· Research
What is Art, Can We Eat It?
Finding a place for your weird art (in Montréal)
Dispatch #7 Luisa Ji
We have arrived in Montréal with our suitcases full of tricks and trinkets for the market experience. On Friday the 25th and Saturday the 26th, the Goblin Market will continue accumulating towards a gentle release. There might be soup, so I heard.
I've heard stories, read the news, and the larger narrative points to the playground for selling art is shrinking both in the financial sense and the appetite for novel experiences. Canadian artists see a sizable loss from the on and off tariffs. At the same time, domestic buyers don’t even begin to fill the gap due to the need to redirect resources to necessities in an uncertain economy. It doesn’t mean there’s no money around, but the general risk tolerance and ability to endure shocks have declined. This could mean a broader shift into a small concentration of power deciding what art means, what art is worth, and what art should be during a time of transition when resources become stagnant. In more tangible terms, Canada’s arts economy needs to discover new networks to sustain artists and their works, and at the same time, we need new ways of taking art into non-conventional spaces—this requires a different way of resourcing the arts than investing heavily into existing artist-run spaces. Though the “what” of the art will be rewritten by power, the how and the impact of art are undeniable: a means of engaging the masses, activating communities, and a space for people to bond over shared ideas. This is why county fairs, markets, and bouncy castle festivals continue to exist even in the most politically conservative areas. Arts and culture aren’t in decline. We simply need to see it through new contexts and perspectives. At the end of the day, people like to belong, and small acts of exchange are conduits for holding the sense of belonging together. Giving time and energy is still a significant contribution. One art piece in exchange for another art piece is still a viable trade. Being in community has a very clear purpose. People like having a purpose that’s clearly and directly laid out for them to follow.
Direct experiences and how viscerally an environment makes you feel will stay with you for a lifetime. Art spaces, however, are losing this magic. When the Gentle Monster storefront essentially sees itself as an art show, we know there’s a gap waiting to be filled. What is art? Can we eat it?
Unlikely alliances and shapeshifting might be necessary. Once again, how does art reshape the marketplace and redefine its network of resources or supply chain? The risk taken to form new alliances might mean: this is not art, and you’re a sell-out. That’s how others might come at you, but you know best when you make art with a full belly and no longer perpetuating the trope of a starving artist.
I’m reading another newsletter called Create Canada about changing the Canadian arts landscape, and I thought these ideas are timely—art in every neighbourhood. Public art and publicly funded art have been a strange beast. When it does make a ripple in the public discourse, it is always about how bad and detached from reality it is. Artists are often trapped in the conundrum of whether they perpetuated an unethical scheme, furthering gentrification, or whether their art is a bad use of public funds because they don’t appease everybody. I like the idea of art in every neighbourhood, and I’d like to see more variety in how “art” fills the nooks and crannies of public space. I’d also like to see art having a place in our mundane lives, as a thing we can exchange with each other, rather than a comparison or a competition. The public needs to build up an appetite for weird art. The artists must have the guts to put their weird art out into the world.
Through my work at UKAI Projects, there’s no shortage of “I don’t understand it” or “maybe this is not art.” I’m fortunate to be surrounded by people who somehow are willing to stay for the plotline.
As for Goblin Market—is it a market, an art fair, an artist talk, a performance, or a workshop? All of the above, and also a commentary on the urge to draw clear boundaries to better classify, organize, and label our experiences into neat compartments.
The markets I grew up with are messy. Vendors take every opportunity to sweet-talk you into their latest schemes. You’d spend hours lingering in the maze-like interior, an adventure. They always somehow have a special thing just for you. Sometimes it isn’t very trustworthy, and almost all of the time, you need to keep a strong will to have your eyes on the target. In many ways, these markets teach you tangible skills in finding out who you are and what you value. This gorgeous mess doesn’t rely on flat lay photos or seductive imagery or intellectual circlejerk to sell. They ask you to be lost in the moment. You miss the opportunity to acquire what your heart desires. It will be gone forever. You’ll probably find a better deal next time, but you’ll never know if there will be a next time. In truth, there’s no next time around. There will be different things that the vendors entice you with. Virginia Woolf talked about street haunting and the beauty in an adventure in the streets of London that started with the errand of buying a pen. Art in our lives doesn’t mean public sculptures, murals, and monuments all over. They are small delights that make even an errand special. Imagine art in public space, or privately owned/managed spaces open to the public, making your day memorable. Commerce isn’t bad. Monetary exchanges aren’t bad. Sometimes I’d really like to have a $5 bill rather than a rock I can’t eat. What’s troubling is that these exchanges are always founded on arbitrary, normalized violence—advertisement derived from deceit, dark patterns to get you stuck in a loop. Other ways are possible.
I remember Sleep No More solely because I think too much about the experience. Knowing how to categorize this production took the magic of experiencing it away. I’m sure many people felt something profound, but I was left unenchanted. It was novel, stimulating, and fun, but not magic. I have a habit of dropping into stores for the fun of trying to understand what makes them special: Aesop, Hermés, and Gentle Monster storefronts are a show— curated, intricately produced, and a spectacle that sets the mood for your lingering in their stores. One campaign can easily top an artist-run organization’s yearly budget. Countless artists and creatives eat from their participation in shaping the brand experiences. Contrary to the belief that art and aesthetic experiences are frivolous, these storefront experiences prove that aesthetic entryways, creative works, and, to a certain extent, “art” have tangible economic value that drives sales, traffic, and competitiveness in a world of new brands popping up like mushrooms after a rain.
Still, at the end of the day, as you browse through the storefronts filled with aesthetic stimuli, the staff lay their eyes on you, trying to figure out what exactly you are here for when a transaction is not guaranteed. It’s uncanny. It’s like a character in a movie breaks the fourth wall with no particular reason related to the plot. In the case of the storefronts, it’s no more than people working a service gig trying to juggle between sealing a deal and deciding where to spend their finite energy. However, people remember how you or your space makes them feel. We are all tired. Sweet-talking someone who looks like they have more money and forego the rest is probably a good survival strategy in this economy. Art situated within a spectacle no longer has its magic. It’s always just a part of the strategy.
Strategy is different from culture. Strategy wants to win above all else. Strategy simplifies all relationalities into one akin to war. War within shared cultures has rules, like a game of chess or Go. Strategy, I’m not sure—as long as someone wins and their opponent loses. When there’s no shared meaning, it enables arbitrary violence. When we forego arts and culture as essential elements of life, we risk losing opportunities for shared meaning to be derived.
As I’m writing this post, many artists in Canada are likely trying to get one last batch of grants to our national funder during its digital portal transition. Every past grant deadline, I pass around the Hunger Games GIF where Katniss salutes, “May the odds ever be in your favour.” The similarity is striking. I hope that my peers win. However, above all else, I can’t hide the hope that I will win. This feeling intensifies even more so when every grant results announcement is now prefaced with a letter to the community, stating how difficult the decisions were to make and the challenge of working with the ever-declining arts funding. I understand where it’s coming from, but I also know how this chain of events makes me feel. Strained. Bitter. Ungrateful. Artists tread on thin ice, thinking that even the slightest deviation from their proposed project will mean they must return the already-spent money. Such emotional burden and troubled relationship with the funds artists get to spend from public funding ensures that the arts will always be the playground for the wealthy who have plenty more room to experiment and fail. There are limits to what public funding can do, sure. However, artists get to decide whether to consider such resources precious and make a run for it.
How does art money make you feel? Wouldn’t it be refreshing to feel something more alive, energized, and nourished?
We will all remember how difficult it is to get the grants, but not very much about how the money helped unlock other opportunities in our practice as artists. How do we honour the resources available to us as artists? How do we nourish the networks that make way for gathering our resources? The Montréal edition of Goblin Market saw an overwhelming generosity from artists and creatives trying to make the sector more abundant—we have been fed by Dépanneur le Pick Up, SLA Location and GU gave us massive discounts, let alone the custom sound experience by Milen, the secret radio show from Borscht Radio, Oracle reading from Editions in Space, and other borrowed things from Ulysse, Anna, Albéric, Husna, and their friends (and their friends’ friends). The Parrots: Wanda Moon (Wendy Woon) Celeste Midnight (Maria Fang) Mz.T (Jessica Moon) Auntie Dad (Amelia Winger-Bearskin), with their travels impacted by the ever-changing U.S.-Canada border situations, patching in from NYC, are the touring Goblins’ most solid support, both in wisdom and inspiration for lifelong commitment to mischief.
A few weeks back, I wrote about performing business. I still think about it, not just performing business but also imagining what exchanges would be enabled through art disguised as business and whether these more magical and relational exchanges can shape a broader culture of care, generosity, and courage to pick apart arbitrary rules when the rules no longer serve us.
Come for the Goblin Market lore and stay for small acts of mischief against arbitrary rules.