Back pain is a postcard intervention
concerned with the relationship between back pain
and the trauma of family violence, in particular child abuse,
as a consequence of cultural and ethnic oppression.
This work is a personal testimony,
a pledge to act as witness, as much an act of resistance
as an invitation for healing.

This work will be a set of 5 functional postcards that work to activate public space in an anti-monumental way as they change hands and take their own specific journeys. Black and white photographic images of my children's backs will be reproduced on the front of the card. On the top left hand corner of the reverse side will be short phrases referring to the relationship between back pain and the cycle of family violence, in particular child abuse, as a consequence of cultural and ethnic traumas. One such text is: "Speaking is impossible in a house full of whispers and screams." The work is intended to be as much a testimony, a verbal and visual action of resistance, as an intervention in the repetitious cycle - not merely a witness to child abuse as a consequence of cultural oppression, but a participant in its cessation.

The specific task of this interventionist artwork is to open up the capacity of perceiving history - that which happened or is happening to others - in one's own body, accessed perhaps through one's own memory. In this way, the work functions to dismantle the abstraction of violence and the dangers of generational repetition by bearing witness to the body.

I first worked with this set of images for a temporary outdoor installation in Winnipeg called "(un)veilings". "(un)veilings" was one of the very few pieces surviving the arson that destroyed my loft and the bulk of my life's work in 1995. In the last several months I have come to a deep understanding of why it has remained.

When I first created the work and photographed my children's backs I thought it was about a public memorialization of trauma that is so unfamiliar in our culture of monuments to death and war heros. What I had not realized was the significance of how I had etched the words of my own pain onto the glass that was then laid over the photographs in the ground.

In an essay written for the exhibition catalogue, Anna Carlavaris spoke of the "vitrified figures on the shore of childhood's "then," (sic) images of the self's own still(ed) painful past". It has since occurred to me that I was also unconsciously rendering visible the dangers of repeating the cycle. Without rigorous attention and care there is constant risk of inflicting the pain and carrying the burden over to our own children (albeit perhaps in different ways), as we work through the stages of finding safety, mourning and remembering.

Backs are not only physical and fleshly, they also signify what is behind -- what is held in the memories and histories of past events. It is no accident that one of the most common physical ailments in North America is back pain.

The work will not just function as a monument or memorialization as was the case in the installation of the earlier version in Winnipeg, but as a promissory note -- a performative engagement. The postcards offer a site for voicing, a space for personal narrative and for witnessing. They also offer a chance for connection in that they can be sent and received by another. This spoken and heard testimony of the cycle of woundings and the hazards of inflicting our own suffering onto the backs of future generations is urgent. Cultural traumas are lived in the personal. Coming to terms with their effects must also be lived as personal in order to challenge the pervasive violence endemic to this culture and serve community as healed survivors.

Financial support from The Canada Council's Interdisciplinary Work and Performance Art Creation Grant Program has made this work possible. Back Pain is the focus of my artist-in-residence project at the Atelier de l'isle in Val David, Québec.

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IMAGES

"speaking is impossible in a house full of whispers and screams."

Over the course of the past decade I have been occupied with searching for an artistic language questioning process and personal engagement with(in) the public sphere. This search has been located in the membrane stretching between life and art, public and private, performer and audience, and (body) memory and history. Working within seemingly "ordinary" frames of action (peeling beets, crocheting, singing, telling stories, making dough, sweeping flour, walking the landscape), the contexts that I create for my work are in many ways a (re)negotiation of daily dwelling practice - attempts at rewiring both self and society in the aftermath of trauma.

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Devora Neumark currently lives, works and co-parents her two children (Zev and Léa) in Montreal, Quebec. Over the past decade she has developed a practice that includes artistic interventions, durational performative works, storytelling and social activism.

Marked by the interrelationships between process and materiality, integrating theory and practice, her artmaking has been situated at the nexus between public(s) and community(ies). She has been actively investigating how an interdisciplinarity practice is most appropriate to her subject matter, political concerns and personal work methodology. The contexts that she creates, including an emphasis on active collaboration, are crucial to the works' development. Her interventions have been characterized by a direct sharing and exchange with the individuals who come across it (mostly incidentally), and who choose to approach / witness / participate.

The most recent body of work, spanning nearly ten years, has included installations and durational performative interventions that have put into question the notion of process as practice, mourning, ritual and repetitive behaviours, intergenerational trauma and violence, the power and authority inherent in memory and commemoration, and the relationships or boundaries between the self and non-self. Neumark has been concerned with the social agency in the memorial form(s) and the negotiation of control in the space between personal and social historical and cultural constructions, their representations and tellings.

Neumark served as Vice President of Auberge Shalom...pour femmes, a Montreal crises intervention centre and shelter for women victims of conjugal violence between 1995 and June of 1999. She was the initiator and co-organizer of the international symposium on visual art and Jewish identity(ies) held at the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts in 1995 and is currently coordinating a related website. As a frequent lecturer, she has addressed a wide-variety of audiences, speaking about public artistic practice, trauma, violence and mourning; competing authorities of memory and history constructions, formations of identity, the cycle of conjugal violence, and health and safety in the visual arts.

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10 Ontario Street West Suite # 706 Montreal,
Quebec H2X 1Y6
(514) 282-4186 / fireside@jonction.net

Born January 27, 1959 / Brooklyn, NY
Permanent resident of Canada since May 9, 1975
Living in Montreal since June 1987
Children: Zev Raphael (07/17/87) and Léa Arianne (19/08/92)

 

back pain : A postcard intervention

iris: A collaborative interdisciplinary installation with Wende Bartley at The Sweeney Art Gallery of the University of California, Riverside

Sunday at the Met (upcoming): A solo durational performative intervention in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. With the assistance of The Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art: New York

iris: The Koffler Gallery: Toronto

L'Art inquiet. Motifs d'engagement: Group exhibition at Galerie de l'UQAM: Montreal

marked, like some pages in a book: A bookmark intervention (with articule's special projects)

Dancing with the Leviathan: Group exhibition organized by Ashkenaz: Toronto, Ontario

présence: A solo street intervention / durational performance within the group exhibition organized by Optica sur l'expérience de la ville: Montreal

communal voices: making a place to be heard: Artist-in-residence at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery: Lethbridge, Alberta

s(us)taining: An independent solo durational performative street intervention: Montreal

Auberge Shalom...pour femmes Project: Placemats: A place mat intervention with information about the shelter and related to the cycle of violence: designed for and used in Montreal Kosher and Kosher-style restaurants

trace(s) - a public intervention as studio practice
a public intervention / durational interdisciplinary performance and photographic installation with Hèléne Engel and Danielle Boutet (along with the volunteer participaction of more than 25 invited participants) sponsored in part by Cobalt Art Actuel as part of Les ateliers s'exposent: Montreal's Square Victoria Metro Station

(un)veilings: A solo outdoor photographic installation in Old Market Square under the auspices of Light Year: A Festival of Photographies sponsored by the Floating Gallery: Winnipeg, Manitoba

the task of mourning: A solo installation at Neutral Ground Artist Run Centre: Regina, Saskatchewan

LIKE (IN) THE SPACE OF BREATH: aspects of ritual and community: a collaborative residency and intermedia installation with: Lily Markiewicz: Forest City Gallery, London, Ontario

making a book (FRAGMENTARY EVIDENCE): an independent public intervention, durational performance and artist book assembling Biblioteque nationale du Québec: Montreal

shifting thresholds: A solo installation with text / image/ sculpture: Gallery 101, Ottawa, Ontario

indices fragmentés: An independent street intervention in two parts: memorial stones and posters in response to Montreal's 350th anniversary celebration

departed structure / imparted tracing: solo exhibition at Gallery 44, Centre for
Contemporary Photography: Toronto, Ontario

L'ETRE ET LE NEON -- LA PUBLICITE AVIDE: An independent group intervention in photographic advertising units, Montreal's Peel Metro Station

1998

La redécouverte de Shalom Bayit in La Voix
Sépharade July-August 1998 (Montreal)

1998/1985

An Ounce of Prevention: Health and Safety in the
Visual Arts : Principle researcher and author: Concordia University

1997

immixtion: sites of engagement: Participant in
artists' book: group project- "s(us)taining memories / dwelling"
artists pages (photography and text) MIX Magazine
(Summer issue Vol. 23.1)

1995

... les yeux fermés: Printed work (photography and text) VIE DES ARTS (# 158, spring)

1994

mapping reservoirs: notations in space: Printed work for Deborah Margo's Réservoirs (Ottawa)

1993

FRAGMENTARY EVIDENCE: Artist's book

1992

departed structure - imparted tracing: on the rhetoric of monuments: Collaborative printed work (photography and text) Espace (# 19 printemps)

Santé et sécurité dans l'enseignement des arts plastiques: Consultant and co-author under the auspices of the Ministère de l'éducation du Québec

1999

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Studio Art, Fine Arts Faculty: Concordia University

Invited jury member for Master students' year end critique (Open Media): Concordia University

Translations of Silence: some responses to violence and traumatic woundings. Invited guest at the Centre for Ideas and Society: University of California at Riverside

1998
ongoing

Initiator and co-organizer of Public Art As Social Intervention... But Now, I Have To Speak: Tesitmonies Of Trauma And Resilience

1997
ongoing

artistic enrichment teacher at the Hebrew Foundation School: Dollard des Ormeaux

1997
ongoing

coordinator for underlining identity(ies): visual art and Jewish experience website in collaboration with the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts

1995 - 1999

Vice President of the Executive Council at Auberge Shalom... pour femmes; a Montreal shelter and resource centre for women victims of domestic violence and their dependent children.

1998

Tutorials for undergraduate and master level students at The Kent Institute of Art & Design: Canterbury, England

Invited as an outside member for an evaluation panel of year-end projects done by the Master's students at UQAM's Master Program of Fine Arts

1997

Invited consultant for the programming selection committee Gallery SKOL: Montreal

Invited jury member for a Master's student defence Entre art et architecture: interventions publiques où coexistent des territoires quotidiens... UQAM: Montreal

Invited participant for semester-end student presentations/evaluations Women in the Fine Arts Concordia University

- co-organizer and participating artist: immixtion - sites of engagement under the auspices of Galerie DAREdare; a group project committed to the discussion, development and actualization for a series of Montreal community based artist residencies and public interventions

artistic consultant for the Cultural Council of the Montreal Jewish Community Foundation

project initiator and co-organizer (with Regine Basha) of the international symposium Visual Art and Jewish Identity: A Contemporary Experience under the auspices of the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts held in Montreal

Artist-in-Residence: Fringe Research Holographics: Toronto, Ontario

- ongoing - Visual Arts Health and Safety Consultant (contracts have included The Center for Safety in the Arts, N.Y.; McGill University; Concordia University; the Ministère de l'Education du Québec)

The following listing combines research material for my work
as well as articles that have appeared about my work.

Allison, Dorothy Two or three things I know for sure. Plume / Penguin
Group: New York and London. 1995

Alphen, Ernst Van Caught by History: Holocaust Effects in Contemporary
Art, Literature, and Theory. Stanford University Press: Stanford, CA. 1997

Aquin, Stéphane Sur l'expérience de la ville: Les vingt-cinq ans d'Optica.
Voir 64: September 11 - 17, 1997

Aquin, Stéphane L'Art inquiet: Artistes, vos papiers! Voir 12 No 4
January 29 - February 4, 1998

Arnold, Janice Placemats publicize issues of conjugal violence. Canadian
Jewish News A-3: Tuesday, Feb 27, 1996

Arnold, Janice Song addresses issue of conjugal violence. Canadian Jewish News July 3, 1997

Beattie, Melody Beyond Codependency and getting better all the time.
Harper& Row: San Francisco, CA. 1989

Beatty,Greg Mourning rituals examined. The Leader Post Regina D-6:
Saturday, March 4, 1995

Becker, Darren Power of Music: Project tries novel way to help victims of
conjugal violence. The Montreal Gazette Thursday, September 4 1997

Bolton, Richard The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA. 1989

Boutet, Danielle Interdisciplinary Practice: A Challenge to Art Discourses. Parallélogramme Art Contemporain 20 No. 4 1995 (pp 38-46).

Brunham, Linda Frye and Durland, Steven. Editors The Citizen Artist: 20
Years of Art in the Public Arena, An Anthology from High Performance
Magazine 1978 -1998. Critical Press (The Gunk Foundation). 1998

Carlevaris, Anna monumental amnesia: recent installations by Devora
Neumark. published in Light Year: A Festival of Photographies The Floating Gallery: Winnipeg, Manitoba. 1998

Caruth, Cathy. Editor Trauma: Explorations in Memory. The John Hopkins
University Press: Baltimore, MD. 1995

Duncan, Ann Art for a time: artist doesn't expect this work to last. The
Montreal Gazette A-4: Monday, May 25, 1992

Duncan, Ann Artist goes to the mat to fight conjugal violence. The
Montreal Gazette I-6: Saturday, March 2, 1996

Felman, Shoshana and Laub, Dori Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in
Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc.:
London and New York, NY. 1992

Felshin, Nina. Editor But is it Art?:The Spirit of Art as Activism. Bay
Press: Seattle, WA. 1995

Friedlander,Saul Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the
'Final Solution'. Harvard University Press: London and Cambridge, MA. 1992

Haines, Staci The Survivor's Guide to Sex: How To Have an Empowered Sex Life After Childhood Sexual Abuse. Cleis Press, Inc: San Francisco, CA. 1999

Herman, Judith Lewis Trauma and Recovery: The aftermath of violence - from domestic abuse to political terror. HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
1992

Kappeler, Suzanne The Will To Violence: The Politics of Personal
Behaviour. Teachers College Press: New York, NY. 1995

Knaff, Devorah L. At second glance. The Press Enterprise (Riverside,
California) F-20: Sunday January 17, 1999

Lachapelle, Louise Lieux communs : le don et l'art. Ethica Vol. 10 no 2
(p. 73-96). 1998

Lachapelle, Louise Le don ruiné: À propos de <<L'art est un virus>> de
René Payant. Revue Trois: Laval, PQ. 13 no. 2 1998 (pp 63-85).

Lacy, Suzanne. Editor Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art. Bay
Press: Seattle, WA. 1995

Lamarche, Bernard Sur le chemin des écoliers: Pour célébrer ses 25 ans,
Optica parraine une série d'interventions urbaines. Le Devoir D-11:
Saturday, October 18, 1997

Lamarche, Bernard L'art engagé: De l'art et des rapports au politique.
Le Devoir D-5: Saturday, Feb. 15, 1998

Lowen, Alexander Depression and the Body: The Biological Basis of Faith
and Reality. Penguin Books: NY.

Ring, Nancy Devora Neumark: Metro Square Victoria. Parachute #82, 1996

Scarry, Elaine The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford University Press: 1985

Scott, Charles E. The Time of Memory. State University of New York Press: 1999

Seamon, David and Mugerauer, Robert. Editors Dwelling, Place &
Environment: towards a phenomenology of person and world. Columbia
University Press: New York and Oxford. 1985

Whitmer, Barbara The Violence Mythos. State University of New York Press: Albany, NY. 1997

Wisechild, Louise M. She who was Lost is Remembered: Healing from Incest Through Creativity. The Seal Press Seattle, WA. (Distributed in Canada through Raincoast Book Distribution, Vancouver BC.) 1991

 

 

LINKS:

http://collections.ic.gc.ca/waic/dneu/dneu.htm
http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/k31320/newm01.htm
http://www.xcult.ch/x/rbuser/

 

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ATELIER DE L'ÎLE

PROJECT HISTORY FROM DEVORA NEUMARK,
INDEPENDENT ARTIST & PROJECT INITIATOR

Anna Carlavaris and I first introduced the idea to Loren Lerner, former Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies and professor in the Department of Art History, Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University. Within the Faculty of Fine Arts, I discovered faculty and students who shared my concerns, and were somehow each individually already exploring aspects of the issues at the core of this project.

One of the many seeds for this project began in conversation with Anna Carlavaris and was initially cultivated with Katherine Warren, Director of the Sweeney Art Gallery of the University of California at Riverside and Amelia Jones also of the University of California at Riverside. At first, it was meant as a way of creating dialogue around the issues underlying the work I was creating for and with the Sweeney Art Gallery (and the Koffler Centre in Toronto with Carolyn Bell Farrell), in collaboration with Wende Bartley and Naomi Kahane. IRIS is a sound and visual installation project that offers a re-interpretation of the hierarchical voice in the biblical narrative of Iris, whose husband was Lot. In re-reading the story of her being turned
into a pillar of salt for having looked back on the destruction of Sodom, the work questions the nature of imposed patriarchal authority; the continuum between personal and social experience and witnessing of trauma; women as choice-makers; and the interrelationships between creative, healing and spiritual energies. I thank Iris and the force who gave her voice including Suzanne Alexanian, Loretta Bailey, Wende Bartley, Gin Bergeron, Naomi Kahane, Sibylle Preuschat, bh yael, Mimi Yano and Sonia Zylberberg

Given the demands of accomplishing PUBLIC ART AS SOCIAL INTERVENTION, it became obvious that the best chance for it succeeding would be to shift the locus from California to Montreal. The importance of the local cannot be understated. My early conversations with Lesley Johnstone, Sylvie Gilbert and Lyne Lapointe were pivotal and direct(ive). My thanks extend to pk langshaw,a long time collaborator in projects dealing with art and public
access. Her engagement with and commitment to teaching social design has been crucial. Her experience and wisdom, no less than her incredibly hard work have been greatly appreciated. Colette Sparkes has been an active listener, critical eye and champion of this project through its many moons cycles.

Rather than proceed with the full project in California, it was decided to have a roundtable at the Sweeney Art Gallery in conjuction with the showing of IRIS, and carry out the larger scheme here in Montreal. It was at that roundtable however, that many of the issues presented here were first fleshed out with the Sweeney staff, University faculty -- including Tiffany Lopez, English: Amelia Jones, Art History: Erika Suderburg, Studio Arts and Deborah Wong, Music Anthropology -- and students from the different disciplines.

The following issues formed the core of the discussion during the round table panel:

• Mourning and memorialization in relationship to ritual and healing space(s).
  
  
• The interrelationship between personal and social narratives and identity constructions.
  
  
• The role of the body in narrative -- the experience and witnessing of trauma through and with the body.

As Public Art As Social Intervention was developing in Montreal -- with the generous participation of all those mentioned above in the first sections of the acknowledgement -- Tiffany Anna Lopez along with Kathleen McHugh, Devra Weber and Traise Yamamoto, invited me back to participate in an inter-disciplinary think tank Trauma and the Unspeakable: History, Autobiography, and Performance. at the Center for Ideas and Society of the University of California at Riverside to explore the following set of questions:

• How can ahistorical formulations symbolically pairing racial
  victimization and sexual violence be explained and theorized?
  
  
• How can the silences and repressions produced by trauma be read,
  analyzed and understood when witness testimony is fragmented, inaccurate or
  fictionalized due to the traumatic event itself?
  
  
• What is the evidentiary status of literary (artistic) artifacts in
  relation to traumatic historical or cultural truths?
  
  
• What is the relationship of self narration to national identity,
  subjectivity, and the structure of oppressive rule?
  
  
• In what ways does autiobiography participate within concurrent
  juridical, scientific, religious or contestatory discourses?
  
  
• What is the evidentiary status of self within the context of trauma?

My thanks are extended to this group for the stimulating discussions and exchanges that are woven into this project as well.

The process continues, the connections continually expand and contract. I am truly grateful for having been encouraged and taught by all who have been and continue to be involved.