After a 30-year career, Vera Frenkel continues to bend reality through art

What do you do with the empty buildings left behind from government-mandated hospital closures? Well, converting them into artists’ residences seems like a logical, believable choice. Welcome to the Institute, "a professional and residential haven, providing support to some of the leading artists of our time," according to the promotional material, which adds: "The only criterion is that artists must be over 50 years of age and in the full bloom of their creativity." The Hamilton branch is already open, with 12 more planned from Vancouver to St. John’s. Really? "People look at me and they say, ‘Is this true? Is there really a National Institute for the Arts?’" says Vera Frenkel, a multidisciplinary artist and creator of the Institute, answering with a wry smile. "No there isn’t." Such is the power and, for Frenkel, the draw of multi-media art, which she has been making for over 30 years using print, photographic collage, video, performance, drawing, the Web, music and computer interactivity. On March 22 Frenkel’s distinguished career was recognized with a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts. Writer and art history professor Dot Tuer describes Frenkel’s art as "the serendipitous intertwining of truth and fabrication," and her latest effort is the perfect example. "The Institute: Or, What We Do For Love" is on display at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa until July 3 to celebrate Frenkel’s achievement, but it can also be viewed at www.the-national-institute.org. The fact, of course, is fiction, but parts of the website such as the photograph of the Institute’s residents and the speech from former Heritage Minister Sheila Copps celebrating its opening make it eminently believable. " help me reflect the culture that I live in," says Frenkel. "They allow me to celebrate in a creative style, and they help you get in touch with what I want. When you have the experience of going through the website, looking at the imagery, I’d like people to say ‘Can this possibly be true? Can the world be quite this absurd?’" Further navigation of the site pushes the limits of believable absurdity, and reveals Frenkel’s satirical self. There’s the Institute’s Fraternization Policy, which "for reasons of health and harmony, discourages full intimacy unless the parties have known each other for three months or more." Then there are the parking regulations that apply "to all other means of transport, from the horse to the bicycle." And the Rabbit Report about resident Richard Simpson who scaled the wall of the building to rescue his pet when the elevators were out of service. Avenues on the site are endless, with each direction bringing the user to more of Frenkel’s work. She says: "The media isn’t the art. The media is the instrument that allows me to make it. But if it didn’t have the qualities that it has, I couldn’t do this." Throughout her career of integrating new technology with art – she orchestrated a performance piece over Bell’s new teleconferencing technology in 1974 – Frenkel says the Internet is one case where the media came before the art, because it opened up so many more possibilities for her. "I thought the Internet was invented for me," Frenkel says. "It’s exactly the way I think in a non-linear way, multiple layers of narrative, and I had been working that way on video but the ‘Net made it much better." And surely as new mediums present themselves, they will also give more opportunities for the artist to challenge fact with fiction. "Eventually, there are different kinds of truths," says Frenkel. "If you’re dealing with fiction on one hand, and documentary on the other, they also call each other into question."

After a 30-year career, Vera Frenkel continues to bend reality through art

Broadcast | March 31, 2006

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