Bopha ChhayAs an artist-run centre that’s in its thirties, Artspeak has its own particular legacy. You hinted at these challenges, sometimes a legacy can bring with it a lot of baggage, or lend itself to gatekeeping. Artspeak has a very particular mandate—to encourage a dialogue between visual arts and writing and text practices. Depending on who the director is at that time, they interpret that mission and the values of the organisation in a very particular way.

BCThis is why it’s really important for me, when I work in a particular place, to consider community building and how long that takes. It’s not just an event, it could take years to build particular relationships of trust, with many different people and groups, and whoever walks in through the door. It is slow work, and takes the amount of time that it needs to take. I really appreciate the boom and bust energy too though. When you can do something, a project, a space, a collaboration and recognise that there are human, emotional, economic limitations and constraints you have to work within, then it’s not about exponential growth. We can’t be expected to deliver and produce all these outcomes all the time. I’ve worked on several collaborative publications and projects with the understanding that they can have a limited lifespan, due to various life constraints, and recognizing when things need to come to a natural end. For example, from 2016–18 we published five issues of Charcuterie (a small, multi-format periodical on experimental and contemporary art literature) before the co-editors Eli Zibin, Steffanie Ling, and then designer Victoria Lum and I had to stop for other jobs in order to pay rent.

BCYou started with the etymology of curator. I often have thought about this, because I am not a formally-trained curator. People often ask me how I came to curating, and I like how it forces me to stop and consider the path that led to this moment. I think about curatorial work as being similar to the process of many other occupations. How you materialise and bring an idea to fruition, who you bring with you, what are the ideas you’re expanding on together, and acknowledging that it’s a process, so stumbling a little, and failing is also part of that learning process. I keep coming back to the word intertextuality, because it forces a deeper looking, seeing, being, it refuses closure, it remains open to interpretation. In that we’re always trying to figure out what our relationship and responsibility is to each other, to things, to ideas, to histories. I think of artworks as different kinds of text. To me an exhibition can be like a publication, or an essay, or a poem, or a story. I often see the different projects within a themed annual program as stanzas, and it is only at the end of the year that you reflect on the whole. That iterative approach is like a story being told over the course of a year. Each project can also stand on its own. As curators I think we’re managing different things; for better or for worse. Maybe we shouldn’t be doing a hundred things at once, climbing up ladders, adjusting the lights, drafting budgets, hosting, and doing all that stuff. But I like the idea of caretaking, because it’s not just the object, it’s not just the artist, it’s not just the space, it’s also everything outside of the institution, the relationships with funders, donors, the neighbourhood. You bring with you all those relationships, and layers of history that inform how you work with the artists you invite. 

BCYes, that was a fun project. Titled Excerpt from Baker’s Dozen, Sol had envisioned it as a ‘photo book’ and we planned to launch it at the Vancouver Art Book Fair. The photos taken by Sol, who has a primary practice in photography, are presented on the cans of beer. He also has a brewing practice. One of my favourite beers in the series was called Selenite Pale Ale for Clearing Negative Energy and on the can was an image of a magic wand and a book, the flavour was wild marjoram flower, magnum hops, malt, water and yeast. Another beer which was really delicious was called Mugwort Beer for Dreaming. The image was of dyed stones and a wool rug, and the beer was made from mugwort, barberry, hops, malt, water and yeast. There were six different beers we randomly selected from to create each four-pack publication.

BCWe live in a rainforest. 

BCRecently Sol did a talk here, in our series called the Speakeasy: Salon, a nod to the history of Artspeak as a speakeasy. The Speakeasy: Salon was an informal para-academic setting, where artists and other cultural practitioners were invited to speak, making artistic research ideas public. It’s really off-the-cuff, presenters choose a research interest to speak about and they don’t have to be an expert. Previous talks have included a presentation on a collection of maritime erotica, histories of archaeological digs, and quantum physics. It gives people an idea of the kind of rhizomatic or interdisciplinary nature of artistic research and the different directions that it can go in, but not necessarily into the final outcome or the work. I think the Speakeasy: Salon programme is just an excuse to get together and have a chat, share a cup of tea. But also our publications are about making ideas, projects, or research public. So again, it’s that different kind of circulation of ideas outside of a formal exhibition in a gallery.

BCWhen speaking, as in writing, I’m also very reluctant to overly describe things. It allows people to come to the work on their own terms, depending on where their curiosity lies. I like the idea that people take what they need, whether that’s enjoyable, puzzling or disturbing, whatever resonates for them. For example, with Woojae Kim’s project, while it appears to be an incredibly quiet show, there’s actually a lot going on. The microorganism breaks down sugar and starches, and transforms it into alcohol. The alchemy is thrilling, and some people may be interested in the process, while other visitors are much more interested in the materials—the unbaked bricks, and clay cups from the local river, or chlorophyll photographic prints.

PBI don’t think we can separate the places that we come from, our positionality, and the way we subconsciously operate. Do you think that your position as an outsider to Vancouver with relationships to—for example—some New Zealand artists, like Berlin-based Ruth Buchanan who did an amazing project here, is bringing international influences into Artspeak? 

PBThis idea of calcification is interesting, how a practice that was once innovative, can become entrenched. The art histories of Vancouver prominently feature photoconceptualism led by male artists Jeff Wall, Rodney Graham, Stan Douglas and others, and photography is still so important today, landscape is a big part of that. Drilling down on that, where we are situated now, in an urbanised downtown, is a very particular place. Artist Douglas Coupland coined the nickname for Vancouver, the City of Glass, after its many condo towers. This imagining and the gentrification, narrative-building and patriotism that framed Vancouver’s 2010 Olympics promotes a settler narrative of Vancouver as a young neo-liberal international city on the edge of the mountains, largely undermining millenia-long Coast Salish relationships to this place. As local Metis-Cree filmmaker and planner Kamala Todd writes, this is an Indigenous city, in “This Many-storied Land.” We’re on the unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations on land that wasn't bought, it wasn’t sold, there wasn’t a war, there was no treaty, what does that mean?

PBYes, it’s stolen land. It’s a really interesting, and problematic, difficult place to work. It’s like an interstitial place. A lot of treaties were made in other parts of Canada but not on the West Coast in British Columbia. There was an urgent rush to claim this space for the Crown and Canada for many reasons, including resource extraction (the Fraser River gold rush), fur trading and concerns over the potential for annexation by the USA. You referenced this earlier, being an uninvited guest, and also an untrained curator. Once I was having a drink with you and an institutional curator, and I controversially declared: “Curators don’t need to be formally trained!” And he asked me, “Why did you come to Canada to do a curatorial programme, then?” Well, I studied to take a break from working as a curator!

PBGetting a chance to re-calibrate, train and actually think about the practice of curating, I shifted my focus. In my curatorial masters degree at The University of British Columbia I asked, how can I decolonise my practice? Can I integrate Indigenous curatorial methodologies into my practice, as a settler curator? I had previously thought that my job was to create space and ensure resources were there within my programming for that work to happen by Indigenous or Māori artists or curators. My biggest takeaway from Decolonising Methodologies by Linda Tuhiwai Smith was yes, it’s a start to open the door for others to do the work, but are you actually doing your job if you can’t work with Indigenous artists; if you don’t know that there are other protocols and relationalities and different ways of working? To me, as a curator, this means engaging in different curatorial methodologies; re-structuring timelines and ways of approaching consent, recognising different ways of being in-relation, including relationships with place,  unravelling existing power dynamics and so much more.

PBYes, and what does “land back” mean? I think it means land and resources fully back in Indigenous stewardship, it means paying rent on stolen land, it means things are going to be different from the way they are now. It means that the status quo will have to change, to give up power. It means we’re going to be uncomfortable. Those who are comfortable now are going to be uncomfortable in the future.

PBDude, if you haven’t been told off or course-corrected lately by an Indigenous auntie are you really doing anything useful?

PBBeing told off is the first step to doing something right.