Glenn Alteen

Individual

Roles

Curator, Producer, Writer

Roles at grunt

Founder (1984), Program Director (1984 – 2020), Curator (1984 – 2020)

Biography

Glenn Alteen is a Vancouver-based curator, producer, writer, and past Program Director of grunt gallery (1984-2020). He has worked extensively with performance art and was cofounder of LIVE Performance Biennial (1999, 2001, 2003, and 2005). Alteen has published art criticism and cultural commentary for the past 40 years. His writing has been recently published in Other Places—Reflections on Media Art in Canada (MANO, 2019), Wordless (grunt, 2019), and Unceded Territories (MOA, 2016). Alteen has been involved in archival projects as a producer of websites including Beat Nation (grunt gallery, 2009), Ruins in Process -Vancouver Art in the 60s (Belkin Gallery, UBC and grunt gallery, 2009), Activating The Archive (grunt gallery, 2011), Taking Advantage—The Mainstreeters (Presentation House and grunt gallery, 2014), and Wordless (grunt gallery, 2019). As a curator, Alteen has produced performances and exhibitions including An Indian Act Shooting the Indian Act—Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun (grunt and Locus+, 1997-98), Ablakela—Dana Claxton (Western Front and grunt, 2001), and Victorious—Rebecca Belmore (grunt, HIVE, and National Arts Centre, 2006, 2007). In 2018, Alteen was awarded the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Art for Outstanding Contribution to Contemporary Practice.

Vancouver Art Gallery, 2021

Collection

grunt gallery Programming Archive (Curator)

Related programs

Request Concert (Curator)
Request Concert (Director)
The Human Voice (Curator)
Trace Elements: Current Assemblage (Curator)
Grunt Or Artspeak (Curator)
New Work (Curator)
Red Worker (Curator)
The Saliva Milkshake (Curator)
The Saliva Milkshake (Director)
Works (Curator)
nikamon ohci askiy: songs because of the land (Curator)
HIVE 2 (Curator)
Jesus Christ Abstracts (Curator)
Drawings for Orbis Pictus (Curator)
Redevelopment: An Intervention Represented (Curator)
Unforgettable Ancestors (Curator)
Two Walls (Curator)
Discourse of a Traveller (Curator)
Soul Tone Poem (Curator)
Yellow Cedar Songs (Curator)
PLAY (Artist)
A Brown Day (Curator)
Cultural Colonialism and other Haphazard Polemics (Curator)
Alter Pieces: a painting installation (Curator)
Perfect Bound: Bookworks by Eight Artists (Curator)
Flowers (Curator)
Throwing Prayers into the Abyss (Curator)
Locus+ (Curator)
Collection (Curator)
Touched by the Tears of a Butterfly (Curator)
Taste This; The Beggars Feast (Curator)
Personal Fables (Curator)
hibernacula (Curator)
The Mattering Map Project (Curator)
An Orgy of Pansemics (Curator)
Swell (Curator)
Mindsexpansion (Curator)
Wildflowers and Weeds (Curator)
Photographs (Curator)
Butterfly Eyes: Recent Drawings (Curator)
New Voices in First Nation Performance (Curator)
A Sea (Curator)
By Chisel and Mold (Curator)
Audition Tapes (Curator)
The Nova Library (Curator)
Life in Occupied Palestine (Curator)
The Last Sunrise (Curator)
First Nations Performance Series (Curator)
INDIANacts: aboriginal performance art (Director)
Recent Work: Paintings and Ships (Curator)
Brewery Creek (Curator)
Bad Boys: Portraits of Mediated Performance (Curator)
Unanswered Questions (Curator)
Statistics (Curator)
The Blood of the Lambs (Curator)
Untitled (Curator)
Untitled (Curator)
Secret Kitchen (Curator)
Madness and Civilization (Curator)
Untitled (Curator)
First Nations Performance Series Cabaret (Curator)
Re-Creation of a Dream (Curator)
I walk. I remember (Curator)
White Shame (Curator)
Nanabush: The Trickster Bottoms Out (Curator)
Age of Iron - A Loss of Way (Curator)
Tree of Consumption: A Performance in the Round (Curator)
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Ghostkeeper (Curator)
The Pigeon's Club (Curator)
Eraser Street – Hubris, Humility and Humanity in the Making of a City! (Curator)
Diptychs (Curator)
análekta (Curator)
Four Faces of the Moon (Curator)
Tomorrow, Tomorrow. (Curator)
Contingent Bodies (Curator)
Technical Problem (Curator)
30th Anniversary (Curator)
Ghost Spring (Curator)
The Blue Cabin (Curator)
March of the Monarch (How to Fly a Tank) (Curator)
Strident Aesthetic. Towards a new liberation. (Curator)
An Exploration of Resilience and Resistance (Curator)
March 5, 1819 (Curator)
Journey to Kaho'olawe (Curator)
nindinawemaganidog (all of my relations) (Curator)
A study in restraint, nanlaban (Curator)
Artist Talk / Off Guard (Curator)
Chicago Performance Art Series Cabaret (Emcee)
Vancouver Performance Art Series (Curator)
Queer City: The Queer Series and The Two Spirit Series (Curator)
Sundogs: A Dramatic Reading (Curator)
Untitled; a new work in progress (Curator)
Inertia (Curator)
Words of Wisdom (Curator)
Halfbred Series (Curator)
Halfbred Series (Artist)
Bisexual Cabaret (Artist)
LIVE Biennial of Performance Art 2003 (Moderator)
Performance Network Symposium (Panel Participant)
LIVE at the End of the Century (Curator)
Theories and Hybridities (Moderator)
LIVE Biennial of Performance Art 2005 (Curator)
Rewind (Artist)
Wah-Q (Curator)
A Concept Over Another Concept (Curator)
Surrey Metal (Curator)
Vancouver Video (Curator)
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Palimpsest (Curator)
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Wordless: The Performance Art of Rebecca Belmore (Producer)
Altered (Curator)
Pissing in a River (Patti Smith) / Put on Your Best Art School Black and Your Best Abstract Expression / Mary Blue and other poems / Id in E Minor / The Ambassador of Sleep (Curator)
Vancouver Performance Poets (Curator)
grunt Show (Curator)
Masque of the Red Death (Director)