2010, VANCOUVER , CANADA
THE GREETER
CURATED BY DAINA AUGAITUS & CHRIS EAMON
CUE: ARTIST’S VIDEOS, VANCOUVER ART GALLERY
Hi, how ya doin
Welcome to the gallery
My names Myfanwy
If you need anything, let me know
Hi, how ya doin Welcome to the gallery My names Myfanwy If you need anything, let me know
Although now it is a given that humble objects and activities can be the subject and substance of art, the prominence of the every- day in art was really a post-war phenomenon, elaborated in the 1950s and 60s through many new forms. The notion of the everyday appeared in assemblages and accumulation art, Happenings and Fluxus performances and as everyday movement in dance. Con- currently, Pop Art revelled in the images of ordinary articles advertised on billboards and in store windows. A plethora of new products in the booming post-war economy — appliances, cars and synthetic materials such as plastics — reinforced a product-based notion of the everyday, followed by the rejection of this notion by artists, in the form of dematerialized, non-object-based actions.
During the 2010 Vancouver’s Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, CUE, captivates the roving international public spectators at the prominent downtown location of the Vancouver Art Gallery. Displayed on an eighteen-foot LED screen, over 79 artists from 22 countries displayed often short but dynamic works chosen to surprise, delight, stir and provoke.
“Entering the exhibition, with its pop psychology neologism for a title, the viewer gets the sense that she or he may be embarking on a self-help experience. Thoughtfully, MacLeod offers herself in the form of a larger-than-life video projection to assist the viewer. This video portrait, entitled The Greeter, is a continuous loop in which the artist, in retails sales drag complete with a Walmart style pinafore, a Gap headset, and a name tag reading “The Greeter”, speaks in a detached and sometimes bored:
Hi, how ya doin.
Welcome to the Gallery
My name’s Myfanwy.
If you need anything, let me know.
Slight variations on these few phrases, as comical in their delivery as they are mundane, repeat ad nauseam. MacLeod’s performance is reminiscent of a self-mocking Bill Murray or a dead-pan Buster Keaton.
“Mundane greeting becomes spectacle; spectacle becomes mundane.”
Through repetition and the recognition that the exchange is not interactive, the greeting becomes alienating. Debord’s assertions about eh spectacle loom up; once upon a time you knew merchants by name and their greetings were sincere. Now corporations package friendliness, employing greeters to placate disaffected chain store shoppers as they simultaneously operate an effective program of surveillance and theft prevention. Mundane greeting becomes spectacle; spectacle becomes mundane.”
Source: Kathy Slade, Myfanwy MacLeod:
The Edge of Reason, A Brief Overview of Personology, Charles H. Scott