Forget the Art, Let's Party! Exhibition Essay
Since its inception in 1974, Eyelevel has been a site of experimentation, resistance, and reinvention. The artist-run model itself was founded on the principles of artist autonomy and collective organization—a counter to commercial galleries and conventional institutions. Yet, as artist-run centres mature, they face the paradox of institutionalization themselves—risking the very autonomy they were founded to protect unless they can remain critically self-aware.
In 2006, when Eyelevel had just celebrated it’s 30th anniversary, then-director Eryn Foster asked how an artist-run centre might not only survive, but thrive. Foster put forth a project in which Eyelevel’s members submitted work to be placed in a time capsule held by the Killam Memorial Library Archives. Eighteen years later, as Eyelevel reached its 50th anniversary, the time capsule was unearthed and its contents shared in a poignant reflection on the passage of time, the evolution of artist-run culture, and the enduring struggles of alternative spaces.
In December 2024, the time capsule’s contents were presented in an exhibition titled Forget the Art, Let’s Party! at Hermes Art Gallery. This exhibition served as both a retrospective and a speculative gesture, re-imagining the vibrant histories and potential future of Eyelevel, and encouraging reflection on the shifting conditions of artist-run culture, urban transformation, and collective memory.
In 2013, Eyelevel made a decisive move to become a spaceless gallery, choosing fluidity over fixed infrastructure. This pivotal shift not only redefined Eyelevel’s trajectory but also underscored a growing reality: the erosion of affordable cultural spaces in Halifax and beyond. Eleven years later, in 2024, as funding dwindles and real estate pressures mount, Eyelevel’s spacelessness is no longer just a strategic choice; it is also a condition imposed by economic and political realities.
Forget the Art, Let’s Party! grappled with these circumstances head-on. Set against the backdrop of Halifax’s ongoing housing crisis, the exhibition implicitly addressed broader questions about space, gentrification, and survival. In a city where artists are being displaced at alarming rates and independent cultural spaces are being replaced by luxury developments, the exhibition was both a celebration and a reckoning. It asked: What does it mean to remember when the spaces that hold those memories are vanishing? What does it mean to party when gathering itself is becoming a privilege?
Embracing the irreverence and DIY ethos of artist-run culture, the exhibition confronted these challenges by celebrating the joy of “establishing, maintaining, and enriching the communities that would come in and outside of the center” (Foster, 2024). Even the exhibition’s title, Forget the Art, Let’s Party!, signaled a shift away from viewing art as a static object on display, instead emphasizing art (and thus artist-run spaces) as lived experience, social engagement, and community building. At its core, the exhibition was an exercise in radical social practice: rather than freezing history in time, it reactivated the past as a means of imagining the future.
This reactivation extended beyond concept—it was deeply felt in the work of participating artists and members, who explored the beauty of the mundane, expressed their hopes and fears for the future, and documented the spaces around them that they knew would not last forever. Their reflections make clear that memory, in this context, is not static. Affirming poet Seamus Heaney’s conception of memory as “the ghost-life that hovers over some of the furniture of our lives”, the once buried artworks in this exhibition did not simply reappear; they re-entered a conversation, animated by contemporary artists and audiences who engaged with them in new ways. This act of unearthing was not just about looking back - it was a collective, participatory process that redefined how we remember.
When reflecting on opening the time capsule, Eyelevel’s current co-director Cinthia Arias Auz noted that many of the anxieties presented by the artists “feel very true and very relevant to this time.” The notes and reflections accompanying each work demonstrated that “the future has no more powerful anchor than the past” (Carlos Fuentes, Remember the Future), and served not only to archive what had been, but invited speculation on what could be. What forms might artist-run culture take in the decades ahead? How can we sustain radical, collective practices in an increasingly precarious landscape? What will remain, and what will be forgotten? As an exercise in future-making, this exhibition reinforced that archives are not just a tool for preserving the past—but also a means of shaping what is yet to come.
Ultimately, Forget the Art, Let’s Party was not a conclusion but a continuation—an assertion that artist-run culture is most sustainable when it embraces reflection and reinvention. The exhibition insisted that history is something we do, not just something we look back on, serving as a reminder that artist-run culture is not just about the spaces we build but about the relationships, ideas, and collective actions that sustain them. In an era where the survival of artist-run spaces remains uncertain, one thing is clear: remembering is an act of resistance, speculation is a tool for survival, and—above all—the party must go on.