Herd Instinct

The following is an entry I wrote in late November, 2008. I needed to sit on it awhile before I posted it. All the photos are from the East Side Cultural Crawl in Lois Klassen's beautiful little studio.

'Tis the herding season, with crowds gathering to stock up on rich delectable foods and shiny pretty things for the holiday season. The East Side Cultural Crawl was a great opportunity to see what magical things artists have been creating in the neighbourhood this year. Lois Klassen generously opened up her studio to some of her colleagues to have a show and sale of a year of activism and art. It was subversive to have Klassen's studio represent work outside the cash and carry model in this context, but at the same time allow for her friends to sell some objetcs that help earn a few loonies to fund more art projects. Some of the public were perplexed, but many came away charmed. Lois also took the opportunity to a launch a project with Pierre Sonolet that acts as a protest to the skyline as it has been purchased and reformed by the Olympic consortia. I can't wait to participate! Let's get together for a photo-shoot party!

'Tis the stampeding season, with crowds enticed by door-crashing deals to get as much as possible for the lowest price, even if that means someone has to die. And they did. And the herd kept shopping. Non-stop shopping. It is this sad event, which occurred at a Walmart recently which coloured my experience as an audience member attending Herd Instinct 360º by performance artist Fia Backstrom. Images grabbed from the internet whirred past as the artist delivered a stream of consciousness sermon on the darker side of the human instinct to form groups. "I don't believe in relational aesthetics..." she declares, wearing her cynicism on her sleeve and flashing us images of distopias from Andy Warhol's factory to Hitler's followers. The trouble with isolating quotes from her performance is that they are part of a web of stream of conscious text that never really settles on a fixed idea.


"We cannot organize, we cannot produce, nor can we define and contain. It has to pass through us. Happening then dissipating, an inoperative experience. That’s why this meeting, like all the others, is a failure instead of a parody, little less than entertainment. An organized staged theatricality, a gathering, a fictive situation we may call art. I titled it HERD INSTINCT 360 degrees. Stay Connected."
--Fia Backstrom, Herd Instinct 360º

Backstrom calls our gathering a meeting of the art cult, and says tonight's gathering is a (planned) failure. She is cool, intellectual, dissecting the decaying corpses of failed utopias. Backstrom tells the story of a right wing Christian sect, a Baptist settlement in Sweden controlled by a so-called "Bride of Christ" with a God-complex. That story ends in infidelity, murder, and the congregation distancing itself from their male minister because he is Norwegian, and therefore suspect.

"I believe I ought to offer something, but I don’t know precisely what that is. Yes who believes in fists anyhow? Maybe it’s about the stomach instead, the gut feeling of being in touch, of in-touchedness."
--Fia Backstrom, Herd Instinct 360º

Some of the more interesting parts of the lecture refer to the changing motifs of the panther, jaguar and tiger images. How they are used emblems of radical groups, but end up co-opted by capitalism in the luxury car industry. I would have been more interested in this process, the morphology of imagery, and the process of a group turning from a utopia to a state of darkness. Calling the performance Herd Instinct 360º suggests a cycling of good to evil and back again, but there was no talk of redemption here. Backstrom's web site contains the script of the performance.

'Tis the season to be cynical, to be sure, when one sees the herd instinct on Black Friday crush the innocent dreams of redemption through the birth of Christ. But surely there is an option for at least avoiding the Christmas rush. Some tips for dealing with the stress of a prolapsed economy and a growing skyline that leaves our city a little darker every day.

Here are my tips:

1) Avoid Walmart at all times.
2) Be crafty. This time of the year to do those dorky or elegant crafts you've always wanted to indulge in.
3) Go to those craft fairs around town even if you don't buy something. Get inspired.
4) Eat rich, delectable foods.
5) Call someone just to hear the sound of their voice--no really, just do it!
6) Buy some shiny sparkly eyeshadow and/or lipstick.
7) Enjoy the herd on your own terms, and be thankful we can gather with friends and family in a peaceful country, even if the political leaders are uber nerds.
8) Say a prayer for the victims of the attack on Mumbai and for the recent victim of Black Friday.