No! Why? What if... Aaargh. All right then!

Why do we rely so much on things that we know so little about?

Take, for instance, a computer. Used on a daily basis for various tasks, this wonderful machine allows you to surf the Internet, to consign your every precious thought for posterity, to fill your tax report and to play chess. It easily becomes your main means of communication with the world, your most discreet confidant, the repository of all your knowledge. It is an extension of you. Your computer improves your life in significant ways. That is, until it starts ruining it.

Indeed, one day your computer starts freezing, gives you incomprehensible messages when you are asking it to perform simple tasks or simply stops responding to your input, turns a deaf ear to your supplications. Then you go through the five following stages :

• Denial and isolation : there is no real problem with it. If I just turn it off and leave it in a corner for a while, it will be fine the next time I turn it on.
• Anger : The bloody thing is still not working the next time you attempt to use it and you are angry at it for the hurt it inflicts on you. You may even be angry with yourself for letting this take place even if, realistically, nothing could have stopped it.
• Bargaining : At this stage, you consider making bargains with your computer such as, "If I change your hard drive or give you a brand new antivirus, will you agree to be functional again?"
• Depression : You feel numb and have lost hope. The mere sight of the computer makes you want to crawl under your bed and spend a few weeks lying there in complete immobility.
• Acceptance : When the anger, sadness and mourning have tapered off, you simply accept the reality of the loss and start shopping for a new computer.
  

As you might have guessed by now, I have gone through these stages lately when the laptop expired. I had been using this computer for three years to write this blog, my thesis, my lectures, my essays, my emails and many other things when it presented me one afternoon with a blank screen.

I spent a week trying to put my limited knowledge of computer technology to the test, then wasted another pestering about the fact that I had to rely on somebody who knew more than I did – and who would bill me accordingly.

If I must rely on my computer, I should also be able to repair it myself, I thought. But then I would not have sufficient time to write this blog, my thesis, my lectures, my essays, my emails and many other things...

I’m still on stage two about this one.

The Beasts in the Museum (part 2): The hyenas

Hyenas are social carnivores that live in groups called clans. Within the hyena clan, there is a strict, linear dominance hierarchy: the animals who rank the highest are called the Art Critics and their rank allows them to take preferred resources (the best canapés and the spot closest to the artist) away from lower-ranking animals: the Art Students.

As lower ranking hyenas become more accustomed to the rules of the museum openings, they grow bolder. At first, they limit their activities to smaller galleries where only the occasional wine served in a disposable glass or cheap lager can be found. They also tend to stay pretty close to the door in case they might have to run. After a few months of such training, the hyena cubs leave the safety of the local galleries in favour of the larger institutions. Museums are large and full of danger for young cubs who don't know their way around; so cubs who have recently "graduated" from the local galleries usually stay tucked away in corners when the other members of their clan are nowhere to be found. The art students begin to observe and follow the art critics, freelance writers and other more experienced hyenas around to openings and press conferences and start to learn their way around the territory. Hyenas can live off such social gatherings quite comfortably for prolonged periods.

Most people think of hyenas as dirty, cowardly scavengers. Hyenas are indeed scavengers, but so are lions, commonly known as curators. Scavengers simply live off things that they did not make: art, institutions, food, etc. When lions scavenge, they usually appropriate goods from smaller predators, such as artists.

Lions are picky scavengers ― after all, they make a career out of it ― and when they abandon an exhibition (or a buffet), there is still plenty of food left for the hyenas. Hyenas are fast eaters, and they can go through two, even three openings in one day! Low-ranking hyenas seem to eat and drink the most, probably because they don't know when their next meal will be.

Hyenas make a noise that sounds like a maniacal laughter to signal submissiveness, usually when they’ve had a few too many glasses of free wine on an empty stomach and lack the vocabulary with which to express their perceptions of puzzling or bad artworks. Besides laughing, hyenas make many other vocalizations, the most famous being “This is so derivative”, a call that allows hyenas to signal that they belong to the clan.

The case of the renegade shoelace

Last Wednesday at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, a man tripped on his shoelace, tumbled down a flight stairs and landed unharmed on a set of 300-year old Qing Dynasty vases. Unfortunately, the 3 vases were not so lucky. In fact, they were smashed to smithereens… all because of an offending shoelace.

At least that is what the visitor bearing the aforementioned tie upon his shoe would have us believe. After regaining his wits and dusting the priceless particles of enamelled porcelain off his lapel, he looked up and said: “There it is! That’s the culprit!”, all the while pointing in the direction of the criminal cord. Although it might be interesting to consider the rise in criminal acts perpetrated by shoelaces, this costly little incident raises a few questions about responsibility.

Of course, the man who will now be fondly remembered as “The One Who Identified The Culprit” did not mean to take a flying leap. Does that free him of all responsibility towards the museum? It would appear to be the case… especially since the precious vases had been sitting on a windowsill at the bottom of the staircase for forty years. Should they have been protected by glass cases, perhaps “The One Who Identified The Culprit” would not have recovered so well from the incident, but the vases would probably be better off.

We tend to perceive museums as fortresses but, according to Charles Hill, a specialist in the recovery of stolen art, the truth is “most art collections are very badly protected. The reason is they’re on public display. You can’t turn the National Gallery in to Fort Knox, what’s the point?” Hill sums up the age old dilemma: can we be given access to art without posing a threat to its security? You never know when or where a renegade shoelace might strike...

Martine Rouleau

Like a whale in the Thames

On Friday, a bottle-nosed whale made its way up the River Thames, swimming through what could only have been experienced as a little canal compared to the deep sea waters this creature is used to. To the amazement of thousands of wide-eyed witnesses gathered along the banks, the great mammal entered central London. The apparently disoriented seven-tonne whale had ventured, against all odds, out of its habitat and out of its depth.

Because I was hiding under a pile of books at the British Library that day, the news got to me via an SMS message stating: “Apparently there is a whale in the Thames outside the Tate Modern.” I laughed thinking that it was putting on its own performance, as worthy of Londoners’ attention as any work of art preciously preserved within the walls of the gallery. After all, it certainly got more attention than the contemporary art on that day . With the outpours of sympathy that went to the poor creature, one could have thought that this whale had a promising future. Alas, it was to have a very short, yet memorable career as a performer.

A few hours after the first live whale to be seen in the Thames in living memory was spotted, an altogether different type of performer was attracting my attention. Marc Cousins, giving his weekly lecture at the Architectural Association stated with his usual bombast: “When you enter an institution you become an idiot.” Sitting in an institution at that very moment and having spent the best part of my day in another, I was compelled to consider the implications of that statement: by entering an institution, you give over all power to “higher authorities”, assuming that professors, librarians, curators, guides ought to know more than you. In order to be granted admission into libraries, universities, hospitals, museums, embassies and town halls – surely repositories of all the world’s wisdom – do we have to first admit in front of witnesses that we are ignorant?

Knowledge is a potent form of power and if we assume that institutions own it all, we choose to be forever out of our depth. We somehow put ourselves, against our better judgment, in the position to loose all the ease with which we usually evolve and become distressed, ungainly creatures. Like a whale in the Thames.

Martine Rouleau