Centre for Experimental Art and Communication (CEAC)

Photograph of present-day 15 Duncan Street, Toronto, Ontario.

Before the formation of CEAC, their members and their peers co-worked in shared spaces. CEAC's founders Amerigo Marras and Suber Donald Corley purchased a house at 4 Kensington Avenue in the Market area, allowing early incarnations of The Body Politic and Glad Day Bookshop to use a shed behind the house as an alternative space.[1] In the early 1970s, Jearld Moldenhauer moved into Marras and Corley's apartment at 65 Kendal Avenue - this address served as the official home for Glad Day Books and The Body Politic.

Previous to the formation of CEAC, Marras and Corley were affiliated with the Kensington Art Association (KAA).[6] Following a $55,000 Wintario grant, KAA became the first artist-run organization in Toronto to buy a building and effectively establish a large multimedia centre. After acquiring 15 Duncan Street in September 1976, KAA launched CEAC.[1] The centre's large, four-storey building in the light-manufacturing in the area south west of Queen Street and University Avenue, now known as the Entertainment District, where it became an instrumental hub for Toronto's creative cultural scene.[1]

KAA/CEAC published 9 magazine issues under the name Art Communication Edition (A.C.E) between the years 1976-1977 and 3 issues as STRIKE in 1978.[9] The publication Art Communication Edition was reinvented as STRIKE due to a desire to "merge with the social stance with consumerist tactics, the antithetical position".[6]

The magazine dealt with contemporary art in Toronto and abroad. It was distributed monthly in Canada, the United States, throughout Europe, South America and Australia. The material published included activities of the CEAC, features on film and performances, books, and statements on recent research and developments in the arts.[10]

The contents of the second issue of CEAC's magazine, STRIKE, and its radical political program caused major controversy that led to the withdrawal of funding from the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council.[9] The May 1978 issue of STRIKE, in support of the Italian militarist group, The Red Brigades, and Red Brigade-style “art-world” kneecapping, was charged with promoting violent overthrow of authority.[11] The controversial issue included an excerpt from a 1937 work by Mao Tse-tung: “To still maintain tolerance towards the servants of the State is to preserve the status quo of Liberalism. In the Manner of the [Red] Brigades, we support leg shooting/knee capping in order to accelerate the demise of the old system”.[12] Scandal broke quickly after the editorial was published, with a headline on the front page of Toronto Sun on May 5, 1978 reading: “Ont. Grant Supports Red Brigades Ideology: Our Taxes Aid Blood Thirsty Radical Paper”.[13]

Following nearly immediate loss of funding in June and July 1978 following the controversial May article, CEAC was forced to close its doors, unable to meet mortgage payments on the 15 Duncan Street location.[13] Competitive animosities and lack of support between CEAC and other Torontonian artist-run centres, notably A Space Gallery, also became clear in the aftermath following the STRIKE scandal and CEAC's demise.[14]

A 1978 letter to CEAC from the Video Officer for the Canada Council, Renee Bart, stated:

"[The] Council has received numerous written and verbal complaints about the lack of access to the CEAC facility, an alleged censorship of projects in the selection process, the disdainful manner in which many artists either using or requesting the use of the facilities were treated [...] This is a very clear indication of a lack of support for, or confidence in the CEAC from the very community which it was funded to serve, and gives rise to questions about CEAC's use of public funds.".[1]

CEAC's subsequent and final third issue of STRIKE stated, in response to the scandal: “what we wish to make clear is that what happened to STRIKE and CEAC is a definite case of censorship, in fact, political repression [...] our project was conceived of as a social experiment, designed to expose the illusions of freedom within the arts and the greater context of liberal democracies”; "As the Futurists were in fascist Italy; as the Bauhaus was in Nazi Germany; as the Constructivists were in the Soviet Union, the CEAC was banned in Canada.”[15] CEAC's founders Amerigo Marras and Suber Corley relocated to New York City following the controversy in 1978[1]

CEAC has been credited with influencing the development of the Toronto art scene and the art hub at Queen and Spadina by many art historians.[1] Of the many existing art institutions that moved to the area during the mid 1970s, including the Music Gallery, Art Metropole, A Space Gallery, and others, as well as new spaces which opened up, YYZ, Mercer Union, and the Cabana Room,[16] CEAC was the largest and most avant-grade.[1] CEAC has also been credited with sponsoring the first punk venue in Canada, Crash ’N’ Burn and with developing the early punk-rock scene in Toronto.[1]

CEAC's first exhibition, presented in January 1976, was entitled Body Art. The exhibition investigated the body's architecture, transmutation, and social behaviour. Featured artists included Suzy Lake, Darryl Tonkin, Lily Eng and Peter Dudar, amongst others.[18] The exhibition was influenced in part by the Vienna School and Hermann Nitsch.[1] It established a platform for performance and non-objective art, which countered present strategies of appropriation and parody then promoted by the art-collective General Idea, also operating in Toronto during that time.[1]

Bound, Bent and Determined, a performance series organized by Bruce Eves, elaborated on the theme of sado-masochism taken up by Body Art.[1]. Featured artists included: Wendy Knox-Leet, Ron Gillespie, Heather MacDonald, Darryl Tonkin, Blast-Bloom, Bruce Eves, Andy Fabo and Paul Dempsey[1]

CEAC began to promote art in New York and on the European continent in 1976. CEAC highlighted the work of the Missing Associates, Ron Gillespie, and made their initial connections with the Polish contextual artists, the “action” school of performance, and Reindeer Werk.[1]

CEAC's second European tour was in May 1977. Taking part in discussions held in Paris by the Sociological Art Collective and in Poland by the contextual art movement, the CEAC group also presented collaborative performances in various art venues, asserting the importance of performance as a means to break down audience/performer barriers.[1] In one seminar/performance, Bruce Eves, Amerigo Marras, Diane Boadway, and Suber Corley placed themselves in the four corners of a gallery, taking turns reading from a text, and speaking in turns into a microphone for fifteen seconds at a time. The text consisted of “seventy statements proposing an antithetical stance to dominant ideology rather than alternative positions that could be reappropriated by the cultural hegemony”.[1]

Throughout its few years of operation, CEAC collaborated and exhibited with a multitude of artists, such as Sarah Charlesworth, Joseph Kosuth, Anthony McCall, Dennis Oppenheim, Martha Rosler, Carolee Schneeman, and Lawrence Weiner, and had organized concerts by Philip Glass and Steve Reich.[22]