More than 50 York Faculty of Fine Arts students are featured in Two Clouds, a unique instructional performance by Dutch artist Aernout Mik. The event was co-curated and captured in a 15 minute video co-directed by York visual arts Professor Jennifer Fisher and her associate Jim Drobnick.
Two Clouds will be on view in the Special Projects Gallery, located on the main floor of the Joan & Martin Goldfarb Centre for Fine Arts, from Jan. 14 to 18. The gallery is open daily from 9am to 4pm (free admission).
The video documents Mik’s project as it was enacted at York on Oct. 26, 2006. On that day, Mik led students and faculty, from the undergraduate and graduate programs in the Departments of Visual Arts and Dance, in a series of perplexing and playful mirror actions as a study in psycho-social group dynamics. Videography and editing of the film was done by Nadine Bariteau and Jesse Bellon, who graduated from the MFA Program in Visual Arts in 2007.
Mik’s Two Clouds was staged in the context of "Do Me!", a collective curatorial project that solicited instructions from international artists to be by Toronto-based performers. This event took the premise of Hans Ulrich Obrist’s 1996 Do It! exhibition and returned it to its performative roots in the work of 1960s Fluxus artists . Like all the projects in Do Me!, the intent of Two Clouds was to challenge the tolerance of public space to accommodate politically-charged interventions, enigmatic group behaviors, disobedient media events, and experiments in personal transformation.
Mik is an Amsterdam-based artist who works in performance, video, installation and new media. His internationally-recognized works depict persons engaging in disquieting behaviors that examine the psychology of groups and the socio-politics of individuality. His publications include Dispersions (2004), Reversal Room (2002), Primal Gestures/Minor Roles (2000), and Tender Habitat (2000).
Fisher teaches contemporary art and curatorial studies at York, and currently serves as director of the Graduate Program in Art History. Drobnick is associate professor of contemporary art and theory at the Ontario College of Art & Design.
Fisher and Drobnick are the co-founders of Display Cult, a collaborative framework for interdisciplinary projects in the visual arts. Their curatorial practice includes the performance/exhibition events CounterPoses (1998), Vital Signs (2000), Museopathy (2001), Linda M. Montano (2003) and Aural Cultures (2005), among others. Their collaborative essays can be found in Trespassers & Captives (2000), Image and Inscription (2005) and Dispersions: Aernout Mik (2005).