I first saw Looking for the Institute (Part One: The Square Became a Circle But Still Was a Square) in a room at the top floor of an old building that houses art studios for the University of Chicago. The room was relatively small, with a projector, tables and chairs for viewing. The sound of wind hitting the rooftop tarp swept through the space.

At fifteen minutes, Looking for the Institute can initially appear confounding. The video begins with an image of colorfully lit stained glass patterns and it took me a moment to discern that the footage was filmed from the inside of a (non-denominational) chapel. As an organ dramatically swells, a man speaks. He’s talking religion. The voice weaves in and often out; the audio has been spliced in from elsewhere. Eventually I get distracted. I look at the floor of this room, at slivers of light creeping in from cracks in the ceiling. After some time (five minutes? Ten?) I notice the man’s voice in the video is not some cynic entertaining (there were a lot of jokes). In fact, the voice is that of an Imam. Just as I recognize this, the video ends.

Emily Jones is an artist whose work often reminds me of conspiracy videos on YouTube, a comparison that she likes. They are low budget and full of actors with slight neurotic tics. The language is sprinkled with stutters and slips. Religion, politics and mental health are recurring themes. The peculiar tone of Looking for the Institute was only enhanced when I watched this latest work in a room that felt ideal as a place for connivance; that this could all possibly be for an event quietly publicized and secretly attended.

Originally from Halifax, Emily Jones is currently studying at the University of Chicago. I recently sat down with her over two nights to talk about her practice. The following is edited from a larger and more sprawling conversation/debate.

Kevin Rodgers: Can you tell me about this new video Looking for the Institute? You say that it is not yet done.

Emily Jones: Right. In part one the institute is religion and looking for the religion. Where am I supposed to be worshipping? Am I supposed to be worshipping? What’s the institute? Where do I go? There are two parts to the piece. Looking for the Institute part two is called Making Love and it is about the institute of love and marriage. Does making love mean anything outside marriage? What does it mean? Where does love end? It keeps those things within the sanctity of an artwork.

KR: The sanctity of an artwork?

EJ: It’s mysticism. For instance, religion defines sex for us. So we have love and sex and those things are bouncing off the walls. Those things are just chaos. Religion acts to put parameters around those things. So we have romantic and sexual love within marriage. Because I don’t have religion--

KR: Art provides parameters?

EJ: Yes, provides parameters. It’s not just on the loose. It gives it meaning. It gives the act of making love meaning. I was testing this out- making love within the parameters of an artwork. The love and the act have been sanctioned.

KR: Can you expand on your idea of mysticism?

EJ: I’m really into the material world. As an artist I appreciate the material world. This is my stuff (Emily taps the table). The stuff that the world is made of. As a human on the earth the only world I know is the material world. Sex and love falls into that. With art or religion there is a relationship between this stuff and something greater. I’m trying to find those connections. I don’t know what they are and I don’t know what to believe in. I’m looking for order in the physical world and trying to access and make sense of things outside of this world that may or may not exist.

KR: While you are familiar with certain religions, you readily admit you are not well versed in many of those you take on: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. And you’ve been criticized about this and about the responsibility for artists to their audience.

EJ: The first part of Looking for the Institute reflects an ambivalence, or detachment. This is in fact my relationship to Islam, so that is my art. No, I don’t have a responsibility to research Islam. I can be cheap about religion if I want. I’m an artist. I can say and do whatever I want. But I'm not a cynic. I like religion. The video doesn't take a stance on Islam... because I don't have one (and even if I did, I don't necessarily think it would be worth sharing... actually, come to think of it, it is precisely my ignorance of the religion that I am communicating.) I am not a Muslim, but I am not hateful right-winger either. But I don't concern myself with defending the faith. Just as most people I know exercise little care when discussing Catholicism. It's not required of them. In fact, they might take pleasure in criticizing it (and given our current times, are free to do so). As educated liberals, we say that we defend freedom of expression and freedom of religion, but I don't feel free when discussing Islam. My artwork deals a lot with political correctness and taboos.

KR: I want to go back to responsibility. Are you saying as an artist you have none?

EJ: I just don’t make it my business to provide a moral directive for the audience.

KR: What are you trying to do?

EJ: Relieve people of a false social conscience.

KR: One of your most startling videos is My Local Story (2008).

EJ: That video is about an organization that provides homes for adults with mental handicaps. The video intends to evoke the mystery of such homes, the political correctness of the organization, the unusual behaviour and appearance of people with disabilities, and our fear of them.

KR: And you have first-hand experience with these kinds of homes…

EJ: I worked in one and I didn’t like this particular organization's mandate of "normalization". There are other better organizations. Jean Vanier, for example, started the L’Arche program. It’s something Vanier said about normality that interested me. Is normal something we do? Is that really what we should be encouraging these people to strive for? Are we all supposed to be mediocre, the same. What’s normal? I don’t know what normal is. My normal might not be very good. We’re trying to make these people step into our world, but we should be stepping into theirs.

KR: How long did you work there?

EJ: Almost two years. I quit my job at the Dalhousie Art Gallery for that job because I wanted to make money. It paid better. I wanted a back up skill- something outside of art or an art gallery. I felt so unemployable, like I didn’t have any skills. The job was tough but I learned a lot.

KR: I’ve also known you as a curator. How many shows have you curated?

EJ: One in Baltimore, one at Dalhousie University. A number of little shows over the years…

KR: There was one recent show in Halifax at the Khyber that I read about, a show that got a lot of attention…

EJ: Set for Life.

KR: How did that one come to be?

EJ: It was with one artist, Steph McNair. For a long time she talked about wanting to live inside a gallery. She’s an artist but doesn’t have a degree- or make a lot of art. She does a lot of drag, was a part of a late night Burlesque scene in Halifax for a number of years. She talked about living in a gallery. The Khyber had to cancel a show because they didn’t have money so there was an empty month. I thought it would be perfect. She had nowhere to live either! She was actually living at the Khyber. She was between apartments, had no money except the small fee they provided her.

KR: She was there for a week?

EJ: Yes. The landlords were kicking her out because they had to set up a show on the last day.

KR: Why do you think the show received as much attention as it did?

EJ: People liked it because it was accessible and fun. Playful. I think it’s also everything the artist wanted it to be.

KR: But it was also because of the financial situation that the Khyber is in…

EJ: The Khyber is downtown and you have this girl squatting in a sense. The Khyber organization itself is on the fringe of squatting in the building. The whole situation is so messed up.

KR: I always found that the Khyber was the perfect example of one of Richard Florida’s creative centers, whose ideas swept through the city when I was living there. I have some serious questions about his approach to cities, but if Halifax was really interested in having a viable arts center they would have supported the Khyber more.

EJ: I know, and it’s depressing. I have a stack of notes from talking to people all over the place. I’ve talked to many involved in the Khyber- the founders and people who have been there over the years. I’ve spent hours on the phone. I wanted to map the history of the Khyber from its first days. I can tell you that not one person has been unemotional about it.

KR: I want to now ask about another key part of your time in Halifax: the Fuller Terrace Fundamental Freedoms Lecture. How did the lecture series come about?

EJ: My friend Devin McCarthy and I wanted to see the Jared Taylor talk at Dalhousie University (this was in 2007; Jared Taylor advocates racialist theories in explaining sociological and economic problems). It was cancelled a second time because of protestors and security concerns. Devin made some comment like ‘we should just have it in our backyard’ because it couldn’t happen at the university. And I thought that was a good idea: yes, let’s do that. And of course we couldn’t have Jared Taylor and that would have been a little much. If the university couldn’t handle him with protestors than certainly my backyard would have been a vulnerable place. So that’s how it started. The backyard was the first idea. The lecture series wasn’t the first idea, the backyard was.

KR: The lecture series started in July of 2007. Who was the first speaker?

EJ: Peter March. I knew that I wanted him to speak because I'd admired him ever since I saw him on the news saying "I won't be silenced" about the Danish/Muslim cartoon he'd posted on his office door at St. Mary's University where he was a professor. I also liked Peter because he looked after Taylor in Halifax; they also got into a debate about racism in a private location after his lectures had been thwarted (you can see it on YouTube, but unfortunately Peter didn't do a great job of debating). Peter is not entirely a popular guy in Halifax, so we did get some negative feedback about having him as a lecturer.

KR: How was the turnout?

EJ: The turnout for Peter March was good, but certainly less than it was for the other speakers. A few friends told me that they would not be attending his lecture. We also got just a couple of angry emails about him. I would just remind the sender that although the lecture was open to the public, it was taking place in a private backyard. I hoped that this would deter any protestors that might want to bother us. I felt a little vulnerable sometimes having that many strangers in my backyard, at times arguing about touchy topics. But the backyard worked well because it made people more comfortable than they might feel in a lecture hall, while at the same time I think it made them more respectful because they were guests at my home in a sense.

KR: You've had a variety of speakers in the Lecture Series, from University Professors and authors to artists. Who were some of the others and what made you decide to choose whom you did? Do you have a certain criteria?

EJ: Sometimes we already had people in mind, and sometimes we asked around for ideas. We wanted people that would be a little controversial in either nature or in the topic that they'd speak on. Some of the speakers were Emmanuel Jannasch (professor at Dalhousie University School of Architecture), journalist Stephen Kimber, artist Emily Vey Duke and Nancie Erhard (assistant professor of Comparative Religious Ethics at Saint Mary’s University).
In most cases we would actually meet the lecturer for the first time when they showed up on the very night of their lecture. We made each of them a nice dinner before they went on. It was perfect because it added a social/personal element to the whole thing. It gave us the chance to relax after a long day of preparing, while it helped the lecturer get warmed up too before they went on, all while enjoying company in our kitchen which overlooked the backyard in which the lecture would took place. I noticed that each time there would be this moment toward the end of the meal when we'd take a peak out back and notice that the seats were filling up and then the lecturer would nervously look at the clock and throw back the rest of their wine.

KR: Why didn’t you have it at the Khyber or any of the other artist-run centers available?

EJ: I wouldn’t have wanted it at an ARC because I didn’t want to sit down with a committee. It was my idea. I wanted to organize it. If I brought it to an artist run center there would have to be a committee and we’d apply for a Canada Council grant. It would all become about money and the Board and it would take forever. I wanted to do it without applying for grants and I wanted to do it without any money. The whole ordeal took maybe $60 from our pocket money. The foldable chairs we borrowed from the North End Community Church down the street. It was about doing it independently of an organization. The whole idea was that it was something that had to happen outside of a university or organization. I didn’t want to deal with the bureaucratic aspect. For me, this idea can go anywhere. It goes with me. It goes with Vince or Devin (Vince Perez joined the lecture series in its second year). We can take it anywhere with us.

KR: I’ve written of you as an artist, writer, and curator but you do more than that. How would you describe your practice? Where does the stress lie?

EJ: The stress lies in the art. I'm an art worker.

Emily Jones is a Haligonian artist and art worker currently enrolled as a graduate student at the University of Chicago.