Labour Day Shenanigans: A Site-Specific Journey of Dubious Destination

In an effort to catch some of the Labour Day goings-on of the Cuban-Hamiltonian ReMix Institute Phase II, I set out yesterday morning, perhaps still a bit bleary around the edges from a quick weekend retreat to visit friends in the middle of nowhere, to Dundurn Castle and its rather expansive Park.

As I had attempted to outline in last week’s post, ReMix had planned a series of performances and bus-based activities coinciding with Hamilton’s annual Labour Day parade and picnic. The latter parts of the day also cut rather close to the Labour Day Classic that afternoon, meaning that I had a limited window of opportunity for art-viewing before gearing up for the big game (priorities, don’t you know).

Something, however, that I think often goes under-discussed in contemporary art is the problem presented by off-site projects, which can be notoriously difficult to locate with a fashionable scarcity of information or else are deliberately left obscure in the vain expectation that these works are to be “discovered” in some faux-organic manner. In fact, even some of Glasgow’s more prolific galleries were about as easy to locate as the darkest, dirtiest speakeasy back when I lived there, but the wide-open grounds of Dundurn Park present their own challenge to the semi-informed art viewer on the look-out for Cuban-flavoured art interventions.

The most notable obstacle was the vast array of human activity surrounding the post-parade picnic of unionized revelers complete with children and pets. I lingered for a moment over this bouncy castle and the ever-watchful Che-shirted man on the other side - perhaps the bouncy castle was a comment on the real thing further up the hill? But then I recalled that the visiting Cuban artists aren’t particularly fond of the pop-commodification of their controversial communist forebears, and Che-shirted man walked off with his daughter and I was compelled to hunt for the elusive art elsewhere.

After a circuit of the real, non-bouncy castle revealed nothing, I was drawn to this mysterious structure set further back in the grounds. Experience told me that its isolation and its peculiar shape were promising signs of art. I’ve had occasion in recent times to think about the similarities between the artist-critic and Philip Marlowe’s fictional cynical-detective lifestyle, and this experience was doing little to shake that particular belief.

I approached the strange building and found the front door shut, the interior dark. I also discovered a flight of stairs leading down the side of the building towards the back. Because stairs to the unknown rank right up there with rickety, should-be-condemned elevators as clear pathways to hidden art installations, I followed them down to a small grassed area surrounded by heavy foliage, a space strangely removed from the rest of the grounds.

There was a narrow beaten path through the overgrown shrubs and wildflowers leading towards what was likely the harbour, but even by artistic standards this seemed an unlikely pathway for any sort of art. I also found a small stray cat and while it was very friendly and profoundly interested in rubbing off copious amounts of fur onto my trousers, I didn’t think its performance quite qualified as art.

By the time I managed to extricate myself from the cat and climb my way back up around the mysterious structure along its stair-free side, proper signs of art had emerged at the front of the building - a curator with a camera is a pretty strong indicator that you’re in the right place. The open doorway revealing milling artists and a video projection being set up was also quite promising. I made a mental note on the possible connection between petting a cat and making art interventions manifest, then moved inside.

As it turns out, the mysterious looks-like-art structure is Dundurn Castle’s cockpit, a turn of phrase that had baffled me when I first read it in the ReMix publicity materials (it had put me in mind of airplanes) but quite plainly refers to the building’s purported use as a cockfighting arena - the historical signage inside the building insists that no official records of cockfights exist while coyly asserting that the structure complies exactly with traditional English cockfighting standards. In its present form, it’s a remarkable space with some absolutely stunning wood-beam construction in the dome, nifty trap doors and weathered concrete walls that, while not providing an ideal projection situation, do lend an interesting texture to the looped video of figurative combative gestures.

The video itself prefaced the performance pending in the grounds outside the cockpit, in which Fleur-Ange Lamothe and Andrew McPhail donned haphazard costumes and enacted a slow-motion cockfight that somehow bled away all the expected physicality of the real thing - less scratching and pecking and a lot more interpretive dance, though I have to express a certain approval of McPhail’s red rubber glove and feather boa. And I would have to maintain that only with art can the question of seeking out a cockpit have such a sensible yet utterly surreal answer.

Also, the Ti-Cats kicked some serious Argonaut ass to the tune of a 34-15 victory. All in all, it was a good day.

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