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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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My first email this morning(ish) had this link:Tour de France hit by massive doping scandal
Damn those stoners on bikes.(it's rather rich that I'm complaining)
My friend A.B. refers to them as the "Thunderous Thighs of Europe", I'm in it for the garish colours, the scenery, improving my babelfish French skills and best of all, the crashes. (I also think it's brilliant that the whole Peloton jumps off their bikes at the same time to pee in the woods.)
Fuck them all for picking on Lance all these years.
Landwasserschlepper
This weekend I am going back to the woods. Then I'm going to Kingston to install for the exhibition Neutrinos They Are Very Small. If you happen to be in Kingston on the evening of July 7th, come to our opening at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre.
Sadly, I am going to miss the opening tomorrow night at YYZ of the massive multi-volume artists' book Ice Fishing in Gimli by Rob Kovitz. I have seen some earlier stages of the project and its great: a sort of mashed up narrative archive of weird ephemera that compiles (and compiles and compiles) into a many dimensioned tome. Or set of tomes. According to the blurb, it tells of "...drownings, freezings, murder and cannibalism; of alien architectures, bizarre conveyances, enigmatic soothsayers and esoteric ice-fishing techniques; of the search for enlightenment, the poignancy of fish-flies and the indeterminacy of maps; of Gimli-born Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stephanson and prairie writer and double-agent Frederick Philip Grove; of boredom, failure, madness, nothingness, unrequited love, best-laid plans, the Wandering Jew, the House of Squid and mysterious things that may or may not be hidden beneath flat, frozen surfaces, to name a few things." Opening starts at 8:00, YYZ Artists' Outlet.
Luckily I will be back in Toronto for the urban park pool art extravaganza called WADE (July 7-9) . I had a blast at the last WADE and we will be zipping home from Kingston to catch as much of this one as we can. All the details are here.
For now, adieu. I leave you, dear readers in the capable hands of L.M. (hey! I can hear your cheers of joy. I know she's funnier than me but you could at least let me get out the door before you start celebrating...)
augh! Is anyone else suffering simpleposie withdrawal? I hope Jennifer is back online soon.
The urban wilderness adventure never stops! Yesterday the intrepid Nanmac and I walked to the Toronto Zoo from Trinity Bellwoods Park. The route we took was 20 miles on concrete (ouch). It took us 10 hours. We mainly did it out of a shared interest in so-called "binge excercise" and self-directed adventure (ie: because it was there). We are also working on a video project that will be discussed further at some later date.
We left shortly after 5 am, and got to see the very end of Saturday night on Queen Street West, small straggling groups of bleary-eyed droogs, and two guys with a card table doing tarot readings in front of the Shoppers Drug Mart. Other points of interest, off the top of my head: sunrise over the Don Valley with waterfowl in the river below, coffee at 7:30 am in the "Stepford Beaches" which were full of blond women jogging. Also a jogging dad with stroller and labrador retriever who offered to take our picture. We declined. Big fence around the water treatment plant.
Kingston road was long. Pain set in for both of us around Midland, which was a major watershed as it meant we were at the edge of our Toronto map and had to turn it over to continue. Lots of trudging followed, punctuated by Freezies and Tim Hortons rest stops. By the time we turned off onto Old Kingston Road, the trudging was more like hobbling. But we went down into a really nice ravine with a park, marsh and river that cheered us up. There was also a very dead and smelly raccoon. Roads kill. Steep hills were a new factor, but being off the main road was a treat. Meadowvale was the final stretch. Crossing the 401 was post apocalyptic, as always, but the limping made it feel even more so. We had a lovely rest under some trees and took our shoes off. The final approach to the zoo included some confusion, as the road signs did not anticpate people arriving on foot. I think we might be the first people to ever walk to the zoo from downtown Toronto. I take Nanmac's point that this would be a dubious accolade.
Thankfully the zoo parking lot, our last hurdle, proved smaller and more shady than we'd feared and all of a sudden we had acheived our goal. Now we did want our picture taken, and a kindly fellow zoo patron obliged. That triumphant image is on Nanmac's camera right now. Maybe we'll post it someday, maybe we won't. We splurged on tickets for the train-like zoomobile to cart us around, but our zoo tasks nonetheless required more walking than we wanted. Once we were finished, however, we hauled ourselves onto a bus to Kennedy station and the TTC carried us right back home with no fuss.
I can't imagine conducting that expedition alone. Nanmac, I applaud you for your amibition, strength and resilient sense of humour. It was a great day with a great friend and I will always remember it!
screen shot from L.M. vs. Rocco
I am leading a tour of the InterAccess exhibition The Networked City (outdoor artworks by: murmur, Paulette Phillips, Marla Hlady, Germaine Koh, Amos Latteier and Luis Jacob) on Saturday afternoon that includes a group discussion about urban wilderness at the Pigeon Condo installation. Details are here. Two of the works involve cellphone interaction, so bring 'em if you got 'em. And don't wear white pants cause at some point you might want to sit on the ground.
The digifest and Harbourfront Centre Mods and Rockers show I curated is still on until July 9th. I hope you all get a chance to see it. I have posted some documentation from the show below. The exhibition is in a long and well-trafficked hallway, right across from the ice cream stand. These images show a lot of reflection which is much worse here in the documentation than it is in real life. The work is vibrant and eye-catching, even in the middle of the day. Scroll down for stills/details and all the artists' statements. While I was documenting, everyone passing by stopped to look, and kids especially seem to really dig it. Two little tykes were dancing and laughing to Tom and John's piece while I was there, and I've had reports that kids have also been spotted dancing along to Chandra and Andy's videos. One little girl, being hurried by her dad, dug in her heels at Myfanwy and Lorna's windows exclaiming "but these one's have a story!" And, of course the Sideways Circus windows are covered in fingerprints, which is sure sign of popularity.
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Chandra Bulucon and Andrew J. Paterson RODS AND MOCKERS, 2006 Mods and rockers Rods and mockers Odds and sods And leather weather Zoot suit, fruit loops Chrome and chains in our brains Look to the future The future is ancient The future is static There is no future So do it all now Do everything now Speed speed speed That's all I need Riding and leaping Driving and crashing Fights on the beach Sex out of reach Rave up and roll back And speak with a stutter! The artists wish to thank Lynn, Scoot, and Bella at EXILE, Rebecca Diederichs, Scott McLeod, Trinity Square Video, Sally McKay, and Kevin Couch |
 Myfanwy Ashmore HΩ, 2006 HΩ is a video landscape exploring a return to a place of early memories - a familial circuit - where the beginning and the end collide and the current is immeasurable but still flowing. |
 Lorna Mills Report to All, 2006 With Google-assisted omnipotence, triumphant narcissism and a rockin' rhythm, planet earth is scanned for divine modifications. |
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Sideways Circus photos by Rob Cruickshank Rob Cruickshank and Veronica Verkley Sideways Circus, 2006 STEP RIGHT UP! YOU WONT BELIEVE YOUR EYES! COME ONE COME ALL! SEE THE MOST AMAZING SHOW ON EARTH! IT'S THE SIDEWAYS CIRCUS!! MARVEL AT THE ALL-POWERFUL STRONGMAN! INCREDIBLE TRAINED SEALS! BEAUTIFUL DARING TRAPIEZE ARTISTS! JUNGLE CATS LEAPING THROUGH FIRE! HILARIOUS JUGGLING CLOWNS! AWESOME BALANCING ACTS! "Toys forced to do things they were never designed to do- stripped bare of their cuteness, right down to their modular parts, and MODDED to power the world's most ROCKIN' Sideways Circus ever- where up is right and left is down!" more photos... |
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Tom Moody and John Parker Rodmocker, 2006 Rather than have some kind of face-off, or rumble, we are merging sensibilities. The collective inner Mod is the high tech influence in the form of some sophisticated audio software and a newish laptop used to edit and burn the video, and the inner Rocker is the low tech source material: 8-Bit-style tunes on an old Mac (some originally composed in the '80s) and animated GIFs by Tom based on MSPaint versions of Web images of John's work. We're trying for some sort of parity between the audio and visual material. Pixels and square waves are both medium and subject. see them go... |
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Shimera by Tyler Clark Burke is better than Grizzly Man, in fact it is the best show about bear attacks I have ever seen. The protagonists are Standing Bear and Trepanation Man. Their tender narrative adventure is finely wrought, 3D, in a series of spinning glass blocks. Says the artist:
These miniature cubes have become the perfect avenue for my death obsession. I love the idea of fleeting energy locked into glass--blocks which capture phantasms forever. Their glass is my brain, with laser beams melting and displacing molecules to leave little scars as memories of heat.I have been puzzling about the cultural myth of bear attacks for most of my life. Am I the only person who finds it somehow comforting when I hear in the news that a human has been killed by a wild animal? And if it's only me then why do we consistenly put teddy bears in babies' cribs? Tyler Clark Burke is all over this myth with her own delicate death wish. The format may be souvenir kitsch but the story is transcendent. Shimera is deft and lovely, and it is on view at Katharine Mulherin Gallery (upstairs) until July 1st.
This conversation took place in an airport bar between an air marshal and a flight attendant. They had been friends for a while, even occasionally lovers, but on this day the conversation turns deadly serious.
Flight Attendant: I've got an idea for how we could make us some money.
Air Marshal: I've already got a job
F A: No, I mean real money. Money you could retire on.
A M: I'm listening
F A: Okay, first we find a woman who is an expert in airplane design.
A M: Should be doable (http://www.wai.org/)
F A: Who's American, but living in Europe. And has a daughter.
A M: Okay …
F A: Then we kill her husband by throwing him off the roof of their apartment building, making it look like suicide.
A M: And this makes us money how?
F A: Bear with me. She's going to have to fly back to the states right?
A M: I guess.
F A: That's when we pounce by kidnapping the daughter and convincing the already grief stricken mother that the daughter was never on the plane at all. That in fact she died with the husband.
A M: I think I see where you're going with this.
F A: Then, we tell the captain that the "crazy" lady has a bomb on the plane and wants a whole pile of cash or she's going to blow it up.
Oh I forgot, we put a bomb in the dead husband's coffin beforehand.
A M: Naturally.
F A: So when they bring the money you, as air marshal, will handle the exchange and steal the money.
A M: you've really put some thought into this. It's the perfect crime. The only way I see that it could fail is if the woman we pick is plucky and resilient and uses her extensive knowledge of airplane design to thwart us. But the odds of that happening are pretty small, I say we go for it.
Wait, how do we make sure that nobody else on the plane sees the daughter?
F A: Let's cross that bridge when we come to it.
The rest is movie making history.
Our unanimously beloved Prime Minister was not beheaded by terrorists while I was away, so take a deep breath and ponder this Harper with Kitties photo-op that I stole from the CBC site.
Vladimir Putin could probably pull it off a bit more convincingly, but this just leaves me totally disoriented. The obvious kitten-eating jokes aside, is anyone else puzzled?
No more posts from me either, I'm off to a cottage, and our hostess has promised that I'll be transported around the lake on a paddleboat ...just like Cleopatra.
In exchange, I had to promise that there would be no drama.
of any kind.
If joester refuses take over this site and bring his newly acquired California calm to this city (and continue the good work of destroying Sally's art blog credibility), then spend your fear-filled, yet lazy, Toronto summer days reading all the archives of email from NOLA (lots of post-apocalyptic fix-it tips), take a ride on the ADD rollercoaster at Tangerines in a Red Net Bag, or behave yourself and stay on topic dammit! at simpleposie's new location.
...packing
I'm going away again now for a few days. This time it should be less challenging leisure. One leg on the journey will be a double hit of art openings in London Ontario on Friday night. M. Jean, who will be familiar to readers of this blog, has curated a show of paintings and drawings by James Reaney at the Landon Library. And our very dear Mr. Nobody has a show opening that same night at Forest City Gallery. If there was ever a time to visit London Ontario this is it. Of course being out of town means we will miss two cool projects by Sarah Peebles. If you are in Toronto, you might want to check out Four Lines on Thursday and 108 - Walking Through Tokyo (with Christie Pearson) on Saturday.
I wrote an essay on authority for Rocket Science. I'm looking forward to their first issue!
Jeffrey Wetson says, "I started painting rafting scenes because my brother is a guide on the Middle Fork of the Salmon and he wanted a label design for his winery."
Larry Willcutt says, "My interest in subjects varies greatly, however I seem to paint more boat pictures than anything else."
Francis Hopkins "almost certainly was the person who designed the first Stars and Stripes."
Wilderness Tours is a pretty slick outfit and none of us died. We were there just a tad too early for Canadian Forces Week.
So in summation, Sally went white water rafting, and now she's lost at sea:
Meanwhile in Toronto, there is anarchy in the streets:
And in the U.S., Condoleezza Rice praises our country.
(shit, her first name shows up in spell-check)
Things have gone horribly wrong this weekend.
OK, just to keep everyone in the know, at this moment, Sally is white water rafting:
In a part of Ontario that boasts a great number of rugged natural gazebo rock formations:
Meanwhile, back at the Toronto church I attend:
We've been fervently praying for someone to deliver us from evil.
amen.
So the evening report - Sally is still white water rafting:
But, bbbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! it's cold:
Hopefully, they have hot chocolate:
Meanwhile, I am comfy and smug in my home:
And it's all very dangerous:
...because it's reported that the RCMP, Toronto Police Department & CSIS have finally made nice with each other and, on top of that, have arrested 17 men on terrorist charges.
So, to bring everyone up to date - Sally is currently white water rafting. Which I imagine looks something like this:
It is cold and rainy, so hopefully she packed this:
Meanwhile, I've been in my garden:
Drinking tea.
And who should pay me a visit?
Why it's Joint Task Force Two, Canada's top-secret anti-terrorist commando unit.
Joint Task Force II, modeled on the British SAS, was formed in 1993 with a counterterrorism mission. These days, that means it can do anything. Previously, counterterrorism was handled by the RCMP Special Emergency Response Team, but their scope was domestic and it was bad PR for the Mounties to be given a job that involved killing people, therefore it was decided that the Canadian Forces would create and control a top-secret unit for these purposes.
One current deploynment for JTFII is Afghanistan, where our Chief of Defense Staff General Rick Hillier is quoted as saying that the Canadian Forces go after "detestable murderers and scumbags", "radical murderers and killers" and "despicable murderers and bastards". "We are the Canadian Forces," says Gen. Hillier. "Our job is to be able to kill people." Thus, forever shattering our illusions of a Canadian army devoted to repairing damaged hospitals overseas.
Now that Sally's out of town I can turn this site into the gardening blog that it wants to be.
A nice rendition of my front yard by Thomas Kinkade.
(I found the blue Delphiniums in the bottom right corner of this example rather fetching and as a whole the painting accurately portrays my inspiring and gracious lifestyle)
According to an article on the Guardian Unlimited site, the painter of light is fighting some legal claims against his personal & business practises:
"Two former employees, Terry Sheppard and John Dandois, told the panel of further examples of Kinkade's unpredictable behaviour: bringing disorder to a Las Vegas performance by the illusionists Siegfried and Roy by repeatedly yelling the word "codpiece" from his audience seat, and urinating in public - in an elevator and on a model of Winnie the Pooh at a Disneyland hotel. "This one's for you, Walt," Mr Sheppard claimed the artist said as he did so."
I'm going white water rafting this weekend and I'm not taking my camera. Maybe I'll do an artists' rendition to post when I get back. Blogging will be even slower than usual over the next week or two as summerish activities and getting the $#@& out of town are taking precendence. I am aware that some of you are eager for Mods and Rockers follow up and installation shots. I'm sorry this is taking me so long, there are reasons but they aren't very interesting. I haven't forgotten, and it will happen eventually. I have heard reports that the show was very popular with the masses of children at Harbourfront over the Milk Festival. And there is no question in my mind that if kids like your art you must be doing something right.
There is a really interesting rant by Jaron Lanier at Edge.org about Wikipedia. He warns of a dangerous groundswell towards "hive mind" type social models, wary of the disastrous political precendents for rampant collectivism, which he distinguishes from "representative democracy" and "meritocracy." Lanier connects the popularity of Wikipedia with the economic push for meta-level sorting of the internet where information becomes farther and farther removed from its original context and the levels of useful subjective information associated with authorship. And he relates all this to artificial intelligence and points out an uncomfortable phenomenon of people degrading their expectations of human intelligence in order to claim success for artificial intelligence. He also notes that the internet is good because of all the people, but there is a trend to depersonalise the content. (As with Wikipedia, which he says "is like reading the bible closely. There are faint traces of the voices of various anonymous authors and editors, though it is impossible to be sure.") The essay has some analysis (quoted) below of collective versus individual systems, and also talks about the valuable checks and balances we developed pre-internet that helped us generate good shared knowledge, like independent media and ethical journalism!
"Collectives can be just as stupid as any individual, and in important cases, stupider. The interesting question is whether it's possible to map out where the one is smarter than the many.
There is a lot of history to this topic, and varied disciplines have lots to say. Here is a quick pass at where I think the boundary between effective collective thought and nonsense lies: The collective is more likely to be smart when it isn't defining its own questions, when the goodness of an answer can be evaluated by a simple result (such as a single numeric value,) and when the information system which informs the collective is filtered by a quality control mechanism that relies on individuals to a high degree. Under those circumstances, a collective can be smarter than a person. Break any one of those conditions and the collective becomes unreliable or worse.
Meanwhile, an individual best achieves optimal stupidity on those rare occasions when one is both given substantial powers and insulated from the results of his or her actions.
If the above criteria have any merit, then there is an unfortunate convergence. The setup for the most stupid collective is also the setup for the most stupid individuals."
"I'd also like to say a word about speculation, a term that has acquired a pejorative connotation among some scientists. Describing someone's idea as "mere speculation" is often considered insulting. This is unfortunate. As the English biologist Peter Medawar has noted, "An imaginative conception of what might be true is the starting point of all great discoveries in science." Ironically, this is sometimes true even when the speculation turns out to be wrong. Listen to Charles Darwin: "False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science for they often endure long but false hypotheses do little harm, as everyone takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness; and when this is done, one path toward error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened." - From: V.S. Ramachandran, M.D.,PH.D., and Sandra Blakeslee, "Preface," in Phantoms in the Brain, New York: Harper Collins, 1999. pg.xv-xvi