I really did believe I could save this glacier, along with the glaciers that appeared subsequently in Matt Nish-Lapidus\u2019s A Limited Hangout <\/em>(2025), from its inevitable demise. That I could succeed in this task was, at least, the implication of the sensor mounted conspicuously next to the screen. What\u2019s more, it seemed to be the whole point of the show Strike a match and put it out<\/em>, which required viewers to become participants in the works, activating them through a myriad of hands-on and hands-off approaches. It was the terms of the activation with Nish-Lapidus\u2019s piece that I couldn\u2019t quite work out, and perhaps also I simply don\u2019t know how to save a glacier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
$\"Matt$
Matt Nish-Lapidus
<\/strong>A Limited Hangout<\/em>, installation view, MKG127, Toronto, 2025.
Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid, courtesy of MKG127, Toronto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
I could do other things, though. I could dig out a dollar from my bag to put in Anah\u00ed Gonz\u00e1lez\u2019s vending machine and receive a playing-card-sized screen print of an inverted map of North America. And I could turn the knob on a green carousel of Gonz\u00e1lez\u2019s photographs of unpeopled industrial spaces. I could lift the phone off the hook of Dave Dyment\u2019s Untitled [Eavesdrop] <\/em>(2018) and listen to a supercut of eavesdropping scenes from film and television. I could read the text on the verso of Liza Eurich\u2019s watery risograph prints, Waves (Barthes) <\/em>(2025): \u201cThe wave of language folds back onto itself.\u201d I can\u2019t confidently say whether it was Roland Barthes who said that, or Eurich. Is taking one of these risographs an activation? Or is Googling Barthes quotes for twenty-five minutes? Does pushing a button count as an interaction? Or turning a knob?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
$\"Dave$
Dave Dyment
<\/strong>Untitled [Eavesdrop]<\/em>, 2018, installation view, MKG127,
Toronto, 2025.
Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid, courtesy of MKG127, Toronto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Another piece by Eurich, an aloof bag-like shape made of pink resin propped up against the wall with a protruding soft tissue, titled Offering <\/em>(2025), offered a more obfuscated version of the role of the viewer-participant in this show. The obvious desire was to pull on the tissue, though the piece was not to be touched. I was all in on the fantasy that this denial allowed: would pulling the tissue produce a thousand tissues, like a magician\u2019s kerchief pulled from a sleeve?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The untouchable works continued with a set of window blinds by Shannon Garden-Smith, made of gelatine and printed with photo transfers of marbled endpapers, edges curled as if they were not meant to be exposed to the light from the window. Alongside a book (touchable) and two framed works interpolating the same marbled effect, Garden-Smith\u2019s work was the most straightforwardly pleasurable one in the show. I would chalk this up to the appearance that the works have already metabolized the experience of touch and do not need the viewer to do anything except luxuriate in its outcomes. What is so compelling here about touch is how much it can extract from the value of surface.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, what made the use of actual, sanctioned touch so disappointing in the more overtly actionable pieces? Strike a match and put it out<\/em> was clearly an apt name for the show: a match exists with the purpose of one specific interaction. No one feels particularly compelled to find a way to subvert the way the match \u201cwants\u201d to be struck. If we approach designing artworks as we do objects, we tend only to produce rigid interactions with expected outcomes. I am unconvinced that this sort of interaction is, experientially, meaningfully distinct from reading a two-sentence description of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If presence or activation is required, so too is agency. But in these rigid interactions, it was an agency that was severely limited. I don\u2019t know how many interactions can qualify as aesthetically significant without some possibility of a participant mucking it all up. Sure, with an increase in agency, so, too, comes an increased margin of error. You run the risk of producing a work that can be overtaken by the baser urges of the audience, that can lose its meaning more easily, that is ultimately out of your hands. Without this agency, though, it seems unlikely that an experience can amount to anything more than rote and mechanical, like trying to read lines opposite an ATM. So now you run the risk of producing a work that has less room for expression and a penchant for patronization and didacticism. It is up to you, I suppose, to decide which option is worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
$\"\"$
Anah\u00ed Gonz\u00e1lez
<\/strong>Calle Automotriz<\/em> ; Aqu\u00ed hay chamba!<\/em>, 2022, installation view, MKG127, Toronto, 2025.
Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid, courtesy of MKG127, Toronto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
I figured I would have better luck with Nish-Lapidus\u2019s A Limited Hangout <\/em>on a second visit, ready to do whatever it took to get the work to respond. It turns out that shamelessness cannot save you from another form of interacting with an artwork: failure. I picked myself up and went to ask at the desk. As it turns out, the work had succumbed to one of the legions of bugs that infest and attack new media art on the regular and was down for the count on the last week of the exhibition. The work is meant to pause the video of a glacier every time it catches you looking. Now, it seems, something has failed and climate change just won\u2019t stop, no matter if you are looking away or not. I have to apologize for writing about this breakdown of mechanics, but I can\u2019t help but be totally enthralled by an artwork taking a sort of \u201cBartleby, the Scrivener\u201d position of its own accord. Nor can I ignore how genuinely captivating the feeling of failure within myself was in the face of a genuinely futile task. Sometimes things just cannot be changed, no matter how you approach them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MKG127, <\/strong>Toronto<\/br>July 12\u200a\u2013\u200aAugust 23, 2025<\/br>","protected":false},"author":6506,"featured_media":273332,"template":"","categories":[884],"numeros":[7754],"disciplines":[],"statuts":[],"checklist":[],"auteurs":[7779],"artistes":[7811,7803,7867,7843,7398],"thematiques":[],"type_compte-rendu":[],"class_list":["post-273352","compte-rendu","type-compte-rendu","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","numeros-116-immersion-en","auteurs-erika-verhagen-en","artistes-anahi-gonzalez-en","artistes-dave-dyment-en","artistes-liza-eurich","artistes-matt-nish-lapidus-en","artistes-shannon-garden-smith-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/compte-rendu\/273352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/compte-rendu"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/compte-rendu"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6506"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273352"},{"taxonomy":"numeros","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/numeros?post=273352"},{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=273352"},{"taxonomy":"statuts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/statuts?post=273352"},{"taxonomy":"checklist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/checklist?post=273352"},{"taxonomy":"auteurs","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/auteurs?post=273352"},{"taxonomy":"artistes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes?post=273352"},{"taxonomy":"thematiques","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thematiques?post=273352"},{"taxonomy":"type_compte-rendu","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type_compte-rendu?post=273352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}