Out of Print at Modern Fuel

"I knew that I wanted to touch upon...instances where Kingston was directly mentioned (such as an article addressing the burning of General Idea’s Miss 1984 Pavillion)."--Kevin Rodgers

 I was delighted to make good time between Toronto and Kingston earlier in the month to attend a series of presentations at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre about the exhibition, A Vital Force: The Canadian Group of Painters (for which I copy edited the catalogue). Arriving early meant I got to visit Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre, which has an interesting exhibition of art publications on display until June 15. Artistic Director, Kevin Rodgers, is interviewed below.

H- As a former art librarian, I was delighted to see gems like the Dennis Tourbin catalogue in Out of Print. How did you curate the selection of materials on display?

K- I should provide a bit of background first. In December 2012, I started my position as Artistic Director at Modern Fuel. At the time I noticed the collection of print material (magazines, artists’ books, etc.) that were casually placed on a row of shelves in the offices. As someone who has an interest in print material, I was curious to see what was actually there (at that point, there were no records that I knew of that indicated what the contents were). This row of shelving was officially called the Nan Yeomans Resource Centre, and it was a recent initiative of the gallery.

Over the next few months, I began going through the contents. Some items I was familiar with, and others were completely new to me, such as the Dennis Tourbin books.  I could tell after a few hours of going through the material that there were some rare and quite wonderful artists books and items, and I wanted to exhibit them. I wanted people to know what we had on hand.

The selection of works was rather organic: I knew that I wanted to touch upon the political publications of the late 1970s and early 1980s (Red Herring, Incite), some conceptual practices (N.E. Thing Company) and instances where Kingston was directly mentioned (such as an article addressing the burning of General Idea’s Miss 1984 Pavillion). These were the starting points.

H- When did Modern Fuel begin collecting catalogues and books for the Nan Yeomans Resource Library?

K- The Nan Yeomans Resource Library was created in 2006. It was the name given to the collection of material that had been accruing in the offices--either by subscription, sought out by former board members and staff, or donated. The material dates back to 1977, the founding of the KAAI (Kingston Artists Association Inc.).

H- The postal system has really networked Canadian artist-run centres over the years and ARCs continue to have an impressive catalogue exchange system. Is that how the majority of items in your collection were amassed?

K- There are numerous items that were acquired through the catalogue exchange system. I would say many of the items from the 1990s were acquired this way, although I’d be speculating on how the majority of items were amassed. Part of the pleasure of looking through this stuff was thinking about how it came to be here, and there are many that remain mysterious.

H-Some of the items on display are showing their age. Was the value of the material discovered or agreed upon only recently?

K- I don’t think the contents of the Library had really been gone through for some time. My understanding is that there was an awareness of the value to some of the material, and acknowledgement of this by transforming the collection into a Resource Library.  However, many items were poorly stored and one of my initiatives is to get this material properly catalogued, preserved, and displayed.

H- Did you find any interesting inscriptions while going through the materials?

K- There were not a lot of inscriptions that I found, surprisingly. Some signatures, some dates. Even those are few and far between. Mind you, I am slowly working my way through the collection, so I am sure there are still some to be discovered.

H- How would you say the role of an ARC library differs from that of a larger institution? The reason I ask is that you have displayed the catalogue for Joyce Wieland’s (landmark) show at the National Gallery, who would have preserved the catalogue already in a climate controlled facility and promoted access by cataloguing it.

K- This is a very interesting question, and I’m not sure I have a satisfying answer. I would like our Library to be a resource, but also a place to see print works displayed in conjunction with the exhibitions. So for each exhibition, selections would be brought out from the collection to complement the artwork, to provide another angle for meaning and to activate histories. This is one way that perhaps it differs from the collection as archive, removed from context so to speak.

Artexte in Montreal is an amazing facility for collecting artists' books and material, and I appreciate the type of exhibitions that they put on in relation to their collection.  Modern Fuel has a completely different mandate, and much less material in our library. What we will do is still something to be seen, but the spirit of Artexte is one that I’d like to keep in mind.

H- Agreed: Artexte is a wonderful model. My first impression of their space was admiration of their journal collection. Speaking of journals, can you tell me about Matriart? I had no idea that Canada used to have a feminist art journal!

A- Matriart was a publication out of the Women’s Art Resource Centre in Toronto, and lasted for eight years.  We have about six issues, including the first one launched in 1990. Each issue was organized around particular thematics, such as Empowerment and Marginalization, or Women in Prison. It is a journal that I was unfamiliar with prior to finding it in our collection, and one that I’m also interested in looking more into.

H- Are there any plans for the Nan Yeomans Resource Library that you’d like to reveal?

K- While I’ve mentioned a few ideas throughout my answers so far, the main change will be when Modern Fuel moves to our new location at the Tett Centre in the summer of 2014. In that new space, we will have a proper display area for the material, and visitors will be able to access the collection easier. We are also reinstating subscriptions, and reconnecting with galleries for print exchanges. I certainly think there is a resurgence of artists interested in producing books and multiples, and I’d like to see our Library be a place (again) where this type of work is encountered and supported.

H- Best of luck with your move, and thanks for your time, Kevin!

Image: reproduced in 2019 via fair use/dealing. Source: http://www.modernfuel.org/art/programming/event/618

Starting the Year with an Oedipal Tragedy

"Which is harder to stomach about the unfortunate pairing of Guterson’s characters?"

A week into December, around the time New Year’s resolutions start taking shape, I visited the University of Toronto for the Book and Periodical Council Idea Exchange about public school libraries. When panelist Annie Kidder referenced a study about the positive neurological effects of reading fiction, I slunk down in my chair in the sea of librarians. It hit me that 2011 was about to pass without me having read a single fiction book, as I’d been completely absorbed by non-fiction. As luck would have it, that very day, the winner of the bad sex in fiction award was announced, making for an easily attainable resolution: the first book I would read in 2012, once my inter-library loan came in, was David Guterson’s Ed King (2011, Alfred A. Knopf). [Spoiler alert: skip the following paragraph if you want to avoid the details of the plot].

A modern day Sophoclean tragedy about patricide and incest, the novel begins with the events leading up to the conception of an Internet visionary. Walter Cousins, a father of two, has an affair with his au pair, Diane Burroughs, while his wife is hospitalized for mental illness. She becomes pregnant and demands child support even though she secretly leaves the baby on a Seattle doorstep. The baby is raised as Edward Aaron King by a local couple but is never told he is adopted. This choice may or may not have affected his emotional development, contributing to his predilection for older women and to the adolescent rage that causes him to drive a stranger, who happens to be Walter Cousins, off the road to his death. The book ends with his suicide at age 54, as he flies a plane above the allowable altitude while processing the sickening news that it was his biological father he killed and that his wife of almost twenty-five years was his biological mother.

Reading the book, I found myself reflecting on the caption within a General Idea photo screen-print called Oedipal Triangle that I’d just seen at the Art Gallery of Ontario: “This three-way relationship is easy to set your sights on.” In contrast to that sentiment, when Ed King finally discovers his father’s identity via DNA analysis and phone calls, his reaction, just before asking the question, “Who was my mother?” was “He wasn’t sure he wanted to look.”

Guterson acknowledges the complicated position of the reader. When Ed and Diane begin their romance, he interrupts by saying, “Now we approach the part of the story a reader can’t be blamed for having skipped forward to…most people, on hearing about the Oedipal complex, feel both resistant and drawn.” It would be difficult to interpret Diane and Ed’s encounter as anything but ‘bad sex,’ and not just because of its phrasing, which is rife with euphemisms. Which is harder to stomach about the unfortunate pairing of Guterson’s characters? The fact that Diane’s mind flits back to Walter Cousins while in the act, or the thought of adult Ed smelling “breast-fed”? Shudder. In spite of his “general body worship” of Diane, it is a match made in hell. Even so, their physical chemistry is described as exhilarating years into their relationship. If Ed and Diane were not tied by blood, it would still be distasteful to read about Ed calculating the number of times they’d had sex in the same way that Rachel called Ross a loser on Friends when he boasted the number 298 in response to a furniture salesman who didn’t believe they’d once dated.

It’s only marginally easier, to use General Idea’s wording, to read a description of statutory rape (Walter and Diane) and the next closest thing, Ed having sex with his adult math coach when he is in the eleventh grade. Even the healthiest relationship supports the bad sex in fiction award, given the account of Ed’s adoptive mother—then pregnant with Ed’s younger brother—copulating with her husband with flabby legs likened to cottage cheese and milk laden breasts compared to squirt guns.

Further to the announcement of the award at London’s In & Out Club, Guterson commented, “Oedipus practically invented bad sex, so I’m not in the least bit surprised.”