Review: capsize // together at articule
Hidden amongst retail shops and restaurants along the newly renovated Saint-Hubert street in Montreal is a small artist-run centre, articule, previously located in the rapidly gentrifying Mile End neighbourhood. The group exhibition titled capsize // together: building collective futures, curated by Diane Hau Yu Wong, starts with a window display of three large prints depicting screenshots of the new media artworks featuring Devin Ronneberg, Quentin VerCetty, and Diasporic Futurisms. The three prints capture the face of a bald-headed Elon Musk, a brass statue amongst a galactical backdrop, and a 3D rendered gas station in a tropical landscape. The exhibition seeks to look for collective answers to environmental degradation and social inequities through varying futurist lenses that resist our current colonial structures, but as I left the exhibition I wondered, who is this collective and who are the people building these futures?
When I entered the space, the loudest piece was the work by Devin Ronneberg titled Premonitions, a 10-minute looped video projected largely onto the left wall. Quickly, it became obvious that the work was a “deepfake” featuring distorted faces on male figures who described uranium mining, nuclear war, and spirituality, but the lack of didactic text and descriptive captions left me wanting to know more. Through asking the gallery attendant, I was able to identify that two of the faces were of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, but only through my own research as a cult enthusiast, was I able to identify that Bezos’ face was added onto Robert Oppenheimer’s – leader of Heavensgate, a sci-fi cult that culminated in a mass suicide of nike-wearing members – and Musk’s onto Marshall Applewhite’s – “father of the atomic bomb”. The choice to feature these two multi-billionaire figures and tech venture-capitalists, is undoubtedly a satire on their contributions to mining and human exploitation while remaining cult-like figures with immense followings, but we don’t need to give a platform to these men, even if in this memed way. However, the lack of information given to the gallery viewers muddied the artist’s futurist view, and makes me wonder if other non-cult enthusiasts would have come to the same conclusions.
The next work, The NuOnes WIll Save Us, is a 30-second animation of two Afro-futurist sculptures in front of the Montreal Olympic stadium, built in 1976. This short, almost gif-like, loop shows a galactic sky and two bronze statues of women wearing non-descript traditional African clothing and holding up a baby blue plaque in the forefront reading “African Caribbean Black Canadian Womxn Museum”. These women are described in the curatorial statement as caryatids, or sculpted female figures, serving as columns to the name of the new museum, presumably replacing the Olympic stadium. This piece, in its own way, also left me wanting to know more about this speculative architectural place, who these women are, when the site was built, and whether this museum broke free from current colonial museum conventions. These unanswered questions, unlike Ronneberg’s work, leave me feeling hopeful, as they make me question what kind of future this site would exist in, as opposed to pointing me to a dystopian and bleak “future” that is not so far ahead.
This final work, Galvanized Suns in Retrograde, by Diasporic Futurisms, a collective made up of artists Adrienne Matheuszik and Vanessa Godden, is a 3D animation and sound piece which depicts a gas station at an undisclosed location and time. As diasporic Caribbean-Canadians, the couple is preoccupied with issues facing diasporic communities including grappling with the after-effects of colonialism and capitalism. The work captivated me immediately, as the landscape made up of palm trees and deep blue night sky is familiar to me. The beginning of the animation loop depicts a gas station with red-hued lights, a tin-roofed house, and two tall buildings in construction, and multiple moons in the sky. The animation, then, takes us inside the empty diner, furnished, yet void of human life. I dream that this location is empty because it exists in a post-capitalist society where oil and gas, and exploitative billionaires (like Bezos and Musk) no longer run our economy.
Both, The NuOnes WIll Save Us and Galvanized Suns in Retrograde, depict new imagined locations, however, they are both void of human life. I am disappointed that the only people that can be seen in this exhibition are rich billionaires collaged onto other men with god-complexes in Premonitions. I am left wondering, who survives to build these diasporic and afrofuturist futures? Those are the people that I want to see.
When I entered the space, the loudest piece was the work by Devin Ronneberg titled Premonitions, a 10-minute looped video projected largely onto the left wall. Quickly, it became obvious that the work was a “deepfake” featuring distorted faces on male figures who described uranium mining, nuclear war, and spirituality, but the lack of didactic text and descriptive captions left me wanting to know more. Through asking the gallery attendant, I was able to identify that two of the faces were of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, but only through my own research as a cult enthusiast, was I able to identify that Bezos’ face was added onto Robert Oppenheimer’s – leader of Heavensgate, a sci-fi cult that culminated in a mass suicide of nike-wearing members – and Musk’s onto Marshall Applewhite’s – “father of the atomic bomb”. The choice to feature these two multi-billionaire figures and tech venture-capitalists, is undoubtedly a satire on their contributions to mining and human exploitation while remaining cult-like figures with immense followings, but we don’t need to give a platform to these men, even if in this memed way. However, the lack of information given to the gallery viewers muddied the artist’s futurist view, and makes me wonder if other non-cult enthusiasts would have come to the same conclusions.
The next work, The NuOnes WIll Save Us, is a 30-second animation of two Afro-futurist sculptures in front of the Montreal Olympic stadium, built in 1976. This short, almost gif-like, loop shows a galactic sky and two bronze statues of women wearing non-descript traditional African clothing and holding up a baby blue plaque in the forefront reading “African Caribbean Black Canadian Womxn Museum”. These women are described in the curatorial statement as caryatids, or sculpted female figures, serving as columns to the name of the new museum, presumably replacing the Olympic stadium. This piece, in its own way, also left me wanting to know more about this speculative architectural place, who these women are, when the site was built, and whether this museum broke free from current colonial museum conventions. These unanswered questions, unlike Ronneberg’s work, leave me feeling hopeful, as they make me question what kind of future this site would exist in, as opposed to pointing me to a dystopian and bleak “future” that is not so far ahead.
This final work, Galvanized Suns in Retrograde, by Diasporic Futurisms, a collective made up of artists Adrienne Matheuszik and Vanessa Godden, is a 3D animation and sound piece which depicts a gas station at an undisclosed location and time. As diasporic Caribbean-Canadians, the couple is preoccupied with issues facing diasporic communities including grappling with the after-effects of colonialism and capitalism. The work captivated me immediately, as the landscape made up of palm trees and deep blue night sky is familiar to me. The beginning of the animation loop depicts a gas station with red-hued lights, a tin-roofed house, and two tall buildings in construction, and multiple moons in the sky. The animation, then, takes us inside the empty diner, furnished, yet void of human life. I dream that this location is empty because it exists in a post-capitalist society where oil and gas, and exploitative billionaires (like Bezos and Musk) no longer run our economy.
Both, The NuOnes WIll Save Us and Galvanized Suns in Retrograde, depict new imagined locations, however, they are both void of human life. I am disappointed that the only people that can be seen in this exhibition are rich billionaires collaged onto other men with god-complexes in Premonitions. I am left wondering, who survives to build these diasporic and afrofuturist futures? Those are the people that I want to see.
I acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.