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Sally McKay's Top Ten Art Picks for 2004
(culled from posts on this blog)
1. Judy Radul's installation, Empathy With Victor at the Power Plant was, in my opininion, a brilliant bit of philosophy that deftly folded fiction, fact, and consciousness into a tight narrative package. But what do I know? Anyhow, I was out-voted in the subsequent poll.
2. Copenhagen, the play by Michael Frayne about phsyicists Werner Heisenberg and Neils Bohr, was an intense study of quantum physics in it's romantic, mind-bending power and it's very real power to produce gigantic war-winning, life-destroying bombs. The narrative took a great shift, swinging the onus of evil off of Nazi-employed Heisenberg and onto A-bomb deployer, Bohr, who left Denmark for USA and worked for the Allies.
3. Rat King Mini Rock Opera was Maggie MacDonald's contribution to February's Tin Tin Tin event organised by Carl Wilson. A chorus of chanters in rat-masks. A soulful leading lady with a voice to melt your heart. A scary dad and jittery rat king boyfriend. Who want's more? What more is there?
4. OCAD's Art Criticism Panel spawned a massive slunge of comments on this blog. The question "is art criticism dead?" really hit a nerve. The topic has been popping up all over the place, and while many find that the murky abstractions of this discussion set their teeth on edge, I totally dig it.
5. Kraftwerk ...damn that was good!
6. Triplets of Belleville was screened in the park by CBN. Nothing beats sitting around on the damp grass with a bunch of other chilly, drunken cyclists. Really!
7. Gene Threndyle's piece for Wade took place in the same park as the screening listed above. Trinity Bellwoods Park is smallish by some standards, but well-used. Sports, culture, dogs, kids, and just plain sitting around all seem to find enough space. I spent most of my time off at TBP this summer, but this particular afternoon, with scads of killer whales spinning and drifting in a sunny, watery underworld, ranks as one of my top days in the park.
8. Janet Cardiff's 40 piece motet really blew me away. I keep thinking back on it, particularly the impression I had of a kind of cyborg experience, an electronic delivery of throat and breath and resonance that seemed slighty unnerving in its perfection. Is this mimesis?
9. James Hartle's kooky drawings really break down the boundaries between art and science. It sucks when the scientists can do their own art too! Sigh ... I guess feeling redundant is just part of life on the cultural fringe. Anyhow, Hartle's proficient use of the overhead projector was inspiring for future performance-type projects, and his broken-up cat drawing sparked a fun discussion about Cubism.
10. Lorna Mills' art show spurred a lot of speculative rambling and babbling on my part, and I won't go on about it again now. But I loved that show.