Background note :

Artists in Residence is a work for voices

written especially for The Arts Today.

It is one of a group of works under the title:

The Institute™ : Or, What We Do for Love

a multi-media work in progress that maps the formation and travails of The National Institute for the Arts , Canada’s remarkable coast-to-coast chain of government supported artists’ residences, popularly known by staff and residents as The Institute™ .

Other works in this cycle are being prepared for both video and the web. Some of the initial programming for a future web version has been carried out during a residency at The Banff Centre , and that work, when completed, will be hosted by the Stadium Network for the Arts , an on-line Kunsthalle or museum of contemporary art. A September launch is anticipated.

A separate web component, programmed by

the CBC’s John McCarthy , accompanies the radio work and offers listeners a backstage glimpse during the production process and chance to read the script and hear the words spoken again.

Artists in Residence is in three parts:

A Cultural Triumph

The Staff Speaks

A New Guest Arrives

with a short introduction read by
E l e a n o r W a c h t e l.

Two narrative-and-dialogue episodes are separated by a kind of rhythmic tone-poem, the voices of which are woven together to form a collective utterance of Institute™ middle managers and junior functionaries. …

A chant/rant …

The six voices
Oubechou
Steele
Tomczak
Hastings
Wachtel
Frenkel

cycle through the text serving as both narrators and speakers,

with the effect of increasing the listener’s focus on what is being said and the texture of the voices, rather than on who’s saying what …

In the body of the work, narration is in caps.,
dialogue in Upper and Lower case.

Artists in Residence features the unexpected return of the missing Canadian novelist, Cornelia Lumsden , (or a possible imposter), author of the brilliant novel, " The Alleged Grace of Fat People ",.

Questions are raised on this and other matters .

***

Introduction

As it says here … as early as 1999, the way was paved in Alberta to shift certain hospital services to private clinics and nursing homes. Despite great public opposition, a bill was passed to that effect at the beginning of May, 2000. Along with its neglect of the water supply, Ontario wasn’t far behind in dismantling its version of the health system. At the same time it was cutting the budgets of its arts agencies and pushing them towards seeking (but rarely finding) private sector partnerships. Individual, especially older, artists no longer had recourse to public support. The one potential exception was the National Institute for the Arts, formed in the same year as Bill 11 was passed in Alberta.

A chain of former hospitals from coast to coast, emptied during the severe economies that started in 1997, provided the sites for this unique project. And cultural bureaucrats from downsized government agencies provided the staff.

The opening of the first branch -- The Institute™ - Hamilton, located in the former Hamilton General Hospital — and inaugurated just this spring by Sheila Copps, was greeted with great excitement. Other branches will soon follow suit across Canada.

And just what is The Institute™ ? a well-known journalist inquires.

Here’s part of her on-site research:-

A third voice says:

END OF INTRODUCTION