We know more than we can tell
Other Sights is a part of an exhibition at the AHVA Gallery at the University of British Columbia. The exhibition is open from June 1st – 6th, with artist talks being held on June 1st and 4th. This exhibition is part of the Congress 2019 of the Humanities and Social Sciences also taking place at UBC concurrently. For more information about the exhibition, below you will find the exhibition text connected to Other Sights’ work in the exhibition which was written by Christine D’Onofrio.
The exhibition …we can know more than we can tell… actualizes the intuitive dimensions of knowledge that happen through experience and the research and creation of artworks. The title comes from Michael Polanyi’s (1958) acknowledgment of past years of experiential learning courses at the University of British Columbia in a process of artistic conversation. by way of work; the resulting streams of artworks reveal covert connections, corresponding impulses, and reciprocal influences. The exhibition of works consists of the threads of inquiry, demonstrating a community of collaboration wherein art thrives.
Other Sights for Artists’ Projects has exposed students to ways of working collectively on artistic projects that materialize in temporary spaces and public outlets rather than in conventional gallery spaces. In recent years, the partnership included work on The Foreshore, a series of discussion-focused events that considered aesthetic, economic, and regulatory conditions of public place and life hosted by various artists and thinkers. This resulted in archived and recorded sessions that were turned into new works in the form of audio zines titled The Foreshore Listens, led by Jen Weigh, who is a member of the Other sights production team. These audio works, by Stacey Ho, Vanessa Campbell, Dan Pon, and Sarah Moore, are featured in the exhibition. They use existing Foreshore recordings and expand upon material from past events to create the podcasts. The outcome of the works “draw out complex constellations of thought and insight otherwise latent in the [original] series and crystalizes their depth and urgency” (othersights.ca). Alumni of the engaged-learning class created new artworks that respond to the audio zines in an effort to further materialize the active grasps we make to keep in touch with what is fleeting. Tung Yi works with familial lineages and public spaces of communication and connection in her sound work Situating the Context. Josephine Lee’s delicate glasswork, Stone’s throw away from the old country, depicts the hybridity of mind as one circulates transient spaces we once or currently call home. In Alexandra Rodriguez’s work Papel Picado, the festively crafted tissue paper cut-out designs are connected to those of tear-off tab flyers found in public spaces. The Mexican folk-art formal shifts into a commercial enterprise that can also be seen as poetically sustaining. In response to Other Sights for Artists’ Projects, the artists activate transient spaces in both form and content, offered by The Foreshore Listens, audio works to uncover layers of institutionalised coercion and effacement.
