Collapse and Incompletion Exhibition

*TW: I’d love to hear more about access to information and open sources–these are topics close to me as well. 

Thinking of this in relation to your exhibition: Sources can be particular and exist in their specificities. What happens when they get realigned and re-positioned next to each other? The exhibition seems to create its own understanding of the archive by having divergent but tangential sources in proximity.

TYH: Quite specifically I feel that large institutions, especially those with corporate and/or colonial histories, monopolize information and material history. For me, the late ‘90s to early 2010s were defined by a resistance to centralized information. I think through the widening of the piracy movement and the emergence of personal home computers, we began to see a kind of informational and digital freedom. I believe this last decade has been defined by the corporatization of the Internet–paywalls, subscriptions, consolidation, advertisements (though pop-ups were always a relentless feature of online life!). I may be nostalgic, but I’m always hopeful for a return to less centralized access to information–or at least one that feels truly accessible. I think this is what I look for in my practice–reliving this sense of discovery or making your first Tumblr page or downloading your first discography. 

As for sources and their proximity, it is these seemingly disparate materials and histories that I enjoy working with. Overall, it’s a way to illustrate fragmentation–historical fragmentation, social fragmentation, informational fragmentation. What I hope to do is discover important connections between the images and objects–even further, I hope an audience can define connections I may have missed.

^†TW: You’ve drawn a connection between sound and image in that both are able to be sampled and remixed, largely due to their proliferation. Can you talk more about this relationship between sound and image, and how these mediums lend themselves to different types of archives or archiving processes? To me, sound is the undercurrent in all of your work, whether you hear it or not. 

TYH: I think in a very obvious way both sound and image are related due to a sensory experience of an image or moving image, or sound can evoke endless feelings, ideas, memories. The arrangement of these aesthetic elements are the cornerstone of what you’d consider “good art.” But I’m far more interested in the process and seeing if it’s possible to translate the philosophy of one medium to another. For example, how do you create the effect of reverb in music, with video? If looping is important, how is that reflected in a print work? I think the idea that the source material can be sampled is a given; I’m really more interested in how to bridge these seemingly different processes together.

^‡TW: Can you talk about how you have opened up your artistic process by bringing in collaborators? I am drawn to how you take source materials as reference points and then create new works that become sources of their own, speaking to the cycle of knowledge creation. By inviting Farhia to have a conversation with an artist of her choosing, and layering that with archival content,  it suggests a malleability or disruptive quality to which you approach history and archives and a freedom to which one can shape future archives, particularly through voices in collaboration and dialogue.

TYH: The opening up of my process was something long anticipated and will continue to be a part of the work as True and Functional matures. My attempt here was to expand my process with sampling, I was thinking about ways to approach it that I haven’t tried before. I was prompted by the format of the artist talk and how to experiment with that. I invited Farhia (who also contributed to the public programming through her poetry reading group, Tender Possibilities) to interview a friend and to consider ideas that she felt converged with some of the ideas we had shared with each other over the summer around music: art and its convergence with technology; and Black cultural work in art-making, writing, and criticism. In the end it was a handful of samples that I pulled out of a 30-minute interview–really small splices, extracts, and splices of conversation. I guess I was considering how to draw connections to Black cultural work and workers across time–I felt that both source interviews were important and poignant in regards to artistic autonomy and Black cultural output.

Theresa Wang (TW): Your exhibition Collapse and Incompletion brings together several years of research into information-making and knowledge production. One way you approach this is by examining the role and interpretation of archives: institutional and dominant archives, but also informal and personal ones. You do this, in part, by conducting archival work and also participating as a user of archives. Your experience as an Artist-in-Residence at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in 2021 is one such example of your foray into an institutional archive. I feel like it also marks the beginning of you creating this new body of work that culminated in the exhibition at Oakville Galleries. Can you speak about your experience in the gallery’s archive(s)––what did you encounter and what was the process like? Did you have a prior expectation of the purpose of an archive or what it would look like, and did your experience at the AGO impact your understanding of “dominance” in relation to the colonial? For example, does information manifest in a certain way when it exists in a dominant context?

Timothy Yanick Hunter (TYH): My time with the Montgomery Collection¹ was different from the way I typically engage with archives. One distinction is the formal access to the objects (mainly photographs). Of course, you have the institution and the layers of access that come with that. At the beginning, Dr. Julie Crooks (Curator, Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora) graciously arranged access to these materials. I had the opportunity to spend an afternoon with the photos. At this time my residency overlapped with the installation of the exhibition Fragments of Epic Memory. That meant that some collections and images weren’t available. These aren’t just photos you can scan; you need to request digitization, and for some of the images at the time, it just wasn’t possible. The process consisted of looking through the available binders, each one compiling photos from a different Caribbean country, and noting the document numbers. Once I compiled my list, I sent in my digitizing request. There are some things I was able to receive as PDFs and some that I couldn’t. Working this way presented a challenge and tension to my process that forced a slower pace of working.

One of the binders I was most drawn to were of the archives of Martinique. Most of the images documented the volcanic eruption at Mount Pelée [in 1902]. There was a gravity to this incident that really pulled me in. There are these histories that are often overlooked despite how monumental they are. I had also been reading local authors such as [Frantz] Fanon and thinking about [Edouárd] Glissant and the right to opacity, so Martinique as a historical site resonated with me.

TW: Your work Pelée Loop (2023) is one of the results of this experience and serves as a point of departure within the exhibition. From there on, other works also reference “sources” but of a different kind. Can you speak to the other sources that you are referencing in the exhibition? Thinking about your mention of opacity: How important is it, if at all, for an audience to know what you are referencing, and do you see your work as participating in the making of a new archive? To me it seems that you uncover historical material to shape a personal archive, but then you abstract the historical material into something wholly different that doesn’t necessarily serve the initial archival purpose.

TYH: Well, some of the other sources are from popular printed matter, like magazine advertisements. In terms of video sources, they can range from digital archives, documentaries, or news segments. Growing up through the popularization of Geosites, DatPiff, MySpace, peer-to-peer sharing, and piracy has definitely influenced the way I think about accessing sources.* I think it’s largely a question of information ownership. What are the boundaries of that ownership? What does it mean for an institution to be the custodian of a colonial archive? In what ways does that restrict and constrict access? I feel like there’s this sensibility of resistance in the research and compilation process. In terms of the importance of an audience recognizing the references, I don’t think it’s really important. For me, referencing is my response to history––it’s a personal practice in a way. I draw reference from those who work with music––you know, sampling, interpolation, remixing, and things like that. I am always exploring ways to source or footnote: this gives me the space to share my learnings or thinking process, but I don’t think it’s a prerequisite or the only entry point into the work. I also always think of opacity and embracing unknowingness. Overall this work is my participation with history and my informal way of writing, compiling and documenting.

TW: In pieces such as Untitled (Winnie) (2022) and Untitled (Jackie 1948) (2023), the reference point becomes blurred or opaque through material decisions. These are both deconstructed portraits of notable Black figures whose likenesses are obscured through graphic repetition, overlapping compositions, and distortion. Can you speak to that artistic process and how it originates from techniques more commonly found in music production? Why are these techniques appealing or productive for you? Do these techniques enable us to think of information in a more expanded way, and if so, how? I’m also interested in the logic or structure of an archive and how you translate that process of collection, preservation, and interpretation into your material practice and your artwork’s visual grammar.

TYH: In my late teens I had wanted to DJ and produce music. I’d used my OSAP money to buy a set of turntables and a mixer. At the time I was also painting, drawing, and dabbling in collage. This was around 2007 and 2008, where vinyl was still quite prominent and CDJs were only starting to gain popularity. I’d spend hours in the vinyl store downtown (when Play de Record was on Yonge Street). I was enamored with the digging process, surfing through records and music I’d never come by otherwise. There was this sense of discovery. In a lot of ways it was personal research. I departed from music as the cost was prohibitive (equipment was expensive, vinyl was expensive). I found that making artwork on paper was more cost-effective. Despite this, I still worked on sound and music but in a different direction–instead of DJing, I spent time experimenting with sound and would share bits with close friends. It was when I started working with video that my sound practice converged with my visual practice. I was also very inspired by Wangechi Mutu and her way of working with found images. I drew a connection between sound and image and the process of sampling.^† Overall, I think the practice is rooted in Black histories of cultural production––the remix, beatmaking, repetition, riddims, beatbreaks, jazz, improvisation, creolization. I think these are the reasons this form of making is so interesting to me. It’s a connection to a rich canon of cultural production and a conversation with history.

As you mention, I am trying to explore information in a more expanded way. I guess I am attempting to extend what it means to engage with history. In my studio I feel as though it’s an alternative scientific process. The difference is that it’s inherently a non-linear process. I’m never exactly sure where the work will take me, at least conceptually. I am more concerned with the process(es) and ultimately the rhythm of the work.

TW: Can you speak about the sonic qualities in the exhibition, including the sound performance you held at the Galleries? Who did you work with, and what type of archival materials and newly generated materials did you layer together?

TYH: I normally start with sound during my studio sessions. I have hundreds of sound works or songs––many are like sketches or rough drafts. Normally I compile the best of the work and then find their homes in the video pieces and online in True and Functional.² For this iteration I was privileged to work with a friend, Jim Anderson, who helped me with the engineering process at his studio. Normally I DIY this part, but I wanted to explore working with an engineer who could lend an additional ear. I went into the studio with about 12 tracks, and he helped me glue everything together. It reads something like a mixtape. In addition to this were contributions from Farhia Tato. She interviewed Bambii, and I spliced some of the conversation and added the samples to the work. I had also sampled an interview with Amiri Baraka, which is scattered through the work.^‡

As a part of the exhibition programming, there was a public performance of the 12 works. Sonically, I was drawn to distortion and finding a balance between heaviness and airiness. There is a significant amount of improvisation, both in the performance and recording.

TW: We’ve talked about how you position your work within the context of institutional and personal archives, and I’d also like to talk about the digital capacity of archiving, which is a dimension you also explore. Can you speak to that, particularly in relation to your web project True and Functional? How did it originate, where is it at now, what is its function as a series, and what has it been like to work with collaborators to expand its digital form?

TYH: Well, True and Functional started simply as a space for me to share my sound work and general process work. The pandemic hit as I was working on it and it was the perfect outlet for me to exhibit my work at my own pace. I had ambitions to pair the editions with public installations; Volume H (2022) at the Toronto Biennial of Art was my first successful attempt in that it was also accompanied by a sound work produced as a vinyl record. The newest iteration, Volume I, is the first where I worked with a web developer and designer, sound engineers, and contributors. This helped me achieve a more dynamic edition of the work. However, one main challenge was relinquishing a bit of control, as I am used to independently working, and this brings its own challenges. Overall I’m happy to see how this work changes over time.

TW: Currently you are in residency again, this time a digital one at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Toronto. The residency focuses on technology as a connective and relational tool––what type of digital archives have you discovered or interfaced with? What are your hopes for the digital, and what do you think it allows us to do for archives that we otherwise would not be able to achieve? Where would you like to take the digital next?

TYH: In regards to the residency, I am in the early stages. At the moment I’m thinking about digital practice in relation to material and art in a larger sense. Particularly I’m thinking about ways to bridge digital space and physical space (which is also a tenet of True And Functional). This is where I hope to take digital practice. In regards to the archive, I’m always hoping to find compelling ways to engage with history and its ephemera. I am an advocate for open-source approaches to information. I hope my work can reflect that in ways, even if it’s simply to inspire critical engagement with history.