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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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Last night I went to the Spacing film screening. It was really great. I forgot to bring the dang nabbed program home with me. There was a really great film by a guy who lives in Parkdale who's uncle lived and died in Parkdale. He talked about development in the area from a refreshing (historically invested) point of view. But I forget the guy's name. I'll find it soon and post it. Also, as I mentioned in a recent comment thread, Tino's Rick Goes to Crticial Mass totally rocked. Very inspiring and made me laugh all the way through. Granted, Rick is a natural film star, but Tino is a master: great pacing, great tone, great composition, and joie de vivre. It's tight, and it's beautiful. And you can see a tiny quicktime version online!
My little birdmap movie (below) was screened too. That went okay, except I realise that things that are designed to be almost postage-stamp size on a computer screen carry a different weight when imposed large on a bunch of people sitting in a dark room. It was bit heavy-handed at that scale. Oh well. At least it's short!
When words and their meanings got pulled apart by po-mo theorists, some people decided that signification (meaning) was old-fashioned and tacky, but the signs (words) were shiny bright and fun to toss around like glittery little trinkets. For other people, though, this pulling apart of things made the structure of meaning itself — the mutiple threads and interconnected nests — even more sexy and fun. Gary Kibbins, one of my favourite writers, belongs to the latter group. I worked on his book, Grammar & Not Grammar, briefly while I was at YYZ. Now that it is published I'm enjoying it very much again. Some day I will write a proper review. A single-author blog post is not enough. Luckily Von Bark is more babblicious than I.
VB says: Gary Kibbins is clever and funny and has interesting things to say about art. I do not want to toss off some glib little comment, I really want to go into depth, but there are so many dimensions of possibility that I can't possibly sum it up in a few sentences. Gary Kibbins comprehends the mercurial nature of nonsense. The tyranny of narrative helps us to understand the world, so Kibbins embeds subtle threads of narrative in a gleeful indulgence of nonsense. Nonsense, the media he swims in, reveals truths about the world we live in that cannot be accessed by rational thought, kinda like 'Alicia in Terra Mirabili'.
My brother, Joester, is a star. Good article by Chris Ashley.
 CPT demo in Toronto, January 29, 2006. Photo by Andre Fortier | This is from a demo in Toronto held by Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT). They are protesting the holding and abuse of Iraqi detainees. CPT members have been in Iraq for some time. "Team members accompanied the Iraqi people through the U.S.-led 2003 war and continue during the post-war occupation to expose abusive acts by U.S. Armed Forces and support Iraqis committed to nonviolent resistance." Four CPT members were kidnapped in Iraq in November, and are still missing. The kidnappers are calling for the release of all Iraqi detainees. I am impressed that while CPT are working hard for the release of their friends, they continue to focus their campaign on the rights of Iraqi detainees. Apparently footage from this demo was aired on Al Jazeera. In other news: more photos from Abu Ghraib were released to the media. They're as horrifying if not more so than the first batch. Also, the UN is calling for the closure of Guantanamo Bay. I am wondering how come I — a priviledged artsy middle class Canadian girl — how come even I know that there is torture going on at Guantanamo Bay, and yet a UN report to that effect is deemed debatable by White House officials? arrrg. |
