Toronto’s full of art with or without Nuit Blanche: snbTO the day after

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was slightly dissatisfied with Nuit Blanche this year. Why? For the same reasons that so many other nay-sayers seem to list:  It’s too crowded with drunks, it’s too corporately sponsored, you have to travel really far between exhibits, and, frankly, I see more art on an average outing than I’m able to access during the busy party night.

BUT, every year I’m always incredibly moved and impressed with whatever is installed near Casa Loma. This year I got to explore the grounds of Spadina Museum: Historic House and Gardens, which is a Toronto Landmark that I had never visited before.

It’s at the top of the Baldwin Steps, which go directly up from the top of Spadina at Davenport.  We, however, did not take those steps. We biked up the insanely steep top of Walmer Road, halting and heaving before it curves up and into Austin Terrace.

Casa Loma in all its glory.

We parked our bikes at the top of the steps and were welcomed by the Spadina Museum volunteers. They were pleasant and smiling and it was a lovely start to our night.

Elemental, presented by the Art Science Collective Canada was made up of 11, multi-media exhibits “which include interactive light sculpture and live percussion in an enchantingly beautiful and vast natural setting.” Guiding us down a mulched pathway were some white twinkly lights, before we emerged into the yard and were struck with the incredible beauty of the beginning of ‘Fabric of the Universe.’

The depth of this piece still sits with me

These were giant light projections on trees. The wind would blow and the leaves would flutter, and the image would seem both alive, and quite still. I wasn’t able to capture great photos of them, but I can still remember how I felt seeing them. I was awe struck. They ranged in shape from a mathematical interpretation of a water droplet, to a humongous insect on its hind legs, seemingly ready to lunge out at its audience. It was meant to be interactive, with the space for people to participate with the light, but we were lucky enough to get there at the beginning and see the installation before people started to do so.

After, I was struck by the muted light of Hortense Gerardo‘s piece, Shadow Proof House. She wasn’t performing yet, so when I looked into the window, I was lucky enough to see her walk towards her ‘stage’ and begin her movement.  Monologues and music, coupled with light play and dance, her performance allowed for and required a moment of calm reflection. In the short time I stood, watching and listening, I saw many pairs come up and snap a selfie before scurrying off to some of the larger, more colourful exhibits. If my partner had seemed more interested, I would have gladly stood and watched for more than a few minutes.

Monologues over a speaker, light projections and dance. A moment of peace. Beautiful

These were the first two exhibits I saw at Nuit Blanche, and they remained my favourite, even after travelling the city to see many more.

I went out for another bike ride the next day, because the afternoon, which had threatened thunderstorms, turned out to be gorgeous, warm and bright. On Dupont, down an alley, I noticed this geometric pattern on a doorway, and went closer to check it out:

After this, I went back to the bottom of the Baldwin Stairs, where I saw the familiar sticker slaps of Lovebot the Robot and a snail mimicking the colours of a transformed electrical box, just in the time I spent locking up my bike:

Then I joined many other people who were climbing the stairs one or more times (I chose twice; enough to get my heart rate going but not enough to be too sweaty!)

The city looked just as beautiful to me in the daylight, but I tore myself away from a view of the downtown and made my way up the path towards the Spadina House:

I entered in the same way I had the night before, going by the unlit twinkly lights and soggy exhibition sign, before emerging into the yard. Again, it was a sight to see.

All that remained from the night before was a barely-trampled line of grass, leading to the tree with the dark, round green image above. But in the light, I was able to explore the grounds, and travel in and amongst the trees that were the canvases/screens the night before:

And I was able to walk freely in the maze-like garden, that had been guarded by this same owl the night before:

I was able to get a close up look at the puffs that cast ghostly shadows over this building in the dark of the night:

And get a much better shot of the turtle that had stolen my heart on our way off the Spadina grounds:

BUT, the best part was, that one of the buildings I had been in the night before was open!

So I went in and was privy to the storage of some of the costumes that had been displayed in spotlights all over the grounds a mere half day earlier:

Along with some drying flowers from the surrounding gardens:

The whole visit felt very clandestine, but it was clear that the space was open to the public as well. I came across a young dad who was tossing a frisbee with his pup while his baby slept in a carriage, and an awkward photographing teen, whose DSLR may or may not have been the cause of his nervous slouch. I saw tourists posing with plaques and lovers admiring flowers, and the whole property felt alive.

I would never have thought to come up to the area that afternoon if I hadn’t been exploring it the night before, but I was glad to take the time to see it in all its daytime beauty, and take note of some of the upcoming activities:

So, Nuit Blanche, as in previous years, you’ve reawakened my desire to explore further reaches of my city, to see the natural beauty, statues and public art that exist on a daily basis, and to continue to find the hidden gems in the alleyways on route:

 

 

Friday night with an old friend

Rain is falling. Breeze is playing with the wisps around my face as cars drive by and people huddle under umbrellas together as they scuttle by. The night is crisp but not cool. It feels like Halloween.

He is watching a something. I am drinking a warm and brown.

Pen to paper.

I was was a grown up who read a thing I wrote as a kid at GRTTWaK13

I have attended numerous times, and I have even read before (which you’ll hear about in this reading), but this past visit to Grownups Read Things They Wrote as Kids was something special because I attended on my own. I could really grasp the sense of camaraderie that exists in the room when a bunch of strangers exhibit vulnerability and bravery by reading the angsty, adorable, hilarious things we create when we’re little… or in my case this time, not so little.

I could barely hold back my laughter and neither could Dan Misener:

Photo by Evan Mitsui. Click on the photo to see it in its original form and to see the other shots he captured from the evening, including people BUSTING A GUT laughing.

A huge thanks to organizer Dan Misener for isolating and sending the audio files of our last reading.

 

I highly suggest you sign up for the GRTTWaK mailing list here so that you hear about the show when it’s first announced (it always sells out).

Profile: Kim Harris, and Sea Legs’ Elevenseas

I just came across, in a random Monday night’s internetting, this glorious playlist of a musician I’d never heard of, but who’s new album I’ve now listened to in its entirety twice.

How did I find her? I’m not sure. That’s the way with these sorts of evenings, isn’t it?  The freedom of clicking wherever, slowly pushing the other open tabs to the right, seeing less and less of the title of each… until you reach a breaking point and you slowly uncover the treasures you found just a few hours earlier…

Review: mecha kucha vs. GRTTWaK

On Thursday, January 16, 2014, in the underground of the Drake Hotel, there was a nostalgic celebration of  the 30th Anniversary of InterAccess.

It was a “culmination of concepts, tools and devices, and other terms of reference that have shaped and transformed new media art practices over the last three decades, …manifested in a jam packed evening of 3-minute talks by 30 practitioners.”

mecha kucha – an onomatopoeia in Japanese, meaning ‘messy, mixed-up, all over the place, and wacky’ or it could mean ‘really really, or super duper’.

Super duper. When was the last time you read, said, or heard that phrase? That alone should be sufficient content for you to take away from this post… but I digress…

I am not a hacker. I don’t know the difference between an Arduino Project and a transistor and a transmitter… though I know I could learn if I took the time to engage in some intro to electronics workshops. But, unlike most of its attendees, I don’t go to InterAccess for its events for the tech knowledge and tinkering. I go because it’s a space that is literally and figuratively energized. The people who are there are interacting in a way that is rare, but becoming more popular these days. They are ‘workshopping’, or ‘coworking’, or, to put it at it’s base level, they are cooperating. Varying levels of knowledge are interspersed in a mosaic of practical, hands-on learning. It’s beautiful, and the interpersonal is an artwork in and of itself. So when I found out there’d be a night that was entirely based around the celebration of that type of interaction, I knew I couldn’t miss it.

Here are a few photos from the night.

Rob Cruickshank (http://bit.ly/1bkb6Dw), on the craft of DIY tech

Layne Hinton (http://bit.ly/MSBEpZ) and her light machine

Light machine + film = moving pic

Skot Deeming (http://mrghosty.weebly.com/) videogame hack = shoot your fave art piece

Norman White (http://bit.ly/1k48Yrv) Circuits = nerves. So simple.

Amos Latteier (http://bit.ly/1bkaDRM) Ham radio talk ON a ham radio … until it became undecipherable and he had to use a microphone… sigh.

Farah Yusef (http://bit.ly/1lx8mMM) on future file formats and obselescence. reminiscing keeps them alive

Michael Awad (http://bit.ly/Mqmsj2), who unknowingly and comically refuses to be in the spotlight, drops a bomb on the crowd: IA is moving into… and ART BUILDING. dunh dunh dunhhhh

If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know that I like to celebrate nostalgia. I like art exhibits that use artifacts, podcasts and songs that integrate archival sounds, and events in which we engage in shared, but personal reminiscing. I am, of course, referring to Grownups Read Things They Wrote as Kids (GRTTWaK). The manner in which the InterAccess mecha kucha presenters talked about their past projects and how those activities shaped them and those around them was similar to me as going to see GRTTWaK. There is an excited vulnerability in their presentations (in both events) that make the audience feel a part of something, even if they really aren’t. I’d say it’s rare to go to an event that is geared towards a particular audience, not BE that target demographic, and still feel like you’re welcome and entertained. Plus, the sheer speed at which the event progresses is incredibly satisfying.

My point in writing this post is to 1. celebrate InterAccess and 2. to encourage you to go to events where you don’t feel you’ll fit in. So often panel talks, presentations, and exhibitors end up ‘preaching to their own choir,’ which is definitely affirming for an artist or an expert but not really likely to encourage new ideas. And, if you have a chance, be the presenter:

waiting to go on stage for GRTTWaK

dan misener reading last at GRTTWaK

I did just that at the last GRTTWaK, and the experience of sharing my childhood stories of ‘sexy pigs’ with a room full of mostly strangers was enlightening and empowering, and quite hilarious. Sign up for the GRTTWaK newsletter here. It’s the best way to be one of the first to find out when the next event is to buy tickets (they always sell out) or read your own journals/stories/letters/assignments, etc (meaning you get in for free).

Notice What You Notice – The Wallace Bridge Sunset

Nothing in my camera phone is capable of capturing the fluorescence in the sky, or the way that the June bugs badger my ears worse than the sound of the trucks motoring by on Dundas Street.

In the five minutes I sit here, at least a dozen pedestrians have up-and-over’d this bridge while dog-walkers strolled below, and nearly twice as many cyclists have sped underneath, seemingly at the same pace as the planes silhouetted in the sunset’s remains.

In front of me lies a large grassed plot of land, quietly waiting for its inevitable development. Few in this neigbourhood wanted this paved path; the wooded railside was more than enough for they and their pups. But now; now this bridge is used so much that the multiple forms of traffic causes my paper to shake as I pen it.

Urban space renewal will never stop being magical to me.

I Lost My Camera in Colombia – A Blessing in Disguise?

I just got home yesterday from a 10 day trip to Bogota and a couple surrounding towns. It was an amazing vacation, and before leaving Toronto, nearly every person sent me on my way with a ‘Have fun! Be safe! Take lots of pictures!’ type of message. Another equator-bound lady and I scoffed at such cliches, thinking ‘Ppff! Like we’re not going to come home with hundreds pictures of this new place we’re going to!!?’

And I took them! I took classic shots of my feet in cute little shoes on top of sewer grates or ground-maps that said ‘Bogota.’ I took simple, wide, landscape shots of the churches and the mountains and the crazy masses of yellow diesel-fueled taxis and insanely packed buses everywhere. I also captured unique, artistic close ups of graffiti,  colorfully painted villas, exotic flowers, and road-side cows, chickens, donkeys, sheep, horses, and dogs. I ensured there were photos with me framed perfectly in front of the dark salmon terra cotta walls of the house of Simon Bolivar, and sitting on the ledge of a beautiful rock wall backed by huge palm trees in Parque Nationale, and on top of little bridges over an adorable creek in Parque de Los Novios.  But none of these will make it to their destined profile-perfect internet home; instead, I came home with 45 shots, and they’re all from my camera-phone.

GRTTWaK – Real Sharing for the Socially Saturated

For a whole generation of digital natives, who have known and used the Internet since we were at least teenagers, the concept of sharing our thoughts, ideas, and experiences and getting immediate feedback holds no surprise. But does someone ‘liking’ our Facebook status or ‘@ replying’ to Twitter updates actually give us the feeling we crave from the act of sharing? What would happen if the sharing of our stories could be rewarded with smiles, laughter, or even applause from more than a hundred listeners?

At Grownups Read Things They Wrote as Kids (GRTTWaK), this is a distinct probability. In the back room of The Garrison, thirtyish-year-old urbanites sit on folding metal chairs, sipping expectantly on locally brewed beer. Excited chatter rings through the crowd, while those who are there solo scroll through updates on their smart phones.

Dan Misener, media and tech guru for CBC, who created the “unstoppably rad” open-mic reading series, begins to speak before his microphone is on. He pauses, and the crowd is unbelievably quiet in anticipation.  The balance of veterans and newcomers at GRTTWaK 11 is fairly even, though slightly more of the audience is hearing Misener’s introduction for the first time. Misener explains that the night will be exactly what it sounds like: adults reading things that they wrote when they were kids. The rules are simple: you must “have been the kid that wrote the kid-writing” and it must be short. In fact, the audience literally cheers for the 5 minute limit, to which Dan quips, “Everyone’s very very excited about the concision!?!” The definition of “kid” really depends on the person, and it ranges from the very young, to the post high-school years.

Surprisingly hilarious, the readings are reflections of the presenters’ kid selves, or rather, those selves they think are comical or interesting to a crowd. We hear letters to pets and parents from summer camp, short stories about animals that cause earthquakes, and aliens from the year 4694. We listen to captions that accompany big, bold illustrations, to diary entries and to love notes about passionate crushes on British pop stars. There are new renditions of old classic girl-detective novels, poems about sports victories, lists of teenage hatreds and adorations, and long, flowery descriptions of selves inspired by favourite authors. There’s a “re-imagining of the Resurrection,” and even the last will and testament of a nine year old! One writer’s line from her journal said, “this will most likely sound silly in a few years… but I just don’t care!” This really captured the feeling in the room that night. We didn’t care: the more unedited, grammatically mistaken, and run-on-sentencey, the better! The less confident, prepared and practiced, the funnier!

The selection process for GRTTWaK excerpt-selection is similar, though more discerning by necessity, to the one we all use when deciding what is worthy of a Facebook or Twitter update. When we post to our social networks, we’re presenting a version of ourselves that we want to show others, and we are quite aware that such updates are read by many, and could be for years. But we’re not just presenting our opinions; we’re sharing our existence.  We want to tell people where we are, what we’re doing, who we’re with, what we’re wearing; our everything about our every moment. A quick search for the #GRTTWaK hash tag on Twitter, confirmed my bet that at least one Blackberry or i-phone in that backroom sent out a status about being there, and linked in people who were there with them.  This constant need to share with others can be isolating, especially since the medium — our computer or smart-phone — is such a private possession.  We’re doing all this online sharing with and for others, but in actuality; we’re doing it alone.

Misener tells me “events like this do not ‘scale up.’ They rely on the enforced intimacy that people are missing and craving.” We want to see how our experiences make us similar to others, rather than unique. GRTTWaK has found a market of sharers that actively use online social networks, yet yearn for something more, something tangible. The hand-written journal entries read aloud take on the quality of story telling, the sharing of the kind of un-vetted personal histories that are normally saved for our closest friends and family members.

The night is rewarding for the presenters because they get instant validations of their experiences, and equally rewarding for the audience because of the sense of camaraderie in the collective mocking of our past selves. Besides being full-body-laughing fun, GRTTWaK reminds us of a time when we chronicled our days and shared our thoughts in more than 140 characters. We begin to remember when our faces weren’t lit by a pale shade of blue as we journaled. For people to learn something about us they had to ask us questions, or be around us while we told stories about ourselves.

Unfortunately for GRTTWaK fans, the next one isn’t until 2013, as Misener and his lovely lady are moving to France for a year or so. When I shared my dismay about the hiatus, Misener reminded me that his re-location doesn’t stop the tradition from continuing. Open-mics happen on a nearly nightly basis in Toronto. A little bit of organizing and some effort to let people know about the theme, and GRTTWaK — or its yet-to-be-named cousin — can continue its ability to let us share things and feelings in ways that Facebook and Twitter cannot.

At the very least, this layover will have many of us scouring our parents’ basements for our dossiers and journals to re-experience — and possibly curate — our own kid-self written past. But let’s be honest with ourselves, we’ll probably post the funniest finds to at least one of our social networks.

I stole this image from blogTO

Solitude

Including my job, where I interact with people constantly, I am rarely alone.

Thursday, from 7pm until 2am I was in the company of one or more people, and enveloped by art and/or music.
Friday, from 2pm until 1am I was being social through the creation and consumption of food and drinks.
Saturday from the moment I woke up in the afternoon until midnight I was in the company of friends.
Today from 930am until 630pm I was with people. Good people. Great people, in fact.

The incredible relationships  and activities I am constantly surrounding myself with are fulfilling and beautiful and exciting, but, at the end of these amazing days of connection and interaction, I’m still seeking something else.

Tonight, after a day of matching my mood to my activities to the sky and back to my mood, I was walking home, when I suddenly remembered that my friend’s art exhibit was ending today. I asked a stranger the time, and was relieved that it was only 630… a half an hour until it closed.  The guy at reception at The Gladstone told me that the exhibit was only open until 5pm, but was I there to pick up my art?  I must have looked devastated, because he looked sort of terrified.  I did something I don’t normally do; I asked them to open it up just for me.

He agreed.

The porter a slight, nervous, lovely fellow, brought me to the 2nd floor on the old elevator, turned on all the lights for me, and said not to rush; that I could let myself out.

I’ve been to numerous exhibits at the Gladstone, but getting to be in the space alone, giving myself my own private tour of the works that were on display was sort of magical. An audio exhibit was still running, providing me with an echoic, eerie, and beautiful soundtrack. Of course, since I was so late, some of the pieces had already come down, but I think, given the fact that I crave, but rarely seek solitude, that this was an experience I didn’t know I needed until it actualized.

Why I was there:

Melanjolly

This day began with a feeling of sorrow, and quickly moved slightly upward to match the weather with a sense of melancholy.

A stroll through crunchy back-alley leaves, followed by brunch with little plastic soldiers, a visit to a beautiful bronze gallery, and time spent by the lake skipping stones and listening to the crashing waves has brought us to this new state, which is also a new portmanteau.