General Idea
Life & Work by Sarah E . K . Smith
Tims ( AA Bronson ) was born in Vancouver in 1946 to a military family , living in cities across Canada . He moved to Winnipeg in 1964 to study architecture at the University of Manitoba . It was at university where Tims met Gabe , through their mutual friend Paige . In 1967 , before completing his degree , Tims and several classmates dropped out to form an alternative community comprised of a free school , commune , free store , and newspaper . The newspaper was called The Loving Couch Press and Tims served as a contributing editor . During this period Tims also worked as a volunteer apprentice for a therapist specializing in intentional communities . Through this work he travelled across Canada , which led to Tims meeting Saia-Levy in Vancouver and also put the work of Intermedia on his radar . Tims became interested in exploring other communes ,
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travelling to Montreal and Toronto . In Toronto he settled at Rochdale College , where he quickly became involved in Coach House Press and Theatre Passe Muraille .
The three artists ’ experiences in architecture , theatre , film , art , intentional community , Gestalt therapy , and independent publishing informed their later work as General Idea . The group , according to Bronson , was born out of the “ late Sixties psychedelia of student revolution , fluorescent posters , underground newspapers and Marshall McLuhan , and inspired by Canada ’ s first artist-run centre … Intermedia .”
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General Idea in front of Test Pattern : T . V . Dinner Plates from the Miss General Idea Pavillion ( detail ), 1988 . Collection General Idea , photograph by Tohru Kogure . This installation view is from SPIRAL ( Wacoal Art Center ), Tokyo , 1988
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Becoming a Group By 1969 Ronald Gabe , Slobodan Saia-Levy , and Michael Tims were all in Toronto and came into contact at Theatre Passe Muraille during rehearsals for the production Home
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Free . The theatre , founded out of Rochdale College — an experimental free university
in Toronto — offered a countercultural scene that attracted many visual artists . As Bronson noted , “ The counterculture scene was small at that time . The three major nodes were Rochdale College , Theatre Passe Muraille , and the Coach House Press .”
Shortly after meeting , the three moved to a house at 78 Gerrard Street West in downtown Toronto along with Mimi Paige ( Gabe ’ s then-girlfriend ) and Daniel Freedman ( a friend and actor ). Bronson recalls that the members of the household were unemployed and amused themselves by creating fake window displays in the house , a former store .
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One project — targeting a nearby nurses ’ residence — involved a display of romance novels about nurses . This gave the impression that the house was a bookstore , but prospective customers were prevented from visiting by a sign on the door that indicated
the shopkeeper would return in five minutes . Significantly , the group didn ’ t see these early experiments as artwork .
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78 Gerrard Street West , Toronto , the house where General Idea formed and lived from 1969 – 70 , photograph by Jorge Zontal
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