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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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Most readers on this blog will already know about the current serious threat to Coach House Books. The press is fundamentally important to Canadian literature, and has been a major inspiration for a lot of DIY-type publishing activity. It's an important publisher for under-the-radar writers and most Canadian authors with any publishing history have had something to do with Coach House in the past 40 years. The place is an icon, and I think we need it. There's an interesting online petition here, FWIW, that allows you to see who's posted and read their comments.
I feel so strongly about the merit of this instant coffee listing that I am reposting it below:
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Huron Street Hunt Club Presents...
PAPER RAD SUMMER 2004 TROLL TOUR
Extreme Animals
Cory arcangel / Beige Programming Ensemble
Paper Rad Videos
dr doo
Natural Reflex
Troll Band
Hitz Exprezz
DJ Jenny-Veranda
Saturday July 24th, 2004
Gladstone Hotel 1214 Queen St. W. (TORONTO)
$6 10pm
The 2003 Toronto appearance by Extreme Animals was cancelled due to city wide lack of electricity. We promise that won't happen again, ok, but you, if you know anything you have to come to this. Have you seen this http://www.paperrad.org/animations/graffiti.html? Well go and watch it than you can decide whether you should come. Maybe you think its stupid, well fine, don't come, we are not going to miss you. But if you do come please show up at 10pm and bring 6$ + money for beverages and merchandise, plus don't forget to wear jammer shorts. If you don't wear jammer shorts you may feel slightly out of place, but don't say we didn't warn you.
For further inspiration please consult the following:
http://www.paperrad.org
http://www.beigerecords.com
Sincerely,
Huron Street Hunt Club
http://www.huronstreethuntclub.com
info@huronstreethuntclub.com
I'm involved in an interesting discussion over at Catherine Osborne's blog about art & commodity as evidenced in the work of Sandy Plotnikoff (work which I love). A super nice feature of this medium is that while two mouthy art chicks can ramble on, the artist himself can join in too, as well as anyone else with a thought on the matter.
Who'd have thought art criticism was such a hot topic? The old-style stuff was moldy and dry, the new-style stuff is either glib and undemanding, or esoteric and niche. Interesting that so many of us (myself included) seem to care about it with some sort of passion. A few months ago this blog saw a glut of posts, spurred by a panel discussion in Toronto about whether or not criticism is irrelevant. A few days ago a really good post appeared at Iconoduel, a report on James Elkins' essay What Happened to Art Criticism? Iconoduel is a very interesting art blog from Chicago, written with insight and clarity by "Dan," who seems to have a cool and solid head on his shoulders. Read his post on Elkins (and then, like I'm thinking, you might not have to read Elkins!*).
" Ultimately, Elkins doesn't 'think it is necessarily a good idea to reform criticism: what counts is trying to understand the flight from judgment, and the attraction of description' (that is the appeal of descriptive criticism, so prevalent now, as opposed to the fiery polemics of a century ago)."*(I'm kidding but I'm not. Maybe part of the reason old guard art criticism has lost cachet is that we readers aren't sated by source material anymore. I rarely want to be absorbed into someone's rigid, worked-out thesis, I'd rather slide around in all the murky questions that rise off a work when others start to analyse and question it. It's partly an attention span thing, and a symptom of decadent culture-grazing, but it might also be a characteristic of rigorous post-modernism. One single point of view just doesn't cut it anymore.)
| Ivor Cutler: THE SUN The sun quietly withdraws its light from the bit of earth you are living on to give to the people who are just about to get up. But anyway, you are tired by then, so you just go to bed. FEEBLE TRY WITH A STONE #1 Why do I look at the stone -- draw it? Why do I stand apart? I shall speak to it. "Hello stone. How are you?" "Well I have a little pain at the back. It's the damp. A little moss gathering at the crack. Can you see it?" I bend. "Yes, I see," but do not offer advice. A cat is also talking to the stone about tinned food and the stone seems very interested. "Goodbye," I say. The cat and the stone turn and nod. "Come again soon," says the stone. What a bloody cheek! 'Come again soon!' A stone! In front of a cat! A TOUGH MARRIAGE There are words -- and there are thoughts. Try putting them together. Try clothing a thought with clear words to make it visible. If you are clever with words, the visibility will be facile. Watch the awkward person struggle for the right word, the honest word. Trust his integrity. | Dave Shrigley: |
My friend Von Bark, out of the blue, recently started quoting the Scottish wag and out-there poet/artist dude, Ivor Cutler. Thank you, friend! I'd forgotten all about Ivor Cutler and his crazy, sideways tug-at-your-heart stories, songs and bits of unclassifiable ephemera. Another friend, Sandra, lent me three wee books by Cutler, published in Scotland by the wee press, Arc Publications (the top left piece above, "The Sun," is from Is That Your Flap, Jack? and the two below it are from Fresh Carpet). If you do nothing else, follow this link to Ivor's Radio Sessions, with online audio samples. Scroll down to the mp3, "I ate a lady's bun," and listen to it. Then browse.
Checking in with Ivor Cutler again after all these years is timely, as another younger waggish Scottish bloke, Dave Shrigley, was all over Toronto's transit stops this spring with posters of his enigmatic nature/culture photographs that "walk softly" and poke pointed sticks at existential melancholy while evoking an "it's a damp cold" style of naturalism. Me and lots of other Canadians have been following Shrigley for years. His off-hand drawings, full of self-deprecation and foul abject humour strike a chord. Maybe I'm going too far to say that Canadians relate to Shrigley 'cause the stance of Scottish identity vis-a-vis England is so similar to us and USA? Yes likely... I am ...Dave Shrigley's career is doing fine all over the world, not just here. But I am excited to be finally putting Shrigley and Cutler together in the same sloppy zone of brain space inside my too-thick skull. Of course there is a lineage here, and how nice to finally grasp it.