12.01 : those lines

Do you have a favourite poem, or song, or whatever, that can still give you chills and inspire you even after years and years?

Mine is Dover Beach, by Matthew Arnold.
(the quintessential atheist/existentialist love poem)

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

(excerpt)

11.28 : david hoffos – a review

I really enjoy David Hoffos’ work. It’s at once charming and spectral. His early sculptures from art school were all so precise and well-crafted, like little shrines or fetish objects. I also like that he isn’t particularly interested in using the “newest” technology, in favour of using whatever’s around, whatever works.

In an artist's statement I found online, Hoffos explains that he “reveal[s] and examine[s] the sources of illusion found within traditional sources of entertainment such as “genre movies”.

I can definitely see what he means — his work often seems to be chiefly concerned with creating an illusionary sense of immersion — like his large scale miniature cities as in Catastrophe and Another City; very amusement-park-like, with a heavy element of spectacle.

But can it, then, be framed as a critique? He seems to try, though his methods are similar. I personally don’t think that his work is particularly subversive, it plays into mainstream genre slightly. Not to say that an artist has to be completely esoteric to be good, mind.

Returning again to his use of obsolete media materials, I find THAT idea to be far more subversive than commenting on the illusory nature of postmodern entertainment, which seems to be mostly escapist by its very defintion. I think that I have been particularly seduced by the thought of newer, better, faster, stronger equipment that will be able to edit my footage for me and then maybe make breakfast. He, on the other hand, has fairly shunted the digital. I’m sure it’s probably about a million times more labour intense, but I wonder whether or not he ultimately gets more out of the process than I do … I’ve been known to get frustrated looking at the same screen hour after hour without any kind of physical break … and time gets sucked into a portal when you’re working on a keyboard and a mouse, for some reason.

It’s one of the reasons I’m taking sculpture next semester, I feel like I’ve lost the sense of tactility in media, working with all these little ones and zeros and blank, unshapeable screens. David Hoffos, on the other hand, seems to delve really deeply into media while still keeping that visceral hold on the sculptural elements of creating space. His media installations are some of the best I’ve seen as a result of it; media comes slightly secondary to the construction of a space through all of these elements combined.

11.23 : jacob

In a similar vein to mystery is a piece I did recently based upon the biblical story of Rachel and her seven year wait to marry Jacob.

listen here

11.16 : production day 2

I often get nervous working around people I respect, because the people I respect usually know their shit. I feel like I don’t, a lot of the time, particularly when I consider that this is the first project I have ever done in collaboration with other people. This shoot has been weighing on my mind with a vengeance.

So it’s fantastic when things go well. I captured the last of my footage tonight. I actually used the lights I got out from AV this time! It’s a bit of an exhausting experience to haul lights all ’round the apt, and it took us a bit longer to complete (~4 hours, or so), but ultimately I was incredibly pleased with what I managed to get. I think the sound might be an issue, but we’ll see. If I gotta do ADR, then I gotta do ADR.

And dinner for everyone again. I didn’t know that one of my actors was a vegetarian, so I made curried beef. It was fantastic, but I coulda made curried vegetables had I known. Ah well, that’s what I get for not being slightly more sensitive to the political climate.

I also captured the footage from the other day. It looks kickass. I’ll get video on here as soon as I can.

11.13 : production, day one

I’ve been all kinds of nervous regarding my dramatic practices shoot lately.  It’s taken a lot of planning — shot lists, storyboarding, location diagrams … stuff that I’ve in the past been incredibly reticent about doing.  I think that’s stemmed from a love of the accident, the random, the unplanned .. I shot terribly haphazardly for my final project last year, but it still turned out exactly the way I wanted.  I know that it’s possible.

The thing that I’ve come to love about the process of preproduction (and it was a process that I began to have a deep affection for, after a while) was the depth and level of understanding I’ve come to about my set.  I mean, granted, I am shooting in my house, so I have a lot of freedom to explore different configurations of furniture & etc., but even just exploring the qualities of light at different points in the day in order to determine when was the best time of the day to shoot & figuring out the camera angles before ensured that the shoot moved along really quickly.  We shot 3 scenes in just under three hours, which, if any of you are familiar with production times, is pretty damn good.

The only annoying thing (which was actually an awesome thing) was that the incredibly effin’ heavy lights I hauled on the bus from school were totally unnecessary … natural light was more than sufficient and made the quality of the footage really tender.

And I cooked breakfast for everyone, which was pretty fun.  I think it’s a lot easier to be enthusiastic about being awake at 7:30 to shoot if you’re full of food and coffee.

I’m excited about the potential of this little short.  One production day down, one to go.

(on a personal note : room’s still a mess, but now it’s a post-production mess. slightly more acceptable?)

11.11 : polyamory II

(this post is in response to Nathan’s questions on the topic of polyamory)

The emphasis in polyamory is on the self. As a person who tends to become co-dependent in a relationship where I am fawned upon as a pedestaled object, I feel like polyamory reinforces the view that as interesting as I am, I am one person, inevitably flawed or unfulfilling in some way, and can be supplemented (as one might supplement a healthy diet with exercise!) in many situations.

Does that sound depressing? It’s not. Particularly with this point of view.

Polyamory, in my view, is honesty. The honesty to admit that, damn it, extraneous sex and intimacy happens! In past relationships I have played the role of the “cheatin’ hussy”, but I never felt more guilty than a child whose hand is caught in a cookie jar.

The way that polyamory tends to work is that your time is divided among three (or more!) people: you, and your lovers. This has proved to be a bit of an issue of late, and I sadly admit that I recently parted ways with a lover due to his dissatisfaction with the amount of time I could provide him. This is, of course, the chief issue: TIME. The level of closeness involved in a monogamous relationship is directly proportionate to the time you invest into it. Inevitably, if your attention is divided among more than two people, you end up with a series of loving acquaintances.

Which is fine! And I love that!

But I also crave the intimacy that familiarity can bring. That’s why (and this is the interesting part) I have a primary relationship as well. The man is someone that I have been able to discuss polyamory and legion other strange issues with in success and, at least half the time, agreement. He supports my desire to live a polyamorous lifestyle and is interested in integrating the tenets of it into his own.

I am stringently honest about my conduct and try to ensure that all of my lovers understand what it is exactly they’re getting into. That’s torched a few bridges for me, I have to admit; most boys get a little cold at that point and are willing to brush me off as some kinda nympho.

Not so. I just like people.

(on a personal note : I’m still trying to reconcile how I feel about Remembrance Day. I wore red today, recited In Flanders’ Fields to myself and tried to figure out if I was sad because people my age died horribly and unnecessarily. Why is a symbolic death worth more than a regular one from AIDS or malnutrition or genocide? Remembrance is all well and good but there are people my age dying every day. The veterans are dying, too. I also tried to think about what my life might have been like if my adopted grandfather had been killed in the war. I guess it pretty much all comes back to self-reflexivity with me.)

11.09 : helplessness

Last night, while I rode home on my bicycle in the wet, I encountered a girl cryiiiiiiiiiiiing hysterically into her cel phone.

She stumbled across the street, still sobbing, kinda like a child. I passed her and she began to scream. I couldn’t hear what she said, but I got a bad feeling about it. An ending relationship, a catastrophic end.

And I remembered a lot of the strange social situations I’ve put myself in, at the catastrophic endings of former relationships. Breaking down in a sushi restaurant. Lying naked on chilly tile. Watching him get off the bus.

I was very, very sad for her. Her world was cracking under the power of her reaction.

Later on, me and my roommate talked about how some of the women she knows live off of men, and I got a similar feeling.

May I never be that kind of helpless again!

(on a personal note today : well. this is all pretty personal.)

11.04 : 8 minutes of yes mockup

Artist’s Statement

A disturbing thread I’ve noticed in the people around me (including myself, at times!) is the tendency to cut off from experiences; to say ‘no’ as a defense mechanism, to preempt pain. If we, as people, as human beings, as art students, as concentrations of energy, as lucky fucking bastards, refuse to get excited, or involved, or engaged in the situations and people around us, it is we, as immovable stone objects, that suffer. We have so much; we still get bored. We are so lucky; we still meet what comes our way with indifference, or, worse yet, refusal.

8 minutes of yes is about the joy of permission, of letting situations unfold themselves, despite factors of comfort level or time. Saying ‘yes’ to even the smallest places where a ‘no’ might appear can positively transform anyone’s life.

The piece consists of two parts: its initial larger-than-life stop sign element, installed here, and a performance element, consisting of the vocal performance of a long poem I’m developing, and the obliteration of the word ‘no’ through the use of ‘yes’ stickers, as below.

11.03 : mystery

Mystery is another piece about female representation in the bible, something that I seem to be interested in; this was done as a self-portrait for Advanced Sound Studio with Dennis Burke (who’s totally badass; I’d recommend his class if you can stomach your mornings well).

I’m really interested in the word harlot, perhaps as reclamation? I’m also interested in the two faces of women as seen by the bible: the whore, or the saint!

I pick both!

11.03 : the apt song

the apt song came about as the sound to an video installation piece I did last year, about the loneliness of living in an urban environment (I was living downtown in a huge highrise) … I was only marginally compelled by the visuals, but found that the sound was so visceral and representative of the strange urban landscape that I kept the sound and scrapped the visuals. Neat, huh? Getting away from the tyranny of the eye. I think it’s a good move.

Listen.