One of the many narrators who is and is not Vera Frenkel in the retrospective of her works now on display at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art says at one point (in this case in the video The Secret Life of Cornelia Lumsden: A Remarkable Story, Part 2 “…And Now The Truth” (A Parenthesis)), “We resort to narrative.” This pat phrase could be the title of her exhibition or a concise response to the question of what she does as an artist. The allusiveness of the answer is appropriate for someone who has spent the past four decades eluding easy identification in the pursuit of an art that enacts even more than it reflects the flux of modern life. 
Vera Frenkel, The Secret Life of Cornelia Lumsden, 1979/1986
The predominant conduit for the last century of flux has been technology of two sorts: communication and transportation. Frenkel tackles the former by embracing a catholic array of media from collage and video to teleconferencing and computer graphics. Her work takes on many forms, blending elements of text, voiceover, visuals, and supporting documentation (which can be deceiving due to the institutional discourse she often inhabits), but it culminates here in an environment slash video salon slash relational installation avant la lettre titled …from the Transit Bar. The theme of human transport is thus also in evidence in this temporary rest stop for the nomads whose peregrinations through history, across boarders, and around cities populate her stories. If there is one thing that holds steady throughout, it’s the artist’s voice – though often in the guise of officious administrators whose typically elliptical discourse envelope and camouflage the author. In the end, those words are her medium, which makes sense since she was a poet in a previous life. Whatever form they take, the stories she and we resort to hold our history and our selves together – though they also happen to be the medium where we drift apart.
Note: Be sure to fully embrace the Frenkel experience by visiting the gallery in the evenings when the Transit Bar is in operation: drinks are served and a piano man is tickling the ivories. It’s the perfect respite from the holidays’ consumer frenzy. See the MOCCA website for times. 
Althea Thauberger, Preuzmimo Benčić (Take Back Benčić), 2014, film
Althea Thauberger, who is currently exhibiting her hour-long video Preuzmimo Benčić and supporting research material at Susan Hobbs Gallery, mines a similar territory to Frenkel with work that emerges from the nexus of globalization and recent historical shifts. She is concerned with narratives and a polyphony of voices, but instead of taking the role of speaker and acting them out herself, she steps back and defers authority to the players. In this case they are a group of Croatian children who have collaborated with the artist on the site of a former sugar and tobacco factory to dramatize a series of scenarios split amongst former workers and an assembly of mayors to consider the past and future of the site. Threaded throughout the assorted performances are stories that range from the personal and anecdotal to historical and ideological. Apart from some wonderfully theatrical costumes that seem more in service of imagination than literal representation (unless the port city of Rijeka actually had a goth-punk mayor at some point), the children use mime, dance, and improv to consider their concerns. The end result is, like the heated debate that is the movie’s climax, unresolved and frustrating. That is, presumably, the artist’s intention: from the significance of child actors to the twist that the factory is in real life slated to be converted into an art centre, there are no easy answers to find here.
Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art: http://www.mocca.ca/
Vera Frenkel: Ways of Telling continues until December 28.
Susan Hobbs Gallery: http://www.susanhobbs.com/
Althea Thauberger: Preuzmimo Benčić continues until January 10.
Terence Dick is a freelance writer living in Toronto. His art criticism has appeared in Canadian Art, BorderCrossings, Prefix Photo, Camera Austria, Fuse, Mix, C Magazine, Azure, and The Globe and Mail. He is the editor of Akimblog. You can follow his quickie reviews and art news announcements on Twitter @TerenceDick.
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Vera Frenkel at MOCCA | Althea Thauberger at Susan Hobbs
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