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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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I am not an archivist. I am the sort of girl that, if you lend me a book, chances are you won't get it back because I will drop it in the bathtub while I'm reading it. That's why I have deep respect and admiration for people like Brock Silversides who actually collect, preserve, and catalogue cultural artifacts. Silversides is Head of the "Media Commons" at the University of Toronto Library, who have acquired the archives of Toronto's lefty weekly NOW Magazine. According to Silversides' essay in the catalogue, the NOW collection consists of "writing/editorial and research files, taped interviews and printed transcriptions, advertising and promotional material, artwork and graphics, office and administrative files, financial records, circulation records, legal files, awards, [and] memorabilia..." Tonight was the opening of a show of about 150 photographs from the 80s, culled from the collection (34,000 photos in all) by Silversides. My two favourites are Bob and Doug Mackenzie (aka Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas) of SCTV, shot by Patrick Harbron, and weirdo punk/alt. bandaged-up zombie musician Nash the Slash as Uncle Sam playing a violin, shot by Andre Pierre. The series of protest shots is also compelling, as are all the photos of youngster local politicians with bad hair and silly 80s fashion. The free, low-production-values catalogue, pictured above and below, is a perfect take-home souvenir.
I was surprised to find myself quite moved by the event. NOW founders Michael Hollett and Alice Klein each spoke with real passion about the bubbling energy of Toronto and it's people. This city is so gawky, it's like a perennial teenager churning with potential energy, a balloon that's always inflating but never bursts. This NOW archive, which includes a full bound set of every issue, is a real core sample of activism and art from the little city that tried and tried and tried. We want it all in Toronto, and we sometimes think we can get it. The listings, letters, lefty commentary and cultural repository that is NOW are both thoroughly taken for granted and thoroughly indispensable. As I rode home from the event along Harbord Street, I was passed by a woman that I can only describe as a "downtown cyclist." She was hip and cute and familiar, with heavy-rimmed glasses, a trim leather jacket, and, of course, a fresh copy of this week's NOW tossed into the milk-crate-basket strapped to her rack.
The phrase, "familiarity breeds contempt," may encapsulate Toronto's cultural situation in a nutshell. We do get on each others' nerves in this town. But we are also ambitious and passionate and looking at these photographs from NOW Magazine I see that familiarity is also fertile. In some weird way, everything that happened on the pages of NOW, from before I even moved here, belongs to me. If you live in Toronto, go see this show, it's part of our heritage and it's sitting in the palms of our hands. (Also, the rare book library is totally cool! Look up...)
Now and the 80s is on at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, 120 St George Street, til December 21st, 2004.
There is a nice piece of journalism-from-the-future here about the bad-apple hipsters who wrecked it for everybody else at the big art show in re-opened Terminal Five at JFK Airport in New York. Chat on the topic available at Schwarz. It's ridiculous. Did somebody say, "end of days?"