The past few times I've passed by the Richmond Hospital Auxiliary Thrift Store in Steveston the line-ups have been at least a dozen people deep -- many of whom look like vacationing families. What does a vacationing family look like in Canada? It's less in what's seen than in what's heard. For example: the southern U.S. drawl. Longer, slower vowels and melismatic diphthongs delivered by faces whose eyes are dead and the mouth does all the work.
The Scotiabank Photography Award is a large one and mostly gets it right, awarding the prize to artists of depth and integrity, as opposed to only those who can operate an expensive camera.
This year's recipient is Ken Lum, whose Canadian Press write-up (as seen in the Globe & Mail) has something in common with the artist's own aggressively matter-of-fact style. Rather than hear who the jurors are, we hear from them anonymously, en masse:
"Prize organizers say Lum uses his art to express his dissatisfaction with the world."
That line might please Lum, though it depends on what mood he's in, who's pointing it out to him.
Then there's the cutline below his picture:
"Ken Lum, of Vancouver, is seen in an undated handout photo."
To me, there's something dismissive about the cutline. But Lum, a former student of counter-narrator par eminence Jeff Wall, might see it otherwise: an honest expression using the most basic -- and truthful -- elements. For it is true: his name is Ken Lum, he is from Vancouver (though he has been living and working in Pennsylvania for over ten years now), he is seen in the photo, which, if it is without a date, should say so, and that it is a publicity photo, though captured with a digital camera, not the old analogue job, so not technically a photograph but a picture, a picture of the artist with one breast button open, the other closed.
John Buchan's 39 Steps (1915) began as a serialized adventure story concerning a Canadian civilian in London who gets caught up in espionage and murder during the early days of World War One. Hitchcock's film version was shot in 1935, four years before the start of World War Two, though you could say that World War Two began when the German Nazi Party took power in 1933.
The picture up top comes halfway through the film, with the Canadian on the run in Scotland looking to absolve himself of murder by solving it. He asks a farmer for food and lodgings, and after the two agree on a price, he is shown to a kitchen and left with the farmer's wife, whom the Canadian originally thought was the farmer's daughter.
The farmer's mention of a "box bed" is demoed by the farmer's wife: a sliding door that reveals a three-foot-high bed recessed into the kitchen wall. By now we have a sense that the wife feels something for the Canadian. She is from Glasgow, she tells him, and he asks her if she misses the bustle of what was by then a modern city. She does of course, which only underlines how unhappy Hitchcock needs her to appear. For why else would she help the Canadian escape when the thugs show up to kill him?
A remarkable haul from yesterday's thrifting. A 4.5" high ceramic pot by Charles Fergus Binns; a small pink Royal Art Pottery bowl; the DVD set of Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's Parsifal (1983), which I saw upon its release at the Oak Bay Theatre in Victoria; Rebecca Solnit's Men Explain Things to Me (2014), whose required-reading title essay features that distinctly U.S. elephant in the room known as social class; and Anthony Powell's The Acceptance World (1955), a novel that begins with Nicholas telling us about his Uncle Giles, a bachelor "nearing sixty" who lives in the Uflord, a once grand "private hotel" comprised of "two corner houses" just west of Queensway, when 25 years later I lived in a similarly eccentric -- if not decrepit -- private hotel just east of Queensway (at Inverness Terrace).
A bit more on the Uflord:
"... that the two houses were an abode of the dead being increased by the fact that no one was ever to be seen about, even at the reception desk. The floors of the formerly separate buildings, constructed at different levels, were now joined by unexpected steps and narrow, steeply slanted passages. The hall was always wrapped in silence..." (8)
Any minute now India will be the most populous country in the world. But is it still the largest democracy? Apparently not. According to those who measure such things (CBC needs to cite its sources), India's democracy has slipped to 161st out of 180 countries. To put this in perspective, India is now behind Afghanistan when it comes to democratic freedoms.
Napoleon referred to China as a sleeping giant ("Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world"). Mao Tzedong was not a communist but saw a version of it (Maoism) as the only way to organize and control a population as large as China's. Has India reached a population of no return? Is it to late for a communist solution, or will authoritarianism have to do?
On Valentine's Day this year Indian tax officials raided BBC offices in New Delhi and Mumbai for airing an item critical of prime minister Modi. Did the BBC in turn claim political interference, given that it is Britain's public broadcaster? No, the BBC doesn't seek political support, as it prefers to see itself as separate from the British state. Ah ha! says that rocket launching autocrat-in-waiting. But it's not! Nor is the CBC, NPR ...
On Friday I attended a gathering hosted by the Ministry of Tourism, Art, Culture and Sport (TACS?). The event was quite literally held in a church basement, if it wasn't for the fact that the church was a wealthy west side church and the basement wasn't raked for live theatre.
Fronting the event was area NDP MLA George Heyman and Saanich NDP MLA Lana Popham, Minister of TACS. Also on stage were Stan Chung (Chair of the B.C. Arts Council), Vancouver City Councillor Christine Boyle and the provincial Parliamentary Secretary for Arts and Film, who Ms Popham failed to introduce during the first go round, but whose name is Bob D'eith.
The purpose of the gathering was to reconnect the Ministry and the B.C. Arts Council with the provincial arts community, after a three year gap due to Covid. The opening remarks concerned provincial government Resilience funding, which some organizations received, and others didn't. The biggest issue from the audience (at least for those who received Resilience funding) was accessibility; specifically, wheelchair access. Apparently those in wheelchairs attending a Firehall Theatre performance have to be carried across the stage in order to be seated. We gasped when we heard that.
With that said, what struck me most about the gathering was the way the individual members of government presented themselves. Ms Popham, who wore gold-sparkled sneakers, kicked things off by identifying herself by height and hair colour, and this was picked up on by others, until Stan Chung spoke of his "boyish charm," even though he is "approaching sixty." We laughed at this because we were supposed to, but maybe too because these introductions were once focused not on what was already apparent (height and hair colour), but more often than not on what wasn't (ethnicity, gender, sexuality and class). A sign of the times? "Does anybody really know what time it is?"
Sick of Myself is yet another film that came out of the blue for me and my platformless life, a story that only the art world could have written -- only to write it anyway.
Signe and Thomas are a young Norwegian couple who, though competitive with one another, are 21st century happy. That happiness is threatened when Thomas gets some attention for his art. Signe responds by doing what most platformers do when feeling left out: she presses the SICK button. In this instance, a Russian-made pill with disfiguring consequences. Sure enough, her disfigurations bring with them fashion shoots, and she seems perfectly happy calling out her detractors on their unscathed privilege.
Sick of Myself is not about competitive couples, narcissism, Simone Weil, nor the whiteness of Norway, but a response to the well-intentioned institutional mantra of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. That director Kristopher Borgli, et al. have set this story in the contemporary art milieu should dispel any misconception you might have that artists are romantic loners, but are in fact the most institutionalized of all us.
