May 1, 2023 • 37 mins
Join our guest Lesley Bell as we take a "Snow walk" through Mackenzie Chown Complex to discuss artist Michael Snow's 1972-1973 installation "Timed Images," the architecture of Raymond Moriyama and the murals by James Sutherland.
View the accompanying 1970s and current images on our special episode webpage Michael Snow Art Walk.
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
S4E09 Getting Lost in Mackenzie Chown with Lesley Bell
Credits
Thank you for listening to Foreword!
Find our footnotes, links to more information, transcripts, and past episodes on our website brocku.ca/humanities.
We love to hear from our listeners! Join us on Twitter and Instagram @brockhumanities.
Please subscribe and rate us on your favourite podcasting app so you don’t miss an episode.
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 Khalid Imam.
This podcast is financially supported by the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
And welcome to our bonus episode ofForeword, where we are walking through
Mackenzie Chow with Leslie Bell, whohas done extensive research into the
building and the artwork, created by thelate artist Michael Snow, specifically
for the space in 1972 and 1973.
So we're starting our tour herein the upper level of Pond Inlet.
(00:28):
And when I look above me, Ican see a gorgeous, huge window
and a mirror on the other side.
And when I look straight out from themezzanine level, there's a beautiful
view of a somewhat chilly, since weare recording in March, a somewhat
chilly, um, but very beautiful pond.
So Leslie, what do you.
(00:49):
What can you tell us about thisspace and what the architect, sorry.
Raymond Moriyama.
Raymond Moriyama What can you tellus about the space and what Moriyama
was trying to do here and whatMichael Snow did in this space?
Yes.
Um, if, if this is a, a collaborativespace, it, this was the beginning space,
like the initial space for MichaelSnow's composition, as he called it.
(01:10):
The composition began right here at frame.
This is timed images
at timed images frame one of timed images,and it was, it was embedded in the wall
of, of this space designed by Moriyama.
Now, the mirrors angled as theyare kind of these, these pyramids
that we have at Mackenzie Chown.
And maybe you're underneath one of thepyramids here, and it brings in light
(01:34):
from above, and then it reflects thatlight back down into the space through
a one of the triangular arrangement ofmirrors that kind of bring that natural
light right back down into you here.
When I was a student, and this wasour student lounge, there were these
beautiful red rug banquettes, likeit was red rug on the floor, went
(01:55):
up all over the banquettes, and thenyou had a mirror wall behind you.
It was like really sixties.
It was just lovely.
60, you know, it had thatsort of shag rug feel.
But because of the rugs, it was likereally this beautiful, muted sound.
And you could just kind of put yourback against those banquettes and
just look at the reflected light.
You could see the pond waterfall and thegreen out there kind of reflected to you.
(02:19):
It was a wonderful, wonderfulspace just to sort of, to
relax and, and do your work.
And we can see that now today.
Looking up now, the, now we are recordingin March, so the waterfall's not turned
on, but you can certainly see, um,the pond being reflected back up to
us and when we've got our back to thewindow and looking up into that mirror.
(02:40):
And, you know, there's one thing thatthat, that it brought to my attention
too, that this is in an institution likethis and changes over time, space takes
on a different, um, uh, value over time.
And maybe in this time at, at,at its construction, we had a lot
more space and a lot more access tothe outside we'll say the visually
(03:02):
outside, but space is a commodity.
And, uh, where this was an academicbuilding, very quickly you need room
for teachers, more room or accommodationfor teaching staff, for faculty, for
meeting rooms and all that stuff.
And so suddenly the spacebecomes chopped up and changed.
And so actually, you know, physicalappearance of a space can change just
(03:25):
because of that sort of changed value
and the changing needs of the institution
Yeah.
And the people using the space.
So, so as we're standing here, um,so Pond Inlet today is, it's used
for conferences it's used for events,but it was originally a cafeteria.
Yeah.
On the main level.
On the main level.
And then up here, as yousaid, was the lounge space.
And we've got this beautiful wallof windows, which is something
(03:48):
that we're going to see throughoutMackenzie Chown actually, because
this is part of Moriyama's um,aesthetic that he's going for about
blurring the inside with the outside
and his use of mirrors, because mirrorsalso reflect and windows reflect and
it was one, so one of Snow's earlyideas that he didn't use was working
(04:11):
with, reflecting in those windows.
And some of these windows,um, daytime and nighttime.
Cuz at nighttime you actually seeyourself as you're looking in,
as if you're looking in a mirror.
Mm-hmm.
If you, you know, on a night, somenight windows, you look, you can
see yourself reflected as if you'relooking in a mirror and then your
image disappears during the day.
And so he had some early ideas aroundworking with windows as well, but in
(04:32):
the end he just chose, um, and maybethrough their mutual discussion, their
collaboration, he was gonna work,first of all with this, this, this wall
behind us that was all clad in mirrorexcept for where the banquettes came
up to about, you know, waist height.
And so as the first piece of Snow's timedimages, it's not here anymore, but can
(04:52):
you tell us what we would have seen Cuzthere was a frame and he works with this
idea of frames and mirrors in all thedifferent pieces we're gonna talk about.
So we're facing the backwall of the mezzanine level
and what would we have seen?
You would've seen a large rectangularshape exposed on the mirror, like,
(05:13):
and the, the shape was really, exposedwall, like the mirror had been cut
away and exposed the wall beneaththe brick wall, concrete brick wall
beneath that had been painted black.
So you have like the idea of a black framesurrounded by silver and in the middle.
Silver too, that silvery.
So it was just the boxoutline of the rectangle.
(05:35):
Yeah.
And so you could stand, it was atthis level, you could stand and look
at yourself, see yourself in themirror that was the center of this
frame, but framed by the black wall.
So you become a picture.
You become an image.
So, and I gotta be honest, as astudent, I sat in the areas here
(05:55):
and I don't remember, I don'tremember seeing that frame here.
I just, I never noticed it.
It's so, it's so fixed,you know, into the space.
I don't remember seeing it.
Well, I have a feeling some of the piecesthat we are going to look at a little
bit later are ones that people haven'tseen, cuz we walk by them all the time.
Alright, so this is thefirst, the first frame.
Did, now did this have a particular name?
(06:17):
It was just frame one.
Frame one.
And I mean, he said that all the, allthat this dispersed composition, which
is what it really is called in hislanguage, he said they could be seen
individually, but I think that the, theyaccumulate and build seen in a sequence.
So, we'll, we're starting with frame one.
And it was this, this,this empty negative space.
(06:38):
We'll call it a negative,negative space shape.
Negative space shape.
Alright, so let's moveon then to frame two.
Mm-hmm.
All right, so we're now at frame two.
We're in the 300 level hallway of D block.
(06:59):
We've got some beautiful, uh, rockdisplays from, uh, the Department of
Earth Sciences, but we also have infront of us this big mirror frame.
It's a mirror frame and it looks like,it looks like a piece of the mirror
wall was lifted right out of pond inletbehind us and moved down the hallway
and just stuck on the hall here.
(07:19):
So you've got the same rectangularframe shape, but made this time of like
bands of mirror, but framing nothing.
Just the empty wall, justthe empty wall behind it.
But across the hall from this,
there's a little box,
little black, built into the wall, alittle black box built in the wall,
and it's put your hand inside it andyou can feel that there's something, a
(07:41):
metaled mount of some kind that there.
But what used to be in this box was a,was a 35 millimeter camera that Snow left.
He used it to document in his words,document, take pictures with it.
And then he left the camera here asan almost an artifact of the event.
And literally part of thebuilding, because this is,
this is built into the wall.
(08:03):
Yeah.
So this was like the camera maybe that,that was facing in, directly in the
center of this frame across from us.
And then he planned around theopening day of the building.
Um, he's invited five peoplefrom the Brock community.
He wanted Brock faculty.
President Gibson was, was one of themembers of it and some students, and
(08:25):
they all walked back and forth asMichael Snow stood where this camera was.
They walked back and forth in front ofit and he snapped many, many pictures.
I've found, like, like contact sheets ofmany, many pictures that he took until
finally he, but he selected one of thesefive or six people walking in front.
He saved one of those photographs andhad it enlarged, and it became the, the
(08:50):
centerpiece of frame number three, whichis further down the hall behind us.
And as our listeners can nodoubt hear in the background,
this is a high traffic hallway.
This is the main hallway throughMackenzie Chown and people
constantly coming and going.
So that frame, and even, evenwithout the camera there, that
frame is constantly changing.
What it sees and what it reflectsback as people walk through.
(09:12):
Because maybe we're, we're trainedin a way to think, you know, you
frame something, you portray itin a way, you know, you make it,
you captured it,
and you make it art, even,you know, something within a
frame, something suddenly isseparated from everything else.
It has an identity of its own.
And so framing became his, he's an artist.
He was a, he was a filmmaker.
So the frame is everything in film, youknow, they get framed by the camera.
(09:36):
Um, so he's speaking about media that way.
So let's go see frame three.
Excellent.
So we are just pausing herein D block where we're moving.
We've got a lovely, beautifulorange and purple and green wall.
We've got lots of studentscoming and going as they come
(09:56):
out of, come out of class.
And we've got a solid wall on,well, as we're headed towards
Schmon Tower on our left.
But you were telling me earlier thatthis solid wall wasn't, wasn't there
originally in Moriyama's building?
No, not at all.
It, it.
It was used, it became infill,I'll call it infill architecture.
(10:17):
It was built almost like to the sideof the Moriyama building on the outside
and covered in all the, the floorceiling walls that we used to have
here that were kind of, you can seefurther along, hasn't been filled in,
but, but here you used to be able tolook out on the, on the pedestrian mall
between here and Cairns, but now it'sall blocked in with academic offices.
(10:39):
And then presumably if you canlook, you can also look in, so
you would be able to look into thebuilding from the outside as well.
And I always kind of wondered about thecolor scheme, but you were telling me
as well that the painting here, the,these, these stripes and chevrons and
that is all part of the original design.
And so I was in touch withJames Sutherland, who's
(11:00):
the, the designer of these.
And he's a public artist in Toronto.
He's done one of the designs for one ofthe subways, I think Spadina in Toronto.
He's, so, he does that kind of work, buthe was invited early on by Moriyama's
firm as well to work with MichaelSnow at the same time as Michael Snow.
And he was doing the stripesand the chevrons as he said.
And uh, because I was in touch with himand I knew that the facilities management
(11:24):
here was interested in restoring them,I got in touch with him and he was able
to provide them again with his originaldiagrams and, and the Pantone color
scheme for it too, so they can match.
So these are what they were originally.
They look beautiful.
I know.
And every time I go by and I seesomething stuck to them, I go, no.
You know, I used to pull all theselittle signs off, like, no, no,
(11:44):
don't you know, but, but yes.
But the idea was, and you canstill see it on in C b lock.
Yep.
If you go across the way and youstand in, we'll say, is it Plaza
Building at night you can look acrossand you can see these graphics.
Are are carried for.
Carried
across the floors?
Yeah, up into the fourth level.
Okay.
Like as a complete kindof complete picture.
(12:06):
It's really a beautiful site atnight, you know, to see that.
But you miss that now here becauseyou can't see through the windows,
you can't see back into thebuilding now it's been blocked.
So again, what you were saying earlier,how we use the space and what we
need from the space and the changesthat happen to any space over time
also affect what the architect wastrying to do and what artists were
originally trying to do in this space.
(12:26):
And I mean in terms of archeology,when I look at the, an early
photograph of frame two, it would,you know, back in that outside geology
reflected in that mirror frame.
You can see open the open space.
You can see windows, you can see a bitof the pond because initially that whole
corridor there was open to pond as well.
(12:47):
Okay.
And so it would've been flooded withnatural light and, and you know,
and that blurring at the outside and theinside that Moriyama had liked to do.
Yeah.
And so that's, that, that, thatwas all, that was all just around
the corner from us as well.
So there was a lot of light oroutdoors coming in from various means
as we would walk through these hallsin the, in the early days, I think.
(13:09):
Okay.
So let's keep headingon to our next frame.
All right, so we're a littlebit further down the hall.
We're now into C block at geographyand tourism is off to the side,
and I'm not seeing any art.
I'm not seeing any frames.
Leslie, what would webe looking at in 1972?
(13:29):
Now you look at the, the doorways forfaculty offices, but there was a wall.
There actually was a wall here, andthis is where you get into archeology.
If you stand beside that wayfinding Cyou know, that says you're in C block.
This is one of the original graphicsthat was part of the building.
So the map that is painted onthe wall was part of the plan.
(13:50):
Right.
Beside it off to the right, yousee some smoother looking brick.
And it was a, it was a film studystudent that took me on a, one of the
Snow walks once and she showed me this.
She had us feeling the wall.
Anyway, this is wherethe video camera lived.
And it faced outwards and,and the workings for inside.
So similar to what we just saw inD block for the still camera, where
(14:13):
it's kind of built into the wall.
Yep.
This was a proper frame with a,with a video camera faced outward
into the corridor across, again,spanning across the corridor where
people were passing in between.
And it was, it was this camerafaced onto another frame, a silver
mirrored frame that held in, withinthe middle of it, the enlarged
(14:35):
photograph of all the walking people.
So the photograph that he took in DBlock was inside a mirror frame where
we now see, uh, the doorway to C 3 12
And so this video camera would be doing a,a constant capture, we'll say, a constant
capture of not only that stationaryphotograph across the hall, but also
the people walking by in the middle.
(14:56):
I don't think it was on.
24 7 or anything like that.
I think whoever went into thisspace, um, at the time would just
maybe flip a switch in the morning,um, you know, and turn it on.
So it was capturing, you know, stuffthat was happening here in the hallways.
Maybe a crowd of studentsgoing by, maybe just a few.
But taking that live feed toa monitor that was down the
(15:19):
hall, further around the hall.
We have a still photograph, but thephotograph is part of an ever-changing
scene as people walk past it.
Yeah.
And he called this, heinvited people to be not only
spectators, but also participant.
And so this is a way, like, it waslike a, a place, not a play space, but
yeah, a play space in terms of plays,you know, like a play action, you know?
(15:43):
Turning kind of like the everyday peoplewalking back and forth into a movie.
He called it fitting into thecasual life of the university.
That's what he wanted to do.
So then you could have yourfriends set up where the video
was and take turns walking past.
Then you begin to see what he's doing.
He's starting to layer time on time.
(16:03):
Okay.
He's, he's layering presenttime on past time, , and maybe a
constant move, constantly changingpresent time on a fixed past time.
You know, he's kind of got the two of themsandwiched right on top of each other.
And then you've got all this stuffhappening in the middle too, you know?
Um, the, almost like the snapshot orthe fleeting part, you know, so it's a,
(16:24):
it's about time for sure now, throughspace, you know, really, and we're
walking from station to station here andaccumulating a bit greater understanding
of time each time we, with eachframe, so to speak, that we come into.
And, and I'm also thinking abouthow we're experiencing the hallway,
because we do have people going by,but I have a tendency in my mind
(16:44):
to think of this hallways fairlystraight for some reason, but it's not.
There's this constant zigzaggingback and you can kind of see around
the corners, but you can't seeall the way around the corners.
So you don't kind of know who you're gonnabump into or what's kind of gonna be there
when, well, you know, around the corner.
I also heard that urban legend, that Brocklegend about crowd control, but that was
(17:06):
not mackenzie Chown no, that was Thistle.
Okay.
Thistle was about, um, keepingpeople moving in straight corridors,
not able to congregate anywhere,just keep them moving straight.
And that was, but it was, it wasI'll call it a natural reaction to
politics at the time cuz students were.
Rebelling across the world in 1968,just when they were starting to build
(17:29):
Brock and build Thistle, they decidedto keep all the corridors straight.
But Mariama in 1972, he's trying tocreate, as you mentioned in our, in our
interview, he's trying to possibly createkind of these happy accidents of bumping
into people or coming out in unexpectedways or having to talk to somebody because
you have no idea where you're going.
(17:49):
Well, you know, look here, we'vegot a pod, but little pods all
along the way, you know, we,this is a, this is a department.
They've got their own little worldin there, like this little village
and this is like a, like a, you know,lane ways or streets on the way to,
from village to village, so to speak.
That's a really interestingway of thinking about that.
Well, I didn't know that architectscall Corridors streets cuz I was
(18:12):
getting pretty excited cuz I thought,oh, they're talking about street
changes and stuff, you know, when I wasreading Moriyama's records, I thought,
Ooh, there's stuff about a street.
That's kind of, but I didn't knowthat's a common terminology that
architects have for corridors.
But then if I was Snow, Iwould've thought, oh, that's
kind of interesting too.
You know, you have the idea ofthe street, you have passers by,
you have, um, people coming andgoing and congregating in that too.
(18:34):
So he, he was capturingthat activity of the street.
And I'm also just thinking as we'rewatching people walk, walk past us,
that in a way, Snow didn't give youa choice about participating in his
art, because just by walking down thecorridor, you're, whether you're aware
of it or not, you're automaticallydrawn into being a part of that artwork.
(18:55):
Yeah.
Even if you don't know.
That's true.
But just like a mirror.
Just like a mirror, which yourimage only exists as long as you're
standing in front of a mirror withthat close capture idea, you know,
you're, you're coming and gone too.
Like there was no recording done.
It was in, in terms ofsaving, it was simply just
capturing and releasing almost.
So again playing it thattime and time and frame.
(19:22):
All right, so now we're kind of at theother end of C Block, just the other
side of the, of the map library, justabout ready to head into the C Bridge.
Um, and you were just tellingme these wonderful bright
green stripes on the wall.
The stripes used to, used to beall part of this hallway as well.
But I'm gonna bring your attention to,um, the, another wall piece of wall
(19:46):
where the bricks have been changed.
All right, I'm seeing it.
We've got, um, portal'schoices, artwork on the right.
Yeah.
So you can see here the slightlydifferent changes in texture, and
they had to touch it up with a greenthat doesn't match the original green,
so it's kind of like here and here.
I don't know.
It was a monitor, so thatwould be like a TV television,
(20:07):
but it also had a frame too.
And, um, I, I don't, I don'tknow if it was mirrored or not.
It's really hard, the original photo.
It could be mirrored, but I, I've beentold that it was a black frame too, so
didn't reflect anything, but I'm not sure.
I can't tell from the photoand nobody else remembers.
So this was playing the imagejust from around the corner.
(20:29):
Yes.
And so people could congregatehere and watch their friends
coming from around the corner.
In fact, it was, we were showing thisto, uh, President Fearon one day, and
he said, oh no he said, stand over hereI could see them in front of the camera
there and see them on the monitor here.
And so, yeah, you couldhave a simultaneous view,
(20:51):
if you know what I mean.
So you had the simultaneity going too,but then again, it could be just one of
those things in the hallway that comesand goes and, and you don't realize.
But I would, I, I think myself, I'dbe standing here watching a lot.
There was, the original ideawas to have a little piece of
mirror, another mirror here.
(21:13):
Just a square, almostthe size of this poster.
So just beside room 330.
But that, that, that got editedat the end and that mirror is now
hanging in geography's lounge.
But I'm thinking it would've beenreally interesting to see what it's
like to watch somebody in your monitor.
(21:33):
You know, and have, have a
reflection of it or like, but,but then you're also in the photo.
Yeah.
Like you're
in that reflection.
You know that when you're, when you'reat the hairdressers and they cut your
hair and then they hold up a mirror foryou see the back of your head and you
realize you can see yourself reflectedseveral times deeply into the mirror.
And I'm wondering whetheryou got that effect too.
(21:55):
I'm wondering whether there wasa mirrored frame around that
monitor which means you've got amirror reflecting a mirror, right?
And people in the middle.
So, I mean, I don'tknow how complex it got.
Well, if any alumni are listening tothis and have memories, please get
in touch because we wanna know more.
All right, so we're gonna keep inthe main corridor here, which veers
(22:18):
slightly to the left, and we're gonnamove into a be bright, beautiful space.
That is the C block bridge.
Yeah.
Like the other bridgewould've been just like this.
So we have got kind of floorto ceiling windows, but we've
also got mirrors on the end.
And that was the sameas the other as well.
(22:38):
So we get this is, thisis the other bridge.
Right.
So that was the way, they were.
Very bright in here.
Um, so again, we've got that playingof the, of the inside and the
outside and we've got a differentcolor scheme and we've got circles.
Um, these are originalas well, the murals?
And he's restored them as well.
Wow.
They're beautiful.
And did you have like the notes andthe colors for these ones as well?
(22:59):
Yeah, it was all part of thesuite and when I got in touch
with, , James Sutherland, he said,oh yeah, he said Michael was working
on his stuff I was doing mine.
You know, like there was a lotof activity going on in that
last summer, you know, before thebuilding opened in the fall of 72.
So yeah.
Excellent.
Alright, next frame.
(23:22):
Okay, so we are now just insideB block and this is so tiny that
you would probably miss it if youweren't really looking for it.
Um, right next to the ladies' bathroom,um, across the hall from B 314.
And what are we looking at, Leslie?
This is, this is the, uh,Michael Snow's self-portrait.
I call it his signature because, but fromour frame one position ,you and I standing
(23:48):
in front of what would've been a mirroredwall in, in the Pond, he also stood in
front of there and photographed himself.
But the picture's beenreproduced in, in a negative.
So what would've been the black exposedbrick is now white showing up white.
And even he, you could look in the littlefigure of, of Michael Snow himself.
He's, he's all in reverse.
And those black rectangles behindhim would've been the windows
(24:11):
looking out into Pond Inlet.
It makes sense now cause I could neverkind of figure out where that picture was
taken or how it, how it was taken, butknowing it's reversed, that makes sense.
And then it's in its ownkind of black frame too.
Yeah.
But, um, so this has always been mountedhere and I mean, they're really mounted.
I hope it never comes off.
It looks pretty secure.
(24:31):
But, but I, I've alwaysbeen interested in this.
I managed to find it in, in theAGO his original photographs
for this, they're all there.
And so he took many photosbefore he finally got a kind of
a pose that he liked, of himself.
This is the old tech, this is filmthat has negatives and positives,
you know, that may be somethingthat's not really understood now is
our technology has evolved so much.
(24:53):
The idea of.
We just put a filter on aphoto in an app kind thing.
Yeah, right.
You know, cuz film having its negativeand positive, but I look at this as
being almost a loop back to frame oneand in a digital world, you know,
we have feedback loops, you know?
Mm-hmm.
He was very interested in sound,Snow was as well, being a filmmaker.
And that's one thing, thisinstallation doesn't have the sound.
(25:14):
And for a musician that'skind of interesting.
There's no sound in it, but I thinkthis is a feedback to frame one,
but it's also his, his own portrait.
And it's interesting how small he is.
Um, and I don't know if that's justthe scale or if he's deliberately
done that, that he's a verysmall figure in that picture.
He's standing back.
Far enough away probably where wewere standing overlooking far enough
(25:36):
away just to get themselves there.
He took a number of picturesand this is the one he chose.
Yeah.
Excellent.
Alright, so we seem to have timedthings during class change, um, but
we've got some more space to look at.
Just all, just two more.
Oh, we got this.
Right around the corner already.
Yes.
(25:56):
I almost forgot about this piece.
So we are right outside of psychology.
Right outside of B 313, I guess on ourleft is, um, Indigenous student space and
the elevator, and what are we looking at?
We're looking at a bunch of rectanglesnested inside each other, and I never
understood this walking by because it,it always seemed kind of so jarring.
(26:17):
We've got the same paint color schemefrom, from the previous block, but
we've got this weird rectangle motif
.And it's really obvious that it's, it's painted in with the original
stripes and chevrons on the wall too.
So it had a reason for being here, butI didn't even notice it myself for a
while because you can see little drilledholes here, there was a, a bulletin board
(26:40):
board that almost entirely covered it.
Alright, well we're glad thatthat's not there so we can see it.
So, I'm guessing we're looking at frames!
That was removed and I, I took apicture of it one day and then thought,
because I had found through researchupstairs, in the archives, I finally
had almost like Snow's plans forall the dimensions of these frames.
(27:01):
And I thought, okay, I have theoutside dimensions of these frames.
And I started on the picture justwriting down, you know, so, so high,
so wide, so high, so wide, you know,and, and realizing I was looking at
all the frames for frames, one to five.
These are all the dimensions rightdown to the size of one of the
photographs that we're going to lookat further on the, on the photo essay.
(27:23):
That's amazing.
So this big outer rectangle, that wasthe one we would've seen in Pond inlet.
Would've been pond.
And then kind of the next wide one
could have been the one in the hallway.
They're all kind of nested each
Yeah, they're all each other right down.
So this one must have been the onethat we just saw with the self-portrait
that was about the right size.
But, it was just one of those thingsthat I thought, I realized one day I'm
(27:46):
looking at, this is like a, anothermap for the whole installation is
as much a map as any of the mapsthat are painted on the walls here.
Well, because I was like, I was quitepleased to find in his, in the records
that he had completely laid this outand he was very exact and he, designed
this graphic as well and it was indeedjust everything to do with timed images.
(28:06):
No one even film studies themselveshadn't really realized it Well, how
could they, if it's covered up, youknow, so, I put it together for them
too, and we were all really happy.
And we're still walking past it andnot even really paying attention to
it, but it's still kind of there.
yeah, but also, I think, I'mnot a filmmaker, but don't
they do this sort of framing?
Um, it's like deep space, so, yeah.
(28:27):
Yeah.
Um, I'm trying to think in the, I'veseen something like that, you know, in
order to try to, to center your shots,so to speak, it's almost like having a
grid screen on your camera, you know?
All right, so we've gotanother piece to look at.
Well, we have, if you look at whatwe've just seen, timed images is a
portrait of the people in this building.
I mean, it was designed to be abuilding for people, for students,
(28:48):
for faculty, academics, and so timedimages is really a portrait of them.
And it's concluded with his own littleself-portrait of him, but he's embedded
himself in the architecture too.
That's wonderful.
I thought of, you know, I thoughtlater that the negativity of it,
that it puts him a bit apart.
(29:09):
He's a, he's a, he is a part ofeverything, but he's apart of it.
He's a, he's away from it too.
Yeah.
He's separated himselffrom, he's the maker.
You know, so we've kind of seenhimself showing himself as a negative.
I don't know if that's interesting or not.
Here at the corner of B Block, wehave another one of these beautiful
maps that is painted on, um, andpart of that original design.
(29:33):
So as we enter into A block, thisis, I think of this as like the
big junction in the university.
We've got, um, the hallway thatgoes down towards Tim Hortons.
We've got the hallway that goes off intothe Goodman School of Business and we've
got this bizarre black line in the floor.
Interesting.
And there's not any art here, butthere was art before there was the
(29:54):
hallway to Goodman School of Business.
Well, you know, if you look at timedimages as, as the portrait of the
people, this became a photo essaywas on this wall, you would've walked
towards it coming in towards A blockhere, would've walked right up to it.
It was a floor to ceiling mural.
Like he, it was actually a wall made ofphotograph, 1600 photographs, all taken of
(30:16):
the building, of the building of MackenzieChown at, at conclusion of it, just, you
know, the conclusion of the architecturewhen everything is being wrapped up.
He came here one day with his cameraand he took hundreds of photographs of
Mackenzie Chown, black and white photos.
And 1600 of them, he collaged intothis massive wall sized photograph.
(30:38):
He called it a simultaneousphotograph, which I kind of like.
Because everything ishappening all at once.
All those pictures are all clickingoff at the same time in a way.
So that is, so that photo pieceis now in this stairwell of A
block, and we will move down thereto talk about it in more detail.
Right now we're looking at a display case.
But that's where that would have been.
(30:58):
And so you would have walked throughMackenzie Chown, you would've walked
through the building, and I imagineyou, your perception of what was here
would've changed as you got closer to it.
You walk right up to it.
Yeah.
You just walk right up to it.
But there's an, I have an anecdote thatone prof one day was walking along this
hallway on her way to teach a seminarand she could see the flurry of dust
(31:21):
or something up here at the corner, menon ladders and they were taking that
they were taking, pulling it apart, theywere pulling the big photo essay off the
wall because they were about to buildthe extension over to the Taro building.
Which is now Goodman.
Yeah.
And so she went, oh my gosh.
And so she ran back, ran to thedean of humanities office and said,
(31:42):
phone the tower, tell them to stop.
That's a Michael Snowthey're tearing down.
So they stopped that happening andthought, okay, what do we do now?
Well the, the size of piece is 16 feetby 12 feet, so there's not many places
you can move something that large.
So they moved it down the halland it's now in the stairwell.
The only large space theycould find to hang it.
(32:03):
All right, so it's changed thewhole viewing experience, which
we can find when we walk there.
You no longer can walk up to it.
You have to like see iton go up and down stairs.
Yeah, to walk to look at it.
Alright, let's go take a look.
All right, so we're now in A block.
We're at the top of the stairs, butwe're kind of on that little hallway
(32:25):
to the side that goes out on the roof.
Behind us, we've got another one ofthose painted maps with black and white
chevrons, but when we turn around,we see this amazing photo mosaic.
So it's a little bit hard to, I guess,to kind of take it all in now because we
don't have that uninterrupted view that wewould've originally have had of the piece.
(32:49):
So you were saying there were 1600 photos?
Yeah.
And, and they were done.
He took these photos with a sortof a program, um, and that it
mean he had a predetermined ideawhat he was gonna photograph.
So he started with the sky.
You know, layers and layers of sky photos.
And then you start coming down on the topsof the buildings and then down through
(33:10):
the layers of the buildings of the, of,of this new building, this Mackenzie
Chown coming right down to the groundand then going into little details.
Now we're looking at it right nowfrom across the way you can sort of
see it, it is like a film in places.
You can see movement, you can seeswooping and changing, there's some
lovely curiosities going on in there.
I look at this as, this isthe portrait of the building.
(33:32):
Um, which is, I thought wasa lovely way to conclude.
It's not, it's not part of timedimages per se, but it was almost
like, I don't know what inmusical terms, what it would be.
Uh, something at the endthat's a coda perhaps.
You come to the end of the hallwayhaving left the procession of
Timed Images frames, and then cometowards A block and see ahead of
you this floor to ceiling mosaic.
(33:55):
And I'm sure that was one thing peoplewere walking towards and looking at.
And I imagine it would've hada very cinematic quality to it,
because as you're moving towardsit, it's gonna be changing.
What you're seeing in it is gonna be kindof changing and you're, um, it reminds me
a little bit of, and I don't know a lotabout art history, but it reminds me a
little bit of some of that cubist stuffwhere they're trying to show multiple
(34:15):
perspectives all in the same image.
A free mobile perspective.
That's the word for it.
Okay.
But think we also have reallyfine details in there too.
You can see that texture.
And he's got his ownself portrait in there.
Really.
He photographed himself,reflected in glass.
The glass of the Pond Inlet,he's photographed himself there.
I'm not gonna let you tell me whichone it is, because someday when I've
(34:38):
got time to spare, I wanna look inthere and find and find that myself.
It's down near the bottom wheremost artists sign their work.
Um, but yeah, he's, but he's,there's a lot of play going on there.
He's looking, he, I think he had a lotof delight in taking those photographs.
Mm-hmm.
He was looking, it's atribute to the building.
You know, it's a tribute tothe architecture, really.
(35:00):
Um, and, uh, I just, I, I still can'tget over how it is very free moving
of mobile perspective for sure.
You think that still images are, inhis parlance, they were fixed, you
know, fixed and not moving, and yetall placed like this, this composite
photograph has a lot of movement in it.
(35:21):
And I seem to recall you telling methat in your research you found some
documentation of where he stood indifferent places to get the photographs?
He has a whole map.
So he drew, he drew himselfof, I mean, he really intuitive
artist, but highly organized.
I mean, when I said I, I encountereda wad of papers in file folders that
(35:41):
he kept all the stuff he kept on the,these constructions and his thoughts.
I mean, really, there was a lotgoing on in his mind, you know.
Well, I want to thank you for taking thetime today to walk through Mackenzie Chown
with me and help me see it with new eyes.
Um, Because I definitely saw it as avery confusing place to navigate, when I
(36:02):
was a student here and when I was TAingand whatnot, trying to find places.
You know, a little frustrating whenyou're late for classes, as I always
say, but now that you've explained tome what the architect is trying to do,
what, what the art was doing, it givesme a different perspective on it and
it, it makes the building a bit more funand playful, and I, I can see that now.
I hope our listeners have alsogotten that out of our tour today.
(36:23):
And maybe if you are on campus, plug inthis episode and go on a little walk.
So thank you so much, Leslie.
You're very welcome.
Thank you for listening to ForwardFind your footnotes links to more
information transcripts and past episodeson our website, brock u.ca/humanities.
(36:45):
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 byAllison Innis for the Faculty of
Humanities at Brock university.
Sound editing is by Serena Atallah,and theme music is by Khalid Imam.
(37:08):
This podcast is financiallysupported by the faculty of
humanities at Brock University.
And welcome to our bonus episode ofForeword, where we are walking through
Mackenzie Chow with Leslie Bell, whohas done extensive research into the
building and the artwork, created by thelate artist Michael Snow, specifically
for the space in 1972 and 1973.
So we're starting our tour herein the upper level of Pond Inlet.
(00:28):
And when I look above me, Ican see a gorgeous, huge window
and a mirror on the other side.
And when I look straight out from themezzanine level, there's a beautiful
view of a somewhat chilly, since weare recording in March, a somewhat
chilly, um, but very beautiful pond.
So Leslie, what do you.
(00:49):
What can you tell us about thisspace and what the architect, sorry.
Raymond Moriyama.
Raymond Moriyama What can you tellus about the space and what Moriyama
was trying to do here and whatMichael Snow did in this space?
Yes.
Um, if, if this is a, a collaborativespace, it, this was the beginning space,
like the initial space for MichaelSnow's composition, as he called it.
(01:10):
The composition began right here at frame.
This is timed images
at timed images frame one of timed images,and it was, it was embedded in the wall
of, of this space designed by Moriyama.
Now, the mirrors angled as theyare kind of these, these pyramids
that we have at Mackenzie Chown.
And maybe you're underneath one of thepyramids here, and it brings in light
(01:34):
from above, and then it reflects thatlight back down into the space through
a one of the triangular arrangement ofmirrors that kind of bring that natural
light right back down into you here.
When I was a student, and this wasour student lounge, there were these
beautiful red rug banquettes, likeit was red rug on the floor, went
(01:55):
up all over the banquettes, and thenyou had a mirror wall behind you.
It was like really sixties.
It was just lovely.
60, you know, it had thatsort of shag rug feel.
But because of the rugs, it was likereally this beautiful, muted sound.
And you could just kind of put yourback against those banquettes and
just look at the reflected light.
You could see the pond waterfall and thegreen out there kind of reflected to you.
(02:19):
It was a wonderful, wonderfulspace just to sort of, to
relax and, and do your work.
And we can see that now today.
Looking up now, the, now we are recordingin March, so the waterfall's not turned
on, but you can certainly see, um,the pond being reflected back up to
us and when we've got our back to thewindow and looking up into that mirror.
(02:40):
And, you know, there's one thing thatthat, that it brought to my attention
too, that this is in an institution likethis and changes over time, space takes
on a different, um, uh, value over time.
And maybe in this time at, at,at its construction, we had a lot
more space and a lot more access tothe outside we'll say the visually
(03:02):
outside, but space is a commodity.
And, uh, where this was an academicbuilding, very quickly you need room
for teachers, more room or accommodationfor teaching staff, for faculty, for
meeting rooms and all that stuff.
And so suddenly the spacebecomes chopped up and changed.
And so actually, you know, physicalappearance of a space can change just
(03:25):
because of that sort of changed value
and the changing needs of the institution
Yeah.
And the people using the space.
So, so as we're standing here, um,so Pond Inlet today is, it's used
for conferences it's used for events,but it was originally a cafeteria.
Yeah.
On the main level.
On the main level.
And then up here, as yousaid, was the lounge space.
And we've got this beautiful wallof windows, which is something
(03:48):
that we're going to see throughoutMackenzie Chown actually, because
this is part of Moriyama's um,aesthetic that he's going for about
blurring the inside with the outside
and his use of mirrors, because mirrorsalso reflect and windows reflect and
it was one, so one of Snow's earlyideas that he didn't use was working
(04:11):
with, reflecting in those windows.
And some of these windows,um, daytime and nighttime.
Cuz at nighttime you actually seeyourself as you're looking in,
as if you're looking in a mirror.
Mm-hmm.
If you, you know, on a night, somenight windows, you look, you can
see yourself reflected as if you'relooking in a mirror and then your
image disappears during the day.
And so he had some early ideas aroundworking with windows as well, but in
(04:32):
the end he just chose, um, and maybethrough their mutual discussion, their
collaboration, he was gonna work,first of all with this, this, this wall
behind us that was all clad in mirrorexcept for where the banquettes came
up to about, you know, waist height.
And so as the first piece of Snow's timedimages, it's not here anymore, but can
(04:52):
you tell us what we would have seen Cuzthere was a frame and he works with this
idea of frames and mirrors in all thedifferent pieces we're gonna talk about.
So we're facing the backwall of the mezzanine level
and what would we have seen?
You would've seen a large rectangularshape exposed on the mirror, like,
(05:13):
and the, the shape was really, exposedwall, like the mirror had been cut
away and exposed the wall beneaththe brick wall, concrete brick wall
beneath that had been painted black.
So you have like the idea of a black framesurrounded by silver and in the middle.
Silver too, that silvery.
So it was just the boxoutline of the rectangle.
(05:35):
Yeah.
And so you could stand, it was atthis level, you could stand and look
at yourself, see yourself in themirror that was the center of this
frame, but framed by the black wall.
So you become a picture.
You become an image.
So, and I gotta be honest, as astudent, I sat in the areas here
(05:55):
and I don't remember, I don'tremember seeing that frame here.
I just, I never noticed it.
It's so, it's so fixed,you know, into the space.
I don't remember seeing it.
Well, I have a feeling some of the piecesthat we are going to look at a little
bit later are ones that people haven'tseen, cuz we walk by them all the time.
Alright, so this is thefirst, the first frame.
Did, now did this have a particular name?
(06:17):
It was just frame one.
Frame one.
And I mean, he said that all the, allthat this dispersed composition, which
is what it really is called in hislanguage, he said they could be seen
individually, but I think that the, theyaccumulate and build seen in a sequence.
So, we'll, we're starting with frame one.
And it was this, this,this empty negative space.
(06:38):
We'll call it a negative,negative space shape.
Negative space shape.
Alright, so let's moveon then to frame two.
Mm-hmm.
All right, so we're now at frame two.
We're in the 300 level hallway of D block.
(06:59):
We've got some beautiful, uh, rockdisplays from, uh, the Department of
Earth Sciences, but we also have infront of us this big mirror frame.
It's a mirror frame and it looks like,it looks like a piece of the mirror
wall was lifted right out of pond inletbehind us and moved down the hallway
and just stuck on the hall here.
(07:19):
So you've got the same rectangularframe shape, but made this time of like
bands of mirror, but framing nothing.
Just the empty wall, justthe empty wall behind it.
But across the hall from this,
there's a little box,
little black, built into the wall, alittle black box built in the wall,
and it's put your hand inside it andyou can feel that there's something, a
(07:41):
metaled mount of some kind that there.
But what used to be in this box was a,was a 35 millimeter camera that Snow left.
He used it to document in his words,document, take pictures with it.
And then he left the camera here asan almost an artifact of the event.
And literally part of thebuilding, because this is,
this is built into the wall.
(08:03):
Yeah.
So this was like the camera maybe that,that was facing in, directly in the
center of this frame across from us.
And then he planned around theopening day of the building.
Um, he's invited five peoplefrom the Brock community.
He wanted Brock faculty.
President Gibson was, was one of themembers of it and some students, and
(08:25):
they all walked back and forth asMichael Snow stood where this camera was.
They walked back and forth in front ofit and he snapped many, many pictures.
I've found, like, like contact sheets ofmany, many pictures that he took until
finally he, but he selected one of thesefive or six people walking in front.
He saved one of those photographs andhad it enlarged, and it became the, the
(08:50):
centerpiece of frame number three, whichis further down the hall behind us.
And as our listeners can nodoubt hear in the background,
this is a high traffic hallway.
This is the main hallway throughMackenzie Chown and people
constantly coming and going.
So that frame, and even, evenwithout the camera there, that
frame is constantly changing.
What it sees and what it reflectsback as people walk through.
(09:12):
Because maybe we're, we're trainedin a way to think, you know, you
frame something, you portray itin a way, you know, you make it,
you captured it,
and you make it art, even,you know, something within a
frame, something suddenly isseparated from everything else.
It has an identity of its own.
And so framing became his, he's an artist.
He was a, he was a filmmaker.
So the frame is everything in film, youknow, they get framed by the camera.
(09:36):
Um, so he's speaking about media that way.
So let's go see frame three.
Excellent.
So we are just pausing herein D block where we're moving.
We've got a lovely, beautifulorange and purple and green wall.
We've got lots of studentscoming and going as they come
(09:56):
out of, come out of class.
And we've got a solid wall on,well, as we're headed towards
Schmon Tower on our left.
But you were telling me earlier thatthis solid wall wasn't, wasn't there
originally in Moriyama's building?
No, not at all.
It, it.
It was used, it became infill,I'll call it infill architecture.
(10:17):
It was built almost like to the sideof the Moriyama building on the outside
and covered in all the, the floorceiling walls that we used to have
here that were kind of, you can seefurther along, hasn't been filled in,
but, but here you used to be able tolook out on the, on the pedestrian mall
between here and Cairns, but now it'sall blocked in with academic offices.
(10:39):
And then presumably if you canlook, you can also look in, so
you would be able to look into thebuilding from the outside as well.
And I always kind of wondered about thecolor scheme, but you were telling me
as well that the painting here, the,these, these stripes and chevrons and
that is all part of the original design.
And so I was in touch withJames Sutherland, who's
(11:00):
the, the designer of these.
And he's a public artist in Toronto.
He's done one of the designs for one ofthe subways, I think Spadina in Toronto.
He's, so, he does that kind of work, buthe was invited early on by Moriyama's
firm as well to work with MichaelSnow at the same time as Michael Snow.
And he was doing the stripesand the chevrons as he said.
And uh, because I was in touch with himand I knew that the facilities management
(11:24):
here was interested in restoring them,I got in touch with him and he was able
to provide them again with his originaldiagrams and, and the Pantone color
scheme for it too, so they can match.
So these are what they were originally.
They look beautiful.
I know.
And every time I go by and I seesomething stuck to them, I go, no.
You know, I used to pull all theselittle signs off, like, no, no,
(11:44):
don't you know, but, but yes.
But the idea was, and you canstill see it on in C b lock.
Yep.
If you go across the way and youstand in, we'll say, is it Plaza
Building at night you can look acrossand you can see these graphics.
Are are carried for.
Carried
across the floors?
Yeah, up into the fourth level.
Okay.
Like as a complete kindof complete picture.
(12:06):
It's really a beautiful site atnight, you know, to see that.
But you miss that now here becauseyou can't see through the windows,
you can't see back into thebuilding now it's been blocked.
So again, what you were saying earlier,how we use the space and what we
need from the space and the changesthat happen to any space over time
also affect what the architect wastrying to do and what artists were
originally trying to do in this space.
(12:26):
And I mean in terms of archeology,when I look at the, an early
photograph of frame two, it would,you know, back in that outside geology
reflected in that mirror frame.
You can see open the open space.
You can see windows, you can see a bitof the pond because initially that whole
corridor there was open to pond as well.
(12:47):
Okay.
And so it would've been flooded withnatural light and, and you know,
and that blurring at the outside and theinside that Moriyama had liked to do.
Yeah.
And so that's, that, that, thatwas all, that was all just around
the corner from us as well.
So there was a lot of light oroutdoors coming in from various means
as we would walk through these hallsin the, in the early days, I think.
(13:09):
Okay.
So let's keep headingon to our next frame.
All right, so we're a littlebit further down the hall.
We're now into C block at geographyand tourism is off to the side,
and I'm not seeing any art.
I'm not seeing any frames.
Leslie, what would webe looking at in 1972?
(13:29):
Now you look at the, the doorways forfaculty offices, but there was a wall.
There actually was a wall here, andthis is where you get into archeology.
If you stand beside that wayfinding Cyou know, that says you're in C block.
This is one of the original graphicsthat was part of the building.
So the map that is painted onthe wall was part of the plan.
(13:50):
Right.
Beside it off to the right, yousee some smoother looking brick.
And it was a, it was a film studystudent that took me on a, one of the
Snow walks once and she showed me this.
She had us feeling the wall.
Anyway, this is wherethe video camera lived.
And it faced outwards and,and the workings for inside.
So similar to what we just saw inD block for the still camera, where
(14:13):
it's kind of built into the wall.
Yep.
This was a proper frame with a,with a video camera faced outward
into the corridor across, again,spanning across the corridor where
people were passing in between.
And it was, it was this camerafaced onto another frame, a silver
mirrored frame that held in, withinthe middle of it, the enlarged
(14:35):
photograph of all the walking people.
So the photograph that he took in DBlock was inside a mirror frame where
we now see, uh, the doorway to C 3 12
And so this video camera would be doing a,a constant capture, we'll say, a constant
capture of not only that stationaryphotograph across the hall, but also
the people walking by in the middle.
(14:56):
I don't think it was on.
24 7 or anything like that.
I think whoever went into thisspace, um, at the time would just
maybe flip a switch in the morning,um, you know, and turn it on.
So it was capturing, you know, stuffthat was happening here in the hallways.
Maybe a crowd of studentsgoing by, maybe just a few.
But taking that live feed toa monitor that was down the
(15:19):
hall, further around the hall.
We have a still photograph, but thephotograph is part of an ever-changing
scene as people walk past it.
Yeah.
And he called this, heinvited people to be not only
spectators, but also participant.
And so this is a way, like, it waslike a, a place, not a play space, but
yeah, a play space in terms of plays,you know, like a play action, you know?
(15:43):
Turning kind of like the everyday peoplewalking back and forth into a movie.
He called it fitting into thecasual life of the university.
That's what he wanted to do.
So then you could have yourfriends set up where the video
was and take turns walking past.
Then you begin to see what he's doing.
He's starting to layer time on time.
(16:03):
Okay.
He's, he's layering presenttime on past time, , and maybe a
constant move, constantly changingpresent time on a fixed past time.
You know, he's kind of got the two of themsandwiched right on top of each other.
And then you've got all this stuffhappening in the middle too, you know?
Um, the, almost like the snapshot orthe fleeting part, you know, so it's a,
(16:24):
it's about time for sure now, throughspace, you know, really, and we're
walking from station to station here andaccumulating a bit greater understanding
of time each time we, with eachframe, so to speak, that we come into.
And, and I'm also thinking abouthow we're experiencing the hallway,
because we do have people going by,but I have a tendency in my mind
(16:44):
to think of this hallways fairlystraight for some reason, but it's not.
There's this constant zigzaggingback and you can kind of see around
the corners, but you can't seeall the way around the corners.
So you don't kind of know who you're gonnabump into or what's kind of gonna be there
when, well, you know, around the corner.
I also heard that urban legend, that Brocklegend about crowd control, but that was
(17:06):
not mackenzie Chown no, that was Thistle.
Okay.
Thistle was about, um, keepingpeople moving in straight corridors,
not able to congregate anywhere,just keep them moving straight.
And that was, but it was, it wasI'll call it a natural reaction to
politics at the time cuz students were.
Rebelling across the world in 1968,just when they were starting to build
(17:29):
Brock and build Thistle, they decidedto keep all the corridors straight.
But Mariama in 1972, he's trying tocreate, as you mentioned in our, in our
interview, he's trying to possibly createkind of these happy accidents of bumping
into people or coming out in unexpectedways or having to talk to somebody because
you have no idea where you're going.
(17:49):
Well, you know, look here, we'vegot a pod, but little pods all
along the way, you know, we,this is a, this is a department.
They've got their own little worldin there, like this little village
and this is like a, like a, you know,lane ways or streets on the way to,
from village to village, so to speak.
That's a really interestingway of thinking about that.
Well, I didn't know that architectscall Corridors streets cuz I was
(18:12):
getting pretty excited cuz I thought,oh, they're talking about street
changes and stuff, you know, when I wasreading Moriyama's records, I thought,
Ooh, there's stuff about a street.
That's kind of, but I didn't knowthat's a common terminology that
architects have for corridors.
But then if I was Snow, Iwould've thought, oh, that's
kind of interesting too.
You know, you have the idea ofthe street, you have passers by,
you have, um, people coming andgoing and congregating in that too.
(18:34):
So he, he was capturingthat activity of the street.
And I'm also just thinking as we'rewatching people walk, walk past us,
that in a way, Snow didn't give youa choice about participating in his
art, because just by walking down thecorridor, you're, whether you're aware
of it or not, you're automaticallydrawn into being a part of that artwork.
(18:55):
Yeah.
Even if you don't know.
That's true.
But just like a mirror.
Just like a mirror, which yourimage only exists as long as you're
standing in front of a mirror withthat close capture idea, you know,
you're, you're coming and gone too.
Like there was no recording done.
It was in, in terms ofsaving, it was simply just
capturing and releasing almost.
So again playing it thattime and time and frame.
(19:22):
All right, so now we're kind of at theother end of C Block, just the other
side of the, of the map library, justabout ready to head into the C Bridge.
Um, and you were just tellingme these wonderful bright
green stripes on the wall.
The stripes used to, used to beall part of this hallway as well.
But I'm gonna bring your attention to,um, the, another wall piece of wall
(19:46):
where the bricks have been changed.
All right, I'm seeing it.
We've got, um, portal'schoices, artwork on the right.
Yeah.
So you can see here the slightlydifferent changes in texture, and
they had to touch it up with a greenthat doesn't match the original green,
so it's kind of like here and here.
I don't know.
It was a monitor, so thatwould be like a TV television,
(20:07):
but it also had a frame too.
And, um, I, I don't, I don'tknow if it was mirrored or not.
It's really hard, the original photo.
It could be mirrored, but I, I've beentold that it was a black frame too, so
didn't reflect anything, but I'm not sure.
I can't tell from the photoand nobody else remembers.
So this was playing the imagejust from around the corner.
(20:29):
Yes.
And so people could congregatehere and watch their friends
coming from around the corner.
In fact, it was, we were showing thisto, uh, President Fearon one day, and
he said, oh no he said, stand over hereI could see them in front of the camera
there and see them on the monitor here.
And so, yeah, you couldhave a simultaneous view,
(20:51):
if you know what I mean.
So you had the simultaneity going too,but then again, it could be just one of
those things in the hallway that comesand goes and, and you don't realize.
But I would, I, I think myself, I'dbe standing here watching a lot.
There was, the original ideawas to have a little piece of
mirror, another mirror here.
(21:13):
Just a square, almostthe size of this poster.
So just beside room 330.
But that, that, that got editedat the end and that mirror is now
hanging in geography's lounge.
But I'm thinking it would've beenreally interesting to see what it's
like to watch somebody in your monitor.
(21:33):
You know, and have, have a
reflection of it or like, but,but then you're also in the photo.
Yeah.
Like you're
in that reflection.
You know that when you're, when you'reat the hairdressers and they cut your
hair and then they hold up a mirror foryou see the back of your head and you
realize you can see yourself reflectedseveral times deeply into the mirror.
And I'm wondering whetheryou got that effect too.
(21:55):
I'm wondering whether there wasa mirrored frame around that
monitor which means you've got amirror reflecting a mirror, right?
And people in the middle.
So, I mean, I don'tknow how complex it got.
Well, if any alumni are listening tothis and have memories, please get
in touch because we wanna know more.
All right, so we're gonna keep inthe main corridor here, which veers
(22:18):
slightly to the left, and we're gonnamove into a be bright, beautiful space.
That is the C block bridge.
Yeah.
Like the other bridgewould've been just like this.
So we have got kind of floorto ceiling windows, but we've
also got mirrors on the end.
And that was the sameas the other as well.
(22:38):
So we get this is, thisis the other bridge.
Right.
So that was the way, they were.
Very bright in here.
Um, so again, we've got that playingof the, of the inside and the
outside and we've got a differentcolor scheme and we've got circles.
Um, these are originalas well, the murals?
And he's restored them as well.
Wow.
They're beautiful.
And did you have like the notes andthe colors for these ones as well?
(22:59):
Yeah, it was all part of thesuite and when I got in touch
with, , James Sutherland, he said,oh yeah, he said Michael was working
on his stuff I was doing mine.
You know, like there was a lotof activity going on in that
last summer, you know, before thebuilding opened in the fall of 72.
So yeah.
Excellent.
Alright, next frame.
(23:22):
Okay, so we are now just insideB block and this is so tiny that
you would probably miss it if youweren't really looking for it.
Um, right next to the ladies' bathroom,um, across the hall from B 314.
And what are we looking at, Leslie?
This is, this is the, uh,Michael Snow's self-portrait.
I call it his signature because, but fromour frame one position ,you and I standing
(23:48):
in front of what would've been a mirroredwall in, in the Pond, he also stood in
front of there and photographed himself.
But the picture's beenreproduced in, in a negative.
So what would've been the black exposedbrick is now white showing up white.
And even he, you could look in the littlefigure of, of Michael Snow himself.
He's, he's all in reverse.
And those black rectangles behindhim would've been the windows
(24:11):
looking out into Pond Inlet.
It makes sense now cause I could neverkind of figure out where that picture was
taken or how it, how it was taken, butknowing it's reversed, that makes sense.
And then it's in its ownkind of black frame too.
Yeah.
But, um, so this has always been mountedhere and I mean, they're really mounted.
I hope it never comes off.
It looks pretty secure.
(24:31):
But, but I, I've alwaysbeen interested in this.
I managed to find it in, in theAGO his original photographs
for this, they're all there.
And so he took many photosbefore he finally got a kind of
a pose that he liked, of himself.
This is the old tech, this is filmthat has negatives and positives,
you know, that may be somethingthat's not really understood now is
our technology has evolved so much.
(24:53):
The idea of.
We just put a filter on aphoto in an app kind thing.
Yeah, right.
You know, cuz film having its negativeand positive, but I look at this as
being almost a loop back to frame oneand in a digital world, you know,
we have feedback loops, you know?
Mm-hmm.
He was very interested in sound,Snow was as well, being a filmmaker.
And that's one thing, thisinstallation doesn't have the sound.
(25:14):
And for a musician that'skind of interesting.
There's no sound in it, but I thinkthis is a feedback to frame one,
but it's also his, his own portrait.
And it's interesting how small he is.
Um, and I don't know if that's justthe scale or if he's deliberately
done that, that he's a verysmall figure in that picture.
He's standing back.
Far enough away probably where wewere standing overlooking far enough
(25:36):
away just to get themselves there.
He took a number of picturesand this is the one he chose.
Yeah.
Excellent.
Alright, so we seem to have timedthings during class change, um, but
we've got some more space to look at.
Just all, just two more.
Oh, we got this.
Right around the corner already.
Yes.
(25:56):
I almost forgot about this piece.
So we are right outside of psychology.
Right outside of B 313, I guess on ourleft is, um, Indigenous student space and
the elevator, and what are we looking at?
We're looking at a bunch of rectanglesnested inside each other, and I never
understood this walking by because it,it always seemed kind of so jarring.
(26:17):
We've got the same paint color schemefrom, from the previous block, but
we've got this weird rectangle motif
.And it's really obvious that it's, it's painted in with the original
stripes and chevrons on the wall too.
So it had a reason for being here, butI didn't even notice it myself for a
while because you can see little drilledholes here, there was a, a bulletin board
(26:40):
board that almost entirely covered it.
Alright, well we're glad thatthat's not there so we can see it.
So, I'm guessing we're looking at frames!
That was removed and I, I took apicture of it one day and then thought,
because I had found through researchupstairs, in the archives, I finally
had almost like Snow's plans forall the dimensions of these frames.
(27:01):
And I thought, okay, I have theoutside dimensions of these frames.
And I started on the picture justwriting down, you know, so, so high,
so wide, so high, so wide, you know,and, and realizing I was looking at
all the frames for frames, one to five.
These are all the dimensions rightdown to the size of one of the
photographs that we're going to lookat further on the, on the photo essay.
(27:23):
That's amazing.
So this big outer rectangle, that wasthe one we would've seen in Pond inlet.
Would've been pond.
And then kind of the next wide one
could have been the one in the hallway.
They're all kind of nested each
Yeah, they're all each other right down.
So this one must have been the onethat we just saw with the self-portrait
that was about the right size.
But, it was just one of those thingsthat I thought, I realized one day I'm
(27:46):
looking at, this is like a, anothermap for the whole installation is
as much a map as any of the mapsthat are painted on the walls here.
Well, because I was like, I was quitepleased to find in his, in the records
that he had completely laid this outand he was very exact and he, designed
this graphic as well and it was indeedjust everything to do with timed images.
(28:06):
No one even film studies themselveshadn't really realized it Well, how
could they, if it's covered up, youknow, so, I put it together for them
too, and we were all really happy.
And we're still walking past it andnot even really paying attention to
it, but it's still kind of there.
yeah, but also, I think, I'mnot a filmmaker, but don't
they do this sort of framing?
Um, it's like deep space, so, yeah.
(28:27):
Yeah.
Um, I'm trying to think in the, I'veseen something like that, you know, in
order to try to, to center your shots,so to speak, it's almost like having a
grid screen on your camera, you know?
All right, so we've gotanother piece to look at.
Well, we have, if you look at whatwe've just seen, timed images is a
portrait of the people in this building.
I mean, it was designed to be abuilding for people, for students,
(28:48):
for faculty, academics, and so timedimages is really a portrait of them.
And it's concluded with his own littleself-portrait of him, but he's embedded
himself in the architecture too.
That's wonderful.
I thought of, you know, I thoughtlater that the negativity of it,
that it puts him a bit apart.
(29:09):
He's a, he's a, he is a part ofeverything, but he's apart of it.
He's a, he's away from it too.
Yeah.
He's separated himselffrom, he's the maker.
You know, so we've kind of seenhimself showing himself as a negative.
I don't know if that's interesting or not.
Here at the corner of B Block, wehave another one of these beautiful
maps that is painted on, um, andpart of that original design.
(29:33):
So as we enter into A block, thisis, I think of this as like the
big junction in the university.
We've got, um, the hallway thatgoes down towards Tim Hortons.
We've got the hallway that goes off intothe Goodman School of Business and we've
got this bizarre black line in the floor.
Interesting.
And there's not any art here, butthere was art before there was the
(29:54):
hallway to Goodman School of Business.
Well, you know, if you look at timedimages as, as the portrait of the
people, this became a photo essaywas on this wall, you would've walked
towards it coming in towards A blockhere, would've walked right up to it.
It was a floor to ceiling mural.
Like he, it was actually a wall made ofphotograph, 1600 photographs, all taken of
(30:16):
the building, of the building of MackenzieChown at, at conclusion of it, just, you
know, the conclusion of the architecturewhen everything is being wrapped up.
He came here one day with his cameraand he took hundreds of photographs of
Mackenzie Chown, black and white photos.
And 1600 of them, he collaged intothis massive wall sized photograph.
(30:38):
He called it a simultaneousphotograph, which I kind of like.
Because everything ishappening all at once.
All those pictures are all clickingoff at the same time in a way.
So that is, so that photo pieceis now in this stairwell of A
block, and we will move down thereto talk about it in more detail.
Right now we're looking at a display case.
But that's where that would have been.
(30:58):
And so you would have walked throughMackenzie Chown, you would've walked
through the building, and I imagineyou, your perception of what was here
would've changed as you got closer to it.
You walk right up to it.
Yeah.
You just walk right up to it.
But there's an, I have an anecdote thatone prof one day was walking along this
hallway on her way to teach a seminarand she could see the flurry of dust
(31:21):
or something up here at the corner, menon ladders and they were taking that
they were taking, pulling it apart, theywere pulling the big photo essay off the
wall because they were about to buildthe extension over to the Taro building.
Which is now Goodman.
Yeah.
And so she went, oh my gosh.
And so she ran back, ran to thedean of humanities office and said,
(31:42):
phone the tower, tell them to stop.
That's a Michael Snowthey're tearing down.
So they stopped that happening andthought, okay, what do we do now?
Well the, the size of piece is 16 feetby 12 feet, so there's not many places
you can move something that large.
So they moved it down the halland it's now in the stairwell.
The only large space theycould find to hang it.
(32:03):
All right, so it's changed thewhole viewing experience, which
we can find when we walk there.
You no longer can walk up to it.
You have to like see iton go up and down stairs.
Yeah, to walk to look at it.
Alright, let's go take a look.
All right, so we're now in A block.
We're at the top of the stairs, butwe're kind of on that little hallway
(32:25):
to the side that goes out on the roof.
Behind us, we've got another one ofthose painted maps with black and white
chevrons, but when we turn around,we see this amazing photo mosaic.
So it's a little bit hard to, I guess,to kind of take it all in now because we
don't have that uninterrupted view that wewould've originally have had of the piece.
(32:49):
So you were saying there were 1600 photos?
Yeah.
And, and they were done.
He took these photos with a sortof a program, um, and that it
mean he had a predetermined ideawhat he was gonna photograph.
So he started with the sky.
You know, layers and layers of sky photos.
And then you start coming down on the topsof the buildings and then down through
(33:10):
the layers of the buildings of the, of,of this new building, this Mackenzie
Chown coming right down to the groundand then going into little details.
Now we're looking at it right nowfrom across the way you can sort of
see it, it is like a film in places.
You can see movement, you can seeswooping and changing, there's some
lovely curiosities going on in there.
I look at this as, this isthe portrait of the building.
(33:32):
Um, which is, I thought wasa lovely way to conclude.
It's not, it's not part of timedimages per se, but it was almost
like, I don't know what inmusical terms, what it would be.
Uh, something at the endthat's a coda perhaps.
You come to the end of the hallwayhaving left the procession of
Timed Images frames, and then cometowards A block and see ahead of
you this floor to ceiling mosaic.
(33:55):
And I'm sure that was one thing peoplewere walking towards and looking at.
And I imagine it would've hada very cinematic quality to it,
because as you're moving towardsit, it's gonna be changing.
What you're seeing in it is gonna be kindof changing and you're, um, it reminds me
a little bit of, and I don't know a lotabout art history, but it reminds me a
little bit of some of that cubist stuffwhere they're trying to show multiple
(34:15):
perspectives all in the same image.
A free mobile perspective.
That's the word for it.
Okay.
But think we also have reallyfine details in there too.
You can see that texture.
And he's got his ownself portrait in there.
Really.
He photographed himself,reflected in glass.
The glass of the Pond Inlet,he's photographed himself there.
I'm not gonna let you tell me whichone it is, because someday when I've
(34:38):
got time to spare, I wanna look inthere and find and find that myself.
It's down near the bottom wheremost artists sign their work.
Um, but yeah, he's, but he's,there's a lot of play going on there.
He's looking, he, I think he had a lotof delight in taking those photographs.
Mm-hmm.
He was looking, it's atribute to the building.
You know, it's a tribute tothe architecture, really.
(35:00):
Um, and, uh, I just, I, I still can'tget over how it is very free moving
of mobile perspective for sure.
You think that still images are, inhis parlance, they were fixed, you
know, fixed and not moving, and yetall placed like this, this composite
photograph has a lot of movement in it.
(35:21):
And I seem to recall you telling methat in your research you found some
documentation of where he stood indifferent places to get the photographs?
He has a whole map.
So he drew, he drew himselfof, I mean, he really intuitive
artist, but highly organized.
I mean, when I said I, I encountereda wad of papers in file folders that
(35:41):
he kept all the stuff he kept on the,these constructions and his thoughts.
I mean, really, there was a lotgoing on in his mind, you know.
Well, I want to thank you for taking thetime today to walk through Mackenzie Chown
with me and help me see it with new eyes.
Um, Because I definitely saw it as avery confusing place to navigate, when I
(36:02):
was a student here and when I was TAingand whatnot, trying to find places.
You know, a little frustrating whenyou're late for classes, as I always
say, but now that you've explained tome what the architect is trying to do,
what, what the art was doing, it givesme a different perspective on it and
it, it makes the building a bit more funand playful, and I, I can see that now.
I hope our listeners have alsogotten that out of our tour today.
(36:23):
And maybe if you are on campus, plug inthis episode and go on a little walk.
So thank you so much, Leslie.
You're very welcome.
Thank you for listening to ForwardFind your footnotes links to more
information transcripts and past episodeson our website, brock u.ca/humanities.
(36:45):
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 byAllison Innis for the Faculty of
Humanities at Brock university.
Sound editing is by Serena Atallah,and theme music is by Khalid Imam.
(37:08):
This podcast is financiallysupported by the faculty of
humanities at Brock University.
Popular Podcasts
Boysober
Have you ever wondered what life might be like if you stopped worrying about being wanted, and focused on understanding what you actually want? That was the question Hope Woodard asked herself after a string of situationships inspired her to take a break from sex and dating. She went "boysober," a personal concept that sparked a global movement among women looking to prioritize themselves over men. Now, Hope is looking to expand the ways we explore our relationship to relationships. Taking a bold, unfiltered look into modern love, romance, and self-discovery, Boysober will dive into messy stories about dating, sex, love, friendship, and breaking generational patterns—all with humor, vulnerability, and a fresh perspective.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com