Mercer Union Hall

Will Munro 1975-2010

2010-05-21T21:43:00.000-07:00

Mercer is deeply saddened by the death of Will Munro today. He was an indefatigable force in the Toronto art and queer community. Mercer will remember him for his support for our various events and fundraisers over the past few years, and as a close neighbour. Toronto has suffered a huge loss.

York Lethbridge appointed new Director of Operations and Development

2010-02-17T10:26:00.000-08:00

The Board of Directors of Mercer Union are pleased to announce the appointment of York Lethbridge to the position of Director of Operations and Development, effective February 24, 2010.

York Lethbridge brings a wealth of experience in the non-profit arts sector and his leadership will be key in driving Mercer Union’s development and operations strategy. His appointment comes at an important growth moment for the gallery, which is establishing a new presence and record of innovative programming at its current location at 1286 Bloor Street West.

York holds a BFA from Queen's University (2002) and an MA in Art History from York University (2008). He has worked for various arts organizations including the OCAD Professional Gallery, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, the Agnes Etherington Art Centre and Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre. He has been an active volunteer for various arts-related charities in Toronto. York has also curated independent projects including recent presentations of Connecting with Collections 2: Destinations at Gallery Lambton, Sarnia, and Abject Nature at The Union Gallery, Queen's University, Kingston.

Holiday Quickie

2009-12-09T09:15:00.001-08:00

Tuesday 15 December, the annual "holiday quickie" party at the Gladstone!

SummerWorks Festival

2009-08-01T14:34:00.000-07:00

Those of you keen on performance art might want to check out the Performance Gallery at the Gladstone Hotel starting August 6th as part of this year's SummerWorks Festival. If performance art is not your cup of tea, SummerWorks has a long list of theatrical and musical offerings to tickle your fancy. A full schedule of events can be found at www.summerworks.ca

2009-07-30T10:19:00.000-07:00

Open call for submissions for artists who are living and working in Canada to exhibit in San Francisco. The exhibition will showcase the work of 6 – 8 emerging Canadian multidisciplinary visual artists. This exhibition will be held at The Lab, an artist run centre located in San Francisco’s Mission district. This project is organized by Jason Gowans and Kevin Bertram. Download the submission guidelines.

Bank on Art

2009-07-22T13:20:00.000-07:00

Bank on Art, a project by Kelly McCray, will harness a functioning ATM screen for artists' projects. Project is set to launch 6 August 2009 but there's still time to submit! Check out www.bankonart.net for guidelines.

I love...

2009-06-21T19:40:00.000-07:00

...ArtStars*. Absolutely fabulous.

Image: ArtStars* Facebook fan page

AAAARG.ORG

2009-06-09T16:41:00.000-07:00

Not having borrowing privileges for academic research is a major drag. Luckily, I've just discovered this amazing resource for critical texts online (and lessens the burden on my roommate's university library account). AAAARG.ORG hosts a large archive of scholarly texts, indexed in a long alphabetized list or cross-referenced in various thematic "issues". Access to the site is free; all you have to do is register.

Image: AAAARG.ORG's article index organized as a visual map, showing the connections between the texts. This map was created and posted by AAAARG user john one year ago.

With deep regret

2009-06-06T19:19:00.000-07:00

I regret not buying Dirty Projectors' new album today, but placating myself until tomorrow with an album preview on NPR online. It's available for free until June 9, the record's official release. This is totally worth 41 minutes of your time.

Truculent typefaces

2009-06-03T20:14:00.000-07:00

A very smart lady in Calgary just pointed out this equally smart poster designed by Lure Design waaaay down in Florida. Luckily, they ship to Canada, so you too can order your own copy to give to the appropriate repeat offender.

Acrimonious (and perhaps overzealous) campaigns against certain cringe-inducing typefaces have been ongoing for some time now, but for those desktop publishing enthusiasts who refuse to abandon such irresponsible design practices for their community newsletters and motivational PowerPoint presentations:

Check out Ban Comic Sans, and also this much more recent Wall Street Journal article on the backlash against this bubbly cartoon type.

Mark Simonson's tirade against Helvetica's backwater cousin Arial is here, and Michael Beirut's great essay, I Hate ITC Garamond is a great read. I've always enjoyed Beirut's contributions to Design Observer, if only for remarks such as:

The most distinctive element of the typeface is its enormous lower-case x-height. In theory this improves its legibilty, but only in the same way that dog poop's creamy consistency in theory should make it more edible.

For all the fontophiles out there, Jonathan Safran Foer's short story, About the Typefaces Not Used in This Edition, venerates the possibilities of type instead of suppressing them. Thanks to Nicole Burisch for pointing out the poster offer, and to another smart girl named Sarah Nasby for the short story link.

Image: Lure Design

Minidonks!

2009-05-24T22:37:00.000-07:00

The above image is from the site, www.minidonk.com. There is lots of minidonk action/non-action in their photo gallery--let's face it, they are pretty stoic animals. I especially liked this one; the kid is so earnest, and you have to give him credit for adding a bag of Doritos to give the little guy a sense of authenticity.

Link courtesy of York Lethbridge, one of Mercer's newest board members, who states that he is not an authority on minidonk husbandry, but I think everyone should be.

Spellcaster

2009-05-24T20:03:00.000-07:00

Summer officially arrived this weekend, which means Toronto will be animated by so much more than just garbage smell for the next few months. In fact, I had a great weekend, of which I will spare the details here but will certainly share in person for interested parties (mostly related to a discovery of a not-so-new bike trail and some tasty ice cream), but the concert I went to on Friday was fantastic. My friend Dan and I were to-to-totally excited to check out Think About Life, who were performing as part of the Over the Top Festival this weekend. I'm disappointed I missed out on the rest of the shows happening that night, especially the lineup at Sneaky Dee's (Hunter + Ulysses & the Siren, Cool Dad, and The Narrative). I shouldn't have missed Mecca Normal either. It's unfortunate that there was so many events overlapping each other, but kudos to Eric Warner and the other organizers for putting together an amazing line up of acts, thus reestablishing a commitment to indie music and maintaining an eclecticism that totally works.

Certainly, TAF didn't disappoint, logging in lots of sweat-triggering dance pop and playing lots of tracks from their new album Family. They emptied the floor for their encore, which was a good thing. Most of the crowd swarmed the stage, leaving the rest of us staring at a flailing spectacle. It was a great way to cap off the evening. Earlier that night, Edmonton-based opener Bayonets!!! was noteworthy, reminding me of L.A.-based punks The Mae Shi (a little online research reveals that they've played together). Bayonets!!! play with a different level of intensity, but they still rock hard. They played a super-short, tight set of hardcore ditties, each clocking in under the minute mark, but their onstage irreverence was great. Please come back to Toronto! Bookended by these two great performances was the big surprise of the evening: tUnE-YaRdS, aka Merrill Garbus, who commandeered the stage with her hair in a side ponytail. After walking on stage and issuing the order to "get over here", the still sparse crowd at Polish Combatants Hall readily complied. Equipped with a ukelele, a tamtam, a snare, a looping pedal, and perhaps some other equipment assembled at her feet that I couldn't see from my vantage point, she cast a spell on us from her first number. Sure, sure, the solo act with looping pedals and/or found sound recordings has been done before (Final Fantasy, The Blow, Ariel Pink, Mira Calix, etc.), but this phenomenal performer blew the crowd away. Tastemakers/tastebreakers Pitchfork have already reviewed her new album here, so check her out before you hear it at an American Apparel near you.

image from hoovesontheturf.com

I was remiss...

2009-05-24T18:33:00.000-07:00

I have been a terrible blogger. I was away and then busy when I should have been blogging about things like Suzanne Nacha's show at Open Studio, Roula Parthenoui's show at YYZ, and this.

And now my time on the Mercer board is coming to an end, so this is my last post.
There will, of course, be more posts to come from the Mercer staff and board, but that's it for me.

Record Store Day!

2009-04-17T19:49:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, April 18th, is Record Store Day, the one special day that has been specifically designed just to make us buy stuff that I actually believe in.

Last year Dave celebrated this special day by posting a list of some excellent places to buy vinyl that were walking distance from our old location on Lisgar - now that we're up on Bloor I thought I'd add Soundscapes, Zoinks, and Sonic Boom to the list.

Both Soundscapes and Rotate This are having 10% off sales, and Sonic Boom will be having live bands play plus free give-aways for folks who bring non-perishables for the Daily Bread Food Bank.

There are also a bunch of Record Store Day exclusive releases from various labels, a preview of which can be found here on Pitchfork.

And if you'd like to do a bit of research on independent record stores and labels, you can watch a good documentary about Rough Trade here.

And last but not least, this is a pretty hilarious interview with Will Oldham talking about his newest release and his concern about the future of Touch and Go and the recording industry in general. Oh and he also calls Wes Anderson a "cancer".

Free Super Stuff

2009-04-15T13:22:00.000-07:00

The much anticipated Free Music Archive is up at last, and, as expected, it's pretty great.

And speaking of free great stuff, last night I had a sneak peak at the free lucky charms we'll be including in the bingo kit at our upcoming 3D Bingo extravaganza, and they are all so great and amazing, I am truly blown away. We'll post some photos of these most excellent charms made by truly rad Toronto artists soon, but for now please just take my word for it that you won't want to miss this event and all the free super stuff that will go along with it.

David Lynch

2009-04-02T06:18:00.000-07:00

Though I respect the man, I'm generally not a huge fan of David Lynch films, but over the past couple of years I've become a huge fan of his internet presence.

There are his daily weather reports, his public service announcements, and his thoughts on iPhones, ideas, and yes, Twitter. (His twittering can be read here and includes gems like "Rocks are melting" and "Happy Saint Patrick's Day".)

All are gold.

Especially this.

Ancient Chinese Secret at Superfuzz Audio/Electric Standard

2009-03-18T09:12:00.000-07:00

This Friday night at 8pm Superfuzz Audio/Electric Standard is hosting a free in store show of Ancient Chinese Secret.

Superfuzz Audio/Electric Standard is a guitar/amp repair shop at 1261 Dundas, just East of Dovercourt, that has opened pretty recently and has already garnered a lot of attention for the excellent services it provides, the beautiful wood paneled interior - made from barn wood, the renovation/transformation of which can be watched here, here and here - and for hosting really great events. I missed their last show and hugely regret it. The band I Eat Kids played, cookies were served, and the generally consensus is that the show totally slayed, evidence of which can be viewed here and here.

So I'm pretty excited about this next show. I heard there will be snacks, refreshments, and twinkle lights.

Art and Politics

2009-03-12T17:48:00.001-07:00

This is a pretty special site.

Rhizome Commission 2010

2009-02-18T15:29:00.000-08:00

FreeWilliamsburg recently posted about the 2010 call for new commissions by Rhizome, the art and technology website, organization, etc.

Says Rhizome:
The goal of the Rhizome Commissions Program is to support emerging artists by providing grants for the creation of significant works of new media art. By new media art, we mean projects that creatively engage new and networked technologies to works that reflect on the impact of these tools and media in a variety of forms. Rhizome defines emerging artist as artists who exhibit great potential yet are not fully recognized within their field. Commissioned works can take the final form of online works, performance, video, installation or sound art. Projects can be made for the context of the gallery, the public, the web or networked devices.

We are now accepting applications. The deadline for submission is on midnight April 2, 2009.

In addition to alerting our attention to this excellent opportunity, FreeWilliamsburg also linked to this excellent article about the excellent Lucky Dragons, who were also recently featured here.

A sad story of a banned shoe

2009-02-04T12:36:00.000-08:00

A large bronze-coloured sculpture of a shoe, built by artist Laith al-Amiri and a group of children at an orphanage, was erected a week ago in Tikrit, Iraq, and ordered removed the next day. The artist and kids spent 15 days and around $5000 building the sculpture, which was on display in the orphanage complex and was made in of honor Muntazer al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist currently in prison for throwing his shoe at George Bush during a press conference in December.

Video footage of the shoe sculpture and some very adorable and proud looking children can be viewed here.

Craig Leonard and the mystery surrounding Grapefruit

2009-01-29T06:27:00.000-08:00

As part of Craig Leonard's excellent show at Mercer - which will be up until February 21st - he has produced a poster project give away about the band DNA. The project is specifically concerned with their song "Grapefruit", which, evidently, was "recorded at an unknown studio in Canada, date unknown".

So Leonard is taking it upon himself to solve this mystery. From his poster we can learn that he has so far found out that "Robin Crutchfield says this was Toronto around 1980...Ikue Mori says she can't remember at all. Tim Wright can't be located. John Hamilton from The Diodes thinks the studio could've been either Queen Street's Cottingham Sound or Accusonic. Freddy at Accudub (formerly Accusonic) has no memory of the band. Tommy Atom might've engineered the track at Cottingham Sound, but he hasn't been found yet...."

Leonard's poster serves as both a history of this mystery, and also a request for help in solving it, as it concludes "LET'S FIGURE THIS OUT! WRITE ME: C.L., 5383 WAVERLY TERR., HALIFAX, B3H 1J1"

I think there are still posters available in the gallery to be taken away, (they were on a plinth in a pile under a grapefruit last time I checked), but if you can't make it to the show and know anything about any of this, please do get in touch with Craig at the above address.

And there is a nice piece about this project here.

The Inaugural Poem Remix

2009-01-28T06:05:00.000-08:00

I didn't watch the inauguration, but from what I gather it sounds like Aretha Franklin's hat was a hit, and Elizabeth Alexander's Inaugural Poem really wasn't.

So last week on Kenny G's radio show he challenged his listeners to "Take her poem. Remix it, shred it, speed it up, slow it down, reconstruct it, deconstruct it, warp it, bend it, twist it, scream it, rock it, set it to noise, obliterate it." With the added note: "sincere recitations will be discarded."

The results of this challenge are all up now on the WFMU blog, and you can hear Kenny play them live today on his radio show from noon-3 pm.

What It Really Is

2009-01-27T05:37:00.000-08:00

Opening tonight at Redbull 381 Projects is What It Really Is, a group show of sculptural works by Kristan Horton, Liz Magor,Kristi Malakoff , Jennifer Rose Schiarrino, and me. (Apologies for the blatant self-promotion, but I think you should come.)

The opening is from 6-9pm at 381 Queen West, which is above a shop in between Spadina and Peter. And yes, I believe there will be some free Redbull at the event.

More details here.

The Way I Are

2009-01-17T08:31:00.000-08:00

Robert Fones, Leviathan #5, 2008, colour photograph laminated on aluminum

Opening this upcoming Wednesday at the Blackwood Gallery is THE WAY I ARE:

"In which slang is proposed as a means through which to consider elaborations and modulations of visual imagery and formal methods within various art practices."

January 21-March 1, 2009
curated by none other than Mercer's dear friend Katie Bethune-Leamen

The artists in this group exhibition are: Valerie Blass, Anthony Burnham, Robert Fones, Martin Golland, Jen Hutton, Kelly Jazvac, John Massey, Elizabeth McIntosh, Planningtorock and Tony Romano.

Opening Reception: Wednesday January 21, 6 - 9 pm. Artists in attendance.

I'm pretty excited to see how this show connects all these rad peeps with this.

Oh, and there is a free bus leaving the Gladstone Hotel at 6 pm, returning at 9 pm.

Some belated holiday news, etc:

2009-01-10T06:28:00.000-08:00

Back in October I posted about an ad campaign by The Bay that seemed to be directly referencing, though not acknowledging, a project by my friend Biliana Velkova. Though The Bay seems to have remained silent about this, Biliana did a window installation in Vancouver over the Christmas holidays that referenced The Bay:

A Breathless Christmas, window installation at Jeffrey Boone Gallery,1 East Cordova Street unit 140, Vancouver, BC
December 4-January 7

A Breathless Christmas is a project loosely based on the Hudson Bay's Christmas campaign. Typical holiday advertising creates the perfect illusion, whether is spending time with family, acquiring desired goods or achieving social expectation of what the holidays should be. A Breathless Christmas takes this concept and applies to a non-existent storefront, in a closed gallery. While the posters promise "the perfect gift" and "free delivery" they are just a façade, there is nothing behind the advertisement and behind the glass. The project is a continuation of the artist's research of marketing, appropriation and authorship issues. As advertising campaigns are borrowing from art concepts more frequently, the line between them becomes blurred.

I think that's a good response by Biliana to that situation, not to mention a lovely photo of her with snowflakes.

And in semi-related news - also relating to issues of appropriation and originality - the Kenneth Goldsmith and Craig Leonard shows opened at Mercer last night and are really excellent. The Goldsmith talk (and his incredibly dapper suit) drew a big crowd, and both artists were there for the opening, which was one of those rare events where people were actually talking about the art...so much to read/explore/think about, in both galleries, and a great free poster project/give-away by Leonard by the front desk. So don't miss it!

Very exciting news:

2009-01-06T09:07:00.000-08:00

This Friday night two new shows open at Mercer:

KENNETH GOLDSMITH, STREET POETS & VISIONARIES: SELECTIONS FROM THE UBUWEB COLLECTION - an exhibition of posters and ephemeral writings from the streets of New York City.

And CRAIG LEONARD: AMUSICOLOGY - A series of mini-installations, charting art/rock coincidences and convergences through mixed dosages of sculptural inquiry, archival impulse and audio experiment.

I am so looking forward to these shows, which run from January 09, 2009 - February 14, 2009. But even though the show will be up for a month, you should definitely try to make the opening because there will be a talk by UbuWeb founder Kenneth Goldsmith at 7PM preceding the opening reception at 8PM.

Just in case you haven't already heard of UbuWeb, it is a truly amazing on-line resource/treasure that you should check out immediately here.

And there is a pretty great interview with Goldsmith here.
(I so badly wish I could take his Un-Creative Writing class, where students are penalized for showing any signs of creativity or originality.)

More information about the show here.

Happy Holidays and all of that....

2009-01-02T15:23:00.000-08:00

Okay, so this has nothing to do with anything, really, but if you haven't already seen Arianna dancing to Beyonce, please watch.
Wow.

I'm back!

2008-12-23T16:19:00.000-08:00

So I just got back from a month at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT, and I had the best time ever. (I never managed to find out whether or not candles really are made by losers, but I did learn that it is common practice for Vermonters to drive around with dead deer on the hoods of their cars, and to hang dead deer in trees to drain the blood.)

But don't let that scare you off. It is a beautiful place in a valley in the Green Mountains, and there are covered bridges, winding rivers, waterfalls, maple syrup shops, hippies, hunters, and three delicious meals a day served in a room with a view of an adorable mink scampering about on the ice of the frozen river right outside the dining hall. Plus there are great studios and very nice houses to stay in, and 40-50 other artists and writers to bond with. And a ping pong table! And if you go around Christmas like I did you get to see the town of Johnson pull together a live nativity scene starring a 13 year old boy in Carharts as the baby Jesus - amazing.

And they offer partial to full funding - applications are due soon, check the website. I highly recommend it!

But back to reality - evidently while I was away I missed some excitement here in Canada...from what I gather the government was almost overthrown for not dealing with the economic crisis, but Mercer saved the day by offering an art bailout - awesome! I'm sorry I missed that.

I also missed Dave Dyment's opening at MKG 127 on Sunday, which I heard involved some excellent whiskey samples. Thankfully the work can still be viewed, though I suppose I'll have to provide my own whiskey...

Christof Migone - Artist Talk

2008-11-21T15:24:00.000-08:00

Did you know that tomorrow, Saturday 22 November at 3PM Christof Migone will discuss his exhibition Disco Sec, on view at Mercer Union until 29 November?

If you haven't seen the show yet, now is your chance, and if you have, come see it again with the added bonus of an interesting fellow talking about a very cool project. More details here.

In unrelated news, I'm leaving to go to Vermont tomorrow. (I saw a Simpson's episode once where a trip to Vermont inspired Bart to say "did you know that candles are made by losers?"....and I intend to find out.)

Anyway, I may be posting even less than usual, sorry, but if anyone out there is missing my posts I suggest you just keep watching this video over and over and over again until I'm back. And you could also delve into this fantastic find.

You Don't Really Care for Music, Do You?

2008-11-18T21:20:00.000-08:00

Red Bull 381 Projects is here to help is wade through this question in a show that opens this Thursday, November 20, from 6:00 to 9pm, at 381 Queen Street West, 2nd Floor

Red Bull 381 Projects presents a major exhibition of four Canadian artists whose work is ingrained in the cultures, lifestyles, thought processes, and at times bizarre and eccentric outgrowths of music enthusiasm: Dave Dyment, Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, Alana Riley and Tony Romano.

The exhibition draws its title from Dyment’s video Pop Quiz, which features a stream of questions culled from the artist’s extensive record collection. Cheeky and provocative, the question might initially come across as a jab at the viewer, but in the context of these four artists’ work it reveals layers of meaning that address music’s cultural, emotional and transformative qualities. While viewers might feel compelled to defend their investment in music, careful consideration of the show’s title begs further questions: What does it mean to “care for” music? Can music care for us? Is it possible to care too much? Combined, these works reveal a web of associations ranging from fandom, cult obsession, nostalgia, existential rumination and the archival impulse.

Opening reception: Thursday, November 20, 6-9pm
Special Performance: Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay sings Jimmy Somerville, 6PM

Gallery walkthrough with curator Catherine Dean and artists Dave Dyment and Tony Romano: Saturday, December 6, 3pm

The Exiles

2008-11-15T05:49:00.000-08:00

The Exiles - a legendary film that has been near impossible to see for ages - is screening at the Cinematheque this week.

Says the Cinematheque:
'The Exiles is a lacerating portrait of the isolation and hardship endured by the Native American community living in the Bunker Hill area of Los Angeles, a once-prominent neighbourhood reduced, by 1960, to decrepitude and poverty. Told with Flaherty-style lyricism, the film lies at the cusp of both fiction and documentary in its intimate dusk-to-dawn depiction of a group of friends led by a Hualapai man named Homer. As the guys set out for a raucous night on the town, Homer’s solemn, pregnant Apache wife Yvonne is left at home to long for his companionship and a better life. She embarks on a drifting nighttime stroll through the city (recalling Jeanne Moreau’s tenuous ambling in Antonioni’s La Notte, released the same year in Italy), her fragile state imparted through a wounded gaze and confessional narration. Shot in inky black and white with startling realism, The Exiles conveys “a near-heavenly vision of a near-hell” (Manohla Dargis, The New York Times).'

The screening times are as follows, hope to see you there:
November 14, 2008 7:00 PM
November 18, 2008 7:00 PM
November 19, 2008 8:45 PM
Screens at Jackman Hall

More info here.

When the New York Times meets The Yes Men

2008-11-13T06:05:00.000-08:00

Dave sent me this link to a Huffington Post article on a fake issue of the New York Times that has recently been distributed around the US. Evidently the fake is the work of The Yes Men, the same folks who have posed as spokespeople for The World Trade Organization, McDonald's, Dow Chemical, etc in an ongoing series of public performances/interventions that can be seen in their self-titled documentary of 2003.

It's a bit odd to read the article about this prank on Huffington Post; they report that one of the fake New York Times stories reads "columnist Thomas Friedman has confessed: 'I have no business holding a pen, at least with intent to write'", while over in the "Popular Stories on Huffington Post" section, you can scroll down to Thomas Friedman's article "We Need 'Overwhelming Force' to Green the Economy".

In any case, those of us who can't get our hands on a paper copy can check out most of the same content on their fake New York Times website.

2008-11-06T05:52:00.000-08:00

In a fit of enthusiasm about Kenneth Goldsmith's upcoming show at Mercer - Jan. 9/09 - Feb. 14/09 - I was looking through some old posts on WFMU and came across this video of Hermeto Pascoal and friends playing flutes and bottles in a lagoon. Please watch it. So so so so good.

Scott Lyall: Artist Talk

2008-11-05T13:15:00.000-08:00

Sadly, I can't go to this, but I think you should.

LECTURE
Scott Lyall
Thursday, 6 November, 7 PM

Toronto-based artist Scott Lyall, whose exhibition ‘The Color Ball’ is currently on view at The Power Plant, discusses his work. Lyall combines drawing, painting, sculpture, and found objects into spare yet complex sculptural environments that arise from an intense period of research and digital image making. The effect is one of improvisation and incompleteness married with calm predetermination. Lyall has recently exhibited at Art Basel, Sutton Lane (London) and the SITE Santa Fe Seventh International Biennial.

$4 Members, $6 Non-Members
The Studio Theatre, Harbourfront Centre

City Renewal

2008-11-02T13:18:00.000-08:00

Though we're settling into our beautiful new space nicely, we haven't forgotten about our old hood, so it's exciting to hear about a new show about to open on Lisgar Street: A CITY RENEWAL PROJECT:

November 4 - 23, 2008
Opening November 7, 7 - 11 pm

Red Bull 381 Projects is pleased to announce a large-scale, site-specific collaborative installation by fauxreel and Specter. A City Renewal Project blends the wallpapered photography techniques of fauxreel with the graphic and painterly approach of Specter as they recreate a neighborhood full of abandoned storefronts inside a 4000 square foot warehouse at 39 Lisgar Avenue in Toronto. The project focuses on the state of decay within the city, renewing these dilapidated buildings as artistic monuments and documenting their history amidst the gentrified frenzy of urban change.

In addition to the exhibition, Red Bull will be hosting Marc & Sara Schiller of Wooster Collective for a talk at the Red Bull 381 Projects gallery space, 381 Queen Street West, Suite 200, on Saturday November 8, 2008 from 7 - 10 pm. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis, so arrive early to ensure a spot.

For more information or to make an appointment for an advance viewing please contact Elissa McGillivray • elissa@acityrenewalproject.com

Augusto Bastos Live!

2008-10-28T13:13:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow night - Wednesday, October 29th, at 6:30 pm - Professor Augusto Bastos will be sharing stories from his incredible life in a conversation with Darren O'Donnell at the Power Plant. This talk is the last event in the Born Out of Pleasure special events series that was programmed in conjunction with Harrell Fletcher's collaborative show of the same name. And it's free!

I spent 10 days with Augusto and highly recommend this talk. He is a smart and funny man who has seen and lived through a lot, and has so much to share. (The photo above is of Augusto as a young man with one of his seven children. Video footage of Augusto in a rickshaw we hired to take him to a dinner can be seen here.) Getting to know him was such a highlight of that project for me, and I suspect it will be a special thing for you, too. So come!

Terry Fox

2008-10-26T11:11:00.000-07:00

Because I've been a bad blogger, this sad news Dave sent me days ago about the death of Terry Fox is a bit late. But here it is:

TERRY FOX (1943–2008)

The American performance artist Terry Fox has died in Cologne. As Der Standard reports, Fox was a definitive force in the Fluxus movement along with Joseph Beuys and Nam June Paik. In the 1960s and '70s, Fox participated in a radical move away from traditional art forms and used his body in performances that polarized audiences. The artist had been living in Cologne since 1996; the city's Museum Ludwig made the announcement of his death.

You can see some of his works here. And the most excellent UbuWeb has his most excellent Children's Tapes here.

Good things from Artists Space

2008-10-19T10:08:00.000-07:00

Artists Space is a really great contemporary art gallery in New York that has a physical space as well as several different online manifestations. (One of the curators is Joseph del Pesco, who gave an interesting talk at Mercer Union a year ago.)

Artists Space recently launched a few new web-based projects that are all worth checking out. (To do this click on the "Web Cast" section on their web site.) One is called Type Cast, a free font download designed by a different artist every month - this month's font is called "Negative Space" and is by Mungo Thomson.

Another online project is called "YouTube Commentary", where a different artist each month is asked to provide a commentary to the YouTube video of their choosing - currently featured is Cesare Pietroiusti's "The Diva and Few Small Mistakes".

And the third web project they've recently launched is The Artists Space Daily, which they describe as "a free software program that you can download and install on your home computer. Once per day it downloads an image from the internet and places it on the desktop of your computer. This small computer program allows for the distribution of artist “postcards” to curators, collectors, and art viewers around the world. For the first year of the Artists Space Daily, we’ve asked an array of international curators to recommend artists who might benefit from this kind of global dissemination."

I downloaded it and am happy to say it works and is excellent - you should get it, too. (The image above is from today's featured artist, Mushon Zer-Aviv, who was recommended by curator Chen Tamir.)

The Bay - "Living Artfully" or not so much?

2008-10-10T19:04:00.000-07:00

This fall The Bay launched its new autumn campaign "Live Artfully". This campaign involves some lovely watercolour paintings and slogans such as "To Live Artfully is to recognize that art doesn't have to be found in a gallery or museum". Seems pretty harmless...but what if The Bay actually "found" this campaign in a gallery? And what if that gallery, and the artist whose work bears a striking resemblance to The Bay's campaign, have not been acknowledged in any way?

This is where a longtime friend of mine, Biliana Velkova, comes in. Pretty much the whole time I've know Biliana - about 15 years - she's been making art that in one form or another addresses her experience as an immigrant from Bulagaria dealing with North American consumer culture. So in July of 2007 she had a show of lovely watercolour paintings in a North Vancouver shop/gallery called Tartooful, whose tagline is "Live Artfully".

As the posted images illustrate, there are a strange amount of similarities between The Bay's ad campaign, Tartooful, and Biliana's work. (Some clarification may be needed - the top image is from The Bay's recent campaign, and the two below it are from Biliana's 2007 show at Tartooful.) There is, of course, the possibility that this is all just some crazy coincidence, but that possibility seems pretty remote, at least to me.

I find this whole situation interesting on a lot of levels. For me it's not as simple as just immediately hating the big corporation for stealing intellectual property. I actually don't like the term intellectual property at all because I find it really disturbing to apply the ultimate symbol of capitalism - property - to our ideas and creativity. And I also get really excited by the various forms of gifting, sharing, borrowing, and inspiring that can occur in art, science, life in general, etc.

But I think these forms of sharing are best distinguished from plain old exploitation by a system of reciprocity, be it some sort of barter, exchange, gift, or just a simple acknowledgment. And at this point neither Tartooful or Biliana have been acknowledged in any way, so they have sent a letter to the media about this issue, and Biliana has done a few postings on her blog about it.

Hopefully some sort of acknowledgment update will be coming soon....

Let's Look Sophisticated Together at Mercer's New Wave...

2008-10-06T12:39:00.000-07:00

So Mercer's New Wave gala opening is this Wednesday night, with a VIP preview reception from 6-8pm, and a dance party starting at 8 and going till late.

There are so so so many reasons why you should come. To begin with, I just saw the new space, and it's really beautiful. Seriously. Come see.

On top of that, Owen Pallett will be playing at 8:30pm (as Beardo). Beautiful sounds in a beautiful space, what more could you ask for?

Oh wait, there's more. To help with the booty shaking we've got DJs Jaime Sin (7th Heaven), Produzentin (Hot Nuts), and Isabelle Noël.

And there will be art installations by Stephanie Comilang, Alison S.M. Kobayashi, and Annie MacDonell - we're so lucky to have such awesome artists showing at our opening event!

Additionally, there will be sitting/drinking/dj-ing environments made by MADE - very exciting.

So clearly this is the place to be this Wednesday evening.

Tickets are available at Soundscapes and Rotate this, and will also be available at the door.

Till then....

Nuit Blanche - Zone C Rules

2008-10-04T18:33:00.000-07:00

Okay, so Zone C was all I really checked out, but whatever, it rules. And yes, I am biased in many ways, but I was pretty taken with Dave's curating.

Matthew Suib's Purified By Fire was so good - strangely subtle and also spectacular.

I got to Jon Sasaki's I Promise It Will Always Be This Way pretty early, and was very impressed with the mascots' dancing...one very ambitious mascot even did multiple cartwheels in a row. I'm curious to know when they'll burn out. (Though clearly they lasted longer than me as I'm back home now while they're still out there kicking it.)

And I really loved Yoko Ono's Imagine Peace. I often shy away from art that requires participation, but I got a button, wrote a wish, and hung it on a tree very happily. So nice.

Another great find from WFMU...

2008-09-28T13:00:00.000-07:00

Recently WFMU posted about Radio Apartment 22, an internet radio station out of Rabat, Morocco:

Established last year and run entirely by three dedicated staffers, the station serves largely as an outlet for international artists, documenting various art events through streaming audio and showcasing selected musical works. Recently, the station provided excellent coverage of South Korea's Gwangju Biennale, including interviews with curators and artists as well as recordings of musical performances. Unique not just in comparison with blander internet radio stations, Radio Apartment 22 also serves an important local function; it is the only fine art oriented media organization in Morocco. The project began in 2002 when Abdellah Karroum founded Apartment 22, one of the first fine art spaces in the area. Initially he found little support from local artists or the government. "There's not really a forum right now in Morocco for speaking about arts and culture in an in depth way, " said Emma Chubb, R22's Programming Coordinator. "They've been building an art museum for years and years but it seems like it will never be finished" Despite this, R22 proudly bears the mark of its locale - the station broadcasts in English, French, Arabic and Berber, among other languages.

Currently streaming on Radio Apartment 22 are interviews with Patrick D. Flores, Hyunjin Kim, and Okwui Enwezor in regards to the Gwangju Biennale, and some pretty great music by Joachim - all definitely worth checking out.

Born Out of Pleasure

2008-09-23T19:40:00.000-07:00

So I just had the huge pleasure of collaborating with Harrell Fletcher and a group of twelve other folk (Augusto Bastos, Thomas Brant, Sean Frey, Hannah Jickling, Alison SM Kobayashi, Helen Reed, Kerri Reid, Swintak, Maiko Tanaka, Amy Wah, and Karen Wielonda) for a ten day project culminating in a show at the Power Plant. One of the twelve collaborators was expert cake maker Karen Wielonda of Frostitution, who inspired us to make sculptural cakes of our experiences during the ten days for the exhibition. (I made cake dentures inspired by an encounter with Manuel Bentes of the Dundas Denture Clinic.)

In addition to the cakes and photos on view, we're also organizing a series of talks and conversations with some of the people we encountered throughout this project. Starting on Wednesday, October 1st, we'll be hosting this mini-lecture series of sorts at the Power Plant; the schedule is as follows:

Naivelt Musical Performance - October 1st, 6:30pm
Youth from Naivelt and Jumblies Theatre: a musical recreation of 1920's Twelfth Children's Work Commune

Holistic Medicine from 1960's to present - October 8th, 6:30pm
Herbalist John Redden from Viriditas Herbal Products in the Junction talks about the history of holistic medicine in Toronto.

Haldeman-Julius Little Blue Book series - October 15th, 6:30pm
Stephen Fowler of the Monkey's Paw Bookshop talks about an early form of the zine from the Pre-Depression era created by an heir of a printing press.

Surviving Accidents - October 22nd, 6:30pm
Francisco Alejandri and Liz Lavandeira - who both work at Torito Tapas Bar in Kensington Market - share essential survival tips and describe past near disasters.

Augusto Bastos Slam Dunks - October 29th, 6:30pmhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
Darren O'Donnell will be in conversation with Augusto Bastos, guerrilla, revolutionary, accused counter-revolutionary, aviation expert, refugee, torture victim, and basketball star.http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

All of these most excellent events are free to the public and will take place in the Power Plant Reading Room.

Oh and we also started a blog called cakeworthy.

New Wave Party, October 8th

2008-09-22T19:34:00.000-07:00

New Wave, The Mercer Reopening Inaugural Gala
Wednesday 8 October 2008

VIP Preview Reception 6PM–8PM
Dance Party 8PM til late

LIVE Performance by:
Beardo (Owen Pallett)

DJs
Jaime Sin (7th Heaven)
Produzentin (Hot Nuts)
Isabelle Noël

Art Installations by:
Stephanie Comilang
Alison S.M. Kobayashi
Annie MacDonell

Environments by MADE Design

$40 ticket / OPEN BAR all night / includes entry to VIP Preview Reception
$10 ticket / CASH BAR / entry 8PM onwards

ADVANCE $10 GENERAL ADMISSION TICKETS AVAILABLE AT:
Rotate This (801 Queen St W / 416.504.8447)
Soundscapes (572 College St / 416.537.1620)

Call Mercer direct at 416.536.1519 or email Elaine Gaito, Director of Public Programs & Development at elaine@mercerunion.org to order both advance $10 and $40 tickets by Visa

NEW WAVE SPONSORS
Amazing Food Service
Grolsch
BULLDOG Gin
Higgins Event Rentals
Sonic Print
Wild Horse Canyon
Hidden Lounge

Mercer Union, A Centre for Contemporary Art
1286 Bloor Street West
(one block E of Lansdowne on the NW corner of Bloor and St. Clarens)
Toronto ON
M6H 1N9
T 416.536.1519

Sarah Robayo Sheridan: Welcome!

2008-09-21T13:49:00.000-07:00

Mercer Union is pleased to welcome Sarah Robayo Sheridan as its newly appointed Director of Exhibitions & Publications.

Sarah's recent curatorial projects include Self-Storage (Curatorial Industries, San Francisco, 2008) Trampoline Hall (12 Galaxies, San Francisco, 2008), Steve Reinke in the Company of Some Other Men (ATA, San Francisco, 2008), Learning to Love You More (MU, Eindhoven, 2007) and the presentation of Chris Marker's multi-screen installation The Hollow Men (Prefix ICA, Toronto and Dazibao, Montreal, 2006). She has worked in a number of non-profit arts organizations including Public Access and Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art. She also has held research internships at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts. In addition to her record of organizating exhibitions, Sarah also holds publishing experience and has worked as a freelance graphic designer. Her writing has appeared in 02 Magazine, C Magazine, Camerawork, Prefix Photo and YYZine, and she was co-editor of Public 24: Being On Time.

Please stop by New Wave, The Mercer Reopening Inaugural Gala on Wednesday 8 October 2008 to say hello, or in the meantime Sarah can be reached at sarah@mercerunion.org

Chris McCarroll: Uniform Material

2008-09-09T13:48:00.000-07:00

My friend Chris has a film in the Toronto International Film Festival this year. I've seen it, I love it, I highly recommend it. So there.

It's called Uniform Material and is the story of a middle-aged man preparing for his first day on a new job. And seriously, it's so so good. And playing Wednesday and Thursday evenings this week. More details for show times etc here.

Sticky: Kelly Jazvac

2008-09-01T20:25:00.000-07:00

This Friday evening, from 8pm to 11pm, Kelly Jazvac's exhibition "Sticky" is opening at YYZ.

Sticky will feature works made from used or flawed printed adhesive vinyl advertisements, such as those seen on subway platforms, buses and billboards. The ads have been collected, cut up, sorted by colour, pattern and texture and re-assembled into new surface sculptures.

Acquainted with the Night

2008-08-29T08:27:00.000-07:00

An open call for submissions coming to us through board member and VoCA Canadian art advocate Andrea Carson.

ATTENTION: ARTISTS WORKING WITH THE DARK
VoCA friend Liz Doyle is working on a documentary based on a Canadian non-fiction GG award nominated book, "Acquainted with the Night" by Christopher Dewdney. The film will explore our relationship with the night over the course of 12 hours- each hour representing a different theme.
They would like to explore the relationship between art and the night.

They are interested in finding out about artists with a unique relationship to the night or the dark: artists who work exclusively at night, artists who are inspired by the night- in general artists with some strong tie with the night hours.

Please email liz_doyle@rogers.com, saying that you heard about it through VoCA.

Thanks and good luck!

And Speaking of Harrell Fletcher...

2008-08-27T09:09:00.000-07:00

Dave recently told me that Harrell Fletcher was one of the nominees for the $25 000 Smithsonian American Art Museum Annual Contemporary Artist Award.

This got me thinking about Canada's Sobey Award, and the exhibition of this year's nominees that opens at the ROM tonight.

And this got me thinking about Doris Lessing's super rad and salty response to winning the Nobel Prize this year:

When reporters informed you that you had won the Nobel Prize last October, your first words were "Oh, Christ." Were you at all excited? No, I wasn't. If I may be catty, Sweden doesn't have anything else. There's not a great literary tradition, so they make the most of the Nobel.

The Nobel committee described you as the "epicist of the female experience." Do you agree with that? Well, they had to say something.

But do you agree with it? No. I can just see somebody sitting there thinking, "What the hell are we going to say about this one? She doesn't like being called a feminist so what'll we say?" So they scribbled that.

Harrell Fletcher: The Forbidden Zone

2008-08-24T10:53:00.001-07:00

The next Kino05 screening will be The Forbidden Zone, this Tuesday evening, the 26th, at Camera Bar on Queen West. The Forbidden Zone is a video produced by Harrell Fletcher through a collaborative project with Chris Johanson, David Jarvey, Elizabeth Meyer and Alexis Van Hurkman.

David Jarvey, who has Downs Syndrome, identifies with a Captain Christopher Pike, a character from a Star Trek episode. Pike has been disabled and wants to go to the forbidden planet, Talos 4, where he can live with the illusion of being "normal" once again. As part of the installation Jarvey and Johanson were shot on a blue screen and imposed onto footage from the actual Star Trek episode.

Harrell Fletcher has worked collaboratively and individually on a variety of socially engaged, interdisciplinary projects for over fifteen years. His work has been shown internationally including at the 2004 Whitney Biennial. Fletcher is a Professor of Art and Social Practice at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. In partnership with I.D.E.A Space at Colorado College, the Art Gallery of Mississauga has commissioned Harrell Fletcher to produce work for an exhibition in Mississauga in November 2009 and in Colorado Springs in 2010. Fletcher will also be doing a collaborative group project at the Power Plant this September.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres + An Art Student + Facebook =

2008-08-22T10:14:00.000-07:00

Arend deGruyter-Helfer is a student at the Art Institute of Chicago, and maker of this piece "I Got You Something", 2008 - Facebook gifts arranged in a pile.

(from freewilliamsburg.)

David Berman Has A Lot To Say About A Lot Of Things

2008-08-19T17:29:00.000-07:00

This Pitchfork interview with David Berman of the Silver Jews is making me pretty happy today. Favorite quote:

You can go through the whole new Radiohead album and try and tell me what they're saying, and all you'll get over and over again is things are miserable, don't try, things suck. And it's all gray. There's nothing there. Never before has there been a "greatest band in the world" who had so little to say about anything. The music-listening world has become such an aficionados world. People want to react to a poem or a painting, but they're like "I'm not qualified. I'm not educated." But they treat their personal preferences for music as if they weren't anything but this complete monolithic subjectivity, and we talk to each other in that way: "They suck, and they're the worlds greatest band."

This Neck of the Woods/Knock on Woods

2008-08-18T09:33:00.000-07:00

From today until August 23rd, Mercer Union is hosting Yvette Poorter's roving residency, Knock on Woods. (More information about the residency and closing reception are here.)

I first heard about this project through an earlier residency project of Yvette Poorter's called This Neck of the Woods, which the website describes as a "Dwelling for Intervals - an independent state, a sculpture, a series of collaborations, an international artist residency, a wilderness, a treehouse, a traveling circus, and a relative site/situation for temporary doing or undoing."

My favorite fun facts from this project's web site involve Poorter's various attempts to strengthen diplomatic ties between This Neck of the Woods, the Canadian Embassy in Rotterdam, and the Royal Family of the Netherlands. (From the website): In October 2006, she wrote to the Royal Palace to invite both the queen and princess to the official closing of This Neck of the Woods. She explained a bit about her family history and invited them to a presentation at Buro Dijkstra. Finally she explained that in December 2006 the land of This Neck of the Woods would officially revert to property of Her Majesty's Kingdom.

She invited the Queen to participate in this closing ceremony but admitted that she understood she was very busy. For this reason Poorter suggested that in lieu of coming in person and as a way to show her support for the project, that she might send me a photo of of herself winking or a piece of official Royal Palace stationary with an exclamation mark in the middle of the page.

The Queen's reply can be viewed here, in Dutch.

Abbas Kiarostami on YouTube

2008-08-16T07:22:00.000-07:00

My friend Chris recently sent me some links to very hard to find early Abbas Kiarostami films that are now on YouTube. These were shorts Kiarostami made for the filmmaking department at the Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults in Tehran, an organization that he helped found in 1969.

One of the best shorts on YouTube is Do Rahehal Barayeh Yek Mass (Two solutions for one problem). (1975) I'm pretty sure the world would be a much better place if everyone saw this film. Seriously.

Also great is The Bread and Alley, which is from 1970 and is Kiarostami's first film.

I recently read that Juliette Binoche will be in an upcoming Kiarostami film - for some reason this worries me, though I read an okay interview with her that makes me think it could be okay and not an Iranian version of Chocolat....we'll see....

Just In Case You Were Wondering What the Canadian Prime Minister Thinks About Holy Fuck

2008-08-14T13:41:00.000-07:00

Toronto band Holy Fuck has recently been named by Stephen Harper's press secretary as one example of what drove the Conservative government to their severe arts funding cuts. Apparently the Conservatives see this band, which received funds to help with a 2007 tour, as an example of misplaced arts funding.

According to the CBC, the prime minister's press secretary, Kory Ten-nike, said "the [funding] choices made were inappropriate … because they were ideological in some cases, or the money was going to fringe arts groups that, in many cases, would be at best, unrepresentative, and at worst, offensive."

Evidently being shortlisted for a Polaris prize and nominated for a Juno award has no bearing on a band's "fringe" status.

More info on the band's reaction to this news, as well as their current tour dates, can be found on Pitchfork.

Your Very Own Song...

2008-08-11T08:03:00.000-07:00

Boise, Idaho's very own indie-pop band "The Very Most" has a new album out called Congratulations Forever. If you buy it before August 31st, they will write a song just for you. For more details on how to get the album and send them your fantastic song idea, go here.

RIP Isaac Hayes

2008-08-10T13:46:00.000-07:00

The sad news about Isaac Hayes can be read here. Thankfully, though, amazing footage of Isaac Hayes can be viewed here.

Jen Hutton Opening!

2008-08-06T14:08:00.000-07:00

Thursday night at 7pm Jen Hutton's new show will be opening at DeLeon White Gallery as part of LOCATIONS/miniature: New work by Jen Hutton and Mark MacKinnon, at 1139 College Street. Her site-specific installation will invert the logic of the large site-specific monument through her refiguring of an unexplained pink and blue landmass she found in her hometown. While Hutton's installation is anything but miniature, it looks close up at the microscopic level, recreating the sense of intimate place she felt at the original site.

I spent a few hours one afternoon a couple weeks ago helping Jen fold and assemble a few dozen of the thousands of waxed paper crystals that will make up this installation, and my inside scoop is that this show is sure to be both lovely and impressive, and definitely well worth your while.

Dave Update!

2008-07-30T17:32:00.000-07:00

So Dave left Mercer and this blog a couple months back to do a residency in Scotland, where, among other things (involving lots of scotch), he has been staying in this sweet cottage and posting a blog for his residency host, Glenfiddich. It's a good read. We miss him.

Illegal Emos

2008-07-28T19:03:00.000-07:00

Evidently the Russian government is attempting to make emos and goths illegal. According to the Moscow Times, emos are defined as "from 12 to 16 years old and wear black and pink clothing. They have black hair with long bangs that 'cover half the face,' black fingernails, black belts peppered with studs and pins, and ear and eyebrow piercings."

And they may be outlawed because of fears of their link to suicide. For real. More here.

Monkey's Paw Section Label Project

2008-07-21T18:41:00.000-07:00

This Friday night The Monkey's Paw will be having it's first ever art exhibit.

The details:
July 23 - August 10
Reception: Friday, July 25, 5-9 p.m. 1229 Dundas St. West (between Ossington & Dovercourt, directly across from LCBO Store #3) 416.531.2123

Responding visually to the cultural content of an entire bookstore, 13 Toronto artists have created (very small) section labels for all 52 subject categories throughout the Monkey's Paw. Their work will be mounted on our shelves and on view from July 23 to August 10. A public reception will be held at the shop on Friday, July 25, from 5 to 9 p.m.

The artists:

Stephen Appleby-Barr
Katie Bethune-Leamen
Diane Borsato
Shary Boyle
Nicole Collins
Nicholas Di Genova
Kristan Horton
Michael Maranda
Olia Mishchenko
Jenn Murphy
Lauchie Reid
Derek Sullivan
Jacob Whibley

More details here.

You should come.

Brian Eno Update!

2008-07-18T13:49:00.000-07:00

For awhile now there have been all kinds of rumors about Brian Eno touring in the fall with David Byrne. Evidently they were wrong. The bastards.

box update

2008-07-17T17:48:00.000-07:00

get ready for a doozy of a box update...
yesterday as i was driving down dufferin st, having run my errands in considerably less time than i had anticipated, it occurred to me that the extra time could be well-spent looking for cardboard boxes. i turned west onto Orfus road, (an eerie street that looks like a former industrial park converted into a strip of outlet stores) and drove to the loading docks in the rear. lo and behold there were green "cardboard only" recycling dumpsters as far as the eye could see. one in particular was filled to the top with beautiful, clean, sturdy, flattened boxes that were the perfect size for moving artist-run-centre things. it was astounding. if we had gone to a custom cardboardist for bespoke boxes, we would have described these to the letter. i was so grateful for my two dozen boxes, i wanted to send a gift basket to whatever weirdo clothing store threw them out. in fact, consider this an open letter: weirdo clothing store; i thank you on behalf of mercer union.

Kirk Cameron

2008-07-15T05:14:00.000-07:00

A little while ago my fella Chris sent me this link to a video of Kirk Cameron talking to gang members in Los Angeles about God and Jesus and stuff like that.

Then later that same day, Dave Dyment sent me this link to a video of Kirk Cameron learning about how bananas disprove the theory of evolution - evidently it has something to do with bananas being easy for humans to hold and eat and the guy talking not knowing about pomegranates.

Just thought you should know.

mercer tidy up day

2008-07-11T14:12:00.000-07:00

with less than three weeks left at our lisgar st location, we have started putting things in boxes ready to move them to bloor and lansdowne. Luckily there is currently a food wholesaler across the street with a lot of empty cardboard boxes for the taking. today i picked up some paper towel and bathroom tissue boxes that are the right size for office binders and folders. i'll keep blogging with regular box updates, please keep checking back.

in the meantime, we're planning a final 'goodbye lisgar st.' party to be held on July 26, from 9pm onward.

Public Collectors and a Collector of Privates

2008-07-11T06:38:00.001-07:00

Public Collectors is an extremely rad project organized by Chicago based artist Marc Fischer, who is also known as one-third of Temporary Services, which is also extremely rad.

But back to Public Collectors - the website says "Public Collectors consists of informal agreements where collectors allow the contents of their collection to be published and permit those who are curious to directly experience the objects in person. Participants must be willing to type up an inventory of their collection, provide a means of contact and share their collection with the public. Collectors can be based in any geographic location."

So, for example, if you're going to be in the Chicago area you can email Marc Fischer and make arrangements to go to his home and listen to his record collection or view his collection of adult comics from Mexico. Or you can peruse the website and check out digital collections of Documentation of Music Underground, Before the Internet, Documentation of People Documenting Anti-War Protesters, or Documentation of Face Painting Options in Mexico City, etc.

In other collection news, apparently Napoleon's not-so-well preserved gentleman part is in New Jersey. This video follows Tony Perrottet, author of Napoleon's Privates: 2,500 Years of History Unzipped, as he travels to New Jersey to see the historic object for himself. Evidently it is in the collection of the late New Jersey urologist Dr. John Lattimer, who, according to his daughter, bought the famous privates to "lend dignity" to the profession of urology.

Just In Case You Were Wondering What the Australian Prime Minister Thinks About Art

2008-07-09T05:26:00.000-07:00

On May 22nd, an exhibition of Australian photographer Bill Henson's work was shut down and investigated as child pornography. At the time, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd weighed in on the matter claiming he found the pictures "revolting", and added "whatever the artistic view of the merits of that sort of stuff - frankly I don't think there are any - just allow kids to be kids."

Charges against Henson were later dropped, but the issue of how Prime Minister Rudd feels about naked children in art will not go away. For their July issue, the magazine Art Monthly Australia published a 2003 image of a naked six year old on their cover.

The girl is Olympia Nelson, then 6, now 11, and the magazine editor said the article accompanying the photographs was a critique of Henson's work and was in no way pro-Henson. Nevertheless, Kevin Rudd has still found cause to speak out and call the image "disgusting".

For her part, Olympia was recently quoted stating that she didn't believe the photo amounted to abuse and was "really offended" by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's comment that he "can't stand" the image.

Stories, In Pieces: opening Thursday 10th 5-7pm

2008-07-08T05:51:00.000-07:00

This Thursday the show Stories, In Pieces opens at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery at Hart House, U of T, from 5-7pm. (Directions here.)

Curated by Mercer's own Aileen Burns, the exhibition brings together works from Toronto and Vancouver by artists Geoffrey Farmer, Curtis Grahauer & Kara Uzelman, Liz Knox, Myfanwy MacLeod, and Jon Sasaki.

Says the press release:
Stories are told in many ways and for infinitely diverse reasons. They pass history and culture between generations, serve as cautionary tales, inspire innovation and adventure, convey news items, communicate personal experience, or provide a much-needed escape from reality. A number of recent contemporary art exhibitions examine possible reasons for the resurgence of narrative in visual art. Artists are reformulating tales of past events from personal perspectives, in order to reclaim and diversify history. They comment on pertinent global issues like ecology, or create psychedelic, alternate worlds that provide fresh perspectives on, or whimsical escape from, the realities of the contemporary moment. Whatever the goal of a particular story, narratives are constructions that follow familiar patterns, and draw on culturally ingrained expectations.

Artists Geoffrey Farmer, Curtis Grahauer & Kara Uzelman, Liz Knox, Myfanwy MacLeod, and Jon Sasaki, create stories through means specific to visual art. The visual and audio cues of their work call on the viewer to engage in narrative processes. This dynamic form of narration contrasts with more linear, predetermined stories that unfold before a viewer, reader, or listener, while watching a film or reading a book. Through their open and suggestive constructions, these artists’ works allow viewers to draw on their own associations, memories, or archive of stories, to develop narrative readings of the work. The viewer becomes the causal agent, narrator, or protagonist, and contributes to the essential temporal component of storytelling. A dynamic engagement with the various elements of each piece is integral to the formation of a story.

Interview with Professor and Artist Steve Kurtz

2008-07-05T05:48:00.000-07:00

On April 21st, charges of bioterrorism against Steve Kurtz of the Critical Art Ensemble were dropped. On June 16, Kurtz discussed his long and sad case with Democracy Now, which can be read, listened to, and/or watched here.

2008-07-04T11:37:00.000-07:00

the other night i went to my friend timothy's apartment to watch the fireworks. we live in the same highrise, but his balcony faces toward the CNE, ontario place, and wherever those fireworks were being launched from. Timothy said it was a barge, but i dunno. we were a few kilometers away, i'm not sure how he could know that. there is something kind of eerie about watching fireworks without hearing the music. i always assume these shows are choreographed to accompany songs like "winds of change" or "rock you like a hurricane." they play out in my head, yet the overall effect is still unsettling...like watching a movie with the sound muted. or rather partly muted...one can of course still hear the explosions a few seconds out of synch with the burst of light. that's a second layer of unsettling if you ask me. it reminds me of phoning my grandmother in calgary in the years when long distance was still expensive and crummy. there would be those intolerable seconds between my voice saying something, and the echo i would hear through the earpiece. phones are much faster now and i appreciate it. next time i watch fireworks, i plan to prearrange a phone link between myself and someone standing on the barge. he or she can hold the receiver toward the launcher tubes, and i shall listen on the other end to noises perfectly in synch with the eyecandy i'm taking in a few kilometers away.

WFMU's Free Music Sampler Vol. 1

2008-07-03T07:36:00.000-07:00

New Jersey's excellent WFMU will be launching a Free Music Archive in November - for now they have just presented Selected Sounds from the Free Music Archive Volume 1, which features a track from Mercer friend Brian Joseph Davis and can be downloaded for free here.

Help Save the International Cryptozoology Museum

2008-06-27T07:34:00.000-07:00

This man - the one in front - needs your help. He is Loren Coleman,the creator of what is described by boingboing.net as "a multi-room cabinet of curiosities filled with artifacts, ephemera, and oddities related to 'hidden animals,' mythical beasts, and creatures unknown to science" called the International Cryptozoology Museum, and he is in trouble with the IRS.

Says Coleman:
"I began with a vision of the museum, after displaying objects and items in a decade of rentals after my divorce, to purchase a house a bit bigger than I needed, to turn over a main floor and extra storage to a cryptozoology and Bigfoot museum where researchers, documentary filmmakers, and visitors could see cryptozoology in three dimensions. It would be the International Cryptozoology Museum, for cryptozoologists, the media, and the public to enjoy....

...To the IRS, the museum verges on being a hobby (as per Code 183), and it needs more income (even if donations) to support itself, on its own. To me, the merging between my interviews, the book sales that come out of the museum appearances, and the visibility of the museum on the net are all interwoven. I’ve never had a great income since I was laid off from adjunct teaching, but combined together, I live at the cryptozoology poverty level with no complaints. But to the IRS, the museum is a separate entity. I understand now, and must comply with that view. I’ve lost my appeal on my “merge” view.

No fighting this any longer, for I stand fully enlightened about how the IRS is viewing Code 183, as it applies to my life’s career. The museum has to make money, or it ceases to exist.

Therefore, my ten year plan for where this museum was going needs to be sped up. It has come time for me to push into play the next phase of where this has to go, for the museum, to be kept alive, I see it has to be moved into a separate facility within one year and get a regular, separate stream of income."

You can find out more about this amazing collection and how you can help save items such as this carving of the "FeeJee Mermaid",

here.

a passing of the torch

2008-06-26T10:40:00.000-07:00

What better way to begin this (or for that matter any) blog entry than with a photo of Dave Dyment, copied from the Nuit Blanche 2008 website, where one can find information about his upcoming "Zone C" curatorial projects.
http://www.scotiabanknuitblanche.ca/zoneccurator2.html

Dave's contribution to this blog was immeasurable. From its inception, the blog was enriched and at times singlehandedly kept moving forward thanks to Dave's efforts. Whether his subject was elephant photographers, Turner Prize winners or things much closer to home, Dave could be counted on to make intelligent commentary on relevant things. We wish him all the best in all his current and upcoming projects.

I now realize that my subject line is misleading. This is not so much a passing of the torch as a spreading of the flame..
as of now, the 'Mercer Union Staff Blog' is officially the 'Mercer Union Staff AND BOARD blog.'
There are now about a dozen new people that will try to fill Dave's shoes, and bring you regular postings that paint a picture of who Mercer is as community of people with different interests and sensibilities. I only hope there is someone on the board who is qualified to blog about Brian Eno, as those postings would be missed most!

Tonight, tomorrow night

2008-05-27T07:48:00.000-07:00

Opening tonight at 6pm and running until the 21st of June at MKG127: Some Dogs and Boats and Airplanes by Bill Burns, which includes a series of photographs, some watercolours and "possibly be the largest collection of dog and boat and airplane salt and pepper shakers of its kind in the world." For more information, visit www.mkg127.com.

Opening tomorrow night (the website doesn't say, but it's usually early) is Mushroom Studio by Katie Bethune-Leaman. "Mushroom Studio draws from many references, including California’s “programmatic” buildings, popular during the first half of the twentieth-century, wherein roadside diners and concessions were created in the shape of whimsical figures—restaurants shaped like puppies, creameries in the form of icebergs adorned with polar bears. This tradition continues with large-scale versions of mundane objects created as tourist attractions, including Vegreville, Alberta’s giant Easter egg, or Colborne, Ontario’s Big Apple bakery. Patently whimsical, there is also a melancholy to these structures and their builder’s efforts to create something mystical in their midst, hoping to beguile, amuse, and attract." For more info: http://www.torontosculpturegarden.com/currentexhibit.htm.

Hello Goodbye

2008-05-23T20:14:00.000-07:00

Posts here will continue to be sporadic over the summer as I am leaving Mercer Union, and Elaine, Jon and Aileen will have their hands full with the gallery relocation. Renovations are currently in progress at the new location at Bloor and Lansdowne, a beautiful building that originally housed a cinema. The fall season will open at the new space with exhibitions by Gwen MacGregor and Sandra Rechico (curated by Dan Adler) and Sylvia Matas, followed by an exhibition of work by Kenneth Goldsmith and Christof Migone.

I will be leaving to concentrate on my own practice, beginning with a three month stint at the Glenfiddich residency in Scotland. It was a painfully difficult decision to leave and there will be much that I will miss about Mercer (EG, JS, AB in particular). A friend of mine who I haven't seen in over a decade (he moved out west) periodically checks in here and concluded (after seeing the Michel de Broin Shared Propulsion Car footage, I think) that I have "the best job in the world". In many ways he is right. Those interested in taking over should apply before June 16th. Here's the job posting. Please circulate widely:

Job Posting: Director of Exhibitions and Publications
> Mercer Union, A Centre for Contemporary Art
>
> Mercer Union is a leading artist-run centre dedicated to contemporary art in Canada. Established in 1979 as a not-for-profit organization, the gallery supports engaging art and curatorial practices that consider contemporary conceptual and aesthetic debates. Showcasing local, national and international artists, Mercer’s twelve annual gallery exhibitions are complimented by critically engaged public programming activities that include lectures, screenings, performances, publications, special projects and events.
>
> As the Director of Exhibitions and Publications, the successful candidate will utilize their experience and initiative to collaborate with the Director of Public Programs and Development—with the support of Mercer’s Board of Directors—to guide the organization's exhibition programming vision. This will involve the implementation and coordination of the exhibition programme and related projects, overseeing the production of publications, and assisting with fundraising initiatives, grant writing, and new marketing initiatives. In August 2008 Mercer Union will venture into exciting territory by moving to a new gallery location with expanded facilities in Toronto’s Bloor and Lansdowne neighborhood. The Director of Exhibitions and Publications will play a central role in facilitating this organizational transition.
>
> The successful candidate will possess:
> -An MA, MFA or equivalent experience in art history, visual culture, curatorial studies, or fine arts
> -A minimum of 3 years experience in a non-profit art gallery or equivalent
> -A solid knowledge of Canadian and international contemporary art
> -Experience managing budgets and grant writing
> -Supervisory experience
> -Strong verbal and written communications skills
> -Excellent interpersonal skills
> -Macintosh computer skills, including Quark, Filemaker Pro, Illustrator, Excel, Word
> -Fluency in both official languages, written and verbal considered an asset
>
> Responsibilities include:
> -Managing the coordination of exhibitions, including coordination of submission review process, generating curatorial proposals, negotiating and managing all contracts, budgets, and preparing exhibition receptions
> -Communicating with exhibiting artists in the development of exhibitions, including coordinating shipping, travel, insurance and equipment needs, and overseeing exhibition installation
> -Coordinating all publicity including writing press releases, preparing press packages, liaising with the media, managing press and mailing databases and actively raising the profile of the Gallery locally and internationally
> -Coordinating all marketing, negotiating all advertising contracts, and designing advertisements
> -Managing publication coordination including brochures, distribution, catalogue exchange, documentation and the gallery website and archive
> -Overseeing maintenance of the gallery space and equipment
> -Organizing Ontario Arts Council Exhibition Assistance grant reviews
> -Participating in developing and setting financial, operational and outreach priorities in collaboration with the Director of Public Programs and Development and the Board
> -Participating in creating and monitoring the business plan, in collaboration with the Director of Public Programs and Development and the Board
> -Working with the Director of Public Programs and Development on all operational, employment, foundation, and sponsorship grant applications, and preparing programming project-related grant applications and sponsorship packages
> -Managing support staff and volunteers with the Director of Public Programs and Development
> -Attending all Board meetings and Committee meetings as required, preparing programming reports for the Board
> -Acting as a spokesperson for the organization to government, funding agencies, the media, and the public
>
> Interested candidates are requested to submit a resume, cover letter, and three writing samples by 5PM on Monday 16 June, 2008 via email apply@mercerunion.org to the attention of the Search Committee.
>
> No phone calls please. Only successful candidates will be contacted. Mercer Union is an equal opportunity employer.
>
> Mercer Union, A Centre for Contemporary Art
> 37 Lisgar Street, Toronto ON M6J 3T3 CANADA
>
> Posted 21 May, 2008

Robert Rauschenberg, RIP

2008-05-13T13:13:00.000-07:00

Robert Rauschenberg died today at the age of eighty-two.

Turner Prize

2008-05-13T05:30:00.000-07:00

The Turner Prize nominations were announced today, and include Runa Islam, Mark Leckey, Goshka Macuga, and Cathy Wilkes. Mark Leckey exhibited at Mercer Union in 2004, in a solo exhibition curated by Jenifer Papararo. Past winners of the prestigious prize (valued at approx $80 000) include Jeremy Deller, Martin Creed, Gilbert and George, Anish Kapoor, Gillian Wearing, Damien Hirst, and Chris Ofili.

Sobey Award

2008-05-08T19:22:00.000-07:00

The Sobey Award nominations were announced today, and are as follows:

WEST COAST AND YUKON: Althea Thauberger; Tim Lee; Scott McFarland; Mark Soo; Kevin Schmidt.

PRAIRIES AND THE NORTH: Daniel Barrow; Paul Butler; Theo Sims; KC Adams; Terrance Houle.

ONTARIO: Kristan Horton; Luis Jacob; Terence Koh; H. Lan Thao Lam; Kelly Richardson.

QUÉBEC: Mathieu Beauséjour; BGL; Raphaëlle de Groot; Adad Hannah; Carlos and Jason Sanchez.

ATLANTIC: Andrea Mortson; Tonia Di Risio; Craig Francis Power; Mario Doucette; Craig Leonard.

Previous winners include Michel de Broin, Annie Pootoogook, Jean Pierre Gauthier, and Brian Jungen. The prize has a cash value of $50 000.

Stutter and Twitch

2008-05-08T13:17:00.000-07:00

Stutter and Twitch, curated by Chen Tamir, opens tonight at the JM Barnicke Gallery from 5 to 7pm. The show features Mercer Union board member Kristan Horton, Yael Bartana , Johanna Billing , David Claerbout, Nancy Davenport, Adad Hannah, Kristan Horton, and Jennifer and Kevin McCoy.

From the press release:

Dwelling on the unattainable desire for stasis and halting change, the
artists' works seek to avoid the trauma and stress that change may
generate. With frozen or barely animated images, many of the works
hang in a limbo between stillness and motion. They push boundaries of
form between video, film, and photography, examining stasis and paused
situations from the point of view of social and metaphoric meanings.
Their interrupted cinema frustrates the viewer's expectation of linear
narrative.

Rather than approaching frustration as negative, Stutter and Twitch
presents the condition of stasis as an arena of possibility. The works
in the exhibition focus on the pause by arresting development and
halting a system in flux. They expose the foundations on which the
structure relies. They challenge the expectation of time, linearity
and continuity when their elements are jarred to a stop.

The show runs thru to the end of June. For more information, visit www.jmbgallery.ca.

1 Guy 1 Can

2008-05-08T09:34:00.000-07:00

The 57 year-old man behind the internet sensation 2 Girls 1 Cup (in which a pair of women shit and puke in a cup and take turns eating it) is planning to defend himself against obscenity charges in the US by claiming he is a fine artist, and invoking the name of Piero Manzoni and Marcel Duchamp. Here's an excerpt:

What do you mean by "shock art films"?
You talk about art? What is art? Art is what artists do. If it shocks you, it's art. One of the things art should do is make you think and question things. Shock art has always been something that has been a very popular thing through the 20th century and the 21st century. People used feces as shock art. There was a guy who shit in a can and sold it for the price of gold. [In 1961, Italian conceptual artist Piero Manzoni canned his feces in 90 tins and sold them for the price of their weight in gold.] So, the Internet allowed me to be an artist, to reach a lot of people. It allowed me to be on the edge, to do what I would never do as a fine artist. If you're going to paint, you've got to compete with Picasso. If you want to write a great classical music piece, you're competing with Mozart. I would never write anything like Kafka's The Trial. If I was going to make a mark, I was going to do it in some extreme shock way.

2 Girls 1 Cup has been viewed by millions and a few months ago Youtube was flooded with 'response' videos, where viewers were secretly recorded watching the clip, recoiling in horror.

The full interview with Ira Isaacs is here.

WWW now, ah, less world-wide?

2008-04-30T19:05:00.000-07:00

Starting today, when I log on to Yahoo.com or Google.com, I am redirected to Canadian versions of these pages. I did some brief web searches (holding my breath while googling 'google') and could not find an explanation. If anyone has any ideas, or better yet, how to bypass it, please leave info under comments. Thanks.

Quentin Crisp

2008-04-30T11:28:00.000-07:00

The Guardian reported yesterday that actor John Hurt has signed on to appear in a sequel to The Naked Civil Servant. He will reprise the role of Quentin Crisp, a part that made both he and Crisp instant celebrities when the TV movie aired in 1975. Quentin Crisp was a gay icon, writer, flamboyant eccentric, occasional actor (he played Queen Elizabeth I in the film Orlando), lecturer, artist model and, according to his business card, "retired waif". He died in 1999, shortly before his 90th birthday. He had often remarked that he would live to the age of one hundred, with ten years off for good behaviour.

Frequently compared to Oscar Wilde, Crisp is best known for his aphoristic witticisms, such as:

"Never keep up with the Joneses; drag them down to your level. It's cheaper."

"Sexual intercourse is a poor substitute for masturbation."

"I never understood music. It seemed to me to be the maximum amount of noise conveying the minimum amount of information."

"Health consists of having the same diseases as one’s neighbours."

"When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, "Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestant in whom you don't believe?"

"A lifetime of listening to disco music is a high price to pay for one's sexual preference."

"If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style."

"Teaching is for teachers, not students... and if you'd known that when you were at school, all of your suffering would have been at least explicable."

"When asked, "Should I tell my mother I'm gay?" I answer, "Never tell your mother anything.""

"Film is preferable to real life because it's so much larger than life. And so much shorter." (I'm paraphrasing this last one, can't find the original source)

John Hurt called it "a real thrill to reprise such an iconic role". The sequel will be called An Englishman in New York, which is also the title of a Crisp documentary, biography and a and a not-entirely intolerable song by Sting.

The Naked Civil Servant was recently released on DVD.

Candice Breitz Talk

2008-04-25T23:04:00.000-07:00

Candice Breitz is speaking as part of the Power Plant's International lecture series next Thursday, in the Studio Theatre at the Harbourfront Centre. She spoke at Mercer Union two years ago - we were exhibiting her work Soliloquy (Clint) - and it was one of the best talks we've hosted at the gallery, despite the fact that she had spent three days in transit due to a snowstorm and the airline had lost her luggage and she was wearing borrowed clothes. She's one of my faves. This is not to be missed. Press release below.

Thursday, 1 May, 7 PM, FREE to Members, $10 Non-Members
Candice Breitz is a Berlin-based South African artist who works in photography, video and other media, using popular imagery to expose the absurdity of how we construct meaning through stereotypes. Through darkly humorous and subversive tactics, Breitz scavenges and then synthesizes the overwhelming remains of vernacular media, striking out at visual and narrative conventions to reveal our fascination with celebrity culture. Borrowing from films such as Basic Instinct, The Witches of Eastwick, Dirty Harry, Kramer vs Kramer, and Postcards from the Edge, and investigating the fan subcultures of musicians including Madonna, Michael Jackson, and Bob Marley, Breitz takes a metaphorical scalpel to contemporary culture, revealing levels of intellectual, technical, and aesthetic sophistication.

Born in 1972 in Johannesburg, Breitz has participated in many major exhibitions including the Johannesburg, São Paulo, Istanbul, Kwangju, Taipei and Venice Biennales. She has had solo exhibitions at De Appel Foundation, Amsterdam (2001), Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2004), Modern Art Oxford (2003), Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2005), and Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2005).

ADVANCE TICKETS:
Call Harbourfront Centre Box Office at 416.973.4000.

Ballet to the Pixies' Where is My Mind

2008-04-25T20:14:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQr82kJrWTQ

Expelled

2008-04-25T19:46:00.000-07:00

Last week the Huffington Post took Yoko Ono to task for licensing John Lennon's song Imagine to the wretched Ben Stein documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. The film, with a current Rotten Tomatoes rating of 9 (not out of ten, that's per cent), is apparently mere creationist propaganda marketed to the same millions who flocked to see Gibson's Passion of the Christ. Ono was accused of hypocrisy (the song opens with the line "imagine there's no heaven") and "selling out". But it turns out the song was not licensed and Ono and Lennon's sons Sean and Julian have jointly filed a case against the filmmakers, seeking to stop them and their distributors from continuing to use the song in the film.

Another song, All These Things That I've Done by the Killers, was reportedly used with permission.

Toxic Titties

2008-04-25T19:33:00.000-07:00

I missed Pietra Brettkelly's film about Vanessa Beecroft, which played last night as part of the Hot Docs film festival, but a cover story in this week's NOW magazine makes it seem pretty riveting. Brettkelly and crew followed Beecroft to Sudan, to document the creation of her work for last year's Venice Biennale, which involved 30 Sudanese women lie face down on a white canvas on the ground to represent the genocide in Darfur. The filmmaker likely got more than she bargained for as the film, titled Art Star, ultimately became about Beecroft's attempt to adopt a pair of Sudanese twins. She met the motherless babies at an orphanage, and still lactating from the recent birth of her own child, proceeded to breastfeed them. This led to an overwhelming desire to adopt the children and take them home to NYC with her.

According to the review, the film presents Beecroft as a complex character, with a genuine desire to help. Brettkelly herself is less certain about the ethics of an affluent New Yorker taking children away from their village (and father!). “Whether I agreed with what Vanessa was doing or how she was acting, I had to appreciate the strong passion within her," she says.

Presumably the film also touches on the potential exploitation of the models in Beecroft's work. I met the artist Heather Cassils a few years ago and she told a few stories about participating in one of Beecroft's performances. Her involvement led her to her own project, with the group Toxic Titties, which she describes here:

I was hired, with Toxic Titties collaborator Clover Leary, to perform in Vanessa Beecroft's VB46 at the Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills. In our parasitical performance Beecroft Intervention, we hijacked Beecroft's work and subverted her vision by influencing other performers, engaging them in a critical dialogue, and by unionising them, which forced up the cost of their labor. We have authored a critical essay that was published in Signs Magazine in 2006. It is an insider account that assess and rejects the dominant claims surrounding Beecroft's work. Our reformulation of this work reads VB46 against the grain by reasserting the subjectivity of the models, who have been homogenised and objectified, and by revealing the troubling mechanisms of production.

Congrats

2008-04-24T18:41:00.000-07:00

The New York Post reported yesterday that Laurie Anderson has married long-time partner Lou Reed, earlier this month. Wikipedia lists the date for the private ceremony (attended by Julian Schnabel, producer Hal Wilner and that guy from Law & Order) as taking place on the 12th of this month. The pair have been together for more than thirteen years and often contribute to each other's albums: Reed played guitar and sang on In Our Sleep, from the 1994 Brian Eno produced recording Bright Red, and Anderson played violin on Reed's albums Ecstasy, Set the Twilight Reeling and the Raven.

Yet Another File Sharing Service, RIP

2008-04-24T04:31:00.000-07:00

....

In C for Free

2008-04-23T19:12:00.000-07:00

Amazon is offering downloads of Terry Riley's classic In C for the price of a single song (despite the fact that it's over an hour long). Even better, Last FM has it here, for free.

It's not my fave minimalist 'classic' by a long shot, but....

Elephant artists

2008-04-23T18:25:00.000-07:00

Here's video of an amazing Burmese elephant painting his own self-portrait, and some photographs taken by Indian elephants with cameras affixed to their tusks.

Virtual Jihadi

2008-04-23T18:00:00.000-07:00

Wafaa Bilal is an Iraqi-born performance artist who moved to the US in 1992, in his mid-twenties. He was arrested in Iraq for creating art critical of Saddam Hussein and had refused to serve in the Iraqi Army during the invasion of Kuwait. He spent two years in a Saudi Arabian prison camp before relocating to the US to study at the University of New Mexico and the Art Institute of Chicago.

He is once again facing censorship, this time from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York, who have “suspended” his most recent work, Virtual Jihadi, after protests mounted by the College Republican club and a local commissioner. Many of the protestors admitted that they had not seen the work, which is a hacked video game in which the artist inserts a fictional version of himself as a suicide bomber. They claim the video serves as an incitement to terrorism. RPI officials did not intervene on Bilal's behalf, despite having invited him as an artist-in-residence. Instead they claimed that the FBI had contacted the school, which the FBI denies.

“This artwork is meant to bring attention to the vulnerability of Iraqi civilians, to the travesties of the current war, and to expose racist generalizations and profiling,” Bilal writes on his website. “Similar games such as ‘Quest for Saddam’ or ‘America’s Army’ promote stereotypical, singular perspectives. My artwork inverts these assumptions, and ultimately demonstrates the vulnerability to recruitment by violent groups like Al Qaeda because of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.”

Somewhat ironically, it appears an even more contentious work from last year was mostly met with bemusement by the press, and no protests. For Domestic Tension at Flatfile Gallery in Chicago, Bilal spent a month confined to a room which was outfitted with a paintball gun that could be fired remotely by viewers over the Internet. According to Newsweek, he was fired at 40,000 times in the first few days.

An interview with the artist appears here.

Discovered: Oil Painting did not originate in Europe

2008-04-23T15:26:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the Associated Press ran several stories regarding the recent discovery of cave paintings in the Afghan region of Bamiyan. Ironically, the works were discovered behind the site where the Taliban destroyed two ancient Buddha statues (built in 507 AD and 554 AD) in 2001. Scientists in Japan have confirmed that the paintings were made with oil, and that they predate European oil paintings by hundreds of years.

Read the full story here.

Charges dismissed against Critical Art Ensemble artist

2008-04-21T16:01:00.000-07:00

A Buffalo judge today dismissed charges against Steven Kurtz, who was accused of illegally obtaining biological materials for an art exhibit protesting U.S. government food policies. U.S. District Judge Richard Arcara ruled that a mail and wire fraud indictment brought nearly four years ago against Kurtz, who is also a University of Buffalo professor, was "insufficient on its face."

For those not following the story (posted about here, here, here and here), Kurtz woke up in May 2004 to discover that his wife had died in her sleep of a heart attack. He called 911 and the response unit that came discovered in their home two kinds of bacteria and equipment they deemed suspicious. Kurtz was brought in for questioning and spent his first night as a widower behind bars.

Investigators determined that the lab equipment used for DNA extraction and amplification equipment was part of his artwork and that Hope Kurtz died naturally. Perhaps to save face (after cordoning off the block and sending in a swat team) Kurtz was indicted on mail and wire fraud charges that carried a maximum of 20 years in prison.

The 2007 film Strange Culture documents the case with both interviews and reenactments.

Record Store Day today

2008-04-19T08:18:00.000-07:00

To celebrate International Record Store Day, here are three stores that still sell vinyl, all walking distance from Mercer Union:

Neurotica (642 Queen West) - Not as good since my friend Jim left, but still a good place to look for rare vinyl. They also carry CDs, DVDs and a small selection of music books.

Rotate This (620 Queen Street West) - Always in competition with Soundscapes for best indie-rock store in the city, Rotate often loses for the supposed rudeness of the staff. I've never personally encountered any animosity and Kevin is actually the cheeriest record store employee I've ever met (despite his brilliant Myspace page name - Kevin Knows I'm Miserable Now). Plus they have a large selection of new vinyl.

Babel Books and Music (123 Ossington Avenue) - As the name suggests, Babel sells vinyl, CDs, literature, art books, music books, poetry, etc. The owner is knowledgeable and has impeccable taste. The store is two doors down from MKG127 (Roula Partheniou's 100 Variations opens today from 1 - 5 pm) and a block north of TPW, who are showing two great videos by Artur Zmijewski.

Go buy some records and maybe bring a bouquet of flowers.

Brian Eno, David Byrne

2008-04-18T08:13:00.001-07:00

David Byrne announced recently that that the long-rumoured return to the studio with Brian Eno will result in a new album by years end, followed by a live tour. Their previous collaboration led to a trilogy of early Talking Heads records and the 1981 classic My Life in The Bush of Ghosts. This will be the first Eno/Byrne collaboration in over twenty years. Disputes over songwriting credits and the general feeling from the rest of the band that the pair were too close led to end of the Talking Heads/Eno collaboration. Bassist Tina Weymouth said "they were like 14 year old boys making an impression on each other".

Brian Eno rarely performs live and I can't recall the last time he toured. According to the booking agent, the set list will consist of at least 40% Talking Heads material.

Vancouver Award Recipients

2008-04-17T19:26:00.000-07:00

Congrats to Kevin Schmidt and Tim Lee, who were both named recipients of the VIVA Award, a $12 000 prize granted by the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation to artists in mid-career. Jeff Wall also won the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement, the province's biggest annual award for the visual arts. The Audain Foundation has helped the VAG become one of the largest public holders of Wall's work in North America and this year they raised the value of the Lifetime Achievement award from $5,000 to $30,000.

Pictured: Kevin Schmidt's exhibition "Fog" at Mercer Union, 2005.

Performance for Peace ends in rape, murder

2008-04-17T12:22:00.000-07:00

The New York Times reports today that an Italian Performance Artist who was hitchhiking through Turkey in a wedding dress was raped and strangled to death by a driver who picked her up. Giuseppina Pasqualino di Marineo was hitchhiking as part of an international performance work to promote peace. Her naked body was found by police in a bush 70 miles southeast of Istanbul. The police swiftly located her killer after he used his victim's mobile phone.

BGL and No.9

2008-04-16T11:20:00.000-07:00

Mercer faves BGL are presenting new work for Project 9, an environmental curatorial agency ran by Andrew Davies and Catherine Dean, which is being launced this Saturday. Here's the press release:

BGL: Project for the Don River
April 22 - June 29
The Lower Don River, between Queen and Lakeshore.

The lower Don River will be the location and inspiration for No.9's inaugural installation, a new work by Jasmin Bilodeau, Sebastien Giguere and Nicolas Laverdiere, otherwise known by the acronym BGL. The trio has become known for work that looks slyly but with affection at the commercialism and consumerism that so often define our culture. As a counterpoint, the natural world plays a big role, and the collision between the two is often their subject.

Their collaboration with No.9 marks the creation of their most significant public work outside of Quebec, and expands on their themes of nature and consumption by taking as its starting point the site of the Lower Don River.

BGL's installation consists of a shrunken cruise ship - christened the Nowhere II - 30 feet long, completely blackened and anchored on the turgid waters of the Lower Don. It is faced by a giant life buoy, totally out of proportion to the ship. With these absurd shifts in scale the function of these objects is brought into question. In case of emergency, is the buoy intended to save the entire ship, or is it meant for the river itself? If the ship is seen as full size, then what monstrous waterway is the Don? And what tourists have chosen its charms as the backdrop for buffets and shuffleboard?

The Nowhere II and its life buoy is an emblem par excellence of luxury, idleness and materialism, representing a leisure activity gone slightly wrong. They points to the possibility of being in a place without really seeing it, like tourists taking pictures from the deck but never going ashore. The life buoy introduces an element of anxiety, but also BGL's trademark humour. With their belief in the capacity of art to elucidate the consciousness of an era, BGL are reflecting back to us the conditions of our time, while subtly bringing attention to the ecological issues of the site.

BGL (Jasmin Bilodeau (1973), Sebastien Giguere (1972) and Nicolas Laverdiere (1972)) have been making exhibitions in galleries, museums and public spaces throughout Quebec, Canada and abroad for over ten years, including the The 1er Bienal del fin del mundo, Ushuaia, Argentina; the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal; Musée d'art moderne Lille Métropole, France; Mercer Union, Toronto; The Havana Biennale, Cuba; and The Montreal Biennale. In 2006 they were short-listed for the Sobey Prize, and in 2007 were winners of the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award from the Canada Council for outstanding work in the visual arts.

BGL are represented by Diaz Contemporary, Toronto and Parisian Laundry, Montreal.

The National Post

2008-04-16T09:20:00.000-07:00

The National Post's Marni Soupcoff took a moment away from bashing environmentalists and questioning global warming to call for an end to the country's funding of the arts (which is, apparently, Canada's BIGGEST mistake, ever). The reason? To stick it to all those white, rich art lovers, who should have to pay for their culture. Good to see the National Post sticking up for the lower income taxpayers again.

Read the full article here, followed by a series of comments so hateful your blood will boil.

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/04/14/marni-soupcoff-on-canada-s-biggest-mistake-the-7-5-billion-that-canadian-governments-lavish-on-the-arts-every-year.aspx

Free CD singles

2008-04-15T21:34:00.000-07:00

The Portland indie label Dark Beloved Cloud has just announced a pretty irresistible offer for their new singles subscription program. In order to get 6 monthly 3" CDs in the mail, you have to create 6 hand-made covers (3" x 3") and send them with your name and address to

Dark Beloved Cloud
P.O. Box 6371
Portland, OR 97228-6371

Your artwork becomes the cover graphic for another subscriber's discs, and yours will be delivered adorned with something crafted by a previous participant. I want the one that just reads 'William Shatner.'

The songs are exclusive to the singles and the first in the series consists of two Devo covers - one by Fat Day, and the other by Melt Banana. The label has also put out work by Jad Fair, Barbara Manning (who sings the amazing San Diego Zoo on the 6ths debut), Fly Ashtray and others.

For more information, click here.