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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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Joe McKay - Top ten things that have been missed or overlooked in 2009.
1. South Park Tower Defense Game. This Xbox dlc is a great twist on the Tower Defense genre. Southpark silliness combined with a pretty solid game. Good for a larf, and way better than the super easy plants vs zombies game that everyone loves so much.
2. Party Down. the best show on tv that nobody knows about is a free "play now" if you have the netflixs. The show is centered around a dysfunctional caterer in LA with a great ensemble cast. It's on Showtime or something so there's loads of "adult situations" and swears. (They cater the adult film awards in one memorable episode).
3. Organic Olives. "Normal" olives should be relegated to pizza and martinis only. If what you need are olives, spend the extra, just like you already do with avocados.
[The olives should also only be picked by virgins, at night.]
2. Taken. Liam Neeson is a serious badass in this underrated action movie.
3. Google street view online road trip across America ... live. The documentation is good , but the real fun lay in participating while they were on the trip. It was a blast.
- Dude in the back of a truck spotted on GMRT
[b/t/w interesting numbering system there, Joester, is it special? Do we not like the number 4? or 6?- L.M.]
5. Shoot em up: the movie. Yeah this goes back a couple years, but you've been overlooking it all year so it still counts. Bloody hilarious gun porn that gets no respect.
7. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Here's the thing - yes of course it sucks - but if somehow you managed to miss all the other Harry Potter books and movies and didn't know the story at all and just watched this one you would think it was the weirdest most crazy-assed shit you'd ever seen. Starting in the middle is almost always a good idea and doubly true here. If you've never heard of Harry Potter this is the place to start. If you have, skip it and hope for an amnesia inducing blow to the head.
8. There are two time travel comedies coming soon (joy!) a British one and a American one. Both look, oh I don't know ... perhaps you've heard of a word called ... "awesome"?
9. The app store. Seriously, if you have an iphone how great is the myriad of free or cheap apps you can get? The Iphone is over priced, at&t (iphone carried here in the USofA) is horrible, and they are environmental disasters - but you have to hand it to them with the app store. There's a zillion free or cheap things and yet the store is still easy to navigate and apps are easy to install. Here's a mini top ten of the apps on my phone right now. AroundMe, Attendance, BigTime, DodgeDot, Dragon Dictation, Drop7, Galcon Lite, Geared, geoDefense Swarm, iResist, Mosquito Repellent, Moviefone, NYC Subway Map, TowerMadness: 3D, Traffic Rush, UkuTune, and Word Scramble by Zynga
10. Subtle self-promotion. In the facebook/twitter age the art of crafty yet casual self-promotion has gone by the wayside. These days if you have some project you want people to see you blurt it out like a twelve year old announcing his farts. As video killed the radio star so too has Facetwitter killed subtlety.
Sigh, Twitterface is gone too :(
Jon Davies' 20 Favourite Art Experiences in Toronto in 2009
(with no regards for conflicts of interest)
1-2. Noise Ghost: Shuvinai Ashoona and Shary Boyle (curated by Nancy Campbell) and Funkaesthetics (curated by Luis Jacob and Pan Wendt) at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery
Left: Shary Boyle, Iceberg, 2007. Right: Shuvinai Ashoona, Monster, 2003-2004.
3. What It Really Is (curated by Nicholas Brown, work by Kristan Horton, Liz Magor, Kristi Malakoff, Kerri Reid and Jennifer Rose Sciarrino) at Red Bull 381 Projects
Jennifer Rose Sciarrino, Supposed Stalactites (Purple and Green Pendants), 2009
4-5. Joao Maria Gusmao and Pedro Paiva: Magnetic Resonance on Abissologic Experiments (with Images Festival) and Street Poets and Visionaries: Selections from the Ubuweb Collection (curated by Kenneth Goldsmith) at Mercer Union
Joao Maria Gusmao and Pedro Paiva, Magnetic Resonance on Abissologic Experiments, 2006
6-8. To Die Like a Man by Joao Pedro Rodrigues, Trash Humpers by Harmony Korine and Phantoms of Nabua by Apichatpong Weerasethakul (with MoCCA) at the Toronto International Film Festival
Harmony Korine, Trash Humpers, 2009
9-11. Talking Points + Talking Ponies by Ben Coonley (with The Power Plant), In the Room 3 by Sung Hwan Kim, dogr (aka David Michael DiGregorio) and Byungjun Kwon (with Gallery TPW), Siting Cinema (curated by Jacob Korczynski, film/video by Oliver Husain, Emily Wardill, Isabell Spengler, Steve Reinke and others) at the Images Festival
Sung Hwan Kim, dogr, Byungjun Kwon, In the Room 3, 2009
12. Satellite by Redmond Entwistle at Gallery TPW (with Pleasure Dome)
Redmond Entwistle, Satellite, 2009
13. Drag Holes by Produzentin and Mary Messhausen at Pride Toronto
Produzentin and Mary Messhausen, Drag Holes, 2009
14. Micah Lexier: Two Parents and Three Children at Oakville Galleries
15. Candice Breitz: Same Same at The Power Plant
Candice Breitz, Still from Factum Kang (Featuring Hanna Kang and Laurie Kang), 2009
16. Stephen Andrews: As Above, So Below at Paul Petro Contemporary Art
Stephen Andrews, The View From Here, 2009
17. Derek Sullivan: Waiting Game at Jessica Bradley Art + Projects
Derek Sullivan, # 47, The Whole World 2009
18-19. Ming Wong: Eat Fear at Trinity Square Video (with Reel Asian Film Festival) and Learn German with Petra Von Kant at the Art Gallery of York University (with Images Festival)
Ming Wong, still from Angst Essen/ Eat Fear, 2008
20. That Night Follows Day by Tim Etchells at Harbourfront Centre's World Stage
Tim Etchells, That Night Follows Day, 2009
So, yes, a good year.
Sholem Krishtalka's top ten list for 2009
#1-10: An Opera for Drella, Jack the Pelican Presents (Brooklyn, NY), Sholem Krishtalka.
Yeah, that's right. Me. My debut solo show in New York was the ten best things of 2009. It was ambitious, conceptually engaged, witty and fun. The paintings were vividly coloured, archly composed and seductively painted. And not even taking into account the fact that I made the work, I can say, fairly objectively, that my show was ten of the best things I saw this year; and I even saw the Venice Biennale (which mostly sucked, PS). I would go so far as to say, in fact, that, alongside the shows I saw this year and liked (oh, I dunno, Shary Boyle and Shuvinai Ashoona at the Barnicke, Stephen Andrews at Paul Petro spring to mind the quickest), my show was on par with my favourite thing at the Biennale, Elmgreen and Dragset's The Collectors. Yup. In complete and total seriousness, I can say with absolute conviction and objective critical authority that my show was on par with all those shows. It was the Top Ten.
Gabrielle Moser's Top Ten List
and Akimblog Editor, Terence Dick's five highlights from the past ten years of Canadian art.
My Top Ten Songs of the Century by Mike Canzi
They're in chronological order by year of release. I provided a link to "official" videos where I could find them, but I don't swear by the videos. It's the songs that I like.
1) Outkast - Red Velvet (2000) - Like most of the other songs on the peerless Stankonia, "Red Velvet" is a call to start thinking outside the box ... 'cause you know that fucker is made of pine. A decade later, this song still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up every time I hear it.
2) Queens of the Stone Age - Feel Good Hit of the Summer (2000) - A pounding, neanderthal beat, outrageous, buzzsaw guitar that'll rip your head off and lyrics that read like the shopping list for a party you ain't want your chirren going to, this song is what rock'n'roll is all about, not that limp, polite Beard Rock the scions of the weathy are churning out by the bowlful today.
3) The Weakerthans - Pamphleteer (2000) - "Pamphleteer" is the slow dance boy-loses-girl flipside to Left and Leaving's adrenalyne boy-bounces-back song, "Aside." It is clever, with lyrics mocking 20th Century red-scare propaganda, and Canadian, in the 20th Century meaning of the word, with countrified jangle and prominent slide guitar.
4) El-P - Accidents Don't Happen (2002) - A guitarist's worst enemy, other than a singer, is a patchcord that is plugged into an amplifier at one end, but dangling free at the other ... 'cause you know that shit is gonna buzz. Well, that buzz runs right through this track, the heaviest straw on this camel's back of an album of hobbling beats, grating electronic noise and impenetrable lyrics. (I like it, by the way.)
5) Deerhoof - Apple Bomb (2003)- Dissonant, jangling guitar and a singer with a childlike voice and tenuous grasp on the English language. What's not to like? Deerhoof was the one consistently great band of the decade and this song, 'round about the 3-minute mark, is where it first starting clicking with me.
6) Jay-Z - 99 Problems (2003) - In this, easily the most "punk" song of the century, Jay-Z tells you what you can do to protect yourself, legally, when stopped for driving while black. A civics lesson you can sing along with. Brilliant.
7) The Go! Team - Ladyflash (2004)- A gold star moment in the short history of Cheerleader Rock, of which The Go! Team was the only known exponent.
8) Clap Your Hands Say Yes - The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth (2005) - This song has its charms--the warbling, David Byrnesian voice of the singer chief among them--but the big story here is how it came to my attention in the first place: Clap Your Hands Say Yes was the quintessential internet buzz band. Back when this song came out, the band probably couldn't even buy a friend in their own home town. Then one blogger took a shine to their self-released CD and told his two readers, both of whom were also bloggers, and they told their four readers, and so on.http://www.clapyourhandssayyeah.com
9) Black Lips - Veni Vidi Vici (2007) - Seamless melding of 1960's garage band fuzz with 21st Century studio trickery. I don't know how they made it sound like this, but I have enjoyed listening to it again and again trying to figure out.
10) Fucked Up - Black Albino Bones (2008) - Someone in this band knows something about electric guitars, because they manage to make them roar, ring and feed back at the same time. This one's up there in the electric guitar pantheon with Back in Black. It's that good.
Honourable mentions to Andrew Bird for "A Nervous Tic Motion," LCD Soundsystem for "Someone Great," Aesop Rock for "Daylight," Outkast (again) for "Hey Ya," and The Juan Maclean for "Give Me Every Little Thing."
Peter Bowyer's Top Ten for 2009
1. In March I was invited to a conference at The Henry Moore Institute in Leeds on rethinking sculpture of the 60’s and 70’s in Britain. The institute had an excellent survey exhibition of the German artist Asta Groting. I liked her sculpture ‘Potatoes’ (2006), a line of 100 roughly peeled potatoes made of polished bronze, running along the floor in earth bound repetition.
2. In London I saw the tremendous Annette Messager show at the Hayward Gallery. I was familiar with her work from the early 90’s when she showed with us at Cold City in Toronto, but this exhibition covered her whole career. The piece I kept returning to was ‘The Boarders’ (1971-72), dead birds she had found and knitted sweaters for.
3. Mark Wallinger’s curatorial piece The Russian Linesman, also at the Hayward, featured a collection of works from all over the place. I got stuck on Jerome Bel’s video ‘Veronique Doisneau’. A ballerina recounts aspects of ballet life and the parts she hated dancing to in Swan Lake. In the men’s room I listened to James Joyce reciting from ‘Finnegans Wake’ over tiny speakers.
4. At The Saatchi Gallery I saw Unveiled: New Art From The Middle East. Shadi Ghadirian’s photographs from the Ghajar Series (1998-1999) attracted me with their serene beauty, especially the tall Persian woman with vacuum cleaner.
5. Wafa Hourani, a Palestinian artist living in Ramallah had one of the best sculptures in this show, imagining the future of the Middle East in cardboard, wire, colored thread and mirror. ‘Qalanda 2067’.
6. Rebecca Warren at the Serpentine felt like an important show to have seen. Galleries of similarly made objects, in dialogue with early modernist sculpture techniques. Serious and funny metal sculptures. I really liked this dried clay piece on a rotation pedestal. ‘The Mechanic’ (2000).
7. Keren Cytter, an Israeli artist had some interesting film projections of artificial drama in her show ‘Domestics’ at Pilar Corrias Gallery. Four Seasons (2009)
8. Spartacus Chetwynd’s sprawling installation ‘Hermito’s Children’ was a great place to start the Altermodern show at Tate Britain. An island of bean bag chairs, tangled up headphones, multiple monitors, hand held camera work and lots of people lounging around.
9. Further into the Altermodern show Rachel Harrison’s ‘Bike Week in Daytona’ (2008). A tall accumulation of drippy paint covered buckets and a monitor, kindled fond clownish memories of Abstract Expressionism.
10. Back in Toronto the visual impact of the freshly painted yellow Karen Carpenter room in Candice Breitz’s installation at the Power Plant has been hard to forget. ‘Double Karen’ (Close To You) 1970/2000. It was like looking at the sun.
