Main Tabs

27.5.14

weekend

It was a particularly summery Montreal weekend, lots of meandering, encounters and art.

a quick stop at a new wellness studio Espace Yama Naka for some kobucha to start my day

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a stroll up the mountain...

...to check out Chromatic festival. Above Jason Botkin and Jeremy Shantz's giant Mr. Potatoheads on acid.
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installation by La Camaraderie
#vscocam
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works by Sébastien Lafleur
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dans le chalet du Mont-Royal
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a bike ride to the east end for an atelier/birthday party complete with smoked meat sandwiches and a mechanical bull. enough said.
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winding it down with the incredible Watermark by Edward Burtynsky and heartbreaking La Vie d'Adèle

23.5.14

Death & Taxes

Tax time has come and gone.  We've declared our lives on paper and as I do every year, I shred expired years gone by.  This year I found myself also with the task of my mother's final taxes and discovering that she had kept all of her life on paper since the 1980s.  Wanting to purge, I began to shred, and shred, and shred.  That satisfying sound of automated blades produced bags of thin strips of paper and history.  Although I was ready to lighten my load and take this pile of recycling down to the curb, I hesitated, thinking "maybe there's something to be done with this?" I struggled with the idea of hoarding bags of paper, then decided to sleep on it.
My eureka moment came not too long after.  It was spring, my birthday was right around the corner, and the art bug has been biting my ass for a while.  Henceforth and prepare thyself an installation birthday party, in which we shall celebrate life, death, the end of winter and new things to come.

Friends at Cineground graciously lent me their under construction space to install three pieces that reflect on the theme of death and taxes, identity and commemorating the loss of dear family members.



Of course I couldn't keep that shredding satisfaction all to myself.  Attendees were encouraged to participate in the one night only installation by bringing own documents of confidential matters that they wished to pass through the provided shredders, eliminating their own paper trail.

shredders and a surprisingly substantial pile of paper, courtesy of attendees

17.5.14

VSCO GRID

I got a nice surprise in my inbox the other night from my absolute favourite photo editing iPhone application. 



The VSCO Grid is a gorgeous curated feed of the images of VSCO Cam users.  As an image junkie, I was very flattered that an image from my VSCO library was among such good company.
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4.5.14

the knife

The Knife has landed.
A crew of humanoid aliens from the future came to demonstrate Shaking the Habitual from the bridge of their spaceship and lucky for us, we were able to bear witness to the event.

The queer-tastic brigade warmed up the crowd with some DEEP aerobics- that's Death/Electro/Emo/Protest aerobics for you, stirring up participation from the crowd. The Absurdist Aerobics class [was] taught by a master-teacher-guru-shaman-dictator-aerobics instructor- new age workshop leader, Tarek Halaby (1) who introduced himself as being queer, Palestinian, American and "I like to get shit done."  After a couple of movement warmups, Halaby had the crowd warm up their vocals chanting "yes!Yes!Yes!" and "no! No! No!"- only to remind us that life wasn't so absolute all the time and we practiced chanting "maybe! Maybe! Maybe!"

When The Knife took to the stage their bridge was revealed, complete with customized maracas of irregular polyhedra forms, as well as a stringed tabletop instrument where some bowing and percussion action took place.  Although The Knife in studio is composed of siblings Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer, for this outing a group of eleven crew members interchanged places, roles and aerobicized dance moves to lead the audience through a twelve song set.  Most of which was less about flexing musical muscles (although there was plenty to love) and more about concepts and performance art that featured plenty of pre-recordings and choreography.

This recalled to mind an early 00's show of Fischerspooner's tour for their album #1.  With their art school roots, the show highlighted the tropes and stereotypes of fame and entertainment with a tongue firmly planted in cheek.  One moment had vocalist Casey Spooner in the balcony on a small rotating platform singing into his microphone.  He paused to take a swig of beer as the vocals kept going deliberately unveiling the lipsync and the artifice of the pop machine.

Now The Knife, Fischerspooner and many others in the pop realm ain't no Marina Abramovic, nor should it be seen as an attempt to create a "fine art" piece, but the allegiance lies in performance art, using their medium to deliver a message and even a smidgen of that self-awareness injected into the popular culture minefield is very welcome by me.