You Comfy? Interview at the Gallery

Some back story

On a last minute tip from a friend I applied to the Vancouver Art Gallery for a part time Animateur position. That’s VAG code for tour guide. I don’t particularly need the work, nor the pay cut, but well: I like working in a gallery, I’d get to directly apply my degree and distilling complex information to the public is actually kind of fun. Usually.

The Presentation

I showed up at 10am today with five other applicants and as many VAG administrators on the fourth floor of the gallery. It was easy to pick me out: I was the only who had a shaved…face. Like my Art History degree and position at the Maltwood Gallery before, apparently the cultural management sector is still pretty high on the women-to-guy ratio.
I wore my slightly retro nerdcore sneakers, khaki slacks, button-downed collared white shirt, khaki blazer and I even put a little bit of the once-a-year gel in my hair (there were free samples of Fructis hair products at the bike race last week). Under the arms: my laptop case (with laptop and file folder) and Old Spice deodorant (which Scott had left at my apartment). I sweat a lot at the best of times.
The others were dressed semi-casual in sleeveless shirts, skirts and sandals. Exception: the six foot blonde German exchange student in the trim black business suit who lined up beside me; she was interviewing for a four week work experience spot and was not seen again.
Anyways, my five minute presentation, which I sweated a lot through, was pretty good, relatively speaking, except for the fact that I went horizontal, feet first, with a simultaneously alluring, ridiculous and cocky look on my mug before the other applicants and judges, not once but like, at least three times.

I made this pose a number of times during my interview.
Oh boy it’s all coming back to me…
I get an idea 30 seconds before my turn and actually act on it. I get out of my seat and stand in front of everyone, in silence, for 10 seconds. I stroke my chin and try to look like Wes Anderson or some such auteur (more like Ed Wood). Then a “flash of insight” and I actually ask one of the other applicants to please stand up. I even tapped her shoulder. What have I started now, some carny magician audience participation gig? I’m surprised I didn’t ask to borrow her watch while brandishing a hankie and hammer.
I do ask if I can borrow her chair, though.
And then I sit down on it, facing the semi-circle. She (the now Chairless One) starts to look for another seat. I stop her.
“Please keep standing.”
I even get comfortable in her chair: cross my legs, look around the room. I slouch. I consider out loud, “Oh ya, that’s better. Way better than standing.”
I was going to let this eat up another 10 seconds until Standing Applicant asks if she’s giving the presentation now.
So I return ownership of the chair to her and grab three more (unoccupied chairs) and slide into reclining pose No. 1. I think No. 2 and No. 3 were floor-based. Where’s all this going?
I point to the chairs and then to my ass. “My presentation is on these.”
The rest of it carried on as so, the following being my actual cue cards and images.

I had eight typeset cue cards and seven images. Download the RTF of the cue cards, if you’d like.

Some Presentation Considerations

I debated cue cards and visual cues. But the joys of inkjet printing (thanks Chie!) onto scraps of sketchbook paper at 3am last night were too fun to pass up. Actually, I’m serious. They also beat actually writing a presentation. So fuck it, if you’re too lazy to memorize your topic just go all out during the interview.
I decide I’ll draw attention to the cue cards.
Slap! onto the chair beside me. “Alright, done with Ancient Egypt, on to the Greeks and Romans.”
Slap! “Whohoo, we’re in the Middle Ages, like 500-1500 AD.”
I almost went through with a Mitch Hedberg technique I learned last night while procrastinating, whereby you mumble through a review of all your notes at the end of the show to see if you missed anything and to like, get a few more laughs.
Not sure if this was worse, but all the other applicants (with one exception) seemed to do their presentations off single-spaced, double-sided, 10pt research papers. Everyone presented on a 20th C. artist and one of his pieces.
My visual cues are images I stole off Google and Grove Dictionary of Art, all a poor 72ppi and worse, all copyright watermarks, all jagged and jpeggy. That hurt me, to be so half-assed in the image department. But they aren’t too too bad, and I hand them out at key points in the lecture. In the end they were probably not needed, were merely glanced at, considering this audience has sat through more than their share of slide lectures.
And that was my primary consideration, that forked path I had to choose from for this interview. Who is my audience today? Is it the VAG Admins? Do I want to demonstrate some Art History prowess? I wrote (but didn’t share) Le Corbusier on one cue card. I almost used BCE and CE instead of BC and AD. The tip of my tongue was ripe with the academic juice of hegemony, cultural safety valve, gender, constructed and other ivory tower terminology.
But I kept my cool. I played the fool. My audience is not Academia with a capital A. It’s the tourists with Orcas on their t-shirts, the Korean exchange students, the first years. It’s me: I don’t want to hear this stuff when I’m on a VAG tour.

Current Tips

I had some other tips in mind before I went in. If I forgot to incorporate them in today’s show, I hope to in future ones:

• Raise questions and allow audience to answer or make their own conclusions.
• Be forthcoming about the allowance and encouragement of differing interpretations
• Cover the main points (intersperse them throughout the presentation so as not to bore?)
• You can’t cover everything in 5 minutes
• If one physical artefact to show, don’t show it right away
• What does the object say about the larger picture
• Humour, have some
• Narrative! Everyone loves a story. Juicy rumours, tidbits of bio

Future Tips

Some notes I jotted down during other people’s presentations:

• Incorporate a personal story
• Original artefact: one applicant had a first printing of an artist’s manifesto, or similar. I immediately woke up and became intrigued. Awe factor. It’s also like that extra tipping point, like you’re treating that particular tour group special, giving them something extra.
• Canadian content
• Relate for the public: to money, or a timeline. One presenter defined “artists’ oeuvre” as running in peaks and valleys, where the peaks mean the work is worth big bucks now
• Start with the basic technical details, i.e. formal aspects of a work(s)
• Don’t do abrupt name-dropping of obscure Dadaist and other artists
• Personalize the story to an individual artist. My additional advice is Careful the autuer trap, but basically everyone likes stories around an individual

On that last point an applicant presented a piece by Duchamp. While many of the points above were not followed, she did tell this one story about the artist: Duchamp was famous for travelling without any luggage. He merely stuck a tooth brush in his breast pocket and wore two pairs of underwear.
If I get nothing else out of this stress-fest today I have that image of Duchamp, carefree with a toothbrush and extra undies. If nothing else I’d want my tour groups to come away with just one snippet as good as that.
Update, August 1, 2006: Just got a call from the VAG; I didn’t get the job. Hmmm…
* Come hither being a reference to the development of the sofa (chaise lounge) during the renaissance, whereby said chair design encouraged lounging and flirtation. Serious!