Posts
:: note :: . . . decades ago beuys shaped my consciousness . . . this summer had an opportunity for my son to view a beuys work . . . he had questions I couldn't answer . . . not unusual . . . later that night we talked a lot . . . that's usually the way it is with work that worms its way into the soul . . .
"Where did you learn it?" "I learned it during the course of my life." "Did your father teach you that?" "No. Let's say I learned it by myself..."
"This is an appealing view of learning since most of what we value in life we probably have not been taught in an educational sense of the word, but have learned it for ourselves through experience.
"The idea of erasing our personal history is alien to a culture that embraces the collection and distribution of information." (THE EXPERIENCE DESIGNER NETWORK:How do we learn the things we value most? | Carlos Castaneda: The World We All Know Is Only A Description )
:: note :: . . . learning and Castaneda . . . spent many a month devouring the works of Castaneda in my youth and awaited each new volume of the journey . . . whether they were historically 'true' or not they shaped my story . . . have learnt that many of the 'seeing' practices when consistently pe...
"There's something inherently powerful about knowing your storyteller, knowing an artist, being a part of the world of the story. And there's something we lose when stories and/or storytellers are just commodities." (culturebot | artists in residence )
:: note :: . . . the issue is: " We don't think of theater companies as teams of artists anymore. They are simply temporary homes for "hot" directors and "star" actors -- and the shows they send to Broadway." . . . no lasting work came from "stars" . . . just check the theater history books . . .
"Brook's journeys have been a constant search for deeper ways of discovering "what is the essence of theatre" and "what can theatre uniquely do?". In their hunger for meaning, they have also been spiritual quests" (the Independent online | Peter Brook: The grand inquisitor )
:: note :: . . . the title 'if' .. comes from Brook's The Empty Space . . . much of the theater created under his name falls short of the wonderful writing and theory he produces . . . a writer of practice is much to be valued . . . the models survive as beacons to guide the others . . . his gift was to articulate the work around him . . . he illuminated many others . . .
"ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Saskatchewan-born painter Agnes Martin, who became one of the world's leading abstract artists, died Thursday. She was 92." (CBC Arts News | Fri, 17 Dec 2004 )
I can see humility
Delicate and white
It is satisfying
Just by itself. . .
And Trust
absolute trust
a gift
a precious gift
I would rather think of humility than
anything else.
Humility, the beautiful daughter
She cannot do either right or wrong
She does not do anything
All of her ways are empty
Infinitely light and delicate
She treads an even path.
Sweet, smiling, uninterrupted, free.
. . Agnes Martin 1973
"Words about visual art are always beside the point, and it's especially hard to say anything about art that is as drastically reduced as Agnes Martin's. How is it that Martin, with her evenly spaced horizontal and vertical lines and her hushed palette, has produced a body of work that is so moving? ... " ( A r t of ...
"For anyone who doubts that we are entering a new era, let's flash back just a few years. "Saving Private Ryan," with its "CSI"-style disembowelments and expletives undeleted, was nationally broadcast by ABC on Veteran's Day in both 2001 and 2002 without incident, and despite the protests of family-values groups. What has changed between then and now? A government with the zeal to control both information and culture has received what it calls a mandate. Media owners who once might have thought that complaints by the American Family Association about a movie like "Saving Private Ryan" would go nowhere are keenly aware that the administration wants to reward its base. Merely the threat that the F.C.C. might punish a TV station or a network is all that's needed to push them onto the slippery slope of self-censorship before anyone in Washington even bothers to act. This is McCarthyism, "moral values" style." ( Bono's New Ca...
God Bless America
Here they go again,
The Yanks in their armoured parade
Chanting their ballads of joy
As they gallop across the big world
Praising America's God.
The gutters are clogged with the dead
The ones who couldn't join in
The others refusing to sing
The ones who are losing their voice
The ones who've forgotten the tune. The riders have whips which cut.
Your head rolls onto the sand
Your head is a pool in the dirt
Your head is a stain in the dust
Your eyes have gone out and your nose
Sniffs only the pong of the dead
And all the dead air is alive
With the smell of America's God.
Harold Pinter January 2003
(via wood s lot | found at abreact )
"'A common report from anecdotal writing over many generations of educators is that it is the teacher who usually learns the most during the process of gathering content materials, designing, teaching and evaluating student performance. In this project we address this issue by developing an innovative instructional design in which collaborative groups of students working at distance create, share and assess learning content (in the form of learning objects) with their peers through online learning portals ( Distance-Educator.com | WHY DO TEACHERS GET TO LEARN THE MOST? A CASE STUDY OF A COURSE BASED ON STUDENT CREATION OF LEARNING OBJECTS resgistration required)
"One of the speakers at the Free Culture Fest, Wayne State University law professor Jessica Litman, said the Free Culture movement is a terrific idea. Historically, copyright law has been crafted by lobbyists for powerful copyright owners who represent the software, music and movie industries, she said....
"'The Shanghai government is pushing for culture at the moment. In their eyes, there are good economic and touristic reasons for culture to be a part of the city ... at the same time, if they get their hands on this place, they will fuck it up with framing shops and Starbucks. There's a complete lack of imagination.'" (Guardian Unlimited | Is Chinese art kicking butt ... or kissing it? )
:: note :: . . . the plight of our commercial driven culture . . . lack of imagination . . .
"Known for dark themes, mythological literary devices and, at times, controversial poetry, Gluck said her writing process is often the result of contemplating a phrase's meaning."
" 'I usually start with a piece of a sentence or pair of lines, and a poem arises out of an attempt to locate the context of why the phrase has resonance in my head,' Gluck said."
"Gluck said "Averno" is the small crater lake in southern Italy which, according to Roman mythology, is the entrance to hell."
" 'It's a book about one's relation to earth," Gluck said. "That combined sense of awe and the sense of self as hostage to Earth and time.' " (yaledaileyneews.com | Gluck waxes poetic on work | via Literary Saloon )
:: note :: . . . an actor contemplates an action's meaning - to locate the imaginative sense of the act and its resonance in the body . . . then generate an energy field within the space ....
"Take the Chinese word mianzi, for example. Having no other word to use, we call this "face," and it represents, very roughly, the inner dignity that is possessed by every human, which all others dealing with its possessor are duty bound to uphold, and neither to threaten nor to challenge. Shout an insult at a Chinese shopkeeper and you make him lose face, you threaten his mianzi, and you commit the most cardinal of sins. Buy your Chinese colleague the most expensive cognac imaginable and you give him face, and you will in consequence be blessed for all eternity." (Words Without Borders | Simon Winchester | In Other Words: A Foreword )
"The same lesson can be learned thirty years later. Stuff Happens would not even be produced today if not for the Theatres Act, which abolished censorship in British theatre. The year that act was passed? 1968. The same year of the Tet Offensive that turned the tide of the Vietnam War. The same year the Catholic minority in Ireland armed themselves The same year as the Prague Spring and when workers took center stage in Paris. When students demonstrated in Poland, Mexico City, the United States, and Britain too. This struggle threatened the order of life that was built on war, racism, inequality and censorship. To say the Theatres Act had nothing to do with the amazing power being wielded by oppressed people in Britain is simply to rewrite history. In the States too, radical theatre had become a staple for the left, with plays not just from Brecht and other classics, but new plays by the likes of Myrna Lamb and Amiri Baraka." (counterpunch | Taking Theatre Back Are The States...
""The basic findings are exciting enough, but you can't help but speculate on what they might mean in a deeper context," says Weliky. "It's one thing to say a ferret's understanding of reality is being reproduced inside his brain, but there's nothing to say that our understanding of the world is accurate. In a way, our neural structure imposes a certain structure on the outside world, and all we know is that at least one other mammalian brain seems to impose the same structure."" (context weblog | real-world processing )
""A lot of people have been interested in what changes in the brains of animals and people when they are learning things," Potter said. "We're interested in getting down into the network and cellular mechanisms, which is hard to do in living animals. And the engineering goal would be to get ideas from this system about how brains compute and process information."" (context weblog | li...
W.I.P.
"System Override: In a society where technology is becoming increasingly more important how do we define the differences between man and machine? This Matrix inspired dance piece fuses athletic and acrobatic movement and fight choreography together in a unique look at our struggle for individuality. " ( FreeflowDanceCo. )
:: note :: . . . the richly textured Garden of the Spirit "named for the Joe Fafard sculpture" Mind's Garden captived . . . the praire caged within/out the sculpture and the hand processed black&white film haunted like some memory or innerscape all the while danced with the solo artist as her words impressed her body . . . "inner impulse" sculptured into a architecture of the spirit . . . what appears to be a collaboration between TES Dahms, Robin Poitras and Gerald Saul honours the power of the land as it interacts with the territory of the spirit in the sphere of contained place . . .
. . . private . . . downstairs in the storage area beneath the stage . . . that's where I teach . . . occasionally we stream up the vomitoriums into the house onto the stage and even into the light&sound booth . . . most of the time we bunker down safe in our studies . . . the walls concrete around us . . . we are few . . . but a loyal bunch . . . the lights are soft or harsh transforming the space at will . . . sometimes we light fires . . . most of the time there's music . . . and always voices . . . words, words, words . . . matter . . .
"Leon Golub's work is about power and the recurring misuse of power through violence, not as an isolated inhuman phenomenon but as an expression of organised, often state-sponsored, oppression and brutality. A fundamental tension is at the heart of his paintings a tension literally between the figure and the ground of the canvas, between the individual and the group within a painting and also between the role of the artist and the wider background of society. Galub has described his work as "a definition of how power is demonstrated through the body and in human actions, and in our time, how power and stress and political and industrial powers are shown... I' m painting citizens of our society, but I'm putting them through certain kinds of experiences which have affected them. I can describe some of them - Dachau, Vietnam, autamatized war, I would even say such a phrase as Imperial America, in a way."" ( Leon Golub )
:: note :: . . . there is a pla...
"how we 'value' culture in the public realm...or how we attach value to creative expression and experience when confronted with the question: 'why should you be supported as an industry, as an organization, as an endeavor, when there are so many other needy causes for the public purse?'" (theArtfulmanager | Value and the arts )
:: note :: . . . an on going discussion . . . another facet of this discussion . . . yesterday faced a decision by an administrator banning Ryga's The Ecstasy of Rita Joe from the high school stage . . . a fundamental misunderstanding of the value of drama . . . is the performing of plays really nothing more than a showcase of talent - a public relations vehicle . . . not! . . .
"aboriginal story in digital media"
"pê-âcimohk. Let us tell you a story. For Aboriginal people, storytelling is a way of using metaphor to understand our roles and responsibilities on the planet. Recently, Aboriginal storytellers from across Canada and around the world have been carrying their traditional and contemporary narratives into the world of digital media. Starting from a foundation based on a Cree worldview (nêhiyawin), TELL explores a variety of contemporary issues related to Aboriginal new media storytelling, giving a voice to all our relations by profiling the work of Indigenous storytellers from across North America and the globe." ( horizon )
Last Sunday John Livingstone Clark gave the first Temple Reading:
Program:
miles had been a pimp once -
stars like priaire dogs -
leave the mind behind -
running wild -
ecstasy factor -
one last toss of the old fedora -
don't say god -
:: note :: . . . a beautiful afternoon . . . an emotional landscape fused to an always pulsing rhythm . . . the music and spoken word wove a magical place . . .
"I regularly see people making art or running theaters or doing a million other things for virtually no money with no resources on the force of sheer will and hard work. It would take the corporate world untold amounts of money - and human resources - to pull of the things we do. So there you have it."
"Art Workers of the World Unite!" (Culturebot.org | The Art worker's Party )
:: note :: . . . me too . . . but we have to be really careful about the whole Art as business model that seems to so dominate America . . .
"On World Teachers' Day, and on any other day for that matter, the basic message that a teacher needs to receive is quite simple. "We appreciate you"."
"That message cannot be repeated often enough, by those of us in the United Nations family and by those who interact with you every day."
"We highly appreciate you having chosen this profession, one so fundamental to society, and the fact that you continue in it, despite - and often because of - the challenges you face. We value the initiatives you take in opening doors of knowledge and tolerance for each girl and boy. We are aware of what your profession demands of you, of your responsibilities and of your rights. We acknowledge the difficulty of your task, and the fact that it takes professional training and a decent work environment to teach well. We appreciate the care you take to direct your knowledge at children with special needs, and your awareness that all students have individual ...
. . . he was a muscian and i was an actor . . . when speaking about play we agreed that we play to celebrate the "timeless space" . . . & then i thought about the process . . . the process of existential imagination . . . play
is . . . re creating and re envisioning the experienced timeless space . . . an act ivity . . . a vibrating energy pattern . . . a set of relationships that reach out to other regions within a larger whole . . .
"What Pollock does in these abstractions, as a result of his actions in the studio, is to disrupt our expectations regarding the role of skill in the final marks on the canvas. In an essay on "Style, Grace, and Information in Primitive Art," Gregory Bareson called Pollock's paintings, along with "natural landscapes, 'found objecs,' inkblots, scattergrams, [...] exceptions to the almost universal linage in aesthetics between skill and pattern" (1972:148). In Pollock's case, as in these others, " a larger patterning seems to propose the illusion that the details must have been controlled," when, in actuality they have not been (148). It is this lack of control of the medium in its traditional sense, along with a yielding to more ritual actions that has been so invisible to most interpreters of Pollock. The illusion of control has effected an account of Pollock at odds with ritual and in concert with historical art practices, even if ava...
"For the first time in Saskatchewan, artists are being recognized as workers in the sense that most people are. The act’s recognition of “the important contribution of artists” and “the value of artistic creativity” to the cultural, social, economic and educational life of Saskatchewan, is pretty much motherhood – who would disagree? – but its nod toward “the importance to artists of being fairly compensated for the creation and use of their artistic works” is downright revolutionary. So too is its recognition of the “the right of artists to enjoy the same economic and social benefits that are available to other workers in Saskatchewan.”"
"In one fell swoop, the government gave to artists rights – on paper, at any rate – that most other residents of Saskatchewan have enjoyed for years."
"But now, as Kutz says, it’s time to actually make some of that happen." ( Status of the Artist - An Update |Dave Margoshes )
:: note :: . . . hmmm . . .
"The earth moved for me in Santiago last week. Pottering about my hotel room, I suddenly felt the floor shudder and reverberate. I even had a fantasy of filing a story to match the famously boring headline once concocted by Claud Cockburn for the Times: Small Earthquake in Chile. While the tremor left me mildly shaken, it had its metaphorical uses. Later that day, a Chilean dramatist told me it symbolised the fragility of democracy in his country. For me the tremor came to represent, rather more optimistically, the signs of artistic upheaval I saw in my short stay." ( Guardian unlimited arts features |On with the show |Michael Billington reports )
:: note :: . . . artistic optimism felt from south to north . . . please stand up for artists . . .
Jerzy Grotowski says in his writing "tu es le fils de quel qu'un":
"Art is deeply rebellious. Bad artists talk about the rebellion, but true artists do the rebellion. They respond to the consecrated order by an act...... art as rebellion is to create the fait accompli which pushes back the limits imposed by society or in tyrannical systems, imposed by power. But you can't push back these limits if you are not credible. Your fait accompli is nothing but humbug if it is not fait competent. Yes, it is blasphemous. but it's precise. You know what you are doing, you have worked out your weapons, you have credibility, you have created a fait accompli which is of such mastery that even your adversaries cannot deny it. (295)"
. . . needed to . . . wanted to . . . decided not to . . . there was the ancient banished scholar who in his youth fled hiding in the streets - sleeping in the ghetto by the river during the day . . . his time had come, the gods determined, and though he longed for the mountains it was the sky which beckoned . . . the northern sky of artic dreams and a forest of hidden saplings . . . he thought he was alone yet the sound of drumming was never far off . . . someone very gaunt and thin was playing or ready to play or had just finished an unearthly music . . . like heaven maybe . . . years ago he had dreams now lost in the blue and the blue green . . . further ahead it rained . . . he could have sung but didn't . . . could have danced . . . a fragment of text floated by unspoken . . . the wind whispered goodbye . . . into gold . . .
"Saskatchewan artist and educator Bob Boyer , best known for his paintings on blankets, has died. " (CBC Arts News | Saskatchewan artist dies of heart attack )
:: note :: . . . was hoping to see some tributes but this passing has gone completely unnoticed . . . in Bob's own words:
"It's like the man on the moon that disappeared when mankind tried to find him by setting foot on the moon. The beauty and naiveté disappeared in the research. A friend of mine once said if you peel away each layer of the onion in order to find out what it is, you will eventually end up with no onion." (Mendel Art Gallery | A Naïve Thought )
"Born in 1950 in Novosil, between Moscow and the Black Sea, a town so small that circuses didn't stop there, Mr. Polunin got his first glimpse of clowns at the movies. But it wasn't the great Russian clowns - Karandash, Popov, Engibarov or Durov - who influenced him. It was Charlie Chaplin. "I was 12 when I saw "The Kid,' " he said. "I just loved him." After moving to St. Petersburg to study engineering to satisfy his mother ("First become an engineer, then you can become anything you want," she told him), he performed in music halls by night. When his mother saw her smiling son onstage, surrounded by beautiful women, as members of the audience leaped from their seats to applaud, she said: "All right. You don't have to be an engineer."" (NYT | Theater | A Late-Summer Blizzard Hits East 17th Street By LIESL SCHILLINGER )
:: note :: . . . how many of us take the courage to follow our dreams . . . the school ter...
"Born in 1950 in Novosil, between Moscow and the Black Sea, a town so small that circuses didn't stop there, Mr. Polunin got his first glimpse of clowns at the movies. But it wasn't the great Russian clowns - Karandash, Popov, Engibarov or Durov - who influenced him. It was Charlie Chaplin. "I was 12 when I saw "The Kid,' " he said. "I just loved him." After moving to St. Petersburg to study engineering to satisfy his mother ("First become an engineer, then you can become anything you want," she told him), he performed in music halls by night. When his mother saw her smiling son onstage, surrounded by beautiful women, as members of the audience leaped from their seats to applaud, she said: "All right. You don't have to be an engineer."" (NYT | Theater | A Late-Summer Blizzard Hits East 17th Street By LIESL SCHILLINGER )
:: note :: . . . how many of us take the courage to follow our dreams . . . the school ter...
"In "Painting as an Art," Richard Wollheim identifies the experience of seeing-in as prior to representation, which involves the perception of, say, marks on a surface that can also be perceived as things apart from each other. This aspect of seeing-in is called twofoldedness; everyone knows this, for example, from the simple pleasure of looking at clouds and seeing people, animals, cars, etc. Wollheim insists that the experience of twofoldedness is not either/or, a switching back and forth from one image to another. Instead the viewer sees, experiences, and holds these images simultaneously. I wonder, however, if it's possible to experience trifoldedness, octafoldedness, or a multifoldedness wherein an image can provoke a number of simultaneous associations that the viewer holds, cycles through, balances and interrelates. An open image, then, would be most successful not only when it allowed viewers to see-in and experience a range of associations, but when the rang...
"It seems to me that there are three types of interpreters: those who just play the notes; those who try their best to follow exactly what the composer has written without suppressing their own personalities; and those who deliberately set out to make things sound "different" (although all three will tell you they belong to the second category). Gould did his damnedest to do things his own way, and often ignored composers' wishes. You can get away with this where Bach is concerned, because little is written in the score besides the notes (there are hardly any tempo markings, dynamics, slurs, or articulation signs)." (Angela Hewitt | Glenn Gould's Bach | The Times Literary Supplement )
:: note :: . . . find myself struggling to write about music . . . came across a musician reviewing a biography about a musician . . . hmm . . .
"Temple Concert"
8 pm
August 27 2004
Duane Dorgan (drums)
Ray Stephanson (keyboards)
  special guest: Melodie Stephanson * (voice)
1. Fuji Vu Yu
Stephanson
  (Three views from the mountain top.)
2. Art Auction Music Medley for a Deaf Audience
(Abdullah Ibrahim, Stephanson
  (Nobody listens except the musicians.)
3. Blue Joy
Stephanson
  (One who makes you happy.)
4. Truth About Ruth
Dorgan
  (The child cannot turn away from the mother's song, simple truth.)
5. Ryan's Mud Hut
Dorgan
  (Nephew Ryan rocks: in his village, his heart at the center solid)
6. Brasil Boogie
Stephanson
  (Steamy eros at the Amazon.)
...
from Prologue: For Gavin, My Son
. . .
and even here you are the patient one
leading by gesture and grace
small arm raised from convulsions
soft hand touching my face
tiny fingers stroking my cheek
and a look   even here in hell
a look   from the mist of your
absence   of love.
( Body and Soul New and Selected Poems | John Livingstone Clark )
"The woman in black (or dark blue) enters in silence and stands beside a house projected on the wall. She bends her upper body to the ground and rises up repeating this movement again and again. Her untied black hair draws a parabola following the movement. The endless repetition is obsessive and insane. As time passing, it becomes a torture tearing at the heart of one who is watching. Is this act of bending and lifting an act of knocking in order to open the door? But what door? A silent scream fills the lungs urgently seeking release from this torture. The woman continues in silence. The economic and precise movement beats into the heart over and over again. She simply keeps repeating the action. The action is not only stronger than words but also honest and truthful. One cannot endure it, cannot pretend any more to be fine and happy with only a few problems. A deep pain surfaces revealing the other side, which has been hidden. Finally one admits and surrenders to her action. O...
. . . while away saw The Dumb Waiter/The Zoo Story Pinter/Albee by soulpepper . . . found that the performance of Albee reached deeper than the Pinter . . . most review (s) concur . . . wanted to see a respected canadian theater company approach Pinter especially having seen and worked with Henry Woolf and Susan Williamson a team of Pinter colleagues and performers extraordinaire . . . Pinter demands a sharp, ironic, dark, comic sensibility and a naive yet alienated impulse . . . Albee is far more straightforward - north american actors, directors and audiences seem to respond to the simple allegory and tragedy . . . power in directness . . . power through the indirect . . . it could have been a revealing twin bill but this would have required each piece to be shaped as parts of a whole rather than just two distinct acts . . . the possibility existed as the same two actors shared the roles . . . the two directors needed to collaborate more . . . it is in the courage to forcefully st...
:: note :: . . . Friday the 27th @ 8pm . . . will be an incredible evening of music . . . all welcome . . . 120 25th Street West . . . a two tone praire gothic structure (formally the Islamic Temple) . . . special voice guest Melodie Stephanson . . . years ago this duo inaugurated the temple concerts with a stunning collection of original compositions . . . hear more in this rare appearance . . .
"'Place is simply the projection of the internal state of the characters,'said Vancouver author Nancy Lee. In other words, it's a state of mind." (Is the Novel Dying? Don't write its ending yet, despite gloomy news from the U.S. In Vancouver Saturday, writers argued for 'emotional accuracy' and a sense of place. | The Tyee )
:: note :: . . . place is not simple . . . sense of place centers emotional accuracy . . . place is self . . . spent 14 days at another place and the self grows into other places . . . return to a certain disassociation . . . today a horrible auto/pedestrian accident left a body lying on the street . . . meters from the front door . . . my place was shaken . . . life is fragile and precious . . . give thanks . . .
. . . back . . . a most impressive exhibit . . . The Great Parade:Portrait of the Artist As Clown . . . a stunning perspective in a beautifu l building . . . watching my teenaged son wander parliament hill, the war museum, the national art gallery, museum of civilization and many other ottawa sites was exhilarating . . . his curiosity and sense of history defied the stereotype of his self-involved age . . . power to youth . . .
""There are knots, points of great condensation, places of high valuation, paths of decision or interpretation that are virtually unavoidable . . . which by an ominous and rigorous paradox confers on them an additionall authority, an influence, radiance or presence that leads their ghost to places where they are not and from which their ghost will never return. (The Deaths of Roland Barthes |The Work of Mourning | Jacques Derrida p. 56)
:: note :: . . . a new project takes shape . . . mask/music/place into images . . .
"At the same time, these tragic and brooding pictures are not just apocalyptic visions hatched inside the artist's feverish mind. They gain much of their baleful conviction from Kiefer's close and incessant scrutiny of the countryside around his home in an isolated village south of Frankfurt. Here he is able to witness the annual buning of stubble after the straw has been cut, and all his landscapes gain immensely from Kiefer's firsthand observation of nature. This familiarity with the precise formation of a ploughed furrow or a havested crop enables him to root even the most harrowing and trubulent paintings in a credible down-to-earth reality. " (richard cork | new spirit, new culture, new money: art in the 1980s | p. 38)
:: note :: . . . have carried the images of anselm kiefer, just beneath consciousness, for a few days now . . . the above quote doesn't relate to the posted picture but more to other images i've been harbouring but the posted...
". . .we decided to work together as a globally dispersed cyberformance company in order to undertake practical research into the collision of theatre and the internet and to create live performances in cyberspace." ( helen varley jamieson | comment in Avatar Theater and 'Time' | networked_performance )
:: note :: . . . blast theory, lag time, art mobs, avatar theater . . . oh yeah & godot arrives . . . the collision between theater and the internet . . .
Voodoo Bunny Series
Voodoo Bunny Series Artist & Story: Duane Dorgan Materials: water colours on paper . . . the music seemed to unfold as it had to each piece opening more and showing a bigger picture. It was an evening of completely original music. In the credits, the names of both composers appeared on all compositions. There were breath-taking solos by both. the four handed playing had a harmony and texture such that one could at times imagine hearing a cello or violins. At times trumpets, flutes and voices. There was no intermission. As this musical landscape opened there was more and more space. Voodoo Bunny Snowman Voodoo Bunny Silent Night Voodoo Bunny Mr. Frog at Home Voodoo Bunny Summer Voodoo Bunny Fall Voodoo Bunny Winter Voodoo Bunny Northern Lights Voodoo Bunny I hadn't seen Mr. Bunny for a couple years not since the new millenium I attended the concert at the invitation of a mutual friend.
korean traditonal songs
learned in korea are from a cultural asset - that is what i mean when i say korean traditional song.
those songs, it doesn't matter who you are, there is no room for returning songs (or energy) to me. i just burn my energy to produce the voice, songs - cleaning up who i am
but the other songs, singing a song is not a finished act. i don't burn my energy to produce the song, the energy is returned to me by singing. singing reproduces my energy or echoes back so, i am not emptying out myself, because of reproducing something, i am refilled.
i am burning my old energy and reproducing new energy, so i am refreshed and better
just like a blood
blood in our bodies.
(im from nyu)
:: note :: . . . inner listening . . . songs to grow by . . . the teaching songs . . . the air songs . . . those neuron passses . . .
time again
the water snake rises into joy
wind travelling floatsom
tiny salt water spirits tumble across pebbles
as gulls soar into the setting sun
multifaceted hues the length and breadth of eternity
kiss the trembling aspens with lips of light
as the choke cherries ripen into deep purple
(summer travels 8/16/01)
Wading into the water
firm bottom & gentle cold
stirs the bone
a red striped insect sunning
stirs the imagination
the cascading distant rain streaks
stirs the spirit
& the wind, the wind
reaching, caressing, chopping, stroking
stirs the soul
your skin bronzes turning to gold
nature massages & transforms
is that love?
(summer travels 9/16/01)
time again
the water snake rises into joy
wind travelling floatsom
tiny salt water spirits tumble across pebbles
as gulls soar into the setting sun
multifaceted hues the length and breadth of eternity
kiss the trembling aspens with lips of light
as the choke cherries ripen into deep purple
(summer travels 8/16/01)
:: note :: . . . the temple floods with sand memory . . . on the roof the pebbles baked into tar scratch the back into immobility . . . listen to the love poems scavenged by wood s lot . . . accepted the invite . . .
SAND
The sand is like acres of wet milk
Poured out under the moonlight;
It crawls up about your brown feet
Like wine trodden from white stars.
From the Arabic of John Duncan .
(via T he Project Gutenberg EBook of The Garden of Bright Waters by Translated by Edward Powys Mathers )
healing waters of manitou
the golden waters
hot & salty
buoyant
floating gently away
a hand guides us as the eyes sting
toopsy turvey head under over
turn everything
upside down
change the center
growth needs wisdom
wisdom needs youth
  let the fire burn
(summer travels 2001)
:: note :: . . . a beacon from the past navigates the soulscape today. . . remember those healing waters the gentle days in the water, on the beach . . .
"Self-awareness ... operates like a drug, stimulating one's sense of responsiblilty while weakening the will to express it." (Northrop Frye)
"...the effort to shut out anxiety is itself an anxiety and a very intense one, which keeps the conscious and critical part of the mind very near to the breaking point of hysteria." (Northrop Frye | The Modern Century )
(via the psychic wood s lot )
"All places communicate instantly with all other places, a sense of isloation is delt only during the trip between one place and the other, that is, when you are in no place. I, in fact, find myself here without a here or an elsewhere, recognized as an outsider by the nonoutsiders and envy them. Yes, envy. I am looking from the outside at the life of an ordinary evening in an ordinary little city, and I realize I am cut off from ordinary evenings for god knows how long, and I think of thousands of little cities like this, of hundereds of thousands of lighted places where at this hour people allow the evening's darkness to descend and have none of the thoughts in their head that I have in mine; maybe they have other thoughts that aren't at all enviable, but at this moment I would be willing to trade with any of them. p. 17" (Calvino. On a Winter's Night a Traveller... p. 17)
(via bryan to haijan )
:: note :: . . . watch packing into boxes . . . summer ...
. . . mom came across a folder full of photos which my dad had taken in '53 while working in Fort Churchill, Manitoba . . . upper atmosphere research . . . remember the stories of his spending nights on the platform watching the aurora . . . people, in the years to come, would ask him: "Do the Northern Lights Sound?" . . . he would laugh and reply, "No." . . . his smile betrayed knowledge of the unexpected universe . . . of the collection of prints this was my son's favourite . . .
floating on the silence of hidden tributaries
tired and in need of solitude
she whispered: i don't know what's in your heart
sleeping in the cleft of a dream
the earth had aged considerably
the eye could no longer pin down the ecstasy in colour
he sliced his finger cutting the onions
how is it that we've forgotten all that was promised at birth?
around the world looking for what we'll never find.
love knows nothing.
Violins will emerge from
  our tortured breasts,
The barbed wire will
  become violin strings,
The broken bones will
  become flutes,
There will be a wild dance.
(Mikis Theodorakis/Greek composer, conductor, poet, and political activist)
(from Journals of Resistance . 1971 English trans. by Hart-Davis MacGibbon Ltd. The lines are excerpted from "Our Sister Athina".)
moxon movement
red wine flowed after the gig
and the chainti smiles collected the sounds
of what will be known henceforth as
the moxon movement
he said 'no intro thought i'd leave the chords just hanging'
oh they did - the chords hung in the air like kites without strings
and if tempo drives them crazy let madness reign in
the moxon movement
the truth but not the whole truth simply the sweet part he knew
and the hymns sung solemn and rich in the heart settling
in the territory of sublime v i b r a t i o n of
the moxon movement
move around but how could we when the spaces between the sphere
of you and i and thou and me and mom and dad & the mud hut
slippery sliding eyes shut awake listening to
the moxon movement
from a lost letter . . .
. . . the real challenge is the creation of art in life made all the more so beautiful because you recognize that the tragic moments to impose meaning, in this massively indifferent univers...
Moxon Gig
Duane Dorgan, percussion
Ray Stephanson, keyboards
1. FujiVuYu   (Stephanson)
2. Metatango (Dorgan)
3. Blue Jay   (Stephanson)
4. Truth About Ruth  (Dorgan)
5. Ryan's Mut Hut  (Dorgan)
6. Brasil Boogie  (Stephanson)
(With thanks to Stella Stephanson, Bjorn Vors, and Rosie Stephanson)
:: note :: . . . an exquisite house concert . . . music to open the soul . . . demanding the spirit to listen to the spaces between with such a gentle coaxing that the rhythmic dance surprises and conjures laughter . . . solemn hymns to walking baselines that never stop . . . cymbal brushes defying the rapture . . . wo mag(mus)icians, I'm honoured to call friends, extend an inv...
"an amputated soul - like an amputated limb, the body seeks out that which is not there and grasps hold of the emptiness. it's like a hole inside yourself that, when you seek it out, expands, pressing against your ribcage from within, reaching all the way up to your throat."
"sleep only comes with the warblers' waking." (nick | this is if.only.org )
:: note :: . . . the sleek eloquence of nick inspired Exile . . .
:: note :: . . . looking at the kenderdine gallery show case windows inside the agriculture building reflecting the john mitchell building (drama building) with drama instructor shadow . . . time of reflections . . . knowing no immediate in[sight]s just trust the process . . . always trust the process it has it's own space and time . . . keep moving and find the times to pause . . . to look intently . . .
"I have no respect for acting. Acting by and large is an expression of a neurotic impulse . . . I've never in my life met an actor who was not neurotic . . . I think the truth is that actors are actors because it gives them sustenance for their narcissism. Acting enables them to experience a false sense of love and attention, the same kind of attention given any exhibition . . . Acting is a bum's life in that it leads to perfect self-indulgence." (Marlon Brando in Portrait of the Rebel as an Artist by B. Thomas. p153)
"I've always tried to run acting down . . . I don't know why. It's not a bad thing to do in life after all. . . Everybody has had the experience of feeling: Christ the world is coming to an end. And you go watch John Wayne riding across the prairie, and you see grass blowing and the clouds, and he grabs the girl and they ride off into the sunset. You went in there feeling awful and you came out feeling good. He made you feel go...
" . . . be light, not weighted down by eighteenth-and-nineteenth century concepts of nationhood, theoretical grids and templates, the formal apparatus of a homogenizing economic system and legislation that attempt once and for all to resolve the disparate elements and paradoxes that make up this society. Leave it to its ambivalences, its frictions, its civility, its anonymity, its mystery, its slow unfolding; leave it to the debate, the haggling and wheedling and coaxing. Drop the need to find lasting solutions for what may not be a problem. Meaning may reside for us in the way that we address injustices, in the dialogues we support, in the messages we send, and in what we intuit about our secret selves." ( A CANADA of LIGHT by B. W. Powe | Uni.ca )
(via wood s lot with many thanks and regards)
:: note :: . . . what an incredible meditation . . . be light . . .
"Between my MA and PhD, my student loan payments were set at $962 a month (including interest) for ten years. Seriously, that's what my BA and MA cost me - attending public universities in one of the world's wealthiest nations - with no opportunity to reduce that amount no matter how well I do or what I contribute to my country. " (purse lip square jaw | Get out the vote! )
:: note :: . . . the above education debt is an atrocity . . . myself putting two children through university and it is only the foresight, over eighteen years ago, to invest in a education savings fund which allows a debt free first degree . . . further education is much more problematic . . . have voted NDP . . . reluctantly . . . a serious mistrust for any major party . . .
& to the rest of canada thinking sask. is redneck conservative . . . the center left combined vote is strong . .
"Now, in a development that some have compared to Copernicus's recognition that the earth is not the center of the solar system, startling new data have revealed that only five percent of the universe is made of normal, visible matter described by the Standard Model. Ninety-five percent of the universe consists of dark matter and dark energy whose fundamental nature is a mystery. The Standard Model's orderly and elegant view of the universe must be incorporated into a deeper theory that can explain the new phenomena. The result will be a revolution in particle physics as dramatic as any that have come before." (>>> context weblog sampling new cultural context| quantum universe: the revolution in 21st-century physics )
:: note :: . . . quantum mechanics was supper table talk with a father who was a physicist . . . any questions transformed into involved explanations and readings . . . the one thing learned was nothing couldn't be answered without lea...
"Thinking back, I can still remember that first night of class where you told us to pick someone, walk up to them, look in their eyes, and see ourselves. From that I wrote the following poem that I'd like to share with you:"
beware ... (by DM)
you're trespassing on my desires. your yearning justifies my fears - turning me from whispers towards thinking about not thinking about it.
I glare at myself in your pupils, dilating your secrets, miming your tears, and see you see me quiver: waiting, anticipating, those far away spaces - silence beckons me deeper - while I caress the familiar sowulo around my neck
"And here is my take on it: The idea of the poem is that happiness lives in all of us waiting, building momentum, wanting to be released onto someone else. Often we are guilty of searching for someone to throw these wonderful feeling at -- people who are not ready, or are afraid or unworthy; people who, for whate...
"At a recent news conference for the opening of the Turner Whistler Monet exhibition, a reporter asked: "Can art make cities more gentle?""
"Unequivocally yes."
"Finding the common threads among us and understanding what sets us apart is a civilizing influence on a world that needs it now more than ever. Every day, art gives voice to that discovery." (Toronto Star | Art matters. |Matthew Teitelbaum is director and CEO of The Art Gallery of Ontario. )
(via Marja-Leena Rathje )
:: note :: . . . more talk about the role of the arts . . . wonder whose listening beyond those of us with a vested interest . . .
Teitelbaum was at the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon for a while . . . questioned many of his directions/decisions . . . without a thorough analysis it seemed he couldn't create the mix of grassroots regionalism with broader perspective that seems so necessary in smaller centers . . . maybe Saskatoon is already gentle . . .
graffiti again
:: note :: . . . so the graffiti strikes again . . . don't mind it so much but the neighbours do . . . wonder how long it will be tolerated . . . think it's the name of a youth gang . . .
" Everything connects. Canadian culture, the imaginative expression of our shared lives and aspirations, is the heartbeat of our people. Its networks of influence are society's arteries. It is in the broad arena of our pluralistic culture that the stories that speak of Canada's distinctiveness are told. In the defiant imaginations of our artists we see the possibilities for our future; in the clamour of their voices we hear the sound of our unfolding identity. Our artists supply the raw materials of the imagination, the foundations on which wisdom and hope are built, for our young people and for Canadians everywhere. The stories we tell each other - in our plays, our books, our films - affirm the importance of the human, the local, the specific: they are the crackly bits that give society texture in the face of the blender forces of globalization."
*****
" Cultural nationalism and cultural freedom are different animals. The key to a flourishing creative ident...
"Multidisciplinary artist Rebecca Belmore has been selected to represent Canada at the 2005 Venice Biennale of Visual Art, the Canada Council of the Arts announced Thursda" (CBC Arts News| Aboriginal artist selected to represent Canada at 2005 Venice Biennale )
Rebecca Belmore
:: note :: . . . labels . . . canadian aboriginal women artist . . . humpf . . . let it be an exciting working artist of "great power and grace" . . .
"The vast majority of Canadians despise these "Leaders' Debates" which are in essence public dogfights. The media openly speak of the odds, about which contender can draw the most blood and what he has to do to win or, at least, come out unscathed. On the basis of these merits, each contender is supposed to prove he deserves our trust and our vote."
"After the debate, the air waves and media will be filled with the views of the pundits on "who won" and how it will affect the outcome of the election. "
"Canadians have utter contempt for these politics which serve the aims of the rich and keep the people totally disenfranchised." ( MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY OF CANADA | A Public Dogfight Is Not a Leaders' Debate )
:: note :: . . . in my teens joined the communist party and even attempted to join the Black Panther Party
. . . Soul On Ice
was a fasinating read at that time . . . today the MLPC still speaks clearly t...
"Tent City is not a city and we don't live in tents. We live in shacks and shanties on the edge of Canada's largest metropolis where the river meets the lake. There's a fence dividing these 27 acres from the rest of Toronto, and on this side we've built what dwellings we can with the rubble of a scrapyard, a no-man's landfill caught in confusion between the city and private business. Sometimes it seems like a community and sometimes like chaos. Junk Town would be a better name." (Down to This | Read the first chapter of Shaughnessy Bishop Stall's new book )
:: note :: . . . there is so much that needs to known and there is so much talk about the known . . .
"I know that your education, the tools you have available, and most of all, your determination and enthusiasm constitute a formidable counter-force to the walls that are being built around creativity and discourse. I count on you to get out there and create. You can – you MUST -- innovate faster than your ability to innovate can be enclosed by laws, regulations, and technological fences." (Smart Mobs | To the Class of 2004 )
(SiliconValley.com | Dan Gillmor | EJournal )
:: note :: . . . thought the problem existed only in the arts . . . live a too isolated place . . . best to all grads everywhere . . .
"During the design process Gehry built over 70 models before he finally settled for two key elements: the tower, inspired by lighthouses, and the asymmetrically folded roof, based on a shawl worn by a woman in a Vermeer portrait he had seen with Maggie, for the main body of the building." (arcspace.com | I nauguration Frank O. Gehry Maggie's Centre Ninewells NHS hospital Dundee, Scotland )
"Nietzsche taught that nice is the cardinal sin of Christianity. Founded on ressentiment of the mighty, the will to nice seeks an end around might by making deference into a virtue with its, “No, but I insist.” Nice, as Nietzsche’s controlling aunts taught him, is always a grab for power, a feint of weakness followed by a stab in the kidney." (myirony.com | The will to nice )
:: note :: . . . will try to find the Nietzsche reference . . . yet it rings true in practice . . . connection that stays on nice has proven a cowardly disguise . . .
""What is theatre to you?" - Lift has invited 100 people to address that direct, non-leading question. Connected in diverse ways to the performing arts, the Enquirers are an intriguingly mixed bunch, ranging from the artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company to a 14-year-old pupil at Holland Park School, and from a Buddhist monk who is the caretaker of the London Peace Pagoda to the chair of the British Council. Groups as well as individuals have been recruited."
"Patently, this Lift season is in the process of proving on our pulses the truth of Peter Brook's remark that "theatre reopens what definition closes"." (Independent.co.uk | Features | The stage we're going through )
"The truth of life lies in the impulsiveness of matter. The mind of man has been poisoned by concepts. Do not ask him to be content, ask him only to be calm, to believe that he has found his place. But only the madman is really calm." ( MANIFESTO IN A CLEAR LANGUAGE by Antonin Artaud )
:: note :: . . . focused attention = calm . . .
"I am adamantly opposed to undergraduates majoring in playwriting, acting, design or directing, or in any of the arts except perhaps dance and instrumental music (both of which require early rigorous training). Bachelor degrees should be acquired in the liberal arts and sciences, not in vocational training." (NYTimes.com | Readers' Opinions | Tony Kushner )
:: note :: . . . have always felt & counseled students this way but have never seen it written before by a respected 'professional', 'successful' vocational worker . . .
"Connie Deiter, Donna Pinay, Neil Mcleod, and other First Nation writers with the support of The Saskatchewan Coalition Against Racism, The Saskatchewan Action Committee Status of Women, The Regina Anti-poverty Ministry and others are calling for a press conference to express indignation at the Noon Edition of the CBC, and in particular Dwayne Brenna, Department Head for Drama at the University of Saskatchewan." (taiaiake.com | Aboriginal Community Outraged at CBC's Insensitive Portrayal of Mohawk Poet Pauline Johnson )
:: note :: . . . while searching something else . . . if this were only an isolated incident of insensitivity and poor judgment . . . four years finally ends . . .
Kut
Chel-Mu-Ri Kut In Korea, traditional shamanistic ritual has its birth and development deep within the roots of Korean folk culture. Before proceeding an understanding of Shamanism and ritual from a Korean perspective is necessary. Shamanistic ritual transcends any religious connotation. The Korean ritual, pronounced "Kut", defies English translation. Ritual, rite or ceremony do not fully describe the meaning of kut. Kut extends into the dimensions of entertainment and spectacle. Kut involves a show with a feast, dancing, singing, drinking as a cultural event. Kut is a service of sharing full of hospitality and serving. Not one aspect may be deleted and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The word kut is active, alive and transforming in the sense of a verb more than a noun. For these reasons, throughout this essay, I will refer to Kut rather than shamanic ritual to reinforce the roots of Korean shamanism. The Korean Kut is divided regionally by the Han river...