19/03/07 - NEW YORK DIARY

One man’s failure is another man’s work of art

SIMON HOUPT

New York can be a scary place, but the most ominous thing I’ve seen in the last few weeks consisted of a log. That was it: just a log (actually, even more prosaic: a section of a fallen telephone pole), maybe one and a half metres in length, suspended about two metres off the ground. And boy, did it give me the shivers.

If you’ve seen the droll 1996 Peter Lynch documentary Project Grizzly, you may have some sense of why it was so threatening. For logs are one of the many projectiles that collide with the quixotic North Bay outdoorsman Troy Hurtubise as he tests a homemade titanium-rubber-and-chain mail suit designed to withstand an attack from a grizzly bear.

Hurtubise had been obsessed with ursus arctos horribilis since 1984 when, then 20 years old, he was hiking through the backwoods of British Columbia and came face to face with a grizzly. The encounter left him shaken but determined to meet the bear he’d dubbed ‘the Old Man’ again, this time in a protective suit that would allow him to get close without being injured.

Lynch’s camera respectfully follows Hurtubise in a quest that consumed seven years and $150,000, as he fine tunes the contraption and then heads out to the Rockies with his buddies.

Alas, the suit is so heavy and awkward — he can barely walk even on the flat terrain of a North Bay doughnut shop parking lot — that he has to abandon it even before a grizzly materializes.

Quentin Tarantino sent a Charlie Rose end-of-year film roundtable into peals of laughter when he described the film — which none of the esteemed film critics had yet seen — and pronounced it “fantastic.” Three years ago, in an episode titled The Fat and the Furriest, The Simpsons sent Homer on a quest to build a bear-proof suit. And more than 220,000 YouTube viewers have checked out a goofy two-minute clip from the film that shows Troy testing his suit by being thrown off the Niagara Escarpment in Ontario, having bear-like bikers beat him with baseball bats and having a truck run into him at 50 km/h.

A couple of years ago the New York-based curator and artist Jean Barberis was visiting Montreal when he spotted some drawings inspired by the film. He got a copy and immediately saw its potential as a spur for artists, and earlier this month the show Grizzly Proof opened at the converted industrial space Flux Factory in Queens (the North Bay of New York) with a sold-out screening of Lynch’s film.

“I almost see Troy’s project as a work of art,” says Barberis. “It fails in its purpose, it’s not a viable grizzly-proof suit, you can’t walk around in it, so the only thing I see it as is an art project. A lot of the time art is about grandiose endeavours that have no end in them except being what they are, and that’s like Troy’s project.”

Hurtubise, who is normally something of a publicity hog, didn’t return phone calls to see how he felt about his life’s work being called a failure. Flux Factory had originally hoped to feature the grizzly suit in the show but, “Troy wanted $10,000 a day for it,” said Barberis. He added, dryly, “Our budget doesn’t come close to that.”

Lynch, who flew down for the screening, contributes his first work of non-photographic art, a camping tent wired with a five-minute soundtrack loop. Stick your head in and you’ll hear a wintry wind howling outside, then barking dogs off in the distance, and then the unnerving snort and snuff of a grizzly on the other side of the flap.

Last week Lynch said he’d drawn on the experience of his first night in the Rockies during shooting in 1995, when Troy’s whimsical project began to take on some unseen higher stakes. “There was a storm and there was something outside my tent, and my producer and I were sitting there — he had an axe and I think I had some kind of knife, and we were just going: What the hell is that out there? My imagination went into high voltage pretty fast.”

Lisa Dillin offers a different take with Bear Hug Sleeping Unit, a sleeping bag fitted with a bear head at the top that fits snuggly atop the face of the sleeper and is outfitted with a reassuring low growl.

Ian Montgomery has contributed a two-metre high origami ursus made of brown wrapping paper titled What it Takes to Fold a Giant Bear. A display shows the 24 required steps, so you too can try this at home.

In the back lounge I found my favourite piece in the show, a heavy duty foosball table made from scratch by the Brooklyn artist Chris Hackett and the transplanted Torontonian Eleanor Lovinsky. Instead of rival soccer teams, the players are miniature grizzlies and men wearing Troy’s space-age grizzly-proof suit. The controls are about chest height, making the entire game more suited to be played by a bear than humans.

It seemed impolite not to play, so Barberis took the Troy controls and I took the grizzly’s side in a game that quickly took on the same dimensions of bottomless time that Troy and his friends endure during the film’s final ill-fated stakeout in the Rockies. Barberis-as-Troy and I-as-bear stalked the elusive ball and each other from one end of the playing field to the other until finally I scored after about 10 minutes. We decided to play only up to 2, and Barberis scored the next couple of goals. Maybe I took it easy on him, I’m not sure. It just seemed that Troy deserved to finally win a round.

Rueters News on Grizzly Proof

DIRECT LINK TO VIDEO

Tucked away in an industrial section of Long Island City, New York, an art Gallery called the ‘Flux Factory’ is launching an unusual art exhibit.

‘Grizzly Proof’ draws together works from over 20 artists inspired the film ‘Project Grizzly, a documentary about an eccentric Canadian who builds a bear proof suit after reportedly being attacked by a Grizzly bear.

The 1996 documentary by the Toronto based filmmaker Peter Lynch is a profile of metal worker Troy Hurtubise, who survived a Grizzly bear attack in 1984 and then spends years building and testing a bear attack proof suit of armor.

Lynch says his documentary has become a sort of cult classic.

SOUNDBITE: Peter Lynch, Filmmaker, saying (English):

“Project Grizzly, it’s one of those things where it’s got nine lives, first it gets discovered by a famous filmmaker like Tarantino and then it gets spoofed on ‘The Simpsons’ and then all of a sudden some artists in Queens, New York are doing a tribute to your film and it’s very surreal, it’s very moving as well.”

The show features 17 works of art, ranging from sculpture, to drawing, to mixed media.

Lynch said he was ‘overwhelmed’ that his documentary has managed to strike a cord with so many people, especially outside of Canada.

Katie Juhl, Reuters.

March 9, 7:54 AM

Grizzly Proof Exhibit Comes To Flux Factory

Katerina Lanfranco’s bear diorama.

By JENNIFER POLLAND

Jean Barberis, the head curator at Flux Factory, was casually browsing through a thrift shop in Montreal when he stumbled on “a childish drawing of a grizzly bear fighting a robot.” Intrigued, he asked the clerk about the drawing. That led him to “Project Grizzly,” a film that illustrates one man’s quest to conquer nature.

Peter Lynch’s comedic documentary “Project Grizzly” tells the story of Troy Hurtubise, a man who survived a vicious attack by a grizzly bear in the Canadian Rockies, and embarked on an obsessive mission to create a “grizzly proof” suit of armor. The film shows Hurtubise testing his suit in various violent ways, with ramming trucks, flying logs and baseball bats. After a series of tests, Hurtubise heads back to grizzly country for an adventure that naturally ends in failure.

“The documentary is a really funny piece of film,” Barberis said. “It shows Troy as a type of Don Quixote figure, who is obsessed with finding a way to defeat nature, but, of course, he inevitably fails.”

“Project Grizzly” has grown into a huge phenomenon; it has even been parodied on “The Simpsons.” Barberis was so taken by the film that he decided to curate Grizzly Proof, an art exhibition at Flux Factory that is inspired by Lynch’s film. In this show, Barberis invited more than 20 artists from around the world to create their own responses to the documentary. Artists were asked to take on the age-old theme of man versus nature, which resulted in an eclectic and dynamic range of paintings, sculptures and multimedia artworks.

Katerina Lanfranco created a diorama-style sculptural installation that was inspired by the dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History. In this 15-by-4-foot glass-encased installation, Lanfranco displays a 7-foot sculpture of a hybrid-bear—with a longer tail, horns and abnormal growths—in its “natural” habitat.

“This piece is a critique on us wanting to contain and control nature,” Lanfranco said. “Troy is obsessed with using super technology to retaliate against the grizzly bear. It almost becomes like a psychotic desire to control nature, and in the end it is a very pathetic and desperate mission.”

Barberis said that Lanfranco’s piece is “cartoonish” yet “scientific.” Lanfranco puts the artist in the position of scientist by “re-blending two aesthetics that are completely different,” Barberis said.

Like Lanfranco, each artist interprets “Project Grizzly” in his or her own way. The film’s director, Lynch, even created an installation for this exhibition: a multimedia installation that draws on humans’ fear of nature by recreating the threatening sounds of the wild.

“The film is interesting and inspiring, and I think that resonated with the artists,” Barberis said. “I think that it is a very fun and playful show. It’s sort of unique in that everyone is responding to a single object, and there is an enigmatic element about that.”

Grizzly Proof will run March 9 to April 12 at Flux Factory in LIC. The show will kick off Friday at 6:30 p.m. with a screening of “Project Grizzly,” followed by a Q & A session with director Peter Lynch at the New Center Cinema in Sunnyside. For more information call (718) 707-3362 or visit www.fluxfactory.org.

Time Out New York / Issue 597: March 8–14, 2007

Kodiak moment

Eleven years after its release, Peter Lynch’s man-versus-bear documentary inspires artists at Flux Factory.

By Dan Avery

When Canadian documentary filmmaker Peter Lynch completed work on Project Grizzly in 1996, he knew he had something special on his hands. Detailing Troy Hurtubise’s quest to create the ultimate anti–grizzly bear armor, the film taps into something primal— capturing Hurtubise’s struggle to tame personal demons even as he shields himself from furry predators. Since its release, Project Grizzly has garnered a fan base that includes Quentin Tarantino and Matthew Barney (it even earned the Holy Grail of pop culture— a reference on The Simpsons). More than a decade later, Project Grizzly has resurfaced as the inspiration for “Grizzly Proof,” a new exhibition of bear-themed installations at Flux Factory (the film will screen before the show’s official opening on Friday 9). Lynch chatted with TONY from his Toronto home about Grizzly’s enduring appeal, his contribution to the Flux Factory show and why a certain comedic commentator has it in for our ursine friends.

Where did the idea for Project Grizzly come from?

I had been doing films about people who map their own territory. A producer asked if I wanted to do something on this guy up north who was working on a bear-proof suit. After meeting Troy and seeing how charismatic he was, I knew it’d translate well into a story.

Is Hurtubise a serious inventor, a raconteur or a humanitarian?

He’s all of it. There’s a part of him that’s P.T. Barnum, but there’s also a Matthew Barney kind of performance art to it. Troy sees himself doing something to benefit humanity, but there’s a real gap between his vision and reality that’s fascinating. I mean, the chest plate is titanium but then another part is just covered in gaffer tape. It’s like an inflated hockey uniform.

What are you contributing to “Grizzly Proof”?

It’s a tent in a dark room, lit only by a Coleman lamp. You’ll hear these primordial sounds getting louder until they completely envelop you and you feel this physical presence bearing down on you. I’m fascinated by the “scared white man in the forest” experience.

Have you seen Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man?

Yes, I loved it. I think there’s something theatrical about both Troy and Timothy Treadwell. They’re both sort of addressing something bigger than the bears. Troy said his grizzlies were tougher than Treadwell’s, though. “His are a lot better fed,” were his exact words.

Why does Stephen Colbert hate bears so much?

I don’t know—maybe it makes him feel safer in a dangerous world? For me, I’m in awe of them. The grizzly is under siege by man. It’s the bear that needs the suit.

How does it feel to know your film is still so popular?

It’s surreal, but also affirming. It makes me feel alive in the world to know I created something that really resonates with people.

Project Grizzly screens Fri 9 at 6:30pm at New Center Cinema.