"Baked Ham" Features Tsukiji, Felt Cats and Desire Lines

 For Tuesday February 19th's class.

I found these today and don't know what to do with them. I can put them here, right? Let's do a class post in reverse!

First, Anita Hairston talks about city design objectively following data- however diverse the source of that data- instead of ideals. A nice call back to earth if you ask me! Anita Hairston is the senior associate for Transportation Policy at PolicyLink and an adviser for the National Building Museum's Intelligent Cities initiative.

Second, "Welcome to Tsukiji", a documentary about Tokyo's legendary fish market.

Third, Illustrator James Davies' stuffed felt cats dressed in various costumes. Yep, they're pretty awesome.

So, what do any of these have to do with Tuesday's panel discussion class about "The Center and The Margin In Canadian Art"? Find out as I do! In the style of Sackville's "Baked Ham Community Speaker Series", I'll connect things that are seemingly completely unrelated for the pleasure of creativity and of learning about new things.

A poster for a talk. The speaker series features two speakers per evening presenting on two seemingly completely unrelated subjects. It is then left to the audience to ask questions and figure out similarities between subjects.

In a few ways, this makes me think of Anita Hairston's mention of desire lines in cities. Desire lines are the worn-down paths created most often on grass by frequent pedestrian traffic. These pedestrians "desire" a footpath where there is none, and who so make their own by force of habit. Many consider desire lines to go outside the beaten path -pun intended- and we could say that they are in the margin. But the margin is sometimes desirable to the center, to keep playing with words, and this is where Anita Hairston comes in and listens, as a good urban planner should.

The desirability of the unknown - and so of the margin - can also be considered when looking at tourism. Does tourism not bank on this human curiosity for the marginal, sometimes for the exotic? Yes, and sometimes to controversial effects. The famous Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo is a good example, where the market was as of late closed to tourists, because there were simply too many for the local merchants to function efficiently! However, curiosity can now be satisfied via the acclaimed documentary "Welcome to Tsukiji" by J. Almena Redondo.

As for illustrator James Davies' felt cats, we can perhaps tie them in by noting that the domain of illustration is itself a marginal one within the Canadian art world. Come to think of it, documentary-making and urban design also fit quite well into the margin of Canadian art. Are they art? Not all the time, and not to everyone. But are they creative? Most certainly. I prefer this idea, that of being a creative rather than an outright artist. This idea of being a creative takes much of the mysticism and supposed glamor away from the act of creating compared to that of the "artist" title. Instead, it is swapped for a professional, diverse way of approaching situations and a flexibility in occupations, professional or otherwise.

Now if only my university diploma read "Bachelor of Fiiiiiine Creativity"... !

Panel discussion: Art and Audience in Canada

For the class of Thursday, February 14th (Happy Valentine's Day).

What a great class! I just love panel discussions. Once Emma, Alex and Matt had presented their talks, the floor was opened to what ended up being a great class discussion (as per usual). Emma scanned across performance art and audience or crowd, Alex explored the gap between the usual art-going audience and the general public's art philosophy, while Matt presented a study that found that "the crowd seems to need reassurance from itself before being able to accept new art". Once they had presented their talks, the floor was opened to what ended up being a great class discussion (as per usual). All of the subjects sent me thinking in an array of different directions, multiplied by the comparison of art and music to which we kept coming back.

Another thing that kept coming back was the need for what we called "art education", and I definitely agree, especially since Matt's mentioned study seems to emphasize that familiarity with art breeds further acceptance of it. However it seems to me important to emphasize the social aspect behind art's popularity, and to add dimension to what might otherwise be a narrow institutional definition of "education".

Last year, I experienced another social and cultural environment by spending the year in Europe. Here, I found that people were generally more knowledgeable of what can still be called "mainstream" or "famous art" such as works from Picasso, Rembrandt, but also the modernists and, to my utmost surprise, even of performance art! All this without necessarily having had classes about art. Rather, as Matt and Alex suggested, the crowd seemed to have become its own motivator to learn about art. Have a few friends casually referring to Degas or Van Gogh? Well you'd probably want to be let in the loop, wouldn't you? Furthermore, the same applied to national and international politics and history.

Social context and play are and always have been powerful learning motivators. Indeed, when have you learned better than being tutored one on one, or when what you're learning is fun? Students learn best when they're actively practicing, and this is instinctively how we learn the very first things in life. During childhood (a time of extraordinarily condensed  learning), we learn by playing. We create a set of rules, design worlds of our own, and explore the boundaries and possibilities of these worlds, breaking the rules when appropriate. Entrepreneurs still use these skills. Lawyers use these skills. Are plumbers not just slightly more sophisticated versions of children playing with connect-a-sticks? Even socialite entertainers play by the rules of their world's books. Point is, everyone still learns and manoeuvres this way. Play encourages risk-taking and builds confidence, both of which have been shown to improve adult chances at success. So why not play still as an adult, then, and make institutional youth education more like play and more like our natural education through social osmosis?

Different understandings of knowledge, demonstrated by a Khan Academy mathematics map. Visit the website for some free learning on this and many more subjects.

My father works at New Brunswick's Department of Education. As a part of the francophone department, the team is small, ideas are shared readily, and changes are perhaps easier to implement. This summer, I was invited to a talk by a retiring senior member of the department, who has basically never stopped learning, and is also an amazing teaching. What a powerful combination! A respected hard worker deeply integrated into the social fabric of the department, he opened the minds of coworkers as he spoke positively of sustainability, (disguised) feminism, and new methods of learning. What I got out of it and what I would like to share with others of my generation, was the assertion that the world, when you look at the right places, is ready and indeed thirsty for the changes we so dearly wish to see. What we need to do is to back it up with researched knowledge and our enthusiasm for new technologies we've created.

Since this summer, I often get (non-confidential) emails being circulated from the department about innovative ideas, new technologies or pressing sustainable information and solutions. What I've noticed from these emails is that there is a lot of talk about re-defining "education". I recently found this playlist, and was very pleasantly surprised to see that I had been previously been introduced to much of its speakers by the mentioned emails. In case you zoned out, I'll mention it again: The older generation is listening, and even innovating. Have a look for yourself at this TEDtalk playlist on re-imagining education , or check out my favourite out of them all here below by the founder of the Khan Academy Salman Khan.

If we want change in the educational institutions, it isn't that far away from reality. There are receptive people working in positions of influence. To me, this Canadian Art History class has been a prime example of this, and I can recount other countless examples of great receptive educators. Maybe we only need to speak up.

Lexier's Collaborative Portraiture Through Text Is Good Public Art

For today's class (Tuesday February 12th), I will be writing two journal blog posts to make up for the class I missed January 29th. This is the second.

Artists seen today: Christo and Jeanne-Claude,  Robert Smithson, Micah Lexier, Micheal Snow, Richard Serra, Eric Fischel, and Tagny Duff.


Micah Lexier, a Canadian artist working and living in Toronto, is tossing around very interesting ideas, revolving around themes that I myself have been thinking about lately as well.

First, that of time and the finiteness of our lives. His works "A Minute Of My Time", "A Portrait of My Grandfather"  and "Self Portrait As A Wall Divided Proportionally Between This Black Type..." make me think of "Lessons For Living", a "Tapestry" CBC radio show episode which I was lucky to discover about a week ago. I highly recommend it! Click on the link above to have a listen. For me, I took it both as a "new traditionalist" look at how we used to do things, looking for answers to current world challenges, and as an an opportunity to re-value golden age wisdom, discarding the modernist and capitalist understanding that everything new is better, mostly if not entirely because it is new.

Micah Lexier's self-explanatory installation "Self-Portrait As A Wall Divided Proportionally Between This Black Type..." at Concordia University. The same work has also been displayed at the Owens Art Gallery in Sackville, New Brunswick.

Second, Lexier explores portraiture -sometimes personally and individually, and sometimes anonymously- with very pleasing results, something I am also currently working through artistically myself with a series of second-hand collaborative memory-portraits. I won't ruin the surprise by sharing my work quite yet, especially since it isn't resolved, but Lexier's installations definitely hit a close nerve. Particularly, I find his "Hall of Names" and "Ampersand" to be poignant as examples of collective portraits, "Hall of Names" speaking about its space (the subway station), and both helping define their spaces into multidimensional places shaped by the people that frequent them and their relationships.

"Ampersand" is a collaborative installation on the walls of Toronto subway stop Sheppard & Leslie. In this project, Micah asked locals to write the name of the station onto the tiles, which he later had installed.

"Hall of Names" a public installation at the National Trade Center in Toronto. Here, Lexier lazer cut the first 1000 anonymous submissions of names out of stainless steel and suspended them.

 Lastly, you'll also notice the prominence of text in his work. This, again, is something I quite like, since I am influenced by biographic and auto-biographic graphic novels, authors (such as Annie Ernaux), and artists crossing text and images such as Sophie Calle. A good story is a good story after all, whether you tell it through images, words, or anything else. And after Richard Serra's "Tilted Arc" (see last post), it sure is nice to see Lexier master public art.

Que "Serra" Ne Sera Pas

For today's class (Tuesday February 12th), I will be writing two journal blog posts to make up for the class I missed January 29th. This is the first.


Artists seen today: Christo and Jeanne-Claude,  Robert Smithson, Micah Lexier, Micheal Snow, Richard Serra, Eric Fischel, and Tagny Duff.

Richard Serra: Matthew Barney respects him, and it shows. In his surreal four part film "Cremaster", Barney features Serra in the chapter "The Order" as somewhat of an all-American Thor figure, shoveling vaseline in his forging suit at the Guggenheim, while the main character of Barney's film completes a puzzle surrounded by a stomping herd of punks. Manly! (...but confusing.) Point is, as a very respected American Modern sculptor of colossal influence, Barney's portrayal of Serra is somewhat appropriate. If you're comfortable with nonsense or really enjoy finding metaphors and symbols in practically anything (like me), watch "The Order" here below.

And yet, I can't not mention everything that I think is wrong and pompous about Richard Serra's "Tilted Arc" (pictured below), including his response when confronted with people's negative response to the public sculpture. They found it obnoxiously obstructive to their daily activities, unaesthetic and lacking in evidence of artistic skill, and over 1300 employees petitioned against it.

That wall, forming a stripe in the middle of the Foley Federal Plaza in New York, is Richard Serra's "Tilted Arc". Erected in 1981, it was dismantled in 1989 after a controversial lawsuit.

In many ways, it reminds me of what is inherently wrong with much of Modernist City arrangement, with the city of Brasilia as its emblem: It all looks great from a plane, but Godiva forbid a person of average means actually try and live there. See this link for a french article in Le Monde on some of Brasilia's contemporary shortcomings, as designed by Modern architecture icon Oscar Niemeyer. Places are dislocated from one another, little is done to bridge sci-economic gaps, and transportation systems other than the automobile were until very recently virtually nonexistent.

In the same way, "Tiled Arc" cuts the public from its destination, is arguably an eyesore, and blocks off circulation and a view to what appears to be a wonderfully pleasant fountain. Cool of Serra to assert that not all art should be pleasant and to want to intervene and interact with the surrounding architecture, but should he really use this opportunity and platform go to war with the public? As a people-inclined closet urban planner (and after all I just wrote), I'm sure you can guess my two cents on it.

To take sides, I first asked "what" and "why". Why did the workers want it removed? What were the artist's intentions? What were both of their (apparently opposing) values, and who's do I believe in the most? As far as I can see, the workers wanted it removed because it did little to add quality to their lives, and in fact did the contrary, while the artist's intentions were relating to advancing his study and expression of modern minimalist art, and so "art for the sake of art's 'progress'". But what is progress and where are we going? Debates, controversy and publicly deemed failures such as Brasilia and the Tilted Arc keep us on our toes, offering an opportunity for us to renegotiate destination. In both cases, I am glad of the position taken since both demonstrate that "art for art's sake" or "modern for modern's sake" (not to mention for the ego) is not enough, and should first serve the populace, especially on a larger scale such as a city or plaza where many will be affected. Put that in your bucket and stir it, Serra.

Re-Humanizing the Landscape With Diversity

For the class of Thursday February 6th.

Here are some of my favorite works from those we saw in class today:

"There Is No Place Like Home" 2000 (4.39x20.42m) a public installation by Ken Lum.

Jin Me Yoon's "Group of Sixty Seven" of photographic installation from 1996.

 

A "Mask" work by Arthur Renwick.

To me, what all of these works have in common (and wonderfully so) is their focus on the human. In addition to speaking about home and belonging (or a lack thereof), they all put a spotlight on individuals by either re-inserting them into the empty landscapes of the Group of Seven and Emily Carr such as in "Group of Sixty Seven", or by saturating the frame in distorted faces such as in Arthur Renwick's "Mask" works.

Either way, this focus back onto the person makes me think of a local photographer's project that you might have heard of already: Humans of Sackville.

Indeed, what is a place without the familiar faces it houses, day in and day out? People make places, and then the places, in turn, shape people. Urban planner Jan Gehl understands it well, having slowly absorbed his psychologist wife's professional wisdom over his career's lifespan. People is where it's at, what it's all about, and Ian Chew, a photographer, Mount Allison University student and the founder of Humans of Sackville, has understood the message.

Run as a Facebook page and as a weekly column in the Sackville Tribune Post, Humans of Sackville is a branch in a much larger tree: There is also a Humans of Brazil, Humans of India, Humans of New York, Humans of Amsterdam... and the list goes on! With these, forget the fashion photography, super glam idealized humans. Although fashionable people will be found amongst the photographed, the "Humans of..." find beauty in all the humblest places, indiscriminate of age, skin tone, gender, and status. It doesn't get any better.

Despite being a small place, (perhaps even tiny,) Sackville is rich in interesting people who would give you the shirts off of their backs if you needed it. Yes, maybe even in January. Humans of Sackville is a great testament to that and to our community spirit, and a catalyst of the later as well. Humans of Sackville was lately acknowledged in Canadian Geographic magazine, and rightfully so! For all these reasons, I tip my hat to you.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

                                              -Margaret Mead

Our Canadian Heritage: A Conceptual Moment

For Thursday January 24th's class.

It's kind of funny to do these journal entries in reverse. I'm sure that this way will produce a different recollection than if I were writing in forward chronologically.

But back to the point! In January 24th's class, we saw conceptual art making in the 70's in Canada through the intervention of Garry Neill Kennedy's crew. The new director of Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Kennedy hired new faculty members such as Eric Cameron and Gerald Ferguson, conceptual artists. He also invited world-renouned conceptual artists to Halifax such as Vito Acconci, Sol Lewitt, Dan Graham, Eric Fischl, Lawrence Weiner, Joseph Beuys and Claes Oldenburg.

Conceptual art isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I love it. Yes, I don't mind that it is ripped away from skill set and craft, allowing for flipped upside down urinals to be regarded as art. Instead, the ideas behind a work are examined as the ultimate qualifier of value and beauty in an art work, and I find this trade-off to be worth it. Ideas are, after all, incredibly powerful. There are reasons why oppressive regimes have burnt books, and one of them is that books, like much successful artworks, carry ideas... powerful tools in the hands of the right individuals indeed.

Somehow here the old Our Canadian Heritage TV commercial pops into my head. "The medium is the message!", fanatically exclaims Marshall McLuhan. For a fuller description of his ideas, click here for part one of three of a broadcasted lecture by McLuhan.

I'm not sure why this comes to mind; Although I think that "The medium is the message" might tie back to conceptual art in a few ways, I find it most strongly relates to Modernism, which makes sense given the chronology. Conceptual art, as I mentioned, is first motivated by the immaterial, its physical manifestation only subsequently emerging from the idea.

Perhaps something they have in common is that they both bring us back to materiality. In Conceptual art, the relation is at times ironic, but very much so present, if only at times by its extreme absence. For example, who can deny the pleasing and sumptuous materiality of Eric Cameron's "Exposed/Concealed" pieces?

An "Exposed/Concealed" painted object "sculpture" by Eric Cameron.

With these, Cameron paints a layer of paint per day onto various objects, repeating the process over and over. The results are objects that insinuate ritualistic performance, while yielding surprising physical results. However the most important part of these works is still the idea. Does it matter that the medium  is paint? In my opinion, it doesn't, although it might have been most practical and a nice reference to the painting tradition, and a pleasant merging of it to that of three-dimensional art. Cameron could have accumulated layers of cumin, of mustard, or of tar, in my opinion, and the piece would have resonated the same. What he is really painting with within our minds is time, once we are aware of his process and of his dedication to his task, so diligently repeated.

Through the act of writing this, I have changed my mind: Conceptual art should not bare the logo "The medium is the message", but should instead be reversed to "The message is the medium", the medium ideally acting only as a window through with to understand the message, the idea. If this entry was a bit densely semantical, sorry. I love playing philosophically with words, and conceptual art indulges me... Thanks for the snazzy catchline McLuhan.

Manufactured Landscapes, Slum Development and Communicative Planning

On last Thursday's class (January 30th), we started the movie "Manufactured Landscapes". I had seen this movie already, but it was great to revisit it.

Without a doubt, the images by Edward Burtynsky (such as the one below) were stunning. Hear him talk about them in this wonderful TEDtalk video:

What this relates to for me is the cyclicality of our creations. What we make, often does not disappear into the ether, and these images are a beautiful but haunting reminder of that closed cycle.

This work made me think of the documentary Urbanized. I don't think I talked about it yet on this blog. Here's the preview:

Specifically, I thought of Urbanized's chapter "A Walk in the Mumbai Sky" during which Sheela Patel is interviewed and shares her expertise with the pavement dwellers of Mumbai and her implication in SPARC, the Society for the Promotion of Area Ressource Centres.

The rapid urbanization of countries in the South of the globe is predicted to be of huge impact in the 21st century. At the moment, a new city the size of Seattle is being born every 4-7 hours, (quoting Alex Steffen, himself quoting others). However, in the South, many of these city's slums are also growing at an alarming rate, further widdening economic disparity between inhabitants. This is where people like Sheela Patel and non-profit organizations like SPARC come in, working to improve the lives of slum dwellers (both in India and across the world).

Here is part one of a short documentary about a slum upgrading in Pune, India, narrated by Sheela Patel:

I admire their process and would love to learn from it, especially when it comes to the system of communication they've established with the community. Planning a city- darn, even just a neighbourhood- should always very intimately include the people who will be living in it, and who have lived in it. Are they not experts themselves of what has worked and what hasn't?

I was glad to learn lately of similar efforts here at home to involve the community in the revising of the region of Moncton's city plans. We might be not as close to slums, but the process is certainly an important one, and I was glad to see it implemented here at home!

Tomi Ungerer and the Canadian Photographers Go to Neverland

CLEAR!

Ok. We're back. This blog died for a little but it's now back up again.

This is on today's class, Tuesday February 5th, in which we finished the movie "Manufactured Landscapes" and saw some Canadian photography work, most notably from the National Film Board's Still Photo Division and the United State's exhibition "The Family of Man" in the 1950's. Later we saw artists Robert Frank, Michel Lambeth, Lutz Dille and George Zimbel. Later (from the 70's) we talked of Jeff Wall's cibachrome photographs and the Sanchez Brother's theatrically set-up photographs.

It was probably the fine line photography can draw between fiction and reality, and the creepy magical quality of the photographs that kept making me think of Peter Pan.

Probably that, and a few themes and conversations such as those we had about William Eugene Smith's "The Walk to Paradise Garden", and the visual prompt of Jeff Wall's "The Drain" (both below).

"The Walk to Paradise Garden" photograph (1946) by William Eugene Smith.

"The Drain" by Jeff Wall, 229x287cm cibachrome (1989).

Why Peter Pan? Well, on a recent movie-watching binge *cough cough, yesterday, cough*, I slipped into the wonderful land of life-inspired fiction with Marc Forster's Finding Neverland. Ignore the formulaic Hollywood film-trailer (breaks the magic for me) and have a look at the trailer below if you're curious. I've mentioned having seeing and loved the movie Hugo too, and between then and now I also re-visited Pan's Labyrinth, which has great monsters!

I love how both film and photography lend themselves so readily to creating a convincing fictional world, perhaps because we are so used to taking what we see as reality. Also, you'll notice that these images have a lot to do with children's worlds, crossing over into adult's, or perhaps more accurately adults reminiscing about childhood and seeing their world as magical and perhaps better than the one they grew up into.

Do I think this to be true? No, not really. Johnny Depp's character, author of Peter Pan J.M. Barrie, probably has it the most figured out, as do the writers of Pan's Labyrinth. Children's worlds are not flawless or oblivious to adult problems, and appreciate honesty. In Finding Neverland, the Davies brothers very well understand that their mother is dying, and are incredibly (and understandably) frustrated that no one will tell them what is going on. Mr Barrie is probably the most straight-forward to them, although still a protective role model.

Are children's worlds innocent? Yes and no. Children need to be protected, but children's worlds are rough terrains with intricate narratives of good and evil, as the best children's authors demonstrate.

A good example is the work of the Alsacian satirist and illustrator Tomi Ungerer (click for his official website).

In Strasbourg, a poster for the Tomi Ungerer on a tramway bus stop. So many things I love in one picture!

Last year in Strasbourg I had the chance to visit the Museum of his work, which was a wonderful opportunity. Tomi Ungerer was nothing short of controversial, always stating what was on his mind politically and at times at great risk. His kid's books were banned in the US until Obama. He is famous for his posters against the Vietnam War and Racial injustice in America. Click on this link for a (french) interview of Ungerer in which he speaks vividly of his second-world war memories as a child amongst other things. My favorite instant of the interview is without question at the very end, when the interviewer comments (translated):

It's surprising when you realize that in all your books, it's actually the bad guys who are the heroes.

To which Tomi replies: What impassions me is the no-man's land between good and evil. I think that everyone can learn from each other. I especially want to show that what counts in life is to respect [others] and to smile.

I think that Mr Ungerer shows great respect to children this way, understanding that they are able to grasp much more complex situations than we give them credit for while stimulating their imaginations. And I really respect that.