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Archaeology of the (1970s) Commune: Notes Towards an Old/New Ontology of Students

A Con­ver­sa­tion between Fras­er McCal­lum and Andrew Pendakis

Fras­er McCal­lum is a Cana­di­an artist whose work on Rochdale Col­lege, an exper­i­men­tal com­mune that was set up in Toron­to between 1968 and 1975, explores the rela­tion­ship between pol­i­tics and his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry. What fol­lows is a con­ver­sa­tion with Fras­er about his piece Come Live With Us (2016) and about the polit­i­cal and aes­thet­ic res­o­nances of the com­mune today.

AP: Fras­er, could you tell us briefly about the his­to­ry of Rochdale Col­lege. What was it? How long did it exist for?

FM: Rochdale Col­lege was a free school and stu­dent co-oper­a­tive housed inside an 18-storey apart­ment build­ing in Toron­to, oper­at­ing from 1968 to 1975. It was orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived as a stu­dent hous­ing co-op to serve the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to but evolved into its own enti­ty not long after plan­ning began. The project was ini­ti­at­ed by Cam­pus Co-op, which ran many shared hous­es in the area and sought to expand its oper­a­tions. Empow­ered by new leg­is­la­tion per­mit­ting the Cana­da Mort­gage and Hous­ing Cor­po­ra­tion to loan to co-oper­a­tives, Cam­pus Co-op ulti­mate­ly opened Rochdale on a vacant lot at the north end of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to cam­pus. Due to zon­ing restric­tions, which called for 7-to-1 floor­plan den­si­ty rel­a­tive to the lot size, the Co-op end­ed up build­ing a high-rise designed to house 850 people—much larg­er than any of its exist­ing prop­er­ties. At its height, more than dou­ble the res­i­dent capac­i­ty lived in the build­ing. Lifestyles denot­ed by the apart­ment units var­ied wide­ly, from con­ven­tion­al dou­ble rooms to entire floors arranged as com­munes. The ground lev­el and sec­ond floor were used for var­i­ous self-orga­nized facil­i­ties, includ­ing tele­vi­sion, radio, pub­lish­ing, film­mak­ing, a library, and a restaurant.

The edu­ca­tion­al ideals of the Col­lege were pri­mar­i­ly devel­oped by U of T grad­u­ate stu­dents and ses­sion­al instruc­tors. They sought to reimag­ine post­sec­ondary edu­ca­tion based on prin­ci­ples of freedom—where learn­ing would be pur­sued for its own sake, beyond its instru­men­tal role in prepar­ing stu­dents for the job mar­ket. These edu­ca­tion­al ideals were car­ried out very loose­ly: Rochdale was non-accred­it­ed and ran cours­es on the basis of stu­dents’ inter­ests. There was lit­tle vet­ting or over­sight in shap­ing the course offerings.

The Col­lege ulti­mate­ly closed due to its inabil­i­ty to pay its mort­gage, but it was a shell of its most vibrant self for sev­er­al years before its clo­sure. Not long after open­ing, run­away youth from the near­by Yorkville neigh­bour­hood began to live in Col­lege com­mon rooms, broom clos­ets, and so on; they were tol­er­at­ed by a suf­fi­cient major­i­ty of Rochdale’s per­mis­sive res­i­dents. For sim­i­lar rea­sons, high-vol­ume drug deal­ers also moved in, cash­ing in on the inabil­i­ty of the police to gov­ern the build­ing. The Col­lege was frowned-upon in the broad­er local and nation­al pub­lic, fueled by media por­tray­als of its great­est excess­es of drug use, sex, alter­na­tive lifestyles, and derelict liv­ing con­di­tions. This broad­er dis­gust set the stage for Rochdale’s clo­sure long before it actu­al­ly hap­pened, regard­less of what was going on inside. Local politi­cians’ patri­ar­chal views of the coun­ter­cul­ture couldn’t with­stand the law­less­ness and immoral­i­ty they asso­ci­at­ed with Rochdale in such a high­ly vis­i­ble, down­town locale.

AP: How did your inter­est in Rochdale devel­op? How or where did you come across it?

FM: I first heard of it through friends whose par­ents had passed through there, which is quite com­mon in Toron­to. I then watched Dream Tow­er, which empha­sized just how inter­est­ing and unique Rochdale was.1 Much lat­er, as a grad­u­ate stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, I decid­ed to under­take this project as a way to reflect more broad­ly on the con­tem­po­rary edu­ca­tion sys­tem and the ontol­ogy of stu­dent­hood. Since U of T holds the Rochdale archive, I felt the sense of two immense­ly dif­fer­ent views of edu­ca­tion through­out the process. As one would expect, the Uni­ver­si­ty was quite antag­o­nis­tic toward Rochdale dur­ing its time. Robarts Library, a cen­tre­piece of the cam­pus, is like­wise a Bru­tal­ist high-rise, and is direct­ly with­in sight of the for­mer Rochdale build­ing (which still stands, now remod­eled for use as com­mu­ni­ty hous­ing). In a very tan­gi­ble way, these two build­ings with wild­ly dif­fer­ent his­to­ries are in archi­tec­tur­al dia­logue with one another—and with Robarts hold­ing the Rochdale archive, the for­mer holds the mate­r­i­al his­to­ry of the latter.

The archi­tec­ture of Rochdale Col­lege became a cru­cial detail to con­sid­er. It’s a very unre­mark­able build­ing, indis­tin­guish­able from the apart­ment tow­ers that were being built through­out the region at the time. The lit­er­a­ture on Rochdale, how­ev­er, shows that the social life of the build­ing vast­ly exceed­ed the con­straints of its archi­tec­ture, and res­i­dents cre­ative­ly mis­used the build­ing to their advan­tage. For exam­ple: it was made almost impen­e­tra­ble to the police. Res­i­dents would use fire alarms to sig­nal police raids, block stair­wells, and remove room num­bers. This fortress-like qual­i­ty was cru­cial to the sur­vival of the Col­lege in its lat­er years. While apart­ment tow­ers from this peri­od are often crit­i­cized for alien­at­ing and atom­iz­ing their res­i­dents, the Col­lege res­i­dents invert­ed these archi­tec­tur­al fea­tures for a much dif­fer­ent arrange­ment of social relations.

CLWU Still 02: view of former Rochdale site at 341 Bloor Street West, from Robarts Library

View of for­mer Rochdale site at 341 Bloor Street West, from Robarts Library

AP: Could you describe the Rochdale instal­la­tion for those who weren’t able to vis­it it or access the video?

FM: The piece, Come Live with Us, con­sists of a 20-minute exper­i­men­tal doc­u­men­tary, a riso­graph book­let with a text I wrote, and an instal­la­tion with a table and some prints. Objects in the instal­la­tion appear in the video, and vice-ver­sa. A major facet of the work involved remak­ing objects from Rochdale’s archives using the high-tech tools of the con­tem­po­rary uni­ver­si­ty: 3D print­ing and laser cut­ting. I remade coun­ter­cul­tur­al draw­ings from the archive as laser-cut sten­cils, which are spray-paint­ed on gallery walls. I 3D-scanned and print­ed a minia­tur­ized repli­ca of The Unknown Stu­dent, the lone remain­ing trace of the College—a pub­lic sculp­ture which still exists out­side the build­ing. The instal­la­tion is anchored by a large stu­dio table, on which sit the sculp­tures and sten­cils, as well as repro­duc­tions of Rochdale Col­lege doc­u­ments as loose prints. There’s also excess 3D-print­ing dust on the table because the process of extract­ing a print involves vac­u­um­ing it out of a tray full of loose dust—like an archae­o­log­i­cal dig. The stu­dio table, replete with dust and loose prints, sug­gests an active and muta­ble approach toward this history.

CLWU Still 07

The video looks close­ly at my medi­at­ed rela­tion­ship to Rochdale. I had for­mer res­i­dents read key texts from the Col­lege his­to­ry for my cam­era: these give a sense of its aspi­ra­tions, achieve­ments, and pub­lic back­lash. Pho­tographs, doc­u­ments, and archival audio appear through­out. I shot video at the for­mer Col­lege site and in the archives at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to to exam­ine the archi­tec­tur­al rela­tion­ships men­tioned above. Final­ly, I inter­sperse long shots, which depict the process­es of remak­ing the objects in the instal­la­tion: machines repro­duc­ing objects that were once hand­made or made from tech­nolo­gies that are now obsolete.

Instal­la­tion view


Come Live with Us (excerpt). HD Video, 20:30, 2016

 

 

 

 

 

AP: In your film about Rochdale we get a sense of a dis­tinct­ly dif­fer­ent way of imag­in­ing domes­tic space. Home is not sim­ply a place to eat, rest and, sleep or a space of qui­et famil­ial repro­duc­tion, but an inte­grat­ed pro­duc­tion unit—a site for com­mu­nal inven­tion where things are con­stant­ly being designed, built, and trans­mit­ted. From the begin­ning we’re encour­aged to look close­ly at shots of con­spic­u­ous­ly dis­played com­mu­nal equip­ment: in-house radio and video tech­nolo­gies and print mate­ri­als, as well as what appear to be machines for the weav­ing of tex­tiles and oth­er prim­i­tive indus­tri­al process­es. In this sense, Rochdale is a kind of anti-sub­urb. Where the sub­ur­ban home is for the most part iso­lat­ed, func­tion­al­ly fixed, and expe­ri­enced as a site of pas­sive leisure and con­sump­tion, Rochdale is shown to be emphat­i­cal­ly mul­ti-modal, intrin­si­cal­ly social­ized, and polit­i­cal­ly pro­duc­tive. Why did you want to empha­size these mate­r­i­al, quo­tid­i­an aspects of Rochdale (as opposed, say, to the inter­per­son­al or polit­i­cal moments that would define a dif­fer­ent kind of his­to­ry of the insti­tu­tion)? What might we see in these anti­quat­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nolo­gies beyond old age and redun­dan­cy? With the shift from ana­log to dig­i­tal pro­duc­tion, the poten­tial reach of a text or image has been dra­mat­i­cal­ly increased even as the con­di­tions of pro­duc­tion them­selves have been pri­va­tized and de-skilled. What is it, then, about our moment which makes these images of social­ized, pro­duc­tive life par­tic­u­lar­ly entic­ing? In a moment in which any­thing any­where can be instant­ly shared—a text, a thought—what might be added to the atom­ized cycle of dig­i­tal pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion by gen­uine­ly social­ized life?

FM: I con­tend that res­i­dents of Rochdale Col­lege sought to make a more liv­able world in a myr­i­ad of ways, begin­ning with quo­tid­i­an life at home. Beyond edu­ca­tion alone, there were exper­i­ments with child­care, com­mu­nal liv­ing, and hor­i­zon­tal pol­i­tics. But my empha­sis on the mate­r­i­al cul­ture lies in the fact that this is where their aspi­ra­tions and social rela­tions were actu­al­ized in a way that is well-doc­u­ment­ed. For instance, there is a moun­tain of self-pub­lished print mate­r­i­al from Rochdale: near-dai­ly news­pa­pers for eight years, mem­os, com­mit­tee meet­ings, protest pam­phlets, and ephemera of all kinds. Co-cre­at­ing print­ed mat­ter, radio, tele­vi­sion, pot­tery, sculp­ture, and so on served to pro­duce and bind the Rochdale com­mu­ni­ty. It offered a pub­lic forum beyond one’s imme­di­ate peers (it’s impor­tant to remem­ber there were usu­al­ly upward of 2000 peo­ple in the build­ing), a doc­u­ment­ed way to express polit­i­cal con­sen­sus or dis­sent, iden­ti­ties, affects, and so on. The art his­to­ri­an Robin Simp­son describes some Rochdale media pro­duc­tions using the dis­course of “coun­ter­publics,” which I think is apt: it cap­tures the broad oppo­si­tion­al scope of the iden­ti­ties forged there.2

CLWU Still 03

Rochdale’s tex­tu­al and mate­r­i­al cul­ture offers a clear pic­ture of its res­i­dents’ ideals. These ideals were para­mount for me, rather than ascrip­tions of fail­ure or suc­cess, because they express a gen­uine desire to reform the edu­ca­tion sys­tem and to restruc­ture every­day life. Res­i­dents express their aspi­ra­tions with a healthy amount of inde­ter­mi­na­cy and uncer­tain­ty. Focus­ing on the pri­ma­ry texts offered a dif­fer­ent entry point than my inter­views with for­mer res­i­dents, since the lat­ter were speak­ing from a ret­ro­spec­tive posi­tion, which was fur­ther cloud­ed by the media cam­paign to demo­nize Rochdale.

With regards to the end of the ques­tion, I think in a very straight­for­ward way these images are imag­i­na­tive: they depict a set of social rela­tions that exist­ed with rel­a­tive auton­o­my from the frown­ing pub­lic for quite a long time. They are hard to imag­ine giv­en the con­di­tions of pos­si­bil­i­ty that exist today. To look at these images now is to look not only at doc­u­ments of alter­na­tive ways of liv­ing, but also to look back—and through—this era, which was itself envi­sion­ing a future much dif­fer­ent from what came to be.

AP: Con­tem­po­rary stu­dent cul­ture shows lit­tle inter­est in the com­mune as a form of life, despite the fact that stu­dents con­tin­ue to report high rates of lone­li­ness, anx­i­ety, and depres­sion and despite the fact that high rents and stag­nant wages make col­lec­tive liv­ing rel­e­vant even as a means to mere eco­nom­ic sur­vival. There’s a very real way in which the com­mune is con­spic­u­ous­ly miss­ing from the con­tem­po­rary cul­tur­al land­scape. In your instal­la­tion you chose to sten­cil images from the Rochdale archive onto the wall of the gallery. In addi­tion to this you spread its prints and pam­phlets out onto a bare wood­en table. You chose to leave some kind of dust too on the table in the space between these prints. Is there not in all of this a real desire for the mate­r­i­al traces of Rochdale, an inter­est­ing polit­i­cal nos­tal­gia, one that goes far beyond the osten­si­bly dis­in­ter­est­ed curios­i­ty of the his­to­ri­an? What polit­i­cal or aes­thet­ic val­ue do you con­tin­ue to find in the com­mune or broad­ly in the kinds of utopi­an social exper­i­men­ta­tion we saw across the late 1960s and ear­ly 1970s?

FM: Nos­tal­gia was top-of-mind for me through­out the project, as there is so much con­tem­po­rary cur­ren­cy placed in this his­tor­i­cal moment and it is often quite selec­tive. I am per­haps guilty of this myself, as I don’t overt­ly cri­tique the naïve pol­i­tics on gen­der, sex­u­al­i­ty, and race that cloud Rochdale’s large­ly white, het­ero­sex­u­al, mid­dle-class res­i­dent body.

My approach was to remake archival mate­r­i­al using high­ly medi­at­ed, tech­no­log­i­cal means—media that are thor­ough­ly enmeshed in the con­tem­po­rary uni­ver­si­ty. With this approach, I hope to present the mate­r­i­al in a way that fore­grounds my alien­ation from it but assert that it is worth look­ing close­ly at nonethe­less. Of course, nos­tal­gia exists when look­ing at his­tor­i­cal mate­r­i­al of this nature no mat­ter how it is pre­sent­ed, but I’m not averse to affec­tive respons­es, so long as they don’t stick to con­ven­tion­al­ly defined nos­tal­gia alone.

With that in mind, I do dwell on Rochdale’s notions of free­dom, self-deter­mi­na­tion, and mutu­al aid, which res­onate with me per­son­al­ly and polit­i­cal­ly and which I believe to be worth re-exam­in­ing. These are espe­cial­ly cru­cial to con­tem­po­rary stu­dent life, which is char­ac­ter­ized by debt, com­pe­ti­tion, and alien­ation. As I was a grad­u­ate stu­dent at the time, I was think­ing about an ontol­ogy of studenthood—what does it actu­al­ly mean to be a stu­dent? For most peo­ple, stu­dent­hood is char­ac­ter­ized as a phase of mat­u­ra­tion and knowl­edge-acqui­si­tion, one then fol­lowed by a sharp (and irre­versible) tran­si­tion to adult­hood. The social exper­i­ments of the 1960s and 1970s, like Rochdale, seem to instead per­ma­nent­ly inhab­it stu­dent­hood, fore­ground­ing tran­si­tion, study, and inde­ter­mi­na­cy as a way of being polit­i­cal. This refusal to “grow up” also rep­re­sents a refusal to cohere with nor­ma­tive ideas about respectabil­i­ty, matu­ri­ty, etc.

These ideas about stu­dent­hood are root­ed in the dom­i­nant cri­tique of the uni­ver­si­ty at that time, which char­ac­ter­ized the lat­ter as a “knowl­edge factory”—a place where cog­ni­tive cap­i­tal­ism is repro­duced through the mak­ing of com­pli­ant and myopic work­ers.3 At Rochdale, stu­dents iden­ti­fied this turn in high­er edu­ca­tion as a fore­clo­sure of their futures. In pam­phlets and self-pub­lished news­pa­pers, they express desires to learn and exper­i­ment with­out the nar­row frame of goal- and career-ori­ent­ed course­work. The point on “knowl­edge fac­to­ries” is cru­cial to the for­ma­tion of their ideas about stu­dent­hood: in lieu of being meld­ed, nor­ma­tive­ly social­ized, and dis­ci­plined, they seek to remain open to pos­si­bil­i­ties and ways of know­ing that escape the log­ic of the factory.

AP: This ques­tion has to do with what we see as a core line of inquiry at work in Come Live With Us, one direct­ed at the rela­tion­ship between rep­re­sen­ta­tion and his­to­ry. It is not that your piece seems par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in rep­re­sen­ta­tion as such—this was real­ly a the­o­ret­i­cal fetish of 1990s decon­struc­tion­ist art prac­tice and crit­i­cism, one that has most­ly exhaust­ed itself. Rather, its focus is more spe­cif­ic and has to do with the pecu­liar dif­fi­cul­ties of visu­al­iz­ing the polit­i­cal. How does one rep­re­sent or stage a polit­i­cal process that has van­ished, a process that was at the same instant a mere sequence in a much larg­er con­junc­ture that has itself dis­ap­peared? To nar­rate polit­i­cal events ret­ro­spec­tive­ly has always been a tricky process, in part because the ten­den­cy of the even­tal is to cre­ate some­thing new at the out­er edges of an exist­ing sit­u­a­tion. As Badiou fre­quent­ly reminds us, events are inher­ent­ly unpre­dictable. They hap­pen against the odds of every­thing we think we know about a state of affairs. But we are deal­ing with more than the trick­i­ness of nar­rat­ing events as such here. Instead, the prob­lem has to do with a par­a­dig­mat­ic shift in the way time presents itself. What has van­ished is the entire uni­verse of communism—the whole ram­i­fy­ing world of left exper­i­men­ta­tion that con­sti­tut­ed so much of what took place world-his­tor­i­cal­ly between 1917 and 1980 (the lat­ter date, when both Rea­gan and Thatch­er were elect­ed, is as good as any to name the end of the era which pre­ced­ed it). Includ­ed in this notion of a com­mu­nist universe—we could call it a left uni­verse or a social­ist uni­verse too—would, of course, be the actu­al­ly exist­ing state socialisms, but also left union­ism, rad­i­cal stu­dent move­ments, gueril­la groups, com­munes, etc. How­ev­er spe­cif­ic or sin­gu­lar the Rochdale exper­i­ment was it can’t real­ly be under­stood apart from the now-van­ished atmos­phere of this universe.

How, then, does one rep­re­sent an exper­i­ment like Rochdale, one that was, in its time, so intense­ly and con­fi­dent­ly here and now? This was a con­fi­dence, a joie de vivre, that was reliant in part on a broad sense, no longer present on the left, that in the long run, in the end, we will win. I don’t mean to use this phrase flip­pant­ly: there’s a real sense among stu­dents in the late six­ties and ear­ly sev­en­ties and among orga­nized mil­i­tants and move­ments that the forces of reac­tion and con­ser­vatism are in retreat and that cap­i­tal­ism as a sys­tem is a vis­i­tor from the past (and not the future). It is not an exag­ger­a­tion to say that giv­en our own polit­i­cal con­junc­ture, the work of re-stag­ing such an experiment—giving life to its agents’ expec­ta­tions and actions, imma­nent­ly under­stand­ing their desires—requires the same kind of arche­o­log­i­cal leap required by anthro­pol­o­gists work­ing on groups rad­i­cal­ly removed from them­selves in time and space. In oth­er words, we’re not sure that return­ing to the polit­i­cal uni­verse of the ear­ly 1970s is all that dif­fer­ent from hav­ing to imag­i­na­tive­ly recon­struct the life-world of the Etr­uscans! At least from my view this is how dra­mat­ic the con­junc­tur­al shift has been since the rup­ture intro­duced into his­to­ry by Rea­gan and Thatch­er. It is as if neolib­er­al­ism were a kind of gar­ish­ly mir­rored door: once closed it shuts off the time/space beyond it in a new way, mak­ing attempts to film or write across the thresh­old extreme­ly dif­fi­cult. So your film sets itself this extreme­ly inter­est­ing (and dif­fi­cult) task, that of film­ing through a mir­rored door and onto a world that has van­ished. You seem to be explic­it­ly try­ing to the­ma­tize this by focus­ing very close­ly on the mate­r­i­al cul­ture of the signs and traces left by Rochdale (for exam­ple, with shots of hands mov­ing through archives, of peri­od doc­u­ments, and of its archi­tec­tur­al remain­ders). You also choose to access the sub­jects of Rochdale not through direct inter­views in which they are asked to reflect spon­ta­neous­ly on the past, but by hav­ing them read peri­od doc­u­ments that were pro­duced about or by Rochdale. There’s a very explic­it fore­ground­ing of his­tor­i­cal lay­ers at work in all of this. What’s going on here?

FM: I ful­ly agree with your con­tention that stu­dent groups and oth­er folks on the left did believe they would win! This anal­o­gy of the mir­rored door is very apt, and it’s one that I have tried to recre­ate in my approach toward the project. While I agree that it takes an immense con­jec­tur­al shift to imag­ine the sociopo­lit­i­cal con­text of the 1970s, my capac­i­ty to speak with for­mer res­i­dents helped to bridge the gaps in my under­stand­ing. They out­lined the unique con­di­tions of pos­si­bil­i­ty that enabled Rochdale Col­lege to hap­pen. I con­duct­ed inter­views with Rochdale alum­ni but ulti­mate­ly decid­ed to ask them to read key doc­u­ments from the Col­lege his­to­ry for the cam­era. One text express­es the edu­ca­tion­al ideals of the Col­lege, anoth­er out­lines rules for gov­ern­ing cit­i­zen­ship at Rochdale via a pol­i­cy toward “crash­ers,” and a third chron­i­cles the fed­er­al government’s out­rage at the clean-up they were left with upon Rochdale’s clo­sure. By hav­ing Col­lege alum­ni per­form these texts, I try to fore­ground their endur­ing pres­ence, no mat­ter how far social­ly and polit­i­cal­ly removed we appear to be from this episode of recent his­to­ry. They are in their six­ties, sev­en­ties, or eight­ies, and they con­tin­ue to car­ry on and trans­mit the past.

CLWU-Still-06.png

In a sim­i­lar way, I filmed the Col­lege build­ing with atten­tion to its details, in spite of the fact that there’s lit­tle to look at. Aside from The Unknown Stu­dent (the sculp­ture men­tioned above), the lone evi­dence of Rochdale is a paint­ed mur­al in the atri­um. The build­ing is under­whelm­ing, and mute to the events that took place there. In the video, I com­bine and over­lay images of the Col­lege build­ing with archival pho­tographs and doc­u­ments that show the same site as a place of dynam­ic social life. The bifur­ca­tion that hap­pens here—between a build­ing that can­not express its his­to­ry and fleet­ing pho­tographs from the past—is part of the dif­fi­cul­ties of visu­al­iz­ing the polit­i­cal you men­tioned above. Rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the polit­i­cal are too often lim­it­ed to acts of dis­sent and tem­po­ral­ly lim­it­ed to insur­rec­tionary moments. For me, the polit­i­cal elides the frag­men­tary nature of its con­ven­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tions because it is beyond visu­al­i­ty; it exists in forms that can­not be rep­re­sent­ed. With this mod­est project, I try to go beyond visu­al­i­ty as a sin­gu­lar approach toward rep­re­sent­ing his­to­ry by engag­ing with the archive through medi­at­ed process­es: through mak­ing, pub­lish­ing, and per­form­ing. In so doing, his­to­ry is not just rep­re­sent­ed, but made and re-made to ani­mate the present.

Image credits

Video Stills: Come Live with Us. HD Video, 20:30, 2016

Instal­la­tion views:

Instal­la­tion view of Come Live with Us at The Art Muse­um at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto
Stu­dio table with 3D-print­ed sculp­tures and inkjet prints, adhe­sive inkjet prints, spray-paint. 2016

Notes

1 Dream Tower. Dir. Ron Mann. Sphinx Pro­duc­tions, 1994.

2 Simp­son, Robin. “Let the Buy­er Beware.” This Book is a Class­room, Pas­sen­ger Books, 2012.

3 Rau­nig, Ger­ald. Fac­to­ries of Knowl­edge, Indus­tries of Cre­ativ­i­ty. Los Ange­les: Semiotext(e) (2013).