CAFKA.02

Power to the People

The thematic title Power to the People was chosen to recognize the 100th anniversary of the inception, in Kitchener, of one of the largest publicly owned utilities in the world. The phrase encouraged artists either to make works that responded directly to this history, to take up its democratic connotations, or to simply view public artistic activity as an act of empowerment in itself.

On September 21st, Kitchener welcomed 20 artists from across Canada, the United Kingdom, United States, and Mexico. Accompanying their fascinating projects was a program of video works including titles from Canada, France, and Germany. Round Table Discussions featured an impressive roster of museum, arts, and academic professionals who debated issues related to artists and activism, censorship, and the artist/curator hybrid.
 
The organizers hope that this event helped increase the public for visual art in the spirit of what was once a civic motto: "Public enterprise started here."

Matt, Rob & Susan Gorbet - P2P

As we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the conception of public hydroelectric power in Kitchener, P2P highlights the ubiquity of the most basic icons of the electric age: the household switch and bulb. Significantly situated at the entrance to City Hall, P2P puts the marquee, a now-ubiquitous and iconic tool of corporate communication, into the hands of the general public. By engaging in the everyday unconscious activity of flipping a light switch, citizens are able to communicate directly, without the oversight of a centralized authority, within a government-owned public space. Literally and figuratively, P2P brings Power to the People.
 
The team behind P2P (Matt Gorbet, Rob Gorbet and Susan Gorbet) is an experience design collective dedicated to enriching the lives of citizens through the creative application of technology as social grease in public spaces. Collectively, they hold several patents and have research affiliations with the University of Waterloo, MIT, Stanford, Interval Research, Xerox PARC, and Silicon Graphics. Their work has been shown in the USA, Sweden, Austria, and Japan.
 

Patrick Bureau - The Perpetual Motion Machine

Progress has been the central theme of my body of work ever since I first encountered Diderot's L'Encyclopedia (1751). Using a personal mechanical vocabulary I have been investigating relationships, both formally and metaphorically, between humanity and technology. The Perpetual Motion Machine is, for me, not only about balancing intuitive processes and manufactured designs, but it also represents a negotiation with an element of nature. The pieceís turbine-like form recalls the prime mover, transforming natural energy into a mechanical force. The multitude of individual spheres, therefore, suggests that together, united with purpose, they are the source of true driving power.
 
Patrick Bureau, (BFA, Art Education, Concordia University; BFA, Ceramics, Alberta College of Art & Design) lives and works in Montreal. His porcelain and wood sculptures have been exhibited across the country as well as internationally. He currently holds a teaching position in the Ceramic Department at the Visual Arts Centre.
 

Peter Conlin & Kirsten Forkert - Disbelief

Disbelief will take the form of an interactive performance, based on the morning ritual of coffee and newspapers. The work will involve conversations with visitors in relation to the media and democracy. It will also involve physically transforming newspapers.
 
The work is inspired by: 
- Sitting down and reading as a civilized gesture. Coffee and newspapers as Europhilia. The Western liberal project: education, democracy, freedom of the press.
- Who is the good citizen? Can the good citizen (always a little too good to be true) still exist in the global corporate order? If the good citizen doesn't really exist, is it just nostalgia? Voting and reading the newspaper as more of an abstract duty than a genuine participation?
- Instability presenting itself as stability, irrationality presenting itself as order
- A sense that the real crises in the world are either invisible or too obvious, too overwhelming to be newsworthy.
 
Peter Conlin works in installation, performance and text. Preoccupations include: very long walks in areas where people don't normally walk, banal 'escapist' experience (absent minded associations, day dreaming), interested in how ideas and experience are transmitted, investigating the act of exhibiting art, and exploring notions of productivity. He is presently in the MFA program at SFU.
 
Kirsten Forkert works in installation, performance and text. She has presented her work across Canada. Her work, which is often site-specific, explores our relationship to larger social and economic structures, especially as they get played out in urban space. She is also interested in questions of community, especially alternative ways of conceiving of this. Audience participation is an important part of her work.