Last Saturday was nuit blanche, Toronto's all-night art thing so we met up with some friends and perambulated throughout the city streets. I learned that art can be interactive, transformative and sometimes, "the Public" can ruin a good thing. I also learned that nuit blanche takes place in very low light and that there's only so much a small camera can do. This is some of what we saw.
A friend just sent me this brilliant book, The Shatner Show which documents 76 images/illustrations/portraits by various artists inspired by the man hisself. This is exactly why "we stand on guard for thee".
If, for some reason, you find yourself trying to impress a little kid who loves drawing dogs by actually drawing a dog yourself, then it would serve you well to watch this brief but important video:
The story of Emanuel Haldeman-Julius (1889-1951) reads like a Coen brothers script. Photos from a lecture at the Powerplant Gallery in Toronto
A young go-getter Emanuel Julius begins working at the Socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason where he meets and marries a wealthy heiress. Eventually he buys 25% of the paper with the heiress' backing and starts publishing public domain classics in pamphlet format. When EHJ discovers there is a voracious appetite for the pint sized books, he quickly starts churning out pamphlets consisting of re-printed classics and commissioned originals from notable authors such as Upton Sinclair and Clarence Darrow. Not all of Haldeman-Julius contributers were as esteemed and the quality of the Little Blue Books, as they were later called, quickly deteriorated. The following titles attest to the range of work published:
1507. A Rational View of the Sex Issue [by] Harry Elmer Barnes. 1508. What You Should Know about Poisons [by] Heinz Norden. 1509. The Gay Chronicle of the Monks and Nuns [by] Joseph McCabe. 1515. The Love Affair of a Priest and a Nun (Abelard and Heloise) [by] Joseph McCabe. 1516. Facts You Should Know About Gonorrhea [by] Heinz Norden. 1517. Land, and Old Man and His Wife [by] Konrad Bercovici. 1523. How to Avoid Catching Venereal Diseases [by] Heinz Norden. 1524. Famous Eccentric Americans [by] J. V. Nash. 1534. How to Test Your Urine at Home [by] B. C. Meyrowitz. 1535. How to Throw a Party [by] Heinz Norden. 1536. Facing Death Fearlessly [by] Joseph McCabe. 1537. The Essence of Unitarianism [by] L. M. Birkhead. 1538. A Rational Sex Code [by] E. Haldeman-Julius. 1545. Why I Do Not Fear Death [by] E. Haldeman-Julius. 1546. An Encyclopedia of Sex [by] E. Haldeman-Julius. 1553. Beneficial Exercises for Nervousness and Indigestion [by] C. O. Benson and Dr. C. L. Smith. 1560. Why I Quit Being a Prohibitionist [by] Harry Hibschman. 1564. Homosexuality in the Lives of the Great [by] J. V. Nash. 1565. The Danger of Catholicism in the Public Schools [by] E. Haldeman-Julius. 1566. How to Conduct a Love Affair [by] Betty Van Deventer. 1567. Making Men Happy with Jams and Jellies [by] Elizabeth Palmer.
Of course, some of the more popular titles involved titillating topics of sexuality or the conduct of the sexually active (or deviant). Yet these pamphlets, sold mostly through mail-order for 20 for $1, made E. Haldeman-Julius wealthy. He became a man about town, which couldn't be that hard in a town like Girard, Kansas. Eventually though, his wife, Matrice ran off with his alcoholic assistant leaving Emanuel alone to womanize and write many, many, many, many, many, many more Little Blue Books.
In the end, it was E. Haldeman-Julius' writing that may have been his undoing. In a book about the FBI he outed J. Edgar Hover as a homosexual which of course didn't go over too well at the Bureau. The FBI already had a file on Haldeman-Julius due to his role as a publisher of socialist literature and as they dug deeper they discovered EHJ's unpaid taxes. EHJ was charged and found guilty of tax evasion but he died before he served any time. In 1951, he was found dead in his pool, or as many locals believe, the FBI murdered him.
His printing house was left to his son but on July 4th, 1978 errant fire works landed on the roof catching fire and burning the building down.
While FishNet may be gone, it's far from forgotten. After all, the National Post named the exhibit one of the Top Five Things to do in Toronto (right after Star Trek: The Musical). The exhibition ended June 22, but some of the remaining fish are on display in the Harbourfront Centre's shop, Bounty. The shop will also continuing "releasing" the fish as explained by Angela in this interview from May for the Ontario Waterkeeper's weekly podcast:
This is a "behind the scenes" look at the Pomme de Parterre installation in June 2007, as part of the International Garden Festival at the Jardins des Métis/Reford Gardens in Grand-Métis, Quebec.
'Cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn't give you what you desire - it tells you how to desire' - Slavoj Zizek
Philosopher, film critic, raconteur, Slavoj Zizek presents his ideas of film and philosophy in this engaging and eye-opening film by Sophie Fiennes. Fiennes embeds Zizek, the Slovenian pyschoanalyst, directly into some of his favorite scenes which he uses to illuminate the ideas and concepts of pyschoanalysis.
Not only is film the perfect medium for criticism of itself, but also the perfect forum for Zizek and his particular talent of constructing and explaining his ideas in a seemingly free-flowing, unscripted style. When Zizek pops into the Matrix we can't help but laugh when he demands a "third pill". Also, I can't help but notice that the blue pill looks an awful lot like a fast-acting Advil gel capsule, of which I have consumed far too many. I guess that's my subconscious desire to stay within the Matrix and refusal to awaken to the reality of my existence. Or maybe I just had a headache.
photo: Bernice Iarocci When you've called during the past year, and I've said Angela was busy – this is what I was talking about. Over 2000 students, educators, artists and designers have been brought together through Project Fishnet to create over 1200 textile fish now exhibited at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto. Angela and Claire have been working at a pace that would make James Brown look like lazy. That pace hit a fever pitch in the last two weeks as volunteers were culled from every corner, photos were Photoshopped, graphics were printed and fish were strung. The show opened last Friday and from everything I saw it was a hit. I think some of the hard-core art folk were a little taken aback by the presence of so many kids, though that didn't stop them from polishing off the punch bowl (oh yeah, ol' skool punch bowl).
Check out the Fishnet Web site, and gallery of fish crafted by artists and kids alike (including your humble author).
For over two years now, Dave Ross, a good friend of ours, has been engaged in a futile task. He has been photographing darkness. Not just any darkness, but the darkness of artists' storage spaces. The surprising thing about darkness is just how much it reveals. The results of these long exposure photographs (and I do mean long — sometimes days in length) are often amazing and mesmerizing. The images are made by the almost imperceptible drips of light that, over time, eventually saturate the film and are not only a document of the unseen but of the passage of time it took for the image to be created. Looking at the photos you become increasingly aware of the emerging detail you begin to see, in much the same way your eyes adjust to diminished light in say, a dark room. The longer you absorb the blackness, the more your mind wonders what you are in fact seeing. You may even feel as though you are actually only looking at black and the details are more like the after image burned on your retina. Then, if you've been staring long enough, the image becomes an after image that you see even when you've looked away — as if your own eye is behaving exactly as the film did, slowly having the room interior burned into your rods and cones.
This summer, eight of the images will be exhibited at the Musée d'art Contemporain de Montréal as part of the Quebec Trienniale. Yet the cost of photographing, printing and framing these pictures is noteworthy. To offset these expenses the artist has made available two smaller scale prints for $125 each. To order prints contact Dave Ross before March 21st and indicate which of the images shown here you're interested in. Find out more about the project here.
Museé d'art de Joliette: 1,260 seconds, 2007 Code:DR2
Tonight we saw Fassbinder's Martha at Camera – unbelievably a film made for German television. Man, they don't just do "Shogun" on German TV, huh? I guess it's sort of "taking the piss" out of "The Bourgeoisie" in the form of a weird German take on the Melodrama. Once you embrace it as a schwarze Komödie/black comedy, it's actually a whole lot of whacky, strange fun. I only wish I knew enough German to yell at the top of my lungs, "SLIME! THIS isn't music! It's SLIME!" So far, we've gotten by yelling, "Schhhlime! Dis muzika ich SCHLIME!" I can't say I recommend it for everyone, but it opened my eyes to a type of movie that might normally have put me to sleep.
Ed Burtynsky, Nanpu Bridge Interchange, Shanghai, 2004
Tonight TVO showed the film about Ed Burtynsky's photography, called Manufactured Landscapes. Though Burtynsky's photos are beautiful and captivating, I can't escape the feeling that he's actually documenting the End. This is how the world ends, this is what it looked like just before we finished and here are the documents that will describe how we plundered the planet. Sort of like the heads on Easter Island. Lasting monuments to a people who foolishly kept carving giant heads while they were running out of trees, food and a sustainable place to live.
Ok so it turns out not everyone was able to play the Pomme de parterre video I posted a while ago, and are still eager to hear what the battery sounds like. You can find out more about the project at Graphic Standards or at Jardins de Métis. Other news from the site is that the potatoes continue to grow in the garden and the onsite crew has already replaced the initial potatoes with a fresh batch. To hear the battery in action listen here
This is Jardin de Métis and it is here that we found ourselves to construct a curious confection. A half-submerged clapboard shed with a roof as big as an aircraft wing, houses a chirping, talking and blinking battery powered by local Gaspé potatoes. The shed is surrounded by planted heritage variety potatoes which are bordered by marigolds and a simple wooden walkway. Some 1200 potatoes within the shed, each pierced with a pair of metal electrodes roughly the size of a stick of Wrigley's gum, sit, spiked on nails on narrow shelves and are connected by red sheathed wires to a 12 different mason jars. Each jar contains its own innards of wires, a single clear LED and an electronic chip and in turn is connected to a 4"x 4" plastic speaker. The speakers, controlled by the chips and powered by the potatoes emit uniquely tuned beeps, bops, chirps and squawks. Each beep is preceded by a short pulse from the LED that is not unlike a firefly's spark. The effect, when standing in the shed, is strangely funny, irritating, mesmerizing and eventually meditative. Your first reaction is to laugh.
Dave posted this short video recently and the folks at Jardin de Métis have posted the photos you'll see in the Flickr set. Just think of this as Potato Power.
It should be said that the week we were in Mont Joli or (wherever it was we actually stayed) was intensely social. We were housed with other artists and designers and every night there was a large gathering of people making supper, drinking beer and doing dishes. Being out of cell phone range, without Internet access, without television, radio or newspapers was disarming at first but you got used to it. I suppose it forced you to be social. Without our commodities, all we were left with was our humanity.
For many years I was astonished at every Kubrick film I saw, then being unsure of myself, I thought maybe he was rubbish. Now, I'm just so unsure of him. I'm glad I'm not alone.
I've said it before, I'll say it again, you don't have to take a camera anywhere anymore, because if other people are there, then someone else has photographed it and posted it to the web (specifically, Flickr). This photo was taken from someone else's Flickr set, but it was from the event I attended yesterday.
The really funny thing was the fact that all three of these very established artists still say that their families have no idea of what they do.
"You draw comic books?" "Yes, but not children's books, for adults." "Oh (winking) pornographic books..."
Which I guess is a problem when you call comics "Graphic Novels" - I mean, are they novels that are 'graphic' - sexually or violently explicit? By that meaning, "American Psycho" is a "graphic" novel. While the debate rages on, I thought it was great that Phillippe Dupuy said at one point, the next time someone asks me "what are you doing these days?" he would respond that he was a dentist.
Yesterday, we saw/heard Jaime Hernandez at IFOA - one half of Los Bros Hernandez, creators of one of the most important comic book series in the last 25 years. What can you say really? You get to hear an author and artist whose work you've admired for years and that person becomes sort of unreal in a way. He certainly wasn't what I expected. Quiet, gracious and even a little reserved. I suppose I really expected someone who looked more like a member of Los Lobos than an author. Based on his Love and Rockets stories, you might think Jaime Hernandez might be brash, loud or just a touch more punk. Maybe he was that way 20 years ago. Perhaps time soothes youthful noise. When looking at his artwork, the one thing that really comes across is confidence. Those big, bold, black lines scream confidence. He has every right to be arrogant but thankfully he wasn't.
Despite a terrible cold, I'm still glad we went and I'm glad that the International Festival of Authors has, for the last three years, included at least 2 or 3 comic book artists in their line-ups of interviews and readings.
Earlier in the day, I attended another great interview. Seth interviewed two distinguished artists from France, Phillipe Dupuy & Charles Berberian whose successful series "Mr. Jean" has just been compiled into a new book published in English by Drawn & Quarterly. Needless to say, I ended up dropping $60 on books yesterday. At least there was free Starbucks coffee.
We ventured out last night to wander with a few thousand other people to check out Toronto's Nuit Blanche (art installations open from sunset to sunrise). We lasted until a bit after midnight on a sojourn that began from our Western Edge HQ on Fern, along Queen St. W. from Gladstone, past re-contextualized car washes, up through Trinity-Bellwoods then over to Philosopher's Walk and the rooftop patio at the Gardiner Museum. The highlights were an installation of 19th century military style tents in the bowl of Trinity-Bellwoods by Tom Sokoloski and the 'Microclimate' at Philosopher's Walk at U of T (basically a kick-ass fog machine). Searching the Web to see other 'Nuit Blanche' nights in Europe, it's clear that Toronto couldn't match Paris or where ever, yet, despite the less than great weather, there was a festive mood on the streets and every coffee shop and restaurant was over flowing with people who'd ventured out. It was 'Culture as Economic Engine' in action. Too bad Stephen Harper doesn't know that (can you tell he's getting advice from Mulroney et al?) It was a fun time and like Ang said, it felt like we were going out on Halloween or something. The surprising part was the variety of people taking it all in. From families to twenty-something hiptsers, to hip-replacement recipients, everyone was having a good time, even though a good many of them pronounced the evening "Newy Blank".
We had plans to meet up with a few people and eventually we did, but Toronto does not lend itself to 'meeting up'. Too much terrain, too much to do, too little 'Nuit'.
By the way, if you're finding yourself procrastinating (of this-I know of what I speak) and you need some musical motivation to "Git 'er done" - I recommend a little Wolf Parade action.
It's easy to become complacent. It's easy to assume quietly that someone else doesn't know what they are talking about. It's easy to be smug. It's even easier to have your feet pulled from under you and have your entire self-worth erased in a single sentence that obliterates any walnut-sized piece of self-confidence you hold somewhere behind your sternum.
Friday, September 22, 2006, I received my first rejection notice from a theatre for "Salt Peanuts". Let's be clear here. I've been rejected plenty of times in my life. God knows (Satan too, for that matter), my high school experience was dominated by the singularly teen-aged feeling that everyone had rejected me and I, in good turn, had rejected everyone else. There have been numerous job interviews that failed to illicit a return call. Many designs and creations have been turned aside in favour of another one. Yet, for all those instances, "appropriateness" dominated the rejection criteria. This rejection, while diplomatic, helpful and even graceful should have been devastating. In fact, rejection of a writer's work is considered a right of passage similar to many we face in life - I'm thinking of First Communion, Bar Mitzvah, an aboriginal youth's vision quest, that finding of your animal spirit, or of a rookie junior 'A' hockey player's gentle grasping of Ritz crackers (I will say no more, Sir).
Somehow, it was not devastating. I would say it was more uplifting. Not merely had my play been rejected, more importantly, it had been read. I realize, this particular theatre has the wonderful policy of reading 'everything submitted', still I felt an air of legitimacy. I had taken that long walk, and the door, the first of many, no doubt, had been firmly shut in my face. Like the shock of diving into cold summer waters, it was exhilarating.
I'm certain after the second or third time, this feeling will wear off, and by the twentieth or thirtieth time, it will really have that devastating, soul squishing, life crushing effect I so expect. Every part of life has its opposite. Dark has light, Ying has Yang, Siegfried has Roy, and Rejection has Acceptance.
Before thinking that you might want to upload a video for discussion, search to see if it's already posted. I know this sounds obvious, but a few weeks ago, I searched for this Daft Punk Video (Around the World) directed by Michel Gondry and found nothing. Now here it is. Like using stop-motion animation and information design set to music - Gondry assigns a different set of characters for the different components of the track (giants are the bassline, bathers the synth keyboard, mummies are the percussion, skeletons the guitar hook, space men are the vocals), all in front of a light display programmed by Gondry's brother. So simple, so logical and so funny, it makes you want to laugh, cry and dance all at once.
Awhile ago I decided to do a sketch a day. Needless to say it didn't go far. If I found it hard to find time to do a sketch, it would be impossible to do the sketch then scan and post it. Instead, I've decided to just post a few as I have time or that are worth a look.
This drawing of a swimmer is from a story about characters who interact at a community swimming pool. I haven't been to the pool lately but anyone who swims at a public pool knows the variety of people you meet. There may be too much there for one story.
