Here and now and then: Derya Akay and Anne Low, Meghan Price and Matthew Walker

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Meghan Price and Matthew Walker, "Watching Rocks: Hamilton/Extinction Event," 2017

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Curated by Tarin Dehod

For AKA’s 35th Anniversary the gallery becomes an expression of liveness, through a six week testimony of time, through a shared meal and its remnants.

Meghan Price presents Watching Rocks: Hamilton, a live-stream of Matthew Walker’s Extinction Event (2015), inserting the glacial erratic boulder into digital time and space. Walker’s boulder was liberated from an urban sprawl development site, layering its history of movement and transition through time by both glacial forces and human hands. Aside from transporting the boulder, Walker attempted to reset the rock itself by sandblasting the physical surfacing of time, in the process revealing an unknown or perhaps unwitnessed deep time. The boulder seemingly recalibrated within a human timeframe, witnessed now through Price’s live stream, a broadcast facilitating a wide network of watchers and multiple viewing sites, online, IRL and at AKA. Live streams can feel voyeuristic, but are diffused and mediated means of looking, creating a kind of illusion of presence; for the watcher a oneness with the frame of the camera. Watching Rocks generates atypical activity for a fixed and stoic boulder, acting as a kind of campfire or physical and virtual meeting place.

Joining the continued presence of Watching Rocks: Hamilton, Elaine takes the place of host with a shared meal for 35 guests, the remnants of interactions and performances left behind as records. Derya Akay and Anne Low’s informal banquet accompanies Price and Walker’s work as a foundation for gathering and exchange. Elaine’s immersive dining space is created through local collaboration and seasonal availability. Elaine’s guests are artists, AKA founders and members, neighbours, community organizers, past board and staff; a selection of those who have and will impact AKA’s history and future.

Here and now and then operates as a snapshot of an organization adapting to meet social and artistic conditions. AKA’s upcoming curatorial framework is inspired by the metaphor of a gateway, positioning the ARC as place-based, engaging with Riversdale and diverse and varied publics, while taking a self-reflexive look at AKA’s role within the local, provincial and national arts ecology. An emblematic sign of this three year vision will be a shifting emphasis on AKA’s name, prioritizing “also known as” as a flexible form directly speaking to this line of inquiry.