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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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Amadou & Mariam - Senegal Fast Food
featuring Manu Chao
Amadou Bagayoko speaks with NPR's Afropop Worldwide: "We said we are all in theJe pense toi
same boat, but nobody knows where we are going. It was like, we're all in this
together, but nobody knows what's going to happen. So the best solution is for those
who have gone on this adventure to a strange land to think about those they left behind
in their country. If they're in the big city, they must think about their parents and friends
who have stayed behind in small villages. That's what we sang about in "Senegal Fast
Food," because the song about exodus, about people who are going here and there.
People who want to live this way have problems, with visas, with the police, all that.
The best thing is to pay attention. You are there, but you don't know what's going to
happen."
It looks like the best outcome for artist Steven Kurtz of Critical Art Ensemble . It just would have
been better not to have happened in the first place. (via hallwalls and elsewhere)
For those of us who have been following recent arts funding discussions in the local blogosphere simpleposie, VOCA, Gabrielle Moser, and Timothy Comeau there is a good lecture here online by UK arts activist John Holden probing ways in which cultural value may be effectively re-articulated. He tells the story of he was chair of the board of a concert hall. The city government wanted to give the organisation 20,000 pounds, but their cultural budget was spent, so the money was coming out of their education budget, and their priority was road safety for school children. The government wanted the concert hall to report how they had been able to reach that aim. Holden said that the "dishonesty inherent in the conversation" really worried him. "He knew that we knew that he knew that we probably wouldn't spend the money on road safety. But as long as we conspired together to come up with a halfway convincing story, then no one would inquire too much about it. Clearly this was no way to fund the arts. It lacked clarity, it lacked rigour, it lacked honesty, and worst of all there was a grave danger that our artistic purposes could be perverted in a scramble to get funding." It's an extreme example, but the dynamic is sure familiar!
More random thoughts about arts funding...
The VOCA thread, spurred by an article in the National Post, is a debate about whether the government should fund the arts. It's an important discussion to have, and VOCA is a good forum because there are people participating who are on both sides of the issue. In my mind, however, there is not a question. I liked L.M.'s comment on that thread about all the other industries that receive government funding, where it is not seen as a hand-out, but and R&D investment. If culture is as important as science and technology (and I believe it is), then it should also be supported by society.
The simpleposie thread is also a debate about whether or not the arts should be funded, but it is spurred by a campaign by Clive Robertson to criticize and hopefully improve government policy. This is where I feel more implicated because, while I support government funding for the arts, I also feel invested in how that funding is disseminated, and there are lots of problems. The main thing, in my view, is to be vigilant about the arm's length model, which is the tenuous boundary between art and nationalistic state-art.
But there are strange gaps and heirarchies in types of art practice that become implied by the system. When I was in Victoria this winter, I met an artist who has a split practice. He makes one kind of art for the commercial tourist galleries (landscapes and still-lifes) and another kind of art for non-profit galleries (more installational and conceptual). I find the concept fascinating, and I'm interested because I don't think it would work very well in Toronto. It would be much harder to keep the two separate. Here we don't have the same kind of tourist market for artisanal work, and, as L.M. said when we were discussing it, no neo-conceptualist would get very far in this town if they were also selling silk scarves at Harbourfront.
While in Victoria, I also met an artist who paints traditional watercolour landscapes, and has a gallerye who does very well selling them. Sometimes, however she verges into abstractions and more experimental designs that her gallerist won't exhibit. But the artist-run centres would not be interested in the work either. She was very frustrated that she simply could not show this particular aspect of her practice.
I guess, in some ways, I have suspicion about a government system that decides for others what art is worthy and what art isn't. Art doesn't work that way, one person's tripe is another person's sublime, and vice versa. I'd like an arm's length system of government arts funding that accomodates more kinds of art and more kinds of artist.
John Scott
Dogfight 2008 mixed media on paper, 38 x 50 inches
A Blast 2008 mixed media on paper, 38 x 50 inches
One Shot World 2007 mixed media on paper, 50 x 38 inches
And did I like the The Battle Ground Project currently on display at the Textile museum?
Yes, I'd say so. These images and more have been catalogued on the Textile Museum's site.
It also should be pointed out that this exhibition is sponsored by the National Post, the same newspaper that recently published an article by one of their resident retards (or maybe she was a freelance moron) that called for the ending of government funding for arts & culture, a bit disingenuous of them since they are happy to reap the tax breaks from their sponsorship of a cultural event such as this.
Perhaps it's money well spent in their minds because the Related Programs and Events include:
Talk: Dogs in War Cinnamon was a military camp mascot on a US Military Base in Afghanistan. Just a puppy, she had found her way into the hearts of many of the service men and women stationed there. One in particular, LCDR Mark Feffer worried for her future when most of the troops who cared for her were due to rotate out of the region. Who would care for her then? Christine Sullivan founded New Hope for Animals with her brother Mark Feffer to raise money for animals in need. She is the author of 44 Days Out Of Kandahar: The Amazing Journey of a Missing Military Puppy and the Desperate Search to Find Her.I love puppies, but this won't work, war isn't cute. (and those pesky arms-length arts juries would probably fund some crabby lefty artist who doesn't think war is cute either)
Tora Bora from War Rug
The Battle Ground Project at the Textile Museum of Canada, 55 Centre Avenue, Toronto.
Opening: April 23, 6:30pm
Max Allen has curated three exhibitions in all: Battleground: War Rugs from Afghanistan, The Kandahar Journals of Richard Johnson and Patches: Military Uniform Insignia
Sarah Quinton, a curator at the Textile museum, told me about this show a few weeks ago, so I got idiotically excited and sent her a link to where I claimed to have written a post about war rugs. Of course I did no such thing. I started by writing a post about the writer Ryszard Kapuscinski that meandered into the subject of war rugs. (I like to pretend that posting pictures is equivalent to essay writing.)
Afghan War Rug from warrug.com
RPG Rug from War Rug
WTC Rug from War Rug
Douglas Walker
Untitled #A-246 oil on panel, 32" x 44"
Untitled #A-247 oil on panel, 32" x 44"
Untitled #A-253 oil on panel, 32" x 44"
Untitled #A-248 oil on panel, 32" x 44"
Lisa Neighbour - I'll See You 2008 engraved knife blade
Just kidding, I'm not dead. But Sally has a bad cold.
At Lisa's opening we discussed our ideal last words. I want to have sent, posthuminously, an email that reads: "I'm dead, you're not". Lisa has promised a blade version in that eventuality, though I prefer to think of myself as exempt . (and at that moment I might just end up saying shitfuckdamncocksucker)
Sunday Devotionals
Big Maybelle singing a brilliant version of 96 Tears (via mister anchovy)
Steven Cohen's video Maid in South Africa is one of the most challenging artworks I've seen. The artist filmed his old nanny, now 84, cleaning his parents' house in South Africa. The house is run down and dingey. There are no appliances, and she washes the clothes in the bathtub. In South Africa, apparently, even lower middle class white people have a maid that they keep employed for a lifetime. Cohen's camerm follows Nomsa around while she does her regular chores. For the shoot, Nomsa is dressed (or, rather, undressed) in the heels, garters and dangling purple nipple covers of a draq queen/stripper. She is deadpan-serious about the whole thing, except for a brief shot where she chuckles at herself in the mirror, and the end, where she laughs gleefully, some kind of disco light flashing from behind her teeth. Cohen, while seemingly quite tender toward Nomsa, is merciless to his audience, and delivers the debasement of this woman he cares about with unrelenting shots of her cleaning the filthy toilet, crawling on the carpet to sweep up cigarette butts, etc.
I watched the video at V-Tape and was lucky enough to have the screening room to myself. I was extremely uncomfortable. I squirmed and kept telling myself "it's just a video." I was glad I didn't have to take other audience reaction into account, as I was having enough trouble dealing with my own. Of course it isn't "just a video." It's a portrait of exploitation that is very real indeed.
Steven Cohen is the same artist who did the stunning performance, in which he converted a chandelier into an over-the-top glam outfit and wore it, with high heels, into a shanty town in Johannesburg as it was being destroyed (Chandelier, 2001-02).
Nomsa raised Steven Cohen. The race dynamics, the power dynamics, the transgressive drag dynamics and the artist/subject dynamics of the video are further complicated by oedipal dynamics. It's all pretty potent. The piece is an indictment of oppression in South African, but it is an intimate tale told from within the loop of the artist's own family experience, embedded in that oppression. As Cohen pointed out in an interview with Lisa Steele (also available at V-Tape), the piece is truly a South African work, and may be hard for audiences in other cultures to fully grasp. At the same time, Cohen is making no excuses, and is fully aware that the video is challenging and extremely hard to watch.
Nomsa herself is fantastic and delivers an unflappable performance. She works away at the dishes, the ironing, the sweeping up with studious absorption. In the interview Cohen describes her delight with the final video, and said that she was keen on showing it to everyone she knew, sometimes, said Cohen, inappropriately. Which is a strange thing to say, considering that I and many others, total strangers on other continents, have born witness to this collaborative enactment of dignity in the face of exploitation.
Steven Cohen's Maid in South Africa is part of the Images Festival, and can be seen at V-Tape until May 10th.
Lisa Neighbour - Im just going home like a shooting star. at KATHARINE MULHERIN
1080 Queen St, West, Toronto
From April 17- May 10, 2008, Opening Sat., April 19, 3 - 6
Oliver Laric - 2008 screen grabs from video
The actual title is an up arrow and a down arrow but they seem to be illegal characters on my PC.
joester just sent this to me with the heading: Best animated gif ever.
and a message: We both suck. Check this out
I am eating their dust.
fun quiz game by Joester
[link updated]
Daniel Barrow premieres his new performance Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry
at the Brigantine Room at Harbourfront (235 Queens Quay West).
for The Images Festival and Harbourfront World Stage
Friday, April 11 & Saturday, April 12, 7:30pm - 8:30pm
Girl Before Mirror 2004, for the forthcoming performance "Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry"
Don't forget, Dorkbot tonight (Thursday, April 10) at InterAccess with Sally McKay.
"Science is itself a big playful grid and its molecules are a huge and mischievous grid-maker constantly threatening to burst into complete abstraction."Just one tidbit from our eminent friend and colleague Andrew J. Paterson, blogging for the Images Festival.
Coach House Spring 2008 Launch
featuring Maggie Helwig, Claudia Dey, RM Vaughan, Jen Currin and Jordan Scott
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Stones Place, 1255 Queen Street West
Toronto, ON
7:30 p.m.
In spite of what the publisher's blurb says, Richard has assured me that his poetry book is full of limericks about my dog.
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I'm doing a talk at dorkbot this Thursday. It's about mimesis and mirror neurons but don't worry! Rob Cruickshank and Von Bark will keep it lively by providing realtime visuals. Artist/curator Andrew Hunter is going to be doing a talk as well, and the picture he provided has somebody wearing an elephant costume, which is a good sign. I hope everyone can come! dorkbot Thursday, April 10 7 pm InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre 9 Ossington Ave Toronto |
Interview with Doris Wishman - Part 1 & 2
The Images Festival for video officially opened last night, running from Friday, April 4 to 13. Due to the CRISIS IN ART CRITICISM I'm part of their Off Screen Exhibition program with my three monitor piece that opened at Harbourfront a few weeks ago, a modified version of this web post. (prompting the best remark at the March opening: "you are so last February".)
More from rounder2u from whom I took the original "je t'aime" video.
Jay Wilson - Safe When Small
Opening Saturday, April 5, 3 to 6pm at Katharine Mulherin, 1086 Queen St. W., Toronto
Plate Fragment lV 2008 styrofoam, spray paint, epoxy, custom tinted car paint
Toothpick Mountain (Safe When Small Sanalite Snow Top) 2008
toothpicks, glue, flocking, electrical, sanalite, saw horses, plexi and digital image.
