Art Attack #8
BY Ron Nurwisah
Photography by Martin Savoie
A still-smoking wreck of an SUV sits in a public square, pedestrians stop and stare at the scene of destruction. It looks like a news story from Iraq, Syria or Afghanistan. But it’s actually right in the middle of Yonge-Dundas Square, one of Toronto’s busiest intersections and right across the street from one of its largest malls.
But this isn’t a result of war. It is an art installation. The piece, “Attack #8”, was created by the Montreal art duo known as ATSA or Action Terroriste Socialement Acceptable [Socially Acceptable Terrorist Actions]. Since 1997, Pierre Allard and Annie Roy have been creating art that merges artistic concepts of audience participation, spectacle and appropriation of imagery with socio-political issues like poverty, environmentalism and consumerism.
Their first installation in December of 1997 was sparked by two news stories, one on the record profits that banks were making and another on the lack of warm clothing for Montreal’s homeless. ATSA’s response was a “La Banque à Bas.” Placed in front of Montreal’s Museum of Contemporary Art, ATSA turned an old oven into a clothing ATM, allowing Montreal’s homeless to “withdraw” warm clothing, fulfilling a real need while poking fun at Canada’s big banks. The next year they upped the ante, starting “State of Emergency,” a five-day refugee camp for the homeless right near the University of Montreal that ATSA still runs every winter.
Since then the duo have used public interventions to explore various social issues. “Industrial Park” was a faux archeological site with ruins made up of bales of compressed recycled materials, a critique of the huge amounts of waste created by consumerism. Allard and Roy have created installations in Mont Royal Park that examined threats to urban and global forests, and an urban history project focusing on how fire has influenced the growth of Montreal’s downtown. This September, they hit Calgary’s ArtCity festival to premiere a new work—a shooting gallery critique of corporate culture.
But most of ATSA’s recent work has been concerned with oil and automobile culture. The duo found an SUV in a scrap yard and blowtorched the car so it looked like it had been in a war zone. The resulting installation went on to travel to Toronto and Ottawa, the first time their work was shown in English Canada.
Allard and Roy cite a familiar list of complaints about oil culture: the propping up of brutal regimes, illegal wars, environmental and health costs. But they take it a step further. “We wanted to go into this territory of private consumption, examine this right that people think they have to buy anything they want because it’s on the market,” Roy explains. This was the kernel for the duo’s SUV installation. They followed it up with a project in which they created 10,000 highly realistic traffic tickets to fine SUV owners for idling, using a remote starter and driving “an oversize gas guzzling vehicle.”
Confused drivers have tried to pay the tickets and even called the courts to challenge them. Some have caught on and called the duo in anger. ATSA’s approach, humourous to some, can and does lead to confrontation. During ATSA’s weekend in Toronto there were a few people upset with the group’s anti-SUV message. Outraged viewers questioned the use of the charged term “terrorism.”
But the duo doesn’t think their use of the term is insensitive or condoning violence. “We want people to think about terrorism. Aren’t we all little terrorists in our day-to-day actions? We all support the status quo when we buy clothing that’s made in sweatshops. We want people to think about violence at another level,” Roy says.
To her, it’s the public dialogue that matters. “I give what I have and they give what they have by sharing their knowledge and speaking and bringing discussion into the streets.”
