You Totally Forgot Today Was Art's Birthday

The French Fluxus artist Robert Filliou was the first to proclaim ‘Art’s Birthday’ as a public holiday. Coincidentally, art shares the same birthday as Filliou.

The artist, who was born on January 17, first came up with the idea of Art’s Birthday in 1963, andfirst publicly celebrated in Auchen, Germany and Paris, France simultaneously in 1973. The myth is that 1,000,000 years ago, someone threw a dry sponge into a bucket of water and alas, art was born.

Nowadays, Canadian sound artist Peter Courtemanche established the artsbirthday.net site and helps orchestrate Art’s Birthday events, which is connected by a loose network of artists and radio stations. From galas to art openings, mail art, fax machines and telephone concerts, past Art’s Birthdays have included flaming cakes, piñatas, a weather data exchange between Sydney and Helsinki, and even an Art’s Birthday double album. Vancouver’s Western Front has been hosting events since 1989.

Today Art will turn 1,000,051 (that is an unbelievable number of candles on a cake). The Swiss radio station EBUis offering 20 minute time slots to the 21 European cities that each celebrate Art's Birthday. Over in Edmonton, Beams Arts presents experimental art and burlesque, while Bordeaux is hosting a homage performance to Filliou by the artist JF Chapelle.

From studio jams to open air dance parties, Courtemanche says it is more about the art exchange than blowing out the (millions of) candles. The man behind the parties talks to us about cake-crushing machines, and how the art world celebrates the most creative birthday of all.

Art’s Birthday celebrations 2013 at the Museum for Modern Art Antwerp, Belgium.

Creator’s Project: When did you start the website and what is your role in Art’s Birthday?
Peter Courtemanche: Art’s Birthday.net was started in 2006. I've been involved with Art's Birthday events since 1989. I was the Director of Media Arts at the Western Front (an artist run centre in Vancouver) from 1997 - 2007 and I was also involved in starting 24 Hours of Radio Art at CITR FM (a campus radio station in Vancouver) in 1992. 24 Hours of Radio Art is now an annual event that coincides with Art's Birthday. From 2004 - 2008, when I was working at the Western Front, I produced collaborative artists projects that would culminate with public events on Art's Birthday. These usually involved sound and network exchanges. Since then, I've looked after the artsbirthday.net web site and tried to encourage new people to join the network and hold events on January 17. I'm also a sound artist, and every year I run a "generative audio stream" for Art's Birthday. There are a number of sound artists who do audio streaming and people then take the streams and remix them and send them back out on the network. Kunstradio in Vienna uses some of these streams in their Art's Birthday programming.

Do you help organize the international events?  
I leave the organizing to the individual place that participates. Sometimes, we will chat in September or October and come up with a theme, or a common project that everyone can work on. This was more common from 2000 - 2006 when the network was a bit smaller (and was easier to organize).

What inspired you to do this?
I was always interested in radio and telecommunications (in the 1980s and early 1990s) before the arrival of the Internet. Robert Filliou was a proponent of mail art and artist networks. He came to Canada in the 1970s and travelled across the country visiting several artist-run-centres including the Western Front. I started hanging out at the Western Front in 1988 and soon became involved in long-distance telephone and video exchanges, and from there I learned more about Filliou and the ideas behind Art's Birthday. It seem natural in the late 1990s (with the arrival of the Internet) to try and build a larger network of artists and art organizations connecting together for an annual celebration.

How does the world celebrate Art’s Birthday?
In the early days, people would sit around and eat and drink and phone each other at strange hours of the night and early morning to exchange video images using slo-scan technology. Some artists would work from galleries or museums, and some would be in their studios or kitchens. There was a large range of scale. Someone in their kitchen might do a drawing and then send it by FAX to the opening of an exhibition at a museum on the other side of the world. Nowadays, we try to keep the same sensibility - where the global party includes people attending large public events and also artists in their studios streaming material to the Internet. Some of the participants exchange sound and text over the network, and some hold parties that are connected in spirit but not through any particular exchange on the network.

How often is there a birthday cake?
I've made a lot of birthday cakes. In 2004, we had a cake-crushing machine at the Western Front. People in Winnipeg (at Video Pool) would hit a switching using a sledge hammer, and then the cake in Vancouver would slowly be crushed. Winnipeg artist Ken Gregory made the cake crushing machine. In 2008, we did a performance at the Western Front where we turned the attic into a giant reverb (and feedback) chamber. There were several sound performances and the sound mysteriously made a cake (we had a gadget that lifted the lid off the cake as more and more sound was played).

Art's Birthday by Hamilton Artists Inc, Canada

What has been the most memorable Art’s Birthday yet?
I think the events in 2004 were the most memorable. We were doing a yearlong artist residency where we played with the idea of streaming data between electronic installation works, so that the actions of one installation could influence the actions of another one. We spent a few months developing the software and then opened up the system to all the Art's Birthday participants. In Vienna, there was a dancing machine (I think they had sensors on a dance floor and also a crude robotic thing that would move depending on the data traffic). In Vancouver, we had Ken Gregory's cake crusher and a "drink mixing" machine that would mix cocktails of various kinds depending on the data flow from other parts of the world.

What are the plans for this year, both in Vancouver and a few tips abroad?
A lot of the participants in the network tend to post their ideas and events at the last minute, so it takes a while for the schedule to be defined. The sites that do the largest annual events are probably Kunstradio (Vienna), New Adventures in Sound Art (Toronto), and the folks in Wales (led by Barnaby Dicker who has been doing interesting events over the last few years). At OKNO (in Brussels) they are planning a collaborative outdoor sound and electronics event with solar powered sound equipment (I'm not sure how well that works in the winter time). Anna Friz (who produced 24 Hours of Radio Art in 1999) will be doing a show at Radio Cona in Ljubljana and this will connect with the artists in Vienna.

Art's Birthday Cake, 2014, Wales.

I haven't organized the Vancouver events for the last few years. But CITR FM has been doing their 24 Hours of Radio Art broadcast every year since 1999. The organization that did the "party" events last year and the year before has closed down, so we are trying to figure out what to do and it might take us until next year (2015) to find a new venue. So we are doing some smaller things (audio streams mostly and possibly hooking up to the events in Brussels).

What is the best thing about Art’s Birthday?
One of the nicest things about the concept of Art's Birthday is that almost everyone understands it right away, just from the name of it. When you get into the politics of it (the poetic economy versus the political economy, and the idea of art and play being part of everyday life), then people's eyes will start to glaze over. But the fundamental idea of celebrating Art and creativity and connecting over distance with different artists around the world is something that most people seem to understand intuitively.

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