ART Habens Byron Rich
When I was twelve I became quite sick, and spent many months in hospital hooked up to myriad life support systems. I think I started to believe I was a bit of a cyborg, artificially sustained via this vast digital / mechanical apparatus. I should mention that my dad and I would always watch Star Trek: The Next Generation, so the Borg was omnipresent in my imagination. Spending so much time alone while sick I somehow felt a strange sense of interconnectedness to something larger than myself. I talked myself out of isolation and into believing that I was just a tiny part of a massively complex system that included digital and mechanical entities. I was a bit intense for someone not even in their teenage years.
I spent my teens grappling with angst, but finding an outlet in an art class that I took every Friday night for 4 or 5 years. The meditative vibe that this class seemed to elicit brought me some peace.
Then University. I studied with a wonderful professor, Jean-Rene Leblanc. He really set me free to be as creatively liberated as I desired. In a way, I set up my own classes, and pursued whatever medium I felt best articulated my message, most of the time failing miserably, but I was free. He is the person I credit with much of my ambition.
I worked at an artist Run Centre called TRUCK in Calgary, supervised by the director, Renato Vitic. I was a handful still, but he helped me get a better sense of the possibility of being part of a non-commercial art scene. While at Truck, I met a wonderful artist, Jessica Thompson. She was an artist-inresidence with TRUCK. She showed me an art world that I hadn’ t realized existed, that being the deeply inspiring and crisis-inducing field of Critical Theory. She forced me to apply to The University at Buffalo where I’ d be able to study under two of my greatest influences, Steve Kurtz of Critical Art Ensemble, and Paul Vanouse. I scribbled my letter of intent while sleeping in a tent in a peanut allergy induced stupor while in New Zealand, never expecting to get in. When I arrived home to Canada, I received my acceptance letter.
After two unbelievably trying, inspiring, and deeply contemplative years, I completed my MFA having had the chance to work with Steve and Paul. They introduced me to integrating science, or at least ideas inspired by science, into my work. They really made me feel as though I had something to say as an artist, and to a lesser degree, a theorist. Grad school was my first taste of being part of a discourse so much bigger than myself, and my personal feeling and beliefs. I felt like a contributor to culture in some small way. And to me, making culture is what artists do. I had some MASSIVE failures in graduate school, and made a few works that I look back on a shake my head in disbelief that I could be so silly. I still have a ton to learn.
Now that I am the teacher, it is both terrifying, and incredibly satisfying. Paul once told me that“ You’ ll always feel like a bit of an imposter as a professor.”, and it’ s true. That said, no one inspires me to build more knowledge, and become more proficient than my students. They force me to be empathetic, self-reflexive, and curious. I love them. Teaching is the only thing I actually feel good at. There is nothing better than feeling the moment when a student realizes the power that art can hold. When they become aware of its ability to introduce people to new ways of thinking, and the possibility of it as a tool for building compassion and empathy, I feel moved and that I’ m contributing to something far larger and more profound. I get that feeling of deep interconnectedness that I mentioned earlier. A feeling that few other experiences can elicit.
My students have moved me from a sort of selfish mode of making into a place of really wanting to make things that make people reconsider how they interact in the world, whether that world is physical or digital, or
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