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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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There is an interesting thread here about Richard Serra and other things to do with minimalism.
Bicycling Tirana (dvd still), 2003. From Rainer Ganahl's website
I've only seen a few installations of Toronto's Images Festival so far. Rainer Ganahl's bicycle video, Bicycling Tirana at Paul Petro Contemporary Art (still up until April 24) is pretty great; pov at about chest height, cyclist riding into oncoming traffic, mostly with no hands. The mood is oddly calm and transcendent, even as the cars are coming straight for the camera. The other video, simply titled Bicycling also has a strange serenitiy. A cyclist, shot from above, dreamily, lazily, doubles a passenger round and round in a Manhattan intersection, unconcerned as cars whizz by. I recognise this particular cycling frame of mind, a kind of blissful remove from the anxieties of car-drivership, despite the constant proximity of the big metal beasts.
There are some confusing works on canvas, big paintings of website pages about a suicide bomber who used a bicycle, and a painting of the text of an email from a cyclist describing a traffic conflict with a car driver. These paintings are kind of pretty, but I think the labour of depicting the web in paint is a questionable use of time.
My favourite piece in the show is the mail art project, Use a Bicycle. Ganahl, who lives in New York, made his own postage stamps which say things like Al Queda, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Shock and Awe. He sent eight Twin Towers 9/11 souvenir postcards to the Toronto gallery, and they all arrived. In the message area of the card is the simple imperative assertion: use a bicycle. This juxtaposition of human-powered transportation against US conflict in the middle east is both audacious and obvious, a simple beautiful statement about the ramifications of various technologies. Rainer Ganahl is clearly in love with the bicycle, an attitude I comprehend. He has written a good bicycle-related artist statement that you can read here. It was this quote, however, from the Images Festival guide, that drew me into the show. "The bicycle is really -- next to the computer and the radio -- my most important instrument for making it through my life."
use a bicycle, mail art project with self-made stamps (detail), 2004. From Rainer Ganahl's website.
News flash: Catherine Obsorne is now online! More on this soon.
cyborg notes
I read in Edge* that Eye-Toy is working on an interface that will read facial expressions. Remember in the old days when AI advancements used to pose questions for ethical and philosophical debate?
Speaking of play, how about a tiny game that you ingest - taken in capsule form. A nanotech neurotransmitter that just stimulates the relevant brain bits. You can have it running in the background and turn your attention on and off of it at will. Come to think of it, the searchable i-tunes implant database will be pretty nice too. Volume control inside your head. Ears are just for wetware interface and avoiding physical impacts. I'm also waiting for the small muscle mod chip from Social Science™ that allows you to select and implement a variety of facial expressions so you don't have to leave your carapace gawping and drooling while you tend to important internal matters.
*sorry I can't find the quote online - read it in hard copy and then lent it to my friend
The pictures above are from Toronto's Alex Wilson Community Garden. Alex Wilson wrote a great, influential book called The Culture of Nature. When he died, this garden was made in his memory. It's right on the best graffitti alley in Toronto, which also happens to be my off-road route to work. Will post the occasional spring picture of this garden and alley because A: it's a beautiful thing, and B: there's another, very much alive, Alex Wilson on Digital Media Tree who spends a great deal of his time birdwatching in Central Park, one of the most cultured pieces of nature on the planet.
"We must build landscapes that heal, connect and empower, that make intelligible our relations with each other and the natural world: places that welcome and enclose, whose breaks and edges are never without meaning. We urgently need people living on the land, caring for it, working out an idea that includes human life and human livelihood. All of that calls for a new culture of nature, and it cannot come soon enough." Alex Wilson, 1953-1993
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?