current projects
January 4, 2010
dream letters for granby october 2009, at 3e imperial, granby québec. 1000 dream letters written and mailed.
* *
* *
what happens when nothing happens september 2009, at fofa gallery, montréal, québec. traveling group exhibition curated by véronique malo and emily mennerdahl.
**
bia/oar (bureau d’investigation d’archives/office for archival review) august 2009, at centre des arts actuels skol, montréal.
**
**
eating oranges after dark ongoing. the work has its own blog.
**
**
transient traces a postcard made from the dream listener project for l’état d’urgence 2008, is now an ongoing obsession of writing, mailing, posting and twittering.
cinema politica to screen dream listener, march 29, 2010
January 23, 2010
Screening begins 19h30
Venue: Room H-110, 1455 de Maisonneuve O, Concordia University
Join us for two great documentaries on art and intervention. Special guests, including filmmakers will present at this screening.
Dream Listener
A Montreal artist explores issues of homelessness through dreams on the street
Karen Elaine Spencer / Canada / 2008 / 18 min
“I wrote my dream on cardboard, went out into the street and held the cardboard dream in front of me. At the end of the day I abandoned the cardboard dream. Over the year one hundred and ninety-four dreams were written on cardboard and shared this way…”
public art and public space – upa concordia winter seminar
January 22, 2010
Featured Speakers: Sara Wookey and Karen Spencer
February 16th, 2009 2:30 pm
Concordia University – Hall Building 1455 de Maisonneuve – Room H 1269
so here i am again, after an eleven year hiatus, and it feels so good
HomelessNation.org does not endorse, nor does it condone, the project.
December 14, 2009
Ou Je Suis N’est Pas Qui Je Suis
“Où je suis n’est pas qui je suis” is an art project by an independent artist.
HomelessNation.org does not endorse, nor does it condone, the project. It is art; created independently and without the support or permission of HomelessNation.org or its members.
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the artist, http://transienttraces.wordpress.com.
…
A description of the project:
Postcards
Year: began December 2008 –
Location: anywhere the mail is delivered
Duration: ongoing
Selected text lifted from the homeless nation web site as a “ready-made” is transcribed in quotation/radio-wave marks on the back of the postcard. The postcard is then sent to an artist, educator, politician or communicator. All names and addresses of recipients are found on the web.
The project deflects communication from one social networking site whose members represent a certain social/economic status toward members of a different social/economic network. The work performs by communicating “as if” the targeted community is part of the homeless community.
Writing text by hand flips communication from the impersonal of the computer back into the personal of the human; the trace of the hand moving pen over paper invokes a human presence. As such, transferring text from the homeless nation site onto the postcard takes a text that is intended to be disseminated to as large an audience as possible and redirects it to infiltrate, one-by-one, the specific target audience.
The text lifted from the homeless nation website is not chosen with the goal of obtaining support for the homeless… it is used as a tool for infiltrating one reality into another reality. Permission is not sought from the original “author,” the project performs the position that information disseminated through social networking sites is in the public domain and open for fair use.
To date, October, 2009: 1239 postcards have been sent.
…
If you have received a postcard and would like to know more, make a comment, or contact the project creator, please visit the artist’s website:
http://transienttraces.wordpress.com/
1000 names – la voix de l’est, granby québec
November 23, 2009
karen elaine spencer at sagamie
November 10, 2009
Karen Elaine Spencer
Karen Elaine Spencer
Artiste en résidence / Artist in Residence
English to follow
À travers ma pratique artistique, j’ausculte l’éphémère et examine la trajectoire que nous, en tant qu’êtres transitoires, décrivons dans l’espace. La perspective d’un mouvement linéaire vers l’avant se trouve déconcertée par des gestes performatifs qui semblent ne mener nulle part. Je prends le métro, je flâne, je me promène, je rêve : ces activités s’équivalent toutes en importance. Or, des segments temporels et des répétitions de mouvements sont définis afin que certaines séquences puissent se détacher des autres. Un motif est repris et entretenu dans le temps (souvent pendant un an), permettant d’engager un processus où il n’est plus possible de départager ma pratique artistique de mon quotidien. Je travaille avec ce qui est à portée de main, avec des matériaux qui témoignent de notre existence au jour le jour : carton, oranges, pain, craie. Par le détournement des matériaux, des intentions ou des mouvements, j’interviens dans divers espaces, avec l’espoir de modifier, ne serait-ce que légèrement, la perception de ce qui est possible.
Karen Elaine Spencer vit et travaille à Montréal (Québec) où elle a obtenu une maîtrise en arts de l’Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). En prenant le temps de prendre le temps, l’artiste puise dans l’ordinaire et met au jour le potentiel poétique de l’existence au quotidien. Ses œuvres ont été présentées dans différents centres culturels au Canada et en Europe. Ses plus récentes expositions sont rêves à la poste au 3e impérial (Granby), porteur de rêves à Dare-Dare (Montréal), i dreamt i ran away from home à Visualeyez (Edmonton) et lit de pain à Paris.
********
My artistic practice investigates the fleeting and how we as transient beings circulate through space. The notion of a linear movement forward is confronted through performative gestures that lead nowhere. I ride the metro, I loiter, I ramble, I dream. Any one activity is deemed as important as any other and segments of time and repetitions of movement are delineated to separate certain moments from other moments. A body of work is sustained over time (often a year) enabling a process whereby my artistic practice is indistinguishable from my daily life. I work with what is near at hand, materials that speak of our day-to-day existence: cardboard, oranges, bread, chalk. Through a détournement of materials or intentions or movements I intervene into spaces; hoping to shift, ever so slightly, perceptions of what is possible.
Karen Elaine Spencer lives and works in Montréal, Québec where she obtained her Masters in Art at l’Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM.) Karen takes the ordinary events of daily life and mines these for their poetic underpinnings, taking the time to take time. Her work has been presented in art centres throughout Canada and Europe with recent exhibitions being: “dream letters for granby” at 3e impérial in Granby, “dream listener” at Dare-Dare in Montréal, “i dreamt I ran away from home” at Visualeyez in Edmonton, and “lit de pain” in Paris.
viva! art action blogging
September 28, 2009
for the past ten days (september 17 2009 to september 27 2009) i have been blogging for viva! art action. with my trusty note-pad (stolen from my son…) and pen. riding my bike like a maniac (yes; we did have nice weather) because i always thought i was going to be late (not taking into consideration these are other artists…like me…always behind time) and arriving in plenty of time. if you want to check out the blog do so…i am the blogger who starts every post with an exquisitely rendered drawing like the one here.
never happened (lets pretend it): an ongoing performative gesture in the fofa gallery window
September 16, 2009
squished oranges and orange peels on canvas tarp in gallery window.
today was the third day of performing my “ongoing performative gesture.” today was not a day of tenderness and i felt disconnected from my actions.
rather than:
sit on the stool and slowly take the orange into my hands and pierce the skin and insert my thumb and squish the juice out of the orange and tear the orange apart and let the orange pieces drop to the ground and hold my hands out in front of me and let the juice drip off and then dry my hands in front of the fan to then bend down and pick another orange to pierce the skin,
i fumbled around and squished some oranges quickly and tried to reconnect with the gestures, but then i went down onto the floor and took the light in my hands and began directing the light at the orange pieces on the floor and inspecting the dried flesh and skin and then i started to give each piece of orange its place and thought about violence and how it can start out as tenderness and how tenderness can shift to violence and the fan blew air over my body and the light was warm on my hands and it became o.k. to do this quiet arranging of orange pieces rather than doing what i had thought i should be doing.
no-one hears the sounds of oranges squishing and juice dripping other than me.
Labouring the Land
Marie-Michelle Deschamps and Michèle Lacombe
Gallery and black box:
What Happens When Nothing Happens
Independant Study Group (ISG) Véronique Malo and Emily Mennerdahl
The artists included in the exhibition are:
Chantal Durand, Anna Jane McIntyre, Tamara Henderson and Jon Knowles, Jacinthe Lessard, Sean Montgomery and Eric Simon, Diane Morin, Taien Ng-Chan, Lina Persson, Meghan Price, Jerry Ropson, Karen Elaine Spencer and Christin Wahlström.
Vernissage Friday 11th of September 2009, 5 à 7
Karen Elaine Spencer
Will present an ongoing performative gesture in the ST. Catherine Street window.
FOFA Mini-Skool
Saturday 12th of September 2009
13:00-16:30
We are sharpening our pencils to mark the start of the year. The FOFA is proud to present two exhibition projects that examine art, labour, learning and cultural perceptions of each with distinct methodologies and outcomes.
Please join the FOFA Gallery and FASA as we join together to present an afternoon of presentations, discussions, and interchange. The Independant Study Group and collaborating artists: Anna Jayne McIntyre, Chantal Durand, Taien-Ng-Chan, Fake It ‘Til You Make It (Eric Simon and Sean Montgomery) along with Marie-Michelle Deschamps and Michèle Lacombe, will host a series of events beginning at 1:00 and finishing up with a round table talk at 3:00.
“What Happens When Nothing Happens” is curated by Veronique Malo and Emily Mennerdahl, active members of the Independant Study Group (ISG), a nomadic artist collective. The curatorial project was conceived whilst working together in Gothenburg, Sweden.
The exhibition “What Happens When Nothing Happens” presents a variety of artists that are based in Montreal and Gothenburg. Although the participating artists vary in media, approaches and art practices they share a creative process that dialogues in its shapes, mediums and forms. The aim with the exhibition is to explore what happens in between, before, and after projects are conceived. Presented in the gallery are unedited ideas, sketches, drawings, thoughts, trials; everything and nothing that happens meanwhile something is being made.
Timetable and PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:
13:00 Artist’s talk
Chantal Durand works with sculpture, drawing, printing and installation whilst exploring the relation of uncanniness we maintain with our body.
13:30 Artist’s talk
Taien-Ng-Chan is a writer and film/videomaker who has written drama for stage, screen and radio. Taien incorporates daily travel (walking, riding the bus) as part of her art practice.
14:00
Fake It Til’You Make It, a collective that met at an amateur lumber jack competition consists of artists Eric Simon and Sean Montgomery. They will be giving a performative talk about “fake” artists and their inspiring art practices and work.
15:45 pause café
15:00 Round Table
The curatorial collective, Independant Study Group (Veronique Malo and Emily Mennerdahl) and collaborative artists Marie-Michelle Deschamps and Michèle Lacombe will discuss the expanded notions of studio practices and practice based research and explore the ideas within collaborative processes. Each of their distinct projects acknowledge, celebrate and display the labours inherent in art practices and put into question both ways of seeing and the attribution of value of time spent in, on, and around the stuffs of art. After short presentations on their practices , FOFA Director, jake moore will join them, and you, for discussion.
Independant Study Group (Véronique Malo and Emily Mennerdahl) will present their collaboration, and the process of the curatorial project as indefinite and evolving project rooted in their everyday lives. Marie-Michelle Deschamps and Michèle Lacombe, two emerging montreal artists that both work with process-based conceptual drawing, will discuss the birth of a collaborative project and its potential for extending one’s own practice and personal artistic development as shifts in perspective occur when in relation with another artist, a site, and materials.
The FOFA GALLERY gratefully acknowledges the support of FASA, and the Canada Council for the Arts in the realisation of this project.
