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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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Top ten art lists for 2003 are gathered together here. Thanks folks!
From Better to Have Loved, by Judith Merril and Emily Pohl-Weary, Between the Lines, Toronto, 2002. pp.237
"Somehow it is hard to write this. I don't mind talking about sex, which is important, or personal love, much more important, or love for space and adventure, which many people think is childish or "escapist" or even "reactionary"; but I am oddly shy about proclaiming that love for humanity and passionate social anger that is called idealist ideaology."
If you don't have cable, go here for some great video clips from the Daily Show. Thanks to dave for the link. Unfortunately, you have to sit through car ads before the clips. If you are like me with no tolerance for such things, hit the link, go get a snack, and come back for the video. Or skip it altogether. After all, it's just TV.
Guest Top Ten
Do you have your own 2003 top ten art list to post? email it to me at smblog@sympatico.ca and I'll post it here. Or click on the comment link below and post it yourself.
Paola's top 10 (links by SM)
- Michael Bittermann (Netherlands) talking at digifest about the hyperbody research group (Oosterhuis Associates) and e-motive architecture.
- Talking to Steve Mann on the phone (he is a clever sponge - this is a term I picked up from Dutch architect Kas Oosterhuis) about his ideas around de-consiousness.
- The Butterfly Effect - choreographers Petr Zuska, Shawn Hounsell, Jiri Kylian - 3 contemporary dance works premiered at Narodni divadlo, Prague.
- A hypnotic 20 minute or so video by a young British artist that repeated the phrase "you're no good" shown at the Venice Biennale (I don't know the artist's name - if someone knows what I'm talking about, please tell me, it now feels like a really hot dream). (I think it might be these guys. - ed)
- The Japan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale for an eclectic curation of a short video, a sculpture light-show, and what may otherwise pass as trash.
- Sheila Butler's Medusa Mum and Sally McKay's Miss Mouse for Girls and Guns.
- Julie Voyce all the time. (I can't find a good link for Julie Voyce! its a shocker - help me out! - ed)
- Bill Buxton talking at the Registered Graphic Designers Conference about the future of personal information within the urban landscape (architecture) and specifically of the capacity to project information in public and private space using a wrist watch within 5 years.
- Patrizio Davila's slick "gumba" photo series. (ditto on Davila link - ed)
- Compagnie Marie Chouinard's "Chorale" dance choreography coming so dangerously close to dance video or over the top fuck-up, premiered at Harbourfront.
Guest Top Ten
Do you have your own 2003 top ten art list to post? email it to me at smblog@sympatico.ca and I'll post it here. Or click on the comment link below and post it yourself.
Top Ten Art Events 2003
by Tino
- CANZINE (MOST FUN)
- TTC STREET CAR INSTALLATION - BLACK OUT (SPOOKIEST)
- THE SADDAM CAPTURE VIDEOS - US ARMY/CIA (MOST BULLSHITTY)
- CITY BEAUTIFICATION ENSEMBLE - POST AND RING PROJECT (MOST BEAUTIFUL)
- WEDGE GALLERY - JAMEL SHABAZZ: BACK IN THE DAYS (COOLEST)
- WORLD PRESS PHOTO - BCE PLACE (MOST GRIPPING)
- TOKYO DOLL (MOST EXOTIC)
- ART ATTACK II - PUBLIC SPACE COMMITEE (MOST INSPIRING)
- CRITICAL MASS VS. TORONTO POLICE FORCE - HALLOWEEN (MOST TICKETS)
- TING - THE MOVE-OUT - SAM HIGGS (SURREALEST)
Guest Top Ten
Do you have your own 2003 top ten art list to post? email it to me at smblog@sympatico.ca and I'll post it here. Or click on the comment link below and post it yourself.
Terrible Ten Art Stars Virtual Names
by Andrew James Paterson
- Vita Iconic
- Yoke No
- Damn Hirstute
- Guide Millinery
- Julian Schnozzle
- Pipilotti Wrist
- Van Goth
- Pieta Mondrian
- Jackson Police
- Baronet Newsman
Wow - we got mentioned in the National Post! (more detail/discussion soon). Welcome, new people. The art/not art discussion that Catherine Osborne mentioned is on Tom Moody's blog here. While you are looking around, check out the other blogs at digitalmediatree. It's a really dynamic group and there's lots of fun, smart writing.
Guest Top Ten
Do you have your own 2003 top ten art list to post? email it to me at smblog@sympatico.ca and I'll post it here. Or click on the comment link below and post it yourself.
Louise Bak's 2003 Art Top Eleven (links by SM):
- Getting an early-read of Philip Monk's new book "Double-Cross: The Hollywood Films of Douglas Gordon". I think it will be a critical surprise when it is released in 2004 from The Power Plant and The AGYU.
- Guy Maddin's Cowards Bend The Knee was the most splendidly sordid video installation at The Power Plant.
- Will Munro and Jeremy Laing's performance at Zsa Zsa, that involved multiple erogenous appendages and orifices was a pure delight.
- Bjork's outdoor concert on Olympic Island. Even her twee "thank-you" after each song was otherworldly.
- Virtual Clearcut by Brian Fawcett was one of the most touching books I've read in a long time.
- Christine Duncan's sound poetry performance in the annual Musicwork's fundraiser (at the Gladstone).(anyone got a good link for Christine Duncan? please post a comment -ed)
- Jeremy Deller's lecture at the Power Plant. The range of his folk/vernacular interests, ranging from aging burlesque workers to acid brass combinations was eccentric and inspiring.
- Chester Brown's "Louis Riel" (Drawn and Quarterly). A comic-strip biography, that is an entertaining and extensively researched account of the life of one of the country's most shadowy historical figures.
- A.A. Bronson's "The Quick and the Dead" at The Power Plant.
- Young and Sexy's "Life through One Speaker," Peaches' "Fatherfucker," Outkast's "Speakerboxx", were at the top of my play-list. I also re-visited Elliot Smith's "either/or" in my sadness, when I heard he committed suicide at 34.
- The limo-ride with pornstar Ron Jeremy, (as the last gal he saw) before he returned to L.A.
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Guest Top Ten
Do you have your own 2003 top ten art list to post? email it to me at smblog@sympatico.ca and I'll post it here. Or click on the comment link below and post it yourself.
Kelly Richardson's 2003 Art Top Ten (links by SM):
- The Innocents - Taryn Simon at KW, Berlin, Germany
- The Weather Project - Olafur Eliasson at Tate Modern, London, UK (distracting sputtering smoke machines aside)
- I want I want a group show curated by Alistair Robinson at Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art, Sunderland, UK (fantasy landscapes, longing and willful escapism what's not to like?)
- A video that I saw of Francis Gomilas up in Newcastle, UK (I wasn't clever enough to ferret out a title at the time, sorry)
- David Hoffos installation for the Sobeys award at AGNS, Halifax
- David Shrigley's billboard commission for the Gloucester Road Underground station, London, UK
- Vagamundo Ricardo Miranda Zunigas video game that parallels the plight of undocumented immigrant labor in New York City. Have a go!
- Festival Times 2003 a group show at Stills, Edinburgh, Scotland
- Atlas - Gerhard Richter at Whitechapel, London, UK
- Eric Fensler's G I Joe public service announcements (I think they've been around for a while but I saw them this year so...I also dont know if they qualify as art but I dont care, it's my list - get your own) ( hooray! LOVE these also -ed)
Guest Top Ten
Do you have your own 2003 top ten art list to post? email it to me at smblog@sympatico.ca and I'll post it here. Or click on the comment link below and post it yourself.
Ken Montague's Top 10 art list (no particular order)(links by SM):
Ken says: "You wanted it, and you got it...peace + love, k."
- Bjork / Outdoor concert on Olympic Island (fireworks. sublime.)
- The Simple Life, starring Paris Hilton / Episode 1 (it's the only one I've seen, but it was beyond funny.)
- Snapshot Now @ Jamie Angell Gallery (Jamie's best group show ever)
- Elizabeth McIntosh @ Greener Pastures (get pregnant, get happy... beautiful work)
- 20 Years of Run-DMC @ eyejammie / Chelsea, NY (nostalgic.)
- Opening of DIA Beacon / Beacon, NY (heavyweight art. especially the Richard Serras.)
- Development of the "Hospital District" on Queen West (especially the re-opening of wonderful Luft on Ossington, Clint Roenisch's smart new venture, and Stephen Bulger's clean, modernist space - "better fits" for all... )
- New Saatchi Gallery, County Hall / London (neat, old-school interior space for showing new British art)
- Janet Cardiff @ Louisiana, Copenhagen (perfect environment for her sound experiments.)
- A.A. Bronson @ The Power Plant (Barr Gilmore did a good thing.)
Guest Top Ten
Do you have your own 2003 top ten art list to post? email it to me at smblog@sympatico.ca and I'll post it here. Or click on the comment link below and post it yourself.
Dave Dyment's Top Ten
- best exhibition: tom sachs at the deutsche guggenheim
- best group show : soundtracks at blackwood, AGO, power plant, etc.
- best retrospective: christian marclay at bard college
- best show i didn’t actually see: pierre bismuth at the AGYU
- best record : the hidden cameras’ « the smell of our own »
- best single : outkast’s « roses »
- best live show : radiohead at the ACC (do you mean skydome? -ed)
- best film still not released : larry clark and harmony korine’s « ken park »
- best sitcom : the BBC’s « the office »
- best shows to look fwd to in 2004: mark lombardi at the AGO, john kormeling at the power plant, mark leckey at mercer union, rodney graham at the AGO
Guest Top Ten
Do you have your own 2003 top ten art list to post? email it to me at smblog@sympatico.ca and I'll post it here. Or click on the comment link below and post it yourself.
Anthony Easton's Top Ten
Anthony says: "Living in the hinterlands, most of this top ten is found via the web and magazines, and my trips to Seattle and Vancouver in May."
- Johnny Cash-Bauhaus Coffee Shop- Seattle
A show of half pop, half folk work inspired by Johnny Cash (foot by foot paintings of stars, targets, guns and dollar bills) it could have been cute, or hipster obvious or just a little over cooked, but 6 months before his death, it seemed a prescient, tender memorial. There were at least two dozen of these, hung on every spare wall, hung in twos or threes or even alone, in red, blue, white or silver--like all that was good and pure about America forced into these tiny canvasses. Even if it was not really about Mr Cash, it would have been amazing.
- The Anniversary Party-1.6 gallery-Vancouver
A group show from new graduates at Simon Fraser University, some of it was clichéd (a gas station like a beacon in the dark night) but most of it was really wonderful in how it looked and what it said. There was the large C-Print of an Andy Warhol billboard looking over Sunset boulevard like a bemused God, and then there was the tiny Susan Bozic black and white of three hollywood signs, rotting from decay, that was technically gorgeous, and hidden in a back room.
- Bernadette Phan-Equinox-Bau Xi-Vancouver.
Organic forms over power canvases, some as small as my palm, some 6 feet tall. A wonderful flowering over, could have been decorative, but the colours were too challenging, and it could have been twee, but the gestural rawness of the mark making betrayed that, it could have been ab-ex but she was having too much fun. The best thing about it was the delicate tension between these three elements.
- Vicky Christou-Untitled- Tracy Lawrence-Vancouver.
White tick marks on a wood board, to show how much time art takes, and how performance is as important as the finished work; graphite grey blobs on canvas, which are the best textured pieces I have seen in years, and other white on white works, which remind me of how varied such limited practices could be.
- Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay - I am A Boy Band-Edmonton Art Gallery-Edmonton
The concept here is insanely simple, a man dressed as a boy band sings a 16th century English madigral. But its funny, erotic, deeply aware of precedent and part of an avant garde sound show in the last bastion of modernism.
- Chris Gergly-The Apartment Series-
More C Prints from Vancouver, which seems to be the favourite medium of that city, these apartment buildings were for swinging singles, married couples on the prowl, newly liberated gay men and young kids doing vague and artistic things for money. To cross the threshold into field stone, broad carpets, slick wood, gold letters and steel elevators was to own the world for a while. There is an immutable sadness in the lack of care that marks them and by extension this paradise on the Coast.
- Richard Prince-Nurse Paintings-Art Forum, Sadie Coles HQ London.
The pieces in reproduction have an intimate destruction, printed they seem to recycle themselves, from marred pulp to high art, thanks to post consumer paper. In life though I imagine the work to be much different, they are huge, 6 feet by 4 feet, 5 feet by 3 feet, 6. 5 feet by 5 feet. They are the size of men who live them. They would intimidate those who are smaller. (Center for Nursing Advocacy responds to the show here.-ed)
- Palaeolithic Sculpture found in Southern Germany
It's 30,000 years old, and so it's a little perverse to have them on a top ten list for this year, but we did not know they existed until very recently. Delicate ivory carvings of women, men, animals, and most excitingly the first depiction of anthropomorphism. The work makes me wonder if we can call them totems, if the work had a ritual function outside it's obvious aestheic care, and whether these questions matter now.
- Grayson Perry, Tate, London
My first reaction to him winning the Turner was Yeah-pottery! I deeply care about this kind of work, and thought that it was a triumph of craft over art, but then I thought a bit and realized the politics of Emin, Lucas, Hirst and the Chapmans is the same politics as Perry, and he won for his gender bending alter ego Claire. But they are really excellent pots, and he is one of the better embroiders recently.
- Ryan McGinley, work for Vice, New York and Montreal.
He is easy and loose and fun, handsome boys fucking and laughing and playing about, rock stars in hotel rooms, the details that others miss-like the shade of green in a hoodie or the curve of haunch, or a sock being pulled off a foot, or the beauty in door frames, slag heaps, details of urbanity that only a citizen of the urban space would grok.
Guest Top Ten
Do you have your own 2003 top ten art list to post? email it to me at smblog@sympatico.ca and I'll post it here. Or click on the comment link below and post it yourself.
Matt King's Top Ten (links by SM)
Matt says: "Here's my top ten list, but I will add that this is a Top Ten for Sculpture Only - and I should add that this is a totally biased New York Based list."
- Robert Smithson - @ Dia:Beacon - A pile of dirt and a mirror, 35 years ago. Does anyone take these risks anymore?
- Tony Cragg - for not succumbing to the impulse towards assemblage.
- Pam Lins - "In Spite of This" @ Ten in One - for leaving sawdust and pushpins inside her weird wall sculptures. Super cool.
- Franz West - not the massive pieces at Gagosian, but the smaller ones in back. Such a disgusting and awkward use of paper mache warrants some kind of award.
- David Altmejd - "Clear Structures for a New Generation" @ Ten in One (2 on the list! you go, gallery) - despite some sloppy construction, the gluey rhinestones in the wig creeped me out. Now that takes talent.
- Ross Knight - for making industrial materials interesting and not in "a Jessica Stockholder kinda way."
- Vincent Fecteau (for image follow link and scroll down - ed.) - back room @ Feature - A summer camp arts 'n' crafts instructor takes on micro PoMo architecture. Works for me.
- Joel Shapiro - @ Pace - I know, Joel friggin' Shapiro? But yes, this is the first interesting work he's done in years. As if someone came in the studio and shook his pieces up until they almost fell apart. Rock on!
- Liz Larner @ 303 - those bases, that color. Los Angeles must be super nice.
- Ken Price / Josiah McElheny - dual prize for pushing the envelope on sculptural "eye candy." I'd like to see this work show up on Antique Roadshow some day.
Guest Top Ten
Do you have your own 2003 top ten art list to post? email it to me at smblog@sympatico.ca and I'll post it here. Or click on the comment link below and post it yourself.
Emily Pohl-Weary's Top Ten (well...eleven, actually)
Em says: "I couldn't come up with art shows, per se. But after very little thought, I did come up with my fav cultural experiences. Here is my list, in no particular order."
- Playing Civilizations 3 (and the add-on, Civ3: Conquests) and all the Nancy Drew mystery games (for ages 11 and up, heh).
- Sifting through a huge stack of Lisa Smolkin's sad but tough emotional superhero paintings one day in her kitchen.
- Reading M@B and touring with him.
- Editing Tamara Faith Berger's new novel (The Way of the Whore--a feminist, modern-day retelling of the biblical tale of Mary of Egypt) for Gutter Press.
- Being part of Kiss Machine's secret room with Paola Poletto.
- Reading my way through the Toronto Public Library's collection of mysteries with intelligent female detectives who aren't cops.
- Working on Paula's Mystery Adventure with Sally M and daydreaming about a million other projects.
- Shopping at Quimby's bookstore and taking my time perusing the zine section.
- Reading graphic novels by Joe Sacco and Phoebe Glockner for the first time.
- Indulging my secret passion for bad Hollywood movies and TV: Charlie's Angels, Daredevil, Kill Bill, Alias, Angel, Charmed (I know! Ugh!) and Dead Like Me.
- Collaborating with Shary Boyle for my anthology, Girls Who Bite Back.
Do you have your own 2003 top ten art list to post? email it to me at smblog@sympatico.ca and I'll post it here. Or click on the comment link below and post it yourself.
More top tens are on their way. Meanwhile...
Guest Top Ten
Do you have your own 2003 top ten art list to post? email it to me at smblog@sympatico.ca and I'll post it here. Or click on the comment link below and post it yourself.
Von Bark's Top Ten Aesthetic Events of 2003 (links by SM)
- Royal Art Lodge & Guy Maddin double-header at Harbourfront: The R.A.L. pretty well defined the "throw tons of small stuff against the wall and let the viewer sort it out" concept, which is a concept I like alot. And I have also noticed several shows this year at Katherine Mulherin's various gallerys which reflect this approach, and I enjoyed all of them, also alot. The R.A.L. reaffirm that despite any imperfect experiences we may have had in the past, the process of collaboration is still an inherently holy one.
As for Guy Maddin, well, the guy is just a f*cking genius. He knows how to build an idea which is tons stranger than anything I could possibly imagine, and then proceed to execute it in an even more astonishingly inconceivable manner. Every time I see one of his movies, I think: "He couldn't possibly top this". Then he does.
- Scott Carruthers 'Oroborous' at KM-Bus: SC is my main man, in my personal opinion the most under-rated artist on my street, although we note that Hive Magazine recently gave him a well-deserved rave review. He fuses together the past, the present, & the future in a brutal short-circuit, and the sparks fly.
- Fabienne Lasserre at Luft: Now this is right up my alley: interpretations of Classic Hellenic Mythology, rendered in vivid wacky bent Miro-esque pop-art styles, using colour schemes which alternate between subtle understatment and jarring glare. Cool.
- Tyler Clarke Burke at Sis Boom Bah: the design mastermind behind the 'Three-Gut' look continues lots of interesting experiments lately. Keep looking.
- Some Owls at Zsa-Zsa: I walked by the window a couple of days ago, and it was full of freakin' Owls! If you know Andrew Harwood, call him up and ask him to look at my web-page: Amazing and Important Owl Facts You Should Know. Then convince him to print it out and staple it to the wall. I probably should ask him myself, but I don't really know him that well and I feel a bit shy. Maybe I will get around to asking him... by the time the show closes. (note: if you look in the window of Tern Art Supplies beside the doorway, you will see a really cool small Teutonic Owl affixed there).
- The Man Without a Past, a fine Finn Film by Aki Karismaki: For some reason which is not known, I did not get out to watch very many movies this year, but this one I did see, and the profound understatement of it haunted me for days afterward. I think one of Aki's main themes here is: Compassion is not expressed in words, but in actions. The characters seem mostly incapable of communicating through language, but that's okay, because they DO care, and that is the important thing. One of Aki's sub-themes suggests that The Salvation Army might be more than just a mundane religious/charity organization, but actually a sort of divine art-cult inspired by American Rockabilly. Now that is a fascinating idea.
- Freeshow Seymour screening at the Gladstone: charming short films and animations which get the balance right: it IS okay be both funny and sad! My favourite is 'Patterns'; & if you see C.Ziedler ask her if the audio was meant to fade out before the end; John Porter told me that he thinks it is intentional.
- Toronto Politics: After decades of stagnation and confusion, the government in the city where I live began flirting with the concept of Democracy. What a novelty.
- The Langley Schools Music Project: the charming and erudite David Wisdom, broadcasting from the West Coast for CBC, is one of the few disc jockeys to have a distinctive effect on my music listening habits. He turned me on to this brilliant stuff. Okay, it was from 1976-1977, but I heard it in 2003. "Angels love enthusiasm far more than perfection".
- 'The Prague Visitor' by Number 11 Theatre: an imaginative summoning of the spirit of Franz Kafka, which perfectly compresses literature, history, theatrics, gymnastics, dance, puppetry, and cooly efficient minimalist special effects into an adorably digestible experience. I love these guys and gals. I do not get out to see live theatre much, but we also enjoyed Neccessary Angel's reading of Euripides' 'Bacchae' (where the beseiged King Penthius tries in vain to hold back the tide of Dionysian rapture sweeping his realm, and perhaps inadvertantly but most sublimely communicates that tragicomic sense of wounded pride and humiliation which 'The Kids in the Hall' were so good at conveying).
Unfortunately, for me the biggest Art-Story this year was a tragedy: A dead pigeon was found in the park, and Lola' Magazine folded. It is not just that hardly a week goes by when I still see something interesting and say to myself: "That would make a good shotgu-...oh.", it is also that I have linked the development of my creative identity along with the evolution of the pigeon, and the loss has shook me personally. But we move on. I also really miss Catherine Osborne's politely crafted replies to my often daft story proposals. Maybe someday, I might post some rough drafts of the ideas which didn't fly, for a good laugh. And if you hold your breath waiting... you might turn blue.
(& speaking of local magazines, what the heck is going on with Exclaim!? Are their editors high or just retarded? First they git rid of their comix section, then they git rid of 'BlaB'. Maybe they think that if they remove all the fun stuff, then people might take them more seriously as a voice of critical culture. I think that people will just think that they are more boring). Von Bark 2003
Do you have your own 2003 top ten art list to post? email it to me at smblog@sympatico.ca and I'll post it here. Or click on the comment link below and post it yourself.
Joe McKay's top ten
- Matt Freedman's show in Greenpoint where he collaborated with 5 different artists on five different pieces - oddly better than the sum of it's parts (a different show curated by Matt Freedman, Mary Ceruti and Sina Najafi is here)
- Anne McGuire video where she recreated Wegman with men for dogs
- Kristin Lucas at FACT in Liverpool - crazy weird collaboration installation
- Bjørn Melhus' video screening at MOMA's Gramercy theatre - everything's good, check him out
- Cory Arcangel's Guitar solo / powerpoint presentation at Smack Mellon
- Documentation of Miss mouse performances In Toronto and London
- Eddo Stern's video of screwing around in video games, Postmasters Gallery
- James Casebere's photos at Sean Kelly - big and beautiful
- AAAAh I can't think of two more
I've decided to copy art blogger Tyler Green and do my own 2003 top ten art list(s).
Sally McKay's top ten
- Raphael Lozano-Hemmer presenting Relational Architecture at digifest
- Jim Munroe's Trip to Liberty City
- Harun Farocki's lecture Bombs Which Take Pictures, presented by the (CMCE) at OISE/UT, and Images Festival in Toronto (many many thanks to Lana Lin for turning me onto Farocki)
- Joe McKay's Colour Game in the Outpost show at Smack Mellon gallery in Brooklyn
- Anja Harteros' aria, "Porgi amor" in Scene I, Act II of Marriage of Figaro at the Metropolitan Opera on October 10th.
- Kelly Mark's Hiccup
- dr. doo peforming live drums with video at North Six in Williamsburg
- Sergio Prego's video in the show The Real Royal Trip at PS1 in Queens
- The guy smoking through his pumpkin head, and the black guy with the white death head make-up, and the funky-chunky roller skater at New York City's Halloween Critical Mass (with many thanks to Times Up! for making it so fun).
- Andrew J. Paterson's performance night by Pleasuredome in Toronto.
image from Sergio Prego's intense video at PS1. Stolen from here.
Do you have your own 2003 top ten art list to post? email it to me at smblog@sympatico.ca and I'll post it here. Or click on the comment link below and post it yourself.
I missed Canzine this year, due to being out of the country. Luckily, the independent art and writing (maga) zine Kiss Machine has nice quicktime documentation of their Secret Room, here, at the Inflatable Museum. People were invited to write their secrets on balloons and leave them behind, the tender silly things slowly jamming up the airspace over the course of the day. It's a typical Kiss Machine project: open and welcoming with just a peppering of genuine risk. "Come on and join us out here on the end of this limb!"
I really love Kiss Machine because lots of the writing is really good, and nearly all of it is unpretentious. Sometimes I'm faced with poems and stories I think are dreadful, but I never find it oppressive, I just read on. Everyone is mixed up together, veterans and greenhorns alike. I trust editors Emily Pohl-Weary and Paola Poletto to choose stuff on it's merit and not it's social clout. There is often something in there by Paul Hong, whose short fiction I find delightful, or Jon Sasaki who is still, somehow, slipping under the radar. There's lots of art reproduced, but a sane lid is kept on the DIY production values, and now that the infamous mattb is doing the design, it all falls into place very nicely indeed.
Damn! Just heard that Alliance Atlantis, who bought out Salter St. Films in 2001, are closing up shop on their small budget projects. Yeesh, after all that raving I've just been doing. Having just closed down an independent Canadian art magazine myself, I find this news further disheartening. You'd think in a country full of kooks we'd find more ways to fiscally support the oddball art phenomena that we love. Damn again. Guess we'll always have the beer commercials for cultural identity. Har har grizzly bears and curling.
A friend in New York asked me why I "like things from Nova Scotia." I was puzzled until I realized the source of the question was the Trailer Park Boys. I started trying to describe Canadian east-coast humour, which led me to Codco (of Salter Street Films)...and then I promptly gave up, cause there's no explaining those guys. (For the record - yes I know they were from Newfoundland) So in lieu of a description, here's some holiday transcription (scene 4 from "Would You Like to Smell My Pocket Crumbs?", 1975, as published in The Plays of Codco):
Tommy Common Christmas Special
The Characters:
Tommy Common
Friends
Singers
Kid 1
Kid 2
Announcer
The Queen
Mother
Father
Children
The Setting
Stage setting for a CBC Christmas special. Feeling of "old fashioned Christmas," fake snow on singers' shoulders, etc. Singers stroll back and forth across stage singing Christmas carols, providing a bridge between sketches.
Tommy Common: (Singing)
Sleigh bells ring, are ya listening?
In the lane, snow is glistening...
(He speaks to the audience)
Oh, hi! Well, it's Christmas time again. And well everyone seems to be getting into the spirit. Especially my good friend Dean Martin. Ha ha ha! What could be nicer than to have your best friends come and visit you on Christmas Eve. Sit around the yule fire and sing Christmas carols. Oh, here are my best friends now.
(Friends enter in a tight bunch, making exaggerated happy gestures, but emitting no sound.) (He calls to them.) Hi friends! Come on in! Come on in! Through the door. Come on in! Yes, Christmas is holly and ivy and all good things. Welcome. (Friends begin to laugh and shout as if volume has suddenly been turned on. They attack Tommy, beat him senseless, and exit, still laughing and shouting.)
(Enter strolling singers, linked arm in arm).
Singers: In the meadow we can build a snowman
And pretend that he is Parsons Brown.
He'll say are you married, we'll say...
Two Male Singers: (Arms linked and appearing effeminate. They speak.) Not exactly, man.
(Introduction on piano to "God Save the Queen." Two singers detach themselves and become Announcer and Queen.)
Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, Her Majesty the Queen!
Queen: Hello (She stops, realizing that her accent has rendered the word unrecognizable. She tries again.) Helle-ah. (She tries again.) Hell-ya; hell-uh; hillya; hilloo. (A whole bunch of "hellos" emerge at once.) Hilleehillyoohillaaaahillye (Piano repeats first line of "God Save the Queen" which covers her confusion. She pulls herself together and starts again.) On this festive and happy (Her accent has now destroyed the word "happy." She tries again.) hi-yappy; hi-yippie; h'yappy (Her voice trails off.)
(Singers resume stroll.)
Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock,
Jingle bell chime in jingle bell time,
Dancing and prancing in jingle bell square,
In the salty air.
(Two singers detach themselves and become kids.)
Kid 1: Shur I saw Santy Claus. It was last Christmas Eve. Me and Dad and Jack Costello were up real late drinking. Yeah, drinkin'! And Santy Claus came down over the stairs, and I picked up me hockey puck, boy and I said, "Get up over them God-damn stairs and don't come down again, or I'll pick you off wit' dat, luh." And he didn't either.
Kid 2: What ya get for Christmas?
Kid 1: Nudding!
Queen: (She resumes character and is finishing off her message now.) And a happy new year (Oops, there goes the word "year." It sounded more like "yir." She tries to correct it.) ye-ir; yeah; yuh; yeh; ya; yi; yoo (She trails off in confusion as "God Save teh Queen" comes up again.)
Single Singer: I saw daddy kissing Santa Claus
(Singers become a family. It is late Christmas Eve. Nerves are frayed. Children are panicking as parents begin to unravel.)
Mother: No, you can't have anything more to eat. You'll have it all tomorrow. Christ sake, I spent more than we had for the past two months. Well, this is it, this is the last year I'm getting into it. I bought all the presents you know. I had to get all the treats and yank all the decorations up from the basement. I suppose you want me to fill the bloody stockings?
Father: Then don't fill 'em, for God's sake.
Children: (Frightened, trying to please.) We don't want nothing in our stockings.
Father: Well, you're not gonna get anything in your stockings and where do you think all the God-damned money is coming from? Santa Claus?
Mother: (To father.) Now, my son, you can keep your money and go down to the Newfoundland Hotel for Christmas. There's gonna be no Christmas here!
Children: (Weeping.) This is not a house, it's a hell hole!
Father: What's wrong with ye two? Be quiet! (He prounounces it "quite.") It's gonna be a wonderful Christmas. (Pause.) Just like last year!
(Children weep more loudly.)
(Singers form strolling singers.)
Tiny tots with their arms all on fire,
Will find it hard to sleep tonight.
They know that Santa's on his way ...
(Songs and lights fade.)
I've been lax about posting lately, due to arguing with Tom (see link below) and my new job: art book publishing at a venerable artist run centre in Toronto. It's fun and hectic. The lineup for this year is exciting (more about that later). I'm scrambling to learn everything I need to know in order to run things smooooothly. Anyhow. That's where I've been. I'm starting to get a grip, so I'll be back onto the blog thang very soon.
There's an interesting "but is it art?" thread going on here.
Thanks to Ben for sending me this link to funny movie reviews a website called Exile for English-speaking, currently-living-in-Moscow, ex-pats from around the globe.The reviews are a larf and there's a great rant about Kill Bill.
Thanks also to Joe for running the stunningly popular prereview site. Some recent posts include Stepford Wives, Scooby Two, and Cheaper by the Dozen. Write 'em and read 'em cause what's good for one is good for us all.
These are my 'whatever, I do what I want' years. No progeny bugging me for shoes or college funds, parents healthy and independent, hormone levels basically stable. I'm sittin pretty in a plethora of bachelor girl delights. I am aware, however, that there's a tradeoff: my geriatric years will be spent without any guilt-ridden younger people to do things for me. But I'm a responsible adult - I have a plan! I'm gonna need internet, a toilet, a bed, a window, booze, and some neighbourhood kids I can bribe to get me smokes and tins of beans. For the past ten years I've had my eye on the Parkview Arms (above) as the perfect seedy downtown rooming house for my sunset days. Imagine my concern when all the other biggish buildings in the neighbourhood have turned into $400,000 condo blocks! Where are we losers supposed to go? But check it out - the Parkview Arms just upgraded their image to match their fancypants neighbours with a classy new neon sign, and a lick of shiny brown paint. Hang in there Parkeview Arms, my retirement plans are still a go!
This image above is part of a great digital slide show from the launch of Spacing, the new magazine pubished by the Toronto Pubic Space Committee. The images were by Kevin Steele, and comprised of extraordinarily familiar, unglamourized shots of downtown Toronto. I liked the gratuitious hanging-sheet-backdrop very much indeed, as well as the fake telephone-poles-with-posters made out of cardboard tubes.
The TPSC is opposed to billboards and corporate ads, much in favour of postering and under-the-official-radar public art. The pole full of staples is a recurring theme, and makes a nice visual metaphor for public interaction. Unfortunately the articles in this first issue tend toward the overly-ernest-and-slightly-boring end of the urban activism scale. But there's a lot of talent on the Spacing team, and I suspect these problems will get worked out over time.
Last night I went to an informal slide show by Toronto artists who participated in the Havana Biennial. Bill Burns, who has been making tiny safety gear for small animals, created this kit for the biennial. It's a miniature version (the flip-flops are about 3 inches long) of everything that prisoners are given in Guantanamo Bay. The kit includes, bedding, an orange boiler suit, buckets, the Koran, a prayer cap, flip-flops, a foam sleeping mattress, soap, and a toothbrush. Unfortunately, when Bill arrived in Cuba, the organizers became worried about the piece, and he was asked to show his safety gear instead. He complied, and "accepted that the small animals of Cuba have as much right to safety gear as small animals in Canada." Last night Bill made a great presentation about the whole affair, speaking as a representative of the Safety Gear for Small Animals company, with an i-photo slide show behind him of street dogs in Havana. He displayed his Guantanamo case for us, and kindly let me take some pictures.
I have been a big fan of Bill Burns since I first saw his great little art book, Analgesia, years ago at Printed Matter in New York. The book takes the form of a promotional publication, or annual report for a pill mine and factory, with full colour photos of little tiny men digging pills out of the ground and loading them onto trucks and conveyor belts.Quote from Analgesia: "Animal testing is out of the question; samples of product are scientifically tested for acidity, taste, efficacy, and possible non-analgesic properties before being allowed into the Inert Halcyon Sector (IHS). The IHS is often called the first line of defence against chronic pain."
Richard Feynman said this:
excerpts from The Distinction of Past and Future
from The Character of Physical Law, 1965
It is obvious to everybody that the phenomena of the world are evidently irreversible...The past and the future look completely different psychologically, with concepts like memory and apparent freedom of will, in the sense that we feel that we can do something to affect the future, but none of us, or very few of us, believe that there is anything we can do to affect the past. Remorse and regret and hope and so forth are all words which distinguish perfectly obviously the past and the future. ...
[HOWEVER] In all the laws of physics that we have found so far there does not seem to be any distinction between the past and the future. ...
If I have a sun and a planet, and I start the planet off in some direction, going around the sun, and then I take a moving picture, and run it backwards and look at it, what happens? The planet goes around the sun, the opposite way of course, keeps on going around in an ellipse. The speed of the planet is such that the area swept out by the radius is always the same in equal times. In fact it just goes exactly the way it ought to go. It cannot be distinguished from going the other way. So the law of gravitation is of such a kind that the direction does not make any difference; if you show any phenomenon involving only gravitation running backwards on a film, it will look perfectly satisfactory. ... If you have a lot of particles doing something, and then you suddenly reverse the speed, they will completely undo what they did before. ...
[Experiments a few months ago indicated that] there is something the matter, some unknown about the laws, [suggesting] the possibility that in fact beta-decay may not also be time reversible, and we shall have to wait for more experiments to see. But at least the following is true. Beta-decay (which may or may not be time reversible) is a very unimportant phenomenon for most ordinary circumstances. The possibility of my talking to you does not depend on beta-decay, although it does depend on chemical interactions, it depends on electrical forces, not much on nuclear forces at the moment, but it depends also on gravitation. But I am one-sided - I speak, and a voice goes out into the air, and it does not come sucking back into my mouth when I open it - and this irreversibility cannot be hung on the phenomenon of beta-decay. In other words, we believe that most of the ordinary phenomena in the world, which are produced by atomic motions, are according to laws which can be completely reversed. So we will have to look some more to find the explanation of the irreversibility.
I used to think I was too ignorant to read Jeanne Randolph, but thank goodness I got over it. Sometimes art writers (myself included) undertake to write a parallel text, not meant to describe or explain the art, but rather to bounce along beside it as a sort of responsive sidekick. Some (mine included) may tip into flip flights of fancy or indulgent ruminations. But Randolph, a psychoanalytic theorist, remains ever rigorous. The shapes of her short essays are often unsettling and lead off into unfamiliar territory. Even when it is not about art, Randolph's writing is like art, good art, in that it can shift you into a new position from which to look out at the world.
[Sigmun Freud's] desk, writing tables, windowsills, shelves and tops of cabinets had all been invaded by tiny, ancient figurines. On every surface Freud had stationed the pagan, the supernatural, the demonic and the life-giving beings of antiquity. ... [D.W.] Winnicott would have understood Freud's teeming collection as providing "room for the idea of unrelated thought sequences." Room for surprises, nonsense, non sequiturs, room for the unexpected. Room for the uncanny and the preternatural. Room for the protohuman, subhuman and uberhuman. Room for the extremes of difference that standardized life and standardizing ideologies refuse to accomodate. The relevance of this is completely obvious to everyone who is labelled as a stranger by his or her own society. From the essay "The Metamorphosis of Sigmund Freud" from the 2003 collection Why Stoics BoxIt takes two to tango and two (minimum) to communicate. Sometimes the excitement about looking at good art is the strange detachment of the persons, yourself and the artist, from this third thing: the unique idea that comes into being when both parties have paid attention. Add a third generative element - a writer paying the same kind of attention - and the ideas become thicker, quicker, and stranger.
At the moment when I know that I am the one weilding the power to interpret an object, when I find the interpretation more valuable to me than the function that the object serves, at that moment the object could become cultural. From the essay "Illusion and the Diverted Subject" from Psychoanalysis and Synchronized Swimming, as quoted in Symbolization and its Discontents
Either golden moon or glitter of stars sparkled on alternate bright blue fingernails as they levitated over [the library clerk's] keyboard. Her green eyes followed signals on her video display terminal and she pricked one of these with the lunar nail of her right forefinger. With her left hand she peeled a barcode from a dispenser. She applied the barcode to the back of this book and smoothed it with her palm. She repeated this procedure exactly for the "seventh" book. "This will pass also, " she slurred, obviously unaware of the cosmic implications of what she had uttered. From the essay "Hi-Tech Surveillance and Moral Imagination: A Psychoanalysis" (the tale of the act of stealing a very old library book) from the 2003 collection Why Stoics Box