Occurrence: Espace D’art et D’essai Contemporains presents:
The Empty S(h)elf, second iteration
Angela Grauerholz
in collaboration with Réjean Myette
soundscape by Melissa Gray + David Morneau
November 4 – December 17, 2022
opening: November 3, 2022 5:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
The installation of The Empty S(h)elf at Occurrence represents the second iteration of Angela Grauerholz’s ongoing exploration into concepts of subjective experience and the role of language in self-definition. Taking form from an ever-expanding archive of visual and textual materials collected over several years, the first iteration of the project, shown at ARTEXTE in November 2019, looked at the alienating effects of digitalization on just about everything, especially the book: effectively causing a gradual disengagement from multi-sensual forms of reading and writing, and a potential disassembling of coherence of thought.
This time, The Empty S(h)elf engages the archive in a more direct reflection on the role of language and subjectivity: here concerned with how the acquisition of language defines one’s sense of self and simultaneously separates self and other—the primordial being that exists outside of language. In this instance, the “other” is represented by the main character in a story by Franz Kafka entitled “A Report to an Academy”: an ape recounts how he survived and escaped life in a zoo by mimicking human actions, eventually adopting speech to become a circus performer. An analogy to the construction of the self and even the “escape” into becoming an artist might be suggested.
This iteration of the project began with a simple AI tool to create “word clouds” for semantic—primarily quantitative—analysis. The software was designed to highlight the words most often used in any given text. However, word clouds are also another way of giving textual material a visual form which, since Grauerholz’s discovery of Mallarmé’s Un coup de dés… many years ago, has become a constant interest of hers. Exploring alternative ways to (re)present text (quotes, passages, poems, stories) typographically involves shaping meaning through material and typographical intervention. The artist, therefore, works implicitly—and sometimes literally—in a “visual space” that one could define as being somewhere between digital and analogue (computer-generated and literary), abstracted and de-constructed, but that is readable as an integrated whole.
Kafka’s text was analysed and deconstructed by Grauerholz to create a list of words and fragments of phrases that would form such a “word cloud”: a first visual representation or typographic image, which already suggests a highly personal interpretation of the story, by selectively directing the viewer/reader through its reading. This first “scoring” of words and sentences received additional treatment by animating the same words and sentences into a film projection to (re)create linearity and rhythm—a return to the narrative, but in an abridged form. From here the suggested interpretation was further layered by adding images—both animated and still—including historical references to early photographic animation. A series of citations addressing notions of mimesis, of being human or being animal, of mind/body dualities, issues of reality and imaginary worlds, consciousness, and a host of other issues are added to resonate with the themes addressed in Kafka’s story and also to find conceptual correspondence to issues in contemporary art theory and/or art making.
This second iteration of The Empty S(h)elf continues Grauerholz’s long-standing collaboration with graphic designer Réjean Myette. Composer Melissa Grey returns with her collaborator David Morneau contributing the soundscape for this iteration of The Empty S(h)elf.
This exhibition project comes almost 40 years after David Tomas’ performance « Lecture to an Academy” (1983), at the time documented by Angela Grauerholz.
A brochure to document the installation will be made available toward the end of the exhibition.
The artist wishes to thank the Canada Council for the Arts for its financial contribution to the research phase of this exhibition project. Thanks also to Réjean Myette for his ongoing collaboration, to Noémie Da Silva, to L’imprimerie, and to Melissa Grey + David Morneau for their soundscape.
