elementary forces

I learned about the Hamilton Audio Visual Node (HAVN) a few years ago by doing the rounds during Art Crawl. Since then it’s become obvious they’re hosting some of the most innovative music and visual art in Hamilton. I sat down with Connor Bennett and Chris Ferguson at the beginning of July to learn more about the collective and discover yet another reason to move to Hamilton. Connor and Chris made it pretty clear you don’t need an invitation to join the party. Featured Title Image, The HAVN Storefront on Barton Street Credit: Ariel Bader-Shamai

Timothy: How did HAVN get started?

Connor: Um, a few of us started a band, and we were practising in the basement of a student house and when it came time to leave that house, we wanted a space where we could continue to play, and show art, and we just lucked out, our collaborator and co-founder Amy McIntosh was living above a storefront and…

Chris: …had a good relationship with the landlord and managed to get the downstairs space at a price we could afford.

Connor: That was May, 2012, we opened up just as most of us were graduating from McMaster University.

Timothy: What does it mean to be a node for the arts? Is the storefront a critical component?

Connor: It’s probably not critical, although it’s nice, it’s really nice. I wouldn’t say it’s critical because we don’t do regular gallery hours, where people can just pop in. It is nice to have the storefront space for things like art crawl. We’re off of James Street but it’s still easier to get people out as compared to a studio space.

Aubrey Wilson Quartet in February 2015, Photo Credit: Amy McIntosh

Chris: Back to your question, as to what it means to be a node. Nodes are intersection points, which denotes the collaborative nature, the interdisciplinary nature of what we’re trying to do. And it was chosen for the sake of the acronym [Laughter].

Timothy: So what are your activities?

Chris: You could put it into four categories. We do art shows every art crawl, and occasionally outside of art crawl. We do music shows two to five times a month. And then there’s HAVN Records, our cassette tape little label. There’s also some miscellaneous things that are harder to categorize. We’ve done craft nights where people come out. Or if people in the collective supply an idea and make it happen. For a little while we had a darkroom in the backroom where people could develop photos.

Timothy: What are some of the highlights from the past couple of years?

Chris: It wasn’t something that I was involved with personally but I thought the darkroom was a really cool idea. It’s not something that’s widely available and it was a DIY thing where they obtained all the equipment and brought it all together. Some of it was donated by a like-minded friend from Guelph.

Connor: One of the best concerts I’ve seen recently was hosted by Cem Zafir and his partner Donna Akrey at HAVN, and they had a percussionist by the name of Tatsuya Nakatani come in and everyone in the room was transported to a different world, it was a magical moment. Those happen a lot. We’ve been really lucky with a lot of good music.

Hagface and Zena in August 2015, Photo Credit: Tony Hoang

Chris: What was the name of the show, I think Ariel and Petra did it, with the yarn, it was kind of, performance stuff; would you consider it a successor to the Quanta_1 show, where you and Kearon…

Connor: Yeah, yeah, it’s kind of like that…

Chris: An extension of that idea. Petra and Ariel did it, how would you describe it?

Connor: It was kind of a poetic yarn installation, with figures…

Chris: …and quotations.

Connor: It was great.

Chris: Really well executed. Not something you see a lot of.

Connor: Yeah, there’s lots of highlights.

Chris: We could keep going.

Connor: Once you start thinking about it.

Chris: I really liked our show for Supercrawl last year, which ended up being themed around Cootes Paradise, the Cootes to Escarpment EcoPark System, which is a conservation effort beginning with Cootes Paradise all the way into Burlington to connect some critical natural lands. The show really nailed the peaceful nature of it. Supercrawl is very busy, there’s tonnes of people and then you come to HAVN and it’s peaceful, relaxed.

Connor: Serene.

Chris: Yeah, Judy Major-Girardin, a professor at McMaster that taught a lot of the HAVN crew, was very generous with her time and she’s a big supporter of that initiative, so she put up a gorgeous installation with sound recordings from Georgian Bay. Frogs. Printed cheesecloth. It was stunning.

Corridors, in Support of the Cootes to Escarpment EcoPark System, September 2015, Photo Credit: Ariel Bader-Shamai

Timothy: What are your objectives? What is the need or desire that you are addressing?

Connor: I’d say from the music side of things, it’s a space for outsider music, for music that doesn’t really fit in a club or a bar. It’s a small space, really intimate, so even if ten people come out it feels like a nice crowd.

Chris: Yeah, It could just be a touring band who might have trouble booking a show at a bigger venue, because they wouldn’t attract a bigger crowd.

Connor: We know a lot of people who are booking shows in Hamilton and we’re filling a bit of a void since they’re not booking these types of shows. Like free jazz, for example, there’s no venues that are booking free jazz but we will gladly and enthusiastically book a free-jazz show.

Boyhood and Holzkopf in July 2015, Photo Credit: Tony Hoang

Timothy: How did you determine the scope of your practice?

Connor: Time determined that. When I started out with HAVN I was working a lot more with Kearon on the visual arts and installation projects and with time my interests and time investments moved more towards the music. It’s a natural evolution within the group, that we’ve settled into our roles based on our interests.

Timothy: Were those interests present from the beginning, or have they been nurtured over time?

Connor: One of the reasons why this has worked out for so long is that everyone has been really passionate about creativity, and art in general, and open to all art forms. That’s been the crux of why we’ve been around for so long, and putting on shows that are successful.

Timothy: What is your current relationship with institutional structures like the university and the gallery?

Connor: Well, quite a few professors from McMaster have shown art in our space. Judy and Dr. McQueen had a show recently. Other galleries? We have good relationships with other galleries, in particular, the Factory Media Centre, because we’ve done a lot of media art, not only that, we’ve shown a lot of art there, and both Amy McIntosh and Aaron Hutchinson have been on the board there. Amy’s been involved since the beginning.

Timothy: You position yourself as an alternative, though.

Chris: It’s not an adversarial relationship, like ‘that stuff is no good.’

Connor: We just don’t want to replicate things that are being done elsewhere. I’m sure we do it all the time. But the intention is to fill a void, take a risk.

Timothy: What are the benefits and limitations associated with your present configuration?

Connor: We’ve had trouble finding grants that apply to us. That’s one challenge because we operate with no inflow of money, so it’s just tough to make it work sometimes. That’s one of the limitations.

Chris: Sometimes I wonder if we put more time into the grants whether we would begin to take a different path. Like, having gallery hours wouldn’t be a bad thing, but it would be different than what we do now, and it would mean that we would be travelling down a more traditional path.

Timothy: Can you speak of the benefits and effects of HAVN, for yourselves and the broader community?

Connor: It’s such a useful space for us as artists and musicians, that’s kind of priceless.

Chris: It’s great to have a spot that you’re part of.

The Celestial Offerings Show in December 2015, Photo Credit: Petra Matar

Connor: Ideally we’re providing a space that’s inclusive, and open, where people feel comfortable. But if I was new to Hamilton and I went to HAVN I could understand feeling intimidated because there’s all these people who know each other already.

Chris: I think it’s always hard, because you establish your audience, and your friends, and you want people to have a stake in the space, that they’re part of it, that they’re not just attending shows, but that they’re part of the community too. But you have to balance that with being open and having new people feel that they can be part of it.

Timothy: So do you have any words of advice to people who might want to start a collective?

Chris: If I had any advice it would be pretty cheesy.

Connor: I don’t know. [Laughter]

Chris: The real trick is having the right group of people.

Connor: Get lucky.

Chris: Yeah, we couldn’t have made this happen in a bigger city where the rents are more expensive.

For the Silo, Timothy deVries.

Supplemental- Video Credit: Mubarik Gyenne-Bayere

Video Credit: Footage by Ariel Bader-Shamai, live visuals by Andrew O’Connor https://www.instagram.com/p/BDE-Nhwk0BT/
Video Credit: Footage by Ariel Bader-Shamai, live visuals by Andrew O’Connor https://www.instagram.com/p/BCCFlOBE0FF/

Video Credit: Olga K.

Apocalypse, Timothy deVries (2015) Acrylic on Panel, 30 x 30 inches

What is a corner? The corner represents a symbolic value. Children are told to stand in the corner when they are disobedient. The corner is a place where one meditates on one’s shortcomings. One can be ‘backed into a corner’ and left with few options or one can retreat into a corner for safety. Animals corner their prey. Corners are places where things get lost and are found. Corners are neglected and swept in the spring. Unfortunate artists can paint themselves into a corner if they are not aware of the space around them and the area beneath their feet. Corners are forgotten with the bustle of activity in the centre of the room.

Gilles Deleuze’s book on Francis Bacon contains a short chapter in which he describes some of the possible reasons for why Bacon consistently displayed his figures against a “round area or ring.”¹ Deleuze asserts that the main reason for utilizing this “simple technique” is to create a “place” and to isolate the Figure.² There is a progression and fatefulness in assigning the Figure to this place. Deleuze claims that the round area or ring relates the Figure to the setting and, in so doing, posits the Figure or painting as a kind of fact or isolated reality.³

Bird on a Wire, Timothy deVries (2015) Acrylic on Panel, 18 x 18 inches

The horizon, ring, corner or wall is a painterly convention frequently revisited by contemporary artists. Although many painters have excluded these settings in favour of fields (e.g. a field of pure colour, or a field of refuse), such settings are useful constructs for displaying objects of value or inducing value within objects. Fields are distinct from settings in that they form a systematic or total (rather than operative or local) context for objects. Conversely, settings function by separating the object from its context so that the viewer can have an unmediated experience of that object. The setting recedes ‘into the background’ as a decorative relief or incidental support.

Corners are specific settings that feature the intersection of three planes (i.e. two walls and a floor). The intersection forms a point. The corner can function simply as the intersection of three planes or as a construct that creates depth and dimensionality. This bivalent nature hints at its duplicity as a setting. It creates a false depth. In this respect, the play of surfaces conspires to become a point of convergence or vanishing point. As a convergence of three surfaces it is a point of ‘agreement’, or perhaps a type of foreclosure; three colours and three lines converge to form a dimensional whole. The duplicity of the corner consists of its character as both a play of surfaces and as a convergence of three lines. The duplicity consists in the fact that the corner realizes both the idea of form and the Form itself through both a convergence (of surface and line) and a construction (of dimensionality).

Two of the most significant questions a painter may ask is, “What must I paint?” and “What is the painting about?” The idea of form contained in a painting is inevitably ‘about’ a sensation or perception. The painter’s nervous system is trained not only to recognize particular sensations and perceptions but to actualize them in the materiality of paint.⁴ Painters practice their art as a way of learning to live with a given set of perceptions and sensations. The act of representation in painting is therefore second to the sensations and perceptions which inaugurate it.

Black Cat and the Jawbone of an Ass, Timothy deVries (2007) Acrylic on Canvas, 46 x 59 inches

The critic’s judgment (i.e. the critique) is the genesis of painterly sensations and perceptions. Critique is the limit of art and limits art to what it alone can do. It functions as a form of violence that is inflicted, observed or endured and occurs when one form overcomes another or when a form is ‘deformed’ by a superior consciousness. The deformation heralds a new and hitherto unappreciated beauty. It is the beauty of a projection or displacement of the painter’s subjective point of view into the materiality of paint. The transformation of sensations and perceptions through the pure and practical reason of the painter reflects the painter’s critique of power. What power? The power of judgment. The critique is therefore absorbed into the very colour of the picture.

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s picture theory holds great explanatory appeal in these cases because it contains propositions regarding the logic and structure of a picture. The painter labels the painting with a title because it represents a state of affairs. There is a close correspondence between the fact represented by the title and the pictorial content of the painting. It is in this sense that the picture functions as a relation between the physical or material world and the thoughts of the painter. Within this context, pictures are criticological constructs. Their titles are statements or propositions that are endowed with sense. As a function of these statements the painting’s pictorial components correspond almost identically with a set of defined elementary forces.

The corner can therefore play several conscious roles within a painting. They are the place of an encounter between a convergence and a defined space. These corners embody a perception. Moreover, corners function as a limit. As the limit of pictorial space they set up a picture plane that functions as a limit to logical thought. By using corners in this way, painters can represent unusual objects with a degree of normative ‘factuality’ – even if they are only representations. Finally, corners function as a place or setting. These corners are settings in which something can take place as well as a destination for various ideas. They instantiate and materialize Form in unanticipated ways. For the Silo, Timothy deVries http://www.timothydevries.ca/

Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation (New York: Continuum, 2003), 1
Deleuze, Francis Bacon, 2
Deleuze, Francis Bacon, 2
Deleuze, Francis Bacon, 52

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Collective Establishes HAVN For The Arts In Hamilton

Elementary Forces By Timothy deVries

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