Near
and Far
January
6 - February 5, 2005
Milutin
Gubash
Opening Janurary 6, 6-8pm
Milutin Bubash, Park, 2004
THE
VOICE
Todd A. Davis
The
office of a down-at-the-heels lawyer. An outer room is neater than his
personal office but still piled with files that need to be put away. A
young lady, good looking, but non-descript in a crowd, sits at the large
wood desk, probably lakefront oak, typing on a computer. She acts as if
nothing will bother her, including the phone which started to ring as
the young man walks through the outer door; simultaneously a corpulent
and slightly disarranged man dressed in a mismatched suit walks into the
same office from the opposite direction and starts to speak to the young
lady as he picks up a recently delivered Italian beef sandwich typical
of the delicatessens in the area. He recognizes the young man, waves him
into his smaller office and turns to speak to the lady at the desk who
has yet to answer the phone.
There was always music playing in the background. It drifted in and
out; they could only pick up bits here and there. It sounded so near,
and yet, so far. It wasn't my fault. Unfortunately, any real communication
with my parents started to fall apart the year I was arrested and sent
through the court systems...
HIM:
Why me?
SHE: You, my dear, were caught; and you my dear, must pay the price.
…I didn't really think it should have been in the courts and neither
did the lawyer my parents hired for me. Joe something. I can't remember
what his last name was at the moment. Other than my case, his claim to
fame was defending some guy named Wells up on second-degree murder charges
for knifing his father. I guess his name was Wells too, maybe not. He
was bored and I'm sure that my case was nothing but gravy for his very
ordinary tacky one-man office that always smelled of cheap booze. Once
when I went to meet him by myself he offered me a shot of really disgusting
rye. We, me and my friends, always drank the stuff with Coke to kill the
taste or at least tone down the smell so our parents wouldn't think we
had been drinking.
He wasn't really a bad guy. Just someone floating through life trying
to fix other people's tragedies while making a buck. It has to be a cold
existence walking in and out of the worse aspects of other people's lives;
working with other's unsuited and indecorous moments.
After talking while drinking the ever-present Coke with Joe he said
it was at the park, or something like that, where the police found the
body of the old man. He pretended as if he didn't want me to end up like
that kid, hiding from the police after killing his old man. "Play
it straight" he would say; but he always started it off with "Listen."
Everything from this guy's mouth started with "listen." Maybe
it was a lawyer thing. Like, "Listen, parents have enough problems
as it is." Or "Listen, it will cost your parents a bit more
for the sessions and keep you out of anything worse than house arrest
for the summer." Or "Listen, let's just say you won't be going
anywhere without one of your parents for a while." Or "Listen.
The courts in small towns like this are tough on kids, especially when
you pull something like you did." Or to emphasize what he wanted
someone to hear he would repeat it. "Listen kid. Listen. I wasn't
hired to defend the others. It's you I have to get out of this mess. You're
the only one I have to worry about at the moment. You, and that Wells
kid, and a couple of divorces. I hate divorces. They're so goddamn messy
with everyone yelling at one another. Listen. Don't ever get married kid.
You hear me?"
And when I finally pissed him off, "LISTEN you little fuck! When
we set this up in court and the judge agrees to the Psych couch he will
pass a motion for house arrest so that your parents won't have to shell
out for a reappearance bond and you and your girlfriend will be having
Sunday dinner with your parents just like it’s supposed to be."
HE: Understand?
HIM: Yeah. Yeah. I know. We were just having some fun.
HE: Listen. That's always how it starts.
HIM: Well, we didn't expect the cops to show up. We didn't expect to be
arrested. We didn't think anyone would care. It wasn't just me –
others were there, they were involved in it as much as I was. And I wasn't
driving. What about the others?
HE: Listen kid. We have to start the process. I'll have Judi make an appointment
for you and your parents next week at Dr. Welles. His office is over on
Third Street at Lakefront across from the Chinese restaurant. You know
it?
HIM: Yeah. Yeah.
--------------------------------------
…a
week later at the office of Dr. Welles, MD, MPh, across the street from
the Haung Don Chinese restaurant, an upscale dining establishment, at
4pm on a mild and somewhat foggy fall day in a small town north of the
city just off the lakefront. The office is appointed with contemporary
furniture and original art by unknown abstract painters fifty years after
the fact. Moody music, something like Dvorak, emanates from a single speaker
centered in the ceiling of the green-tinted white waiting room. A young
woman sits at a desk with the usual accoutrements: computer, file folders,
clipboard with forms, pen holder filled with generic Bic pens, telephone
arranged neatly, even retentive in nature.
I really didn't want to be there. Basically it was to appease my mother,
and I suppose persuade my father that this was not the be all - end all
tragedy, but also, as the lawyer said last week, "Listen. This is
to keep your ass out of jail for everybody's sake. "It was weird.
I don't understand why it was all coming down on me. The other three were
there. Barry and Doug; Jesse was driving the car. We were heading towards
Debora's house. He wanted to stop by and pick her up.
Could they, he thought, have done it without him?
It was a four-o'clock appointment at Dr. Welles office so that Mom and me would be finished with school for the day. Dad would meet us there after having to take the train in from work. Mom picked me up at school with Dad's car for some reason. He got there just before the appointment so Mom filled in the questionnaires regarding our medical backgrounds prior to Dr. Welles seeing the three of us. I kept asking her what he wanted to know, but she wouldn't relent; I had to fill out the information on one of the questionnaires. Sometimes we had this game where I would push the limits to see if I could get her to do such things for me. She finally explained, "Dr. Welles requires specific answers from you in order to assess the situation properly and that is between you and Dr. Welles only." She also told me that he was not looking for a wrong or right answer, only information from me. "And," she noted, "would you please sit up straight and make a good appearance. It will only help your cause."
HIM:
How long will the Doctor want to see us?
SHE: That will depend on how willing you and your family are to impart
information and answer his questions. But I would imagine the session
would take at least two hours today. Also Dr. Welles will need to speak
to your son by himself, without you and wife present.
HIM: What does he want to know about me?
SHE: Dr. Welles will see the three of you now.
--------------------------------------
NOTES:
(order of appearance)
HIM: The Voice
HE: The Lawyer, the Father
SHE: The Mother, Dr. Welles Assistant
---------------------------------------
CHARACTERS
FATHER: works at Near and Far Sciences for the state of Illinois. He is
involved in a Scientific Literacy Professional Leadership project for
researchers in the Earth and Space Sciences. The primary task of the project
is developing statistics for the measurement of radiation emanating from
Quasars.
MOTHER: works as a teacher in language development for local School Board.
Teaches teachers in the concept of Near and Far Language Development.
She wrote her Masters degree on the subject while at Northwestern University.
HIM: teenage son in High School at Weaselhead Valley High School
---------------------------------------
About the artist:
Milutin
Gubash
is a concerned citizen. The former resident of Calgary spends time pouring
over newspaper reports on deaths and homicides the way some people follow
the price of stocks or the progress of hometown hockey teams. His work
of the past four or five years has, in fact, been based upon such deadlines
as Boy Killed by Baseball at Church Picnic, Homeless Man Killed by Salvation
Army Garage Door, and Son Charged in Stabbing Death of Father. His current
work, a series of video "enactments" entitled Near and Far,
continues to borrow from the narrative reservoir offered by the Calgary
Herald. Gubash’s mini-narratives, ranging from 4 to 14 minutes, are
conceived between and performed by him and his parents, in carefully selected
locations throughout Calgary. In the artist’s words, the collaborations
are an "attempt to construct provocative connections between events
and forces that are either impersonal—or alternately perhaps too
personal, to confront and understand directly."
Milutin’s parents are getting on in years. His father stands with
a cane. For their part, his parents seem mildly bewildered but also very
present and patient with their son’s antics. For the artist, this
work seems to offer the possibility of some form of immortality—or
at least momentary safety—for his aging parents. Based on a seemingly
endless stream of senseless or inexplicable acts indicative of a society
running amok, their lives and his art intersect in a strange and wonderful
way that leaves us alternately charmed and perplexed.
Milutin Gubash’s Near and Far appears in both the main
gallery and the Gallery 44 Vitrines located outside the entrance of the
gallery. Watch for the 30-second "commercials," or mini-surveys
of the show, that may be broadcast near you.
Biographies
Milutin
Gubash is a photo-based artist currently living in Saskatoon,
where he is Assistant Professor and Head of the Photography and Digital
Imaging Program at the University of Saskatchewan. He has upcoming exhibitions
at VU in Quebec City, Dare-Dare in Montreal, the Ottawa Art Gallery, and
the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon.
Milutin’s work consistently explores ways in which chance and selection
impact our social and individualizing tendencies. A bizarre and tragic
newspaper story leads us to a landscape, where in turn an "improvised"
performance in front of (or with) his parents (and the camera) leads to
a number of possible (mis)identifications. These, in turn, lead to a synthesized
understanding of a highly complex and idiosyncratic ordering of information
and sense of being in the world.
He writes, "For years, Michael Welles lived in a tree in Weaselhead
Park. In the summer of 2002, his father's remains were found scattered
in the park. In 2003, he was accused of first-degree murder. In "Park,"
my parents and I pretend to be birds, calling to each other with a series
of complex and varied whistles."
Todd
A Davis has plied his trade as an artist, writer, curator,
and administrator on the West coast since 1979 and prior to that on the
East coast formerly as a student at the Nova Scotia College of Art and
Design in the early 1970's. During twenty years in Vancouver working within
the community he met many artists that led him to believe Canadian artists,
curators, writers and institutions were indeed worth leaving his birthplace
south of the 49th parallel.
As an artist and independent curator/writer he found himself involved
in several institutions including: The Unit/Pitt Gallery (presently the
Helen Pitt Gallery) as an instigator, founder and parent. The Burnaby
Art Gallery as a Curator, then Director and ultimately as Curator once
again to be with artists and their art. And the Art Gallery at Simon Fraser
University producing catalogues and working with the collection.
The sweet singing calls of Vancouver Island sirens lured him to Open Space,
an artist-run centre in Victoria. He is privileged to work with many informed
individuals on an agenda of visual art, new music and other art forms
which includes an extensive publishing program The rocks are looming but
so far he has avoided total destruction. Presently, he is intrigued by
the use of pure fiction in art and critical writing.
