If representational Modernism, as Linda Nochlin suggests, was constructed out of a sense of loss associated with the fragmented bodies of antiquity (Nochlin 8), the Postmodern is constructed out of the urge to gain from the fragmented bodies of the present. Fragmentation within the paradigm of Postmodernism no longer operates on a sense of lack →
The 7a*11d collective, also known as Gale Allen, Annie Onyi Cheung, Shannon Cochrane, Paul Couillard, Jess Dobkin, Adam Herst, Johanna Householder, and Tanya Mars, are descending upon Toronto for the eighth time with the biennial 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art. With 30 local and international performance artists in tow, from October 21st to October →
Recent performance art in Toronto often favours heteronomous platitudes rather than tackling lofty political subjects. If art can still be viewed as means to accessing truth, performance artists must direct their often jarringly absurd practices at those who enable and subsequently disable the art community from thriving. For those readers who, perhaps, have never tested →
We had quite a bit of trouble categorizing this review of The Shapes of Thought by The Einstein’s Brain Project, a joint venture between two Calgary artists, Alan Dunning and Paul Woodrow, and Morley Hollenberg, a professor in the Department of Physiology & Pharmacology at the University of Calgary. The project straddles the lines between →
Mortal Coil Performance Society | Photo by Curran Folkers “Three stilt-walking equine women in white, red and black emerge from nowhere. Amidst fluttering manes and floating silk draperies, the crowd is transported to a world between worlds.” Artist Statement | Mortal Coil Performance Society Oddly enough, experiencing Mortial Coil Performance Society’s Horse Women is exactly →
“The +15 is the term for a network of indoor Calgary walkways that allow downtown workers to commute from building to building sheltered from the weather. Ghost is a 22-second looped video shot in the +15 at a location where The Glenbow Museum is connected by a bridge to the EPCOR Centre for the Performing →
Since I first laid my hands on their initial release in 2009, baffled by the logistics of perfect binding books by hand, I’ve been intrigued by the spirit of the Ferno House micro-press. Comprised of Spencer Gordon, Matt (The Door) Laporte and Arnaud Brassard, Ferno House is a fledgling press in Toronto that has taken →
Photo by Matthew Filipowich // Sitting at the counter at Zoots Cafe on Dundas West, recorder running, I’m mystified by how vividly Pelee Island emerges in my mind; a small, isolated, forgotten place, low buildings and open land, log cabins and Victorian homes, trading posts filled with teacups. I lean my head on my hand, →
Cannibals clamoring in hordes throughout Ontario, snapping necks with confused slackened jaws, repeating short strings of language that drip off their rotting lips as slowly as the congealed blood of their victims. A crazed man in a car with a crying child, a stroke victim, a news broadcaster, a community, a province entirely helpless as →
Despite being a relative misnomer, the term Can lit does have its loose parameters, at least as far as public perception is concerned. Open spaces. Prairies. Cold. Boring. Pastoral shit. Where and how this odd reputation came to be (I’ll sidestep the obvious reference) is unclear, but for small-press kids, lit-bums and art-losers, there is →
When Latour was first recommended to me, it was under the guise of his being an anti-postmodernist. Preying on my open-mindedness, some of my pomophobe friends so very often try to deter me from my postructuralist leanings, or at least try to get me to acknowledge the relative truth of contrarians. Of course, once delving →
At the outset of my thesis research this year, my exposure to Linda Hutcheon’s concept of historiographic metafiction really made me feel as though I would never ever come across a more shamelessly coined term of absolute emptiness. I know, I know, this column has already, in its title, implicated Linda Hutcheon as a scholar →
The Book is not dead, nor can it die. The future of the book is its continuous present, its ability to change, adapt, expand, and move with the people who sustain it, the communities who foster it, the lovers of literature. The book is not dead, nor can you place this lack of creative vision →
Our good friend Shakespeare asserted that “All the world’s a stage”, but now in the age of the technological reproducibility of art and everyday life, what about the virtual world? This is exactly the domain of The Builder’s Association. Founded in 1994 with the aim of using “the richness of new and old tools to →
Opera on Steel Bananas? Really? I know, opera isn’t something that independent artists in Canada often consider within their realm of influence. Powdered wigs, haughty Italian vocals, fat ladies, and the inevitable presence of the pretense-ridden bourgeois? Our beloved Richard Huelsenbeck is turning in his grave as I write this. Opera, stereotypically, is the antithesis →
As a lover of contemporary cultural theory, I’ve made myself entirely incapable of functioning properly as a well-oiled cog in the system. Don’t get me wrong, I’m just as much of a cog as everyone else, with my Facebook profile and airborne seat in the Twittersphere. Hell, I run a webzine for god’s sake. I →
I really wish I could have made it out to more of the HOT DOCS film festival. I managed to make it out to only one night of the Toronto Jewish Film Fest last month, and on my way out of the Q & A with the Director of Zrubavel, I was sure to tuck →
“How did froth-head and barm evolve clouds overcast with winter’s brume, moulding Man to primordial word-slime. Man the word-mime, jellied in woolpacks – gummed in hazes, scuds. Man the glue, cooked egg-white of hoots and cuckoo calls.” ///Meredith Quartermain: Matter I love Bookthug, not only because their catalog absolutely rocks, but because they’ve introduced me →
Born and raised in the GTA, I’m a public transit kid. I take it everywhere. Even when I moved out to the suburbs for the bulk of my childhood, my Mom didn’t have a car and I shelled out my $2.25 daily to ride the godawful Mississauga transit to high school. When I turned sixteen, →
Curated by Emese Varga with the intent of bringing “contemporary Canadian artists and a composer together under one roof to juxtapose perspectives and expressions of what music/sound is to them”, Permeate features visual artists Katie Pretti, Scott Everingham, Amanda Clyne, Ezra Gray, Margaret Nieradka, Sarah Fardon-Choi and Christopher Wong, all inspired by the intersection of →