Ingrid Baxter (b. 1939) is a conceptual artist and co-founder of N.E. Thing Co. or NETCO in 1966, along with her then-husband Iain Baxter. Officially incorporated in 1969, the prolific and influential NETCO humorously appropriated and subverted the corporate paradigm in a variety of projects that comment on art and art making and its socio-historical context. The first Canadian artists to be featured on the cover of Art in America (May-June 1969), NETCO dissolved in 1978. Known for incorporating arts and commerce together in her practice, following the dissolution of N.E. Thing Co. she went on to found Deep Cove Canoe and Kayak Centre in Deep Cove, North Vancouver, which she currently operates. Baxter holds a BA in piano performance from the University of Idaho in 1960, and an MEd from the University of British Columbia in 1981.
Hannah Dubois is a filmmaker and photographer based on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Səl̓ílwətaʔ (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations, otherwise known as Vancouver. Dubois received her BFA in Film Production from Simon Fraser University and works across many mediums such as film, photography, fine art and ceramics. Her practice serves as a study into the complexities of relationships and communities while remaining rooted in her own lived experiences.
The Crane Revisited … Again is a short video of Ingrid Baxter attempting a synchronized swimming move that she was once adept at when she was a competitive practitioner. Shot by her granddaughter Hannah Dubois, the video re-enacts a performance she undertook in the 1970s which was itself an attempt to remember the same move. With the time span in this video of 47 years, Ingrid Baxter tests the relationship between mind memory and body memory, and of re-enacting the re-enacted.
The first re-enactment was from 1972, when N.E. Thing Co. (a collective founded by Iain and Ingrid Baxter 1966-78) contributed the work Retro-Aesthetically Executing the Crane to Lucy Lippard’s exhibition, c. 7,500. For the work, Ingrid Baxter wrote, “With a Retro-aesthetic frame of mind I executed a Crane. This is a movement in synchronized swimming which I used to perform perfectly. It has been ten years since I have executed this skill.”
In 2018, curator Fabien Pinaroli invited Ingrid Baxter to take part in Re: Celebrating the Body, an exhibition that revisited N.E. Thing Co. For the exhibition, Baxter decided to once again revisit the Crane, this time with her granddaughter filming the attempt. Of the process, Baxter writes, “I thought that, in the spirit of the show, I could challenge myself to attempt to perform the Crane once again. By doing this, it would reveal what there is in both my mind and my body memory. In the spirit of the purity of this experience, I did not practice, read about nor “Google” the Crane. … Hannah Dubois and her film crew from Simon Fraser University (were) ready to film my efforts. I swam to my position for filming and began with a floating layout position. It felt near perfect. Now a ballet leg … OK, but not as straight or as high as I would like it to be. My toes were pointed but aging had reshaped by toes a bit. Not as pretty … Now where does my body go? I was hoping that my kinesthetic memory would kick in and take over … but it didn’t. I somehow rolled back to an inverted position … rotated … and came back to a good layout position. (Good enough that the two lifeguards said that it looked pretty good.) I knew that I had not executed the Crane as well as it should be, but only parts of it.”
Ingrid Baxter and Hannah Dubois’s video The Crane Revisited … Again (2019) plays daily between 9 am and 9 pm through 2 May, 2024, on the Belkin’s Outdoor Screen.
Ingrid Baxter (b. 1939) is a conceptual artist and co-founder of N.E. Thing Co. or NETCO in 1966, along with her then-husband Iain Baxter. Officially incorporated in 1969, the prolific and influential NETCO humorously appropriated and subverted the corporate paradigm in a variety of projects that comment on art and art making and its socio-historical context. The first Canadian artists to be featured on the cover of Art in America (May-June 1969), NETCO dissolved in 1978. Known for incorporating arts and commerce together in her practice, following the dissolution of N.E. Thing Co. she went on to found Deep Cove Canoe and Kayak Centre in Deep Cove, North Vancouver, which she currently operates. Baxter holds a BA in piano performance from the University of Idaho in 1960, and an MEd from the University of British Columbia in 1981.
Hannah Dubois is a filmmaker and photographer based on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Səl̓ílwətaʔ (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations, otherwise known as Vancouver. Dubois received her BFA in Film Production from Simon Fraser University and works across many mediums such as film, photography, fine art and ceramics. Her practice serves as a study into the complexities of relationships and communities while remaining rooted in her own lived experiences.