Jean Marshall’s beadwork piece
"Life Cycles," was commissioned for Nuit Blanche Toronto’s Nuit in the Neighborhood as part of an online augmented reality project that let people position the work within their own spaces. Here it’s seen on Lake Superior. (photo by Christian Chapman, courtesy the artist)
We are in unprecedented times.
This is the mantra of what has become a generation-defining period. Yet, in the face of this drastic shift, cultural producers – artists, administrators, curators, writers and others – have risen to the occasion, adapting to new demands.
As a result, cultural artistic experience has exited the authority of the institution and leapt into virtual arenas. The monopoly held by galleries and museums as the primary space to produce, disseminate and experience artwork is leaching away. In the mad scramble to remain relevant – and to head off impending financial shortfalls in the inevitable post-pandemic economic fallout – the shift to online artistic experiences has opened an alternative means for cultural distribution that isn’t exclusively within a white cube. Previously, a lengthy “but is it art?” discourse would have surrounded such a creative cultural shift. Thankfully, this has been skipped. But like many cultural producers now, I take pause to consider how this might reverberate in the future.
A text I find myself returning to, regardless of whether I agree with it or not, is American scholar Stephen Weil’s Making Museums Matter. Published in 2002, a time when the Internet was available, but not as extensively or pervasively as it is today, it argues the institution’s efficacy and usefulness is determined by its impact, quantified in viewer engagement through educating the public. Weil’s observations were based on only a portion of what has continued to be an expanding definition of culture and the different platforms within which artistic production has propagated.
I would argue that access is the method to maximize efficacy and impact – both in physical and intellectual senses – whether in economic, architectural or cultural terms, or in ways related to safety, audiences of different ages, the reflexiveness of bureaucracies and more. If the lauded theory by Marshall McLuhan is true, and the medium is the message, then the art institution itself is a medium for disseminating cultural production and inherently signals its authority on cultural connoisseurship when it does. By framing galleries and museums as cultural distributors or platforms, the ability to treat them as one of multiple options for cultural dissemination will inherently justify their existence while simultaneously redistributing power within the hierarchy of capital-A ‘Art’.
An onliine lunch-and-learn event at the imagineNATIVE festival in Toronto last October. (courtesy imagaineNATIVE)
Two events readily accepted by institutions as methods of art display are Nuit Blanche Toronto, a free, all-night contemporary art event, and the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival, a hub for Indigenous screen content. This year, both were accessible through digital means, hosted on virtual platforms that supported the artwork and also enabled visitor engagement and interventions.
Both are highly anticipated events in Toronto each October and serve significant roles not solely as arts-related activities, but also as in-person gatherings. While there are built-in audiences for both events, as they have been held in previous years, that shouldn’t preclude future events or programs from including online hosting or imply that community connection or impact was compromised by the digital format. This year’s events were legitimate in their own right, and while the platforms were spurred by the realities of the pandemic, I would be excited to see these models continue for future festivals and exhibitions. They have set the bar.
As a film and media festival, imagineNATIVE, by its very nature, is well suited to be integrated into an online platform experience. That said, the multifaceted approach of a streaming service for videos and the use of social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube for live events demonstrated a consideration of the strengths of each platform's capacity for connectivity and consumption.
For instance, a virtual reality experience, Kanotaye, by Asha Veeraswamy, a Seneca creative technologist specializing in virtual, augmented and mixed reality, was built specifically for imagineNATIVE. It offered standard activities at a gathering – milling about, making small talk, touring the space, taking selfies and watching a slide presentation with a speaker – but also the absurd – the ability to integrate photos and memes and generate endless ducks. Veeraswamy even shared a keyboard shortcut that allowed us to fly.
After hundreds of hours on Zoom, I can say with all certainty, that I’d happily embrace more virtual reality experiences like Kanotaye – it felt more real than anything I’ve attended since March. I don’t have the word count here to gush about how imagineNATIVE constructed a streaming service to view films and curated portions, a decision that was so on point and so familiar.
Asha Veeraswamy’s "Kanotaye" was launched at imagineNATIVE this year as a virtual reality experience. (courtesy imagineNATIVE)
While imagineNATIVE assessed the best platforms for the delivery of each aspect of the festival, effectively optimizing the environment to control the user’s experience, Nuit Blanche’s Nuit in the Neighborhood did the opposite. Here, 20 artists were commissioned to make work with the intention it would be engaged as augmented reality, giving individuals the ability to position the work within their own environments.
This was especially poignant for those who have been in more severe pandemic lockdowns for greater durations, as it included the living spaces where we have spent most of our time, adding another layer of creative intervention. Instead of privileged control over the display of art or our engagement with it, a role often reserved for curators, we experienced a multiplicity of exchanges through social media.
Public engagement with a splash of spectacle is the heart of Nuit Blanche, but this year its commissioned works were made with the intention of online hosting. There are no divisions between public and institutional art engagement in this sphere because there are no spatial delineations to draw those binaries. Thus, taking away aspects that make a work “precious” can ultimately generate accessibility.
There’s much more that could be discussed, but one thing we can know for certain, post-pandemic, is that there’s no “going back to how it was.” We can see museums as a tool or a platform, one of many ways to access culture. I don’t want to go back to centring four white walls as the default depository for art. Many folks are part of communities that have faced violence in these spaces, which may be echoed in experiences of being forced to cross that threshold to experience art or being deemed representative of your “visitor demographic.” Art can, and will, continue to be made with the express intention of being situated within a gallery, but this should be communicated as an option – like selecting a palette – rather than an assumption or a default position. ■
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