Vol. 5, No. 2: Fall/Winter 2009
Art Outside of the Studio
by Erika Knudson
A conversation with Susannah Sayler, co-founder of The Canary Project.
This interview took place in summer 2009, before The Canary Project exhibit and class at IU.
Are you the main photographer/artist?
Ed and I work as an art team, as collaborators. That’s how we like to be represented. We are collaborators.
Tell me a little about that, your roles, and how that collaboration works.
There are definitely divisions of labor. We have specific roles. We collaborate a lot on the brainstorming and ideas when we start a new project and move with it. After that, as we’re actually in production, if it’s a photo-based project I do more shooting, preparing images, or printing. Then we’re very collaborative on the printing process and also editing in terms of which images we use and where they go in the exhibit. With The Canary Project, it started out of [another project] then it moved to more of a collective where we were working collaboratively and producers of other artists’ projects. And Ed took the lead on quite a lot of those projects because I was quite wrapped up with the photography project. I was traveling a lot.
Does that photography project continue? Are you still going to different parts of the world, or has that part ended?
We have completed the shooting for the project. We don’t plan to do new locations. There is some discussion of isolated returns to a couple of the locations we shot for specific purposes. But we’ve capped that project in terms of the places we visited and what we’re trying to accomplish and learn from the work. Now we’re in this phase of trying to understand what that body of work can do. We had a really interesting year of deciding and figuring out how the photography works best, what it does best, and how we want it to exist going forward. One iteration is the photographs that you will see in the exhibit at IU, 21 large-scale color photographs. It’s like a musical concert that a very small number of people go and see. Most of the people who would interact with this work would interact with it through the web or a variety of other mediums. A big focus of ours this year coming up is re-doing our Web site so that it better represents how we feel about . . . and give some more balanced weight to some of the other projects that the canary project did over the years.
You are at Harvard right now--are you there as students or are you teaching?
We’re neither. We’re in this great role as fellows. It’s considered independent study. It’s called the Loeb Fellowship at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. We’re neither students nor professors. We are independent scholars. So we’re able to take or sit in on courses and have access at any of the schools at Harvard or MIT. It’s also given us really good networking with people here—different professors we want to have conversations with. We picked a lot of classes but they were all auditing situations.
What kinds of classes did you audit?
Quite a variety. In the first term I did some art history. In terms of my professional development I felt like I was a little weak, because as an undergraduate I wasn’t an art major. So I actually sat in on quite a lot of nitty-gritty art history classes and also studied landscape with a really interesting landscape architect over at MIT. Then in the second term I worked on my public speaking skills, because I was getting very focused on teaching. I haven’t done a great deal of teaching prior to the Canary Project. The last few years I’ve been running this organization, and being a full-time photographer. And through the Canary Project, we actually have a lot of speaking engagements. So for speaking engagements and for teaching, I really wanted to improve my speaking skills. So I took a class at the Kennedy School of Government. It was amazing, I really learned a lot. I had to give speeches in front of future world leaders, incredible people. I was really impressed with the quality of teaching there. And I did some more art history and a bit of science, climate science. And the other great class I took was on making books. Not so much handmade books, but more the process of putting together artist or architectural type books from a editorial/photo-editing standpoint.
That all sounds like it’s been enormously helpful in building this project.
It’s been a great year. It did take us out of a bit from the day-to-day operations of the project. We’ve been in Cambridge, and our office is in Brooklyn, so we kept several Canary projects going and were working hard on the photography. But the way that we staffed the projects from our studio was a constant flow of people we were working with—that didn’t slow down. So I feel like we have a lot of momentum but at the same time, a transition in terms of what the project is going to be next.
When you come here, will that be the next thing you do with the project after having been at Harvard?
Exactly. We’re working on this ambitious exhibit, we’re really excited about it, it’s giving us a lot of leeway. The exhibit is going to be a teaching tool for our class there. And we also regard the projects we’ll do with student in the class as Canary Projects. We want those projects to really feed into what we do.
Have you selected some of the objects that are going to be the beginnings of the project?
We selected 12 objects that we want to exhibit in the gallery. They’re going to go in the same space as the photographs. Now we’re just waiting to hear back if the various collections will be able to grant the objects that we want. We’re pretty optimistic about that. In the end if we’re successful we’ll have objects from Lily, from the Mathers museum, from the Biology department, and the Herbarium.
Will the students just dive right in and start making work in response to the challenges that you set out for them? The exhibit will build over the semester?
Most of the exhibit will be in place when class starts.
You will consider doing another exhibit for the following semester if the work warrants it?
Yeah. We’d love to use the student projects. When we were discussing that with Betsy Stirratt, we had no idea how many students we’d have. But we’ve had excellent turnout, we’ve had 18 students sign up. Part of the question is will we have enough projects to do a show? But I think we will, so that’s really good news.
How are you hoping that people will interact with the exhibit/take away from that experience?
The exhibit is complex. There are a lot of different levels that you can interact on. We have five rooms, and each room is really quite different. There are some areas that are really cerebral and challenging people to think about issues around climate change, like issues of certainty/decision making, things that have to happen on the human brain level in order for us to deal with this issue. What I’m talking about there is we have one room is dedicated to inspiration. It’s about the game of poker. We’re using this idea of gambling as a metaphor for people to consider issues of certainty and decision-making, and try to think about your decisions and the future and outcomes in terms of a certain lack of information. We have a certain amount of information about climate change, we know with about 90% probability of certain outcomes we can expect and we have to plan based on that information; but it’s not an entire picture, nobody knows exactly what could happen. So it’s kind of like what somebody at a card table who knows their hand but doesn’t know what everyone else’s cards are, what the chances are they’re taking. That’s the metaphor we’re playing with there. We thought we might invite some professors; it would be a good way to get to know some professors, get some games going at night after hours.
There’s also a room that’s our activist room that will have a lot of materials from more activist projects that we’ve done. We want to have that room staffed by student volunteers who can speak with visitors and those volunteers will work on archiving the information in that room in that gallery. So there will be a research component for students in that area. So that deals with the activist spirit and the issue is one that can be addressed collectively and is quite upbeat. And then we have a lot of work that’s more contemplative. Photographs, the room with the objects, a video installation, melting ice. Those works allow people to think about the force of nature and about the issues at stake in a quieter and more contemplative way.
Hearing about the exhibit, are there elements of those different approaches that you’ll also bring into the classroom? How are you two approaching the classroom part of this?
We have a lot to do for this class. We feel like we need to start with an overview of climate change. We’re going to have some guest speakers from the university to kind of explain the science behind climate change. And then also an overview of the history of art and activism and the types of projects that are well-known in the field. We’re going to ask students, if they come in the class with a pre-conceived idea of what they want to do, to kind of forget whatever that was. Because we feel strongly that the students have to really do some thinking on a fairly complex level before they come up with the idea for a project so that they can balance a rational plan, a plan of action or something they want to accomplish, with an art approach. An approach that incorporates information from a lot of different types of fields. They can have a goal of what they want to achieve with their project, but then we want them to approach that from a lot of different angles and do reading and sketches and talk to people and let a lot of different types of interdisciplinary types of thinking shape their project. We’re going to try to get them to not be going full-force into their project, but have it be more of a development. And then the actual work on the project, the labor of making the product, will happen more after we leave. And we’re hoping to come back for a crit in the middle there, to see their work and projects. The project will be due at the end of the semester, so they’ll have that time to produce the work. We’re just working on a budget really to get back to do a crit in the middle.
What do you hope students take away from the experience of the class and the exhibit?
My hope for what they take away is that they get a sense of art working outside of the individual studio-based practice… see art as working out in the world, involving more people than an individual vision of beauty. Think about it as more of a participatory, more research-based practice. That the artist’s job is to look at an issue from so many points of view and present back to the world a picture. So they have to gain confidence that their work serves a purpose in the world. There’s that, and also I want the students to learn about the kind of research and information gathering that goes into making this kind of work. Artists need to read a lot. You can’t make art from a vacuum. So I’m hoping we can instill in them the notion that information-gathering creates production. And that their work matters—they can have an impact on the community or the people around them.
Do you have a philosophy of teaching, and could you sum it up in a couple sentences?
I think some of the things that I’ve mentioned are aspects of it. I really believe in thinking before you make work. And certainly in trying to find a way to get to the students with concerns. I think a lot of students don’t have confidence in what they’re interested in. So they think that Nintendo might not be a valuable subject for art-making. And if you look around the art market, you find out that whatever it is that the student’s passionate about, they’re probably not the only person in their generation and those things are valuable to explore. It’s a process of going internal and seeing what visual evidence matters or excites them. I think a lot of students out there think “I just have to make interesting images.” They think it’s about production of something that other people want to look at, when really it’s a process of going inside and giving room to what’s of interest to them personally.
How do you instill confidence in undergraduate students? How have you reached them in the past?
When I was teaching up here in the Boston area, I definitely would have these students who were not—you can tell when they’re shooting photos and aren’t out there looking for images that they care about. It’s pretty clear when they are just looking for images that they think will look good. I think this is the case for art classes in general, but in the critique process, you have to provide an atmosphere that feels safe to them but is also honest. It doesn’t help not to tell them that their pictures are clearly not coming from a deep place. And so building up some trust in the critique process and not let students get away with trashing each other, but having kind criticism and a lot of conversation about the work is a big part of the process. That way they have to defend what they’re doing in the process of a conversation with other students and the professor. I think when they hear themselves talking about their work, they can tell if it’s for real.
What about the activist side of this? Do you help students leave the class with a sense of desire to be more activist in their lives and as artists?
I don’t think we’re promoting activism. I think we’re definitely presenting it as one kind of mode that you can work in as an artist. We want to open that door, but I’m not sure that we’d want to go out on a limb and tell students that we think that making that type of work is in some way superior to making other kinds of work. So I think we would leave that pretty open.
What constitutes activism in work for you?
That’s an interesting question. Activism for artists is a tough one. We know artists who are really careful about keeping their activist life and their art life kind of separate because they kind of feel like the kind of energy that is involved in activist work is not productive for art-making. But then you look at their artwork and you realize that their artwork is deeply informed by their activist life, which they may kind of try to keep separate. I think it’s important to not use the same kind of messaging or the same kind of thought-processes that an activist uses . . . about informing an art production from a lot of different points of view. One of them could be activist. But the reason why I said I wouldn’t want students to launch right into it and examine it from different points of view is it should be informed from more places than activism.
Is there a landscape or an environment that haunts you most from those you’ve captured from your camera?
As far as locations go, I feel that my time in Peru was really kind of transformative for me in terms of this project because I had the time there and the resources in terms of the local experts there to really look at the issue of climate change there from a lot of different perspectives. We were looking at melting glaciers and the way that the disappearance of the glaciers there will impact water supply in coastal Peru, where most of the population lives. And so I started photographing the different glaciers. Then I worked my way down to the coast and photographed informal communities—shanty towns that don’t have services of running water, so they’re dependent on water from water trucks. They pay for that, and as water becomes more scarce the price goes up. They’re very vulnerable to water shortages. I also looked at the effect it will have on agriculture in the north part of Peru. I ended up with this fairly full picture photographically and also understanding what’s at stake there. There’s one image from Peru in the exhibit that’s really haunting for me. We call it the “glacier void.” It’s a picture of a mountain and you can see the valley in the foreground, you can see that a glacier did pass through there, more up towards the mountain top you see more evidence of glaciers having been there. There are crevasses from ice and snow, but in the picture at this point, it’s quite green. It’s a very peaceful, stately image. In a way it has all this geologic time in it. It will be a neat exhibit.
So it’s beautiful and stately and peaceful, but there’s an underlying horror in a way?
The forces that shape the land are evident in it. It’s not an image where I feel like there’s a great deal of violent undercurrent—some of the images certainly do have that aspect—but this one’s more the aspect of geologic time and change. It’s there.
Now that you’re a teacher and successful artist doing something you really care about, if you look back to when you were the age of the students you’ll be working with, how did you get from where they’re at now to where you’re at now? What kind of message would you give to students looking to their voice and wanting to succeed as artists?
It’s tough to make it as an artist. I think only really two kinds of artists survive in this world: you’re either independently wealthy, or you just keep doing it because it’s the only thing you know how to do. You don’t do art if there are a lot of other options for you. If you’re a photographer then you do have some options in terms of other ways to make income. From what I’ve observed, it really does have to be the only thing for you. It’s not a profession to choose if you’re not really sure. It’s kind of like going into medicine if you’re a little squeamish about blood.
So there are ways to do both, but if you want to be an artist you have to be absolutely sure and committed.
Yeah, you do. Artists who aren’t really committed won’t make it. There are a lot of people who practice art in their lives and it’s incredibly enriching for them, but that’s different from being a professional artist and actually making a living out of it as a teacher or someone who sells work. I’m not discouraging anyone from making artwork because they love to do it, I’m just talking about doing it as a profession.
When you were an undergraduate in college, did you feel that inner absolute drive to be a professional artist?
Yeah. I don’t think at that time I knew the difference between wanting to be a photographer and what it takes to be a professional artist. I didn’t have a clue about going out and actually getting a job in the art world, working for a gallery, make connections all the time, showing your work to people all the time. I was like “I like to work in isolation, I don’t really want to hit the pavement.” So I spent the first five or six years making work in a fairly isolated manner. I wouldn’t recommend other students do that. You really have to get out there, show your work, and get feedback from it. The Web makes that a lot easier, to get your work out that way.
What inspires you about this project? Coming to Bloomington, teaching, and setting up the exhibit here, I mean.
To be working with students, I’m really excited about that. We’ve worked with a lot of young people in this age group as interns. And they’re really inspiring, because they don’t have the kind of grown-up fatigue that you have from knowing how hard it is to change policy. They’re not jaded. They’re really idealistic and they have this kind of energy. The other thing is that we started a project in New York, now we’re up in Cambridge. We’ve been in these urban places in the northeast, so we’re excited to get out to another part of the country and talk to other people about what’s going on with this issue in another part of the country. We’re seeing Nebraska after Indiana and then we’re going to Kansas.
Will you talk to people who live the agricultural life when you come to the Midwest?
Yeah, I want to look at corn. We hear that probably the most impact in terms of climate change in that area is going to be corn cultivation. We’d like to learn more about that and I’ll probably be doing some photographing around that issue.
Erika Knudson is Co-Director of the IU Office of Creative Services in Bloomington.
