Blurring the lines between art and revolution

Madeleine Hayles
Contributor
York University has a reputation for being a school with an activist bent.
We have all faced the woes of attempting to get to class through a massive crowd of jostling protesters in the middle of Vari Hall on a Monday morning. Maybe you’ve even been one of the jostlers.

On the other hand, when I spied someone poking fun at a poster – something about York students rallying against hate – and the revolutionary disposition of York students, I have to admit, it made me snicker a little.
Although the Art Gallery of York University (AGYU) already has a keen and agreeable audience in the multitude of opinionated and civic-minded undergrads, perhaps it is this second category of students – the sceptics and the aloof – whom the AGYU is hoping to reach with their latest exhibits. “Revolutionary Sundays,” a collection of Gilberto Ante’s photos of the early years of the Cuban Revolution, is on display alongside a series of constantly changing and growing art projects produced by two activist artist collectives, the Centre for Incidental Activisms and Public Studio.
“Revolutionary Sundays”
A Cuban sugarcane worker,  Gilberto Ante became a photographer in the 1950s, eventually becoming responsible for keeping a photographic record of dictator Fidel Castro’s regime. Ante did not only document socialist leadership and action – he spent his free time capturing images of everyday life in 1960s Cuba, particularly the life of Cuban women.
The series currently on the display at the AGYU features these photos, the commonplace moments that constituted the backdrop of a tumultuous political era. The exhibit marks the first time Ante’s work has been displayed in North America.
Ante’s thoughtful black and white images of children, friends and family; a group of grinning spectators watching a female dancer’s skirt billowing out about her; a man jumping on a trampoline and other images all serve to capture a particular and strange phenomenon. Poet W. H. Auden said suffering takes place “while someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.” Perhaps it seems such things would make for a tedious photo gallery, but Ante manages to captures a certain tranquility and joy that is hidden somewhere in the dullness.
Centre for Incidental Activism
In the adjacent gallery, a series of contemporary art pieces produced by two artist collectives are taking shape. One of them, the Centre for Incidental Activism (CIA) is a group who wish to put artistic inquiry and research as much on display as they do their finished product.
“It’s a project that is designed to make the research process of artistic production visible,” said CIA member Deanna Bowen, a Toronto artist and University of Toronto lecturer.
The AGYU curators also challenged the CIA with a few requests. “We were asked not to make traditional art, that is, art objects,” Bowen remarked. Perhaps aware of apathetic York students like me, the curators also requested that the CIA members “engage with the York community, however closely or broadly we [CIA] chose.”
The artists also had to include an activist and participatory practice in their exhibits, which happened to fit nicely with Bowen’s latest project. Bowen spent the summer in Selma, Alabama, the starting point of the three Selma to Montgomery marches that took place during the height of the American civil rights movement.
“The show is an opportunity for me to interpret being in Selma, Alabama in the summertime,” said Bowen, “and art is a strategy for me to go about talking about a fairly charged political event.”
Using art, Bowen is able to tackle an emotional topic, and she does so using the unique, research-oriented method of the CIA.
“I’m all about research and making archival documents visible,” she said. But Bowen also understands that what’s written down from Selma’s history, and the history of the civil rights movement generally, presents a biased perspective. She places just as much value in displaying the personal histories she comes across through talking to the older generations and learning their stories.
“I’ve met some incredible people along the way who have really, just over a coffee, blown my mind,” Bowen said.
Public Studio
Public Studio, the second group with works presented at the AGYU this season, is a constantly changing collective focused on creating a dialogue between art and the current political climate.
“I’ve often been called an activist and an artist, and activist artist, and I think that what we’re interested in doing with Public Studio is saying that there isn’t really a separation,” said founding member Elle Flanders, a Toronto filmmaker and artist.
Flanders and her Public Studio partners Tamira Sawatzky and Eshrat Erfanian have brought their video project, Kino Pravda 3G, to the AGYU to illustrate just how blurred the line between activism and art is.
The original Kino Pravda is a series of newsreels created by the Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov intended to exhibit everyday experiences, including footage from the marketplaces, bars and schools of Russia in the early 20th century.
Tacking “3G” onto the end to refer to the cell phone’s deep involvement in modern protest, Public Studio’s project aims to reflect this idea of cinematic truth and examine global unrest in the contemporary world.
“We started with the G20, because that was in our own backyard, and then started to look at protest movements all around the world,” said Flanders.
By finding, downloading and editing together cell phone footage, Flanders’ project creates films that are “very current, and they’re looking at what’s happening right now,” she said.
There are three films in total focusing on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, the student demonstrations against funding cuts to universities in the U.K. and the pro-democracy riots in Egypt.