Quick Draw Artist Interviews are a series of
interviews conducted by Otino Corsano using Facebook's IM Chat feature.
Spontaneous conversations with international artists and influential members of
the art community are recorded and documented specifically for publication on
this blog.
Quick: Gasp. Short-lived gifts sharpened. Heated iron;
forged steel. An open door leads out to a drawn out passage never previously
uttered. Ambling yet cultivated, curving and carving across the grid to save
time and retrace your form. I going back to make gains where you could never
breathe. It has taken you this long to surface so ever slowly and if I
continued to follow from my depth my blood would surely expand too rapidly
towards another, all too predictable, early demise. I’ll return with relics.
Those are the bends. Draw: art about art.
Christopher Healey (Ottawa, ON) studied Fine Arts at
Concordia University in Montreal and is completing a Masters of New Media &
Communications at Hamilton’s McMaster University. Healey has always been
interested in digital media and approaches this photo collage work through his
painting and drawing sensibilities.
Christopher Healey
Chat Conversation Start
Today
Chris
7:09pm
Hi Otino - is tonight’s interview happening?
Otino
7:10pm
Sure. Is now a convenient time for us to discuss your work?
Chris
7:12pm
Yes, it's a good window. You?
Otino
7:13pm
Now is fine. I think this discussion should be interesting since
you are also known for your interviews with artists.
Wondering if you can tell me how the entity ArtListPro began?
Chris
7:18pm
I landed in Toronto in early 2009. I was living in Parkdale in
tight quarters with no studio and new to the city. However I was invested early in social media
and contemporary art so I started visiting art exhibition and conducting
interviews with artists using YouTube as a media platform.
The interview format was a great excuse to interact with artist
and learn more about how they approached art especially within the Toronto
community.
You were one of the artists I met through recording live
lectures: first at the inaugural Toronto Alliance of Art Critics lecture at
Double Double Land and then at the Biennial Panel at the White House in
Kensington Market.
Otino
7:19pm
I know the Toronto community greatly appreciates your work in
documenting these types of events.
Let's focus on your current work. It appears photo-based yet I
understand you are reluctant to be pinned to the term photography. True?
Chris
7:19pm
I am not a photographer!
Otino
7:21pm
I imagined that would get a reaction.
Chris
7:24pm
Haha yes, you did get your anticipated reaction.
Photographers have a technical expertise and carry certain philosophies,
relationships or even a loyalty to the outside world. I don't care about these
traditional or even technical-based approaches to the medium.
I like photography, as it can be painterly and prolific – as in
producing a lot of material to work with – as well as experimental. I really do
admire photographers like Lynne Cohen and Isabelle Hayeur and have been
influenced by their work.
Otino
7:26pm
I was thinking your practice is more akin to the Richard Long
types since many of your photographic documents are linked to your walking
around local areas.
Your site-specific investments seem to be focused on the ‘specificity’
side of the equation with an added political perspective.
Chris
7:29pm
Yes, Richard Long… This is why I value interviews as I’m
reminded of artists and concepts relevant to my practice.
Otino
7:31pm
Were you born and raised in your
current Hamilton context?
Chris
7:33pm
I grew up mainly in the suburbs. Upper middle class. These soul-less
suburbs helped me ride the wave from criticality to creative urbanity.
Although, since then, I have always - and I mean always - lived
in depressed areas predestined for gentrification at best: St. Henri in
Montreal; Parkdale/Hintongurg, Ottawa; Toronto’s Parkdale and now Barton
Village in Hamilton. What makes these places most "poor" is the
perspectives of these locations of people who don't live there. In my view they
are the least boring, visual environments one can hope to find these days.
So yes, I think this context carries the political into my walks
and camera work.
Otino
7:35pm
How do digital formats help you investigate these social issues
involving the economics of space?
Chris
7:37pm
Social media has emerged as the space to put digital images
into. This platform is an essential part of my post studio practice process of taking
digital pictures.
A constant, methodically and considered series of photos are harder
to explain away in political rhetoric than a quickly written blog post
Otino
7:39pm
So would you describe yourself as a social media artist in the
overarching sense of the term or more as an artist invested in social issues via
a variety of digital media?
Chris
7:45pm
I don't know. I just don't know anymore and have stopped trying
to define myself as an artist. For the last four years, sure I post content
online, yet the performance and the printing is all part of this mess as well.
Some artists cited an interesting term:
"post-internet" which is to install work from the web into a space
and then insert the documentation of that work back into the web. Accordingly,
I admire A. Bill Miller's approach best as is no longer makes any distinctions
between "real life", "online" or "social media"
anymore. It is all considered real life.
Nevertheless, as far as social research goes, I feel more like a
cranky anthropologist along with a camera and Photoshop.
Otino
7:46pm
Do you intend your extensive depictions of urban plight to activate
real life solutions or are there only aesthetic concerns at play here?
Seen 7:46pm
Chris
7:52pm
My insight is to reveal real life solutions remain unattainable
because we don't yet understand the problems - or are even aware there are
problems.
My view of the practicality of the public sphere has descended
into a Baudrillardian world of simulacrum and simulations. I think once you
start thinking of "solutions" you are already on the wrong path.
I am archiving my work as interviews, photos and/as
documentation through social media platforms. I do not carry airs to know what
will resonate with a future audience or even a current one. I feel very
reassured knowing I am not the only artist with this mindset, thanks to my practice
of conducting interviews with other artists. I guess I like to get new perspectives
on artistic issues I am trying to figure out.
Otino
7:55pm
A singular, almost eyewitness perspective seems to be pervasive
in many of your series.
Is autobiography key to understanding this work?
Is there an appropriation of news reporting angles at work?
Chris
8:02pm
Yes… yes… and no.
The apparent autobiographical aspect is hard to escape from
since I am using social media so much over the last four years. Still, when applying
devices formally, I don't like the idea of being too 'slick' with the work, hiding
myself - or my reflexivity - in the environment. How something is completed, or
rather attempted is more interesting to me and somehow more honest - even if perhaps the results are problematic.
In the Hamilton series about my own neighborhood, I am the
epitome of what some middle-class, middle age white business dude from the
suburbs might look like when scoping out the area to exploit it – previewing derelict
properties to develop or neglect for profit, etc… I am often approached and
challenged. So I leave evidence of myself in many of the works to comment on
the phenomena.
I am exploiting this area as well with my gaze right? At the
start, ArtListPro definitely had a news/reporting angle and I think this view
is still there because it's how I understand media.
Otino
8:04pm
What are the dead ducks about?
Chris
8:09pm
Hard to define - a tragedy?
I mean, it was so odd, curious and heart pulling to see these
large birds crashed and somehow meeting death on a long expanse of frozen
beach. Where were they going? Why here? Does anyone care enough to find the
answers?
It seemed fit to take pictures of what runs counter to the very
often pretty, shiny images of the typically depicted civic sphere (I heart
>insert the name of your city here<). These tragic images are as real and
relevant as any other community picture and deserved to be noted for the
record. My record, but still a record nonetheless.
Otino
8:10pm
Did you ever discover the cause?
Chris
8:14pm
Some hypothesized it was effect of a long winter; yet it was odd
the birds were still around in the winter at all. It is not the way these birds
behave normally in places such as Ottawa or Montreal. I also heard reports of someone allegedly
shooting birds in the Hamilton area. See? I don't even know what the real
answer is. However I think it is the area and the discussion I am most
interested in - the media space between the art and the public.
Otino
8:14pm
Given the digital context of your work playing out on the web
and via a full range of social media outlets, is it relevant to ask: "Who
is your audience?"
More specifically: Is it important to you the content you
produce is still considered in the traditional 'visual art' arena?
Seen 8:15pm
Chris
8:21pm
I am making work with a few people in mind and as alluded to
earlier, a future audience.
I believe the physical component of creating hundreds of works
is very powerful. So as I undertake this, in part online, art project I don't
always have a clear destination or audience. I’m fine with losing some people
and then letting others step in.
I've settled for being more intervention than a headline draw,
so to speak. I’m more comfortable as a media entity than as an artist. I just
don't know if "visual artist" means what we individually may think it
means anymore. So it does not matter I guess if I am that or not.
Otino
8:25pm
Your recent "Mountain Path" project appears to stand
out as a poignant and important addition to your multi-disciplinary practice.
Seen 8:25pm
Chris
8:36pm
For "Mountain Path" I used my iPhone's panorama camera
setting to scan the path as I walked it. This feature straightened the path out
artificially in a series of very distinct and unique images for the series. Some
are badly transposed - others feature weird shadows especially forming when I
turned corners.
There are obvious aspects of endurance and performance in the
production of this work, yet I could not plan the resulting immediacy of the
images along with the challenges of managing the "mountain" of photos
produced and installing the resulting pictures in different spaces and formats
- most currently on Twitter. The results of uploading countless images using very
counter-intuitive, although readily available social media platforms like Twitter
enacts an interesting problematic. Social media has the preset expectations set
for quick, concise messages and not a long, drawn out visual series with no
obvious meaning, ending or beginning. It's becomes problematic for my audience
and I like offering this new challenge of reception.
I think this problematic also operates with our preset expectations
of contemporary art as well. In other levels, it is about looking at undervalued
space equally representative as any other part of the space, in this case the
mountain, or scenery, or the map or whatever. This themes of a journey as a
large drawing is a topic I hope explore more in future work.
I have been deliberately producing a large quantity of new work
over recent years not providing me with enough time perhaps to reflect on my
practice, however I agree this recent project is significant to my art
interests in exploration.
Otino
8:39pm
Should one be able to draw parallels between these meandering Mexico
documentations and your Canadian projects also involving the documentation your
local wanderings?
"Slower" is a work
pointing to the possibility of this post-geography.
Chris
8:46pm
Good question as it points to a personal conflict I am facing in
my practice:
After four years of producing work in Hamilton, I am considering
new directions. Yet since the local space I am focusing on here is disappearing
I wish to continue to explore the apparent opportunity. In new locations such
as Mexico I can sometimes lose this addition of personal signifiers to a
degree.
I created the Mexican series in a few days before my trek back
to Hamilton however I faced serious creative blocks prior to this final, intensive,
production time.
I projected "Slower" on the front porch of my house in
the middle of this winter.
We are a product of our environments, for better or for worse.
If I move to Mexico I don't yet know how this will affect my production until I
am immersed in the experience of the new space and context. I could just as
easily start drawing and forget about the camera. That could happen.
Otino
8:48pm
Well whatever the future brings I wish you and your art only the
best Chris. Thanks for taking the time to speak to me about your work.
Chris
8:48pm
Thank you Otino! This was very helpful dialogue.
