The following is an interview/conversation with her.
- Stacey Sproule
Stacey Sproule- You are involved with a number of collectives, can you talk about one- your favourite one?
Maggie Flynn- I'll start by talking about Border Town. That's very much where my mind is right now. I don't know if we are technically a collective. We are a bunch of people that meet once a week and we talk about borders, border towns, towns that are cut in half by borders and all the crazy things that happen around those instances. We are people from different backgrounds who will meet for eleven weeks and at the end of that time we will each produce a project that comes out of our time and learning together. So that's been a really amazing project. Its brought together by Tim Maly and Emily Horne and they have pulled together a really good group of people with really different backgrounds, from architecture, design, writing, and visual art. It started out as something that was very much lead by Tim and Emily but now they have found a lot of foreign correspondents for us to be in contact with. So those people are sending us reports about where they are and what things are happening around the border. One person is in Palestine, we are also in contact with people from Detroit, there is someone in China and one person who travels all over. And this week our readings were things that the foreign correspondents had written about the places where they are. Its a really exciting way to be learning about these things. I think of it kind of as a free school scenario though its a bit more structured. But its a really interesting model. I've never done anything like this before: independent learning with the goal of creating something at the end.
SS- It seems like you have access to a lot of people you wouldn't normally have access to in any other circumstance.
MF- YES! Oh fuck, do we ever! I mean other than ourselves which is amazing. We took a field trip to Niagara Falls, and the guy from the bridge transit authority stayed late after work to show us around. He showed us all around the office and all of the security things they deal with and told us stories about stuff that goes on with the bridge. He gave us pretty detailed information about how the bridge transit authority interacts with the border authority. Its been pretty exciting to have people tell us things we felt like we shouldn't know!
SS- I wanted to talk about your art a little bit. There were two pieces that I saw on your website that I felt related to Three Tongues kind of ideas, which were the caged books and the key cutting project. Can you talk about the caged books?
MF- That was called Academic Trade. At the time I was really frustrated with being in University, since then I have come to realise that its probably alright that Universities exist and they have their place in the world. But I was really frustrated with academia and the way knowledge was guarded. I thought it would be funny if to access the knowledge in a book you had to go through another learning process which is how to use a hacksaw to saw metal. So it puts two different ways of interacting with things together and you need to use one to get to the other. I welded these cages with steel rods around individual books the cages were tight around the books so you definitely couldn't open the book unless you sawed open the cage. I had a space at the University of Toronto with a big work table and 25 or so books in cages and a couple of hacksaws and a sign that read- Free Books Crack One Open! There were a lot of students that came who had never interacted with a hacksaw before so there was a learning process to watch. And sometimes people would give each other tips on sawing. Its not that hard- it takes a bit of time and energy to cut through six or eight metal rods, but if you don't know how to hacksaw you might press too hard and waste a lot of energy or one girl was holding a book between her knees and trying to saw it that way- so painful to watch! But I think people were really excited to interact with this material in a stodgy university setting.
SS- What about your piece- Key Cuttin' Shit Shootin'?
MF- It was in a group show with a lot of people and I had a worktable, a light, and a box of blank keys in the middle of the room. The invitation was open to people who came to the show to talk to me while I cut them a key they could keep. I filed the keys with metal files as we had a conversation. And the conversation would continue until they thought their key was finished. I had some really memorable conversations that night. It was in a really busy space but I felt really focused on the person sitting in front of me. I felt that when I was cutting each key it would be a record of that conversation with that person. I was thinking about early sound recording technologies like records, or wax cylinders. And using keys for me was very fitting because my dad is a locksmith and it was absolutely inspired by him and the conversations he has with his customers. I'm interested in those environments where people just converse- where there's a comfort to conversing and its interesting to think about what makes people just want to sit and chat.
SS- I love that project! So wonderful and simple but really effective. Ok, so let's talk about the other collective you work with- Tongue and Groove.
Who's in Tongue and Groove?
MF- Simon Black, Meghan Scott, Kailey Bryan, Jeanette Hicks, Tasha Turner, Robert Clements, Brian Hobbs, and Me! We've done a few projects now together- everyone in the collective comes from a really strong sculpture and installation background. The last project we did was called Fix em Up Free Market. So we had the storefront at Whippersnapper Gallery in Kensington and we invited people to bring things they didn't want or broken things and we would fix those things or take parts from them and offer them for free for anyone to take or trade. It was a high traffic area at Dundas and Augusta and as soon as we opened we had a bunch of people who would come by regularly to see what was new. We also had people offer their time to help us fix things- some just wanted to help because they loved the project and some people helped because they wanted to take something. But we did emphasize that it was a free store and you could just take things. At a certain point too we had so much stuff that we needed people to take it!
SS- All the pieces of yours we've talked about today have shades of collaboration in them, and you seem to work in that way a lot. Why, would you say, you collaborate?
MF-Collaborations sometimes happen for logistical reason but I guess the reason I am drawn to collaborating is the outcome. Doing things alone is fine and you can push yourself and take outside influences or try to do new things with your own scope of reasoning but when you work with somebody else then you immediately have a space between you where you have to negotiate things and communicate in some way with them. So its simple things but through that I feel I am so much more challenged and I think that I am generally more excited about the results when I've worked with somebody because its something that has come from outside of me - its something new. You arrive at things you would never get to if you were just working alone.
