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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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I just received links to the following blogs through an email thread initiated by Palestinian artist Emily Jacir. I've just glanced through the drawing blog and it is totally fantastic. Scroll down for the talking bombed out building.
A Beiruti's drawn diaries: "How can I show sound in a drawing?"
Mazen Kerbaj, Live from Lebanon, 18 July 2006
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5082.shtml
Laila al Haddad's blog in Gaza:
http://a-mother-from-gaza.blogspot.com/
Message from e-flux:
Dear friends, we are forwarding this request for help for refugees in Lebanon on behalf of Ashkal Alwan, an organization we highly respect which organizes some of the most important contemporary art events in the Middle East. We ourselves are making a financial contribution and strongly urge you to also do so, if possible, as it is really a critical situation.More information and donation details here.
many thanks,
all of us at e-flux
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"I'm very grateful for the lucky accident that plopped me into the world during this particular junction of space/time because once in a while I get to read Paul Hong's writing." - Sally McKay |
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That quote by me appears on the back jacket of Paul Hong's new book, Your Love is Murder, Or the Case of the Mangled Pie, from Tightrope Books. Having been raised in a writerly setting, I am somewhat phobic about first books by new authors I am accquainted with and I rarely read them unless I absolutely have to. This one is different. Having read some of Hong's perfectly balanced, lateral, frightening and surprising stories in Kiss Machine magazine, I was waiting for the book with out-and-out anticipation. While reading it I experienced not one flinch, nor sigh of awkward pity, but rather found myself completely absorbed, disbelief suspended, with utter confidence in the author and eagerness to see what would happen next. The stories are hard to describe: they are short and precise, and a lot of them have animals. The animals are sometimes sort of supernatural, like the shark that appears to the boy in the hospital. Other times they are locked in the material world with the rest of us, like the dog who must borrow a child's plastic shovel in order to scratch complaints to his owner in the sand box. The stories are also about aliens. Neurologist Ramachandran talks about the zombie in our brain, a literal aspect of our physiological functionality that is impassive but observant. I recognize a certain deatchment in Hong's point of view, as if the narrator was just a visitor to this world, seeing through the eyes of a human boy. Except for the parts of the book that express a deep, confused and seething rage. This is the subtext, and it is linked to racial discrimination, to the infuriating impotence that comes from witnessing and experiencing human violence, and to the alienation of swimming through a culture's tropes and modes that do not speak to you, yet envelope you. In some cases the animals seem to proffer a bridge across a chasm. A creature that functions as icon in one set of mythologies (for instance a beaver) functions for our protagonist as a kind of existential entry-point to forming relationships with the world, or maybe, and this is where it all gets spooky, a relationship with the underworld? Ben Okri's Famished Road springs to mind, with his boy protagonist trapped between the spirit world and the living world, constantly courted and seduced by ghosts, barely clinging to the version of reality that is shared by friends and family. The struggles in Paul Hong's stories are handled with a light touch, with perfect tension, with lots of humour, and efficient yet unpredictable prose. He is an incredibly good writer, and I am an envious, admiring and enriched-for-the-experience die-hard fan. | |
JINGLE
A group exhibition curated by *Andrew Harwood
Gladstone Hotel Public Spaces 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Floors
July 15 to Aug 27, 2006 12-5pm
OPENING RECEPTION 7PM TO 9PM JULY 14, 2006
Patricia Aldridge, Katie Bethune-Leamen, Amy Bowles, Cecilia Berkovic,
John Caffery, Keith Cole, Chris Curerri, Michael Comeau, Pete Dako,
Fastwürms, Sadko Hadzihasanovic, Luis Jacob, Melissa Levin, Scott
McEwan, John McLachlin, Allyson Mitchell, Will Munro, Andrew J.
Paterson, Lisa Pereira,* **R. M. Vaughan, Natalie Wood
* recently responsible for the destruction of the Toronto Art Awards
**recently indicted on a charge of lacking appropriate reverence for Vancouver art
The show I'm in called Neutrinos They are Very Small opened last week in Kingston at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre (curated by Corinna Ghazanvi, and hosted by Celeste Scopelites and Jan Allen). It looks fantastic, if I do say so myself. There is a catalogue coming soon designed by Lisa Kiss (superstar). The same show was on exhibit in Sudbury last fall, where it also looked great. The space in Kingston is smaller and the works are more jammed together, which I really like a lot. The three artists — myself, Rebecca Diederichs, and Gordon Hicks — all worked together on the topic of neutrinos for several years (during which time many pints of beer were consumed, much information was shared, any many outlandish speculations were floated). The show is a really great amalgamation of our three very different approaches to the same big topic. The collaborative element was really important to me and, while I hope to work with both Gordon and Rebecca again, I know that the good chemistry we had for this exhibition is impossible to fabricate or reproduce.
There is one piece in the show that is literally a collaborative work between the three of us (Agent B, Agent G, and Agent S) called " The Black Box." We have installed it in two different ways so far, but the current mode involves a website which Gordon designed, and which I completely adore. I'm not going to explain the project here because exploring the data for yourself is really the whole point.
WADE: Michael Caines and Leah Decter, Everyone in the Pool (Christie Pitts wading pool)
WADE: Nick Tobier and crew (Charles G. Williams wading pool)
WADE: Sandra Gregson, True Reflection (Stanley Park wading pool)
WADE: Shannon McMullen and Fabian Winkler, Waves (Trinity Bellwoods wading pool)
WADE: Louis Laberge-Côté performing Verbal Source, conceived in collaboration with Peter Chin (Dufferin Grove wading pool)WADE was super fun again this year. I took all the pictures above during my bicycle tour on Sunday afternoon. I started with Michael Caines and Leah Decter's felt making project at Christie Pitts. Unfortunately I missed the bit where everyone got to mush up the felt in the pool, but I did get to pick out a piece to take home, and chose this one cause it looks a bit like Google Earth.
In Nick Tobier's dance piece a group of people dressed as city workers mucked around in the pool making waves and patterns and acting out cute little loosely connected scenarios. The picture on the left shows my favourite part, when the very tall man was jumping and splashing, and the two women were following him making smoothing out gestures as if they were calming the water with their hands. I'm not normally a big dance fan but I enjoyed it a lot. All the chaotic clowning around was nicely timed and the whole thing flowed. I must also confess that all the little two-year old audience members and I were on the same wave-length regarding the innate hilariousness of people splashing each other on purpose.
Sandra Gregson's fake grass might have been my favourite piece of the ones I saw. She rolled out some really classy astro-turf-type lawn along the side of the pool and partway into the water. It was a very low-key transformation, and the very small kids were freakin' out of their minds happy with running and splatting themselves onto the softer surface. The plastic grass felt really good on your feet and the dry areas made a great place to sit — not as visually spectacular as some of the other works, but as a positive pool enhancement it was really successful.
I also really liked the subtle sound buoy by Shannon McMullen and Fabian Winkler. It just bobbed and warbled in the pool while all the regular kid activated water activities took place around it. I waded out and bonked the thing a few times and it had a nice robust construction, like a sturdy toy. While I was there, a little kid kept running his fire truck into it going "vroom."
The Peter Chin / Louise Laberge-Côté collaboration was a recipe doomed to fail...only it didn't. Laberge-Côté did an autobiographical dance/monologue in which he evoked the psychological states of his story with movement. Sounds horrid, doesn't it? But in fact his performance was super charismatic, well-paced, brave, and funny. I was very impressed at the courage of the man to put himself on the line in such a strange and intimate performer/audience setting. Again, the kids were totally captivated, shrieking with laughter as his persona flipped in an instant from angelic child to tormented demon and back again.
Unfortunately I did not get pictures of John Greyson and Margaret Moores' Roy and Silo’s Wedding, which I attended in the evening. The candle-lit floating balloon penguins in ice-laden water made for a great closing party centre-piece. A dvd was playing in the centre of the pool. Many of us managed to watch it despite the icy chill of the water, by hopping back and forth from one numb foot to the other. There were a lot of penguin references laid on, the footage being an apropriated comedic re-mash of March of the Penguins. The story was about the gay penguin marriage in New York City, with jokes about Penguin books re-releasing all their gay literature, and lots of gags with the Penguin logo. Lots of colder-blooded-than-I resilient youngsters spent time in the water encouraging the floating penguins and candles to drift this way or that, and the rest of us stood and sat about the pool chatting in the dark. Every once in a while a balloon penguin would explode when it got to close to a flame.
I know WADE is a big huge ton of work. Many congratulations to curators Sandra Rechico and Christie Pearson for pulling off this excellent weekend of watery outdoor park art.