Inventory: Poetry

Instead, with accent hues of moss and lavender shades of rose, I follow a map of syllabics

I write on || a t i k o w a y a n ||

and build my lines like this

nohkominanak ||:::oooo:::|| ||:::oooo:::|| iskwewak iskwewak iskwewak ||:::oooo:::|| ||:::oooo:::|| ||:::oooo:::|| ||:::ooo:::|| askiy askiy askiy askiy askiy askiy askiy askiy askiy askiy ||:::oooo:::|| ||:::oooo:::|| ||:::oooo:::|| ||:::oooo:::|| ||:::oooo:::|| ||:::oooo:::||

Autumn 2015 Contemporary Art & Criticism

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Inventory by Robin Simpson

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Knowing C Magazine’s design, I expect this inventory and long preamble will sit near the back of the magazine. I do not drive, so I’m used to conversing from the back seat, or as part of a rotation between shotgun and the back; either way, I’m always a passenger. I’ve only come to read poetry seriously over the past few years. My standpoint is as a student of art history. I study in Vancouver, a city known for its poetry and for engagement between poets and the art milieu. I study at the University of British Columbia during the day. In many respects, I also study at Simon Fraser University at night. Much of this study is informal, courtesy of the para-academic activities of students and faculty associated with that university’s English department. I’m often seated, listening to poetry or listening to poets converse – a passenger again, observing alongside. Poetry, it seems, has a new cachet in the art world. A short while ago, we were processing the arrival of art writing. This emerged from renewed readings of New Narrative poetry, a fatigue with panels repeating the crisis of art criticism and the calculated marketing of art book publication that prompted forums and constituencies while also confirming the arrival of a new lifestyle accouterment. After all this, we’re still left looking for an “Escape from Discussion Island,” as John Kelsey termed it in a catalogue essay from a while back.1 Leaflets printed with the Louis-Honoré Fréchette poem “Caughnawaga” fly through the air The following inventory details a few during an anti-austerity protest in Montreal, April 2, 2015. events and publications as encountered in PHOTO: ROBIN SIMPSON Vancouver, along with some thoughts from of having one of his poems read aloud by with a poem, “Invocation,” ending with the line: “welcome to Vancouver, where sunMontreal. At present, I’m looking for some Kinder Morgan’s lawyer. Collis was one of four respondents to a ny is lucky/where murdered and missing retrospect on the case of poetry as a thematic figuring within the art world, which might lecture by Franco “Bifo” Berardi occasioned women are unlucky.” Under question was be found in the front of this magazine, or it by an exhibition by artists Brady Cranfield the ease of speaking broadly about capmight be forthcoming. I think that whenever and Jamie Hilder at the Vancouver artist- ital’s decentralization and the romantic we arrive at this or that thematic, we should run centre 221A in the fall of 2013. Consider- re-embodiment of poetics. Always fixed hold onto our suspicions. The art world – ing Bifo’s concept of semiocapitalism and to a European pivot, coded white and urI mean contemporary art as an economic his call for poetry to lend new sensual resis- ban, the scale and ambition of this critimatrix and its attendant social and formal tance to capital, Cranfield and Hilder fol- cal thought echoes easily in the university consequences – is such a stupid, little knot lowed up with a printed and bound version of hall or gallery, but loses grip when read of value-production that it’s often tough to his lecture, prepared by Publication Studio through material struggles at a local level. tease out why our shared inclinations drift Vancouver, with responses by Collis, art his- Nicholson reminded us, “In this unceded one way or the other. We should then, at the torian Jaleh Mansoor, labour scholar Enda territory where more than half of the over same time, hold onto our suspects. Those Brophy, poet and organizer Cecily Nicholson, 60 Indigenous languages being spoken in the country are located, the handle of revwhose words and deeds are suspect, let’s keep and questions from the audience.2 Bifo’s lecture, titled “The New Game,” olutionary practices, in terms of language, them close. There are orphanages, refuges, night schools and safe houses burrowed into focused on what he terms neuro-colo- seems to me to be barely understood.” In her documentary long poem From the and between our disciplinary and profession- nization, namely the synchronization of al bunkers. And sometimes, there’s money brain activity with capital, and with it, the Poplars (Talonbooks, 2014), Nicholson invessupplanting of embodied relations with tigates the history of Poplar Island, located to take. This past fall, Texas-based Kinder Morgan electronic connectivity. As if to ease his in the Fraser River and forming part of the served a $ 5.6-million lawsuit to five protest- diagnosis of an endemic, global wave of de- New Westminster waterfront. Meticulously ers committed to the cessation of the ex- pression at both individual and collective outlining the site’s material history, she pansion of the Trans Mountain oil pipeline levels, Bifo peppered his talk with levities brings past utterances of policy, government through Burnaby Mountain. Among the de- about the chance sunny day in Vancouver decree and settler hearsay together with fendants was poet and SFU English professor and smoking weed with political radicals in her own interventions. Poplar Island was Stephen Collis, who had the added pleasure Seoul. For her response, Nicholson opened one of the country’s earliest reservations.

Inventory

Poetry

the 2012 student strikes, the Liberal government refusing to accept the strikes as legitimate and insisting that the students could only effect a boycott. Also at play are the ongoing attempts of media and law to figure the students as aberrant citizens whose dissent should justify the application of excessive police violence. Deploying their video as a means to spur community feedback, Lemieux and Brunette opened their exhibition at Articule in Montreal up to discussions with a range of groups invested in social and cultural sectors and committed to thinking through and resisting Quebec’s recently announced austerity measures. In April, I joined an anti-austerity march of thousands walking through downtown Montreal on one of the first certifiably sunny days after the coldest winter on record. At Rue Berri, the mass turned south to walk down a declining viaduct. A cloud of brightly coloured paper issued from an apartment tower on Sherbrooke. Picking up and unfolding one of the sheets, it turned out that each carried a poem. I held in hand the poem “Caughnawaga” by Louis-Honoré Fréchette. Published in 1908, the poem describes an approach on Kahnawake and the disappointment of encountering a Mohawk chief running a grocery store and speaking Lower Normandy dialect with an English accent. Although Fréchette was a progressive, if contradictory, thinker and a confidant of Louis Riel, the poem carries an imperial logic, its inclusion souring the initial delight of the confetti-like cloud. Picked up off the street, Fréchette’s poem reminded me of the complexities arising from the betrayal experienced through the dismantling of the welfare state. Namely, the risk of slippage between retrospect and reactionary thinking, the foreclosure of strugCover of Issue 4, Summer 2014, It’s Fucking About A Bicycle by writing collective About A Bicycle. gles within traditional models of modern IMAGE COURTESY OF AAB nationhood, and the narrowness of broad Appropriated for industrial development fol- resurfacing of divisive gendered and racial critical declarations and vocabulary. It’s a lowing a devastating smallpox outbreak, it is dynamics in para-academic groupings at question of answering dismantlement with presently designated a nature reserve by the large, as well as the abuses and manipula- defense. Of where we hold the measure province of British Columbia. Undergirding tions of critical theory and activist forma- for our actions and of what we continualthis is the fact that it remains traditional ter- tions (“safe spaces”) in attempts to rescue ly attempt to salvage and keep constant. ritory of the Qayqayt First Nation. From the and confirm white, hetero, cis-gendered Perhaps it’s time to match dismantlement Poplars presents decolonialization as a pro- innocence and futurity. At the launch, with dismantlement. cess, manifest in a form of critical research LaFrance and Jamali Rad introduced the Simpson is an art historian, curator, and student that traverses a range of discursive fields, new issue, yet nominated two male porte-pa- Robin based in Vancouver. He is a contributing author to bringing about interruptions and forcing roles (their partners Patrick Morrison and Mathieu Beauséjour: La révolt de l’imagination (Musée regional de Rimouski/Expression, Centre d’exposition open silences within the archive. Scott Inniss) to read their exchange aloud. de Saint-Hyacinthe, 2015), West of Eden (Presentation About a Bicycle, a Vancouver-based critFor their documentary video project, Cuts House Gallery, 2014), Sarai Reader 9: Projections (Sarai/ CSDS, 2013), Heteropolis, ed. Adaptive Actions (Adaptive ical reading and discussion/writing group Make the Country Better, François Lemieux Actions, 2013), Oh, Canada (MIT Press, 2012), and A Play comprised of feminist-Marxist, self-identi- and Edith Brunette have taken the on-going to be Played Indoors or Out: This Book Is a Classroom (Passenger Books, 2012). fied women launched the fourth issue of their cultural funding cuts in the Netherlands as Endnotes eponymous journal in winter 2014 at the now an object to trigger conversation about ausclosed STAG Library. Titled, It’s Fucking About terity, be it forthcoming or couched in ex- 1 John Kelsey, “Escape from Discussion Island” a Bicycle, the latest issue features an extend- isting policies at civic, provincial and federal in Meaning Liam Gillick, ed. Monika Szewczyk et al. Boston MA: The MIT Press, 2009. ed conversation between editors Danielle levels here in Canada. While Dutch cultural 2 Brady Cranfield & Jamie Hilder, "Introduction", LaFrance and Anahita Jamali Rad, both poets, workers and artists might find ways to work in exhibition text Due to Injuries... 221A, Vancouver, September 14 to October 19, 2013. http://duetoinjuries. punctuated by contributions from group mem- around the loss of funding, what is striking com/introduction-bradybers Asuman Gencol, Rafaela Kino, Penelope to hear from Lemieux and Brunette’s inter- cranfield-jamie-hilder/ Hetherington, Megan Hepburn and Stacey locutors is the affective (namely depressive) Ho. In their exchange, titled “Preliminary impact of right-wing political rhetoric on Materials for Bad Students,” LaFrance and the Dutch milieu. Dubbed leeches, depenJamali Rad share retrospective vantage on dents and addicts desperate for funds, these the journal. They reflect on shifts in read- denigrations infiltrated and weakened the ing material in response to the group’s con- solidarity needed for an organized response. versations and changing membership, the I’m reminded of the semantic hinge of

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Autumn 2015