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The Two Times I Loved You the Most In a Car

By Dorothea Grossman

It was your idea

to park and watch the elephants

swaying among the trees

like royalty

at that make-believe safari

near Laguna.

I didn’t know anything that big

could be so quiet.

And once, you stopped on a dark desert road

to show me the stars

climbing over each other

riotously

like insects

like an orchestra

thrashing its way

through time itself

I never saw light that way

again.

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Marianne must close her eyes to recall Héloïse. For Marianne, Héloïse exists when she can see her.

Héloïse, however, does not need to see Marianne to delve into her feelings. She does not need to see her one last time. Her desires are deeply entombed inside herself, ready to surface through a tremble.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a film about many things, abortion, art, but it is ultimately a portrayal of desire. Through vividly meticulous tableaux that establish this world of women, to a silent, steady pacing of choice words and shared experiences, the film reveals slowly the power of desire and how this force can change the way you see and experience the world.

The two lovers know that theirs is a short-lived romance, but they are nonetheless changed forever.

Marianne, the portrait painter, learns from Héloïse how to see beyond formal conventions. From her portrait of her, to Sophie’s abortion, to her later paintings including the title portrait and her salon showcase featuring an original adaption of Eurydice and Orpheus, Marianne, the artist, in turn changes how we see the world.

Marianne’s portrait sketch of Sophie’s abortion is unlike anything we can recall in the male-centric canon of art history. In her adaptation of Eurydice and Orpheus, the lovers are not doomed, because they appear to see each other one last time, as if to say good-bye. Even her portrait of Héloïse, the one pulled out by one of her new painting pupils, defies convention. Running lengthwise into a landscape, the dark night engulfs a lone figure illuminated by moon light from above and by flames from below. She is alone in the world, and her solitude is already a defiance of every social order of the day.  

Set in 17th century France along the south shores of Brittany, we meet Marianne as she travels, unaccompanied across the choppy waters to fulfill her commission. When her belongings fall into the water, and when she must carry them up to the shoreline, she does not ask anyone for help. The film understands that women do not need help. The film understands that men are not helpful to the lives of women, unless it is a father’s name a daughter can submit her painting under or a foreign suitor whose advantageous marriage will lead to a more exciting life for his new mother-in-law.  

Under the pretence as a walking companion, which is already under the pretence of a suicide watch, Marianne is asked by Héloïse’s mother to paint her daughter in secret. Héloïse’s refusal to sit has already frustrated one portrait painter away, and her portrait must be painted and sent forward to her suitor in Milan. The completed portrait will seal her fate, both Héloïse’s mother’s wish to live in Milan and Héloïse to live out the life her sister wilfully evaded. When the finished portrait is sealed into its casing, was it even possible to not imagine the nailing shut of a coffin?

A little death.

Our introduction to Héloïse feels prolonged. We hear about her first. We see her portrait with the face entirely destroyed. The hem and body of her dress floats across the floor as it is carried to the makeshift studio for study. When we first meet her, we see only her back. She walks ahead, and like Marianne, we are eager to see her. Instead, we see the swaying hypnotic folds of her hooded cape. The erotic charge of the bobbing swaying fabric that falls away under the body’s sprint stops short of the cliff’s edge. The momentum of this scene, and running throughout the film, is of sustained desire.

Marianne closes her eyes in concentration during one of her secret painting sessions. Formally trained as a portrait painter by her father, who only ever appears by reputation, Marianne intimately observes Héloïse in order to recall her later. She at times even sees her as a vision and as a premonition. On their walks together, Marianne studies the placement of Héloïse as she rests one hand over the other. Marianne attentively observes the curvature and recesses of Héloïse’s inner ear. Like a new lover exploring and learning every intimacy of her other’s body, the camera lingers, mesmerized by each new detail.

The first time we see Marianne recalling Héloïse is years after they’ve met, when Marianne has presumably taken over her father’s portrait business. We hear her instructing her pupils. Her instructions are didactic. They are intended to follow the day’s traditional conventions. But she is both teacher and model. Her concentration breaks when she sees her own painting. Only through sight does her desire return.

Héloïse is a contrast to Marianne’s externality. Instead of seeing the world and replicating it, Héloïse is composed entirely of an internal existence that she struggles to communicate. She longs to be understood. She thinks deeply and longingly about something before she does it, from the first time she runs to her first kiss with Marianne. Her anger comes on like a flash, brewing away like a storm. When she sees Marianne’s first portrait of her, she is displeased and biting, because she realizes that Marianne does not really see or understand her.  

When Marianne sees Héloïse again, after indeterminate years since their romance, it is first through a new portrait at a painting salon. Marianne rushes through a crowded salon to see this new portrait of the Lady. Héloïse, older, appears in painted form with her young daughter on one side and her own hidden life on the other. Marianne smiles to herself in recognizing their shared past in this portrait of Héloïse before her. The secret code of page 28 is as important to Marianne and Héloïse as lavender wine.

The last time Marianne sees Héloïse, it is from across the auditorium for a performance of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, summer concerti. Marianne moves right to left across the screen into the more general balcony seats while she spots Héloïse moving in the opposite direction towards the elite box seats. Héloïse’s face remains reposed with the signs of time passed. She is alone, appearing to relish in the anticipation before a performance. The crowd quiets. The orchestra hums. The first notes of Vivaldi’s staccato frenzy slowly begins. The rhythm of the insects swarming brings back every rush of desire into Héloïse’s body. The camera lens spins ever so gently forward. We see in Héloïse’s body a slight heave of her chest. She suppresses a heavy breath. Her eyes widen. They glow with the fire of brimming moisture. As she breathes, her body shudders. We recognize this piece of music is the same concerti Marianne plays for her on the piano all those years ago. We know this is the moment she first felt the desire to kiss her. Héloïse does not see Marianne across the auditorium. She does not need to.

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When I’m cruising in the digital age of online dating profiles and repeatedly see Gandhi being quoted, often uncredited and slightly misremembered, it’s an automatic hard pass. You can imagine the profile pic: a smiling white woman, usually blonde, looking off into some distant horizon point with a smile. BE THE CHANGE YOU WISH TO SEE IN THE WORLD. Her hair is wind swept in this first photo, but if I haven’t already moved on, I will see it tied back in the next shot, because she is now pictured holding a yoga pose in a full side profile. I’m mostly wondering who took this shot, and how did you convince them to do it? Was it like a day of taking new profile shots for Tinder, including going to the yoga studio, changing, warming up, and then just endlessly practicing the same three poses until the most natural effortless picture is snapped on the 40th try? I guess I could have judged less and swiped right in order to get closer to answering these questions that I have, but I already know I will never be satisfied with the response.

I have a hard time letting go of things past. 

I also have a hard time remembering people’s names and faces. 

I understand how this can send mixed messages.

From the last few outings to galleries and openings, people whose names and faces I have already forgotten exclaim at me, “Hi! Do you still live here?” 

Despite this, I still drag myself to see shows on the rare occasion. I know I have lost almost all desire to review art exhibitions, which I know was what made me visible for sometime. Reviewing art was also a type of bodily engagement that I used to love. Heightening my senses with notepad and pen in hand, I particularly enjoyed the element of surprise emerging from looking and thinking deeply with arranged objects in re-arranged spaces. These days, it’s all a hard pass. 

I thought about reviewing the recently re-opened MoCA Toronto, but every time I tried, I felt it might be too disappointing to dissect. I had tried sniffing around for some personal tidbits, but the outer rings of trauma are so severe that I couldn’t get past the surface problems of people’s damaged emotional health. From my own encounters then opening night, a ticketed name-on-list kind of event that I only tagged along to as somebody else’s unnamed last minute plus one, I couldn’t unsee the visibly rushed install job that was in plain sight from sloppy projection edges to a lack of spatial consideration. I walked away from that night feeling sad and defeated for the artworks that weren’t even given a chance. From where I stand (which is from a location largely removed from contemporary art in the present moment), the show just screamed its internal divisions. I could be projecting, but it just all seemed like such a waste of time and money. Because how many years of curatorial consideration did they have to prepare this grand re-opening (answer: MoCA knew they were leaving for the better part of a decade, let alone the three years they had between physical spaces). How many resources were made available to make this exhibition happen (answer: MoCA operates with around 20 full-time staff on a $6 million dollar annual budget, with an overwhelming majority of that coming from private donations. For comparison, the Powerplant operates on under $4 million annually with about 30% from private sector funds and a similar number of staff). And what did this first show say? To me, it said loud and clear that it does not have its shit together. 

Walking the length of each floor from top to bottom, I could only observe the clashing of two very different artistic visions at odds with each other. It really felt like the two artistic heads (who I presume are November Paynter and David Liss) were not talking to each other, or even interested in talking to each other through their curatorial visions. This is purely speculative on my part, but the discombobulating juxtaposition of works felt very real. I will admit I was excited to see what Paynter would do in Toronto, but all I have seen so far is frustration. I will also share, though I believe it’s commonly known and widely felt, that Liss’s track record has been disappointing for years, and his continuing tenure is one of the longstanding riddles of this city’s art scene. I know people keep saying this aloud in private, but when was the last time this was said in public? He’s taken MoCA as far as he will ever take it. It’s time to let go. 

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I can only vaguely remember the first time I saw a Rebecca Belmore work. It was in the mid to late 2000s and I was in either Winnipeg or Saskatoon or Vancouver. Her works can remind me of all these places. I remember the work though, even though I have never seen it since. It was a video work where she is singing the Canadian national anthem in English and French. The video is a single shot, tightly framed around her face and neck in a darkened room. As she sings, she continually tightens a makeshift noose around her neck. The harder she sings, the harder she pulls. Her voice breaks. Her breathing stops. She keeps going. She does not stop until the song is over. 

I remember reading this piece was made shortly after Oka. I don’t think I fully knew what that meant at the time. I know I am still learning.

The above image is a still from The Named and Unnamed (best known as her Vigil performance). It’s a superb presentation with the warm glow of bulbs. This work is never easy to see, yet I find myself sitting through it again and again. Watching this work in the AGO context suddenly made me feel far from Vancouver. The mountains in the distance. The specific grey light and dampness. The people I used to know. Everyone in the room is having a different moment.

Formally, I have always wondered who was behind the camera. I appreciate their movement, how their attention weaves in and out, back and forth between the performer and the audience. The camera pulls back when she begins an action. The camera creeps back in to her face, her feet, her hands. The camera gives space between the performing body and her surroundings. There is no preciousness in presence alone. The artist is working.

Fountain greets you as you enter Facing the Monumental. I love how you can hear the gushing sound of its falling water throughout the entire exhibition. Fourteen years after its premiere at Venice, I think Fountain is only growing in power. I recognize in myself a difference in seeing this work again in a post-TRC moment. Not that the work of Truth and Reconciliation is remotely over for settlers. Not by a long shot, especially in Ontario where the government is regressing hard, but there feels like a rise in settler awareness on the historic and ongoing systematic injustices against Indigenous people in this country. It is notable in audience reactions. There feels like less distance between the work and the viewer, at least for now. 

I have never seen her clay sculpture work before and they have a similar grounding effect in pulling you in and around the spectre of devastation. The ghost in Tarpaulin stands shoulder to shoulder with the oil rig of Tower. There are additional Belmore pieces throughout the AGO, from Biinjya’iing Onji (From Inside) next to the sculpture garden to some public art commissions near the back elevators, to pieces from the collection on the second floor at the J.S. McLean Centre for Indigenous + Canadian Art. It feels like they did a complete re-hang of the collection across the museum, and it is a welcome change. Indigenous artists are being contextualized alongside Canadian artists in a way I have never seen before. It forced me to slow down in my looking. I ended up walking through every wing in the AGO, which is something I have never done before. The works that now feel compartmentalized in the corners are the post-war European and American works. There was not a soul present inside the minimalist show (LOL) while the exhibition of Kenojuak Ashevak and Tim Pitsiulak was bustling with elbow to elbow viewers. People were really spending time with the works. It didn’t feel gross or greedy like they were gobbling up difference. Perhaps I am growing soft, but it felt like the opportunity to see these images really meant something to them.

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Saskatoon Summer

I felt so peaceful and content in Saskatoon. Full days basking in the glory at Wanuskewin Heritage Park for the NIMAC gathering. Evenings filled with familiar comforts like a perogy dinner in the backyard with the sweetest saskatoon berry pie for dessert. Those wide open streets under the blazing sun gets me every single time.  

It’s been almost a week back in the crush of Toronto and I am still thinking about Lori Blondeau’s survey show in Saskatoon which just opened at the University of Saskatchewan’s College galleries 1 and 2. Grace: A Survey started off with an encore performance of “Are you my mother?” which accordingly to the printed conversation she has with Troy Gronsdahl, has been roughly twenty years since she first tried performing it. It was a performance piece she had collaborated on with her mother about her residential school experience, and the first time she performed it, she had to stop at the request of her mother who was in the audience.

I can’t say what happened this time around. When I got there about ten minutes before the performance was about to begin, the room where the performance was to be held was already lined with bodies, jammed and pressed together against the makeshift fence. More bodies kept pushing themselves into the room. There was no air circulation and the energy was too hot and frenetic for me, so I wandered off downstairs to watch the videos in solitude. I would later hear a woman fainted, a poet to be exact. Meanwhile, I sat quietly watching Lori Blondeau’s early performances on video, many of which I had never seen, and wondering why have I never seen this work before. It’s so good. She’s so good.

I am feeling high on prairie love from big skies and endless light, and remembering deeply why I lived and breathed these spaces for as long as I did. From 2008 and on, I began seeing Lori’s work, even though she has been doing it for twice as long. I remember seeing her work in Face the Nation at the Art Gallery of Alberta in 2008. I was around in Winnipeg when she was Belle Sauvage alongside Adrian Stimson’s Buffalo Boy at Plug In. Hell, just three days prior to seeing Grace: A Survey, I saw a few of her photographs from the same series at the Remai Modern in echoes. It was one of the better displays, as at least it was aware of its context.

I had gone directly from the airport to the Remai as I was so curious to see what all the hubbub was about. I am no longer curious, as I did not see anything that warranted a bub. Sure, the views were nice if you knew someone who could take you up to the roof top terrace. I worked my way from top to bottom and felt confused and at times disappointed with many exhibition design choices. A show is only as good as its installation, and for a museum of this scale, I expected better.

In terms of layout, the galleries may as well have shouted from its rooftop terrace that the big imported shows will get as much physical space as possible and the collection and contemporary shows will fit in the corners.

Even with all that space, the Jimmie Durham show felt cramped and isolated. The Remai has really missed an opportunity to open up the conversation around Durham’s work and legacy by choosing to completely ignore the recent controversies. Being the fourth and final stop of the tour, and the only stop in Canada, how does the Remai Modern have the audacity to tout itself as “a leading centre for Indigenous art practices”? The disconnection continues as the Paul Chan piece was okay, but fairly out of context. Like the neon piece by Pae White that dominates the second floor stairwell, photogenics appear to be top priority. The Remai Modern is a very nice building that sits very close to the South Saskatchewan river. But unlike its beloved predecessor, the Mendel Art Gallery, the museum feels less like a gift to the people and more like an inappropriate slap on the ass. 

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NOW

There’s something about 

bad pens

that give an air

of absolute insincerity

to everything—their caps off 

‘n the caps laying

around too

like shitty disciples

to the mess

I’m sorry I need to stay in my fog

& dictate these details

to no one

like a dog outside

bipping up going no mommy I hear

dictator of the mess

secretary of a dog’s clicking

nails

which float across our sea

like degrees

along a therometer

laying flat numbers

ushering everything into a room

I can see

do you hate me now

Darling I want nothing but this

endless flow

of getting loose

then holding my bear

alone on the couch

& it’s you

- Eileen Myles, from Sorry, Tree (2007)

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April 5, 2018

I can’t decide if the softness of LA pretzels is an enjoyable treat or a sign of the city’s weakness. 

I haven’t left the house except to go grocery shopping. Von’s is like Safeway and the closest Korean supermarket is just okay. Ralph’s felt like a poorly lit warehouse. I spent the most amount of money there. 

There are gates everywhere. I hear them opening and closing and creaking and groaning. 

I try going to a reading at Poetic Research Bureau. I see that it’s located in Chinatown and there’s a bunch of small galleries I have never heard of and have zero interest in within walking proximity. I get off the metro and see some small old Chinese people, so that’s a good sign. I turn a corner onto Hill and no one else is around except two tall old white people. The man stands in the middle of the fucking sidewalk and I brush his windbreaker for that swoosh sound and he instinctly moves to protect his giant lens on his giant camera. I do a loop of all the restaurants on Broadway before I turn back up on Hill. I read somewhere that New Dragon was good. Boy, they were not. A single Chinese nuclear family of a man and a woman and their 2.5 kids were the only other patrons. The man behind the counter sits me and is pretty chatty as I speak Cantonese to him. I have a head cold and can’t hear half the words he’s saying, but maybe I also don’t understand him. He sways me away from ordering the wor wonton soup and pushes the regular wonton noodle soup. I think he’s out of the wor wonton ingredients as he says to me or to himself that this dish comes with a lot more meat, so I order what he suggests. I had read a review the day before of “best noodle soups in LA” by a smiling ruddy faced white dude who wrote that the wontons were good and slippery here, and that didn’t make me want them. He was no Jonathan Gold, in words or in palette. My first bite reveals fatty pink fillings in an overly salty soup. With each grisly bite I briefly run in my mind what I should say to the restaurant manager. Should I tell him the truth? Doesn’t his empty restaurant already show him the truth. I down my wontons with weak chili paste wondering if each bite if I’m going to be sick later. In the corner of the restaurant there is a television and I watch Jeopardy on mute. Answers like DACA and NRA appear on the captions. The manager asks me how it was, was it delicious, and I stretch out a yeaaah. 

I cross the street onto a deserted Chunking Court. I have heard most of the great Chinese restaurants can be found in the San Gabriel Valley. I have never seen an empty Chinatown before, even in the dinkiest of places. Maybe that one time when I was on an island and there was just that one Chinese restaurant that was closed. The half-assed gentrification of Chinatown by galleries and other forms of whiteness does not even anger me because it is too sad. It’s 16 degrees Celsius or 61 degrees Farenheit and a girl on Tinder tells me she wishes it wasn’t so cold right now. I am a full hour early for the poetry reading and only white men are in the room. I ask where the closest coffee shop is and I leave and don’t go back. I get back on the metro and eat a softer than bread pretzel at Union Station and I almost choke myself because I am so hungry. I head East and up Vermont to the taco truck behind Walgreens. Everyone is ordering in Spanish except me in my pink pineapple sweatshirt. I stop into Von’s to pick up some vegan ice cream and think I see Topher Grace, but it could really just be any white guy awkwardly smiling and walking.  

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The Disparity Within Public Engagement

It was just brought to my attention that the original post no longer exists. It was first published on CCA’s blog in 2014. Upon request, here is the original post (sans unicorn imagery).

This began as an invited response to Canada Council for the Arts' 2012 published research study and discussion on Public Engagement in the Arts, but after three drafts, I realize we need to establish some common ground first.

Taking a step back, my own definition of “public engagement in the arts” is generally tied to a responsibility that comes with applying for and accepting publicly funded programs. Planning for community engagements (formerly known as audience development in previous years) continue to be increasingly more pertinent to the success of receiving public funds for cultural activities. On a philosophical level, I absolutely agree with pushing a public engagement agenda, but deep down, my real inquiry is less concerned with why and how we are accountable, but to whom exactly are we accountable?

I ask this question because I have long held a suspicion that the demographic known as the “general public” does not really exist. The general public is a unicorn, a myth; and our fascination with finding and appeasing this unicorn is a dangerous distraction from   overarching issues such as systematic discrimination and exclusion.

We can look at statistics to get a sense of the self-identifying general public by race, income, gender, and sexuality. A quick snapshot reveals that income disparity in the last 20 years have grown by over 40% between Canada's top 20% and bottom 20% of after-tax family income, covering a range of $15,000/yr to $120,000/yr. Cis-gendered women continue to comprise of over 50% of the country's population. Immigrants comprise of over 20%. First Nations close to 3%. LGBT at 5%. These numbers are not perfect and do not consider how they intersect and overlap and exclude different identities, but using them as a guideline, we can observe that there is no general public, just multiple layers of publicly recognized identities.

From the perspective of public programming, attendance by the general/multiple public becomes the defining criteria of success for realizing outreach potential. However, looking at some of the curatorial programming/exhibition/presentation line ups from the past ten years, I do have to wonder if and why the general/multiple public would even want to engage? (Endnote 1)

I put this question forward as a serious and considered inquiry. I would challenge you to look up any organization or institution's collection or presentation schedule and see if the “general public” is being reflected. Some are doing a better job than others, but it's a catch 22 as there is no possible way that any form of programming will ever be able to reach and appease everyone. That said, there is room for vast improvement in acknowledging the disparity between those who make and publicly show art and those who don't engage with art at all.

Public engagement is directly correlated with access to the means of cultural production.  Agency is the foregrounding entry point into feeling empowered to engage, but on a systematic level, there is only a very small percentage of the “general public” who are being exhibited and represented as professional “art,” namely, white educated men. There are arts service organizations that cater specifically to women, immigrants, Indigenous individuals, people living with mental and or physical health issues, youth at risk, etc., but they are largely seen as not “professional”, which in my understanding of the word, is an accepted euphemism for xenophobia. Separate funding pools have been created to cater to the non-white and/or non-professional artists rather than addressing why existing grants have excluded their participation. Everything is not so black and white, of course, but as an addition to the discussion on public engagement in the arts, let's remember how creation and dissemination and consumption of arts and culture need to be first and foremost accessible to all identities of this broad, general public.  

Endnote

1. The issue of diversity has been flagged within the Council’s public engagement paper under “Emerging Trends.” For example: “The new Canadian public is increasingly diverse and does not necessarily have a stake in the existing arts offer. Immigrant and Aboriginal populations are growing rapidly. Diverse publics are engaged in a wide variety of arts and culture that takes place within and outside the mainstream, whether through community-based, digital or commercial culture. For example, the ‘Access and Availability’ study showed that Aboriginal respondents were more likely to take part in activities that were relevant to their culture.” (Pg 19).

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Just Walking Around 

By John Ashbery 

What name do I have for you?

Certainly there is no name for you

In the sense that the stars have names

That somehow fit them. Just walking around,

An object of curiosity to some,

But you are too preoccupied

By the secret smudge in the back of your soul

To say much and wander around, 

Smiling to yourself and others.

It gets to be kind of lonely

But at the same time off-putting,

Counterproductive, as you realize once again

That the longest way is the most efficient way,

The one that looped among islands, and

You always seemed to be traveling in a circle.

And now that the end is near

The segments of the trip swing open like an orange.

There is light in there and mystery and food.

Come see it. Come not for me but it.

But if I am still there, grant that we may see each other. 

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Winston was wondering how one gets written about. He didn’t ask me to write this, but he did answer my questions, and I, his. 

I didn’t get to ask if there was ever any possibility in me writing about Fogo Island without sounding like an ethnographic townie. Perhaps it’s not a question. The answer is obvious. 

. . . 

Driving around the Island, I’ve stopped to chat here and there from Joe Batt’s Arm to south Joe Batt’s Arm to Tilting and back through Barr’d Islands and Shoal Bay over to the town of Fogo and Fogo Central, and of course, Deep Bay, too. I would like to visit Seldom, and Little Seldom, and Island Harbour, and maybe visit the islands off of the island. Here on Fogo, not a single person has asked me where I’m really from. There has been no other place I have ever visited that is quite like here. My awe isn’t just about the landscapes. Yes, the views are breathtaking. Every step in every direction is amazing. But what I really like is how the water tastes sweet. The air fresh and salty. I have never slept with my doors unlocked. That kind of safety should be felt at least once in a lifetime. After years of parachuting into one place after another, and consistently made aware that being and feeling and thinking differently could get me into trouble, Fogo is a welcomed change.    

I want to take a moment to acknowledge the Beothuks, too, who were the original people on this land, and who were completely wiped out by European contact by the early 1800s. Fogo was a summer fishing spot for some Beothuks, but as more English and Irish settlers arrived, their diseases killed off the scores of families living around the shores of Newfoundland and Labrador and present-day Quebec. Everyone I’ve talked to so far seems to know some Indigenous history, and know that it’s a tragic thing that happened to the Beothuk people. I can’t say most people I’ve ever talked to in the rest of this country really know let alone acknowledge who was already here on the land they are currently inhabiting. No official narrative has led them to believe this land couldn’t be owned and occupied. I don’t think it’s conscious racial justice in Fogo so much as feeling connected to lineage and to land, but I will take it. I mean, where else in this country would you even hear a fifth generation middle aged white man offer, unprompted, that his ancestors were immigrants -- that we were all immigrants who came to this land. 

. . . 

I’ve really enjoyed whipping around the Island in a cherry red pick up truck listening to Selena Gomez. The ride is courtesy of FIA. Everyone on the island knows that if you’re in a red pick up, you are with Shorefast, and if you are in a white SUV, you are with the Inn. Steffen spotted me in Deep Bay before we even met, and followed me for a minute in his lemon-coloured FIAT. I wonder if he will make friends with the banana-yellow Hummer sitting on Brown’s Point Road.

Steffen is pals with Winston, and I have invited myself along to their next fishing trip. Hannah is also on standby for a future fishing expedition with Winston. His name has come up the most of anyone on Fogo. By day, Winston and Linda Osmond run the Herring Cove Art Gallery and Studio in Shoal Bay, which sits at the end of the dirt road near Foodland. According to Steffen, the produce is far superior in Winston and Linda’s garden. Winston never showed me his vegetable garden on the day we met, but he did talk up his wife’s squash pickles. I ate half a jar with buttered toast for breakfast this morning. Painting local scenery from memory, Winston seemed disappointed when I asked him if he painted any dogs. He knows what a fish looks like, so he paints those. 

A painter for about as long if not longer than he was a fisherman, Winston knows what he likes to do, and he’s gone all in with his gallery and studio. In the past he’s left for Alberta and the Yukon, but he always comes back. Most Newfoundlanders do. He knows the land and the sea tie him here. When you leave and come back, he says with his arms wide open, you head straight out to the ocean like greeting an old friend. 

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I know I shouldn’t even write this now (as save it for the book), but I felt I needed to say something. Yesterday I saw the Every.Now.Then: Reframing Nationhood at the AGO and today I am still thinking about went wrong. It’s “nice” that the museum is trying to be more inclusive, but I am going to need more. I don’t want to dissuade any of the participating artists into thinking they shouldn’t participate in these kinds of shows, but I do want to say a few things that are creeping on my mind.

As a mass survey show showing the complexities of Canada as a work-in-progress nation state -- so an impossible task towards a non-existent notion -- Every.Now.Then felt very random at best. Putting forward Indigenous and a multitude of ethnicities together as a show about Canada 150 is a kind and noble gesture, but have we not learned that this patronizing model doesn’t work? After circling through to the wall of visitors’ comments, the show as a whole seemed to say little more than “they are here, too.”

I italicize they because it feels like the show is for white people, curated by white people. I know this to be partly untrue, but I can’t help but still feel this. With each corner turned, they became every.one.else, an assortment rather than a collection, misguided and incomprehensible.  

Unlike the epic Toronto: Tributes + Tributaries, 1971-1989 exhibitions directly preceding this show at the AGO, Every.Now.Then held no sense of engagement amongst the artists or any sense of belonging between them. Tributes + Tributaries reset a high bench mark for confirming that large institutional surveys can in fact be done with sincerity; that disenfranchised communities can celebrate themselves inside of institutions that have excluded them for so long. I have a feeling that the difference between these two shows is whom the exhibitions are for. Tributes spoke directly to the people in the show, to the current generation mentored by these pioneering artists and visionaries, and to the communities that sprung up around them. The “local” show was rich and enriching, and left a lot of room for exploration. Every.Now.Then reads like a compromise. A muddled list of artists and geographies and Indigenous and settler histories, who may work on their own, but have yet been synthesized into a thesis, only harangued and crowded together to show “diversity” in the gallery. I was happy to see some of the names included, but that is not enough. 

The condition that an ethnic or Indigenous artist is always seen first through their visible identity rings true here. A nice thought crosses my mind when I think of the hordes of young people moving through the gallery who will see ethnic names as the majority of artists in this show. And still, all I could see was how isolating and disconnected each artist and ethnicity looked and how estranged were the presence of Indigenous and Inuit art forms. Is this the dark portrait of siloed multicultural Canada the curators were going for? Diversity is difficult to criticize, especially in a space that has been extremely British colonial, but my take-away from this show is that diversity is for white people always, now, then, and this is not good enough. Not. Any. More.

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12 hours of Bunz lyfe

I had gone for a walk in the afternoon with a friend to clear my head. We walked along the Lakeshore through the piles of garbage mixed with driftwood. Even though the water was high, the line of garbage and black silt was still ever present. I had one week left at my office job and I was about to go on a spring vacation back West. I needed to declutter my mind and home. 

I had recently given away a love seat sofa bed after finally buying myself a new couch. I was also the lucky recipient of a free queen mattress, but am now in the process of re-giving it away to someone who wants it more. I had put both those items onto Craigslist, as I find sharing it among my social circles too personal, as online friends are in reality a loose gathering of colleagues, strangers, and a few old friends who live too far away too concern themselves with your junk.

Going through what little storage I have in my west end Toronto apartment, I started accumulating a pile of single items that seemed suitable for better homes. I started with a full un-open box of cat litter and two unused cat scratching pads. It’s been almost 18 months and I don’t think I’m going to replace her. I wiped off the dust on the top of the box and photographed them on my table in natural sunlight. The friend I had gone for a walk with said she tried the Bunz app recently and got rid of a few things, got a few things in return, but ultimately didn’t want to run around town meeting strangers. I had only ever heard of Bunz as a Facebook group that seemed mildly annoying. I had no need for TTC tokens or tall cans of beer, so it didn’t seem like a thing for me. But I wanted the cat litter to go somewhere useful, and come to think of it, I barely use this 5 disc CD changer, or unopened bottle of red wine vinegar . . .  

So that is how I started on Bunz.

Users immediately started liking the litter, even though I hadn’t figured out I could tag each post. I also didn’t know that if someone likes it, it could mean they wanted to trade and that I should check out their offerings. I had to google what ISO meant after being repeatedly asked what mine were. My items sought out went quickly from bottles of non-flavoured Perrier to specifically a badminton set and or squash goggles. As I started scrolling through other people’s offerings, I felt like I was rummaging through the lost and found box at the YMCA. Unused shower loofas, half cases of cheap make-up, hotel sized soaps and lotions, lots of wrinkled clothing, old shoes, and loose pencil crayons. I didn’t want to swap any of my things for garbage. They could just take the items, but real trades were insisted. 

After a failed attempt to trade my litter plus scratch pads and the frame the pads go into for a $25 Keg certificate, I felt like I needed to widen my wares to attract better swaps. I added glass tumblers, an alarm clock, a plant hanger, and even an open bottle of hard liquor that I was gifted. I didn’t need to part with any of these things, but I could -- for a badminton set or squash goggles. Offers of flavoured perrier kept coming in, but I was beginning to get tired of explaining what non-flavoured meant. Falling deeper into the Bunz hole and algorithm, I started seeing higher ticket items like playoff Raptor tickets and brand new iPads and high end furniture pieces. Did they want my red wine vinegar and cat litter? 

The open bottle of liquor attracted a flurry of messages at two in the morning, possibly from a drunk Bunz. After failing to turn on my Do Not Disturb setting and engaging, it turns out drunk Bunz wanted to trade for a fictional badminton set that was oversized and rainbow coloured, and if not, four cans of grapefruit Perrier. I woke up a few hours later with a head cold and not in the least bit interested of hauling my dead cat’s things to a subway station to trade for some old craft paper. I canceled the trade, and started worrying also about the drunk Bunz mass messaging me again. After another hour of looking through other people’s trash, I deactivated my account.

After removing the app entirely from my phone, I continued Spring cleaning and looked up an animal shelter where I could donate my pet things. I re-arranged and found two large jars that I will give to my walking friend who mentioned she was looking for containers. The CD player sometimes skipped anyways, so I will just take to an e-waste recycling centre. I threw out two pairs of old, ratty boots with holes in the soles that I was clinging to for no reason. If anyone wants to go dumpster diving for them, I am happy to throw in a dead plant and some soy candles. 

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This morning, the first news I read is about the American government’s plans to ban visas to citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, all predominantly Islamic countries, and many containing high numbers of refugees seeking asylum. When the rallies and protests against this Islamophobia begin, will the same support from Jan 21 turn up? 

~

Last night in Toronto, I attended a town hall on Roncesvalles hosted by MP Arif Virani, on the topic of racism and intolerance. A six person panel had been organized, including Leila Sarangi, Yasmeen Persad, Todd Ross, Anthony Morgan, Raina Younes, and Shaheen Azmi representing intersectional gender and racial parity, racialized LGBTQ visibility, Ontario Metis, anti-black racism through a legal lens, Muslim refugees, and Muslim Canadians working against Islmophobia, who are currently experiencing the highest rates of hate crime in this country. 

The town hall was a series of short educational statements, followed by an hour of questions from the floor. Quite quickly, an outburst from an older white man raging against Islam took over the event. He came with a woman, who earlier stood up to denounce her Muslim upbringing and who couldn’t stop talking or standing. She was carrying documents she needed somebody else to see. She had proof that there were Imams supporting violence against women and children. She also held a copy of a very worn copy of the Quran. The man was filming the whole event with his or her camera phone. He had been sitting and shaking his head throughout most of the presentations. The more he heard the sound of his own voice, the louder his shouting became against Islam. Some of us started to boo him down. A crowd of people, including Virani, ended up having to physically surround him to move him out of the building. We could still hear him shouting outside for a while longer. A few minutes later, a white woman who had sat placidly throughout the evening asked without any irony how she can be a better ally. 

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Saturday, January 21, 2017.

Everyone had a camera out, so I don’t need to tell you what you can see for yourself.

As the march began, I overheard a white man in his 20s maybe 30s make fun of the test minute of silence for the 1PM minute of silence. He whined how crowded it was and muddy it was, and told his girlfriend that if they lose each other in the crowd, she can meet him back at home.

Closer to Dundas, I saw the crowd on the sidewalk momentarily part as two bodies engaged in an altercation. One young white man had snatched the cap off another young white man and they chased and scuffled in the middle of the Women’s March. A middle aged black woman told them to stop it, they the man who stole the cap was being an ass. The cap was red with the trademarked white “Make America Great Again” and the culprit asked ‘Why would you wear that here, huh?’ before he threw the hat onto the ground making the other man bend down to retrieve it. A few steps later, seeing the man in the red cap again, I frowned at him. Cait said he might not be well, noticing he was wearing house slippers on his feet.

The entire block in front of the US Embassy was blocked off and the front of a presumably empty building was lined up with a row of police officers on horses, a firetruck, and an outer barricade of cops. As the march path went from six lanes down to three, I watched the cops along the perimeter happily smile and stick out their palms for high fives, and I watched the white marchers happily high five them back.

With the exception of the perimeter around the US Embassy, police presence was not even felt. Three questions come out of yesterday:

1. When was the last time you went to a public demonstration where police presence was not felt? If never, ask why.

2. And have you yourself ever felt threatened and oppressed by the police? If not, ask why.

3. Most importantly, will you stand up and march for those who do feel oppressed by the police on an everyday basis? If no, ask why.

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What is Media Art Anyways and Why Don’t We Critique It More Often?

The following is my introductory text to a series of questions and answers for Issue 34.1 of BlackFlash Magazine. The full article is available in print only.

As a writer and curator who oscillates between contemporary art and what we define as media art, i.e. moving images, sound art, I have been unable to reconcile the undeniable chasm between the two communities. In an age where interdisciplinary art has become a default for so many, the discourse surrounding interdisciplinary arts has not kept pace with the expansion of how art is being made and being experienced.

Even within Images Festival, where I have served as Artistic Director for the past two years, I have noticed that many of the scholars and critics who attend our moving image-based art exhibitions do not attend the screenings in the cinema, and the inverse is absolutely true. There is a small overlap that moves between both worlds, but we feel we remain in the minority, even as more contemporary artists from the visual art world are increasingly shown in the cinema and prominent filmmakers continue making large scale exhibitions for galleries and museums. While the same work can exist in both a white cube space as well as a darkened cinema, the experience of that work is completely different, and that difference is the chasm neither side seems willing to talk about.

The collective witnessing of the moving image in the darkened theatre is an integral part of the cinematic experience. The ability to watch and stream from home has not changed the fact that people still love going to the movies. Cinephiles will also go to the ends of the earth to see a rare film print of their favourite work, no matter how many times they have seen that specific work. That mentality, as observed, is less inclined to go into a gallery space where the work is playing on loop for so many set days, often with no stated start or end times, and where fellow audiences can come and go as they please.

The proximity to the screen, projector, and audience members is completely different in a gallery setting, and there are often other entry points, be they sculptural or other modes of aesthetics, to broaden the context of the work.

On the other hand, gallery hoppers can sometimes spend half a day in a gallery with the works, watching and listening to works on repeat in different sequences to tease out their own meaning. Artist and curator tours of the work are always made available, or even a panel discussion, and the thought of attending a single timed screening (one that also often charges a ticket price) is less appealing.

I bring all this up as anecdotal knowledge while moving image works completely saturate the visual art world, and more often that not the presentation and ensuing discourse of that work has completely negated its film and/or video art history. Visual arts writers are often left grappling with the time-based marathons of most exhibitions, while “film critics” don't go anywhere near visual art exhibitions. The development of a critical media art discourse also remains in a perpetual infancy, an anomalous category of writing that only a few publications have recently started to tackle.

Taking the pulse of Canadian writing on media art culture, I asked a few questions to new and established publications including Prefix Magazine, the collective members behind MICE Magazine (full disclosure: I am a founding member), to Luma Quarterly's editorial team, and to Blackflash Magazine’s Managing Editor about the state of media art discourse. In no particular order, here is what they have to say:

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This is less of a question, and more of a comment, but Francis Alÿs is a bad painter and no one in the room said anything. Including me. I had a question, that sounded like a comment, but I let myself get talked down from saying it aloud. I was momentarily convinced that it wouldn’t be worth it. That I shouldn’t give any more energy to this than I already have by simply sitting here and staying awake. Looking around, it felt doing nothing was the default Toronto disposition?

The history of painting and its narrative to colonization was starting a small fire in my brain, and still I let it burn out instead of burn down. And now, after steaming through that hour long ruse, and storming through the 5th floor in a huff, I can only be angry with myself for not believing that asking a question aloud in that moment would have at least made me feel slightly better.

Because here is a reoccurring question I will keep asking myself: What keeps all the smart asses in the room silent in these moments? Especially since afterwards many of them agree in a smug nodding dissent that _____ was TERRIBLE if not downright offensive. Is the Toronto art scene really not big enough to handle a public difference of opinion?

The AGO remains disappointing in its support of giving solo exhibitions to male artists 15 years past their relevance. I still remember doing a dead run through the Julian Schnabel exhibition as my defense mechanisms kicked in. The very same thing happened tonight. The curator’s “talk” by Cuauhtémoc Medina felt like he was playing a joke on us and Alÿs was in on it, but I doubt the AGO was in on it. I have enjoyed Medina’s writing in the past, as I have also really appreciated Alÿs work in the early 2000s, but I don’t live back there.  

While I am mad at myself for not speaking up in the moment, I think I secretly wanted to be talked out of asking publicly uncomfortable questions. Not because I don’t care, but because attending and formulating generative questions is exhausting, and I am tired of exhausting myself for the amusement of those who feel the same, but who do not publicly say so.

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The US Presidential election results should probably be in by now, but I just can’t bear to look. The result doesn’t matter so much to me as what has already been allowed, encouraged, and fully supported. Whichever way the election goes, violence has already been nurtured from systematic to brazen acts of destructive hatred. The incline from foundational prejudice to entitled prejudice should not be surprising. Violence towards bodies, especially Indigenous bodies, Black and brown bodies, female bodies, trans bodies, vulnerable bodies made more vulnerable by social conditioning, has already happened, is happening right now, and will continue to happen no matter who takes control. The force of that violence is all the difference, and perhaps not even, as whichever way the election results go, the winners and losers will rise in victory and retaliation.

When I started thinking about the US election today, my body started to shake. My heart started to race. I had to choke back what was not a cry or a scream, but a feeling as if I had just suffered some serious physical injury or deep emotional betrayal.

A friend of mine told me this story about her first trip to NYC last year. She was riding the subway with a few friends and suddenly this couple, two average white hipster yuppies, started punching this mentally ill black woman in the face.

I have a vague memory of sitting around in my late teens with my then best friend’s parents and family. We were seated casually around their dinner table, some moving in and out of the kitchen, others on the couch in the living room. They were a political family in the sense they were stocked with lawyers and had a notable politician in the extended family. One of the kids had brought up the decline of the west as a theory, probably because it had just been assigned to them in their first year university class, and while one parent agreed with an affirmative “that’s right,” the other one laughed and laughed.