Is there anything left to be done at all? (2014)
In 2014, Ibghy and Lemmens were invited to undertake a residency at Trinity Square Video in Toronto. Because the residency was dedicated to art production, the artists asked themselves if it would be possible to embrace the “non-productive” in their own field of work without depriving themselves of the potential to act. As artistic practices are increasingly complicit with high-performance culture in contemporary labour regimes, they were interested in exploring what would remain of the desire to act if the compulsion to produce for the sake of productivity were suspended. After breaking the links that bind intention with realization and effort with reward, they wanted to see what, if anything, there is left to do.
To explore these questions, Ibghy and Lemmens invited four artists: choreographer and dancer Justine A. Chambers, community-engaged artist Rodrigo Martí, visual artist Kevin Rodgers, and hardcore singer Ryan Tong, to workshop the generative potential of unproductive labour and expenditure in creative work. By suspending the expectation to produce a work for someone or for something, they encouraged their collaborators to engage with the desires that drive their creative practice without being oriented towards any specific purpose.
One by one, each artist arrived with some ideas about how to spend their time and some materials to use as a starting point. Often, a gesture or a series of improvisations would be followed by a conversation during which they would reflect on how a “productive” orientation, expectation or intention might have infiltrated into what had just transpired. These discussions would influence the parameters for the following explorations.
After the residency, Ibghy and Lemmens presented traces of the time spent with their collaborators in an installation that included fragments from video recordings made during these explorations, as well as assemblages of objects and spatial configurations that took their cues from the forms that emerged during the process.
Realized with the collaboration of Justine A. Chambers, Rodrigo Martí, Kevin Rodgers, and Ryan Tong.
Work presented at: Trinity Square Video, Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery, Galerie d’art Louise-et-Reuben-Cohen.
Is there anything left to be done at all?, 2014, installation: six videos with sound, objects and text, variable dimensions.
