IAIN BAXTER&: A Deinstallation And Its Documents

Posted: January 28, 2013 | Author: David Bellman

 

IAIN BAXTER&: A Deinstallation And Its Documents

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“In spite of the oft asserted impersonality of culture, a humble truth remains that vast reaches of culture, far from being “carried” by a community or group … are discoverable only as the peculiar property of certain individuals, who cannot but give these cultural goods the impress of their own personality.”

– Edward Sapir (1934)

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IAIN BAXTER&, “Information Mural [Digital Conversion Code]”, stencilled paint (detail) – North VancouverMuseum, 2012. (Photo: M. Cynog Evans, CAUSA Archives.)

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“The special modern form of fatality is the total programming attempted in our technological society.”

– Wylie Sypher (1968)

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IAIN BAXTER&, “Information Mural” (detail), 2012. View of deinstallation in progress (printed matter withdrawn), 23 January 2013. (Photo: M. Cynog Evans, CAUSA Archives.)

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“Today any form of the concrete world, of human life, any transformation of the technical and natural environment is a possibility and the locus of this possibility is historical. Today we have the capacity to turn the world into hell, and we are well on our way to doing so. We also have the capacity to turn it into the opposite of hell. This would mean the end of utopia, that is, the refutation of those ideas and theories that use the concept of utopia to denounce certain socio-historical possibilities. It can also be understood as the “end of history” in the very precise sense that the new possibilities for a human society and its environment can no longer be thought of as a continuation of the old, nor even as existing in the same historical continuum with them.”

– Herbert Marcuse (1967)

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IAIN BAXTER&, “Information Mural” (detail), 2012. View of deinstallation in progress, 23 January, 2013. (Photo: M. Cynog Evans, CAUSA Archives.)

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“In most ordinary activities we rely heavily on habit and system, ours and other people’s, and properly so. The world would come apart without those braces. But the experience of art is in part defined by the fact that it asks to be an exception to this practice. Ideally, as the human embryo recapitulates all the stages of evolution before becoming human, each encounter with a work of art can recapitulate the stages of wonder, exploration, and discovery by which we have come to value that realm.”

– Roger Shattuck (1984)

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IAIN BAXTER&, “Information Mural” (detail), 2012. View of deinstallation in progress, 23 January 2013. (Photo: M. Cynog Evans.)

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View video (exhibited, North Vancouver Museum, 2012):

http://vimeo.com/m/53916840

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28.01.13.

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In The Medium Of Motion (Part 8)

Posted: January 23, 2013 | Author: David Bellman

 

In The Medium Of Motion (Part 8)

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“True vision isn’t just seeing seeing. It’s also seeing not seeing. And true understanding isn’t just understanding understanding. It’s also understanding not understanding.”

– Bodhidharma (5th century CE), patriarch of Ch’an and Zen Buddhism

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“EnglishBay, Vancouver, 21 January 2013 – 16:02:20.” (Photo: M. Cynog Evans, CAUSA Archives.)

 

“English Bay, Vancouver, 21 January 2013 – 16:02:30.” (Photo: M. Cynog Evans, CAUSA Archives.)

 

“EnglishBay, Vancouver, 21 January 2013 – 16:02:41.” (Photo: M. Cynog Evans.)

 

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“One meaning of time is a drift toward inertia.”

– Wylie Sypher (1969)

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“That the mental fire doesn’t burn appears to be the first prerequisite of our managing the fire that does burn – of having it burn when, how, and where we wish. … This is just the fundamental question of morals – the interaction of persons and things, or of personal freedom and the stable order.”

– John Dewey (1904)

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MIRROR THROWN INTO THE SEA

[Statement sent by Iain Baxter (N.E. THING Company) – via telex – from Simon Fraser University to the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 17 September 1969.

Baxter’s instructions to students of David Askevold’s “Projects Class” (NSCAD) state: “Photodocument … as mirror leaves hand and as mirror hits water.”

Enactment of this proposition (first realized in Halifax and exhibited at NSCAD) prefigures a continuously collaborative aesthetic intendment – across the unified field of an IAIN BAXTER/BAXTER& trajectory]

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“Art makes it possible to pass through things and to be a process of going through, not an arrival.”

– Mario Merz (1983)

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“I believe that all creative persons working in the field of the Visual Arts in Canada have a great need to get together, not only with each other, but with many persons in ancillary fields, in order to establish a foundation of principles and of attitude, of a specifically Canadian kind. Ours is a new country, at times it would seem almost a primitive country, but surely therein lies some of our great strength, our potential value? (As Wang Wei said: ‘To learn how to paint, one must first cut off both hands.”)

– Wells Coates: excerpt of a letter to Alan Jarvis, Director, National Gallery of Canada (1956)

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” ‘Block Salt On Tidal Plane’ – IAIN BAXTER& / CAUSA Curatorial Project. EnglishBay, Vancouver – 17 January, 2013.” (Photo: M. Cynog Evans.)

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IAIN BAXTER: In The Medium Of Motion (Part 7)

Posted: January 18, 2013 | Author: David Bellman

 

IAIN BAXTER: In The Medium Of Motion (Part 7)

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“Above all, becoming does not occur in the imagination.”

– Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1980)

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BLOCK SALT ON TIDAL FLAT

[Iain Baxter (N.E. Thing Co.) Project, 1969]

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BLOCK SALT ON TIDAL FLAT

[IAIN BAXTER&/CAUSA Curatorial Project, Vancouver.
Photography: M. Cynog Evans, 16 January, 2013.]

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Document 1. • Time: 15:21:36

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Document 2. • Time: 15:22:03

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Document 3. • Time: 15:23:17

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Document 4. • Time: 15:52:37

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Document 5. • Time: 15:59:20

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Document 6. • Time: 15:59:52

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Document 7. • Time: 16:05:24

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Document 8. • Time: 16:15:29

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Document 9. • Time: 16:15:48

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Document 10. • Time: 16:20:43

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Document 11. • Time: 16:28:30

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Document 12. • Time: 16:40:52

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“Time, as it passes, separates the good art from the bad metaphysics. Can we learn to make this separation, not after the event, but while it is actually taking place? That is the question.”

– Aldous Huxley (1958)

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[“English Bay, Vancouver – In Memory of Wells Coates,” M. Cynog Evans, CAUSA Archives, 2013.]

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In The Medium Of Motion (Part 6)

Posted: January 14, 2013 | Author: David Bellman

 

In The Medium Of Motion (Part 6)

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“This world is the formless as we perceive it, the unknowable as we know it.”

– Annanda Coomaraswamy (1918)

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“Mind is no-mind and it is out of this no-mind that the whole panorama, infinitely rich, of the whole world unrolls itself.”

– Daisetz T. Suzuki (1958)

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BLOCK SALT ON TIDAL FLAT

Block of salt is placed on tidal flat at low tide. If possible, the salt block should be of a colour similar to the colour of the tidal zone soil.

[Iain Baxter / N.E. Thing Co. project – forming part of the exhibition TRANS VSI CONNECTION, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, September 15-October 5, 1969.

Information sent from Simon Fraser University Library to the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, September 17, 1969.]

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“Salt Block, Vancouver, 2012.” [Photo: M. Cynog Evans, CAUSA Archives.]

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We think things persist in time because structures persist and we mistake the structure for substance.”

– Julian Barbour (1999)

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IAIN BAXTER&: In The Medium Of Motion (Part 5)

Posted: January 9, 2013 | Author: David Bellman

 

IAIN BAXTER&: In The Medium Of Motion (Part 5)

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“It is a matter of pure convention as to which of our experiential activities we term mental and which physical.”

– Alfred North Whitehead (1927)

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“Every act is political and, whether one is conscious of it or not, the presentation of one’s work is no exception.”

– Daniel Buren (1969)

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BAXTER PROPOSAL

• PEOPLE IN HALIFAX TO LIVE ON VANCOUVER TIME (PACIFIC STANDARD TIME) FOR ANY PERIOD OF TIME.

[Iain Baxter / N.E. Thing Co. message: transmitted by telephone, September 16, 1969. Information received by Gerald Ferguson (Halifax), and publicly presented (in typescript) on September 17 – as part of the exhibition TRANS VSI CONNECTION, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, September 15 – October 5, 1969.]

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“Commemorative Plaque, Hamilton Street, Vancouver: October 6, 2012, 14:19.” [Photo: M. Cynog Evans, CAUSA Archives.]

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“All art is propaganda, for it is in fact impossible to do anything, to make anything which is not expressive of ‘value.’ The artist may say he does not care who likes his work or dislikes it, whether it effects anything or not, but directly he shows his work to anyone, and more so if he shows it in a public place, he becomes a responsible propagandist for the ‘values,’ the ethos, expressed in his work and therefore promoted by it.”

– Eric Gill (1935)

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“The body implements the soul and in this sense we are all artists.”

– Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki (1958)

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In The Medium Of Motion (Part 4)

Posted: January 8, 2013 | Author: David Bellman

In The Medium Of Motion (Part 4)

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“Motion is the transfer of one piece of matter, or one body, from the vicinity of the other bodies which are regarded as being at rest, to the vicinity of other bodies.”

– René Descartes (1644)

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TRANSPLANTATION

[Iain Baxter: Visual Sensitivity Information (VSI), Formula No. 8 – sent, via telex, from Simon Fraser University Library to the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Received: 8:30 pm, Oct. 3,1969.]

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TRANSPLANTATION

“International Marine Terminal, North Vancouver. View from StanleyPark – 1 January, 2013, 16:15.” [Photo: M. Cynog Evans.]

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“The world does not exist outside of its expressions.”

– Gilles Deleuze (1993)

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TRANSPLANTATION

“International Marine Terminal, North Vancouver. View from StanleyPark – 1 January, 2013, 16:11.” [Photo: M. Cynog Evans.]

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“If you want to understand Zen, understand it right away without deliberation, without turning your head this way or that. For while you are doing this, the object you have been seeking for is no longer there. This doctrine of immediate grasping is characteristic of Zen.”

– Daisetz T. Suzuki (1938)

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In The Medium of Motion (Part 3)

Posted: January 7, 2013 | Author: David Bellman

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In The Medium of Motion (Part 3)

 

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“My interest in Eastern philosophy, and the fact that it offers a much more harmonious relationship to nature than does the western Cartesian tradition, was a major reason why I wanted to go to Japan.”

– IAIN BAXTER (2012)

 

“Nature is always in motion, never at a standstill; if Nature is to be loved, it must be caught while moving and in this way its aesthetic value must be appraised.”

– Daisetz T. Suzuki (1938)

 

“Pacific Ocean (near Skalsh/Siwash Rock, Vancouver) – 1 January, 2013. Orientation: West, towards Japan.” [Photo: M. Cynog Evans.]

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LIGHT VANCOUVER15:40 PSTAND SAME TIMECHIBACITY8:40JST LIGHT

[IAIN BAXTER&, 1969/2013]

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Since 1961 – when he accepted a Japanese Embassy invitation to reside, that year, as a guest of their country – an enduring CONTEXTURE has sustained a particularized IAIN BAXTER/BAXTER& PRESENCE that furthermore clarifies a momentary (cumulative) engagement with a PROVISIONAL/ECOLOGICAL AESTHETIC.

In 2013 – as in fifty-one immediately previous years – each (every) iteration (reiteration) of the purposeful/transgenerational BAXTER& project will have the capacity to encompass a contemporaneity that is at once transitory and pending.

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IAIN BAXTER&: In The Medium Of Motion (Part 2)

Posted: January 2, 2013 | Author: David Bellman

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IAIN BAXTER&: In The
Medium Of Motion
(Part 2)

David Bellman
CAUSA

January 2, 2013

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IAIN BAXTER&: Entrance Signage, North Vancouver Museum, 2012. [Photo: M. Cynog Evans, CAUSA Archives.]

 

“A real work of art destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between himself and the artist – not that alone, but also between himself and all whose minds receive this work of art. In this freeing of our personality from its separation and isolation, in this uniting of it with others, lies the chief characteristic and the great attractive force of art.”

– Leo Tolstoy (1896)

 

“Language is not life; it gives life orders. Life does not speak; it listens and waits.”

– Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1980)

 

IAIN BAXTER&: INFORMATION MURAL (detail), North Vancouver Museum, 2012. [Photo: M. Cynog Evans, CAUSA Archives.]

 

“Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the world.”

– Alfred North Whitehead (1933)

 

“We do not keep in showcases the coins current in the world. A living art does not produce curiosities to be collected but necessaries to be diffused.”

– George Santayana (1905)

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INFORMATION/LOCATION: NORTH VANCOUVER – the IAIN BAXTER& / CAUSA exhibition (installation) project – formally concluded on December 30, 2012, at 5:00 p.m. Fourteen hours later, in Chiba, Japan (an official “Sister” to the City of North Vancouver), Buddhist temple bells (at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve) tolled one hundred and eight times – so as to ceremonially dispel the “earthly deities” that cause “human suffering.”

Included among the “defilements” addressed by each bell toll were certain key “concepts” that now consistently (aesthetically) emerge from last year’s speculative (unfinished) BAXTER& / CAUSA / North Vancouver Museum project:

arrogance, capriciousness, deception, disrespect, envy, haughtiness,
hostility, inattentiveness, indifference, ignorance, imperiousness,
imposture, intransigence, jealousy, ostentatiousness, pessimism, pretence,
sarcasm, vanity.

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