"Confucius said, "At fifteen, I aspired to learning. At thirty, I established my stand. At forty, I had no delusions. At fifty, I knew my destiny. At sixty,I knew truth in all I heard.At seventy, I could follow the wishes of my heart without doing wrong."" (Analects of Confucius | Book 2, Verse 4 ) :: note :: . . . destiny = learning + standing without delusions . . . rendering is the work of distilling play (the learning governed by the play) to its essence . . . my destiny = investigate the elements of tempo, iconography (the shared poemagogic images), movement patterns, sounds . . .
Posts
"My own single favourite artistic moment of the year came courtesy of a Brooklyn-born rapper playing an intensely demanding role on the London stage with a self-assurance that was disarming: Dante Terrell Smith - aka Mos Def - ably aided by Jeffrey Wright, was startlingly charismatic in Suzan Lori-Parks's Topdog/Underdog at the Royal Court." "To overhear two young members of the audience wanting to check out a hiphop album as a result of a trip to the theatre was to realise that the ebbs and flows of cultural conjunction are moving in gloriously unpredictable ways. Long may it continue." (FT. com | Arts & Weekend / Art, music & theatre | The year that culture became popular By Peter Aspden Published: December 29 2003 ) "At the end of 2003, English Canadian theatre may be competing on the world stage and all the rage in Germany, but for a sizable demographic on the home front, its very existence is in doubt. No art form can afford to ignore new au...
"... And in the novel, as in life, whether he lives or dies depends on which story he believes." "And this I do believe." "Which is why I tell these three stories over and over again. the story of the time my son and I came to Canada. The story of my short career as a basketball player. the story of an old man and his garden. " "And there are others." "I tell them to myself, to my friends, sometimes to strangers. Because they make me laugh. Because they are a particular kind of story. Saving stories, if you will. Stories that help keep me alive." "Of course, you don't have to pay attention to any of these stories. Louis's story is not particularly cheery. Alexie's story doesn't have a demonstrably happy ending. Neither participates fully in Western epistemologies, and my three don't have a moral centre not are they particularly illuminating." "But help yourself to one if you like." "Ta...
:: note :: . . . saw the love,spirit & sex trilogy: Lovers , Too much flesh , Being light . . . took me to dogme95 & here . . . the concept although intriguing wasn't able to sustain either in a 'filmic' nor 'ideas' way . . . the performances were superfical and surface oriented illustrating a simple narrative . . . as études with more care, thought and development they promise a deeper, fuller work much like the Three Colours Trilogy . . . to embody the diverse elements into some unified, consciousness might even evoke The Apu Trilogy , written and directed by Satyajit Ray . . . still a bare & rough quality leaves a mark on the eye even if it is an irritation . . .
"'Time,' says Jorge Luis Borges, "is the substance I am made of. Time is a river that carries me away, but I am the river...." Our movements, our actions, are extended in time, as are our perceptions, our thoughts, the contents of consciousness. We live in time, we organize time, we are time creatures through and through. But is the time we live in, or live by, continuous [~]like Borges's river? Or is it more comparable to a chain or a train, a succession of discrete moments, like beads on a string?" (THe New York Review of Books | Jan. 15, 2004 | In the River of Consciousness By Oliver Sacks) ( See: artists )
Workshop | December 18 - 23, 2003 | "Training" Reflection Day 1: 7 - 10 pm - brief intro - warm-up breath exercises (standing, shoulders, wall) movement (hand wave & push-pull) integrate into full breath - dynamic push-pull space - vibrational research from lying to stand - listen to song - resonating exploration through "Summertime" song (abdominal, chest, throat, head resonation) - contact work using mirror & vibration Day 2: 7 - 9 pm - brief check-in - introduction of twelve basic poses: (stand, arrow, sky, earth,horizon, candle, curl, lean, earth bow, cat, shoulder stand, forward roll & backward roll) - dynamic pose space - vibrational research from lying to stand - listen to song - Motions reflection Day 3: 7 - 10 pm - check-in - review pose elements - dynamic pose space - vibrational research - push-pull individual voice research moving towards interaction - Motions (stand, primal, center, transit...
I was thinking of a series of dreams Where nothing comes up to the top Everything stays down where it's wounded And comes to a permanent stop Wasn't thinking of anything specific Like in a dream, when someone wakes up and screams Nothing too very scientific Just thinking of a series of dreams (Bob Dylan | Series of Dreams )
"The obsession with power, will and hierarchy in Peter Jackson's film trilogy adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's epic The Lord of the Rings fuels its dangerous topicality: a vindication and veneration of empire. " (Open Democracy | The Return of the King: Tolkien and the new medievalism | K.A. Dilday) :: note :: . . . hmmm . . . had some thoughts during first of the trilogy but don't even wish to see the rest . . .
"In this unique work, a group of village idiots during the plague in medieval Europe are forced to enact their own mass due to the sudden death of their beloved pastor, an extraordinary man who had given them shelter and trained them to sing. Though it sounds grim, the piece is full of buffoonery and comic audience participation. Combine this with choral singing of sacred hymns and chants from the 9th through the 17th centuries, and you get a work which travels from the ridiculous to the sublime. Fool's Mass premiered on December 19, 1998 at the Grace Church Chantry, where it has been performed every December since." "It became clear during the development of this piece that there were many levels of symbolic representation at work. The nature and essence of being "poor theatre" artists in this society was thrown into sharp focus by the death of Jerzy Grotowski, a mentor for company director Matt Mitler and inspiration for all. It became painfully clear th...
Didn't have to dream to be visited by ghosts . . . Demons haunt whether wide awake, asleep, unconscious or terribly aware . . . Apparitions knaw at the sides of memories . . . Spit and shout at traces with angry mutterings in broad daylight . . . Don't see spectres? It takes training to keep phantoms alive . . . Rage dream . . . The culture of bruising breaking the will . . . Compelling ancient & modern pummelling . . . Spook pugilism in one minute nineteen seconds . . . Blood and gore . . . Hurt? See it in the eyes . . . Raw rhythms of destruction and war . . . Elemental, visceral drama experienced at the illegal edge of death . . . Alive unravelling outlaw perception . . . Face bleeding mortality. Caught me cold. Seeing the black light.
"The most innovative example of the form -- so far, at least -- was '' The Angel Project ,'' by Deborah Warner, which came to New York as part of the Lincoln Center Festival in July. Ticket holders arrived at a precise, prearranged time at the tramway stop on Roosevelt Island. After a few solitary minutes, a golf cart drove up and carried each one away to the abandoned, vine-covered tuberculosis hospital at the south end of the island. From there, one by one, audience members were sent off on a silent journey through the city, with no guide except an enigmatic 15-page book of directions. The two-hour trip concluded on the 63rd floor of the Chrysler Building, where wind whipped through the open windows and actors wearing battered wings sat staring out at the city below, occasionally turning to make eye contact with audience members -- whose reactions ranged from delight to disgust to tears." (NYTimes | Magazine | Theater for One )
"Your Touch," from Carrying Place In other centuries, other creatures' fantasies, on a prehistoric day dense with heat, some small mammal brushed the neck of its mate and ushered in our possibility. When you have found the place between my shoulder and my head, that tough band that runs in my family up the neck, you will reach through the veil of my hair, and press the weight of history upon my skin. You will touch me and I will remember my first lesson in evolution: in caves there are fish who have lost their eyes. In the dark grottos, the deep waters they need only touch. Builders poised on the upper beams of a tower hauling themselves into the immaculate openness of space, we push into each other, blind to the future we penetrate. - Esta Spalding (via Anansi Press poem of the day | Dec 13, 2003)
"Perception is an evolving, learning-on-the-job process. It thrives on new input and on education, which is what a prolonged and repeated experience of art, particularly unfamiliar art, is. Korean art has been largely invisible in the West, so we all have a lot of catching up to do. The Asian Art Museum, which has been lighting the way to Korean art and culture for years, continues to do so in these admirable shows. Now it's time for other institutions to pick up the torch." (NYTimes | Arts | Korean Art, Serenely Unconcerned, Finally Gets a Chance to Shine )
"My approach to making ceramic art has been profoundly shaped by over fifteen years of experience living and traveling throughout the polar regions - " ( Kent Swanson : Works inspired by polar terrains) "There is a greater understanding of the Korean aesthetic. The beauty of 'naturalness', those characteristics unique to clay as a material and the clays essence as part of nature; and the beauty of aliveliness' that passes from the potters to the viewer. Using these qualities of clay without exaggeration or over-extension. The Korean's people understanding of their own art is emotional. The Western approach to the world is logical, bringing about a trend in ceramics aimed at perfection of structure, meticulous decorativeness and a high concern for function. This is seen as incomplete as an artistic goal and with the preservation of Korea's own sense of beauty, the Korean artist gains an aesthetic advantage of freshness over rigid impersonality raised...
"When we began our textwork, things began to change. There was a lot of sorrow in peoples stories, including my own. When Raymon began to have us do our sourcework and textwork alone, there were a lot of tears, and a lot of confused faces. We didn't know what to think. We didn't even really know what we were doing. But we did it. At the time, it seemed like we were doing the impossible. I didn't know my voice could get so loud. I didn't know anyone could do what they did. But I suppose none of us ever really thought of trying it either. The last two classes, we performed out our class "dream" It was amazing. I watched my classmates, my friends, do what I never thought we could do. Eveybody was somebody else. We had developed out characters, without even knowing it. Characters so strong that we could hardly remember what we did by the end of it. It was beautiful." (student reflection )
"Behind the specific rights and wrongs of this case, however, Aguirre has put her finger on a problem that is simmering beneath the surface of mainstream Canadian theatre: In a country that is increasingly racially diverse, the on-stage faces continue to remain almost exclusively white." (Globe&Mail | Entertainment | Fix the colour code in Canadian theatre | By KATE TAYLOR Saturday, December 6, 2003 )
GREETING Charles Dickens wrote the Christmas Carol in 1843. Since then the cherished story has been adapted for the stage, the cinema both silent & talkie and television. We welcome you to our version - a little fantasy of colour, music, dance and spirit drama. In the end we are asked to pay less heed to work & wealth and more to worship & wonder. We are invited to pay less heed to commercialism & consumerism and more to charity & caring. God Bless! "I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it. Their faithful Friend and Servant, C. D." () :: note :: . . . probably in schools everywhere . . .
DUNLOP GALLERY UPDATES :: note :: . . . original posting requires updates . . . not wishing to fall victim to a first posting and then ignore the developing story . . . "Canadian artists are among the country's lowest paid workers and, since 1970, the National Gallery has voluntarily paid to exhibit an artist's work. Canada was also the first country to pay artists to publicly exhibit their work." (CBC Arts | Virtual rights questioned by artists in Ottawa )
Dunlop Updates
Follow the story: DUNLOP GALLERY REGINA SASKATCHEWAN The whole & continuing story: Friends of the Dunlop Art Gallery and Regina Public Library Writers' Union 'aghast' at library cut (CBC Saskatchewan | Jan 06 2004) Arts board seeks legal advice over Regina gallery closing (CBC Saskatchewan | Dec 24 2003) Library Board cuts another program (CBC Saskatchewan | Dec 22 2003) Regina library task force unveiled (CBC Saskatchewan | Dec 19 2003) Regina library petition being circulated (CBC Saskatchewan | Dec 10 2003 ) Storm gathers over library closures (CBC Saskatchewan | Dec 8 2003) Library closures delayed but still going ahead (CBC saskatchewan | Fri, 05 Dec 2003) Gallery closing sparks backlash (Global and Mail | News | Fri, 05 Dec 2003) Mayor calls for reversal of library closures (CBC Arts News |Thu, 04 Dec 2003) Artists, library supporters protest Dunlop closing (CBC Arts News | Wed, 03 Dec 2003 ) Canada Council rings in on gallery closing (CBC...
:: note :: . . . Porcupines and China Dolls by Robert Arthur Alexie has been haunting me these past days . . . no book since Thomas King 's Green Grass, Running Water has had such an engrossing effect . . . King's book became my christmas present of a couple years back . . . some how Alexie's book will not be given to anyone . . . recommended perhaps but not given . . . the writing is terse, direct, graphic and powerful in a voice full & throaty which rips into the heart and at the same time generates warmth & healing much the way the voice of Tom Jackson does in his singing . . . layers of silence behind the words are exposed in bold and simple textures . . . The Dream World & the legends, beliefs and history . . . The Awakening from a typical night of lost souls & famous last words & deep dark secrets into disclosure . . . The Real World returning home & the missed opportunities & the secrets, lies, truth & new beginnings . . . ...
CyberPunk Magazine from Russia "I worry this is more than theory. One of my biggest fears is that I am right about all this. I worry that our entire existence is nothing more than a virtual reality in some other beings' cyberspace. I cling with every ounce of sanity I have to the comforting notion that, "No! I do exist. I am not a figment of someone's imagination. This world is real," and I am glad that I never took any philosophy classes." ( cyberpunks.org | Paranoid Delusions:Consciousness and the Future of Multimedia ) via ArtNodes & Context Weblog
"Few people can formulate original points of view, but those who do are definitely worth listening to, says Stephen Bayley, with feeling" (Telegraph | Arts | Opinionated - and proud to admit it ) "What Gadamer is after is some kind of permanence within change; he has seen the temporality of human works, their immersion in time and, seeing it as their essence, he sees developing out of history a culture, a language, some sort of commonality which somehow subsists and assures continuity without repetition, a permanence amidst change, a being within becoming. Gadamer calls it tradition; it both certifies and is certified by great works without being narrowly legislative of them. He says of the writer that he never "freely invents his plot, however he imagines that he does." Thus there remains some truth in the old mimesis theory since the "free invention of the writer is the presentation of a common truth that is binding on the writer also." Is this de...
Peasant Widow's Fall "Statement:The source of this work was a novel from my childhood. Set during the Asian feudal times a peasant widow led a life of untold hardship. Her travails scorched my impressionable pre-teen imagination. The image of a widow in extreme agony needed releasing. The work proved exhausting. Painting thirty-five masks, getting up at dawn for the installation, fighting the cold while hanging the masks and finally sheltering the doll from the harsh, biting wind pushed my endurance to the limits. The telling moment was minutes before her unveiling I asked. "Are you able to stand here alone against the wind?" A voice clearly answered, "Yes, if you return to unbind me." The work had taken on a spirit of its own." (Iryn)
"The closure of the Dunlop Arts Gallery, a small but vibrant gallery located in the Regina Public Library, has sent waves of shock and dismay through the national visual-arts community." (Globe & Mail | Entertainment | Fans lament closure of Regina gallery ) "Citing slow ticket sales, the Art Gallery of Ontario has closed its exhibit of works by Canadian artists, including the Group of Seven, until 2007. The cost-cutting move comes in response to a decline in revenue, a gallery spokesperson said. " (CBC Arts News | AGO closes Canadian exhibit ) :: note :: . . . the times . . .
"Nigel Jamieson: I think Kabuki actually isn't distancing at all, I think it's incredibly emotive theatre. I saw this woman who has to murder her son and she lays out all of the gestures, these incredibly slow gestures of all the tools she's going to have to do it by, and it's incredibly powerful. And I think the same with Mnouchkine's work. When a moment of intense emotion has these actors who have got these puppet operators behind them you know in the way their bodies just soar up - when you have these incredible élan or lift, and I feel my heart and emotions kind of soaring with that, I think that is exquisite art, it's no different from a great painting." "What we're looking for is a heightening of life; we have the everyday life around us, and all art needs to heighten that so we experience things for this brief period of time more strongly, and I think that's what Mnouchkine's about, that's what Asian theatre and certainly c...
"WE HAVE THREE TYPES OF MEMORY. The first one is organic, which is the memory made of flesh and blood and the one administrated by our brain. The second is mineral, and in this sense mankind has known two kinds of mineral memory: millennia ago, this was the memory represented by clay tablets and obelisks, pretty well known in this country, on which people carved their texts. However, this second type is also the electronic memory of today's computers, based upon silicon. We have also known another kind of memory, the vegetal one, the one represented by the first papyruses, again well known in this country, and then on books, made of paper." (Al-Ahram Weekly | Books Supplement | Vegetal and mineral memory: The future of books | Umberto Eco) "Now we can understand the full meaning of Socrates' statement that virtue is knowledge. If a person knows what he is doing, then the life he makes for himself is one of the possible ways in which he could have lived, and so ...
"There may be value in learning to control distracting gestures and superfluous movement, but no player needs to strive to put themselves in to the music, because they are there anyway as the vessel through which the music passes." (Guardian Unlimited | Arts | Emotional rescues ) :: note :: . . . a superficial treatment to a complex & important issue . . . emotion is quite individual and deep and specific and alive . . . it is a rich source of energy . . . sometimes it is considered a pollutant . . . transformation into action . . .
He bases his adaptation on the knowledge that our bodies instinctively crave order, that from infancy on we try to control the world's scale and proportions. That's why the dwarfs and giants of folk tales are powerful; likewise the fantasies of Jonathan Swift and Lewis Carroll. (Not to mention the centuries of false claims that because women were smaller than men, they must be inferior to them.) (NYTimes | Theater Review | ' Mabou Mines Dollhouse': Fun-House Proportions Turn Dominance Upside Down )
The Bacchae recounts the eternal human struggle between chaos and order, liberty and restraint, passion and reason.... At the end of The Bacchae, we are left with the image of a mother attempting to reassemble the pieces of her son's body that she herself has ripped apart. We, the audience are also left with a job of reconstruction. How can we understand this strange and violent story? What can it mean to us now, more than 2000 years after it was written? The Bacchae is one of our great theatre rituals and, as with all rituals, there are not true spectators. We all participate. Greek Drama Director: N. Cadger
"The best way to judge the effectiveness of a democracy is to measure how it allocates the goods of the land: Does the government protect the commonwealth on behalf of all the community members, or does it allow wealth and political clout to steal the commons from the people?" (RollingStone : National Affairs : Crimes Against Nature )
a young man learns of his fathers death as he plays the ghost of christmas present a middle aged women enters the hospital to cut out her cervical cancer and questions the source of all the anger an even younger girl cries because she couldn't say goodbye to her grandmother who in fits of dementia claimed to hate her granddaughter hell bound on the narrow stairs of a fire exit a thousand porcupines cry in the darkness How was your Day?
Quicklinks: Globe and Mail : entertainment : Floating on the resale market Guardian Unlimited Online : arts : Star of stage and screen Financial Times.com : Arts & Weekend : Ar, music & theater : Dance: Ricercar/William Forsythe :: note :: . . . art and business . . . stage and film . . . dance and theatrical space . . .
"In his 2003 Massey lecture, award-winning author and scholar Thomas King looks at the breadth and depth of Native experience and imagination. Beginning with Native oral stories, King weaves his way through literature and history, religion and politics, popular culture and social protest, in an effort to make sense of North America[base ']s relationship with its Aboriginal peoples." (cbc : ideas : massey lectures : the truth about stories ) :: note :: . . . listen to a great story teller . . .
"Dan Macallair, the executive director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in San Francisco, said the suspension is indicative of a national trend toward zero tolerance in schools." ""We're punishing kids for things that we adults never would have been punished for when we were that age," he said. "If we try to criminalize every comment that adolescents made, all our kids would be locked up."" (JSOnline > Milwaukee Journal Sentinel > School suspends teen for rap lyric ) (via Tellio II who adds "Comment: Zero tolerance+no constitutional rights for students=fascism")
"For Currin is quite simply on a no-lose ticket (a good hiding to everything): Bad Painting with quality technique. Keep the theorists chattering and the buyers salivating. Conceptually, he adds nothing to near-century old Dadaism. He is a fashionable footnote to Picabia. And technically? It is here that one has to despair, because of what the warped prevailing taste for Currin says about actual sensibility for painting of the past. If sub-Rockwellism actually looks to taste makers and key educators to be on some kind of parity with the art from the raided image-bank of history, if old-master technique is merely an abstraction to be referenced, like a brand or celebrity's name knowingly dropped, then we are in trouble." (artcritical.com > Curryin' Favor by David Cohen) "If judgement is imagined as the hot faucet in a sink, then at the very least it will leak as soon as the cold is turned on (cold being the raw, primitive act of seeing). And, as the "ins...
"Two key areas of the brain appear to respond to the pain of rejection in the same way as physical pain, a UCLA-led team of psychologists reports." ""While everyone accepts that physical pain is real, people are tempted to think that social pain is just in their heads," said Matthew D. Lieberman, one of the paper's three authors (with Kipling D. Williams and Naomi I. Eisenberger, study's lead author). "But physical and social pain may be more similar than we realized."" (context weblog : rejection affects human brain in same way as physical pain ) :: note :: . . . as an educator in contact everyday with youth this observation is validated each and every moment . . . social connection is a deep human need we so often ignore & neglect . . .
"Commenting on the initial success of Pather Panchali and Aparajito, Ray declared in 1958: "Personally I have been lucky with my first two films, but what is really important and exciting is not the immediate gain, but the ultimate vindication of the belief that I hold dearest as an artist: art wedded to truth must, in the end, have its rewards."" (WorldSocialistWebSite : Arts Review : Film Festivals : "Art wedded to truth must, in the end, have its rewards" ) :: note :: . . . saw The Apu Trilogy, written and directed by Satyajit Ray this weekend . . . dvd just released . . . Pather Panchali (Song of the Road) , the first of the trilogy is truly remarkable . . . Ray with a precise eye allows the story to flow . . . each moment developes on its own terms the director follows doesn't manipulate . . . the story of each moment is determined by the impulse of the action or as Ray states in his essay "Making Films" in our films, their films : ...
"Turning down literary awards isn't easy. Writers may consider such gestures, but usually decide against, or are dissuaded by friends who say: "At least you forced the cretins to recognize real talent for once," or "You need the money." In Mr. Sonallah's case, it was $16,000 (U.S.) and he is an artist who never took a state arts job as a form of subsidy. In his speech, he said, "We don't have theatre, cinema, scientific research or education any more. We only have festivals, conferences and bins of lies."" (Rabble News > columnists > Comparing acts of dissent >by Rick Salutin) :: note :: . . . the curse of festivals . . .
"Ideologies are deadly when they are based on hatred. Growing up in the 1970s in Seoul, I was taught that North Koreans were our archenemy, all of them red devils with horns. Everyone at school had to participate in anti-Communism slogan and poster contests, and girls jumped rope to a song that went, "Let's kill off those Commies. / It's about time." I imagine North Korean children were taught to see the South in the same way." "I hope I know better now, but the truth is, I really don't know how to regard North Korea and its people. Like most other South Koreans of my generation, I am stuck somewhere between that ridiculous, feverish hatred and familial sympathy, between the fear of North's nuclear threats and the burden that we need to confront this crisis in a sane, sensible way." "Reading and translating the three short stories for this feature was, for me, the most intimate encounter I have had with North Korea, an experience tha...
"Saskatchewan Arts Alliance asked our provincial political party leaders to articulate their position and measures they plan to establish to support the arts and culture sector. Of the registered provincial political parties written to, three responded to the questionnaire and the Saskatchewan Liberal Party provided its "Statement on Arts and Culture"." ( Full Political Party Responses to Arts Sector Questionnaire : Saskatchewan Arts Alliance) :: note :: . . . to the polls . . . am reminded of the phrase don't vote it only encourages them . . . but must . . . cynicism runs deep but not that deep . . .
"Declared unfit for human habitation, the "Zones of Exclusion" includes the towns of Pripyat (established in the 1970s to house workers) - and Chernobyl. " "In May 2001, Robert Polidori photographed what was left behind in this dead zone. His richly detailed images move from the burned-out control room of Reactor 4 - where technicians staged the experiment that caused the disaster - to the unfinished apartment complexes, ransacked schools and abandoned nurseries that remain as evidence of all those people who once called Pripyat home." (Globalist PhotoGallery > Zones of Exclusion > Robert Polidori's Chernobyl )
"In teaching research writing, I begin with a bibliographic essay - a narratio of the chain of thought that a student must later insert their critique. I require that they avoid having a thesis until they understand the evidence. Then, as a thesis emerges into an argumentative paper, they must attract the attention of an audience (exordium), provide a logically consistent argument (argumentio), anticipate counter-arguments (refutatio), and suggest a course of action based on their thesis and the evidence. Writing first works to change ourselves, then it works to change others." (this Public Address > Pragmatic and Semantic Structures ) :: note :: . . . a wonderful clear statement . . .too many students suffer under pre-ordained structure . . . this emerging thesis is the work of creative energy . . .
Winter Sweat Lodge by Iryn :: note :: . . . today was the last day of the summer lodge . . . four splashes of goodbye to a precious fall and four splashes to welcome winter . . . a Feast & Giveaway . . . the Long-Tailed Weasel , already white, scaled the tree behind the Lodge and flew gracefully after it's prey . . . many thanks and honour to the elders . . .
" Alex Janvier has filled a former Cold Lake, Alta. bank building with 200 of his own paintings that have never been seen before by the general public. The building has been renamed the Janvier Art Gallery." (CBC > Arts News ) Metasearch Alex Janvier > WWW Arts Resources ____________ Picture Gallery >20 years of the Turner Prize
"The ghoulish cruelties in the Disasters of War are meant to awaken, shock, wound the viewer. Goya's art, like Dostoyevski's, seems a turning point in the history of moral feelings and of sorrow - as deep, as original, as demanding. With Goya, a new standard for responsiveness to suffering enters art. (And new subjects for fellow feeling: as in, for example, his painting of an injured laborer being carried away from a building site.) the account of war's cruelties is fashioned as an assault on the sensibility of the viewer. The expressive phrases in script below each image comment on the provocation. While the image, like every image, is an invitation to look, the caption, more often than not, insists on the difficulty of doing just that. A voice, presumably the artist's, badgers the viewer: can you bear to look at this? . . . " (Susan Sontag. Regarding the Pain of Others . p 44 -5)
:: note :: . . . maybe spend some time with the naughtiness . . . t...
"The bad news is that one work has been deliberately added to the exhibition (by the Chapman Brothers) in order to outrage our guardians of public morality. This has become a Turner Prize tradition, one I am sorry to see. Because, otherwise, the exhibition of the shortlisted artists is curiously coherent. In their different ways, they all share a pessimistic view of nature, history, sex and society, expressed in work that is often beautiful, always compelling." (Telegraph > Arts > Ignore the naughtiness ) :: note :: . . . many times it would be rewarding to ignore the naughtiness . . . knee-jerk reactions are far too easy to initiate . . . thank goodness for a perspective that goes one step beyond . . .
One function of literature - of important literature, of necessary literature - is to be prophetic. What we have here, writ large, is the perennial literary - or cultural - quarrel: between the ancients and the moderns. . . . One task of literature is to formulate questions and construct counter-statements to the reigning pieties. And even when art is not oppositional, the arts gravitate toward contrariness. Literature is dialogue; responsiveness. Literature might be described as the history of human responsiveness to what is alive and what is moribund as cultures evolve and interact with one another. Writers can do something to combat these clichés of our separateness, our difference - for writers are makers, not just transmitters, of myths. Literature offers not only myths but counter-myths, just as life offers counter-experiences - experiences that confound what you thought you thought, or felt, or believed. Literature can tell us what the world is like. Literature can give st...
AK I would explain it with the example of the time problem. We all know the mechanical time of a television program which is basically derived from peoples' working hours and the petty mercantile uses they make of their leisure time. For the Greeks, Chronos stood for time that leads to death, time that consumes itself. Chronos is a gigantic god who devours his own children. His antipode in the Greek pantheon is Kairos, "the fortunate moment." Kairos is a very small, dwarf-like god with a bald head. But on his forehead he has a tuft (of dense hair). If you catch the tuft, you're lucky. If you are just a moment too late, your grip on his bald head will slip and you won't be able to hold on to him. This character, Kairos, is the "happy time" that is hidden in the time of people's lives, in their working time, in everything they might do. He is an object of aesthetic activity. With Chronos on the other hand, you can only become a watchmaker. HUO The time...
Stalking the Wild: a metaphor of struggle Artist Iryn - Working Description "Wild Onion Stalk, thread / knots Materials from nature have their own distinctive integrity. Their own strength and weakness. I needed to accept the organic character. I fought the material wishing it to fit my imagination. However the material never loses. I compromised continually. The action of tying. Difficult to untie. After the tying the individual character loses its uniqueness. Yet . . . Binding and bonding the thread & stalks creates strength. We people tie things together every day. I gathered them pulling the stalks from the ground and snapping off the roots. Broke them. Then spent days making them stand again. A huge frustration. What am I doing in the name of art. The sculpture ridiculed me. Just leave them alone they stood by themselves. By the river the stalks were beautiful - are beautiful."
"Finally, a Zizekian fractured fairy tale (see The Plague of Fantasies (London: Verso, 1997), p. 74 and 84n25). A young woman, an unhappy, scorned-by-her-family-and-peers princess, befriends and kisses a slimy frog. The frog turns into a young, handsome, rich prince, and their friendship turns to Love in all its glory. After five years of marriage, however, the princess sees that her prince is just a frog. (Analyze the tale using the concepts of the "real" and the "Real.")" ( Slavoj Zizek on Fantasy ) ". . . in life, we never really do anything for the first time, always repeating past experiences, habits, rituals, conventions. Life is Theater." ( Augusto Boal from introduction to Performance Studies by Richard Schechner)
""Remember the Future." For the future is the stage, that grand canopy that drapes and folds our most unspeakable desires, the stage that promises to dramatize our pasts, to enact them in such a way that we might begin to understand them, to touch them, to know them, to become intimate with them. Those past that we have still not encountered we label "ends" so that we might one day reach them. For we know that there is no future that remains untouched by the whispering pass of our many pasts." (phelan & lane the ends of performance : Orlan , a comtemporary French performance artist .)
Han Bok Illumination Container for traditional woman's summer dress Artist: Iryn Materials: Fabric, bamboo, wood, wire, twine and paint Statement: As a Korean living in Canada my appreciation has grown for my own tradition. I wanted to create a container which would reveal or open up its content. Using soft pastel colours I wanted the beauty of tradition to be expressed and honoured.
". . . with Davis's fierce musical intelligence guiding the performance around him. "He had conversations with everyone he worked with," remembers Henderson. "What not to do, look out for this, but be yourself and just listen to it. He'd say, 'Here it is, this is the way I see it, but you do what you do.' "" (Guaridian Unlimited > arts . Friday Review > 'Releasing this has destroyed Miles' ) :: note :: . . . don't think so . . . back then (1970) witnessed a Davis conversation . . . an incredible concentration with sense of purpose . . . as audience there was the distinct feeling of listening in on some unknown personal quest/journey in the form of dialogue . . . we were summoned to be as still & quiet as possible . . . i responded with reverence and respect . . . still do when the music requires . . . nothing can destroy that . . .
"Some of his recent abstractions are supposedly inspired by Einstein's theories about perception and the speed of light: a fuzzy metaphor implying that the artist works at one pace and his critical public responds at another. A sly storyteller, a charmer and old-style rabble-rouser, he still has a restless imagination, huge energy, and an uncanny knack for spotting how two unlikely things go together. A woman washes her back with a turquoise sponge beside a giant egg yolk. The painting was inspired by a Florida sunset, Mr. Rosenquist has said. Pure poetry." (NYTimes.com > Arts > Art & Design: Mixing Glossy Pop Images Into Haiku Writ Large ) Rosenquist
"The arts are important, we are told, not just for our inner lives but for the positive effects they have on education, on the economy and on the future of the region. But do arts leaders really have a place at the table among the power players in Hartford?" . . . "Fay: We took our 15-year-old sons to see "TopDog/Underdog," and it's one of their favorite plays. We were thrilled that our boys had a chance to see that show, which we saw with them and had an opportunity to discuss the depths of that play with them. To me, that's the kind of thing that shapes an artistic appreciation in young people, in all of us. For me, that's where the conversation should reside. I'm making a point. I wish we were not so consumed with operational stability. So when we get money, we could put it behind some great vision. I think when you have that great artistic success, people's lives can be changed by it, moments in history stand still. I can reel off a hal...
Sartre
. . . attended a decidedly bourgeois, trifling tale . . . frustrating that a institution of higher learning would not recognize what Sartre so succintly observed so many years ago . . . 1. Rejection of psychology Psychological drama is basically ideological holding that man is not conditioned by historical and social factors, that human nature is the same everywhere. The rejection of psychology implies a desire to reach deeper into forces that ultimately shock. 2. Rejection of plot The belief that the purpose of plot (trifling tales) was to please & simply diverted and distracted audiences into the beginning, middle, end constructions. 3. Rejection of realism of any sort. Realism is at bottom a philosophy, a bourgeois philosophy and, in fact, realism is only valid at the conversational & insignificant level. The critical theater needed to contact the subterranean forces - the essential conditions of the human adventure which we can no longer grasp.
. . . Ancestral Place . . . the temple is a brisk ten minute walk from the Saskatchewan River and a stones throw from the original Saskatoon railway station (now converted to a small upscale mall) . . . up the hill is Caswell School . . . located in the lowlands . . . a small depression just before the grasses reach the river . . . the place was an ideal spot for a camp . . . sheltered yet not too far from water . . . dreaming one night . . . after burning the golden leaves of fall in a pail which filled the temple with smoke and left traces of the smell of burning for at least a week . . . dreamt of an old, solitary plains cree rider dismounting his horse and making camp right in the middle of the temple . . . the trail led through the center of the temple . . . he came from Duck Lake and was perhaps on a journey to locate the place for a sundance . . . well now it takes an act of imagination to present the story of Ancestral Place . . . :: note :: . . . s lot changes name to s...
"Wearing the sacred mask of Sidha Karya, a mythological Balinese figure representing death and renewal, Nyoman Catra, the performer, surveyed the scarred skyline of Manhattan and said, "People are trying to destroy our world, our country, our village." In keeping with Balinese tradition, he was playing a character in a 15th-century story, but he was also speaking of contemporary events as he connected the terror victims of the two islands - Bali and Manhattan - by turning them into inhabitants of one town." (NYTimes.com > Arts > Theater: In Bali, All the Post-9/11 World's a Stage ) :: note :: . . . art as purification ceremony . . . a type of community based theater with efforts to involve, mobilize and politicize . . . in the process expand the boundries of what is called "art" . . .
"I have no count, but I sense a dwindling number of people in the academic world who are unclassifiable. Neil Postman, who died Sunday, was one, and now we can say he will always be one. Such figures -- with reputation but no real discipline -- have a tendency to make people think. Postman had that." (Salon.com: technology: Neil Postman: A civilized man in a century of barbarism ) Neil Postman, 72, Mass Media Critic, Dies (NYTimes.com > Obituaries ) :: note :: . . . remembering reading " The Disappearance of Childhood " (1982) as a first year education student and the passion the words stirred . . . though later felt the need to pursue the ideas in a larger context the writings of Postman always sparked topics of research . . . the insights, provocative analogies and metaphors were often far more arcane than the culture they sought to illuminate . . . am reminded of when McLuhan was called upon to explain, he said his intention was not to explain, but to exp...
Bloody Hand Your man, says the Man, will walk into the bar like this — here his fingers Mimic a pair of legs, one stiff at the knee — so you’ll know exactly What to do. He sticks a finger to his head. Pretend it’s child’s play — The hand might be a horse’s mouth, a rabbit or a dog. Five handclaps. Walls have ears: the shadows you throw are the shadows you try to throw off. I snuffed out the candle between finger and thumb. Was it the left hand Hacked off at the wrist and thrown to the shores of Ulster? Did Ulster Exist? Or the Right Hand of God, saying Stop to this and No to that? My thumb is the hammer of a gun. The thumb goes up. The thumb goes down. ( Poetry by Ciaran Carson ) Ciaran Carson l Belfast poet wins top award
"Theatres shouldn't be dutifully educational, but divinely inspirational. They shouldn't have to worry about their social relevance or town-hall efficiency targets, because their purpose is no more materially quantifiable than a church's. As Michael Gambon graphically puts it in Richard Eyre's diaries, published last week, "a theatre isn't a place where you impose rules on people; it's a dirty radical place where an actor can work with a fag in his hand". This element of anarchy is a theatre's life force." (Telegraph:arts:The arts column: theatre - home of divine inspiration )
"Tall, wooden spears (from Brazil) are perched along a wall, and some Chinese calligraphy hangs on another. And on tables and chairs and the rest of the floor, you see African masks and drums and canes, along with dozens of Inuit carvings of birds and hunters. All these treasures are from Crombez' travels around the world, searching for the Simple Truths, the Guiding Principles of Healing. Travel to the Outer World of cultures and countries and to the Inner World we humans inhabit when we're sick and want to be healed but don't know how" (cbc: ideas abolut healing )
Madang Kut uses ritual enactment to reconstruct a collective life of harmony based on the spirits of playfulness and inclusiveness. By transforming socially oriented theater into a shamanistic ritual act, the performers and spectators can create collective ecstatic moments, a truthful portrayal of reality, a practical method of social change, and a healthy image of the people - the four essential elements of madang kut . this transition from theater to ritual allows a onstant invocation of social memories and realitites that, in turn, transforms silenced histories of han into healthy histories of shinmyong and also offers possibilities for constructing an alternative history. ( Performing Democracy : Contemporary Madang Kut of South Korea: Dong-il Lee)
"In 1971 an ad hoc group of activists in Vancouver who for two years had been protesting American nuclear tests on Amchitka Island in the Aleutians without success, decided they too needed to ignite a spark. Their plan was to sail a broken-down boat named the Phyllis Cormack to Amchitka to "witness" the next bomb test. Hampered by storms and the U.S. Coastguard, they were forced to turn back, with expectations that their venture had been a failure. But thousands of supporters who had been following their efforts in the newspapers greeted their return and a second boat was immediately sent out. The second boat was still 700 miles from the island when the bomb went off and it appeared that all had been for naught. But as a result of the worldwide media attention the U.S. announced an end to tests on Amchitka and the island was restored to its prior status as a bird sanctuary. It was the first victory for Greenpeace." "For Hoffman and the Yippies their actions an...
(. . . photographic images of Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park by several Alberta Photographers.) :: note :: . . . many years ago visited the breath taking mystery of Writing-on-Stone . . . tragically during an extended camping visit an act of vandalism destroyed one of the petroglyphs . . . since then more and more of the remarkable stone carvings are enclosed behind wire meshing or cages for protection . . . we protect our past from our present selves . . . wood s lot linked to The Himalayan Art Project . . . petroglyphs are alike the world around . . . the above image told me a story of a shamanic dance despite being described as a "fallen warrior" at the site . . .
Menard delivers stirring performance in Velvet Devil Joanne Paulson The StarPhoenix Andrea Menard has wowed audiences with her musical theatre creation, The Velvet Devil, in Regina and Ottawa. Now she has brought it home and thank heaven -- and Menard -- for that. From the moment the Saskatoon singer and actor appears on stage, clad in a white satin dress, glittering jewelry and long golden gloves, she commands attention until her final bow. Menard plays Velvet Laurent, a.k.a. The Velvet Devil, a young Metis woman born in Batoche with a beautiful voice and determination to burn. Velvet is a tender 18 when she hits Toronto, ready to take her place on the vaudeville stage, and her success is spectacular. But tragedy brings her home, to a performance at the Roxy Theatre -- yes, Saskatoon's Roxy Theatre -- where she tells her story and ends up baring her soul to the audience. The plot weaves in the difficulties encountered by women and people of colour in show biz, as well as the char...
"I don't know exactly, but I think that he took it in that way : sometimes you can, but sometimes you have to be cruel to work yourself. Cruel to the end, that even if you want to hide something very deep, you should not do it. You must however get to it and give it, share it with others and give yourself totally and entirely. This was maybe the lesson of Artaud for Grotowski." ( zygmunt molik : How the tradition passes from one to another - about my experiences with Jerzy Grotowski ) :: note :: . . . need to make a marker for how tradtion passed from molik to me . . . first encounter in wroclaw, poland then vienna, austria and finally toronto, canada . . . the work was a continuous research of no more than a week at a time though spanned a decade . . .
"Rich likes to keep things simple," says Wilmes, whose work with Maxwell dates back to their Chicago-based Cook County Theater Department days. "Beyond the narrative, which is his main concern, he enjoys the playful dynamic between actors with experience and those with very little. The combination encourages us to rid ourselves of our actor baggage. We're forced to listen more closely to what the other is saying." "I've been a Maxwell groupie for years," says BAM's executive producer Joe Melillo, who has made a rare institutional commitment to both develop and premiere this Henry IV, which has the honor of inaugurating the 2003 Next Wave Festival. "He's an original art maker who's not derivative of anyone." "I'm still going to be me even though I'm directing Shakespeare," Maxwell assures. "As a director of my own plays I find that I'm subverting what I've written all the time. I guess I'm s...
"As the story goes, theater grew from a fundamental desire to appreciate that which is not human: the gods, the natural world, the weather[sigma] By humanizing spirits, animal-life, or rain, people could calm the chaos of those dramatic events oblivious to their control. Eventually theater became more than a just a means to appropriate and understand the non-human: it posed as a gateway to comprehending the largest human mystery to date: the self. " (Art and Culture Network: Theater )
"Poetry not written for the stage can certainly enthrall an audience; all you need is a good performer. But problems always arise when poetry is turned into theater with more than one character. How do you move outside the mind of the poet ó that blazing single consciousness ó without giving up intensity? How do you use set design, movement and music? How do you make them as precise as the poet's meters and metaphor?" (nytimes:arts: Ginsberg and His Mother, From a Poem to a Play )
"I'm perceiving lots of polarities swimming around: flow vs control, scruffies vs neats, Human Voice vs [Profession Al]-ism, [Relation Ship] vs Con Tract, high vs low ProJect variability, process as overhead vs savior (contra stupidity), service vs product, project vs process, New Economy vs Old Economy, Science vs Humanities (Two Cultures) . " (WebSeitz/ wikilog ) :: note :: . . . examining polarities . . . goto blink for the many further blinks . . .
In Concert : A Program of Compositions by Michael Swan Third Ave. United Church, Saskatoon Sunday Sept. 14, 7:30 Rhapsody and Fugure - Michael Swan, violin Three Vignettes I. Soliloquy II. "Footprints" III. Celebration - Jordan Kirkness, double bass Fantasy - Michael Swan String Quintet No. 1 ("The Lord is My Shepherd") I. Moderato II. Scherzo-Trio- Scherzo III. Adagio (Meditation on Psalm 23) IV. Molto maestoso- Molto meno mosso Michael Swan, violin Kim de Laforest, violin Saache Heinrich, viola Carman Rabuka, cello Jordan Kirkness, double bass :: note :: . . . passionate playing of original works stirs the heart . . . the sincere, open and honest spirit with which the performers entered the music touched the place where music and desire meet . . . thank you . . .
"I simply want to say that representation itself is suffering a deep crisis. This means - and this is probably the biggest quality of the contemporary era - that because of this crisis, human dimensions become very important. The quality of the result is very relative. It is important now that an object - and not just an object, it could be a gesture, a performance, etc. - is based on the human gesture behind it. We are facing the moment when notions such as style, fashion, language... have completely lost their significance." (Viktor Misiano: PME - Les Productions M E de l'art ) :: note :: . . . visit Norway to learn about canadian theater . . . experience a sense of isolation/alienation . . . wonder why so many (too many) artists choose to ignore the possibility that the space next to them may be inviting . . . experience a slight sadness that they choose to gesture and search significance away rather than towards . . . but i understand and with a shrug meet them ...
"Because by third year I want students to be able to articulate their own learning, and largely be able to assess their own work so that their contexts of practice and learning are understood as contexts of practice and learning." " . . . reviewing means you receive detailed contextual comments, rather than simply corrections or disagreements, and it does lead to a demonstrable improvement in your work, but it tends to happen rather late in the research (and creative) process." (vog:blog : Developing Crits )
The Wild Iris At the end of my suffering there was a door. Hear me out: that which you call death I remember. Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting. Then nothing. The weak sun flickered over the dry surface. It is terrible to survive as consciousness buried in the dark earth. Then it was over: that which you fear, being a soul and unable to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth bending a little. And what I took to be birds darting in low shrubs. You who do not remember passage from the other world I tell you I could speak again: whatever returns from oblivion returns to find a voice: from the center of my life came a great fountain, deep blue shadows on azure sea water. Louise Glück
PANIC ATTACK Each new day brings something new to scare us almost to death. Peter Kavanagh reports on a gathering of scientists, philosophers and communicators who interrogate our obsession with risk. (cbc: ideas : Monday, September 8) :: note :: . . . heard this snippet . . . "I bristle when the school says their first job is the safety of their students. I would much rather that teachers state as their first priority - education." . . . . yes education means taking risks . . . it is not a safe experience . . . education demands challenges beyond the known . . . courage to take risks not manage . . . move beyond the fear . . .
auschwitz birkenau : went to one of the buildings . . . noone there . . . on the door was a sign - press button and the light will remain on for 15 minutes . . . pressed button & light turned on . . . entered . . . a minute later the light was off . . . inside this place of death i was alone . . . deepest dark . . . i couldn’t make a sound . . . i concentrated only on a clear voice inside me saying “find the exit” . . . walked very slowly, carefully, fearfully . . . someone was pulling at my legs . . . another was calling from behind urging me to turn around . . . i choked . . . couldn’t breathe . . . finally i emerged into the bright strong sun . . . i was back in the world of the living and i sat down to breathe . . . i had been truly scared . . . it had been a long time since i had felt such fear . . . trapped in the dark of the place of the dead my mind had been very clear . . . there was no hesitation - no confusion . . . one simple thought . . . get out...
"Anyway . . . the question of what to write in one's blog if one is a teacher doesn't strike me as any different in essentials from the same question with the words "spouse," "partner," "employer," or "child" subbed for teacher. Same questions we all face. We all gotta find our own answers." (Caveat Lector: O Tempora )
". . . I think it is important that education acts to destroy itself - the most important thing that any school can teach you is that you don't need school. " ". . . my teachers - they have become colleagues, not because of any basic change in attitude on either side, but because of a change in the level of knowledge we share. No one knows everything; when you figure out that it is important to talk to people because they actually know things that you don't, you become a much more effective learner." ". . . The flow of knowledge works both ways in school. I learn things from my students every semester. I enjoy that aspect a lot . . . " (this Public Address: Gated Communities ) :: note :: . . . a space that opened a gate about transparency . . . the public/private gates/no gates . . . no fence around the temple and the windows just may get smashed . . . get spanked beyond the ideal paradigmatic . . . just Bubble&Box it out . . .