come back till just prior to the makingof this work they did, did here at Brock.
And my generation might be morefamiliar with Snow because of the
work that hangs in the Eaton Center.
Um, and I'll put a linkin the show notes.
There was a, a lovely interview onCBC radio recently that they have
(07:31):
restored that and they're in theprocess of Rehanging, uh, flight
Stop, which is 60 Canada geese.
So if you have been in the TorontoEaton Center and you have looked
up and seen those, those geese.
You have seen a Michael Snowwork, and I understand he also did
some work on the exterior of theskydome with the, with the fans.
So there's a couple of, of, um, recentpieces that people might have seen and
(07:54):
not realized what they were looking at.
So he is really a prolific artistdoing photography and film and
sculpture, so, How does he getconnected to Brock and why Brock?
Um, I'm, see here's anothertheory I might have, just an idea.
He was, he was engaged by thearchitect, uh, Raymond Moriyama,
(08:16):
both of them at the same age.
Um, both of them sort of at apoint in their career that it
was beginning to launch for them.
They had a good steady, uh, mid, maybeyou call her their mid-career, uh,
Raymond Moriyama had just completed acouple of years from when he was invited
to do the work for Brock, he justcompleted the Ontario Science Center,
which was a really radical building.
They wanted a science museum, not a circusas it was called when it first opened.
(08:39):
But of course, the public loved it.
And he really understood how abuilding could work for its purpose
and how space could be used.
And of course, we mustn't forget,he was a chancellor of Brock
for a number of years here too.
After that, um, And, and Iheard him speak here once and
he talked about the integrationof exterior and interior space.
(09:00):
He had a real Japanese aesthetic in his,um, work, and you see it here at Brock.
So I have this idea that his office was onCumberland Avenue in Toronto, and Michael
Snow was represented by Isaac's Gallery,just around the corner on Young Street.
And I had the opportunity to talk toone of the architects from Moriyama's
office saying, how did they get together?
(09:21):
And he said, well, on Friday afternoonswe used to have these charettes in the
office where we'd invite people fromdifferent walks of life to come and talk.
And I'm just thinking maybe,maybe they met that corner.
Maybe he'd heard of Michael Snowor the artist, you know, this
artist gallery around the corner.
And they must have clicked very well.
Um, I have a letter.
Just a brief letter from the Moriyamaoffice where he said Michael Snow
(09:44):
was a very creative man, and thatfrom the beginning this was an art
and architecture, um, collaboration.
And so what, what Raymond Moriyamadid, cuz he was hired to design
a building and Snow would've hadto, as a public art artist have to
observe the new parameters if they'regoing to collaborate for this space.
(10:05):
And it was an academicbuilding, purely academic.
So ranging from the A block to the, Idon't know how many blocks it goes, D
block, I guess on the 300 level you'vegot, actually it was all for students.
You had a cafeteria on one endin the A block, there was another
cafeteria on the other end in D Block.
And so that, uh, that cafeteria on a blockend would now be the current is currently
(10:30):
the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities.
And um, I believe there's some, uh,co-op and co-op careers and experiential
education offices in that hallway as well.
So that was all.
Cafeteria.
Oh, yes.
And on the other end, it was alsocafeteria that was in operation
when I was a student here too.
And then,
and that was Pond Inlet,
that's a pond inlet.
And then of course, the loungeabove it kind of hovers like a,
(10:52):
we call it a mezzanine level.
Um, but the cafeteria was down below withthis beautiful full wall, uh, window wall.
Mm-hmm.
You know, you could lookout on the, on the pond.
Um, designed to be a beautifulspace right from the beginning.
Um, so Snow who'd as a, as a publicartist, would've been working with these
parameters that knowing that he's gota building, he's got a corridor with
(11:16):
that meandering, uh, aspect to it thatwe talked about earlier, that Alison
mentioned that Zigzag, and I think he,he, he thought of the experience of
walking that hallway, the people, thestudents, the population, the faculty
that would be using those hallways andwalking those hallways on a daily basis.
For him, it was, he was sort ofworking with, um, with a new idea.
(11:38):
So one of the urban legends, um, and I'mkind of excited to, uh, To, um, break the
myth, I guess, around this, um, becauseit's certainly something I heard when
I came to Brock is that Mackenzie Chowhad been designed to prevent students
from congregating, but that's not atall what the architect was going for.
And once I learned what thearchitect was going for, the
(11:58):
space made a lot more sense to me.
So what were they trying to achieve inthis zigzaggy slightly confusing building.
Well, you know what, but this is notmy own idea, but it's when, uh, Dr.
Scott Henderson was here at theuniversity he and I did a Snow walk
walking through what was, what was, andhe brought in some theories of space.
He talked about he felt thatMoriyama was, designing hallways
(12:22):
where people would meet and be lostmaybe bit, just bit disoriented.
Because you're zigzagging along,you're not aware that you're,
you're constantly turning corners.
And he felt that people would haveto stop and say, uh, can you help me?
I'm lost.
In other words, you'd haveconversations, you know,
Well, he certainly achieved that.
But you do notice thatthere are maps on the walls?
(12:43):
Yes, there are.
There are.
And they were all part of the earlyinstallation too, because another
architect in the firm was hired todesign what were called wayfinding maps.
So you have the maps at the corners forthe C block and D block and, and then all
those chevron stripes too, which identifywhether it's a geology or geography.
And you know, if you look,they're, they're on the outside
(13:03):
of the building too, those mm-hmm.
Navy blue and lime green stripes.
Mm-hmm.
So we are actually going to recorda bonus episode of you and I, uh,
walking through Mackenzie Chown,looking at what remains of snow's art.
Um, so I'm just gonna plug thatright now for our listeners.
If you're trying to visualize, um,What we're talking about, you'll
(13:24):
actually be able to do a walkthrough.
And I just had the, um, the experiencejust a week or two ago where I, I do
not venture into some of those, someof those science blocks very often.
And I was with somebody elseand I had no idea where I was.
And then suddenly, I'm like,oh, I know exactly where I am.
And I had one of those moments andI thought of, of the architect and
(13:47):
the artist working together to createthat experience, which can be a
little frustrating if you're latefor class, but on an experience level
is a really neat experience to have.
So some of those spaces nowhave been changed a little bit.
There's spaces that have been closedin that were maybe left open, but
Snow's art was made to go in and workwith the architecture in the building.
(14:09):
So I wondered if you could tell ussome of how this multi, multi-piece
installation worked, right?
Because he, he, the word he uses is hewanted it embedded in the architecture.
He had many ideas before hefinally settled on this one.
Um, I'm wanna talk a bitabout research actually.
(14:30):
Yes, definitely.
Um, because this was the only experience,the probably the more, most full
experience of, of research I've everhad in my life and probably ever will.
And it became almost, uh, hang on.
Not an obsession, but if you, ifyou study something hard enough, it
sort of really starts to take over.
And even in the past twoweeks, contemplating what
I'd be talking about today.
(14:51):
I realize I'm just like, I'm over full.
I'm over full again.
I can talk too much.
Um, and I'm making notes againon things that I hadn't noticed
before and it's just too much.
So, um,
So what was it like researching?
Where, where did you have to turn to?
What kinds of sources did youhave to, to look at how much
of the art was still around?
(15:13):
Um, well, well, of course I was goingto be researching the, the collection
as a whole, and so I knew that our ownarchives here could offer some help also,
this is an institution where everythingand the Snow stuff still lives, so,
even in 2000, there were still peoplearound from 30 years ago who had some
memories of it, and I had to, I foundsome and I found, I found one admin
(15:38):
assistant who remembers being a studenthere and engaging with this installation.
Wonderful.
And I mean, I haven't just told youhow it really works yet, but this
was the exciting part of the snowinstallation I gather for students.
And he, this is the participatorypart or the experiential part that he
really, it was kind of interesting you,you walked in front of a video camera
(16:01):
and using a close circuit technologythat image of you walking me in front
of the camera showed up around oneof those zigzag corners, about a
30 feet down the hall on a monitor.
So, And it was live.
It was a live stream,I guess you would say.
Although Snow had wanted adelay, it couldn't be done.
So it was a live stream.
So your friends are watchingthere on the monitor, watching
(16:23):
you walk along the hallway.
They know you're coming, you know,and so there was this sort of play of,
you know, people sort of performingfor the camera and their friends.
And so there was that playaspect and, um, for him,
and he incorporated mirrors intohis work as well, so that you are,
you are being reflected back and
Oh, I know.
(16:43):
Um, um, but I, but I asked thatarchitect about mirrors when I had
the chance to talk to him abouthow they might have got together.
And that architect said, well, mirrorsare just an architectural material, he
said, and I thought, oh, so there wasnothing, um, I think, I think Moriyama,
it was part of his strategy to bringthe inside and the outside, kind of
(17:03):
bring them together um, having this hugemirror wall reflect the beautiful pond
you could actually sit back in that.
I remember being a student sittingback in that lounge and looking up at
the slanted kind of mirrors above you,and you could see the, the waterfall
almost falling over your head.
Reflected.
Wonderful.
I'm gonna try that now.
And so, it was an architecturalmaterial mirror is, but I think
(17:26):
Snow looked at it as a, what he,he gave it, he called it flux.
It's, it, it's flux.
It's, it's fleeting.
Mm-hmm.
Whereas he's also got two other,he's got two other, what we
call image capture devices.
He had a still camera a photographiccamera doing something and he
had a video camera capturing too.
(17:46):
And then you have a mirror which justreflects, but doesn't record in any way.
So he is playing with timein a way there too, right?
Well, the whole, the wholeinstallation is called Timed Images.
And, and over the years I've, I'vebeen trying to think about why
that title, because the titlessprung up out of his notes.
(18:07):
Mm-hmm.
Just timed images.
And I actually wrote once,like, where did this come from?
Because I couldn't find a, but he, he,he sort of found a, That name came to
him and it, and it, it does describe it.
Although at the time I thoughtit might just be one of another
joke of his, and I'm not sure.
Do these images have atime limit sort of thing?
Are they timed?
You know, um, so I, so I'm not sure.
(18:28):
He is a very playful architect, asyou said, or not architect or artist.
As you said, he worked witharchitecture outside the dome.
You know, with that, that sculpture,
I guess it's a Rogers Center.
I think I, I think Isaid Sky Dome, didn't I?
Showing my age.
It's a dome in mine.
Yeah.
Or, or even in the Eaton Center too.
I mean, there's some, the factthat you've got a flock of geese
flying through the Eaton Centeris kind of ironic in a way too.
(18:50):
Mm-hmm.
So I was thinking after you, you andI spoke a few about this a few weeks
ago, and I was thinking afterwardshow we take it for granted today
we have so many recording devices.
Video photography were, we're constantlyimmersed in that kind of atmosphere.
But I was thinking back to 1972, whenhe's putting together this installation,
(19:13):
he's dealing with more limited technology,but he's also, the users are not like
seeing yourself on a screen is notnormal, is not a usual thing in 1970s.
Well, you know, he was using it wasthen an emerging technology video.
Don't think of it now, but it was, andI had the opportunity to work with it
(19:35):
a bit in the early seventies as well.
And it was, it was called portable, butit was hardly that it took two people,
but at least one to carry the batterypack and one to carry the camera.
Um, and so you always worked withthis person in tandem with you, but
it, it was totally freeing becauseit wasn't in a broadcast studio.
It wasn't these big honking camerasyou see, you know, that would've
(19:57):
been coming from CBC or, youknow, a very big broadcast studio.
Um, these were very portableand they allowed people to see
themselves in a very informal way.
And when Michael Snow wasteaching at NASCAD, um, now NASCAD
University, that's in Halifax
that's the Nova Scotia's
college of Art Design.
(20:17):
College of art and Design.
Yep.
He was teaching there in 1970 andcorresponding with Moriyama because the
two of them were already engaged in thisproject and he was thinking and sending
the ideas back and forth all that summer.
But in the fall he was teachingat, at Nascad and he wrote back and
said, Students here are using thisvideo projection technology here.
And he said, kind of interesting,I'd like to try it myself at Brock.
(20:40):
And so he was that kind of a mind, hewas that kind of, um, an artist and
that kind of a creative and curiousmind that he seized on something
new and began to think, what, whatcould he do with it, you know?
Um, and so he broughtthat idea back with him.
Uh, yeah, he was just, uh, he seemed tome to be, and I have the opportunity,
(21:00):
I think for those two years in,involved in this project and all the
papers and documents I assembled.
I feel like I was on his, almost in hismind for a couple of years because I,
through the research, through startinghere at Brock and finding basic notes
on, on what was here at Brock, andthen I, I knew that he'd left personal
(21:21):
papers at the Art Gallery of Ontarioin the library and archives there, and
so I ventured there and was rewardedwith really fat file folders of stuff.
The man did not throw anythingaway, and it was wonderful.
It was like, just like a treasury troveof all the things to do with the making
(21:41):
of timed images and the attendant piece,which we'll talk about too, when we do our
walkabout, I just call it the photo essay.
It really never had a name.
That's the one, well, it nowhangs in the stairway in a block.
Mm-hmm.
And yes, we will talk more aboutit, but it's also very cinematic.
Um, oh yes, indeed.
As it's still, still images, but stillplaying with, with, with the idea of film.
(22:02):
And so I had the, you know, I sortof felt that he had, uh, he was one
of these quick minded people thatjust like to try something new.
Um, although he never usedvideo again in any of his work.
Oh, that's very interesting.
Yeah.
Is the only time he did it.
I had the opportunityto meet Michael Snow.
First of all, I had the nerve to,you know, to write him out of the
blue, um, and say, I wanna make alittle video on your artwork here.
(22:24):
Perfect.
I was just gonna ask you about your video.
And nobody had really,because the artwork had.
Uh, been removed over time.
Uh, this is an institution and thereare changes and things happen and I,
I can probably trace the demise ofthis artwork, you know, over time.
But he, he was quite a aware of it.
I think everybody was afraid ofmeeting up with him in case he
(22:47):
sued them, ruining his artwork.
But in truth, he was, when I wroteto him, he was really excited to hear
that the work still had resonance hereamong, uh, people at the university.
And, um, yeah, he gave me permission touse anything that I found in the archives,
you know, and I said, I'd keep in touch.
And then I thought, well, I, because ScottHenderson had been making me think more
(23:11):
of Moriyama and this collaboration, I alsogot permission from from Moriyama, just
to let him know what I'm doing, what I'mdoing, and, and I thought more about them.
I, I began to think more what Icould find in Moriyama's behalf.
So his works or his papers were at the,uh, province of Ontario archives, which
are at York University, and I lookedthem up and saw that at the very end of
(23:35):
everything listed there, all this stuffto do with Brock, the very end Snow.
Just said one file folder.
And I thought, Hmm, it's worth a trip.
And it really was
wonderful
because this was all the handwrittenand typewritten correspondence between
Snow and Moriyama's office, all theidea building and the tossing back
and forth of things that he might do.
(23:55):
And, uh, and also the, um, thetossing back and forth of what
budget he could carve out.
Because what Mariama Off wasoffering was that we'll find
money within the build here.
To, to create a piece of public art.
And so that's what this was going to be.
And I even found a letter, um, and Idon't know where, but I know it was
(24:16):
from the archive upstairs to JamesGibson, who was the president at the
time from one of his colleagues, Ibelieve in Concordia, talking about
the a percentage for public art policythat Concordia was putting in place.
Hmm.
And he was, he was reporting back to JamesGibson talking about, yeah, we do it here.
You might do it.
And I'm thinking that's why theadministration at Brock was so.
(24:41):
Sure, let's go for it.
Let's have, you know, carve out somemoney and let's have a piece of art
that comes along with the building.
Mm-hmm.
So it, it, it seemed like avery forward thinking, kind of
administration at that time.
Um, maybe they felt that, you know,and James Gibson, I know he always
was extremely supportive of artwork.
He was the first president, hewas very supportive of artwork,
(25:03):
and we've got some lovely pieces aroundcampus outdoor sculptures, um, as well and
I'll put some links to some informationabout those, um, that have been gifted to
the university over the, over the years.
They're, um, and I'm blanking outon the titles cause I don't have my
notes in front of me, but there's theone with the, with, uh, the lambs.
I think lambs or lions.
(25:24):
Path of possibility.
Yeah.
Yes.
Path of possibility.
And then there was the, sheWolf, I think the She wolf.
They're by the same artist, actually.
They're a German artist.
So yeah, we had, yeah, we donatedsome that, that large collection too.
And just some, actually there's one piecethat's in the, I don't know what you call
it, the pedestrian corridor, uh, outside.
(25:45):
Um, Cairns and between Cairns mm-hmm andthe, you know, and the Mackenzie Chown,
there's a, a, a bronze column therethat, that's kind of in the trees now.
It's a lovely little contemplativespace that they've put it in.
Um, and it was the firstsculpture that Brock ever had.
I'll have to look for it.
And it came from Expo 67.
Wow.
Because, a number of, uh,artworks were commissioned for
(26:07):
expo from across the country.
And the artist of that piece was a womansculptor from the West coast, and she
and James Gibson knew who to apply.
Anyway, he applied to the folks atExpo 67 for the university to have
that artwork and it came here andso, but that's part of the backstory.
Yeah.
I end up finding in my job.
I think realistically an artist likeSnow would understand that, he may
(26:30):
not have done video again, just becauseit is, um, it's a time-based media.
In other words, it has a, has alifespan in terms of technology.
Um, It, the, the actual installation,the video camera, the monitor, the
whole, I can't trace it past around 1980.
Okay.
To 82.
There's a, there's a, a fine artscommittee meeting that was held around
(26:52):
1982 where, and I saw that there wasone word, Snow on, on their agenda.
And I thought that's probably about,they're dealing with the fact that, um,
Mackenzie Chown is being transformed.
I found this out, the, um,geology, uh, library the
geography library, I should say.
Yeah.
Was moved from the mainfloor up to the third level.
Okay.
That's exactly where theinstallation pieces were.
(27:15):
Okay.
The camera and the monitor around thecorner, and I think they probably weren't
working at that time, and so when itcame to refurbishing that whole corridor,
they were just removed from the walls.
And when we do our walkabout, youcan actually feel the walls, feel
the wall texture, and feel wherethey took them out and put fresh
bricks in and then painted over
(27:35):
because the, uh, technology he would'vebeen working and working with and some
of us remember the remembered the, uh,earlier days of computing when you had
to have a screensaver, like images wouldbecome burned into monitors and that
kind of thing as well so there wouldbe kind of a point where things break
to the point of not being repairable
(27:56):
One of the, the most fun thingsI had at that, at the archive, at
the A G o, I was turning the pages.
I was with my friend Tracy, thevideographer, because at that point we
decided let's start recording things.
Um, so I'm turning the pages andI saw one of his scratch pages.
He's, he seemed to me he mighthave been sitting at the phone.
And he's writing down numbers andhe's got Phillips something, or
(28:16):
he's got model numbers and you know,dimensions and things like that.
Scratched on a piece of paper at thevery top though he's got burn in of image
and he's underlined it and circled it.
And I thought, I know somebody is justtalking to him saying, Michael, Michael,
I want you to know about this though.
Like you can't just leave thecamera on the same thing all the
time because the image will burnin, there'll be a burn in of image.
(28:40):
And he probably thought That sounds weird.
That's fantastic because then that,that plays into the whole time images
and, you know, your word playeda set a because it, it's about
the, the nature of the technology.
He's almost like he's let the technologyby its own nature just tell its own story.
And so he, he planned it forthat image to finally burn in.
(29:02):
Um, He, the, the image that thecamera was, was trained on a certain
image across the hallway from it.
People would move betweenthe image and the camera and
kind of blur things up a bit.
And, but that image over timedid slowly, I believe, swallow
up what was being transmitted tothe monitor around the corner.
(29:23):
Um, because he was atthe cusp of a technology.
You've got the cusp of, ofanalog and digital right there.
Mm-hmm.
Um, the analog, it's a pushing it andseeing, seeing what you can do with
it and how far, how far you can go.
You've got the analog camera.
Making a fixed image that's,you know, like, you know, from
the negative to the positive.
(29:44):
You know, the film you've got that,you've got that, I would call like
really kind of analog technology witha video technology which is more fluid
and moving and an entirely different,um, Idea, uh, like a, a camera, a
video camera is a, is a moving, movingstream of light, you know, so to speak.
(30:04):
Mm-hmm.
I mean, I was trying to thinktoday we use the word digitize all
the time, but, you know, w whatdo we really mean by it anymore?
It's like, uh, we're just makingit so the computer can read it.
Mm-hmm.
But, um, so we, you know, we digitizethings all the time, digitize images
and whatever, but we, you know, we'remaking it we can see it on a computer.
(30:26):
But if the power goes out,you don't see anything.
And one thing about having a, alike analog is that it is fixed.
It doesn't have, you know, itdoesn't have any fluidity at all.
It's, it's meant, it'sa snapshot if you want.
Mm-hmm.
It's seen that way.
And so it's in, so he was,he, he was right at the cusp
of a, a changing technology.
Those portable video cameras.
(30:47):
I'm talking about this close circuit, putit in your own hands, kind of technology.
And I'm sure all a lot of artistswere jumping all over it too.
Yeah.
You know, at that timein the early seventies.
Yeah.
So I just want to travel back in timein your story, um, as well because
as I mentioned, um, you retired a fewyears ago from Brock, but you were a
(31:11):
longtime, um, fixture in the visual artsdepartment, um, and working in the days
of slide libraries and things like that.
And I thought it would be reallyinteresting to hear a little bit about
your journey and what you learned, um,with visual arts and library sciences and
kind of why, why you went down that routeand what it was what teaching art history
(31:32):
used to look like before PowerPoint?
Well, remember, I, started in 83.
Brock was still pretty young,and the visual art department was
so young that there were prettymuch only three professors.
Uh, two in the studio, one in history.
Um, and it made pull in a fewextras, you know, every, you know,
and it started to grow from there.
(31:54):
But the new hire for arthistory, um, was Derek Knight.
And he came and I remember in thisfirst, first lecture standing up in
the front of the class and saying inhis English accent, which I can't do,
who said, well, you know, we couldneed somebody to be a slide librarian
and if anyone is interested, and Isort of felt like, Uh, a calling.
(32:15):
I don't know what it was.
Anyway, I went to his officeand said, I'd like to do that.
So I learned how to make slides.
Photographic slides because they'retransparent, they can be projected.
And that's how art historywas taught back in the days.
In fact, it was always donewith two images at once.
It was called the comparative method.
(32:35):
So you'd have one slide projector,and these are for anyone
who's not familiar with them.
These are like the round carouselthat goes clunk, kerr clunk.
So you would have one on oneside and one on the other.
Yeah.
Of the classroom.
Yeah, so, so you'd have tohave two, all of the slides in
order and properly matched up.
Yeah.
(32:55):
And so not only professors in art history,but also the students who had to do
presentations would use that method too.
So I quickly became kind of a, amiddle point within the department,
um, working with students and faculty.
I had a big light table and I wouldmake slides for people photographing
images from books and then mountingthem properly and having them
(33:17):
ready for them to use in theirpresentation, but also labeling them.
They had to go in a drawer somewhere.
They had to go be part of the system,
had to be able to find them again.
And so Derek and I really worked out asystem of storing them away based on what
they were and also where they came from.
Who's, who were the artists?
What was the country, you know, what wasthe culture, um, and what was the medium?
(33:40):
And so we had drawers anddrawers of these slides and I,
I just grew it up at the end.
I think they were probably about50,000 slides, and I sort of Wow.
And made a lot of them, uh, uh, anda lot of them, almost all of them
had my handwriting on the labels.
And so, uh, I did that, but I realizedin the, in that process, still being
a, a student and then graduating,I really wanted to know more about,
(34:04):
About the process of putting thingsaway in this sort of, this system.
Mm-hmm.
The idea system of storing thingsand, and a particular interesting
of storing images because they don'thave words associated, you know?
Mm-hmm.
They don't have words in them.
They're not books or they're not,but they're images and how do
you identify an image such thatyou can put it away in a system.
So I found that kind of interesting.
(34:25):
And so I had an opportunity totake a year off from Brock and
go to do the, library science,uh, at Western University.
It was called, um, Libraryand Information Science then.
And, um, and so I went away and,and came back after that year.
But in that year at Western, Ireally could, I really focused on
(34:45):
art librarianship and the whole,uh, interesting conundrum of
how you, how you catalog images.
So, because I felt like Iwas pretty unique that way.
Um, it was my, it was what I focusedon, and I came back with that idea.
I really love being a librarian.
It, it wouldn't be, uh, I wouldn't besuitable in a, an academic setting, like
(35:07):
our own academic library here at James A.
Gibson.
But, but, um, I really felt I belongedwithin the Department of Visual Arts
there, you know, or at least, or atleast working in humanities, which
are, which then used a lot of imagerymm-hmm in order to teach their courses.
Yeah.
So we're coming up soon to actually 10years of the Marilyn , um, the MIW Yes.
(35:29):
Which is, yes, it's 2015.
Yeah.
Yes.
So it's just a couple of years away andI'm just, what, what, what happened?
Um, but you were kind of, you, well, youwere very involved in the learning commons
and that student, student-centered space.
And again, if you could just tellus a little bit about what you
did at the Marilyn and, and whatwas the same, what was different?
(35:50):
Um,
well, well the transition again,that Snow actually, it, it, in
experience from analog to digital,I did too in my, in my work as an
art librarian for the department.
So images had to be digitized.
Classrooms were no longer, uh, equippedwith, uh, with slide projectors.
So profs were, um, had to startdoing their own imagery, getting
(36:12):
it in some digitized form so theycould put it out as a PowerPoint
or however they wish to do it.
There really weren't too many optionsother than PowerPoint, I guess,
because there were no more ideaslike a slide carousel where you could
kind of pick and mix and move thingsaround and, and also there was, uh,
just a single projection usually.
Mm, which changed theformat of a lot of teachers.
They were used to thatcomparative method, so their own.
(36:34):
They would say that pedagogychanged because of that.
That's really interesting.
The connection between the technologychanging and then the pedagogy having
to change to, uh, to reflect that.
I mean, I, that's what we'realways doing, I guess, but,
uh, well, I guess it's a, it, yeah.
Um, it's an argumentative approach.
You could have a, you could have a,like an image of a whole thing and then
a detail of it, or you could, the wayDerek liked to do it, he liked to throw
(36:57):
up things that were to totally, you couldsay a non-sequitur, you know, something
renaissance and something Andy Warhol and,you know, and, and let's talk about it.
Mm-hmm.
Let's talk about how, you know, youknow, he would generate discussions
using that kind of method and it, andI found it really stimulating too.
And so I thought, you know, teacherslike him, instructors like him would
(37:19):
have to change their, change their ways.
You know, having just one image to workwith a whole parade of images if they
wanted, but having, being able to, toshow two at once sometime if I felt
kind of generated more conversation,it was just the way we were taught.
Yeah.
That's why I'm calling it pedagogy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
And um, in the Learning Commons, which isa really beautiful space in the Marilyn,
(37:43):
you were interacting with students.
I know they showed student art inthere, and I remember once that you were
involved in creating a zine library.
Well, you know, I, I was lookingat retirement at that point, and
I had a a, I always like involvingstudents and all my work anyway.
(38:04):
Um, and so I had a student who was keento be a librarian and she had applied to
Western as well and, uh, and I think U ofT and she was waiting to hear from either
one, and I saw some opportunities for, uh,for her to work with me that last summer.
Uh, for one thing, bothmusic and dramatic arts needed
someone to organize their stuff.
(38:25):
They had some interestingthings to organize that.
And I said, fine, you've gotsome, we'll, Someone to do that.
But then we, uh, I'd been to oneof my professional organizations
where at oca, it's OCA now O CADUniversity, uh, that's the Ontario
College of Art and Design in Toronto.
They had a, they showed ustheir zine library when we were
(38:46):
there at some spring meeting.
And I thought, Hmm, this kindof interesting, maybe we can
get students involved in that.
So anyway, I asked the student workingwith me to, um, we went to the zine
library, visited it in Toronto, got asense of what it what's up with it and,
and decided to kind of start our own.
And so there were a number of things tokind of already kind of include in it.
(39:07):
And um, I don't know if it's beencontinued, I don't know if it's been
continued, but I found out that a lotof libraries have, have a primary,
secondary and academic, you know,like beyond, um, libraries and public
libraries have invited zines as a wayfor, um, students and people just to
sort of, um, Identify themselves, telltheir stories, and they take all forms.
(39:31):
And I just love the littlepublications like that.
They're, they're, they're wonderful.
Um, and for anyone who wasn't ateenager in the nineties, that's when I
remembered them and being very popular.
Um, zines are like the social mediabefore we had digital versions of social
media where you made a little magazine,um, and you could maybe photocopy
it, maybe it was a one off and youcould trade them with your friends.
(39:52):
You could sell them.
Um, and there's still even withdigital social media, there is still
a thriving subculture, around these.
And I remember attending a workshop that,uh, that was held down at the Marilyn to
help make, to make zines and to do collage
. I also too, in my generation, we made newsletters, we made, we had little papers
(40:13):
and things like that in high school.
You know, it was, it was mostlyabout doing your own thing.
Mm-hmm.
Telling your own stories, I suppose.
And I, I've, I've actually been on abus a, a couple of times over the years,
and I found a little zine on the bus.
People just leave them behind, youknow, like a little piece of found art.
Yeah.
And so I really, Ireally like that as well.
I love that it's this, ongoing, um, mediumthat just keeps getting rediscovered
(40:37):
by each, each successive generationand kind of reinterpreted a little bit,
but that it's still the whole idea offinding ways to tell our stories and,
and, and share that with other people.
But you know, you realize it's a,it's a tangibleness of it as well.
Mm-hmm.
Like the little bound publicationwas it, you know, however it's bound,
whether it's a zigzag book or whetherit's got a little, you know, it's
(40:57):
got a staple holding it togetheror, but it's, it's a, it's a, it's a
textural, it's a material thing andit's analog and I, there's only so much.
Um, satisfaction I think you canget from like, you know, your,
your cell phone as an object.
Mm-hmm.
It's, it's the useful object, you know,it's, it does all sorts of things for you.
(41:18):
Well, coming back to what you weresaying about snow and the photograph
that you have, that, um, representationof the thing that, you know, the
electricity goes out or your batterydies you still have that representation.
Well, the hand touched it at some point.
Yeah.
You know, it's not art, but but a hand.
But it is art.
(41:38):
Yeah.
But a hand touched it.
Yeah.
In, in a way too.
Yeah.
And, and I have, and even for like,photographs that I really value, like in
my own personal photographs, I make, youknow, I know where they are I keep them.
And other images that were digitalthat I value a lot, well, I've
made them into hard copy as well.
Mm-hmm.
Because I just don't, you know,I, I don't wanna lose them.
(42:00):
I want that, I want a tangible.
Yeah, you know, of my past like that
and that need to be able to organizeimages, um, certainly hasn't abated
if anything, it's probably even morenecessary as we produce more and more,
more images and, um, listeners might liketo, um, refer back or, or, or listen back
to the interview I did with David Sharon,where we talked about this plethora of
(42:23):
digital content that we need people inlibrary sciences, people with archival
training mm-hmm art history training, arttraining to help us kind of come to grips
with all of just the massive quantity.
Figure out, sort it,organize it, make it usable.
Uh,
I remember being in library school andthinking and, and, and saying to one
(42:43):
of, you know, one of my friends, like,I think there's work out there for this.
Uh, and that was, and, and Ihadn't, there was no internet then.
I'd seen the internet as a librarystudent, but most, when I came back here
to Brock, you know, blurbing on aboutthe internet and computers and everything
like, and, you know, and gopher and emailand everything, they all looked at me like
(43:04):
I had like horns, no horns like who, what?
Because I, I, but thatcame very quickly after.
Yeah.
You know, but I remember seeingan image download on the internet,
a jpeg, it took 15 minutes it wasan image from Japan I remember.
And it took 15 minutes for itto download to my computer.
Yeah.
I had a JPEG reader on my computer.
Um, but, but yeah, I felt I was abit ahead ahead like that, but I,
(43:29):
yeah, it was really, uh, it wasreally an exciting time, but I.
But I managed to see through myprofessional organizations that there
was a big change coming to my own work.
Mm-hmm.
The digitizing of all those slidesand, uh, and a new way of teaching and
copyright really intervening in, in manyways and making it so that libraries
(43:50):
couldn't, and, departments couldn'tjust, use anything to teach their
classes, they had to have licensed images.
And, and so a lot of things changedand, um, And so I ended up envisioning
the learning commons, thinking thatwe needed a library sort of space
downtown, even just a study space, ora space for students to congregate.
(44:11):
I wasn't really sure because I'mnot a librarian in that regard,
and I didn't know how much studentswould actually take advantage of it.
You know, but I just, uh, just we were,we were leaving the mothership and
so we had, I felt that we had to havesomething that, that reflected like
what, what the resources on main campus.
So the learning commons was, I don'tknow, uh, if it, well, I don't know
(44:34):
how someone else might have developedit differently, but I like that I
mostly had, um, music students in therebecause it was a quiet space and I found
out that music students like quiet.
Well, and I suppose just like MackenzieChown has changed and evolved over the
decades, um, the Marilyn I W Schoolwill continue to change and evolve
(44:55):
to meet our changes in technology andour, and the needs of our students.
And, um, it's so exciting to talkto somebody who was involved in
that at the very beginning as well.
So I'm gonna wrap up our conversationthere because you and I are gonna
take a little walk and we're gonnago get lost in Mackenzie Chown.
Okay.
Does that sound good?
Let's get lost.
(45:15):
Alright.
Thank you very much for joiningus today and um, listeners, stay
tuned for our bonus episode.
Thank you for listening to ForwardFind your footnotes links to more
information transcripts and past episodeson our website, brock u.ca/humanities.
(45:38):
We love to hear from our listeners,so join us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram at Brock Humanities.
Please subscribe and rate uson your favorite podcasting app
so you don't miss an episode.
Forward is hosted and produced byAlison Innes for the Faculty of
Humanities at Brock University.
Sound editing is by Serena Atallah,and theme music is by Kalam.
(46:02):
This podcast is financiallysupported by the faculty of
Humanities at Brock University.
Have you ever been lost inBrock's Mackenzie Chown Complex?
Perhaps you were looking for aseminar room or an office, or
perhaps an entire department.
I think you could argue that youhaven't truly visited Brock until
you've had that experience at leastonce, and some of us are still having
that experience a decade later.
Well, today's episode of Foreword, weare going to be speaking with somebody
(00:26):
who knows a lot about MackenzieChow Complex and some of the amazing
art that has been in that facility.
Welcome to Foreword.
I am your host, Alison Innes, asusual, and this episode I'm bringing
you a conversation with a recentlyretired Brock employee who will be very
familiar to some of our VISA graduates.
Lesley Bell started herBrock journey back in 1983.
(00:51):
She graduated with an honors BA in VisualArts and then continued her studies
to earn a master's of library sciencedegree from Western University in 1993.
Over time, her job at Brock wouldevolve to include oversight of the
Brock University Art Collectionand the former Sean O'Sullivan
Art Gallery on the main campus.
(01:12):
And then when the visual arts departmentwas moved down to the Marilyn I.
Walker campus Lesley Bell wentwith it and she was involved
in conceiving and designing thelearning commons in that new space.
And her duties expanded to includemanaging the equipment kiosk and
supervising student monitors.
She constantly worked to developopportunities for the space to further
(01:35):
benefit students and the community, andnever stopped striving to make it a more
inclusive place to study and congregate.
And while Lesley was doing all this, shewas also doing her own research into the
now late Canadian artist Michael Snow,who was involved in some art installations
around Brock's Mackenzie Chown.
So I am super excited to bring Lesley toour listeners today as our featured guest.
(02:00):
Welcome.
Hi.
Thank you, Alison.
Well, you know, um, the journey withthe art collection began for me,
as you said, it was became, uh, anadditional responsibility to me in
around year 2000, maybe 1999, 2000.
And that actually on that very day thatI sort of went down to the other end of
the school, one of my first duties I wastold was something was happening down at
(02:23):
the, um, mezzanine level of the pond inletand big renovations were underway there.
I knew the space very well from beinga student, but I hadn't been to that
end of the school in a bit, so thereI was with my camera and there was
a big renovation being done of thewall, like the mirror wall being taken
down and that, that's when I realizedthat there was a work on that wall.
(02:48):
It was part of that mirror wall.
It was like an exposed darkframe, rectangular frame.
It exposed the brick wall beneathwith a mirror all around the
outside and a mirror in the middle.
So we had this black frame,but the wall was disappearing.
I was there because there were a numberof artworks that had been displayed there,
and they were taking display cases away.
(03:08):
The, the cases were being ripped upand I was busy bundling up these little
artworks, but I looked up anyway withmy camera and snapped a picture of that
wall before it was, um, taken down,and that ends up being probably the,
one of the only recordings of frameone, and it was called Frame One of
the Installation by Michael Snow thathad been part of the building when
(03:32):
it was first made or built in 1972.
And so it has a really, that was justvery superficial knowledge I had of it
because even as a visual arts studenthere and Michael Snow, the artist
had come and given an artist talk.
I knew him as a visual artist.
I knew he was a filmmaker and we'dseen a few of his films, but I,
I really had no knowledge of thissculpture within the, within the,
(03:56):
the building within Brock building.
And so taking over the art collection,it became my job at that point to figure
out what was the art in this collection.
And a survey had been done earlier about1987 with rudimentary information and
a picture of each work that would'vebeen part of the art collection,
(04:16):
but no backstory to any of them.
And who knew where all those pieceswere at this point, 11 years later.
So I, I had to start locating everything.
And yes, there was a picture of one ofthese bits and pieces from an installation
that was labeled as Michael Snow.
And so I thought, yeah, that had somethingto do with that mirror, that mirror wall.
(04:38):
And so I began with curiosity justtry and find out more about this work.
And it occurred to me that eachone of these artworks have their
own story, and each one of them isembedded in the history of Brock too.
So that's what I felt like as Istarted to gather information about the
artworks and about the Snow installationthat I was looking back in time.
(04:59):
Mm-hmm.
So the building that we now knowas Mackenzie Chown Complex, was
originally called an academicbuilding, something like that.
It was built in 1972.
And Michael Snow's originalart, multi-piece art
installation was 1972 1973.
So this is actually the 50thanniversary, um, which is one of the
(05:22):
reasons I'm really excited to haveyou, um, talking about Snow's art.
And we also lost the artist, um, himself.
He, he, he passed away in January.
So for people who maybe aren't familiarwith Michael Snow , or the name, or
some of the pieces, um, could youtell us a little bit about who he was?
Oh, you know, um, Uh, film studiespeople are, are very well versed
(05:45):
in what Michael Snow can do.
He's known as a, as a filmmakermore than anything, I believe,
but he was a, what's he called?
A polymath.
You would call that person a polymath.
I think he's primarily, and this is justbased on my own opinion now, a musician.
Mm-hmm.
He's a musician and, and when hedescribes a lot of his art, art
statements that I've read, they, thereare a lot of illusions to musical terms.
(06:09):
He talks about something, evenin this installation, having
a fugue element to it.
In other words, repeating, uh,patterns over, you know, repeating
and repeating or nested patterns,which are musical patterns.
And he calls this a composition likea, a, like a multipart composition and,
talks about taking a reading of thecomposition as if it's like a piece of
(06:29):
music that you're going to enter into.
Snow was at that point in 1970 to72, he was representing Canada in the
Venice Biennale um, the first soloartist to do so, he had a solo exhibit
of his work at the National Gallery.
Um, but even Canadians mostlyknew him from way back.
(06:51):
And I did when, when we went to Expo67, when I was a teenager and there
were Snow's sculptures of a walkingwoman, there was like a cutout
figure of a walking woman and she waseverywhere, all over the expo site.
She was on the, the Montreal Metros.
Um, and so people were, Kind ofgot, got familiar with the idea
of Snow as a sculptor really.
(07:11):
But then he left and went to New YorkCity for about 10 years then and, didn't
come back till just prior to the makingof this work they did, did here at Brock.
And my generation might be morefamiliar with Snow because of the
work that hangs in the Eaton Center.
Um, and I'll put a linkin the show notes.
There was a, a lovely interview onCBC radio recently that they have
(07:31):
restored that and they're in theprocess of Rehanging, uh, flight
Stop, which is 60 Canada geese.
So if you have been in the TorontoEaton Center and you have looked
up and seen those, those geese.
You have seen a Michael Snowwork, and I understand he also did
some work on the exterior of theskydome with the, with the fans.
So there's a couple of, of, um, recentpieces that people might have seen and
(07:54):
not realized what they were looking at.
So he is really a prolific artistdoing photography and film and
sculpture, so, How does he getconnected to Brock and why Brock?
Um, I'm, see here's anothertheory I might have, just an idea.
He was, he was engaged by thearchitect, uh, Raymond Moriyama,
(08:16):
both of them at the same age.
Um, both of them sort of at apoint in their career that it
was beginning to launch for them.
They had a good steady, uh, mid, maybeyou call her their mid-career, uh,
Raymond Moriyama had just completed acouple of years from when he was invited
to do the work for Brock, he justcompleted the Ontario Science Center,
which was a really radical building.
They wanted a science museum, not a circusas it was called when it first opened.
(08:39):
But of course, the public loved it.
And he really understood how abuilding could work for its purpose
and how space could be used.
And of course, we mustn't forget,he was a chancellor of Brock
for a number of years here too.
After that, um, And, and Iheard him speak here once and
he talked about the integrationof exterior and interior space.
(09:00):
He had a real Japanese aesthetic in his,um, work, and you see it here at Brock.
So I have this idea that his office was onCumberland Avenue in Toronto, and Michael
Snow was represented by Isaac's Gallery,just around the corner on Young Street.
And I had the opportunity to talk toone of the architects from Moriyama's
office saying, how did they get together?
(09:21):
And he said, well, on Friday afternoonswe used to have these charettes in the
office where we'd invite people fromdifferent walks of life to come and talk.
And I'm just thinking maybe,maybe they met that corner.
Maybe he'd heard of Michael Snowor the artist, you know, this
artist gallery around the corner.
And they must have clicked very well.
Um, I have a letter.
Just a brief letter from the Moriyamaoffice where he said Michael Snow
(09:44):
was a very creative man, and thatfrom the beginning this was an art
and architecture, um, collaboration.
And so what, what Raymond Moriyamadid, cuz he was hired to design
a building and Snow would've hadto, as a public art artist have to
observe the new parameters if they'regoing to collaborate for this space.
(10:05):
And it was an academicbuilding, purely academic.
So ranging from the A block to the, Idon't know how many blocks it goes, D
block, I guess on the 300 level you'vegot, actually it was all for students.
You had a cafeteria on one endin the A block, there was another
cafeteria on the other end in D Block.
And so that, uh, that cafeteria on a blockend would now be the current is currently
(10:30):
the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities.
And um, I believe there's some, uh,co-op and co-op careers and experiential
education offices in that hallway as well.
So that was all.
Cafeteria.
Oh, yes.
And on the other end, it was alsocafeteria that was in operation
when I was a student here too.
And then,
and that was Pond Inlet,
that's a pond inlet.
And then of course, the loungeabove it kind of hovers like a,
(10:52):
we call it a mezzanine level.
Um, but the cafeteria was down below withthis beautiful full wall, uh, window wall.
Mm-hmm.
You know, you could lookout on the, on the pond.
Um, designed to be a beautifulspace right from the beginning.
Um, so Snow who'd as a, as a publicartist, would've been working with these
parameters that knowing that he's gota building, he's got a corridor with
(11:16):
that meandering, uh, aspect to it thatwe talked about earlier, that Alison
mentioned that Zigzag, and I think he,he, he thought of the experience of
walking that hallway, the people, thestudents, the population, the faculty
that would be using those hallways andwalking those hallways on a daily basis.
For him, it was, he was sort ofworking with, um, with a new idea.
(11:38):
So one of the urban legends, um, and I'mkind of excited to, uh, To, um, break the
myth, I guess, around this, um, becauseit's certainly something I heard when
I came to Brock is that Mackenzie Chowhad been designed to prevent students
from congregating, but that's not atall what the architect was going for.
And once I learned what thearchitect was going for, the
(11:58):
space made a lot more sense to me.
So what were they trying to achieve inthis zigzaggy slightly confusing building.
Well, you know what, but this is notmy own idea, but it's when, uh, Dr.
Scott Henderson was here at theuniversity he and I did a Snow walk
walking through what was, what was, andhe brought in some theories of space.
He talked about he felt thatMoriyama was, designing hallways
(12:22):
where people would meet and be lostmaybe bit, just bit disoriented.
Because you're zigzagging along,you're not aware that you're,
you're constantly turning corners.
And he felt that people would haveto stop and say, uh, can you help me?
I'm lost.
In other words, you'd haveconversations, you know,
Well, he certainly achieved that.
But you do notice thatthere are maps on the walls?
(12:43):
Yes, there are.
There are.
And they were all part of the earlyinstallation too, because another
architect in the firm was hired todesign what were called wayfinding maps.
So you have the maps at the corners forthe C block and D block and, and then all
those chevron stripes too, which identifywhether it's a geology or geography.
And you know, if you look,they're, they're on the outside
(13:03):
of the building too, those mm-hmm.
Navy blue and lime green stripes.
Mm-hmm.
So we are actually going to recorda bonus episode of you and I, uh,
walking through Mackenzie Chown,looking at what remains of snow's art.
Um, so I'm just gonna plug thatright now for our listeners.
If you're trying to visualize, um,What we're talking about, you'll
(13:24):
actually be able to do a walkthrough.
And I just had the, um, the experiencejust a week or two ago where I, I do
not venture into some of those, someof those science blocks very often.
And I was with somebody elseand I had no idea where I was.
And then suddenly, I'm like,oh, I know exactly where I am.
And I had one of those moments andI thought of, of the architect and
(13:47):
the artist working together to createthat experience, which can be a
little frustrating if you're latefor class, but on an experience level
is a really neat experience to have.
So some of those spaces nowhave been changed a little bit.
There's spaces that have been closedin that were maybe left open, but
Snow's art was made to go in and workwith the architecture in the building.
(14:09):
So I wondered if you could tell ussome of how this multi, multi-piece
installation worked, right?
Because he, he, the word he uses is hewanted it embedded in the architecture.
He had many ideas before hefinally settled on this one.
Um, I'm wanna talk a bitabout research actually.
(14:30):
Yes, definitely.
Um, because this was the only experience,the probably the more, most full
experience of, of research I've everhad in my life and probably ever will.
And it became almost, uh, hang on.
Not an obsession, but if you, ifyou study something hard enough, it
sort of really starts to take over.
And even in the past twoweeks, contemplating what
I'd be talking about today.
(14:51):
I realize I'm just like, I'm over full.
I'm over full again.
I can talk too much.
Um, and I'm making notes againon things that I hadn't noticed
before and it's just too much.
So, um,
So what was it like researching?
Where, where did you have to turn to?
What kinds of sources did youhave to, to look at how much
of the art was still around?
(15:13):
Um, well, well, of course I was goingto be researching the, the collection
as a whole, and so I knew that our ownarchives here could offer some help also,
this is an institution where everythingand the Snow stuff still lives, so,
even in 2000, there were still peoplearound from 30 years ago who had some
memories of it, and I had to, I foundsome and I found, I found one admin
(15:38):
assistant who remembers being a studenthere and engaging with this installation.
Wonderful.
And I mean, I haven't just told youhow it really works yet, but this
was the exciting part of the snowinstallation I gather for students.
And he, this is the participatorypart or the experiential part that he
really, it was kind of interesting you,you walked in front of a video camera
(16:01):
and using a close circuit technologythat image of you walking me in front
of the camera showed up around oneof those zigzag corners, about a
30 feet down the hall on a monitor.
So, And it was live.
It was a live stream,I guess you would say.
Although Snow had wanted adelay, it couldn't be done.
So it was a live stream.
So your friends are watchingthere on the monitor, watching
(16:23):
you walk along the hallway.
They know you're coming, you know,and so there was this sort of play of,
you know, people sort of performingfor the camera and their friends.
And so there was that playaspect and, um, for him,
and he incorporated mirrors intohis work as well, so that you are,
you are being reflected back and
Oh, I know.
(16:43):
Um, um, but I, but I asked thatarchitect about mirrors when I had
the chance to talk to him abouthow they might have got together.
And that architect said, well, mirrorsare just an architectural material, he
said, and I thought, oh, so there wasnothing, um, I think, I think Moriyama,
it was part of his strategy to bringthe inside and the outside, kind of
(17:03):
bring them together um, having this hugemirror wall reflect the beautiful pond
you could actually sit back in that.
I remember being a student sittingback in that lounge and looking up at
the slanted kind of mirrors above you,and you could see the, the waterfall
almost falling over your head.
Reflected.
Wonderful.
I'm gonna try that now.
And so, it was an architecturalmaterial mirror is, but I think
(17:26):
Snow looked at it as a, what he,he gave it, he called it flux.
It's, it, it's flux.
It's, it's fleeting.
Mm-hmm.
Whereas he's also got two other,he's got two other, what we
call image capture devices.
He had a still camera a photographiccamera doing something and he
had a video camera capturing too.
(17:46):
And then you have a mirror which justreflects, but doesn't record in any way.
So he is playing with timein a way there too, right?
Well, the whole, the wholeinstallation is called Timed Images.
And, and over the years I've, I'vebeen trying to think about why
that title, because the titlessprung up out of his notes.
(18:07):
Mm-hmm.
Just timed images.
And I actually wrote once,like, where did this come from?
Because I couldn't find a, but he, he,he sort of found a, That name came to
him and it, and it, it does describe it.
Although at the time I thoughtit might just be one of another
joke of his, and I'm not sure.
Do these images have atime limit sort of thing?
Are they timed?
You know, um, so I, so I'm not sure.
(18:28):
He is a very playful architect, asyou said, or not architect or artist.
As you said, he worked witharchitecture outside the dome.
You know, with that, that sculpture,
I guess it's a Rogers Center.
I think I, I think Isaid Sky Dome, didn't I?
Showing my age.
It's a dome in mine.
Yeah.
Or, or even in the Eaton Center too.
I mean, there's some, the factthat you've got a flock of geese
flying through the Eaton Centeris kind of ironic in a way too.
(18:50):
Mm-hmm.
So I was thinking after you, you andI spoke a few about this a few weeks
ago, and I was thinking afterwardshow we take it for granted today
we have so many recording devices.
Video photography were, we're constantlyimmersed in that kind of atmosphere.
But I was thinking back to 1972, whenhe's putting together this installation,
(19:13):
he's dealing with more limited technology,but he's also, the users are not like
seeing yourself on a screen is notnormal, is not a usual thing in 1970s.
Well, you know, he was using it wasthen an emerging technology video.
Don't think of it now, but it was, andI had the opportunity to work with it
(19:35):
a bit in the early seventies as well.
And it was, it was called portable, butit was hardly that it took two people,
but at least one to carry the batterypack and one to carry the camera.
Um, and so you always worked withthis person in tandem with you, but
it, it was totally freeing becauseit wasn't in a broadcast studio.
It wasn't these big honking camerasyou see, you know, that would've
(19:57):
been coming from CBC or, youknow, a very big broadcast studio.
Um, these were very portableand they allowed people to see
themselves in a very informal way.
And when Michael Snow wasteaching at NASCAD, um, now NASCAD
University, that's in Halifax
that's the Nova Scotia's
college of Art Design.
(20:17):
College of art and Design.
Yep.
He was teaching there in 1970 andcorresponding with Moriyama because the
two of them were already engaged in thisproject and he was thinking and sending
the ideas back and forth all that summer.
But in the fall he was teachingat, at Nascad and he wrote back and
said, Students here are using thisvideo projection technology here.
And he said, kind of interesting,I'd like to try it myself at Brock.
(20:40):
And so he was that kind of a mind, hewas that kind of, um, an artist and
that kind of a creative and curiousmind that he seized on something
new and began to think, what, whatcould he do with it, you know?
Um, and so he broughtthat idea back with him.
Uh, yeah, he was just, uh, he seemed tome to be, and I have the opportunity,
(21:00):
I think for those two years in,involved in this project and all the
papers and documents I assembled.
I feel like I was on his, almost in hismind for a couple of years because I,
through the research, through startinghere at Brock and finding basic notes
on, on what was here at Brock, andthen I, I knew that he'd left personal
(21:21):
papers at the Art Gallery of Ontarioin the library and archives there, and
so I ventured there and was rewardedwith really fat file folders of stuff.
The man did not throw anythingaway, and it was wonderful.
It was like, just like a treasury troveof all the things to do with the making
(21:41):
of timed images and the attendant piece,which we'll talk about too, when we do our
walkabout, I just call it the photo essay.
It really never had a name.
That's the one, well, it nowhangs in the stairway in a block.
Mm-hmm.
And yes, we will talk more aboutit, but it's also very cinematic.
Um, oh yes, indeed.
As it's still, still images, but stillplaying with, with, with the idea of film.
(22:02):
And so I had the, you know, I sortof felt that he had, uh, he was one
of these quick minded people thatjust like to try something new.
Um, although he never usedvideo again in any of his work.
Oh, that's very interesting.
Yeah.
Is the only time he did it.
I had the opportunityto meet Michael Snow.
First of all, I had the nerve to,you know, to write him out of the
blue, um, and say, I wanna make alittle video on your artwork here.
(22:24):
Perfect.
I was just gonna ask you about your video.
And nobody had really,because the artwork had.
Uh, been removed over time.
Uh, this is an institution and thereare changes and things happen and I,
I can probably trace the demise ofthis artwork, you know, over time.
But he, he was quite a aware of it.
I think everybody was afraid ofmeeting up with him in case he
(22:47):
sued them, ruining his artwork.
But in truth, he was, when I wroteto him, he was really excited to hear
that the work still had resonance hereamong, uh, people at the university.
And, um, yeah, he gave me permission touse anything that I found in the archives,
you know, and I said, I'd keep in touch.
And then I thought, well, I, because ScottHenderson had been making me think more
(23:11):
of Moriyama and this collaboration, I alsogot permission from from Moriyama, just
to let him know what I'm doing, what I'mdoing, and, and I thought more about them.
I, I began to think more what Icould find in Moriyama's behalf.
So his works or his papers were at the,uh, province of Ontario archives, which
are at York University, and I lookedthem up and saw that at the very end of
(23:35):
everything listed there, all this stuffto do with Brock, the very end Snow.
Just said one file folder.
And I thought, Hmm, it's worth a trip.
And it really was
wonderful
because this was all the handwrittenand typewritten correspondence between
Snow and Moriyama's office, all theidea building and the tossing back
and forth of things that he might do.
(23:55):
And, uh, and also the, um, thetossing back and forth of what
budget he could carve out.
Because what Mariama Off wasoffering was that we'll find
money within the build here.
To, to create a piece of public art.
And so that's what this was going to be.
And I even found a letter, um, and Idon't know where, but I know it was
(24:16):
from the archive upstairs to JamesGibson, who was the president at the
time from one of his colleagues, Ibelieve in Concordia, talking about
the a percentage for public art policythat Concordia was putting in place.
Hmm.
And he was, he was reporting back to JamesGibson talking about, yeah, we do it here.
You might do it.
And I'm thinking that's why theadministration at Brock was so.
(24:41):
Sure, let's go for it.
Let's have, you know, carve out somemoney and let's have a piece of art
that comes along with the building.
Mm-hmm.
So it, it, it seemed like avery forward thinking, kind of
administration at that time.
Um, maybe they felt that, you know,and James Gibson, I know he always
was extremely supportive of artwork.
He was the first president, hewas very supportive of artwork,
(25:03):
and we've got some lovely pieces aroundcampus outdoor sculptures, um, as well and
I'll put some links to some informationabout those, um, that have been gifted to
the university over the, over the years.
They're, um, and I'm blanking outon the titles cause I don't have my
notes in front of me, but there's theone with the, with, uh, the lambs.
I think lambs or lions.
(25:24):
Path of possibility.
Yeah.
Yes.
Path of possibility.
And then there was the, sheWolf, I think the She wolf.
They're by the same artist, actually.
They're a German artist.
So yeah, we had, yeah, we donatedsome that, that large collection too.
And just some, actually there's one piecethat's in the, I don't know what you call
it, the pedestrian corridor, uh, outside.
(25:45):
Um, Cairns and between Cairns mm-hmm andthe, you know, and the Mackenzie Chown,
there's a, a, a bronze column therethat, that's kind of in the trees now.
It's a lovely little contemplativespace that they've put it in.
Um, and it was the firstsculpture that Brock ever had.
I'll have to look for it.
And it came from Expo 67.
Wow.
Because, a number of, uh,artworks were commissioned for
(26:07):
expo from across the country.
And the artist of that piece was a womansculptor from the West coast, and she
and James Gibson knew who to apply.
Anyway, he applied to the folks atExpo 67 for the university to have
that artwork and it came here andso, but that's part of the backstory.
Yeah.
I end up finding in my job.
I think realistically an artist likeSnow would understand that, he may
(26:30):
not have done video again, just becauseit is, um, it's a time-based media.
In other words, it has a, has alifespan in terms of technology.
Um, It, the, the actual installation,the video camera, the monitor, the
whole, I can't trace it past around 1980.
Okay.
To 82.
There's a, there's a, a fine artscommittee meeting that was held around
(26:52):
1982 where, and I saw that there wasone word, Snow on, on their agenda.
And I thought that's probably about,they're dealing with the fact that, um,
Mackenzie Chown is being transformed.
I found this out, the, um,geology, uh, library the
geography library, I should say.
Yeah.
Was moved from the mainfloor up to the third level.
Okay.
That's exactly where theinstallation pieces were.
(27:15):
Okay.
The camera and the monitor around thecorner, and I think they probably weren't
working at that time, and so when itcame to refurbishing that whole corridor,
they were just removed from the walls.
And when we do our walkabout, youcan actually feel the walls, feel
the wall texture, and feel wherethey took them out and put fresh
bricks in and then painted over
(27:35):
because the, uh, technology he would'vebeen working and working with and some
of us remember the remembered the, uh,earlier days of computing when you had
to have a screensaver, like images wouldbecome burned into monitors and that
kind of thing as well so there wouldbe kind of a point where things break
to the point of not being repairable
(27:56):
One of the, the most fun thingsI had at that, at the archive, at
the A G o, I was turning the pages.
I was with my friend Tracy, thevideographer, because at that point we
decided let's start recording things.
Um, so I'm turning the pages andI saw one of his scratch pages.
He's, he seemed to me he mighthave been sitting at the phone.
And he's writing down numbers andhe's got Phillips something, or
(28:16):
he's got model numbers and you know,dimensions and things like that.
Scratched on a piece of paper at thevery top though he's got burn in of image
and he's underlined it and circled it.
And I thought, I know somebody is justtalking to him saying, Michael, Michael,
I want you to know about this though.
Like you can't just leave thecamera on the same thing all the
time because the image will burnin, there'll be a burn in of image.
(28:40):
And he probably thought That sounds weird.
That's fantastic because then that,that plays into the whole time images
and, you know, your word playeda set a because it, it's about
the, the nature of the technology.
He's almost like he's let the technologyby its own nature just tell its own story.
And so he, he planned it forthat image to finally burn in.
(29:02):
Um, He, the, the image that thecamera was, was trained on a certain
image across the hallway from it.
People would move betweenthe image and the camera and
kind of blur things up a bit.
And, but that image over timedid slowly, I believe, swallow
up what was being transmitted tothe monitor around the corner.
(29:23):
Um, because he was atthe cusp of a technology.
You've got the cusp of, ofanalog and digital right there.
Mm-hmm.
Um, the analog, it's a pushing it andseeing, seeing what you can do with
it and how far, how far you can go.
You've got the analog camera.
Making a fixed image that's,you know, like, you know, from
the negative to the positive.
(29:44):
You know, the film you've got that,you've got that, I would call like
really kind of analog technology witha video technology which is more fluid
and moving and an entirely different,um, Idea, uh, like a, a camera, a
video camera is a, is a moving, movingstream of light, you know, so to speak.
(30:04):
Mm-hmm.
I mean, I was trying to thinktoday we use the word digitize all
the time, but, you know, w whatdo we really mean by it anymore?
It's like, uh, we're just makingit so the computer can read it.
Mm-hmm.
But, um, so we, you know, we digitizethings all the time, digitize images
and whatever, but we, you know, we'remaking it we can see it on a computer.
(30:26):
But if the power goes out,you don't see anything.
And one thing about having a, alike analog is that it is fixed.
It doesn't have, you know, itdoesn't have any fluidity at all.
It's, it's meant, it'sa snapshot if you want.
Mm-hmm.
It's seen that way.
And so it's in, so he was,he, he was right at the cusp
of a, a changing technology.
Those portable video cameras.
(30:47):
I'm talking about this close circuit, putit in your own hands, kind of technology.
And I'm sure all a lot of artistswere jumping all over it too.
Yeah.
You know, at that timein the early seventies.
Yeah.
So I just want to travel back in timein your story, um, as well because
as I mentioned, um, you retired a fewyears ago from Brock, but you were a
(31:11):
longtime, um, fixture in the visual artsdepartment, um, and working in the days
of slide libraries and things like that.
And I thought it would be reallyinteresting to hear a little bit about
your journey and what you learned, um,with visual arts and library sciences and
kind of why, why you went down that routeand what it was what teaching art history
(31:32):
used to look like before PowerPoint?
Well, remember, I, started in 83.
Brock was still pretty young,and the visual art department was
so young that there were prettymuch only three professors.
Uh, two in the studio, one in history.
Um, and it made pull in a fewextras, you know, every, you know,
and it started to grow from there.
(31:54):
But the new hire for arthistory, um, was Derek Knight.
And he came and I remember in thisfirst, first lecture standing up in
the front of the class and saying inhis English accent, which I can't do,
who said, well, you know, we couldneed somebody to be a slide librarian
and if anyone is interested, and Isort of felt like, Uh, a calling.
(32:15):
I don't know what it was.
Anyway, I went to his officeand said, I'd like to do that.
So I learned how to make slides.
Photographic slides because they'retransparent, they can be projected.
And that's how art historywas taught back in the days.
In fact, it was always donewith two images at once.
It was called the comparative method.
(32:35):
So you'd have one slide projector,and these are for anyone
who's not familiar with them.
These are like the round carouselthat goes clunk, kerr clunk.
So you would have one on oneside and one on the other.
Yeah.
Of the classroom.
Yeah, so, so you'd have tohave two, all of the slides in
order and properly matched up.
Yeah.
(32:55):
And so not only professors in art history,but also the students who had to do
presentations would use that method too.
So I quickly became kind of a, amiddle point within the department,
um, working with students and faculty.
I had a big light table and I wouldmake slides for people photographing
images from books and then mountingthem properly and having them
(33:17):
ready for them to use in theirpresentation, but also labeling them.
They had to go in a drawer somewhere.
They had to go be part of the system,
had to be able to find them again.
And so Derek and I really worked out asystem of storing them away based on what
they were and also where they came from.
Who's, who were the artists?
What was the country, you know, what wasthe culture, um, and what was the medium?
(33:40):
And so we had drawers anddrawers of these slides and I,
I just grew it up at the end.
I think they were probably about50,000 slides, and I sort of Wow.
And made a lot of them, uh, uh, anda lot of them, almost all of them
had my handwriting on the labels.
And so, uh, I did that, but I realizedin the, in that process, still being
a, a student and then graduating,I really wanted to know more about,
(34:04):
About the process of putting thingsaway in this sort of, this system.
Mm-hmm.
The idea system of storing thingsand, and a particular interesting
of storing images because they don'thave words associated, you know?
Mm-hmm.
They don't have words in them.
They're not books or they're not,but they're images and how do
you identify an image such thatyou can put it away in a system.
So I found that kind of interesting.
(34:25):
And so I had an opportunity totake a year off from Brock and
go to do the, library science,uh, at Western University.
It was called, um, Libraryand Information Science then.
And, um, and so I went away and,and came back after that year.
But in that year at Western, Ireally could, I really focused on
(34:45):
art librarianship and the whole,uh, interesting conundrum of
how you, how you catalog images.
So, because I felt like Iwas pretty unique that way.
Um, it was my, it was what I focusedon, and I came back with that idea.
I really love being a librarian.
It, it wouldn't be, uh, I wouldn't besuitable in a, an academic setting, like
(35:07):
our own academic library here at James A.
Gibson.
But, but, um, I really felt I belongedwithin the Department of Visual Arts
there, you know, or at least, or atleast working in humanities, which
are, which then used a lot of imagerymm-hmm in order to teach their courses.
Yeah.
So we're coming up soon to actually 10years of the Marilyn , um, the MIW Yes.
(35:29):
Which is, yes, it's 2015.
Yeah.
Yes.
So it's just a couple of years away andI'm just, what, what, what happened?
Um, but you were kind of, you, well, youwere very involved in the learning commons
and that student, student-centered space.
And again, if you could just tellus a little bit about what you
did at the Marilyn and, and whatwas the same, what was different?
(35:50):
Um,
well, well the transition again,that Snow actually, it, it, in
experience from analog to digital,I did too in my, in my work as an
art librarian for the department.
So images had to be digitized.
Classrooms were no longer, uh, equippedwith, uh, with slide projectors.
So profs were, um, had to startdoing their own imagery, getting
(36:12):
it in some digitized form so theycould put it out as a PowerPoint
or however they wish to do it.
There really weren't too many optionsother than PowerPoint, I guess,
because there were no more ideaslike a slide carousel where you could
kind of pick and mix and move thingsaround and, and also there was, uh,
just a single projection usually.
Mm, which changed theformat of a lot of teachers.
They were used to thatcomparative method, so their own.
(36:34):
They would say that pedagogychanged because of that.
That's really interesting.
The connection between the technologychanging and then the pedagogy having
to change to, uh, to reflect that.
I mean, I, that's what we'realways doing, I guess, but,
uh, well, I guess it's a, it, yeah.
Um, it's an argumentative approach.
You could have a, you could have a,like an image of a whole thing and then
a detail of it, or you could, the wayDerek liked to do it, he liked to throw
(36:57):
up things that were to totally, you couldsay a non-sequitur, you know, something
renaissance and something Andy Warhol and,you know, and, and let's talk about it.
Mm-hmm.
Let's talk about how, you know, youknow, he would generate discussions
using that kind of method and it, andI found it really stimulating too.
And so I thought, you know, teacherslike him, instructors like him would
(37:19):
have to change their, change their ways.
You know, having just one image to workwith a whole parade of images if they
wanted, but having, being able to, toshow two at once sometime if I felt
kind of generated more conversation,it was just the way we were taught.
Yeah.
That's why I'm calling it pedagogy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
And um, in the Learning Commons, which isa really beautiful space in the Marilyn,
(37:43):
you were interacting with students.
I know they showed student art inthere, and I remember once that you were
involved in creating a zine library.
Well, you know, I, I was lookingat retirement at that point, and
I had a a, I always like involvingstudents and all my work anyway.
(38:04):
Um, and so I had a student who was keento be a librarian and she had applied to
Western as well and, uh, and I think U ofT and she was waiting to hear from either
one, and I saw some opportunities for, uh,for her to work with me that last summer.
Uh, for one thing, bothmusic and dramatic arts needed
someone to organize their stuff.
(38:25):
They had some interestingthings to organize that.
And I said, fine, you've gotsome, we'll, Someone to do that.
But then we, uh, I'd been to oneof my professional organizations
where at oca, it's OCA now O CADUniversity, uh, that's the Ontario
College of Art and Design in Toronto.
They had a, they showed ustheir zine library when we were
(38:46):
there at some spring meeting.
And I thought, Hmm, this kindof interesting, maybe we can
get students involved in that.
So anyway, I asked the student workingwith me to, um, we went to the zine
library, visited it in Toronto, got asense of what it what's up with it and,
and decided to kind of start our own.
And so there were a number of things tokind of already kind of include in it.
(39:07):
And um, I don't know if it's beencontinued, I don't know if it's been
continued, but I found out that a lotof libraries have, have a primary,
secondary and academic, you know,like beyond, um, libraries and public
libraries have invited zines as a wayfor, um, students and people just to
sort of, um, Identify themselves, telltheir stories, and they take all forms.
(39:31):
And I just love the littlepublications like that.
They're, they're, they're wonderful.
Um, and for anyone who wasn't ateenager in the nineties, that's when I
remembered them and being very popular.
Um, zines are like the social mediabefore we had digital versions of social
media where you made a little magazine,um, and you could maybe photocopy
it, maybe it was a one off and youcould trade them with your friends.
(39:52):
You could sell them.
Um, and there's still even withdigital social media, there is still
a thriving subculture, around these.
And I remember attending a workshop that,uh, that was held down at the Marilyn to
help make, to make zines and to do collage
. I also too, in my generation, we made newsletters, we made, we had little papers
(40:13):
and things like that in high school.
You know, it was, it was mostlyabout doing your own thing.
Mm-hmm.
Telling your own stories, I suppose.
And I, I've, I've actually been on abus a, a couple of times over the years,
and I found a little zine on the bus.
People just leave them behind, youknow, like a little piece of found art.
Yeah.
And so I really, Ireally like that as well.
I love that it's this, ongoing, um, mediumthat just keeps getting rediscovered
(40:37):
by each, each successive generationand kind of reinterpreted a little bit,
but that it's still the whole idea offinding ways to tell our stories and,
and, and share that with other people.
But you know, you realize it's a,it's a tangibleness of it as well.
Mm-hmm.
Like the little bound publicationwas it, you know, however it's bound,
whether it's a zigzag book or whetherit's got a little, you know, it's
(40:57):
got a staple holding it togetheror, but it's, it's a, it's a, it's a
textural, it's a material thing andit's analog and I, there's only so much.
Um, satisfaction I think you canget from like, you know, your,
your cell phone as an object.
Mm-hmm.
It's, it's the useful object, you know,it's, it does all sorts of things for you.
(41:18):
Well, coming back to what you weresaying about snow and the photograph
that you have, that, um, representationof the thing that, you know, the
electricity goes out or your batterydies you still have that representation.
Well, the hand touched it at some point.
Yeah.
You know, it's not art, but but a hand.
But it is art.
(41:38):
Yeah.
But a hand touched it.
Yeah.
In, in a way too.
Yeah.
And, and I have, and even for like,photographs that I really value, like in
my own personal photographs, I make, youknow, I know where they are I keep them.
And other images that were digitalthat I value a lot, well, I've
made them into hard copy as well.
Mm-hmm.
Because I just don't, you know,I, I don't wanna lose them.
(42:00):
I want that, I want a tangible.
Yeah, you know, of my past like that
and that need to be able to organizeimages, um, certainly hasn't abated
if anything, it's probably even morenecessary as we produce more and more,
more images and, um, listeners might liketo, um, refer back or, or, or listen back
to the interview I did with David Sharon,where we talked about this plethora of
(42:23):
digital content that we need people inlibrary sciences, people with archival
training mm-hmm art history training, arttraining to help us kind of come to grips
with all of just the massive quantity.
Figure out, sort it,organize it, make it usable.
Uh,
I remember being in library school andthinking and, and, and saying to one
(42:43):
of, you know, one of my friends, like,I think there's work out there for this.
Uh, and that was, and, and Ihadn't, there was no internet then.
I'd seen the internet as a librarystudent, but most, when I came back here
to Brock, you know, blurbing on aboutthe internet and computers and everything
like, and, you know, and gopher and emailand everything, they all looked at me like
(43:04):
I had like horns, no horns like who, what?
Because I, I, but thatcame very quickly after.
Yeah.
You know, but I remember seeingan image download on the internet,
a jpeg, it took 15 minutes it wasan image from Japan I remember.
And it took 15 minutes for itto download to my computer.
Yeah.
I had a JPEG reader on my computer.
Um, but, but yeah, I felt I was abit ahead ahead like that, but I,
(43:29):
yeah, it was really, uh, it wasreally an exciting time, but I.
But I managed to see through myprofessional organizations that there
was a big change coming to my own work.
Mm-hmm.
The digitizing of all those slidesand, uh, and a new way of teaching and
copyright really intervening in, in manyways and making it so that libraries
(43:50):
couldn't, and, departments couldn'tjust, use anything to teach their
classes, they had to have licensed images.
And, and so a lot of things changedand, um, And so I ended up envisioning
the learning commons, thinking thatwe needed a library sort of space
downtown, even just a study space, ora space for students to congregate.
(44:11):
I wasn't really sure because I'mnot a librarian in that regard,
and I didn't know how much studentswould actually take advantage of it.
You know, but I just, uh, just we were,we were leaving the mothership and
so we had, I felt that we had to havesomething that, that reflected like
what, what the resources on main campus.
So the learning commons was, I don'tknow, uh, if it, well, I don't know
(44:34):
how someone else might have developedit differently, but I like that I
mostly had, um, music students in therebecause it was a quiet space and I found
out that music students like quiet.
Well, and I suppose just like MackenzieChown has changed and evolved over the
decades, um, the Marilyn I W Schoolwill continue to change and evolve
(44:55):
to meet our changes in technology andour, and the needs of our students.
And, um, it's so exciting to talkto somebody who was involved in
that at the very beginning as well.
So I'm gonna wrap up our conversationthere because you and I are gonna
take a little walk and we're gonnago get lost in Mackenzie Chown.
Okay.
Does that sound good?
Let's get lost.
(45:15):
Alright.
Thank you very much for joiningus today and um, listeners, stay
tuned for our bonus episode.
Thank you for listening to ForwardFind your footnotes links to more
information transcripts and past episodeson our website, brock u.ca/humanities.
(45:38):
We love to hear from our listeners,so join us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram at Brock Humanities.
Please subscribe and rate uson your favorite podcasting app
so you don't miss an episode.
Forward is hosted and produced byAlison Innes for the Faculty of
Humanities at Brock University.
Sound editing is by Serena Atallah,and theme music is by Kalam.
(46:02):
This podcast is financiallysupported by the faculty of
Humanities at Brock University.
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