Essay

OCCUPATION

Parker Branch held two offsite occupations at a space I administrated in Montreal, between 2011-2013. The first time, we described their work like this: The(se) presentation strategies explore the possibilities for the lateral diversions of meaning that become possible across heterogeneous collections, rather than any sense of duty to the history of the objects exhibited. The second time we described it the same way. Parker Branch has at other times described their work in these ways: “An exhibition of objects from the Parker Branch collection that thematically orbit (subjects) and the emblems attached to them”; “Objects from the Parker Branch collection”;  “…Has things in common.” Over its duration, it has been (mis)categorized as an archive, a library, a curatorial project, a museum, a gallery, a curiosity shop.  Here, the Parker Branch is described as “an ongoing collaboration between artists Anna Madelska and Jason Hallows.”

TYPE

Useful texts from some other occupations of Parker Branch

“Stacking is vertical ascension without flight, by lifting the surface of the ground. Bricks and mortar give form to the most fragmented – humbly participating in the cycles of mountains and dust. Masonry, of both the practical and speculative sorts, shares in Kurt Schwitters’ deceptively simple premise that ‘stone upon stone is building’.” from No. 12: AND CHEERLEADERS, December 2010.

“The word occupation is a useful entry point. Taken temporally, it suggests one’s labour, how time is spent, what one does. Spatially it implies a strategy of dissent, the forceful take-over of a location.” From PLACED HERE BY MEMBERS (unnumbered show), January 2017.

“Oh tangle of matter and ghost” from No. 26: THE ORDINARY, January 2013.

OCCUPATIONS

“When you moved into the old apartment there was infinite space. There was so much that you could sit on the bed, your reading lamp glowing beside you, and from there you could look out into the depth of the room where the glow faded and faded over the concrete and somewhere failed. Past that you could see nothing: dark. And you could stare at it, this curtain, this vibrating presence, see it render everything past its border un-falsifiable.

The reason an old apartment made the list is because it’s this story–or maybe I should say–this scene, your old place–that makes clear to me how an object, a thing, is, so often in my perception, merely a ladder of qualities, uses and, finally, meanings; and how, in climbing this ladder, the thing itself is sometimes lost. Sitting in that little island of light, feeling, with your eyes, its edges, you apprehended the old apartment as a thing.

Try closing your eyes now.”

THE ORDINARY

“Objects are most often considered in the following ways – size, shape, color, mass – and value, determined by meaning or use.”  A set of finite constraints that render the object into merely “a container for qualities.” Continuing his talk in April of 2015 at TSV, Karl Schroder elaborates on this idea: “The meaning of a brick is to make a wall. The meaning of a wall is to make a building. The meaning of a building is to serve the human spirit (…).” What is lost in this project, he says, is the thing itself. Once you’ve extracted all of the information, it follows that the thing itself may be discarded.

Against this problem, Schroder drew two diagrams. One looked like this: a centre dot, with lines emanating outward at quarter points, each capped with an infinity symbol. The second was the same, except the bottom line was removed, and in its place was a flat line, indicating a wall, suggesting a constraint. Paradoxically, even with a constraint, this new diagram still projects infinitely in its other three directions.

BUILDINGS

(From a letter, with language from Francis Ponge, Mute Objects of Expression)

…I guess at this point I’ve told you a lot about the scaffoldings and little about the building itself. I realize of course you believe there’s a fine line between discursivity and prevarication. Both methods of avoiding something.

So, Let’s return as quickly as possible to the building and the search for everything that can be said about the building and only of it.

The new apartment is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, we think, and somehow, though matched in width on the exterior, it is smaller on the third floor than the second. There are holes in the floor through the centre of the building, which is the only true line one might draw from each apartment, which at one point contained a dumbwaiter. Through the oddly angled bay windows near my desk, I can see the silhouettes of people in up to 12 apartments on the opposite side of the street. It is possible to see at least one of the interior walls in each.

SPECULATIONS

Maggie Groat’s work, A study for collected tools for directions, healings, focusings, reconnections, wayfindings, wanderings, unseeables, wonderings, outsidings, action reportings, future seeings and interconnectivities was in an exhibition titled SÉANCE FICTION at the Walter Phillips Gallery.  The display included a book-work and a collection of mysterious items. In her review of the show for Canadian Art, Nancy Webb provides this incomplete inventory: “one black geodesic form nestled inside a walnut shell, a coiled bundle of yellow rope and a black mirror.”

For her exhibition at Parker Branch, titled the text read like this: “Carefully selected over many years, the objects and images in this exhibition share a common energetic power or potential, a kind of magic. When compiled, the objects appear as though they are artifacts from an abandoned cabin, while also suggesting their potential future use in some mysterious ritual; situated between the archive and the root cellar.”

…

We used to drive to an industrial park in the outskirts of the small town adjacent to ours. There was a showroom/office there with glass windows on the front and stretching around the corner of the building, two doors on the interior, always closed. Inside there were several carefully wrought but badly cared for wax mannequins of unidentifiable celebrities; a jukebox formed like the front end of a Camaro, and an arrangement of objects seemingly out of phase with any identifiable past or present – weird jugs and barrels, spools of unusual proportion, unidentifiable copper objects, framed oil paintings of candles, and an excess of light fixtures all dimmed or darkened. In the middle there was a long glass table, always covered in papers. The space gave a sense that some mysterious gathering had just stepped away from deliberations, would resume meeting after the minute hands of two giant clocks sounded the agreed upon number of times through the doors and wood paneled back walls. We’d look at this scene for hours, often until we were completely out of cigarettes, waiting for its workers to return.

SALT

Salt’s many uses include, but are not limited to: a preservative, a kitchen ingredient, a ward against ill will, an absorber of psychic energy, also for protection, purification and healing. In accounts of fiction, salt or saltwater may be employed to disperse of agonistic forces. Salt’s capacity to absorb water make it lethal compound for many organisms, as well as supernatural creatures (see entry: VAMPIRES). Salt is known to exacerbate wounds, and in tandem with mineral water, does a notable job of removing wine from cloth.

APRONS

(from Sartor Resartus, Thomas Carlyle, chapter VI – Aprons)

“Aprons are Defences; against injury to cleanliness, to safety, to modesty, sometimes to roguery. From the thin slip of notched silk (as it were, the emblem and beatified ghost of an Apron), which some highest-bred housewife, sitting at Nurnberg Work-boxes and Toy-boxes, has gracefully fastened on; to the thick-tanned hide, girt round him with thongs, wherein the Builder builds, and at evening sticks his trowel; or to those jingling sheet-iron Aprons, wherein your otherwise half-naked Vulcans hammer and smelt in their smelt-furnace, — is there not range enough in the fashion and uses of this Vestment? How much has been concealed, how much has been defended in Aprons!?”

EXTRACTIONS

In the room there’s a poster of a face and Anna and Jason are concerned they have obfuscated it too much with the wheat paste used to affix it to the wall.  The face is of a person potentially scowling, sneezing, or squinting into the room. They want to ensure it’s possible to see her upper lip and cheekbones, so they wipe away the paste with some water.