>>PREVIEW
AMBIVALENCE BLVD
Runs until January 13
Media Gallery (Art Gallery of Calgary)
It would be easy to dismiss the video, Ambivalence Blvd, part of Dick Averns ongoing art project, as a silly exercise. Too easy.
Averns, an instructor at the Alberta College of Art and Design, spent a couple of days in Ottawa last spring tooling around Canada’s capital city. Ambivalence Blvd (the performance) was carried out last May as part of Alberta Scene, the multi-million-dollar bash held in Ottawa to celebrate Alberta’s Centennial. While celebs and hangers-on noshed on Alberta beef, Averns walked around Ottawa with a street sign in his hands with the words Ambivalence Blvd printed on it.
For a few hours on each of those two days, a video camera also documented his meanderings as Averns passed the United States Embassy, the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, 24 Sussex Drive and other less high-profile locations, including the ByWard Market.
All this leads to a dark room in the basement of the Art Gallery of Calgary, where Ambivalence Blvd and Navigating Ambivalence Blvd (another video) are being shown. A perfect place you might surmise for ambivalence. As the lone spectator in the media gallery, I watched as the videos played on.
Averns and Vancouver-based art historian, Dorothy Barenscott, first discuss the project. This segment seems stiff and highlights the adage, "Show them, don’t tell them."
At one point in the conversation, before Ambivalence Blvd itself begins, Averns states, "Whimsy and humour are potent devices." A fact that few would dispute, especially those who have had the opportunity to view Charlie Chaplin skewering the industrial revolution in the classic 1936 movie, Modern Times.
And the Little Tramp comparison is not out of place here. Averns doesn’t walk funny or don a derby hat, but he does take on the persona of a fool as he silently carries his sign through the streets of Ottawa inviting spontaneous reaction.
Moreover, as in Chaplin’s films, the initial humour of the situation – punctuated by a loopy soundtrack provided by Jacob Cooper – evaporates with a serious message being uncovered.
In one scene, security personnel confront Averns as he gestures with the sign, pretending it’s a rifle. However, this attention-seeking episode is not the most telling moment of the video. It occurs when the artist, who has made it his business to explore the commoditization of public spaces, is confronted for simply walking down the street with the sign in his hands.
The video underscores that a right, such as freedom of expression, will only be protected if society is willing to shake off its ambivalence. If Averns can be stopped for walking, what does that hold for others who seek to uncover the truth in a time in our collective history when disinformation and secrecy is a way of life?
Averns’ Ambivalence Blvd demonstrates how incidents such as the January 2004 raid of reporter Juliet O’Neill’s home can happen in a country where democratic rights are touted, then snatched away with the scribble of a pen.
A reporter for the Ottawa Citizen, O’Neill had her home raided by the RCMP looking for the source of leaked information for a story the reporter wrote about Maher Arar, the Canadian citizen who was incorrectly branded a terrorist by the Canadian government, flown to Syria and then tortured.
It was not public outcry that led to the quashing of three portions of Canada’s anti-terrorism law, the same law used to justify raiding O’Neill’s home, but a ruling by Superior Court of Ontario Judge Lynn Ratushny, who said that certain provisions of the law, "Have not been well-tailored to suit their purpose. They arbitrarily and unfairly and with a blunt club of criminal sanction restrict freedom of expression, including freedom of the press."
In his conversation with art historian Barenscott, Averns says, "Ambivalence is a powerful emotion in its purest state."
O’Neill, Arar and a growing number of concerned Canadians understand exactly what he means. |
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