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Hardt Times

A good turn-out at Michael Hardt, et al.'s talk and panel at SFU yesterday afternoon, the morning after Hardt's longtime collaborator Antonio Negri passed away. I had read his and Negri's Empire (2000) when it came out, and it was one of those books that many of us reached for again after the events of 9/11, in the way that many of us do when we think it was in Empire that we first heard that something like that is possible.

Warehouse Wall

Walking east on East 1st Avenue, past Main, a long wall, and a few panels in, evidence of the Vancouver Mural Infestival. But the wall itself -- its materials, its design. It's enough that it's a wall and not a support for more visual information. Why can't we leave it at that, allow our eyes a rest? Allow our ears and nose to occupy us?

The False Creek Flats

A picture taken on my way to a studio visit. I knew the picture would look better in black and white, but there is no Black and White setting on my device, only related options, which led me to choose Noir because it offered the highest contrast. I was hoping the photo would capture some of that Lee Friedlander energy, but all I got was a whisper of Laurence Oliver introducing another episode of The World at War (1973).

Woke Up It Was a Chelsea Tower

The Chelsea Tower on 6th Avenue just east of Main. Not sure when the ribbed concrete look came about (early 1970s?), but I like it.

The Art of Darkness

Rereading Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1902), with special attention to the section that begins with Marlowe travelling to France to interview for a job as a steamer captain, then south for miles and miles and miles to the "Big River," which we all know is The Congo.

This is nice:

"Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is before you -- smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, Come and find out."

And the line that follows -- typical of the Eurowestern gaze (my italics):

"This one was almost featureless, as if still in the making, with an aspect of monotonous grimness."

A Received Face Fits Its Gifted Nose

Walking home after a studio visit yesterday I noticed another example of the Vancouver Mural Infestivalization, this time along 1st Avenue. Only what's this? An intervention? A received face fits its gifted nose!

Two Books

I was fortunate to get the last copy of Maru Aponte's artist book Palm Readings at the Combine Art Fair this weekend. Something about the cover reminded me of another book cover, not so much what is pictured on that other cover, but the colours they shared and the middle presence of a yellow circle. That "other" book is an old favourite of mine: Maxine Gadd's Lost Language: Selected Poems (Toronto: Coach House Press, 1982).

A Poem by Robyn Schelenz from Touch the Donkey #39

WILDLIFE

Animals move in the trees
I don't know

Which trees

Or which animals

We trundle on

I laugh and say

Trees are better

Than a groundful

Of snakes

No the guide says

Snakes leap

From the trees

Oh I say

I wish my whole body

Was a shoe

Maru Aponte

Combine mounted its third art fair at Griffin Art Projects this weekend, with participation from seven galleries this year, including the Griffin.

Pale Fire Projects contributed work from two artists, one of whom, a newer artist, is Maru Aponte, who lives between Vancouver and her native Puerto Rico.

Up top is one of Aponte's smaller en plein air paintings. At bottom, a limited edition artist book, of which there were fifty, and now there are none.

Mountain View

A picture taken at Main and 27th, looking north, 4pm. The clouds that brought rains these past couple days had lifted -- just in time for sunset. I love how the winter mountains look. Sunset's pink icing.

Fiddlehead Farm

The Schreiber Farm in the 1970s, when it was a teaching medium for students of Total Education, a Vancouver-based alternative school. This is the same Powell Lake farm that Eden Express (1975) author Mark Vonnegut and his Swathmore pals purchased from the children of the Gagliardi Farm (1914-1968) in the late-1960s and, in the 1980s, was renamed Fiddlehead Farm by Linda Schreiber. The site became a hostel after the Schreibers moved on. In 2002 it was sold and logged.

Urban Landscapes

Windows to past landscapes can be found in the strangest places. The above is a section of a frame taken from a 1977 American film dubbed in German and renamed Die Hasen von San Francisco. What attracted me to this frame were the two cars in the intersection: the economical (German-made) Volkswagen and the gas-guzzling (American-made) Cadillac(?). But what stays with me is the sky. All North American west coast cities have their own version of the sky. They even write songs about them. Like this one, about Seattle.

Howdy Partner

Such a rich red. And all these signs to look at. A painting of an Indigenous man from the neck up, a story of drawings between him and the door. Who's behind this invitation to "partner up"? 

Demystify Chinatown

Banners are usually there to promote tourism, or a sense of place. These are different. As citizens we are asked to participate in the relaxation of what we think we know. Chinatown is not what we think it is. But what is it? And what does it want to be?

Pour Lore

Time is slippery. The best measure of time is the optical lattice clock, a faceless monstrosity that is useless to anyone who doesn't know how to use it. An archive is another kind of clock, though less precise, given that microseconds aren't important in the overall scheme of things.

Up top is a grab from when I Googled "glue pour." Note the disparity in the date of Robert Smithson's Glue Pour. Marian Goodman, one of the world's leading modern/contemporary art gallerists, lists the Glue Pour performance (document) as 1970, when the person who took the picture (Christos Dikeakos) says it happened in 1969. Who do we believe? Ah, it's the 21st century, so they're both right.

Pandora's Locks

Pandora's Locks feels like where New West's British store was located. If so, it's hard to imagine a locked room adventure in its place.

The British store was small and narrow. Seems these locked room games require a succession of spaces? I can't imagine it otherwise. Just thinking about it is giving me claustrophobia.