Below the Radar Transcript
Episode 208: What Are Our Supports? 鈥� with Joni Low
Speakers: Steve Tornes, Am Johal, Joni Low
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Steve Tornes 0:02
Hello listeners! I鈥檓 Steve Tornes with Below the Radar, a knowledge democracy podcast. Below the Radar is recorded on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. On this episode of Below the Radar, our host, Am Johal, is joined by , independent curator and Vancouver based writer. She is a SSHRC Doctoral Fellow at 丁香园AV鈥檚 School for the Contemporary Arts, and her research-creation focuses on artists accessing different ways of knowing, feeling and remembering. They discuss Joni鈥檚 new book, , and 2018 curatorial project of the same name, as well as local artistic practices that make Vancouver鈥檚 art scene unique. We hope you enjoy the episode!
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Am Johal 0:52
Hello, welcome to Below the Radar. Delighted that you could join us again this week. We have a special guest with us, Joni Low. Welcome, Joni.
Joni Low 1:00
Hey Am. Great to be here. Nice to see you.
Am Johal 1:03
Well, I wonder if we can begin, Joni, with you introducing yourself a little bit?
Joni Low 1:08
Yes. My name is Joni Low. And I'm a writer, independent curator, and doctoral student at 丁香园AV鈥檚 School for the Contemporary Arts in their inaugural doctoral research creation program.
Am Johal 1:21
Writer, curator, critic, is it fair to call you a critter?
Joni Low 1:25
Yeah, call me a critter. We are the other-than-humans.
Am Johal 1:29
Yeah. Yes, as you mentioned, you're a doctoral student, and you've been writing on visual art for almost a couple of decades now. So you know, this community very well, but broadly, the art community and you've just released a book, just a few weeks ago, wondering if you can tell us a little bit about it.
Joni Low 1:47
So, it sounds like I'm carbon dating myself a little bit. Writing for decades. Yeah, so the project, we launched a book, it's called, What Are Our Supports?. And it's an anthology with over 20 local and international contributors and What Are Our Supports? was based on a project I did in public space in 2018, which involved five artists groups, responding to the question of, what are our supports during precarious times, by situating their project in a booth made by .
Am Johal 2:24
And in terms of how the project started out, or was conceived of, are there other things that inspired this project? Or was it already sort of planned to be a part of this project with Germaine?
Joni Low 2:38
Yeah, definitely. There's a lot of inspirations. And just when I was walking here, I was thinking about them. Where do I start? I mean, the initial inspiration, I think, for me, is my observation of artists, spatial practices in the city, and particularly artists that often work collectively. And they frequently work as part of their practice to build support structures for community. So I'm thinking here, of course, of Germaine Koh, , who's part of , , , , . I mean, these are all artists that create space for art, and to make those spaces possible for community.
Am Johal 3:26
If you could speak a little bit to, I know Germaine from around, she was just over my place a few months back when was over. Wondering if you can speak a little bit to you know, her art practice and the way this particular project relates to the themes of the book.
Joni Low 3:46
Yeah, so Germaine is an artist I've long admired. I've known her, I think, since 2005/2006. So that was when I worked at , and she came to do a project called , which was basically taking all the bottles that had no economic value from and making it into a kind of shimmering shifting installation, that a lot of the people in the neighborhood and the Downtown Eastside interpreted as a memorial. Like they really took ownership of this installation and had a lot of, you know, very powerful responses to it.
Am Johal 4:22
I remember that because Ken Lyotier, who's the founder of United We Can, I had met Germaine already, and had connected them up. And I remember going to see that show. It was a really beautiful show.
Joni Low 4:34
Yeah, yeah. And so I've known her for a long time. And I've always admired her practice, both in its ability, like very conceptually rigorous, aesthetically beautiful, but also in a way creating, you know, platforms for social encounters, social engagements, and these are often incidental, unpredictable. I mean, I think of another of her works, , which is an old rotary telephone, that sits in a gallery and you pick it up, and you're connected with a stranger, and then that's an opportunity for encounter. So, for Germaine, I mean, I'd wanted to work with Germaine and actually the project that predated What Are Our Supports? is a project called . It was a two person exhibition with Germaine and that looked at, you know, asked the question, what are the afterlives, material and conceptual afterlives of things that are outdated or considered as waste. And I was thinking about the afterlives of outdated technologies, outdated ideas and paradigms. And so the question of transformation was like, what else can these structures become and what else can maybe perhaps we as humans, maybe as an outdated category, also become? So that was another inspiration for the project.
But I'll just say, maybe what I've enjoyed about Germaine's practice and how I've watched it evolve is how, you know, she has a beautiful sculptural practice. And over time, she's really activated that practice to be socially engaged, to be like where the, say, for instance, the structure that the projects happened in, , it is actually like, it's a platform for engagement, for exchange, for connections. So her practice has evolved, where her sculptural practice becomes a platform for engagement becomes an opportunity for people to come together, exchange ideas, work together differently, build community, so I was super excited to work with her.
Am Johal 6:48
Yeah, and Germaine is so sporty. She did that project , was .
Joni Low 6:54
Oh, yeah.
Am Johal 6:55
I think there was a .
Joni Low 6:58
Yes, that's a good one. That's a good one. Yeah, League is super interesting in that I think they come together to play games, but they invent games. So there's no script. I mean, I think this taps into something I wrote about in my introduction for the What Are Our Supports? book, is how she's interested in this idea of incidental aesthetics. So, you know, it's chance based, it's not something that you can necessarily control. It's open ended. It involves the audience as participants.
Am Johal 7:29
Shout out to Germaine Koh out on Salt Spring Island, the pride and joy of Armstrong, BC.
Joni Low 7:35
Hey Germaine.
Am Johal 7:37
So Khan Lee. So can you speak about his involvement in the project? And also how his practice relates to some of these things that you've encountered in the book?
Joni Low 7:47
Oh, yeah. I mean, is it helpful if I do an overview of our project? And then maybe we can jump into Khan's project? Because it is super interesting one. So as I was saying, these five artists projects, they began with the question of, what are our supports, during, you know, environmentally, socially, politically, precarious times? And how do artists attune us to the immaterial relational, perhaps temporary support structures that are really quite crucial to the survival of art, space for art, and the survival of community and our commons? And so each artist took that question, you know, and interpreted it both like in the site specific location, which was . And within Germaine's booth in Cathedral Square Park.
So, I should say, Cathedral Square Park is also itself a support structure. The fountain for this park is a cooling system for the power substation underneath. The park itself is, you know, kind of decrepit, outdated overhang from . You know, now it has this beautiful mural by , , and blanketing the city, which we can touch on. But by and large, it's an underused, very odd downtown park.
We were also interested in that area because it was sort of an area on the crest of gentrification downtown, like, it didn't really have an identity. Across the street from it is the . A little bit further down, there was a vacant lot that has since now, it鈥檚 the Amazon headquarters. And then kitty-corner to that was the Canada Post building, which, as you know, now is I think, also going to include Amazon plus, like three condo towers. So we're interested in you know, the politics of the neighborhood, the gentrification spatially how it was changing.
And then also a bit further down, and this connects with the OR Gallery, is the BC Hydro building, and of course, BC hydro is this huge towering building that was, you know, it is right next to the which was the former home to the OR Gallery and which has for decades long been a space, a support structure for art. Through the family that's been a space for low rent and for art on the ground floor and that resisted, you know, BC Hydros attempts to buy it out, bulldoze it and create, you know, another one of their towers. So in many ways, like, they're kind of like this , or this support structure for values that is still standing. And as you mentioned, 鈥檚 piece 鈥溾��, we're very much thinking about that. And responding to that too.
Am Johal 10:48
And there used to be the which used to be the , which used to be a kind of workers organizing center in the 30s. But then they had to sell the building, that group of nonprofit organizations that were there. That was right around the corner.
Joni Low 11:07
Right around the corner. Interesting. Yeah, yeah. It's cool to think about, as well, structures, you know, and think about this question around Afterlives, like structures that have outgrown their intended uses, what else they can become. And, you know, we've been, you know, as being a former police station, and now being like, a cultural precinct or a hub of nonprofits. I mean, I think that's one example of.
Am Johal 11:36
Yeah, that kind of trying to shift from negative symbolic capital to something else in terms of use of this space, but also, you know, complex renovation, and all of those things. It's an ongoing, these things are never done in a way. And it's the art of making unfinished, I guess.
Joni Low 11:56
The art of making unfinished. The open ended assemblage. And so the five artist groups, each took the booth and interpreted it in different ways, according to the thematics. HMH Boothy, Germaine designed the booth to be both a sort of critique of the restrictions in affordable space in our city, for art, for living. So it's a very small booth. It's like a telephone booth, three by three by seven. And she also designed it as, you know, kind of thinking about the cultural associations of the telephone booth like say, , , as a sort of , as this portal, or sort of a point of exchange or a point of transformation.
So all of the artists approached Boothy as a sort of, you know, something that's very malleable in identity and use. And so what else could it become? And they took Boothy and interpreted in a variety of ways, like Afterlives Currency, which was with Germaine and Aron. They utilized the booth as a currency exchange, transforming electronic waste into currency made from that waste. Emily Neufeld and T鈥檜y鈥檛鈥檛anat-Cease Wyss, transformed the booth into an Indigenous ecosystem. So within it were all the plants that are local to the area, sort of envisioning the city before the city. S F Ho with changed into a surveillance portal. Thinking about codes of belonging within the park, like who belongs in public space and who doesn't and all the sort of invisible codes that determine that. And DRIL Art Collective transformed the booth into a lightbox. So they basically were thinking about, their project was called . And they were thinking about the ground beneath us as a sort of support structure and those sort of overlooked surfaces which we walk on every day. So they took rubbings of all the sorts of the surfaces in the area and thinking about, you know, the architecture of the cathedral across the street, made these rubbings into sort of psychedelic patterns and transformed it into a lightbox. And then Khan Lee worked with Andrew Lee and Francis Cruz and they transformed the booth into The People's Salon, which was basically a free salon, a hair salon offering free haircuts to the public. So then I got to Khan eventually. Wanted to shout out to all the artists' projects.
Am Johal 14:42
In terms of, you know, previous books that have been written about Vancouver art, this is a very different type of project in many ways. You know, there's was capturing, you know, a moment in the artist-run centre scene that , edited that that volume. did the . And I'm wondering, you know, this is different than those but were there other pieces of writing that sort of influenced this project and the kind of the stakes of the themes in this book, you know, the why now of why these questions are percolating at the moment within the art community here?
Joni Low 15:24
It's interesting, you mentioned those other anthologies because, you know, when we were working on this book, and I co-edited it with art historian, , who used to live here, he since relocated to Santa Barbara, California. We were thinking about Vancouver and Vancouver histories, and how difficult it is for our generation to write that kind of history. In part because of the affordability of the city that disperses populations, like a lot of people move away, they come back. So there's a lot of interruptions. Community is still here, but it's a lot, perhaps less cohesive than it feels to be in Vancouver Anthology or Vancouver Art & Economies. But I still agree with you in that, I think this anthology comes at a moment in time where we're looking at practices in Vancouver. And in particular, how they create community during precarity, like how do these artist practices, continue to create space for art to happen, despite it all.
And so, I mean, I'm really interested in, you know, these artist practices, in part, like, it's not necessarily a cohesive school, like . And these are artists often that work, you know, in different disciplines, like in sound, and, you know, sculptural practice, also a socially engaged practice. So they're not just socially engaged artists, they're, they're quite holistic in their practices. So I wanted to really, you know, highlight a sort of spirit that I see, that I've seen in Vancouver, since I've been active in the community that I think people hadn't written a lot about, and the undergirding of that spirit is support.
Am Johal 17:14
I'm wondering in terms of the different roles you've had within the visual arts community, from working at Centre A, to writing projects and other roles, and now as a doctoral student, you've been immersed inside of this community for so long? How did that sort of benefit or influence you in terms of conceiving of this project in this particular way?
Joni Low 17:39
I think I mentioned in my introduction, as well, like, when I first started living life, in art, like working and living alongside it, and I date that experience to work at Centre A. You know, I was always encouraged by artists鈥� practices who, you know, they continue to pursue the quest of art, first and foremost. Less so art鈥檚, you know, conspicuous rewards. And these are artists that are consciously, you know, focused on the ideas, the experience and the knowledge that making art can bring. And with that, is it a lot of unknowns, but consciously, I think, not positioned in the market. And what I admire about these artists practice is like, really their tenacity in continuing to create space for art that feels free, that is really, you know, and it's so hard not to be entangled in like, neoliberal capitalism, and the way you know, it, really fuses itself into our lives. But I feel like these artist practices continually do that.
Am Johal 18:53
I wanted to ask you about, we chatted about this before we started recording, just around this theme of friendship. There's a quote in the book as well, around assemblages, by . "Assemblages don't just gather lifeways; they make them," and I'm wondering if you can sort of speak a little bit to kind of this notion of friendship and generosity and sociality that come up in the book.
Joni Low 19:19
Yes, okay. So I love Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing's writings, and I was thinking a lot about 鈥� her writing is both in how she talks about assemblages and how she talks about living through precarity. And I feel like a lot of the artists, projects and practices reflect this spirit of working through precarity to find answers on how to live and also creating these assemblages.
And so Anna Tsing , "Assemblages are open ended gatherings." On the ecologies of varied species, "Assemblages don鈥檛 just gather lifeways; they make them. Thinking through assemblage urges us to ask: How do gatherings sometimes become 'happenings,' that is, greater than the sum of their parts? If history without progress is indeterminate and multidirectional, might assemblages show us its possibilities?"
I mean, what I love about this quote, I think it very much captures these artist practices, and I think about the projects in, What Are Our Supports?, as sort of maybe a snapshot of these longer strands of, you know, their practices before and since that are creating support structures in our community.
Coming together, I think the way we did in Cathedral Square Park, in and around these projects, like, be it the currency project with Germaine Koh and Aron Louis Cohen, when they were inviting members of the public to bring in their electronic waste, and then they smelted it on site into these little coins that were meant to be a kind of future currency made from waste. A kind of like, post-capitalist economy kind of existence, or like, the People Salon where, you know, people came in or, you know, we'd get tourists, students, I think there was a guy that just got out of jail, stopping to get their hair cut. I mean, this is an assemblage that is unpredictable, it's open ended, it brings together a host of different publics. And the artist is not really in control of the outcome, or the composition, or the discoveries that are made with those publics. So I think of those projects very much as assemblages and the power of art, you know, kind of to transform everyday life, be it through care, or be it through thinking about how you know, currency is or is not a support structure for existence.
And also, you know, the kind of stories that emanate from that afterwards. I also think about, you know, assemblage within, like, the artist practices in a longer thread. So I mean, like, since this project, all of these artists have continued to be active in their practices, creating support structures for community. Like I think of Germaine's current project, . S F Ho did a beautiful project, a curatorial project called Slow Wave, which was about bringing LGBTQ2IA identified artists to a retreat on, I believe it was Gabriola Island. I think of Emily Neufeld's efforts in to, you know, provide a living wage for artists and helping to unionize arts workers. And Cease Wyss, you know, and her creation of Indigenous food forests. So, I mean, that's another way I think of the assemblage is like, how it was highlighted in these projects, but how they've continued since, in communities, not necessarily the art community. But also not necessarily always legible as art, but to create support structures through art for, you know, community.
Am Johal 23:09
Yeah, it's a really interesting word and assemblage, it comes also in a lot of those literature and friendship and community from to to Leela Gandhi's work on effective communities, has spoken about it related to queer nationalism and homonationalism nationalism. And I don't know if it comes up in or not, but what, he might not use that term, but there's certainly relevance there. So I like how that circulates in the book as well. I wonder if you could speak a little bit to Cease's role in the project as well.
Joni Low 23:48
Yeah, so Cease had two roles. I mean, one was her involvement in , which was a project by Emily Neufeld. And so Cease was a consultant for that. And she also, you know, as a media artist, Indigenous ethnobotanist, spoke a lot to the Indigenous plants that were in the ecosystem. And then she also, for the publication, which we worked on during the pandemic, I invited her to write a poem, and so her poem is kind of like, right at the forefront. It's called 'These Futures That Are Waiting' and, and her poem speaks to both the ancient knowledges that are of this place. And she's Squamish, St贸:l艒, Hawaiian descent, and also speaks to the ways in which nature is communicating to us the answers that we need for the future. So I mean, I think there's a part in her poem where she says 鈥淥ur telecommunications have been with us for millennia.鈥� And she points to the birds and the trees, and you know, all these messengers that have the wisdom that we need to move forward.
So yeah, I'm really honored to have her in the project. I've known her for a number of years. I think, when I met her when I first worked on 's for the CBC鈥檚 Wall, but always as someone who just has a wealth of knowledge and insight about listening to nature, listening to the lands, and having that sort of like other than human knowledge carry us forward. She mentioned she wrote the poem, just before the launch, she was telling me she wrote the poem in situ. So she went and she sat in Cathedral Square Park, and she looked at it sort of like decrepit nature. And then she looked around at the plants and then she imagined, you know, what was there before. So when you read it, you really get the sense of that presence.
Am Johal 25:51
Joni, so you've been doing your doctoral work for a little while now. I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit to kind of what you're doing for your project in your research right now.
Joni Low 26:05
Okay, well, as I mentioned, just before we started, a lot of my interests in my current topic, came out of this project, because I've long been interested in artists that work intermediately and that intermingle different media and different senses, in their work, to sort of, you know, convey an idea, expression, sensibility. What I realized in this project, and which relates to my current work at 丁香园AV, is this sort of, like notion of sensing otherwise. So, how are artists, you know, intermingling the senses or intermingling media, to really sense otherwise, towards different ways of knowing, feeling, and remembering. And what I found in reflecting on this project is, you know, the artists, all the projects are, you know, like, engage different senses, like, not just the visual, like, it could be the tactility of the Indigenous ecosystem, you know, the sonic nature of, you know, the performances that were done around DRIL Art Collective's re-grounding, the footnotes, or the People's Salon. And really just kind of, you know, with S F Ho's project, sensing, you know, invisible codes of belonging, like, how do we do that? And so, it kind of brought me to this question of, you know, it's like, you know, we live in an ocular centric world. Slick technical perfection, you know, a world that really kind of privileges the visual over the other senses. But what happens when, despite this looking slick, perfect, and what have you, our other senses tell us otherwise, that something's not right. And, you know, be that smell, touch, taste, or, you know, a kind of intuition, a sixth sense.
And so, my observation of these artist practices, which I very much see as research in public, you know, experimenting with unknown outcomes, was, you know, like, how are artists sensing otherwise, and gesturing towards maybe a world that's alongside, a world, you know, that we need to sort of bring into fruition and manifest, you know, making worlds and building different futures. So, my current research at 丁香园AV is about that. The way I've proposed it entering the program is an exhibition. So it's research-creation, so part of it will be an exhibition, a part of it will be a dissertation, maybe that will be a publication, but around artists who are are sensing otherwise, in perhaps, you know, in different ways, neurodiverse, multisensory, intermedial, towards these different ways of knowing. And I'm also interested in how the kind of synesthetic resonances that these projects have with neuroscience and increasingly somatic therapy. Maybe that's all I'll say about my research right now.
Am Johal 29:12
Just around the neuroscience part. Could you speak to that a little bit? I know, of course, , has some work related to neuroscience, but what areas are you looking at?
Joni Low 29:23
Yes, I'm increasingly, like, I am interested in maybe the sort of parallels between art intermingling the senses and how neuroscience and somatic therapies are getting at like the greater connections between my body in healing, healing from trauma. And in neuroscience, like I've definitely was reading Catherine Malabou. So that's how I got into, like, the brain. And you know, how mapping, like with neuroscience mapping some of these affective reactions, we can see evidence of how, like, affect works and how healing works, healing from trauma. So I've been reading . And I've been increasingly getting into therapies. So I was looking at , , and adrienne maree brown, who is works in generative somatics in terms of how.
Am Johal 30:30
Who has been a guest on the podcast.
Joni Low 30:32
That is right, because she won an award through 丁香园AV last year. Yeah. Yes, somatics as a way of healing the body. Bodies of color, bodies that, say, don't fit into ideas of quote unquote, normal, in capitalist, white, hetero patriarchy. So I know it's a big topic, I'm still working through it. But one of the things that I really appreciate about somatics increasingly, it doesn't mean I won't get like, you know, back into neuroscience, but, just as, is that it, yeah, it just looks at sensory, like how the body and the senses are experiencing the world. And increasingly for artists of colour or minoritized perspectives, which is part of my interest, how have they been affected? And how are they utilizing the body, the inner support structures, the embodied support structures, to guide them towards what feels right, what feels like the world that they want to live in and the world they want to create?
Am Johal 31:45
Wondering if there's any other projects that you're working on now that you wanted to talk about? I know putting out a book is enough and working, in addition, but you strike me as someone who's working on other stuff too, or potentially in the future.
Joni Low 31:59
I'm just focusing on resting right now.
Am Johal 32:02
Fair enough. Fair enough. That's good.
Joni Low 32:05
But yeah, we just launched this book in January so just going to rest and I'm gonna focus on my coursework, my doctoral studies. So building up my list. Maybe I'll get some of those authors that you mentioned.
Am Johal 32:20
I am teaching a class on friendship and community. I can send you the syllabus.
Joni Low 32:27
Yeah. And what I wanted to add actually about friendship because you had asked sort of like in relationship to assemblage, and friendship and solidarity. Another text in this book is 's and she talks about friendship as a medium. Of friendship as political, as a way of living and working together in this world. And I very much think that these practices embody that, like they utilize that as a medium. And I talk about, you know, like materializing the social, but they utilize it as a medium to make art with an intimate community so I definitely think friendship is very important.
Am Johal 33:09
Joni, anything you'd like to add?
Joni Low 33:12
Maybe I'll just add a little bit about the additional contributors in the book. You know, how they came to be a part of the project, because like during the pandemic, you know, we realized that a lot of these questions that we're asking about, like, supports during times of precarity, modes of self-organization, mutual aid really resonated with these projects in 2018. And, so in discussion, my co-editor Jeff O'Brien, and I, we thought, why don't we enlarge this conversation and include, you know, additional thinkers, feelers, contributors, who both think about support in their research or their practices, and bring them together in the anthology.
So in addition to artists' contributions, the anthology also includes commissioned poems and essays. So we have a really lovely poem by , We're All Given Boxes. I mentioned Cease's poem. wrote a poem about, you know, the before and the after the city. And then we have essays by Jeff Derksen, by , that are looking at things like public time as our support. That's Jeff's essay. Paula writes about land as a support structure. And then we kind of rounded out the anthology, like we were thinking, you know, in the wider expanse of time, and wider communities of, you know, like, people that are writing about supports. And, of course, C茅line Condorelli's had been a big inspiration for the project. So we were able to include some of her texts and reprint them.
And Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, her writings on colonialism, settler colonialism, as a series of processes, like, sort of scaffolding that work to uphold the structure. And we thought that was really, like a really great fit in talking about, you know, invisible structures that support and invisible structures that do not support and that we need to find ways to nimbly sort of react against, you know, that series of complex processes in order to build the worlds we want to see. And for Leanne, you know, it is about like, grounded normativity and Indigenous resurgence. And, you know, we just love the way she talks about that. She frames colonialism as this sort of shape shifting process that, you know, we need to react against in order to shift the larger structure. And I think that was something that Marianne Nicholson also mentioned in your last podcast that really resonated with me when I was listening last night. So anyways, just to say a little bit about the additional contributors.
Am Johal 36:11
Interestingly, we interviewed Leanne in the book that I'm working on with my friend, Matt, on friendship and community and Jeff Derksen just came to my class to read some poems related to the class. So we've got some overlap here.
Joni Low 36:26
Yeah, definitely. And just some amazing thinkers.
Am Johal 36:31
Thank you so much for joining us on Below the Radar, Joni.
Joni Low 36:34
Thanks Am. Thanks for inviting me.
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Steve Tornes 36:37
Below the Radar is a knowledge democracy podcast created by 丁香园AV鈥檚 Vancity Office of Community Engagement. This has been our conversation with Joni Low. Head to the show notes to find Joni鈥檚 book, What Are Our Supports?, and to read up on some of the resources mentioned in this episode. Don鈥檛 forget to subscribe to Below the Radar on your podcast listening app of choice. Thanks for listening and we鈥檒l catch you next time on Below the Radar.
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