\u201cPublic discourses are complex and knotted. They intertwine, affect, \u00adantagonize, fold over themselves, and flee in different directions,\u201d writes artist, architectural and urban designer Adrian Blackwell in his \u00adintroduction to his installation Model for a Public Space [knot]<\/em> (2010). A circuitous, \u00admulti-level set of bleachers built out of unfinished plywood, Blackwell\u2019s Model<\/em> occupied the Reading Room of Hart House, a multi-purpose \u00adbuilding on the University of Toronto campus that houses several student services, for a month, offering visitors a space to meet and engage in \u201cnon-\u00adhierarchical discussions.\u201d Commissioned by curator Maiko Tanaka for her conference \u201cextra-curricular: between art & pedagogy,\u201d which explored the \u00adrelationship between art, education and activism, the Model<\/em> accompanied and in many ways illustrated the discussions being held in adjoining rooms about the possibilities and limitations of pedagogical art practice.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Despite its deceptively simple structure, Blackwell\u2019s installation \u00adreferences a heady combination of radical social texts, from Vladimir Tatlin\u2019s Model of the Monument to the Third International<\/em> (1920) and Alexander Rodchenko\u2019s abstract mobiles, to more complex schemas for analysis put forth by French theorists such as Jacques Lacan and Alain Badiou. The Model<\/em>\u2019s spare modernist aesthetic was a marked contrast to the dark wood and ostentatious detailing of the Victorian-era Reading Room that hoped to produce new social relations through a new \u00adarchitectural environment. Two discussions on love, politics and contemporary art hosted by Blackwell and his collaborator, curator and educator Christine Shaw, were meant to demonstrate how the space might be used.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Though the aims of Blackwell\u2019s installation were ambitious, the project operated in tension with its own limits and potential failure. Set in the context of the university, the model seemed to already limit the parameters of the \u201cpublic\u201d that could access it. Coupled with warning signs posted around the perimeter of the space alerting viewers that they would be climbing the sculpture at their own risk, Blackwell\u2019s model appeared to prove that such non-hierarchical meetings have the capacity to wreak both ideological and physical dangers. Even the title of the work, with its [knot]<\/em> addendum, functioned like a negation of itself through the \u201cknot\/not\u201d homophone, perhaps implying that a utopian public space is impossible to achieve. But such tensions between idealism and cynicism are perhaps \u00adcharacteristic of the pedagogical turn in recent artistic practice. Speaking in a roundtable discussion during the conference, Vancouver artist and colourschool founder Kristina Lee Podesva succinctly articulated the need for a pedagogical art practice that, unlike relational aesthetics, was not concerned with making a spectacle out of our everyday social activities (such as talking, or sharing a meal), but instead with facilitating introspection and individual transformation. Perhaps Blackwell\u2019s Model<\/em>, by pointing out our ongoing desire to establish a truly \u201cpublic\u201d space, offers just this kind of opportunity for introspection and self-reflection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Justina M. Barnicke Gallery,<\/strong> Toronto
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