Harbour: Magazine of Art & Everyday Life
Library Item
Harbour is an interdisciplinary magazine produced by artists and is concerned primarily with writing and artworks by practicing artists. A critical intervention into current formulations of art publishing, Harbour questions the canonization of artistic works, the professionalization of the artist and the critic, as well as their compartmentalization. We offer writing which identifies and addresses relevant contemporary art and social issues, writing which examines the institutional framework of art, and which discusses practical problems facing artists, particularly in issues of power and difference. Harbour seeks a critical non-hierarchical diversity.
This issue of HARBOUR Magazine is a co-production with the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia on the occasion of the exhibition SAVAGE GRACES which presents the work of artist Gerald McMaster. The publication SAVAGE GRACES is the third collaborative project undertaken by HARBOUR. The first, Travelling Theory, and the second, Race and the Body Politic were undertaken with the hope of crossing institutional boundaries, of creating a site which could alternate with that of professionalized artistic discourse and which could contribute to the institutions becoming more self-reflexive.
In each case, these co-productions have replaced the conventional gallery or museum catalogue with a periodical publication. another option would have been to anthologize the texts in book form. Our perspective is that this choice would tend to reinforce the legitimacy of the institution with the relatively authoritative form of the book or the catalogue. A periodical publication, having a certain impermanence and a more 'casual' readership seems a particularly relevant form for any document critical of institutional authority. And, insofar as Gerald McMaster's works often address the context of popular culture and draw from there for materials, the commercial newstand seems an appropriate route by which this document can make its way to a readership.
A museum of anthropology begins a self-reflexive turn the moment it includes the works of contemporary First Nations artists within its purview. As an invention of Modernity, the museum has incorporated Modernity's linear time sense thus allocating authenticity to works of the past. Through introduction of a contemporary native artist as speaking subject into a space and discourse whose terms would conventionally only recognize the work as artifact and the maker as object of that discourse, the museum confronts itself with the paradox at the centre of its own identity.
As an agency of Western culture's representational apparatus the museum has been a source of those homogenizing categories which apply to both language and identity. If a site is created where opposites can lose their essential differences, stereotyping may be replaced by processes in which names are no longer anchored in identities but rather secure them. We hope the recontextualization of SAVAGE GRACES in this publication, together with the texts of these accomplished and prominent writers and theorists will contribute to the creation of a site within which issues of power and difference can be critically explored."
This issue of HARBOUR Magazine is a co-production with the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia on the occasion of the exhibition SAVAGE GRACES which presents the work of artist Gerald McMaster. The publication SAVAGE GRACES is the third collaborative project undertaken by HARBOUR. The first, Travelling Theory, and the second, Race and the Body Politic were undertaken with the hope of crossing institutional boundaries, of creating a site which could alternate with that of professionalized artistic discourse and which could contribute to the institutions becoming more self-reflexive.
In each case, these co-productions have replaced the conventional gallery or museum catalogue with a periodical publication. another option would have been to anthologize the texts in book form. Our perspective is that this choice would tend to reinforce the legitimacy of the institution with the relatively authoritative form of the book or the catalogue. A periodical publication, having a certain impermanence and a more 'casual' readership seems a particularly relevant form for any document critical of institutional authority. And, insofar as Gerald McMaster's works often address the context of popular culture and draw from there for materials, the commercial newstand seems an appropriate route by which this document can make its way to a readership.
A museum of anthropology begins a self-reflexive turn the moment it includes the works of contemporary First Nations artists within its purview. As an invention of Modernity, the museum has incorporated Modernity's linear time sense thus allocating authenticity to works of the past. Through introduction of a contemporary native artist as speaking subject into a space and discourse whose terms would conventionally only recognize the work as artifact and the maker as object of that discourse, the museum confronts itself with the paradox at the centre of its own identity.
As an agency of Western culture's representational apparatus the museum has been a source of those homogenizing categories which apply to both language and identity. If a site is created where opposites can lose their essential differences, stereotyping may be replaced by processes in which names are no longer anchored in identities but rather secure them. We hope the recontextualization of SAVAGE GRACES in this publication, together with the texts of these accomplished and prominent writers and theorists will contribute to the creation of a site within which issues of power and difference can be critically explored."
Stephen Horne (Editor)
Lani Maestro (Editor)
Karilee Fuglem (Editor)
Lindsay Brown (Editor)
Andrew Carlisle (Editor)
Lani Maestro (Editor)
Karilee Fuglem (Editor)
Lindsay Brown (Editor)
Andrew Carlisle (Editor)
LIB.00399
Harbour
1993 – 1994
1181-943X
Volume 3, No. 1
Print and published material
English
Media Room and Library
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