67 - Killjoy - Automne - 2009
Sylvette Babin

With this issue we chose to clearly mark our 25th anniversary, not by producing a commemorative publication but by focussing on the present rather than the past. A celebration of the present? Yes, but what’s there to celebrate in 2009? Aside from feeling proud of what has been accomplished, underlining an anniversary requires additional work and investment—the size of this publication proves it—yet with the same limited resources. In the context of a crisis that has ramifications in the cultural sector, the desire to celebrate is certainly not as strong. Moreover, how is it possible to rejoice when our leaders are progressively and slyly withdrawing their support to culture?(1) In such circumstances, celebration takes on a more sour, cynical twist. And so, it is under the sign of anti-celebration that esse marks 25 years of activities.

The double theme of trouble-fête (party pooper) and killjoy seemed the perfect locus for this kind of event. From a citizen perspective, we assert a critical stance against the multiplication of celebrations that tend to get lost in increasingly trivial considerations; as a cultural organization, we proclaim our indignation concerning the withdrawal of state funding in culture. As a publisher, what we want the most is to open our pages to committed texts exploring the meaning of celebration. For this reason we’ve brought together eleven authors whose writing we particularly appreciate. Some are faithful friends and contributors to the magazine, while others are first-timers. They have been invited to consider the theme not only of celebration, but also of commemoration, which is often inherent to anniversaries. In these essays, celebration is at times analyzed for its unifying potential, at times for its deceptiveness. Among others, it has a critical power that numerous artists have decided to exploit, while others prefer reactivating the festive in art—celebration for celebration’s sake. Different forms of commemoration are also studied, critiquing in passing the duty to remember that sometimes tends to make the present seem better. The resulting works and actions—re-enactments, transient memorials, spontaneous monuments or anti-monuments—testify to the multiplicity of forms possible and foreground some attempts at preserving memory through the use of the monument—a practice we thought worth questioning.

We are also publishing an impressive portfolio bringing together fourteen artists whose twenty works are particularly in synch with the theme, be it by the various codes of celebration they employ, a commemorative impact that evokes the monument or anti-monument, or a critical or ironic approach using killjoy strategies. Also, Michel F. (T.) Côté, who has always accepted the challenge of basing his “Affaire de zouave” column on our chosen themes, proposes five tried-and-true killjoy rules. Once a killjoy, always a killjoy—that’s the esse spirit.

But let’s be frank. Beyond its deliberately ironic and provoking title and its diverse critical expressions, Trouble-fête/Killjoy still underscores esse’s lasting presence on the artistic scene. After all, this 25th anniversary also acknowledges our enduring involvement in contemporary art, which would not have had the same impact without the support of our financial partners and, most importantly, of our readers. We also owe the evolution of our magazine through the years to our numerous contributors who have ensured its success, be it by participating in one issue, for one year, a decade or two. We sincerely thank you all.

1. It is impossible not to mention, aside from the important cuts in a dozen or so cultural programs a year ago in August, the obtuse policy of Canadian Heritage in regard to funding cultural magazines, which led recently to their withdrawing their financial support to esse.

66 - Disappearance - Printemps / été - 2009
Sylvette Babin
David K. Ross, Martha Fleming/Lyne Lapointe: 50,400 seconds, 2008. Photo : David K. Ross

In this issue on the theme of disappearance it is no way our intention to announce the death of art, which has been repeatedly predicted for several decades. At most we will, once again, confirm the recurrent tendency to forego the art object in favour of the artistic device, encounter or experience, an attitude which certainly marked our previous thematic issues (“Waste” and “Fragile”) and which we could have combined with this one to form a trilogy. Do we thus dare to proclaim the disappearance of the object or more precisely the end of the art object’s reign? It is notably this question that some authors took up in their reflections on many artists’ choice “of producing no tangible object while remaining within the system” (Desmet). This is perhaps the first observation to be made here: with or without an object, visible or invisible, and promoting the ephemeral, the so-called artists without works persist in taking a place in the system, in leaving a trace, an image, a story. Furthermore, the following pages are not without works; for the most part, very high definition digital photographs. If there is not always a presence of “objects” (in many cases one is indeed confronted with empty rooms), this is not any less proof that artistic acts were carried out. Nobody questions that these traces, which artists or dealers take great care of, now serve as artworks to be displayed in various exhibition places after the experience has dissipated. The inevitable process of the preservation of memory is such that the intangible is inexorably materialized in the archive. The art object thus resists its disappearance.

The theme of disappearance has not only been explored in terms of the absence of works or objects, but also in relation to the immaterial, impalpable and evanescent. Devices that work on perception, works erased before the gaze, poetic fictions on death or the decomposition of matter are part of the propositions, which in this issue, refer rather to the disappearance of the subject. Moreover, aside from the main thematic we here include a more politically informed and consequently more disturbing essay on the disappearance of the citizen in totalitarian regimes (Vera). However, in this case, not a trace has been left.

The active participation of viewers is also one of the recurrent elements in this thematic issue. In order for the “disappeared” works to regain their status as artworks and find themselves within these pages, one certainly had to undertake a “reconstitution” task that was in several cases left to those who took part in the experience. Whether by walking through a work to make it effective (Schneider), by looking for it (Fridfinnsson), by memorizing it (Pope) or by literally inventing it (Tiravanija), the viewer has become the one through who the work has been granted existence. This Duchampian affirmation, which does not appear to be waning in twenty-first century art, perhaps confirms that if the artist tends at times to make the artwork disappear, s/he nevertheless entrusts others with the mandate to make it reappear.

[Translated from the French by Bernard Schütze]

65 - Fragile - Hiver - 2009
Sylvette Babin





[Translated from the French by Colette Tougas]


64 - Waste - Automne - 2008
Sylvette Babin

The presence of waste in contemporary art certainly doesn’t have the same provocative impact as when the avant-gardes used it at the beginning of the twentieth century. Similarly, the debunking of the art object through the use of “poor materials” instead of “noble materials” makes little sense at a time when garbage bins, landfill sites and drop-off centres have become the new suppliers of artists’ materials. However, the collection of discarded items, the transformation of rubbish, scrap or refuse—pick your designation—and the use of waste as subject matter for photography are recurrent practices in today’s art. What does this gesture mean nowadays? Has provocation been replaced by exposure?

Now that waste accumulation has become an increasing source of worry and that recycling is no longer just an option, the ecological question certainly stands out in the association between art and waste. Moreover, one could read in this encounter a critique of consumer society. In the last decades, we have witnessed the production—in excessive quantity, at infernal speed and, moreover, at a cheap cost in Chinese factories—of objects that are more readily discarded than repaired. As a result, the supply in material resources is particularly easy for the gleaner artist—a sad privilege. Our intention is not to state a situation of which we are all aware.1 Twenty-first century citizens, including artists, are certainly the most informed in the history of humankind. However, they continue to consume massively as if this state of affairs were unsolvable or as if it were the price to pay for our species’ comfort. Obviously, we cannot blame the sole production of waste for all our environmental problems—even if the word refers not only to domestic garbage but also to industrial and toxic refuse, etc.—but neither can we entrust the task of finding a solution to citizens only. As mentioned in a excerpt from Libération quoted by Éloïse Guénard on page 16 of this issue, “While attributing culpability to citizens and in proposing a facile expiation of their sins by means of small, individual gestures, we forget to explain to them that a good number of the public policies to which we subscribe are anti-ecological.” While we should not, at the risk of destroying any sense of individual responsibility, give the impression that personal gestures have no impact on the environment, can we expect significant change to happen if our leaders don’t take drastic measures?

The previous paragraph might suggest that this issue has a strong ecological content. It is not however the main perspective privileged by our authors. It doesn’t mean that such preoccupations are not echoed in their essays but rather that they chose to consider waste for what it is, i.e., a meaningful object, with an important cultural and historical background, which has the potential to make us think and the capacity to be transformed into an artwork. Some examples of such work can be seen in our portfolio section, where artists, in the descriptions they give of their work, show that beyond aesthetic concerns they want to question lifestyles that lead to the overproduction of waste. In her book Quand les déchets deviennent art, Lea Vergine writes: “Trash is a direct, meticulous and indisputable document of the habits and behaviours of those that produce it, that goes even beyond their own convictions or self-perception.” [2] This sentence encapsulates rather well this issue where waste, in its multiple forms and locations, and the artworks derived from it show us a bit more who we are.


1. Those who are not that aware might want to consult a very lucid book written by astrophysicist Hubert Reeves, Mal de Terre, a dark yet realistic portrait of the current state of the Planet, with a rather exhaustive description of various forms of waste that have disastrous consequences on the environment. Hubert Reeves (with Frédéric Lenoir), Mal de Terre (Paris, Seuil, 2003).
2. Lea Vergine, Quand les déchets deviennent art. Trash, rubbish, mungo, (Milano: Skira, 2007).

[Translated from the French by Colette Tougas]

63 - Mutual Actions - Printemps / été - 2008
Sylvette Babin

This issue on “Mutual Actions” is an exploration of two overlapping notions: interactivity, which refers mainly to the relationship between a person and a machine—notably in technological pieces calling for the viewer’s participation—and interaction, which elicits a connexion between individuals, i.e., the artist and members of the audience. In both cases, we can turn to the word “spect-actor,” a neologism which despite its sometimes arbitrary use raises exactly this question of active participation on the part of the viewer in contemporary artistic practices. This participative aspect, although it goes back a long way, still deserves to be questioned not only in terms of its constitutive modalities, but also with regards to its genuine efficiency in opening up to the Other.

Our theme was put forward to writers as a series of questions, and some of our contributors drew directly from them for inspiration. Here are some examples. Has technology become a necessary interface to address interactivity? How can the artist’s role be differentiated from that of the participant or the work itself? How can we rethink the public sphere and intersubjectivity under the sway of technique? Is the image a passive or active entity? Does it accept the gaze or is it a vehicle for subjection? Can it be grasped as a pragmatic entity, i.e., as the subject of mutual action? In a society of the spectacle, what does participation mean? Does the sphere of mutual action go beyond the sphere of representation? Has contemporary art succeeded in renewing mutual action as effective political action?

Deliberately open to various perspectives, this issue tries to answer one or several of these questions. It features essays reflecting upon practices that use so-called relational strategies or questioning the idea of interactivity as such, as well as analyses of various media and web art practices. The writers also examine more indirect or symbolic types of participation, with mirrors and reflection acting as forms of engagement with the viewer. From the practices studied here, be they interactive or interactional, a constant seems to emerge: the desire to develop a less autarchic form of art. It is in fact the main objective of mutual actions. Do these so-called interactive technological apparatuses make it really possible for the viewer to interact with or even modify the work? Do interactional works truly open zones of significant exchange between artist and viewer? These questions remain open.

[Translated from the French by Colette Tougas]


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