Shortly following the decision by the programming committee to accept Lexier\u2019s dossier, Julie Tremble, articule\u2019s programming coordinator, received a letter from Joshua Schwebel, an emerging Montr\u00e9al-based artist, stating that they had, in fact, been fooled, and that Lexier himself had never applied to the centre. Schwebel had proposed a fake project to articule under Lexier\u2019s name as a means to investigate whether \u201creputation would outweigh a really weak proposal.\u201d1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 1 <\/a> - \u201cJosh Schwebel\u2019s Anti-Social Practice,\u201d Blouin Art Info, accessed March 11, 2014, http:\/\/ca.blouinartinfo.com\/news\/story\/988517\/interview-josh-schwebels-anti-social-practice.<\/span> The show went on at articule, but instead of the proposed project by \u201cLexier,\u201d Schwebel presented a work about reputation and quality within artist-run centres, in conversation with Lexier himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Titled Please Do Not Submit Original Works<\/em>\u200a\u2014\u200aa tongue-in-cheek reference to submission guidelines urging artists to send in slides with their applications as opposed to actual artworks\u200a\u2014\u200aSchwebel\u2019s piece was both a performance and an installation in the gallery. Schwebel\u2019s use of Lexier\u2019s name, CV, and portfolio was done without Lexier\u2019s knowledge or permission. This was an act of impersonation. What Schwebel presented cannot accurately be described as a forgery. To forge is to make, adapt, or imitate something (generally an object such as art or currency) with the express intention of deceiving the reader. While his application to the gallery did include faked documents and was sent from a fake email address, Schwebel\u2019s project wasn\u2019t to imitate Lexier, but rather to underscore how the administrative structures of artist-run centres inform aesthetics. While he was attempting to briefly deceive the centre, the ultimate purpose of the short-term deception was to highlight where articule\u2019s own mandate was, as Schwebel viewed it, deceptive in its language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In her 2005 article \u201cFrom the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique\u201d2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 2 <\/a> - Andrea Fraser, \u201cFrom the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique,\u201d Artforum<\/em> 44, No. 1 (Sept. 2005). <\/span> Andrea Fraser presents a case for how institutional critique has shifted from an attempt to disrupt, disturb, or dismantle the institutions of art towards a practice of defence of these same institutions. Pushing against this type of soft critique, Fraser asks, \u201cHow can artists who have become art-historical institutions themselves claim to critique the institution of art?\u201d3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - Ibid.<\/span> This question is especially relevant to Schwebel\u2019s practice: he is not so much interested in the institutionalized artist as he is in the dangers of alternative spaces, especially older, more established (and well funded) ones like articule, growing to resemble the larger institutions they were set up to contest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Schwebel\u2019s piece came out of the idea to make \u201cuse\u201d of a famous artist as a means of exposing what he considered to be a growing trend in artist-run centres: the contradiction between a mandate to exhibit emerging artists and present radicalized practices and the temptation to bring in big-name artists. For Schwebel, artist-run centres are becoming indistinguishable from larger institutions in terms of their programming. I agree that we have witnessed an institutionalization of public art spaces in Canada over the last thirty years, in part due to a direct desire of the membership of these artist-run centres to move in this direction, but I would further argue that this is equally a consequence of shifts to the language of public funding at national, provincial, and regional levels, brought on by shifts in the governing administrations towards a more austere climate for the arts. Ultimately, while Schwebel was invested in \u201chow the artist\u2019s name, to the extent that its value functions as a brand, potentially outweighs the work s\/he produces,\u201d the main goal was to re-open space for criticality within the programming of artist-run centres, especially those whose mandates already suggest an openness to that type of work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Schwebel only proposed this work to articule. This was in part due to his previous relationship with the gallery. Schwebel had submitted dossiers in the past but had not been successful in his applications. The committee had generally admired his work and they collectively encouraged him to apply to the Special Projects programming committee. Programming under the banner of Special Projects offers space for short-term, non-exhibition-based projects inside or outside the gallery. Artists receive \u201cpromotional and logistic support, access to the centre\u2019s equipment, administrative infrastructure, venue, and financial support.\u201d4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - \u201cCall for Projects,\u201d articule, accessed March 11, 2014, http:\/\/www.articule.org\/en\/call-for-projects.<\/span> However, these special projects are not the same as the regular exhibition programming in duration or, frankly, prestige. For Schwebel, who sees his interventions as having the same weight and requiring the same amount of time for the public to digest as other more obvious exhibitionary projects, the suggestion that his work be reshaped was unappealing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Schwebel didn\u2019t target articule because his work had previously been rejected. To view Please Do Not Submit Original Works<\/em> that way would reduce it to a petty and reactionary artwork, which it is not. articule was specifically singled out by the artist because its mandate states that it is \u201can open-access artist-run centre dedicated to the presentation of a broad range of contemporary art practices,\u201d that it strives for \u201cartistic excellence, interdisciplinarity and social engagement,\u201d and that it specifically supports emerging artists while continuing to offer support for established artists who \u201ctest the limits of aesthetic gesture, and who commit themselves to the ideals of experimentation and risk-taking.\u201d5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - \u201cMandate,\u201d articule, accessed March 11, 2014, http:\/\/www.articule.org\/en\/mandate.<\/span> Most importantly, however, \u201carticule supports discursive and alternative activities.\u201d6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 6 <\/a> - Ibid.<\/span> It is precisely because of the centre\u2019s self-assertion of its support of radical and counter-institutional practices, of its potential to be critical within its own mandate, that Schwebel\u2019s fake-out was possible. While articule states that it is open to a multitude of types of proposals, Schwebel\u2019s artwork responded to a perception that the gallery privileges practices which exhibit visible labour as opposed to immaterial labour, and which take up physical space in the gallery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In his first contact with articule, Schwebel told Tremble that the forged dossier, which \u201cdeliberately lacked content,\u201d was not meant as \u201ca reflection on the quality or importance of Lexier\u2019s oeuvre, but rather on the quality of the proposal.\u201d7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 7 <\/a> - Schwebel, \u201cletter to Julie Tremble\u201d. <\/span> For Schwebel, what was important was working with a Canadian artist who had reached a certain level of commercial and critical success. Schwebel identified Lexier as someone who specifically distances himself from the practice of making, who doesn\u2019t always involve his own hand in his work, and whose art speaks to a larger discussion on the appropriation of labour. For example, in Lexier\u2019s recent show at the Power Plant, One, and Two, and More Than Two<\/em>, Lexier collaborated with over two hundred Toronto-based artists. While he is billed as the curator, he is nonetheless celebrated as the artist<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lexier was not made aware of Schwebel\u2019s deception until after it occurred. But once he was apprised of the exhibition, Lexier \u201cdonated\u201d a \u201cwork\u201d to Schwebel for presentation with the other installation ephemera. In a letter to Tremble, Lexier explains that he provided Schwebel with a \u201cletter-size photocopy of a portion of the colophon for a boxed print series\u2009.\u2009.\u2009. called Preparatory Drawings for a Portrait of the Morrish <\/em>Family.\u201d8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 8 <\/a> - \u201cMicah Lexier email to Julie Tremble,\u201d Joshua Schwebel, accessed March 11, 2014, http:\/\/joshuaschwebel.com\/artwork\/3429638_Micah_s_contribution.html.<\/span> What Lexier gifted to Schwebel contained all the information present in the actual artwork, but it is not the artwork. It can more accurately be described as a test or proof for the final print. On the photocopy of the print, there is a line of text not included in the final print, which states that, \u201crather than sign my own name, I asked the master printer, Allen Ash, to sign my name. I liked that this page showed that in the past I have asked someone to impersonate me, and I thought the gesture of asking another to sign my name had echoes with Josh\u2019s project\/exhibition.\u201d9<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 9 <\/a> - Micah Lexier, email to Julie Tremble. <\/span> While Lexier gave Schwebel the printed image, what was shown in the gallery was only the letter to Tremble. To the viewer, it is unclear how Schwebel acquired this \u201cold piece of paper.\u201d Is it forged, stolen, gifted, invented? For Lexier, the inclusion of his \u201cnot-art\u201d in Schwebel\u2019s show at articule is ambiguous at best and this ambiguity was critical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the proposal itself can be read as the actual artwork, it also manifested as an installation in the gallery and as a performative lecture. The installation was placed in a side area of the main gallery\u200a\u2014\u200aa relegation to a secondary space which could be understood as a subtle payback for the joke played on articule\u200a\u2014\u200abut it is important to note that the project submitted by \u201cLexier\u201d was accepted alongside Kinsley\u2019s large-scale sculpture, and the newspaper project that was originally accepted would have taken up significantly less room than Schwebel\u2019s actual installation. What Schwebel presented, both in the gallery and on his website, which acts as another important site for this artwork, were the exchanges between himself and Tremble as a representative for articule. For the performative lecture, Schwebel curated a panel of \u201cexperts\u201d made up of two critics who read pre-written statements about his project: Carl Samuels, a visiting academic and critic from New York City and Patrice Loubier, a Montr\u00e9al-based art critic. The discursive nature of Schwebel\u2019s project for articule was further emphasized when it became apparent that both \u201ccritics\u201d were reading from almost identical texts, putting into question its authorship, and that \u201cSamuels\u201d was in fact Carl Schwebel, the artist\u2019s father. The repetition of the read texts created a sensation of doubt in the audience, but ultimately it only left a lingering feeling of uncanny d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu. Because articule, much to Schwebel\u2019s surprise, was excited to participate, he had to dramatize the critique through a performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Tremble received Schwebel\u2019s letter, she approached the board of directors to make a decision on how to proceed with the dossier. Unanimously, articule\u2019s board voted to move ahead with the project and was excited to present a self-critical work. At no point was cancellation an option. Schwebel was absolutely correct in assuming that articule, as their mandate suggests, would be open to self-reflexivity, and it should be noted that Please Do Not Submit Original Works<\/em> has had a lasting effect on the centre and its programming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What was revealed to everyone through Schwebel\u2019s artwork was the absolute need to continue making space in artist-run centres for work that pushes against the grain and which maintains the original intention of the artist-run centres to experiment and offer alternatives to the type of projects most often promoted by other, larger art institutions\u200a\u2014\u200aeffectively, to continue the task of self-critique set out when artist-run centres were initially developed.<\/p>\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/82_AC01_Berson_Schwebel_please-do-not-submit-original-works-2-scaled.jpg\")
PLEASE do not submit original works: Micah’s contribution<\/em>, 2012.
Photo: courtesy of Micah Lexier<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n