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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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Hannah Evans' Top YouTube Finds of 2008
2008 was the year YouTube melted my brain. Late in 2007, I met one of the founders - a nice, unprepossessing young man with floppy blonde hair. He didn't seem like a mad, brain-sucking genius. Then I started spending more time on the site. And even more time. Banal but true: there is an infinite variety of creative endeavour captured there. Here's my top 3 of the year:
1. Marvin Gaye sings the star-spangled banner : Best performance of any nation's anthem ever, delivered at a 1983 all-star basketball game. I wonder, is there anyone who could deliver the Canadian anthem with this kind of panache? Buffy Sainte Marie, maybe?
2. Riding a bike with Lucas Brunelle: Lucas Brunelle straps a camera to his head and races in alley cats across the world. His work is thrilling and the music always rawks. This one is from NYC.
3. Diva wars: There is a corner of YouTube where it really matters that Whitney kicks Mariah's ass. Or vice versa. A lot of sincere time and effort appears to be spent on this question and the posts are deeply infused with passion. I like that.
Sally McKay's top ten online things to do that don't involve reading (+friends&family links)
1. Most of the items below on this list are podcasts. Listening to lectures online goes down real good with puzzle flash eye/finger game candy: Bunch is truly mindless and looks like smarties; Desktop Tower Defense is actually kind of a good game; Bear and Cat Marine Balls is very very cute.
. I highly recommend loading up one of these brain cell destroying little gem-of-a-games if you are planning to tuck into any heavy duty online listening. Everyone knows the human brain takes in audio information much better when the eyes are distracted by blinking blobs of saturated colour and the small motor control neural centres are busy pushing switches...right?
2. CBC Idea's "How to Think about Science" series
One of the things that has occasionally bugged me about some of the various art & science hybrid events I've participated in is the way that artists can sometimes get all on their high horse about how they (we) can be critical of science as if scientists weren't subject to ethical reviews up the ya-ya, and aren't held socially accountable to their own work through professional rigamaroles that would send most of us artists running back to the garret. I'm not saying that the ethics of science are by any means transparent, but the most thoughtful and thought provoking critiques of scientific ideology tend to emerge from the scientific community itself.
In this series every person interviewed is deeply invested in science while at the same time challenging fundamental assumptions about their own discipline. I enjoyed each episode, but I think my favourite was quantum physicist Arthur Zajonc, who has a great take on the ubiquitous practice of modeling (modeling abstracted principles of nature as opposed to experiential observation of nature) as a kind of narcissistic human self-idolotry.
3. The Brain Science Podcast with Dr. Ginger Campbell
Dr. Ginger Campbell is my hero. Her generous, open-minded journalism is fueled by the kind of nerdish enthusiasm for her subject that reminds me how happy I am to live in the online age of niche disseminations. Campbell knows a lot about brain science, and she does much more prep work for her interviews than most journalists, reading carefully the books that her subjects have written, drawing connections between issues that arise in different episodes and always putting her listeners first. She is charming and disarming and creates such an atmosphere of comraderie that the really tough questions just roll off her tongue and her interviewees are happy to take them up. Pick and choose the topics that interest you. Three of my favourite episodes are:
#39 Brain Science Podcast: Michael Arbib on Mirrror Neurons
#36 Brain Science Podcast: Embodied Intelligence with Art Glenberg
#22 Brain Science Podcast: Christof Koch discusses Consciousness
4. Emergent Podcast: 2007 Theological, Philosophical Conversation- Session 1 part 1 and part 2, Session 2 and Session 3 with Richard Kearney and Jack Caputo
If you really want to get a grip on postmodernism, ask a Christian philosopher theologian! Caputo and Kearney are both serious intellectual philosopher dudes who got invited by a group of hard thinking, questioning young American Christians to discuss their work in a two-day symposium about the social benefits of ambiguity and doubt. There are really funny personal anecdotes about Lacan and Derrida thrown in for comic relief. If you (like me) have been harbouring a spidey-sense that Jacques Lacan was maybe a great big dick-head, this is the podcast for you.
5. Philosophy 185 Heidegger with Instructor Hubert Dreyfus
Many thanks to Be Smiley for turning me onto Hubert Dreyfus. He is like a professor from a movie about a professor. He dodders and fusses and gets his podcast microphone messed up. But he's right on top of the ideas and the best thing is that he rethinks his own philosophical positions as he goes along, so you can hear this big mind working and grinding and falling into pits of self-doubt and climbing out again while he talks. Also, at some point he goes on a hilarious tangent about how he took on the artificial intelligence dudes while he was at MIT, claiming — based solely on his reading of Heidegger — that they would never succeed, and he wins!
Trying to read Heidegger is kind of like trying to dig your way up out of a six-foot deep earthen grave, but this isn't reading, it's listening (don't forget the pretty colours puzzle games) and Dreyfus makes it fun. (Bonus: Dreyfus also taught a podcast course on Man, God, and Society in Western Literature which is just as good and you don't have to deal with Heidegger)
6. This American Life
USA voted Barack Obama for president because the country is not entirely composed of crazed and inbred republicans. In fact, if the only thing you ever heard from contemporary USA was This American Life, you'd think the country was overrun with humane and thoughtful Jewish intellectuals with a self-deprecating sense of humour and a gift for narrative that draws from the best depth and breadth of American literary tradition from William Faulkner to Hunter S. Thompson (passing through the East Village). It's feelgood bed time stories for lefty Western adults and ranks second only to Coronation Street on my list of entertainment vices. Two of my favourite episodes are:
Hamlet in prison
Music Lessons
7. The Moth
The Moth has rules: New Yorkers get onstage and tell a true story that happened to them without notes. Each one takes about 20 minutes. Some people are famous, most are not. All the stories are good because this is New York where there are lots and lots and lots of competitive people and the ones who manage to claw their way into a public forum of any kind usually have something going for them.
8. Practice of Art 23AC - Foundations of American Cyber-Culture with Instructor Joseph Donald McKay
Did someone say nepotism? Full disclosure: Instructor Joseph Donald McKay is a family member. Ever get frustrated because you wish you knew what your sibling knows? I did, and then I listened to these podcasts. Now I know what Joester knows, plus I know what I know ...bwa-ha-ha-ha! This course provides solid foundational info if you are into net art; lots of juicy history about Turing and Charles Babbage and Donna Haraway and the Whole Earth Catalogue plus good contemporary digital artist links and pertinent political reminders about the digital divide.
9. SART:3480 - Dynamic Web Content with Instructor Lorna Mills
Okay, technically there is reading on this site. But mostly I just look at all the pretty flashing scrolling spinning shiny thingies. Lorna is my dear friend and the defacto boss of this blog. She's an excellent teacher and almost makes me want to relive my undergrad so I could take her course. But not really, because I'd rather enjoy other people's messed up youtube hacks than do any coding myself. Lorna's class and Joester's class did a cross-border blog collaboration but I've lost the link. Little help?
10. OVVLvverk
I live with Von Bark, the brain behind the owls. I look at OVVLvverk every week because it always surprises me. This website began as a sort of spoof of the infamous VVork but has swollen way past any kind of gag into an online image collection that makes excellent use of self-imposed restrictions, bending and stretching categories like a good collection should. Each day's post is the best one yet.
Jon Davies' Top 15 (plus bonus: movies!)
I'm too lazy to editorialize too much, so I'll keep it short. These are in no order, and I'm sticking just to Toronto because it's easier.
1. Carla Zaccagnini: no. it is opposition. Art Gallery of York University, curated by Emelie Chhangur. 17 September – 7 December, 2008.
What could have been a Borges Lite gimmick ended up one of the most playful, well-put-together and compelling shows of the year, the exhibition's meticulously doubled structure bringing out the best in Zaccagnini's sometimes brilliant work.
2. Sadie Benning: Play Pause. The Power Plant/Images Festival. March 11 – May 1, 2008.
The Images Festival and The Power Plant scored a coup by landing one of the few showings anywhere of Sadie Benning's masterpiece – an incredibly imaginative and queerly moving two-screen animation that posits the polymorphously perverse "Ze Bar" as the heart and soul of a depressed War-on-Terror-era Midwestern city. Sublime.
3. Daniel Barrow: Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry. World Stage/Images Festival. April 10 – 12, 2008.
Greatest Living Canadian Artist™ Daniel Barrow goes to a dark, dark place with this serial killer-themed performance, years in gestation, that courageously ends on a note of absolute despair. Yes, he was robbed of the Sobey Art Award, but we loved his installation in the nominees' show at the ROM: he gave over the microphone and the overhead projector to strangers!
4. Swintak: Self-Aware Shed. YYZ Artists Outlet. September 6 – October 18, 2008.
I loved loved loved the video documentation of Swintak being an off-screen bossy boots and ordering around her shed, the gallery and the whole world: Night! Day! Night! Day!
5. Charles Atlas: Hail the New Puritan (1987). Pleasure Dome/Images Festival, curated by Kathleen Smith and Ben Portis. April 9, 2008.
It was an intensely emotional experience watching this thrilling, candy-coloured portrait of young choreographer/dancer Michael Clark and his 80s London demimonde – our flaming dandy ancestors on screen at their loveliest.
6. Jon Sasaki: I Promise It Will Always Be This Way. Nuit Blanche. October 4 – 5, 2008.
I couldn't take my eyes off of this troupe of goofy dancing mascots – the dolphin was my fav – a thoroughly entertaining spectacle but also so rich with pathos and desperation and depletion and boredom as well.
7. Stories, in Pieces. Justina M Barnicke Gallery, curated by Aileen Burns. July 10 – August 24, 2008.
Buried in the summer – hopefully people saw it! – this small but ambitious Canadian group show of elusive-narrative art was a perfectly polished gem – props to Myfanwy MacLeod and Jon Sasaki in particular.
Myfanwy MacLeod, Bedsheet With Holes, 2005. Courtesy Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver.
8. Nomadic Residents presents Orlan. OCAD. September 30, 2008.
OK, I fled before the Q&A as usual: was her horrible translator revealed to have been a joke by the grande dame at our expense? Orlan's insane hybrid Franglais was a dizzying, near-incomprehensible delight, even if her more recent work can't compare with the plastic surgery carnivalesques of yore. [images on flickr]
9. Rosalind Nashashibi: Bachelor Machines. OCAD Professional Gallery, curated by Charles Reeve. June 25 – September 7, 2008.
Nashashibi's eye for composition, formal innovation and all-around intelligence made these enigmatic 16mm film installations a treat to be repeatedly savoured – and put the Prof. Gallery in my good books after their awful Rirkrit Tiravanija maiden voyage.
>>>
I know I shouldn't be concerned about nepotism – that's what an art scene is built on – but I decided to segregate things by close friends or that I was involved in myself. Do I not get out of my circle as much as I should? Should I feel bad about this? Discuss.
10. Artur Zmijewski, April 15 – May 3; Life Stories: Maayan Amir and Ruti Sela, Meiro Koizum and Tova Mozard, curated by Chen Tamir, September 10 – October 11; Jean-Paul Kelly: And fastened to a dying animal, October 16 - November 15, 2008. Gallery TPW.
I may be on the board but I can objectively say these were three amazing shows. Congrats to Kim Simon for dragging Artur Zmijewski's staggering video Them kicking and screaming to Toronto, and for Chen Tamir's curation of the fabulously weird documentary-portraits-gone-awry in Life Stories, and Jean-Paul Kelly's astounding domestic melodrama And fastened to a dying animal.
Artur Zmijewski, Them (video still)
11. Andrew Lampert: THE PURPOSE CROSSED. Fabulous Festival of Fringe Film, Durham, ON, curated by Jacob Korczynski. August 9, 2008.
NY film geek Andrew Lampert took the piss out of the tried-and-true live projector performance genre with his delightfully shambolic, two-man comic chaos in an old barn – it would have made Jack Smith proud.
12. Margaux Williamson: Teenager Hamlet 2006. Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects / TIFF Future Projections. September 4 – 13, 2008.
So my friends made this and I wonder if people who don't know them could ever love it as much as I do. Margaux brings a huge amount of visual and verbal wit to bear on her playful make-believe portrait of her Queen West neighbourhood (its young denizens divided into groups of "Hamlets" and "Ophelias" and interviewed by the stars) as seen through the lens of Shakespeare's Hamlet.
13. Angelika Pietruk, Laura McCoy and Kathleen Phillips. Trampoline Hall, curated by Lauren Bride. June 9, 2008.
National treasure Lauren Bride changed the rules of the Trampy Hall game by writing all three lectures herself, resulting in a wonderfully odd mix of confession and self-erasure. The Q&A sessions in particular raised more Q's than A's since the speakers often couldn't answer on Lauren's behalf.
14. Ei Arakawa: The Color Ball. The Power Plant. November 22, 2008.
So I had to handle the video projection (of clips from films ranging from Parsifal to Showgirls) that Ei Arakawa scored his performance with. Maybe it's because I almost had a crate dropped on me, but I've never felt the adrenaline rush of live performance before this. Arakawa and his co-conspirators exploded – unpacked, rearranged, broke open – Scott Lyall's installation The Color Ball in 45 minutes of beautiful, death-defying entropy: it was a hurricane of constant movement and expertly carried-out destruction/construction.
15. Barry Doupé: Ponytail. Pleasure Dome, November 29, 2008.
Animation wunderkind Barry Doupé's first feature melted the mind, as did much else at Pleasure Dome's A Lower World: Excessses and Extremes in Film and Video fall season: Our first-ever gallery exhibition, Mike Kelley's Day Is Done, Ryan Trecartin's I-Be Area, the Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn screening that no one came to… (shame!)
Barry Doupé, Ponytail (video still)
And since nobody asked, here are the best films I saw in a terrible movie year - though I have yet to see The Wrestler, Wendy and Lucy or The Class:
1) Let the Right One In (YES!)
2) Man on Wire
3) WALL-E
4) Synecdoche, New York
5) Happy-Go-Lucky
and the rest in no particular order:
6) Savage Grace
7) The House Bunny ("the eyes are the nipples of the face")
8) Milk
9) A Christmas Tale
10) TIFF 2008 – Lowlight: 90-min lineups for tickets. Highlights: I Want to See, The Beaches of Agnès, Hunger, Salamandra, Still Walking, 35 Shots of Rum, Lorna's Silence, and Sounds Like Teen Spirit.
Thank you bye.
Top SevenDarling, Our memory for these things is awful. All this criticism business takes it out of one, but nevertheless, we assayed, and have come up with 7 entries. Last year, we seem to remember only mustering up 2 examples. At this rate, we'll get to an even 10 next year.
1 - Daniel Barrow, Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry
A new performance that further elucidated his particular peculiar world of the shy, the shunned, the damaged and the perverse: the fey drawings, the floating objects, the effetely tragic narrative; the headiest of vintage Barrow. Not only has his command of narrative deepened, his performance style has sharpened: his apathetic, lisping narrative voice feels like one's inner defeated child weeping softly in one's ear. Surely among Canada's greatest treasures. Which brings us to 2008's greatest failure: The Sobey Award. Already a laugh-fest with David Moos' nationally absurd nomination of the internationally absurd Terence Koh, the fact that Daniel Barrow was passed over merely confirms what we already suspected of this country's institutional curators: a pathetic lot, with not an ounce of imagination or originality to be had. Fire them all, now.
2 - Cathy Opie, An American Photographer (Guggenheim Museum, NYC)
A dazzling, moving collection of work, and a startling, invigorating exhibition. Her mid-career retrospective at the Guggenheim marks her entry into the contemporary canon of American photography. Consider Opie's oeuvre, its profound, unabashed queerness, consider the institutional monumentality of the Guggenheim, and consider just how much more exciting is her show. Yes, beautiful work, deeply personal work that mines (and exhausts) ideas of community and representation; yes, a questing photographic eye, yearning for meaning and beauty (rare enough these days, in the art world, where content is a hurdle to sales); also a shining example of curation that matters: a thoughtful, daring, highly original act of historicization. If only the institutions north of the 49th parallel were this singularly risk-taking.
3 - Ryan Trecartin, I-Be Area
The Pleasure Dome is to be lauded endlessly for a voraciously ambitious fall program: A Lower World was the result of the magical panache that can be the result of living and working beyond one's means. The timing of the screening of Trecartin's latest opus was slightly off, but a marvelous coup nonetheless. Torontonians were able to see, first-hand, the continuing formation of a (so far) deserved mega-reputation.
4 - Carte Blanche, Vol 2: Painting
Yes, yes, yes, there were a host of dubious production choices and decisions that can easily smack of unfairness. And yes, amid the choruses of complaints of Not Doing Things the Right Way (what IS it with Canadians and due process?) some of the critiques levelled at the organization of this tome of contemporary Canadian painting are valid and right. And we aren't particularly impressed by the resultant show. Still, the book stands on its own, and no one else seems to be devoted to or championing this country's artists the way MaryAnn Camillieri seems to be. A sumptuously designed object that can be a genuine ambassador for Canadian painting; people should have been positively throwing funding at her. But no (what are people throwing money at? Well, MoCCA seems intent on giving Matthew Teitelbaum, one of this city's wealthiest residents, a cheque for $20,000). So we would like to extend a hand of hearty congratulation to Ms Camillieri for having the cojones to do something profoundly un-Canadian: committed, concrete self-promotion. We eagerly await Carte Blanche Video, Sculpure/Installation, and Performance.
5 - People Like Us: The Gossip of Colin Campbell (Oakville, ON)
Too long in the coming (see: Canadians, failure to self-promote and-). A tenderly curated show that highlighted just how intimate, warm, and funny video can be. A massive installation comprised of roughly 15 hours of single-channel narrative video that seemed inviting and accessible. A tour-de-force primer of the foundation and generation of community. Campbell's verve, intelligence, and camp should be the stuff of enduring international legend. Furthermore, the sensitivity and humanity of this show only throws into high relief the cold, alienating, and ultimately pointless techno-masturbation of Gareth Long (the partner show at Gairloch Gardens).
6 - The Quebec Triennial (Montreal, QC)
Yes, we complained about much of the work here, but much of it was also excellent. More importantly, the sprawling show was ballsy, forward-looking, unashamed to promote and be definitive about its participants. It just shows how valuable is a sense of cultural identity (as opposed to WASPy anglo Toronto -- we're looking square at you, Power Plant -- too careful and prissy and conceptually precious to actually care about decisively curating their own city's art, or too juvenile and sloppy -- ahem, MoCCA -- to do so without self-sabotage). With shows like these, Toronto and Vancouver, with all their pretense of being international art cities, deserve to be left in the dust of Quebec's thrilling art production.
7 - Sophie Calle, Prenez-Soin de Vous (Montreal, QC)
The DHC/Art Foundation in Montreal brought in this astounding installation of a conceptual artist at the height her powers, and everybody but Heaven knows how much filthy lucre they threw behind it, but they did 'er up right. They paid due reverence to the relentlessly, exhaustively encyclopedic nature of this project of public revenge, sprawling it up, down, across, and all over two buildings. A coup for Canadian curation.
Tino - The Most of 2008 Selections
The Most Emotionally Powerful
Luminato - Regent Park Paste-ups by Fauxreel
According to Fauxreel, "The buildings of Regent Park are in the process of being torn down and rebuilt, so the idea is supposed to make the residents literally become part of the physical landscape, challenge some of the pre-conceived notions that other Torontonian's have of these people and stoke the discussion surrounding the displacement of some of Regent Park's residents as they are kicked out of their homes for this re-build…"
Photo by Richelle Forsey (Torontoist)
The Most Peace-loving
Yoko Ono Imagine Peace
"When I was going to the Buddhist temple and would see all these beautiful white flowers in the bushes," she explains. "In the temple itself you could buy these tiny slips of paper, which said you'd received good health or money or whatever. This was a very old tradition. I liked the idea but I wanted (to make the good-fortune message) in your own handwriting."
The Most Poignant
The Village Pet Store And Charcoal Grill / Banksy (New York)
"New Yorkers don't care about art, they care about pets. So I'm exhibiting them instead."
The Most Local
Michael Brown - Urban Canoe Trip / Arcadia Gallery
A 10-day peformance crossing Toronto from West to East by Canoe
The Most Clever
Postcards - Sandy Plotnikoff / Eflux (Utrecht)
http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/5335 (Utrecht)
http://www.masterhumphreysclock.nl/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sandyplotnikoff/sets/72157605688887282/
The Most Practical
Actions: what you can do for the city: Foamy Velour - Sarah Ross
Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal
The Most Earth-Friendly
Elinor Whidden / Creative Activism, Toronto Free Gallery
"This Project is titled Steel Belted Snowshoes. I have fashioned a pair of giant snowshoes made from shredded tires gleaned from the side of the roadways. Then I will be wearing these snowshoes while walking in the Alberta wilderness documenting through video and photographic mediums. I would like to create a dialogue that epitomizes the image of 'The Western Frontier.'"
The Rocky Mountains is a perfect site to continue her exploration of finding a way to survive and readapt in a society that is increasingly threatened by contemporary car-culture.
The Most Biting
Rafael Sica (Brasil)
"Using a very expressive drawing, Sica frequently gives his subjetcs an existentialist treatment, but in a very caustic way. The most interesting, though, is the fact that his strips are always impressive experiments in form." (Image Making Machine)
The Best Attitude
Specter / Fauxreel / City Renewal Project
"That came about because I had an opportunity to use this warehouse that was being demolished to turn in to turn in to condos. My friend who had a lease on the space was having issues with her landlord so she was just like, 'go crazy, do what you want with it'. Since condos were going to be built there, I felt that it was important that the project had some relation to transformation. Urban condo development often alters the neighborhoods they are put up in. It was a bit of a reactionary piece, but we weren't trying to be very heavy-handed with it. There are many layers to it. It's not just 'condo developments are bad.' We understand that people need places to live and if that there is space in the city that isn't being used, they have the right to do that with it."
However, we'd like to see some of these spaces revitalized and integrated in to the existing communities, rather than being eyesores, or having nothing to do with the architecture or surrounding neighborhood. Unfortunately, our city (Toronto) doesn't have a design committee, so developers go wild and miss the point of what makes neighborhoods thrive. They push out the small mom and pop shops, the artists and local character. Rather than being political and heavy handed, we wanted to make fascinating work with humor involved. And who knows, maybe after seeing one of the spaces you might think 'that reminds me of this store that was by my house when I was a kid and they turned it into a Starbucks!'
The Most Inspiring
Man on Wire - Documentary
"A look at tightrope walker Philippe Petit's daring, but illegal, high-wire routine performed between New York City's World Trade Center's twin towers in 1974, what some consider, 'the artistic crime of the century.'"
What a beautiful documentary filled with madness, vision and genius. Jaw-dropping and deeply inspiring. Incredibly he filmed everything from the idea to the execution.
Sunday Devotionals - Eartha Kitt
I Want To Be Evil 1962
C'est Si Bon
Just An Old Fashioned Girl (via Anthony Easton)
An Englishman Needs Time
Email from Julie Voyce:
But we say it all in French so it sounds really really pretty. Joyeux Noël à vous et putains!
Anita Sarkeesian's Top Four
1. So You Think You Can Be President - Political Remix Video
2. These elections posters: http://frighteningprospect.com/
3. I don't know who the original artist was nor who the photographer of the photo is but regardless... it's fantastic..
4. Fake Edition of the New York Times released by the YES MEN: http://www.nytimes-se.com/
My Top Ten for 2008 – Or, Things That Made Me Feel Art Was OK And Interesting Again
by Leah Sandals
1. Sojourner Truth @ Katharine Mulherin: I know at lot of my love for this show may have had to do with being in a particularly jaded frame of mind at the time, but what can I say? Big, poster-painted, folded-paper bow and paper-link chain = my favourite, most hopeful sight of the year.
2. Bill Burns @ MKG127: I should have gone to see this before closing day because by golly, I would have loved to gone back a few times and laughed at all of Burns’s funny art jokes again. Writing to police chief Fantino in the guise of a nutty old man wanting to give away a salt and pepper shaker collection? Then writing in the guise of the nutty old man’s wife explaining fictional nutty old man’s inclination? And writing to a pet food co. about yogurt in their dog food? Watercolours of a Post-it note that refer to hint-hint-nudge-nudge curators “in a meeting”? So so funny and great, nonsensically and wonderfully so.
3. Jesse B Harris @ Le Gallery: I knew I liked Jesse B Harris when I saw a punk leather-and-chain dreamcatcher he made in Montreal. But then I saw this show and I really fell for him. Riffs on the ever-so-cool one-inch pin aesthetic, punk black leather, political protest and the Mona Lisa all at once? Very well played. Most of all love the professionally painted protest signs affixed to baseball bats. Art/punk/punk art as polished, aestheticized, confused aggression is rarely more smartly portrayed.
4. Wu Wing Yee @ Drabinsky Gallery: Again, maybe it was the lack of shows around at the time, but the near-end of summer really saw me fall in love with Wu Wing Yee’s perfect little installation at Drabinsky. For it, the recently immigrated Chinese ceramics artist made precious-but-raw cocoons/cages for Chinatown dollar store detritus, and installed them on all levels of the gallery walls. Turn a corner and the focus went from cultural protectiveness straight to spirit, with a heap of plain ceramic “stones” piled on the gallery floor, drawings thereof behind. It all came down to facility with intent and with the space. Can’t wait to see what this recent TO resident does next.
5. Marla Hlady @ YYZ: I sat and listened to the nonsensical Hlady player piano, and time seemed to just fly by. Listening while perched on a nostalgia-evoking piano bench heightened the experience. I didn’t understand it, but I really really liked it, the acoustic waves felt by the body, the walls, and the piano’s casing, not just plugged into the ears with a pair of fashionably-white buds.
6. Seth Scriver @ Katharine Mulherin/Elizabeth McIntosh @ Diaz Contemporary: McIntosh and Scriver’s works couldn’t be more different, but I was really torn between them so I’ve decided to jam them both in here. Scriver is well known for his psychedelic drawings and all, but that’s not my favourite part of his work. I just totally adore his videos, where analog crudeness meets digital effects, and where (especially!) the mystical, ridiculous stories of Scriver’s rural Ontario relatives get play in the white cube. That is the most arrs-some stuff. McIntosh, as we all know, is a totally rad abstract painter. I was actually a bit sad that the Diaz show didn’t have any of the silver and pink works Vancouver’s Blanket had been showing. But she remains a totally kickass abstractioness. Her introduction of studiomate Elspeth Pratt’s and protégé Monique Mouton’s works to the Toronto scene was also super-appreciated.
7. Eddo Stern @ Interaccess: Media art continues to suffer under its various burdens vis a vis rapidly evolving technological cultures and standards, but Brooklynish artist Stern nailed at least a small sector of the vast tech culture realm with his video work at Interaccess, “The Best Flame War Ever.” With a script culled from an actual message thread on a gaming site, Stern reveals loads about generation gaps, masculinity, identity and the everyday as they exist in the world of the web. Thanks so much to Interaccess for bringing this show here, and gesturing towards the fact that work like this can and is being done.
8. “7 Days in the Art World” by Sarah Thornton: I know that technically as an art writer I’m supposed to understand a lot that goes on in the art world. Yet I really, really don’t. So it was a total treat to read sociologist Thornton’s condensed take on seven facets of the art biz, from auctions and art schools to studios and biennales. Her job is summarizing and understanding subcultures from an insider/outsider perspective, and she does it wonderfully, demonstrating the interconnected-yet-sectored way the art world operates. Especially loved that she included the crit from CalArts. So different (not bad, not worse, just different) from all the other considerations that swirl around art objects and their artists. Hello, disconnect!
9. Frieze Magazine: I am never disappointed by an issue of Frieze Magazine—provided I can get my hands on one, what with its erratic import scheme here in Canadia. To me, these guys, at least right now, provide a perfect balance of straight talk and circling prose, eccentric reference and common touch. Keep on keepin’ that flame—or icicle?—alive, F-folks.
10. Liz Lemon/Tina Fey/30 Rock: I have glasses and brown hair and am nerdyish. This is probably one main reason I like Liz Lemon/Tina Fey, who also has glasses and brown hair and is nerdyish. But it’s also possible I like Fey’s creation 30 Rock for the same reason I liked ‘7 Days in the Art World’ – it’s a blend of insider perspective and outsider entertainment. OK, it also provides a lot of cheap, cheap (and yes, nerdy) laughs too.
According to our logs, if you Googled free online fucking vedios for free seenable, we come up
Email from Fastwürms
Gabby Moser's top ten is here.
Andrew Harwood's Top Ten List and 4 Gross Items for 2008
1) Katie Bethune-Leaman Mushroom Studio at the Toronto Sculpture Garden. What can I say? - Monumental, funny, sweet, smart and one hell of a lot of work!! And cozy too! By far the best sculpture to inhabit this space, in like forever! Great job girl!!
2) Dyed Roots: the new emergence of culture, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, curated by Camilla Singh. Who says identity and works about Diaspora have to be boring and prescriptive? Well Singh says, "No" with her own installation piece and performance. Singh worked in her role as curator inside a giant cage with three canaries just inside the gallery entrance, critiquing everything from ethnography, zoos and working in art institutions. Emily Chhangur also rocked this group show with her bloody, salty, rusty installation. Gritty, grizzly and gutsy.
3) Kent Monkman, Dance to the Berdashe, Urban Shaman Gallery, Winnipeg. I just so happened to be in Winnipeg with the fabulous Fastwurms when this exhibition was on! I loved the bearskin-shaped video screens that were delicately edged with beads, the dancers and Ms. Monkman's coral ensemble. There were amazing dances by various artists and gorgeous choreography by Michael Greyeyes! I am not sure why the Berdashe (Monkman as aboriginal drag queen goddess) kills, or does she just "finish off", all the hot native dancers with her glamour/psychic energy at the end? Perhaps her beauty is too much or that there can only be one gorgeous First Nations artist in the country?? Hmm? Glamour can create, but it can also destroy!!
4) Suzy Lake and Bill Jones at Paul Petro Contemporary Art- OMG do I love terrorist drag!! In their work Suzy Lake as Patty Hearst there are so many questions about power relationships captor vs. the kidnapped, wealth vs. radical politics and exploitation, not only by Hearst's SLA kidnappers, but also by the media at the time. Heroine or enemy?
Bill Jones - The Bedroom 1979
5) Hunting, at Stephen Bulger Gallery, curated by Stephen Bulger. Wow wee, this show has it all from historical photos of Inuit hunting by Richard Harrington, sepia-coloured photos of 1970's dads and their kids with deer on the roofs of their station wagons to Terrence Koh's male nude in the woods with twigs as antlers. Tina Clark adds a wicked slice of critique and humour to this show with her installation of wishbones from a variety of poultry collected and mounted on wooden plaques as if they were big game. Perhaps the most poignant piece in the show is the forlorn Platform 5A by Vid Ingelvics, a colour photo which portrays an abandoned hunting platform in a lonely tree, suggesting that hunting itself is a thing of the past. Ingelevics' photo also has the feel of a neglected kids tree fort, adding to its superb solitary quality. To round the show off Bulger includes the lurid colour photo La Cabane by Benoit Aquin, a hunting lodge unflinchingly butch, replete with girlie pin-ups, booze lying about and general male mess. Stephen Bulger please curate more shows, you are brilliant.
Benoit Aquin - La Cabane
6) Jean-Paul Kelly, And Fastened to a Dying Animal at Gallery TPW. Kelly's video, drawing and photo-based installation was a touching tribute to his family and also an examination of our relationships to animals and even houseplants. The artist also sweetly and intelligently queries our relationship to spirituality and morality, using pets and ghosts in his master video work entitled Goodbye, Good Act. His wonderful drawings, especially Cat(Mom) shows a reclining cat with upholstered tufts on its back and ribs depicting our relations to animals and family members and how we view/use/interact with them, especially the polarized creepy/comfort aspects!
Jean-Paul Kelly - Cat(Mom) 2007 and The Spirit is a Bone 2008
7) Thrush Holmes' "gay" landscape paintings in his series NOT YET TITLED (NEW) consist of large canvases of wonderful pink hues and roughly painted landscapes that proves that he can actually paint. He's also produced delicious giant green tree-scapes with paint scrumbling across the surface with queer Fauvist abandon! (Although he is not queer.) No over-varnished, nor neon-clad trying-too-hard to please/sell work in this series, just bang-on beautiful painting here!! This work should keep Gerald Hannon intrigued, there maybe hope for you still girl!
8) Noam Gonick, Wayne Baerwaldt and Barbara Fischer's curator/artist talk at the Drake Underground. These three spun gold threads at this talk about film, video and performance that was truly inspirational. I really appreciated Gonick's candor about making films in Canada and in Winnipeg. I was most mesmerized by Fischer's romantic rant about light, projection, performance, the universe and everything. I don't remember a word of what Baerwaldt said, but he is so darned cute and bright it doesn't matter. Kudos to Mia Neilson, Drake Hotel Curator, for getting these three to speak on the same panel!
9) The Power Ball 10 Decadance was actually fun for a change. They seemed to get the right amount of artists and rich people in the same room, which made for a pleasant mélange. Jade Rude's Frames mini-installation seemed perfect for this crowd - as they could all look at themselves in Rude's beautiful assortment of mirror-like brass frames. They still won't let drag queens into the exclusive upstairs party even though we got the PP more PR than you can shake a stick at!! And God, can someone please buy Gregory Burke some new clothes (a Dale Carnegie course wouldn't hurt either) - after all he is married to that gorgeous mink of a clotheshorse Christine Davis!! I think I can safely say that we were the most Decadent people there though; it doesn't take much in Toronto!
10) Moynan King's The Beauty Salon seemed to escape any critical attention last summer and it was fucking fabulous! "Part Musical. Part Salon. Part Video Project. Come for the Art, Stay for the Manicure." This was a glam dyke salon with beauty services for men and women with songs and dance sequences and gorgeous sets in peach salon colours. The great salon attendants were dressed in aqua and pink salon outfits from the '60's and '70's. I was so happy I got eyebrows added on with fake hair and eyelash glue, a facial (real one not a dirty one) and then had great tunes sung to me right in my salon chair with a fab dance routine to boot afterwards - social relativism at its best! I felt so gorgeous thank you! Performed by Moynan King, Ange Beever, Nathalie Claude, Sherri Hay, Kirsten Johnson, Dayna McLeod, Kim Roberts and Robin Woodward (Trixie)
Robin Woodward and Kirsten Johnson
2008 Gross List:
Beyond Gross 2008: Jonathan Meese at Greener Pasture - WTF was that? Nazis are cool'n'stuff.
Delusions of Grandeur Gross 2008: Thrush Holmes' album, Every Million Golden Universe, please, please, please don't sing ever, you have an awful voice - you really don't need to be the king of all media! You are so great at other stuff so please stick to them! Vanity = veneer. Sadly during my fabulous and brilliant performance as Mme. Zsa Zsa, The Underwater Oracle at The Social for Nuit Blanche, I had to endure that caterwauling on loud speakers from across the street during my smoke breaks. I even went over and asked them to turn it off, twice! Anyways Holmsie ya got yur paintin's to fall back on! We loves ya even if you are slightly delusional or maybe because you are? Anyone who calls themselves a "Genius" has to be a fabulous person, this I can relate to!
Meekly Gross 2008: Nuit Blanche - the art was fine, but everyone, including the artists, was at home in their jammies and in bed by 5 am - what gives? I guess they turned the booze off at 4 am! Lame-ass Toronto art viewers.
Artist-Run Centre Gross 2008: Mercer Union's renovation debacle - LOL! God I love it! And people said I was a bad administrator!! I feel redeemed - I love young people! Good luck with that one everybody. Or should this one go to YYZ?? HMMM? Does anyone work there anymore? What happened to the publishing program? What happened? What??
In the famous words of Bette Midler as she is standing in front of thousands of screaming fans in the concert sequence at the end of the film the Rose, "Where'd everybody go?"
A.B.'s Top Ten List for 2008 - Why People Should Stop Covering Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’
1) Because the world doesn’t need any more teary, hushed, faux-profound ‘special moments’ on televised singing contests.
2) Leonard has paid off his debt now, and thanks you.
3) Leonard’s former Buddhist monk instructors are pestered at their local corner store by patrons who burst into spontaneous performances of the song.
4) Okay, maybe Styx or somebody could do a bangin’ version. Or - Dokken!
5) The song is kind of … white, isn’t it? Worse, the suspicion remains that it thinks it’s black.
6) Someone, somewhere, will lower a microphone into the depths and play Hallelujah to the whales.
7) Because unquestionably mighty as the song is, there are one or two infelicities in there, such as rhyming ‘hallelujah’ with ‘do ya’. Len can pull this off - only Len can pull this off.
8) There have been 170 attempts at the song to date, by all sorts of unlikely artists. Where will it end? Who’s next? Cher? Kim Jong Il? Malcolm Gladwell?
9) Because kids will think ‘you don’t need drugs to get high’. Now just a minute there, youngsters.
10) Because Jeff Buckley’s take on this song is everything the others want to be.
[I beg to differ - L.M.]
Ross Angus Macaulay says:
Zing! A challenge!
In no particular order.
Hooliganship's Cartune Xpress tour
Sandy Smith Untitled (Balancing act #2)
Paul Robertson Kings of Power 4 Billion %
Marcel Dzama Even the Ghost of the Past
Aram Bartholl Chat
Perspectives
Abracadabra
Becky James I Hate You Don't Touch Me or Bat & Hat
Jeffery Werner's scans of his parent's world trip 1968-69
Sally McKay Residency Exhibition with Marlene Bouchard, Troi Donnelly, Sandra Doore, Rachel Evans, Pete Gazendam, Emily Goodden, Roy Green, Miles Hunter, Rebekah Johnson, Ingrid Klasen, Devon Knowles, Thomas Koivukangas, Judah Kong, Daniel Laskarin, James Lindsay, Miles Lowry, John Luna, Katie Lyle, Brian MacDonald, Mike McLean, Rob McTavish, Marketa, Peter Morin, Bradley Muir, Brenda Patays, Shelley Penfold, Judie Price, Shawn Shepherd, Cathleen Thom, Elizabeth Thomson, Joanne Thomsom, Rhonda Usipiuk and Dallas V. Duobaitis
Joe McKay - Top ten games I played this year.
(Board games, video games, casual and intense I threw them all in together so they are in no particular order.)
Agricola
A resource management board game built around the super exciting world of 17th century dirt farming. If you're really good, you might eventually make a carrot. It takes playing it a few few times before you begin to form a strategy, but the game is deep and balanced and fricking fun. Plus the joy of putting your newborn child to work in the field is very cathartic.
duc de Berry Book of Hours - June
Cosmic Encounters (2008 edition)
Technically not a new game, but the rerelease of this classic board game finally gets the details right. Flares? check. 50 powers? check. attack 40? check. Technology (WTF?). check. My favorite part of CE is the fact that players can collaborate for a win. So you may have a super power, but if everyone teams up against you, you're fucked. Pure crazy gameplay joy - you're never out of a game of CE.
[OK, the Delville painting of Satan isn't really in Cosmic Encounters' interface, and neither is the Book of Hours in the interface
of Agricola, BUT WOULDN'T IT BE AWESOME IF THEY WERE???? - L.M.]
Race for the Galaxy
From the creator of Puerto Rico, this card based game is a sea of indecipherable icons and rules. But if you spend the time it's deep and fun, even if (ahem) you always lose (except for that one time you played the military strategy and you drew all the cards you needed in just the right order).
Little Big Planet
A reason to get a PS3? Not quite, but if you're looking for a next gen system it should tip the balance towards the sony machine. It's the natural progression of mario style side scrolling platformer. And user created levels will ensure extra hours of gameplay. Trust me, it's really really fun even if it looks childish. [as opposed to very adult like the new improved version of Cosmic Encounters that I'm pitching - L.M.]
Fantastic Contraption
You will know by the end of the 20 demo levels weather this physics puzzle game is for you. For me it was hours and hours (and hours) of fun, but attempts to addict like minded game players has been met with mixed results, in spite of it being the best flash game since Desktop Tower Defense. User created levels ensure more late night you-should-really-go-to-bed fun than you can handle.
Gears of War 2
Stupid stupid stupid stupid Xbox 360 3rd person shooter. Stupid. Fun? Sir, yes sir!
[Joe mentioned that this comercial oversold the game, hell, it made me want to join the military, kill things, feel bad, kill more,
come home with PTSD, kill things at home. Kill kill killl, and to a very nice song. - L.M.]
Armagedtron
Light cycles done right - finally! This game may require homework that involves watching Tron again (best Disney movie ever). BTW, you suck compared to me, guaranteed.
Cash n Guns
Any game that includes six orange foam handguns has to be fun. This is easy to learn and fun to play party game is the funest way to kill your friends this side of Mafia (werewolf to some). On a count of three everyone points their gun at someone in a massive Mexican standoff. It's actually kinda scary. Then on a count of three everyone has a chance to put down their weapon, wusssing out. Then cards are revealed. Was your gun even loaded? It's like a giant 6-way scissor paper stone game, with guns.
Pitchcar
I love this game for two reasons. 1 it's fun and 2 I've only played with Americans who wouldn't know a Crokinole board from a curling rink. Yes this racing game utilizes the awesome game dynamic of flicking little wooden disks, a skill I mastered as a youth and have long assumed was generally wasted as an adult. In short, I rule this fucking game and fear only my mother (Crokinole wizard).
I made this. you play this. we are enemies
simple gameplay, but ya gotta love the messy style. Game are always so bloody clean looking, no? Saying more will spoil it, just give it a shot.
Tonik Wojtyra's Top Ten List
1. Gifts by Artists at Art Metropole - Lots of work has sold out or it's well on it's way to selling out but it's up until January 10 2009, if you've slept on it thus far.
Miles Collyer & Tonik Wojtyra Granola by Artists 2008 500 grams for only $10.00
2. Jonathan Meese at GPCA. Was it the best painting show in 2008 in Toronto? Well second best but a delightful show just as well.
Jonathan Meese DON MASOSCHISSILI 2007 Oil on canvas 24 x 18,40 x 2 cm/ 9 1/2 x 7 1/4 x 0 3/4 in
3. Piotr Uklanski, BIALO CZERWONA at Gagosian, NYC. Jak sie masz?
PIOTR UKLAN'SKI
4. Tino Sehgal podcast at Magasin 3, Stockholm recorded March 6. 2008 - It's not exactly easy listening but it's smart like heaven on earth. Artist talk by Tino Sehgal, March 6, 2008. Duration: 64 min. Language: English. A conversation between Tino Sehgal and Richard Julin, chief curator at Magasin 3. http://www.magasin3.com/mp3/tino_sehgal_podcast.m4a
5. Le Silence de Lorna, Dardenne Brothers at TIFF. Lorna appears in every scene of this wonderful and intense story.
6. The new MacBook Pro from Apple - Like a Harvey's hamburger: A beautiful thing.
7. Despite all odds, Damien Hirst trumps, as Lehman Brothers dumps. If you can't appreciate that, your whole perspective is wack.
8. Paul Butler at MKG127 lambasting Canadian Art's coverage of Toronto's art scene in his type tight Toronto Now Suite. Pull up your sockSSSSS bitches!
Paul Butler Toronto Now Suite 2008 detail, archival tape on magazine pages
9. Season 5, The Wire. Sad sad sad Baltimore!
10. Michael Phelps' 8 gold medals at the 2008 Olympics. Baltimore homeboy Phelps has more Olympic gold medals than all of us; 14 if you wanna get technical, plus 2 bronzes from 2004. Eat that.
R.M Vaughan's Top Ten of 2008
1) The Whole Jacob Scheier Mess
Jacob Scheier is this year's winner of the Governor General's Award for Poetry. He is not even 30, and his book, More To Keep Us Warm, is his first. Normally, a breakthrough such as this is cause for celebration, the CanLit scene being the stodgy old fartsack it is. But because Mr. Scheier was close friends with two of the jurors (both senior poets who were close friends with his late mother, the poet Libby Scheier) and because he is a sometime collaborator with the juror Di Brandt, his award has been poisoned by accusations of cronyism and nepotism. Why is this so wonderful (for me, not for Mr. Scheier, nor for his editor, Michael Holmes, my good friend and also often my editor)? Because it made people talk about poetry, and made people mad about poetry, and made people value poetry (even if it was just for the sake of scandal). I have now officially lived long enough.
[update from R.M.:
"Since my posting, I have learned that some of the information I collected about Jacob Scheier, from various media sources, was incorrect -- namely, while he and his mother were both well acquainted with one of the jurors, Mr. Di Cicco, neither he nor his mother could be considered a "close friend" of said gentleman. Mr. Di Cicco did, however, blurb Mr. Scheier's award-winning book, and perhaps that is why they have been depicted as "close friends".
In the world of poetry, a switchblade jungle if there ever was one, you can count your real friends on one hand."]
2) The Return of Feudalism
We do not currently have a functioning federal government, because the nice lady appointed to represent Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth (who owes her glistening thrown entirely to heredity), agreed to shut down Parliament. For an opposition, we have a newly minted leader who is the descendant, within grandparent range, of White Russian counts and princesses. By this time next year, the Senate will be declared The House of Lords and we will have to give over all our best wheat and game to our local Boyars, or be buried in mud up to our necks and have our children sold to Ottoman slave traders. The return of the tunic, however, and mead-based drinks, not to mention bleeding cures, will be a boon to us fatties.
3) OMG! Britney!!!!!!
Britney's "comeback" would be remarkable (not everyone can go full mental and then make a hit record - just ask Whitney Houston) if not for the fact that Britney Never Went Away. Her last record was a hit. She was on the news practically every damned day in 2008. What constitutes a comeback now - getting up in the morning? By these low standards of media peak-and-valleyism, Patrick Swayze is enjoying a comeback by getting cancer. I am having a comeback simply by writing this Top Ten list. Did you make a phone call today, or buy some socks? Bitch, you are So, So Back!
4) Bernie Mac
Best dead person of 2008. Elizabeth Taylor continues to disappoint.
5) Team Macho
I do not trust these fake gays and fake outsider artists any farther than I could roll them up a hill. It's all so calculated, that "doodling in my notebook in grade 9" look, so Vice Magazine, circa 2003. The only consolation comes from knowing that one or two of them will inevitably move to Berlin or New York in the next year, have a (fake) affair with AA Bronson, become very rich, and then fuck over the rest of the team. There is nothing new under the sun, or on the walls.
6) RRSP Cash Outs
Retirement rumours have been swirling all year around Toronto's grand old men of art writing - Peter Godard and Gary Michael Dault. Personally, I would miss them both. But then, I'm a poet (this year, at least). The saddest thing about these possible career conclusions is that Toronto, Canada's true art powerhouse, only has two full-time art critics in the first place. I am taking bets both for and against the assumption that either or both will be replaced by new writers, it being a 50/50 proposition. We need a new Lola. And speaking of which ….
7) Hunter And Cook Magazine
Jay Isaac and his band of merry drunks launched the first viable Toronto art mag to come along since, well, Lola. H&C is gorgeously produced, packed with colour and glossy artists' projects, and even has some words in it. Words you actually want to read, not shred for hamster litter. If H&C makes it to three solid issues, they'll have done more for Toronto art than mainstream media have done in the last 5 years.
8) Iceland
I went to Iceland in October and it was just delightful. Imagine Newfoundland run by Manitobans - Manitobans who eat rotted shark meat and tell long, windy stories about giants, elves, giant elves, and rough sex. Nicest folks in the world. And their economy is even more fucked than ours! We really should just adopt them.
9) AGO Transformation
Blingee by Sallee
Ok, it's not as bad as I expected. But, I will say this: like a lot of international superstar zillionaire architects, Frank Gehry has obviously not stuck his hand in a bucket of soapy water in a long, long time. That window - that wondrously, achingly arched convexity, that dancer's-bare-foot-in-feline-flight captured in glass - is already filthy fucking dirty. Have you ever been to the basement of the Eaton Centre, where the giant prism fountain sits, unloved? It is yellow-brown with spores and grime, from decades of contact with the unwashed and Toronto tap water. The future is dusty.
10) My Book
His Book
I had a book published in May, and people are buying it and the media loves it (not that I read things written about myself, but I hear things) and, well, if P. Diddy can give a party a week for himself, I can give myself one miserable paragraph a year. I rock. Haters go home.
I'm on the board at Art Metropole, and I want to make a plug: Christmas shopping at Art Metropole does not suck. It's affordable, and you can get good stuff. Art Metropole's Gifts By Artists show and sale is on until January 10. There are also lots of great artists books and art books, dvds, and multiples that are not part of the special show. The people are nice and friendly and they don't play carols in the store. Your money helps Art Metropole publish and disseminate works by artists locally and internationally.
Art Metropole
788 King Street West 2nd Floor, Toronto, Canada M5V 1N6
T 416.703.4400 F 416.703.4404 info@artmetropole.com
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Anthony Easton's Top Ten Aesthetic Events 2008 (we have to start with Anthony)
1) Paragon: New Abstract Art from the Albright Knox (U of T:Scarborough Campus) Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art, 1940-1976 (Jewish Musuem of New York)
SUE WILLIAMS Blue Foot, Red Shoe 1997
I like to think of this as a before and after, the show at the Jewish Museum about the triumph of Representative over Abstract, and the Knox show about how abstraction still eats pure aesthetics like a zombie eats brains. (plus, both made a concerted effort to include women including Anne Truitt, Grace Hartigan, Lee Krasner and Joan Mitchell at the Jewish museum, and Sue Williams, Karin Davie, Mariko Mori, and others at the Knox show)
2) Kenneth Noland
Via Ember 1968
My favourite living painter, and this year I saw a dozen examples of his best work, not only a couple at the usual places in Edmonton, but 4 at the Abstract show at the Jewish Museum, one of his chevron stained paintings next to NE Thing's velvet ribbon riff on it at the AGO, and the joyous, cosmically humming 20 foot long stripe painting from 1967 to 1970. Can we please have a decent retrospective , please?
3) Cloverfield
Still from Cloverfield, JJ Abrams
The first movie of the millennia that actually understands the new lo-fi aesthetics of terror.
4) Lee Friedlander SF:MoMA
Lee Friedlander Mount Rushmore 1969
Extensive survey, made me more aware of how artless and how sophisticated that artlessness was, the casual over crowded frames, the lack of one focus point, and the oblique angles all contained in these exquisitely printed 8x10 silver gelatins.
5) Dustin The Turkey, Ireland's Eurovision for 2008.
The reducto-ad-absurdum of self constructed, highly ironic, meta-contextual pisstaking.
6) Courbet Hunting Scene, 186?, Met
I missed the big Courbet retrospective, sadly, but this painting was so dark and brooding that the mood made you realize the pile up of dead animals in the lower right corner. About ownership, and possession, violence, and the thantos/eros link, plus painted with the usual precision.
7) Chardin The Governess, 1739, at the National Gallery, Ottawa
Its like one of those games that you play to keep from being bored when you are a child—how many variations of gray and brown can you find in this canvas (for the record I found more then 20)
8) Sir Joshua Reynolds Selina, Lady Skipworth at the Frick
Because it seems to be one beginning of a impressionistic, emotionally relevant project, because I have a thing for the high class and bored, bored, because the grey on grey tones, with the dress, and the silver hair and the sallow skin, all of these are formal, I kept looking at it, and it shocked me how much it stayed with me. I like being reminded to look at something I previously dismissed.
9) Alison Schulink's Landscape of Niagara Falls, and Portrait of a Monkey, Mike Weiss, New York
I know this list is so painting heavy, which must mean something, and it is already hyper conventional, with a bunch of museum shows and the like, and these two ugly on purpose, good bad paintings, have nothing really new to say, and I cannot exactly say why I like them, the paint handling is good, the colours are garish enough to be interesting, I have not found a painting of either Niagara Falls or monkies I hated, they are ballsy, and not schmaltzy, and have an energy missing in other painters of her generation, etc etc, but at the end of the day, how they confound me, how I still think of them as something I like, and something I am confused by liking, is worthy of having them on the list.
10) Mad Men
Because every good girl has got to love a psychopath.
This site is blocked in the UAE. Image courtesy of Janet Bellotto, who is currently teaching in Dubai.
However, Anthony "fellate a Jehova's Witness on your doorstep today" Easton's site is not blocked by the UAE.
WE WANT TO PUT YOUR TOP TEN LISTS ON THE
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SEND THEM TO US.
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AND HOW TO GET STUFF ON IT.
IT IS A DIFFICULT AND HIGHLY SPECIALIZED SKILL.
I TAUGHT A CLASS ABOUT THE
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YET, NONE OF MY STUDENTS MANAGED TO GET ANYTHING ONTO THE
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THAT'S HOW HARD IT IS!
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(all art, artish, artlike, and artificial list items are welcome, our contact links are at the top of this page. Deadline is Dec. 27th.)
Email from Julie Voyce:
Sunday Devotionals - 'effin Mike Oldfield and 'effin Tubular Bells in three parts (early Xmas gift for the five prog rock fans who come to this site)
Ethel & the Mermen would make me so happy if they would anounce their instruments in a British accent. (perhaps building up slowly into a fully ecstatic and inspiration declaration of DRUMS!) (Be nice if they had a glockenspiel too.)
kitchen gifs
  
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In Geert Lovink's new book (mentioned in yesterday's post) there is an interesting almost-manifesto about network aesthetics that he wrote with Anna Munster for Fibreculture in 2005. Reminding me of Tom Moody's complaints about what he calls, "XYZ art," Munster and Lovink take on the proliferation of network mapping projects and call for more nuanced expressions of network culture that aren't reduced to pictures of nodes and lines. Some bits:
The very notion of a network is in conflict with the desire to gain an overview.
Mapping information – the aesthetics of contemporary visualisation – provides a sense of relief that the twisted and unstructured info-bits that roam around in our cognitive unconscious are finally laid-out to rest. A beast is tamed.
We should forget about exposing the links that are already there, and, with our capacity to engage a networked logic, forge links to what is in the network but not yet of the network. By this we mean to invoke a project more akin to social aesthetics or aesthesia in which we engage in and with the collective experiences of being embroiled in networks and being actively part of their making. This we can contrast with the abstracted activity of simply mapping quantities of data – such as social network maps – a form of production already captured by the codes and conventions of connectivity.
This image above (1998) is the "final map showing 2.5 years of accumulated statistics" from John F. Simon, Jr.'s finished net.art project Alter Stats. Below is a recent image (2007) by Chris Harrison, "a Ph.D. student in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University."
In the early days of net art, technical expertise was political in the hands of artists who used their skills to claim the technology and make it transparent, thereby resisting corporate attempts to perpetuate the seamless illusions of television online. But as the internet morphed from a medium to a ubiquitous environment, the urgency with which net artists revealed technology shifted from an activist practice to an ideological, formalist aesthetic.
There's lots of grey area, like Ken Goldberg's famous Telegarden (1995-2004), above. In this work, internet users tend a garden from remote locations by interacting with a website that sends commands to a robot in the gallery that waters the plants. This work differs from a network map in that it does not literally represent nodes and lines of connection. But its literal manifestation of a network is vulnerable to Lovink and Munster’s critique that “the increasingly abstract topological visualization of networks removes us from an analysis of the ways in which networks engage and are engaged by current political, economic, and social relations.” In 1995, the garden itself was staged as if it were a meaningful object, cared for collaboratively by a network of internet users. But in the present day context, the fragile little circle of plants functions as an instrument for the system, revealing nothing more than its own site as node in the network. When the self-reflexivity of the gallery artworld melds with the self-reflexivity of network mapping, we end up with a techno-art snake eating its own tail.
I have been reading parts of Geert Lovink's book Zero Comments: Blogging and Critical Internet Culture. Lovink has been around the new media scene for a long time, since before the internet got ubiquitous. He says some pretty harsh/funny things about new media as a discipline in his chapter "The Cool Obscure." Here's a few zingers:
Digital aesthetics have developed a hyper-modern, formalist approach, and seem to lack the critical rigour of standard contemporary art pieces. (p.56)Lovink is worried about the viability and sustainability of new media art as a discipline. A lot of his criticism resonates with me, although of course I can think of lots of examples of awesome artworks that contradict his general thesis. He makes the disclaimer, however, that he is not addressing specific works, but rather new media institutions and general trends. Here's a bit that cracks me up:
Links to contemporary social movements are weak, and the awareness of basic postcolonial issues is often absent. This is not the case if we look at individual works, but certainly if we look at the way festivals and conferences are programmed. (p.58)
Putting content online is a last resort, but funnily enough it is not very popular among new media artists. The Internet is looked down upon by some as a primitive device, left to an in-crowd of Internet artists and discourse leaders who prefer to perform formalistic experiments, combined with a subversive political action every now and then...(p.58)
There is a widely spread belief that tech-based artworks have the potential to be genius. Supposedly there are not yet traces or fingerprints of society on recently developed technologies and the artist therefore has the full range of all possible forms of expression in front of him or her. [...] According to this "myth of the blank page," new media artists are not limited by existing cultural connotations because there are no media-specific references yet. It is the heroic task of the new media artist to define those cultural codes. (pp.50-1)
Why did new media art miss out during the exuberant dotcom days and why do geeks and IT millionaires prefer buying cars and other middle class baubles of consumption, and turn their backs on their own art form? (p.40)Um...cause for young guys who suddenly come into wads of cash, art is almost never the first thing on their mind? For artists who are used to juggling day jobs and multiple types of gigs to pay the rent, the idea that new media would provide some kind of ongoing access to big money might seem a little silly. But that only goes to prove Lovink's overall point:
Electronic art, an earlier synonym for new media art, is in crisis. So is virtual art and net.art. These carefully gated communities have proven incapable of communicating their urgency and beauty to their ever-rising (potential) audience. (p.41)Lovink positions himself as a kind of whistleblower, and suggests:
...we urgently need to analyze the ideology of the excessive 1990s and its associated political consciousness of techno-libertarianism. If we do not disassociate new media quickly from that decade, and if we continue with the same rhetoric, the isolation of the new media sector will eventually result in its demise. Let's transform the new media buzz into something more interesting altogether before others do it for us. The will to subordinate to science is nothing more than a helpless adolescent gesture of powerlessness and victimhood. (p.68)ouch!
Sunday Devotionals - Shirley Bassey
I Who Have Nothing
Goldfinger
Something
Spinning Wheel
(found)
(found)
Sally McKay graphically defends the Magna Carta to great success. (and great effect)
OK Harper made his appointment with the GG, so we'll know if he gets to cancel parliament for a month and rally or if the coalition will rule fair lovely Canada. Galenagalaxian told me about this petition. Or we could set cars on fire, or set cars on fire or maybe we could set fire to cars, or perhaps just setting fire to cars is what we can do. I'll think of something. I've got it, let's set cars on fire.
b/t/w I am a little bit confused about this blingee that Sally made. ...but it's very nice.
From the CBC:
"I've never seen the leader of a Conservative party, certainly not Bob Stanfield, certainly not Joe Clark, lie — I choose the word deliberately — the way Mr. Harper has," Broadbent said.
The former NDP leader, who helped negotiate Monday's deal between the New Democrats and the Liberals with the support of the Bloc Québécois, said Harper also lied when he said the three opposition leaders refused to sign their agreement in front of a Canadian flag because Gilles Duceppe, a Quebec sovereigntist, objected.
In fact, there were at least two flags present at Monday's signing ceremony, as well as a painting of the Fathers of Confederation.
From the CBC
Some constitutional scholars argue that the so-called reserve power of a governor general is so archaic and unused that it should not be relied upon in contemporary situations — the electorate should always be the ultimate decider — which is why Gov. Gen. Jean is getting so much conflicting advice of late.Now somehow I can bring this all back to the Magna Carta, because, for some strange reason, it doesn't seem to be discussed enough in blogger circles
The three main reserve powers that a governor general has are to dismiss a prime minister, to dissolve Parliament (or not) and to delay or refuse royal assent to legislation, which has been used only once before, in Alberta during the Depression.
These constitutional conventions are not written down and so involve a fair amount of subjectivity on the part of the incumbent.
In Jean's case, the fact that she is a Quebec francophone, was appointed by the Liberals and was accused of separatist leanings at one point (which she denied) may also factor into her decision making, some observers argue, if only because she might not want to be seen dragging her high office into petty controversy.
But those anti-monarchists who ask why we have a non-elected official deciding who will govern miss a point: virtually every western republic in the world (save the U.S.) has a dual system involving a head of state and a head of government, based largely on the Westminster model, for just these eventualities. At some point, somebody has to decide.
In fact, in India, a democratic republic with a history of fleeting coalitions, the head of state, the president, has taken on the difficult task of trying to herd coalition partners together and to, shades of Jack Layton and Stéphane Dion, spell out their commitments in written form.
The U.S. invests its reserve powers in the president, which can prove problematic when he uses his "royal prerogative" to dole out controversial pardons just as he leaves office or to decide on his own what constitutes something like torture.
From wikipedia
By 1215, some of the most important barons in England had had enough, and they entered London in force on 10 June 1215,[1] with the city showing its sympathy with their cause by opening its gates to them. They, and many of the moderates not in overt rebellion, forced King John to agree to the "Articles of the Barons", to which his Great Seal was attached in the meadow at Runnymede on 15 June 1215. In return, the barons renewed their oaths of fealty to King John on 19 June 1215. A formal document to record the agreement was created by the royal chancery on 15 July: this was the original Magna Carta. An unknown number of copies of it were sent out to officials, such as royal sheriffs and bishops.
The most significant clause for King John at the time was clause 61, known as the "security clause", the longest portion of the document. This established a committee of 25 barons who could at any time meet and overrule the will of the King, through force by seizing his castles and possessions if needed. This was based on a medieval legal practice known as distraint, but it was the first time it had been applied to a monarch. In addition, the King was to take an oath of loyalty to the committee.
Clause 61 essentially neutered John's power as a monarch, making him King in name only. He renounced it as soon as the barons left London, plunging England into a civil war, called the First Barons' War. Pope Innocent III also annulled the "shameful and demeaning agreement, forced upon the King by violence and fear." He rejected any call for restraints on the King, saying it impaired John's dignity. He saw it as an affront to the Church's authority over the King and the 'papal territories' of England and Ireland, and he released John from his oath to obey it.
So this means that Ratzinger is going to get involved, but at some point in the near future, Harper will want to divorce his wife causing a break with all Papal authority to create the Church of Canada. I, of course, will chronicle these future events for wikipedia.
What gives Globe and Mail?
You were one of the newspapers that endorsed Harper in the last election. Remember the one that was held about 15 minutes ago?
This week, Canadian Politics have turned into a garden party worthy of Anthony Trollope's Palliser novels.
But it gets better, according to Andrew Steele's Globe article about the options that Harper can exercise to remain in power, one is to "Preemptively Remove Michaëlle Jean" (the GG) however,
"This is the true nuclear option for Harper: a preemptive strike against Jean to remove her from office, and replace her with a governor-general sympathetic to the argument that the people should decide in an election."
[...]
"Mr. Harper could advise the Queen that Ms. Jean should be removed from office, perhaps noting her past dalliance with Quebec separatism as grounds. He would then be free to appoint someone who would agree to call an election or prorogue rather than call upon Mr. Dion to form a Ministry.
The difference is critical here. In Australia, the issue was the Senate refusing to pass supply. Prime Minister Whitlam had a majority in the lower house, which is normally supreme in matters of confidence. But PM Harper does not have a majority in the Commons, has not tested the will of Parliament and an alternative administration enjoys a majority of support.
To call this option risky is a grave understatement. Not only would it threaten the role of the monarchy in Canada, but parliamentary supremacy back to the Magna Carta would be called into question."
Also could some please make this logo 3D. I only have Easy GIF Animator.
(Harper wants to destroy the Magna Carta)
ALMOST NOTHING with Josh Thorpe, Yam Lau and Barbara Balfour at Akau Inc. 1136 Queen St. W, Toronto. Dec. 4, 2008 to Jan. 31, 2009.
Curated by Cheryl Sourkes
Opening: Thursday, Dec. 4, 7 - 9:30 pm
Josh Thorpe - Stripe for the Eel 2008 Wall with acrylic paint. (Installed in the Experimental Exhibition Lab at UofT)
(found with the file name: Ilovehorses.gif)