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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
Digital Media Tree this blog's archive OVVLvverk Lorna Mills: Artworks / Persona Volare / contact Sally McKay: GIFS / cv and contact |
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As I am currently fussing about USA, I have found recent posts over at michelle kasprzak blog quite stimulating. Nice history of passports and also this "says-it -all" quote, both from MK:
"It is interesting, the idea of moving to a place being equated with approval of what that nation stands for. It does seem like a vote of some kind. I know a lot of Canadians in America that worry about these things, and the reflection their choices make on them. Sometimes opportunities are too good to pass up, wherever they are located. My cousin is currently working as an airline pilot in the United Arab Emirates. Does he support their goverment? I'm not sure, but I do know he was offered considerably more money to fly for an airline based there than he was making here, so he went. We tend to ask these questions a lot more when someone settles in America, which I think is a good examination of conscience, but a move sometimes simply means an opportunity for change, money, personal growth, or any combination of these things. Where one chooses to settle, either temporarily or permanently, can sometimes be quite arbitrary. A generation or two ago, some Eastern European immigrants had to choose between places they didn't know very well - Australia and Canada, in one story that I remember. I think Canada was chosen because it seemed not so far away from Europe, and yet offering a blank slate. Not a compelling "vote" in favour of Canada, it's true. But interesting to think about the misperceptions, fantasies, and other reasons for choosing a place to immigrate to - the American dream being the strongest example I can think of.I take MK's point, but at the same time I can't help but worry about when to draw the line...when is another country's foreign (or domestic) policy soooo bad, that to even be associated by geography is to be too complicit?
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Castle in the Sky is the film that I could not watch due to a parental block on my Playstation. Arg!!! Well fine, now I got other means to watch whatever I want ... so I'm allowed see kid's movies like this one, co-produced in USA by Disney, ironic. Anyhow, my stupid tech woes aside, this is another really lovely anime [via] by Hiyao Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away). The story is a bit weak compared to his others, written for a younger audience maybe, but the artwork is unbelievable. Miyazaki has a knack for nature, and the grasses, trees and clouds in this film are simply stunning. The tale revolves around Laputa, a floating city in the sky that has been long abandoned and overrun with plants and trees. Huge, soft spoken robots are the only surviving inhabitants and they wander about the place growing moss and taking care of birds' nests. This is the most poignant and gripping aspect of the movie. I got a bit bored with the rest of the plot, but honestly I've never seen such a good-looking movie, so I dozed and let the pretty pictures transport me. |
Kiss Machine in the Toronto Star: "With agriculture, when you get down to only a few species, people get sick," [Emily Pohl Weary] says. "It's the same thing with cultural creations. You don't want any one or five big magazines to rule the world."
A recent thread elsewhere directed me to this excellent, informative essay by Mr. Wilson on the historic relationships between art and Central Park.
"Throughout its history there has been a dialectic between an “elitist” and a “populist” concept of the Park. It was conceived by cultured (and wealthy) people who wanted a park to match the great public places of Europe, and also to increase the value of real estate uptown. Theirs was a Romantic view of Nature, by way of American Transcendentalism. The Park would be for quiet contemplation and relaxation. The lower classes, in so far as they had access, would be edified by the models both of Nature and of their social betters."In case there are any readers of this page who are unaware of the rest of Digital Media Tree, it is full of great, smart writing. Browse around.
"...infinite vigilance is not possible"
Nassim Nicholas Taleb at Edge.org, also published in NYTimes on April 8/04.
Much of the research into humans' risk-avoidance machinery shows that it is antiquated and unfit for the modern world; it is made to counter repeatable attacks and learn from specifics. If someone narrowly escapes being eaten by a tiger in a certain cave, then he learns to avoid that cave. Yet vicious black swans by definition do not repeat themselves. We cannot learn from them easily. All of which brings us to the 9/11 commission. America will not have another chance to hold a first inquiry into 9/11. With its flawed mandate, however, the commission is in jeopardy of squandering this opportunity.
I went to see the Whitney Biennial yesterday. The Globe and Mail's Sarah Milroy described the show as "tremulous." Tom Moody will no doubt speak for himself, but he has been heard to characterise it as the "fey, twee Biennial." I was a bit surprised to see so much low-impact, pretty work, and found myself tiring of all things quirky, pale pink or minty green. That said, the show made for a great art afternoon and some stuff, mostly dealing with violence and/or death, really struck me. Here's my list of picks.
Emily Jacir is a Palestinian American with a US passport that allows her to travel where other Palestinians can't go. She uses this power/freedom to fulfill requests such as. "Go to the Israeli post office in Jerusalem and pay my phone bill," and "Go to my mother's grave in Jerusalem on her birthday and place flowers and pray." Some requests are practical, some symoblic, some expressions of love and connection, some are vehicles for vicarious wish fulfillment. The documentation is simple and straightforward and the piece carries its own impact without fuss or fanfare. You can see most of it here.
Sue DeBeer's Hans & Grete is a big, funny/sad 2-channel video installation. The floor is covered with huge funfur pillows for flopping and watching (strewn, when I was there, with saggy, weary teenaged art viewers). The piece has 4 characters, two teenaged boys and two teenaged girls, played by two actors. They are twinned and juxtaposed in various ways, with lots of fairytale type reference, stuffed animals, sex and air guitar. The characters deliver monologues that each have their own heartbraking mixture of violence, idealism, childishness, ego and pain. The website is great, and generously and openly cites DeBeer's primary source material which includes writing by Ulrike Meinhoff and Eric Harris' suicide note. My favourite scene is when the character Kip is in the forest with a little stuffed toy dog. The dogs eyes glow amber and it speaks to him in a smurfy voice. He makes the dog elevate into the trees. The scene is twilit, understated and damn scary.
Jack Goldstein was an important 70s artist working with film and mass media. I'd never heard of him, and according to this useful article by Jim Lewis at Slate it's not a huge surprise.
By 1991 he was broke, angry, depressed, strung out, and one day he simply moved away, out to the California desert—disappeared, really. Almost nobody heard from him; if you came to contemporary art afterward, you may not even have heard of him. And yet an artist like Douglas Gordon, whose giant videos of a ponderously live elephant, shown at the Gagosian Gallery in New York last month, pleased so many people, owes a great deal to Goldstein, as he may or may not know himself.The piece shown here is film of volcanos and underwater scenes. The colour is extreme and the image breaks down, the highlights burning out into amorphous areas of white, orange or blue. It's a gripping abstraction of images of the elements, that ends with a lunar eclipse, accompanied by an alarming, high-pitched tone, the only sound in the piece. I loved it.
Chloe Piene's Blackmouth was really great; a slow-mo video of a young girl covered in mud (or something) and roaring like a lion or a monster. Prepubescent power/anger/angst.
Barnaby Furnas's bloody violent paintings were unsual enough to really catch my attention. They strike a fine line between cartoonishness and abstraction. Sam Peckinpah in paint (with a bit of real life war and bit of video game graphics resonating in the mix).
Cory Arcangel/BEIGE showed their famous hacked Nintendo clouds, and a great little screen tucked off to the side with Super Mario sleeping to crazy hacked Nintendo music (heard through headphones). I was happy to see this work, after hearing so much about it, and while I like the ephemeral, performance and online presence of Beige more than this installation, I'm nonetheless glad that they were in the show.