by Simone Keiran

Five separate stories are woven into cohesive and compelling drama in David van Belle and Eric Rose’s Ghost River Theatre production, The Highest Step in the World.

Captain Joseph Kittinger

The main story centers around a very literal interpretation of the question, “What do you do when you can’t go back down the same way you came up?” — by examining what it may have taken from American air force pilot and war veteran, Captain Joseph Kittinger, to jump off the Excelsior III flight balloon on August 16, 1960, from 102,800 feet (31.3 kms) in the upper stratosphere, and free-fall for four and a half minutes, reaching supersonic speeds of 614 mph (988 km/h) — a feat which has not yet been equaled.

The play provides a frank discussion of the ‘hostile skies’ which fliers face in the upper stratosphere; the effects on the physical body; the risks which test pilots and astronauts have taken; and the tolls they have paid in injuries, experience and wisdom. It describes how technology evolved and where it fell short. The opening scene is a gripping narrative which re-creates the last moments of the Space Shuttle Challenger, and correlates it Kittinger’s experimental parachute feat.

The Highest Step in the World also segues into:

• the story of Vesna Vulovic, the Serbian former flight attendant who plummeted 10,160 metres (33,330 ft) without a parachute when a bomb went off inside her plane;

• a fanciful re-staging of Ovid’s Icarus and Daedalus;

• a personal anecdote about the end of a marriage.

Through these accounts, the play the play’s creators, Eric Rose and David van Belle, bring its audience inward to contemplate what it took from Kittinger to make that jump in terms of:

• the figurative understanding of ‘spine’ or strength and the willingness to risk one’s life;
• ‘nerves of steel’ or courage;
• and the ‘heart’ or trust in one’s purpose, team, and possibly fate itself.

Through that process of introspection, it is only a matter of one step for each audience member to face their own need for spine, nerves and heart, or to look frankly at physical risks, supportive people, and the consequences of actions. Such a very small step ….

The Highest Step in the World brings all of these characters, Kittinger, Vulovic, both Icarus and Daedalus to life through David van Belle’s tour de force solo acting performance.

One nit about van Belle’s acting is the over-exaggeration and, in fact, the overuse of the Russian accent. Since, with the way that the script is laid out, there has to be a very clear demarcation between the characters — especially in the scenes set between Daedalus and Icarus, whom van Belle portrays as a beloved, but dissolute and foul-mouthed modern teenager — it is easy to understand why he interprets the vocal inflections in this way. But Greeks and Serbians don’t sound Russian, not even in the oddest Cold War Era daydreams! In the case of Daedalus, it’s a bit over-the-top — strange and a stretch, but not eye-watering since it’s a myth. In the case of Voluvic, however: Serbia — as part of the former Yugoslavian Republic — parted ways with the Soviet Union back during the times of Stalin, so a Russian accent is a blunder, no matter how anti-nationalistic and globally inclusive Voluvic’s personal views were.

Setting that aside, however, in addition to playing multiple characters with vastly different personalities, van Belle serves as the narrator — charging up tension with that data stream of facts and unifying all the disparate elements and bringing them home with personal anecdotes and reflections. He manages this because he’s got one helluva technical team backing him up.

The Highest Step in the World utilizes, both, stunts and multimedia projections as special effects. The set design and wardrobe appear to be a simple, blank, white canvas upon which 16mm video clips of archival footage and light effects may be projected, a ersatz tabula rasa to provide a symbolic Greek chorus of imagery in order to reflect the zeitgeist of the era. Footage of seagulls soaring, moonscapes, the earth from its upper atmosphere, even Cold War Era tract housing roll in the background. Some of the most riveting images are the projections of xrays, air force uniforms and cosmonaut suits directly onto van Belle. Audio tracks include the famous countdown to lift-off, newscasts about Sputnik, even the rumbling of the Challenger’s massive engines. Program notes for The Highest Step in the World mention that Anton de Groot runs about 500 sound, lighting and video cues through the 70-minute show, that Ben Chaisson and Court Brinsmead set up and ran the projectors, and Ami Farrow sourced the footage. The stagecraft also includes a Wonder of the Ancient World setting for the scenes of Daedalus and Icarus in captivity, hidden — evocatively — behind a ‘veil.’

A flying rig, designed by Adrian Young and Larissa Yanchak, allows for van Belle to perform some strenuous acrobatic stunts. He simulates every permutation of flight and falling from floating within a gravity-free environment, leaping through a low-gravity environment like Neil Armstrong on the surface of the moon, free-falling toward earth and floating with a parachute. It’s a vigorous and energetic performance.

Ghost River specializes in original work. They research and create the plays from scratch, workshop them with a creative and resourceful production team, and refine the spoken language with a good dramaturg, Vicki Stroich. The results pay off with hypnotic storytelling, interesting visuals and a longstanding sense of satisfaction when the show is finished.

The Highest Step in the World is showing at:

PUMPHOUSE THEATRE
2140 Pumphouse Avenue, SW; Calgary
(403) 263-0079

8:00 pm nightly, and 2:00 pm Saturday Matinees
until October 29th, 2011.

Go see it!

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Documentary, El Bulli: Cooking in Process;
Gereon Wetzel, Filmmaker.

by Simone Keiran

♫ A law was made a distant moon ago here:
♪ July and August cannot be too hot. ♫

Overlooking a half-moon cove called Cala Montjoi, near Roses, along Spain’s lush Costa Brava, there was once a restaurant open only six months of the year. They accepted reservations one single day out of the entire year and, yet, filled every available space. The white-washed adobe building with floor-to-ceiling windows floated cloud-like under towering arbutus on a cliff with stunning views of the warbly mermaid-filled Mediterranean.

♫ And there’s a legal limit to the snow here … ♪♫

For twenty-four years, it offered increasingly hybridized and Michelin-starred meals of 29-39-49-59 … courses, until it finally culminated in the final 39-course ensemble of highly specialized taste plates: foams, spheres and sands made of food; food transformed into non-food items like frozen mint lakes, tobacco-flavoured blackberry ice cigarettes, pea film; deconstructed dishes reassembled into their essential elements, including a martini that involved a chef squirting gin and vermouth from an atomizer into a mouth smeared with a half-masticated olive shaped-sphere of reconstructed olive paste. A whole chef, his entire faculties and training honed through years of experimentation, squirting, squirting, squirting, not to mention the teamwork required to mangle-ize all those olives, take out the pip, then somehow re-blorpify them into those special spheroidical sacs that resonated with its original olive shape.

The Chef de Grand High Poobah decreed that all food served therein henceforth should be declaréd magical.

♫ The winter is forbidden ’til December
♪ And exits March the second on the dot. ♫

It employed a young man full-time whose only apparent role involved running a leaf rake over pea gravel from one end of the compound to another. Raking, raking, raking. Back and forth and back and forth. When he could’ve spent his summer juicing sweet potatoes!

Gereon Wetzel, the filmmaker who made El Bulli: Cooking in Process, captures this Zen Monastic fervour so well.

♫ By order, summer lingers through September … ♪♫

With its high-definition focus and brilliant lighting, there is much that is The Hard, Clear Light of Day going on in this documentary.

It begins with a soft-focus dreamlike, slo-mo seqence at the end of the season, though, while countless chefs and sous-chefs and chefs-de-maitre and chefs-de-cuisine fuss and fret over itty-bitty morsels, sprinkling a dibby-dab here and wiping a dauby-dib there. I’m not gifted with that special spectrum of autism which allows me to quantify vast masses in one sweeping blink, but there must’ve been nearly a dozen hovering over each table, and there were three tables, not to mention the stoves, the refrigerators, the machine console banks, the pantries, the rafters ….

♫ The rain may never fall till after sundown.
♪ By eight, the morning fog must disappear. ♫

In film time, El Bulli is closing for the year — its sorceror’s apprentice stores of foamimajigs, spheroididgets, juicimagogs and pulvericizors wrapped in octo-layers of cling films and shelved, as Chef de Maitre, Ferran Adrià, and his team of Head Chefs scoot off to an atelier in Barcelona to conduct controlled* experiments on food for the next six months.

*If by ‘controlled’, one means ‘tasting what happens’ after Adrià drops, for example, a transparent pouch of sweet potato-flavoured goo encased in special Japanese medicinal paper into a glass of …’ I forget, maybe something blibbery, maybe tap water.

Wetzel’s focus is so sharp that, even though in this one scene Chef de Cuisine Albert Raurich never raises his fingers to his lips, you can actually see him gnaw straight through his manicure in anxiety as he reports to Adrià that — wurra! wurra! wurra! — carbonated water, instead of ordinary flat tap water, was accidentally poured into an oil and water cocktail. Oil and water, yes, because the other Chef de Cuisine, Oriol Castro, decreed that the oil felt so silky against the lips. Later in the season, a macadamia nut and some blackberry spheres are dropped in, probably because customers gave them The Look.

Wetzel homes in so acutely that, when Other Brother Darryl’s harddrive crashes and there is no third backup disc (as the second one is at the computer repair shop with the technician), instead of using the mere hard copies that were printed out on — gasp! — reams of paper, we watch as Adrià chews off the guy’s balls. Poor things shrivelled right there, fell off with a mystical plop and scampered away. (Not to worry, however, they were probably rounded back up, marinated in a vacuum bag of juiced calf cartilege, and served up with a tartare of street urchin.)

Watch as the El Bullistas take their early morning stroll through the market. The shot utilizes a longer-distance lens and microphone. This could’ve been deliberate, in order to let the documentary recording process remain discreet and the conversations candid, but I suspect it also kept the camera operator at a safe distance in case the grocers started flinging their food, like chimpanzee poo, in frustration.

Watch as the green-grocer is asked to bag up three grapes.

Three. You read it correctly.

“Okay, make it four.” Raurich concedes with a huff when the grocer gives him The Look.

Impudent chit, what was she thinking!

“And three green beans.”

What Wertzel’s camera did not capture is how, for the past ten years and in spite of charging each customer a flat-rate of €250 per sitting, El Bulli was not a financial success. It was only through book sales, that Ferran Adrià managed to keep his venture afloat. It closed its doors for good, this summer …

♫ If ever I would leave you, it wouldn’t be in summer.
♪♫ Seeing you in summer I never would go. ♪♫

… although El Bulli’s reincarnation as a “Creative Centre of Tapas” is presently in gestation.

Okay, okay, okay, so it would be a shabby, impoverished world indeed, if the success of all such ventures were to be measured by net dollars — even if the rest of us Shuvs and Zuuls would’ve had to shell out that €250 per sitting, regardless, and consider it a bargain!

And there was something about Ferran Adrià’s food that made so many people tingly in their tummies that it spawned a worldwide shift in cuisine.

He is taken so seriously and takes himself so seriously that he actually took the opportunity to dogpile onto his existential futility with a bunch of other chefs (René Redzepi, Michel Bras, Alex Atala, Gaston Acurio and Dan Barber) and give birth to a Chef’s Manifesto.

It included these eyepopping extracts:

“We dream of a future in which the chef is socially engaged, conscious of and responsible for his or her contribution to a just a sustainable society … through our cooking, our ethics and our aesthetics, we can contribute to the culture and identity of a people, a region, a country … we can also serve as an important bridge to other cultures … we all have a responsibility to know and protect nature.

— unleashed at a fat-cat G-9 Summit without the slightest trace of irony, in Lima, Peru, no less, renowned for its large population living at subsistence level.

♫ And could I leave you, running merrily through the snow?
♪♫ Or on a wintry evening, when you catch the fire’s glow? ♪♫

His defenders are so tightly wound, a firestorm of antagonism was ignited when Jonathan Jones, The Guardian’s art critic, wrote:

“In some banal way, it’s easy to say that food is art; that clothes are art. What’s more interesting is to ask whether they can be serious art: can they move us; change the way we see the world; make us think about profound matters?”

Jones’ conclusion was that cuisine and couture are carnal, not sharing that abstracted mental sphere that great art occupies.

One commenter declared that food is more like literature than art, since it:

“has a narrative, sometimes embodied in a menu, but often described in the interplay of the various elements on a plate … The way salt and sweet, cold and hot, texture and form play on a plate could be analogous to light and shade in painting, tone and register in writing, or in the right hands, even the same as those things. After all, food has a register too, and food is every bit as visual as art.”

D’oh!

Even so, it still came down to aesthetics, an imperative that has been removed from art since Dadaism. If art doesn’t look good, it can still serve its purpose well enough. If food doesn’t taste good, people won’t swallow it, won’t go back to the restaurant, won’t shell out the big bucks, won’t buy the books. It’s a split hair of a definition, but one which still defines.

And so what! Why does cuisine have to be art? Why can’t it it be appreciated and valued on its own terms? Where is this false hierarchy of importance coming from? And why is this even an issue?

♫ In short, there’s simply not a more congenial spot
♪ For happily-ever-aftering than here … ♪♫

So, what about a documentary film about food? Does that qualify as art?

Oddly enough, it does. Wetzel’s film uses a straightforward chronological and linear style of exposition and edits in key places to put many interesting thought-provoking points across without stating them outright. Through his lens we see how a highly dedicated staff interacts, even when stretched to the limits of their patience, without caving over personality issues; how the scientific process of experimentation and observation can produce chemical results which are appear magical to the uninitiated; how an abundance of originality, creativity and dedication can create a new style of cookery and inspire chefs around the world; and even how this can be stretched out into lengths suffice to recall the Roman Empire or the Sun King’s Reign in all their ridiculous excess.

It’s a meta, meta, meta, meta, meta world!

Badump-bump!♪♫

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Calgary International Film Festival’s Presentation of
A Halába Tábcoltatott Leány (The Maiden Danced to Death)

Laszlo Zsolt (Gyula Udvaros) and Bea Melkvi (Mari) on the Banks of the Danube.

Hungarian and Slovenian folk dances are so intricate, it takes years of practice to acquire the necessary precision and dexterity before the dancers can proceed at the breakneck speed of a professional company. One misstep, one forgotten element of movement, one careless moment of distraction and a Rube Goldberg’s progression of disasters unspins. When everything goes perfectly, however, the dance leaves viewers breathless, pulses racing like the dancers themselves.

The Maiden Danced to Death, a labyrinthine tale of treachery, betrayal and revenge, written and directed by Endre Hules, is like one of those folk dances. Each detail has been placed so precisely within the story’s structure that revelations unfold with breathtaking élan — always fresh, startling, unpredictable and unveiled at the moment of greatest impact. It takes a wild spin across two of the most beautiful cities in the world, Budapest and Montréal.

Twenty years after Pista Udvaros, played by Endre Hules, has been exiled from communist Hungary, he returns with a purpose. From the moment he sets foot outside the arrivals terminal under overcast skies and commandeers a taxi from under the people who hailed it, his character is established. Pista means ‘crowned’ and Vilmos Zsigmond’s cinematography takes us with him over Budapest’s famous ironwork bridge and up the cliff face, where palaces, the great Cathedral and grand hotels show Udvaros overseeing vast tracts of the Danube and its surrounding flatlands — a man of far-reaching vision, who knows exactly what he wants and allows nothing to impede him.

A jubilant reunion takes place with Udvaros’ younger brother, Gyula, and sister-in-law and one-time lover, Mari, in their dance studio, a place which has fallen on hard times now that the communists are no longer in power. The sedate colour pallette and muted lighting reinforce a sense of hidebound tradition. Even the signature company dance, The Maiden Danced to Death, has not changed since Pista left.

Bea Melkvi (Mari) and Steve Court (Endres Hules) engaged in an elaborate chess match.

The brothers literally dance Mari through the city streets to Gyulas’ apartment. There, they learn that Udvaros promotes folk dance companies in the west through the Steve Court Company. He is ‘Steve Court’, an impressario famous enough that they’ve even heard of him in Eastern Europe — and have sent letters asking for representation, although no word of a more personal connection has ever reached them.

Court is a cypher. Is the elder of the two brother’s return a matter of celebration, or a warning of darker business to come? And what has happened to the family he left behind in Canada?

A phone call, to the senior Gyula Udvaros, their father — forced upon Court by his brother and faced with resignation and acceptance — results in an exchange of bitter words, as both brothers seemed to know it must. These personal relationships are political, and the end of the old regime leads to a new power balance, reflected in Hungary and the Balkans.

Ancient Fertility Rituals and Blood Sport

As the movie’s title indicates, folk dances contain symbols for the social orders of their creators, and may include or reflect darker, more barbaric practices stretching back through the past to tribal origins. Just as Stravinsky’s Rites of Spring addressed the oft-times brutal rituals of the ancient Slavs, the Honvéd Dance Company’s Eastern European folk dances also depict a similar element of blood sport.

The company’s lead female dancer must pass her ‘crown of flowers’ to a younger woman just as they are on the cusp of international success. Marriages serve up aridity and deceit, meeting vulnerability with hostility and bitter humiliation. Children are alienated from parents. A father is publicly beaten in front of his daughter in a scene which pivots so much between ossified tradition and liberty, the viewer must choose where their own sympathies lie and what the cost of those beliefs entail in very graphic terms: who is led off in chains? Who is set free?

“The Maiden Danced to Death” referred to a punitive measure taken against a young woman who offended the strict and narrow social codes of farming communities and villages. A girl, deemed too flirtatious and seductive, is culled from society by those she rejects. She is danced from young man to young man until she is spun out of their circle and ostracized, left exhausted, without protection, as good as dead.

Shortly into the film, we learn the full cost of Court’s exile, but until the climax, we never learn the identity of the ‘maiden’ in this particular dance; every principle and most of the supporting actors have their moment of public excoriation. We only know for certain that the dance unfolds irresistably before us.

When the brothers ask why girls allowed themselves to be subjected to this sport, Mari explains, “What could they do? When you’re asked to dance, you dance.”

Smoke and Mirrors

The techniques of mirrors and smokescreens which Hules uses to misdirect his viewers recall the mechanical wonders and Vaudevillian stagecraft imported from Prague, Budapest and those great Medieaval capitals. Mirroring starts in earnest as we track Court back to the mountain over Montréal. The city is less stately and more modern, but the scene stretching beneath him is almost identical to the landscape he surveyed from the cliffs over Budapest. Emergency sirens provide an omen of what he awaits, both in his marriage and the company he founded.

Much is made of pacts with the devil, an archaic trope favoured by Eastern Europe pre-dating Goethe. Binding agreements, Machiavellan negotiations, masked identities — both onstage and behind the scenes — feature throughout the film, and it seems as though the plot will unfold with the usual cost of Faustian bargain, but this underestimates Hules’ skill as a storyteller. The true role of the contract is so unexpected as to leave the viewer nonplussed.

When Court tells Mari, “I’m just a ghost,” it seems as though ruin and desolation are inevitable, but Hules’ pulls out another astonishing surprise — one which shows the vibrancy and relevance of folk dancing to our modern age, just when it seems the craft no longer reflects our modern world.

From the Calgary International Film Festival, the film now proceeds to France.

A Halába Tábcoltatott Leány (The Maiden Danced to Death)

A joint Hungarian, Canadian and Slovenian production written and directed by Endre Hules.

Photography: Vilmos Zsigmond

Cast :
Endre Hules: Pista Udvaros/Steve Court
Bea Melkvi: Mari Udvaros
Laszlo Zsolt: Gyula Udvaros, Jr.
Boris Cavazza: Gyula Udvaros, Sr.
Deborah Kara Unger: Lynne Court
Stephen McHattie: Ernie Hatchet

-30-

By Simone Keiran and Aidie Keiran-Arney

A collective theme runs through the short movies crafted by young filmmakers for the 2011 Youth by Youth Film Competition, an annual feature of the Calgary International Film Festival: the problems they perceive are apocalyptic in nature, overwhelming in scope, and hopes are fragile and tenuous. Even at the elementary school level, they are anxious to reach out and overcome the experience of alienation between people. The most innocuous and lighthearted of the films had philosophical inquiry at their core, not to mention crushing social critiques and violent explosions. These young filmmakers have wrestled and wrangled the monstrous scale of these problems into scenes and stories small enough to fit through the camera iris. The results were surprisingly elegant  and well-realized.

The choices of storytelling techniques and imagery used enough creative and intelligent variety that Cathy McKee, director of the Reel Fun Film Festival and a judge, mentioned it right off the hop: “Everyone always says that making a choice is difficult, but this year, we really mean it! It was so hard to choose, we decided to include some honourable mentions.”

Young Filmmakers Highlight the Heavy Lifting Ahead for Today’s Youth

In Integral Theory, Nannak Sobhil, writer and co-director, and Jasha Makan, co-director, combine the theme of alienation and the investigation of what constitutes an alternate dimension, both, into a very cerebral exploration of consciousness itself.

The disaffection, boredom and loneliness which Iklan Kuan’s lead character experiences prompt him to undertake dangerous risks in order to re-create, in physical form, the ‘Fourth Dimensional’ state of disconnection he perceives in his friends when they sign off from the ‘Second Dimensional’ virtual reality. The use of his physical body as the guinea pig in an experiment involving comas resonates closely with David Gilbert’s 2004 novel, The Normals, where another over-educated and alienated young man strives to overcome his existential futility and unemployment problems, in that particular story by hiring his body out to test experimental-phased pharmaceuticals. Sobhil and Makan quietly dispatch what, at first, seemed to be an open-ended resolution with a shocking and provocative declaration.

Along a similar vein, there was the lesser realized speculative sci-fi piece, The Scissors about a special pair of the things capable of snipping wormholes between dimensions. The visuals wavered between a few oddly framed images to highly saturated scenes and original illustrations. I wasn’t sure if the director intended for the lead character to be an unreliable narrator by the certain inconsistencies which arose between his actions and his sermons, but that was the final effect. Although, at times, the delivery bordered on pedantic, the filmmaker approached the subject with imagination and flair.

This was followed by the sombre post-apocalyptic prose-poem, The Plant. A traveller in tattered clothing wanders through sepia-tinted badlands, struggling to foster hope in the washed-out landscape. The extreme contrasts of light and dark values and shimmering, solarized edges say more about life in extremis, where light is too brilliant and harsh, and darkness too solid. The camera work in this piece was breathtaking.

Black Snow, about the 1917 Halifax Harbour explosion, was a three-part composite documentary, that involved a full classroom of cast and crew: the first scenes being re-enactments from the collision, which set off the catastrophic chain of events; the second involved a news report style recitation of facts, interspersed with images of the modern-day harbour, the park, schools and artifacts; the third involved a musical ballad performed by a Halifax elementary school student superimposed over period clips and stills which evoked the history of the region. The various pieces linked modern and early 20th century Halifax together, to show how much the city was shaped by this event. This was the piece that won the elementary level prize.

Alienation returned in the claymation short, Be the Hero; a plea to save our oceans from impending environmental apocalypse was at the heart of another stop-motion piece, Destruction of Construction; and a fable about the folly of pride was the key of the classical drawing-based re-telling of Hans Christian Anderson’s The Fir Tree. Only the very clever and amusing stop-motion animated object short, Epic Car Race, made a complete dash away from pedagogy and angst.

A 15-Year-Old Weighs In

Since this special feature was about youth, I brought my teenager, Aidie, along to gain her feedback and discuss how the shows affected her.

“I found all the shows were very well done. My favourite was Rock, Paper, Scissors.”

This was the senior high level prizewinning entry — an amusing stop-motion cautionary tale about a sore loser and the abuse of seemingly absolute power — by Sarah Clark, with some assistance from her brother, Chad.

“I liked it because of the creativity and simplicity. The techniques which went into making the film brought out a quality which was very near perfect.”

Nathan Pronyshyn, Stage Director for Vertigo “Y” Theatre and judge, also praised Clark’s seamless animation and concise, elegant storytelling.

“I absolutely loved The Lonely Rock,” Aidie continued. “It was utterly cute, a simple story about a rock who can find no one like him. It was slightly emotional and had a lot of truth to it. In a way, we are all ‘Lonely Rocks’.”

The original Lonely Rock in question has been removed from its element, and its quest through foreign terrain for companionship of a particular sort —that of others like itself — recalls the vulnerability of the baby bird in P. D. Eastman’s classic preschool storybook, “Are You My Mother?”

Aidie’s final choice was the judge’s elementary school level honourable mention The Birthday in which construction paper cut-out explosions and clouds of smoke brilliantly conveyed a cat’s sentiments about the things it hates, “I had no idea what the creator was trying to say, but the colours were so bright and the randomness of the plot made everyone laugh.”

When it came to the sobering content, “All of the short films had a strong moral theme or warning statement about what could happen. I found that the messages were subtle enough that it didn’t feel as though the filmmakers were scolding us, or acting parental and telling us what to do. They raised a lot of interesting points for discussion.

“For my part, I prefered when information was not spoken in a flat monotone, as I lost focus and drifted off, and I also prefered the bright coloured images over the sepia tones and old photos.”

The Youth by Youth Film Competition has been an important component of the Calgary International Film Festival for several years. Films accepted into this portion of the festival must be between thirty seconds and seven minutes in length, and directed by filmmakers who are between nine and eighteen years in age. The content may be fiction or nonfiction. The competition provides an excellent venue to see the talent which is emerging in young filmmakers these days, as well as a chance to see what’s on their minds.

“When I was a kid, my friends and I would shoot films, but we had no place to show them, except a few sketchy sites,” said Andrew Phung, the show’s MC and program director. “Now, these kids are building themselves major audiences on youtube and other sites, and it shows in their films. It’s a whole new world for filmmakers.”

-30-

The University College of London recently undertook an experiment where subjects were given brain scans while they viewed a 10-second interval progression of projected images of paintings by Old Masters such as Constable, Bosch and Ingres.

The results showed that blood flow to the medial orbitofrontal cortex, the part of the brain associated with pleasure and desire, increased by ten percent — a reaction similar to falling in love.

The subjects of the experiment were chosen for their lack of arts education and exposure so that their responses would be similarly unschooled and unaffected by current fashion or critical discourse. There was no variation in response between images of landscapes, portraits, still life paintings, or abstract works. Paintings which were considered more aesthetically challenging, however — images by artists such as Bosch, Damier or Massys, in which the cerebral message of the work overruled the sensual content or the beauty of its visual presentation — generated less of a response which signified pleasure.

The scientist who oversaw this experiment was Professor Semir Zeki, chair of Neuroaesthetics at the University College of London. The experiment is up for peer review and is expected to be published in a scientific journal.

This story was originally reported by Robert Mendick, a senior staff reporter at The Telegraph, London, England, on 08 May, 2011, who also took the opportunity to interview such expert art educators such as Dr Stephen Deuchar, director of the Art Fund, a philanthropic group which purchases works for museums and public exhibition venues, with an eye to the effects of funding cuts to various arts programs by the current Conservative government in Britain.

In the provinces of Alberta and British Columbia, similar funding cuts are at issue, and studies like these may help to generate sympathy for continued support of public arts financing.

In Calgary, concerned parents and students have formed the organization Save Our Fine Arts (SOFA) in order to deal with the issue of consistent funding to fine arts education in the public education system. The question is whether studies like this will help to garner increased support from parents who Hon. Dave Hancock, MLA Education, has emphasized are the ones who must lobby for allocation of resources toward fine arts in the Public and Catholic school systems.

The problem with the study is that it is so limited in its scope, in that it used the works of only thirty painters. Also, the mandate of fine arts has expanded far beyond the requirement that it be of aesthetic pleasure to the beholder. Since the advent of Modernism, beauty can stand in a place of secondary relevance to a work’s value and may not factor into the appreciation of the work at all. Artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Jean-Claude Riopelle, John Cage and Francis Bacon have challenged the notion of what constitutes a work of art and what constitutes beauty, so that now, in the Postmodern/Contemporary era, a work can be entirely conceptual or ephemeral.

Zeki’s study confirms what arts educators have always known, that beautiful images generate pleasure and a sense of well being. The study could have gone so much further. It would’ve been interesting to evaluate the results from expanding the experiment in these ways:

1. Using artists, themselves, as well as those who work in related fields such as art criticism, art education and art therapy.
2. Utilizing works from the Modern, Postmodern and Contemporary fields of art in which aesthetic response is not the primary consideration — for example, Nicole Dextras’ Ice Typography.
3. Providing straightforward point-and-shoot photographs of scenes similar to those depicted in the paintings as a contrast to the actual work of art; ie., is it the aesthetic beauty of the image which provides the heightened response, or the artistry?

It would be especially interesting to see if there is a similar physiological response when people have taken the time to educate themselves in art, or if the effects are more subtle.

— 30 —

Crossposted to CalgaryVisualArts.com

Presented by the Writers Guild of Alberta and the University of Calgary Creative Writing Research Group,
Upstairs at Pages Bookstore on Kensington,
March 15, 2010.

This informative panel was presented by Samantha Warwick, with the Writers Guild of Alberta, who laid out the format and introduced the four speakers, professionals associated in one capacity or another with writing, publishing, taxation or legal issues.  Each spoke for fifteen minutes, after which a Question and Answer session was opened to the audience.

The speakers were:

• Brian Brennan, journalist, author and area representative of the Writers Union of Canada, who encapsulated the recent Google settlement in the United States, and its implications for authors in Canada.
• Sarah Ivany, publisher of Freehand Books who explained the transition process of paper publications to electronic books, and the possibilities which open up in that process.
• Lawyer, David de Vlieger, from Code Hunter LLP who addressed the issue of copyright and electronic publishing.
• Freelance writer and accountant, Toby Welch, who provided tax tips.

Brian Brennan and The Google Settlement:

Essentially, about 8 – 10 years ago, and in accordance with its mandate of “organizing the world’s information to make it universally accessible” Google began the project of digitizing (read: scanning) out-of-print books. It entered into partnership with a group of businesses with vested interests in not paying royalties for previously published out-of-print materials, and which included The New York Public Library and the Bodleian Library in Oxford. When people typed in the appropriate author/subject/title, the page which matched the search criteria would show up in an online frame.

Google did this without permission from the owners of the copyrights. When a group of writers and publishers realized that Google’s actions constituted copyright violation on such a massive scale, they launched a civil suit in US jurisdiction. Google’s arguments against their suit were that the scans fell along the lines of “Fair Use.”

What constitutes fair use varies between jurisdictions. Some places have laws where writers may freely cite a  portion of a published or recorded work for academic purposes or for professional purposes. Others require the payment of royalties. In Canada, for example, libraries are required to pay royalties to authors for the use of their materials, but not so in the States. There are differences in the length of private vs. public domain.

The court battle between the coalition of authors and publishers and Google went on for about 18 months, after which Google said, “Look, the only people making money here are the lawyers. Can’t we settle this out of court?”

The coalition of authors in question concurred. They hammered out a 325-page settlement and agreed upon a $125M US figure. One-third was to go to the writers, one-third to Google registry, one-third to the lawyers. There was an opt-in/opt-out clause. If an author opted out, Google would have to remove that work. If the writer decided to opt-in, the disbursement worked out to about $60 US for each work, plus Google offers 63 per cent royalties on all future sales of material from its registry — a darned sight better than most booksellers and distributors. On the other hand, the writer has signed away international rights in perpetuity, because once an article is published online, there are almost no restrictions over access to that material, anywhere and anytime.

The deadline for the opt-in/opt-out was in January.

Since Google intends to continue scanning ‘out-of-print’ works, which extends the scope of their activities to a larger field of writers, and from the past into the future, the matter has come up in US court again — Justice, Danny Chin, presiding. He heard the initial arguments on February 18, 2010, and commented that he was going to take ‘more than a day to decide’. There were quite a lot more parties arguing against the settlement than for it.

Justice Chin also asked Google why it didn’t just try to ask writers for permission first. Google pointed out that Microsoft had already tried this and it didn’t work. It took money, or the possibility of a settlement to bring writers forward.

Some of the writers at the roundtable were of the opinion that the Google settlement wasn’t that bad for them. Once books are out-of-print, writers usually haven’t got a prayer of re-publishing them again in the future, so this extends the opportunity of making a few extra pennies, but some areas of concern for the Writers Union of Canada are:

• Libraries in the US will have unrestricted access to Canadian publications without paying royalties.
• There is no indication of what measures will be taken to find rights holders in the future, and what will be done if they cannot be contacted.
• There is no indication of what percentage of the work will be scanned and made available. In Canada, a critic or reviewer may only use a small percentage of a recorded or published text without paraphrasing for the purposes of elucidating or substantiating their views. The exact amount is not spelled out in terms of percentages or numbers of sentences, but the intention of the law is that the overwhelming brunt of the ideas and exposition must come from the writer of the article, not the quoted material.

“We have been following this issue very closely,” Brennan explained, and encouraged writers to read up on the latest information posted at the Union’s website.

Sarah Ivany and E-Book Publication

Ivany was quite clear that E-books are no longer a conceptual issue for writers and publishers. They already exist in the form of Amazon Kindle readers and similar applications,  or in downloadable pdfs, so publishing must take their existence seriously and rise to meet the challenges this new media presents. E-books are changing the manner in which publishers and writers approach publication.  At the moment, her frustration as an editor is at how clunky the formating applications are. Poetry is particularly difficult to format, for example, with its irregular line structure and phrasing.  Since many small independent publishers take a great deal of pride in the production values of the finished book, these media platforms do not meet their requirements.

Writers should probably be looking at forming multimedia collectives, since the very concepts of books are shifting which the advent of electronic media to a multi-sensory experience.  In other words, future books could include sound effects, sound tracks, graphics and artwork, snippets of film-style storytelling. They wouldn’t necessarily resemble text on a page. The lines between art genres could become blurred, and ‘lone wolf’ writers may have to join artistic cooperatives.

Ivany then proceeded to describe the labour pains of this new format. Amazon, when it launched Kindle, failed to realize the full costs which publishers have to carry in order to bring books to market. Essentially, it removed the onus from publishing houses of having to print, store, ship or sell the books, but there are other hidden costs incurred with editing, proofreading, factchecking, research, design/formating, marketing/ promotions and administration, and that’s before the issue of the writer’s advance and royalties. Amazon’s original pricing did not take these issues into account, and the original price structure was completely unrealistic from the point of view of publishers, especially small-scale publishers.

Then there are issues of rights, national vs. international distribution, policing of IP addresses [Editor's note: "Even now, countries like Switzerland are stepping forward to protect their national publication industries by levying tariffs."] Ivany suggested that writers who negotiate their contracts should now insist upon world rights since distribution can no longer be managed over the internet as easily as with solid physical objects like books. So, for example, if a writer publishes an e-book nationally in Canada, and then tries to negotiate international publication later with an American house, the Americans will simply point out that their market, the readers in the US who would buy the book, can easily pick up from Canadian sites and sources at the lesser cost — hence there is no point to them paying for those rights. On the other hand, electronic publication extends the possibility for readership far beyond the traditional boundaries.

E-books also change the concept of out-of-print, which presents a thorny issue. What does this entail? Once published in digital form, the material is available forever. How are royalties to be collected or disbursed?

Lastly, what sort of culture do writers want to cultivate in their communities? Independent venues like bookstores and publishers have been part of cultivating supportive environments for writers in the past on a smaller community level.

The thoughts which Ivany provoked circulate around the age-old question of how writers are to make a living wage when there is an online culture of entitlement which revolves around content consumption for free. At this stage, it appears as though they are enabled by online media platforms like blogs and bandwidth providers and search engines to cannibalize writers and other artists, and yet content providers have little other recourse for audiences.

-30-

Western Art, Colonial Portrayals of First Nations Peoples and “The European Male.”
The Triumph of Mischief touring exhibition at Glenbow Museum
The Treason of Images solo show at Trépanier Baer Gallery

Canadian Cree Kent Monkman’s paintings, performance art, super-8 movies, antique tintypes, multimedia presentations, & mixed media installations poke fun at depictions of First Nations People in art and movies from the 19^th century right up to modern times.

"Théâtre de Cristal" by Kent Monkman; multimedia tipi installation, with beads, fishing line, simulated buffalo hide, digitalized super-8 movie, "Group of Seven Inches", and video, "Robin's Hood", 2006. The Triumph of Mischief touring exhibition at the Glenbow Museum, Calgary, AB, Canada, until April 25th, 2010.

George Catlin, Paul Kane and Cornelius Krieghoff were a few of many historical western artists who presented a view of North American First Nations’ peoples skewed by colonialism and self-importance, which Kent Monkman punctures with sharply pointed paintbrushes and sharply painted fingernails.

This prolific Canadian Cree artist has produced a staggering volume and variety of satirical work which focuses scrutiny on cultural filters, based around the performance persona (inspired by popstar Cher) of a very flamboyant and gay drag queen called, “Miss Chief Eagle Testickle” — a play on the words “mischief” and “egotistical”. In her maribou and dyed feather war bonnet, beaded and open-toed stiletto mocassins, dreamcatcher bra/breastplate and Louis Vuitton quiver, Miss Chief swans over Monkman’s visual narratives that turn the traditional white view of North American history bottom over bone china teakettle — literally.

Installation of Costume made for Miss Chief Eagle Testickle: Top Left: Louis Vuitton Quiver and Arrows, Top Right: Dreamcatcher Bra, Center: Raccoon Jockstrap, Bottom: Beaded Mocassins by Kent Monkman, 2006-07.

Monkman created an elaborate costume for Miss Chief which embrace Cher’s (Bob Mackie’s) playful contemporary aesthetic homage to American Indian fashions, like the aforementioned Louis Vuitton quiver and arrows. He even appropriated the Louis Vuitton brand to “refer to social hierarchies and monopolies of class, power and wealth, established by trade among Europeans and Native Americans. “

While Kent Monkman wants viewers to laugh at his interpretation, presented as a series of lighthearted and gay frolics, it is with the underlying awareness that the original source material — the paintings, movies, diaries and photographs compiled of and about North American First Nations ever since the late 18th century — revealed a worldview that was not funny at all.

“I have for many years contemplated the race of the white man who are now spread over their trackless forests and boundless prairies and I have flown to their rescue, that phoenix like, they may rise from the stain on a painter’s palette, and live forever with me on my canvas.”

— Miss Chief Eagle Testickle’s soliloquy from Robin’s Hood.

Staggering Scope of Materials, Media and Presentation Platforms

In addition to mixed media installations, public performance pieces, and multimedia presentations, the variety of work which Monkman crafts include:

• Painstakingly detailed acrylic paintings which appropriate images from famous 18th and 19th-century European Neo-Classic and Romantic works

"The Triumph of Mischief" by Kent Monkman, 2007; acrylic on canvas, 84” x 132” . Monkman describes this painting as "The Moral Landscape", borrowing scene constructions from Bosch's "The Garden of Earthly Delights" and Botticelli's Primavera, but depicting the mishmash of collision between Native and Euro-centric spiritual traditions. Glenbow curator, Ben Portis writes: "Miss Chief strolls calmly through a swarm of iconography gone amok. Animal spirits from Western and Aboriginal myths collide. Half-man/half-beasts chase totem-conjuring shamans. A white bison ambles in the background. Horse-thieves vie for Pegasus. Pablo Picasso attempts to steal away with a sacred African mask. The final orgy has yet to get underway."

• Mixed media installations which incorporate simulated buffalo hides and playfully re-adapted renditions of ‘traditional Indian crafts’ like crystal-beaded tipis and brandname couture fabrics.

• Artificially aged replicas of tintype photographs, in which their First Nation’s subjects appeared in bizarre costumes and artificial poses.

"The Hunter" from "Emergence of a Legend 1" 5 in a set, Edition of 25; Chromogenic prints on metallic paper; 6.5” x 4.5”, 2006. Portrait of the artist in performance persona, in collaboration with photographer, Christopher Chapman, & makeup artist, Jackie Shawn.

• Slide shows and silent black-&-white super-8 movies.

• Monologues and extracts taken from the journals and writings of early explorers and philosophers such as Rousseau, but altered to present Miss Chief in the lead role as observer.

In other words, Monkman draws upon every method used to not only record the exploration and settlement of North America, but often to contrive folk stories about it and romanticize the people, places and customs beyond all semblance to reality, usually for exploitive purposes.

Monkman’s art attracted so much animosity, it was banned from the Royal Ontario Museum’s Shapeshifters, Time Travellers, and Storytellers Exhibition in the Institute for Contemporary Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum in 2007.

Historical Revisionism, Cultural Filters and Monkman’s Response

Among some of the more bizarre practices of traditional western artists which Monkman skewers were the propensity of some artists to alter the apparel of First Nations models in paintings, photographs and western movies so that they appeared more savage and earthy. Western artists, photographers and movie-makers seemed determined to preserve past styles of dress and adornment that no longer existed (if they ever really existed), and which were less practical for the environments in which people lived, or the occupations on which their survival depended.

In the movie, Group of Seven Inches — so named because it filmed at Tom Thompson’s cabin on the site of the gallery, just north of Toronto, which houses the McMichael collection, comprised mainly of Group of Seven Canadian impressionism — Miss Chief loosens up some “European Males” with liquor, then poses them in clothing which more accurately reflect her antiquated ideas about how they should look, than how they would naturally and presently appear.

Stills from "Group of Seven Inches" by Kent Monkman and Gisèle Gordon, digitalized super-8 multimedia installation, 2005, projected onto a simulated buffalo skin on the floor of the Théâtre Cristal Installation, 2005.

Hollywood’s depiction of the First Nations people is shrewdly flipped around in the digitalized Super-8 movie, “Shooting Geronimo” which is the centerpiece of Monkman’s multimedia installation, Miss Chief’s Magical Winter Count (with traditional Swampy Cree Beadwork), 2007.

“Winter counts were the pictographic records of events kept by the First Nations of the Plains.” Ben Portis, Glenbow’s guest curator, explains.

In Shooting Geronimo, a dastardly movie director tries to film a movie about Geronimo, and pits two attractive young Indian men against each other for the leads. The actors are jealous of each other, even as the director tries to manipulate them into broad caricatures. When Miss Chief intervenes, the director is accidentally shot, and the Indians do some fancy script editing in order to save their necks.

Portis also writes, “Twin buffalo hide movie screens form a sort of Rorschach (ink blot) pattern that hint at barely disguised, subconscious motives lurking in early cinema.”

Still from "Shooting Geronimo" by Kent Monkman and Gisèle Gordon, 2005.

It isn’t quite clear what Portis means. There is nothing subtle or barely disguised about Monkman’s blatant homoerotic content, and intent for the First Nation performers to be portrayed unnaturally, their actions and appearances distorted by stereotype and caricature. Monkman’s style is over-the-top and in-your-face. It isn’t this aspect of his material which is subtle: Miss Chief Eagle Testicle’s long sweeping sheath of hair, eyelashes and maribou kitten heels might recall Japanese yaoi manga, the narrative of his performance pieces might be likened to slash fanfiction, the figures in his paintings might be intentionally generic representations of strapping young macho men, with the ungrounded quality of cartoon drawings — in essence, realistic, but unreal. Even so, not everything is garish and loud. There is something quieter at work in his relationship with viewers, in terms of contemporary culture and what it means to be singled out for scrutiny, especially a warped scrutiny.

His paintings make it clear that derivative ‘transformative’ works like fanart and fanfiction existed long before these genres were identified as distinct movements.

Artists also altered the poses of aboriginals while attempting to ‘document’ them in their traditional occupations. One example of this is Paul Kane’s infamous oil painting Hunting Fish, in which an Indian, who wears nothing but some fancy scarlet hipwaders, holds an enormous blazing torch aloft in one hand, while preparing to hurl a javelin at a freshwater fish in the other, all while balancing upright in the front of a canoe!

"Hunting Fish" by Paul Kane, oil on panel, circa 1870.

Monkman’s Indians are often depicted cavorting around in feather boas and highheeled hipwaders. “The European Male” is often depicted being led astray and upended by Monkman’s Miss Chief.

The artists who painted First Nations were characterized by self-insertion, self-aggrandisement and self-promotion — sometimes literally as with George Catlin, in one famous example, who painted himself into a scene where a group of adoring Natives stared reverently as he painted. He claimed that they ascribed a supernatural and benevolence power to his talents.

More often, the self-importance was figurative, through their worldview. They betrayed a certain overblown grandiosity of purpose, the desire to capture the Wild West in images before it disappeared forever, as though the First Nations people were peculiar scientific specimens to be impaled on pins in shadow boxes. Usually, the paintings were of tiny figures going about various daily activities in the foreground against a sweeping panorama of natural landscape.

“These gay and tinselled bucks may be seen in a pleasant day in all their plumes, astride their pied or dappled ponies, with a fan in the right hand made of turkey’s tail—with whip and a flybrush attached to the wrist of the same hand, a white and beautiful and soft pleasure saddle, ornamented with porcupine quills and ermine. The person I allude to [is] familiarly known and countenanced in every tribe as an Indian beau or dandy. Such personages may be seen on every pleasant day, strutting and parading around the village in the most beautiful and unsoiled dresses, without the honourable trophies however of scalp locks and claws of the grizzly bear attached to their costume, for with such things they deal not. They generally remain about the village, to take care of the women, and attire themselves in the skins of such animals as they can easily kill, without seeking the rugged cliffs for the war-eagle, or visiting the haunts of the grizzly bear. They plume themselves with swan’s down and plumes of duck, with braids and plaits of sweet-scented grass, harmless and unmeaning ornaments, which have no other merit than they themselves have, that of looking pretty and ornamental.”

"Máh-To-Tó-Pa (Four Bears) with Indian Dandy No 19, 233", acrylic on canvas, 2008.

Catlin also catalogued his paintings and woodblock prints of Natives, which reduced Catlin’s original models to numbers, nullifying any spiritual or personality quality that otherwise might have been revealed, essentially turning them into objects instead of people. Also, the sheer quantity of prints which Catlin produced betrays a certain mindset, one of greed. In his rush to commit their images to woodblock and paper, Catlin missed the more essential quality of a good portrait, that of revealing the subject’s inner self, knowledge of which takes time, intuition and relationship to cultivate.

In The Treason of Images solo show at Trépanier-Baer Gallery, Monkman satirized Catlin’s woodblock prints of various chiefs and braves, all rendered with a line drawing of their spirit animal in the background as an icon for their true personalities, by using a line drawing of their spirit “dandy” or “tinselled buck” in the background.

“The history and customs of such a people, preserved by pictorial illustrations, are themes worthy of the lifetime of one artist, and nothing short of the loss of my life shall prevent me from knowing them and becoming their historian.

“From what I’ve seen of these people, I feel authorized to say that there is nothing strange or unaccountable in their character, but that it is a simple one, and easy to be learned and understood, if the right means be taken to familiarize ourselves with it.

“I have for many years contemplated the race of the white man who are now spread over their trackless forests and boundless prairies and I have flown to their rescue, that phoenix like, they may rise from the stain on a painter’s palette, and live forever with me on my canvas.”

Monkman’s freely appropriates images from Neo-Classical and Romantic Paintings. Not only scenes by historical Western artists, like Albert Beirstadt’s Yosemite Winter Scene (1872) or Paul Kane’s Scene in the Northwest (1845-46), but Jacque-Louis Davide’s oft-replicated Napolean Crossing the Alpes at St. Bernard Pass, Pierre Auguste Cot’s The Impending Storm (1880) .

Left: "The Trapper's Bride" by Kent Monkman, 2006; acrylic on canvas, 28” x 20”. Collection of George Hartman and Arlene Goldman. Right: "Napolean Crossing the Alpes at St. Bernard Pass" by Jacques-Louis Davide, 1801; oil on canvas, 264 × 231 cm (103.94 × 90.94 in). Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria.

It is Kent Monkman’s parodies of 18^th and 19^th-century European Neo-Classic and Romantic Paintings that the extent of his academic knowledge comes through. In his videos and performance pieces, the recording equipment doesn’t obscure that there is a real human being beneath all the campy frou-frou and make belief. His voice is audible, the tone and pronunciation. His size, gait and the relationship of his body to his surroundings are visible, and it can illicit an almost uncomfortable sense of proximity and vulnerability, and from that, responses slightly edged with caution and seriousness. The paintings don’t have that sense of intimacy, illusory as it may be.

This is where a greater depth of knowledge is called upon from the viewer: a trapper’s bride, or ‘country wife’ as they were sometimes called, was an aboriginal or Métis woman purchased by a white man for the purposes of looking after his physical well-being, cooking, cleaning, tending to his clothing, children, chattels, and sexual needs while they were in the wilderness. They were often discarded when the man returned to white civilization, although some men — Explorer David Thompson being a prime example — remained loving husbands until the end of their lives. Even so, the predicament of their survival is one of the sobering and shameful secrets of our western past.

In Monkman’s painting, it is Miss Chief who holds the traps slung over her shoulder, and the husband’s sash firmly in hand. It is also her high heels that have spurred the horse into rearing, and she wears no other apparel beside a sheer bridal train.

Monkman’s paintings grapple with how the art work of that period reflected the influences and forces at work in the culture and psyche of the painters: colonialism and subjugation; the notion brought forward by philosophers such as Rousseau of the Romantic Savage who is at one with nature and a caretaker of the land, how European beliefs and morality were imposed not only through the symbolism of this majestic (ie., Divine) landscape, but over sexual expression.

Sexuality is in the field in which Monkman chooses to reclaim the upper hand in power dynamics. Miss Chief is portrayed as sexually confident and dominant. White men are often depicted in sexually submissive postures, not always unwillingly.

Left: "Si je t'aime prends garde a toi" (Study for "Icon from a New Empire") by Kent Monkman, 2007. Acrylic on canvas, 36” x 24”. Collection of George Hartman and Arlene Goldman. Right: Pygmalion and Galatea, by Jean Léon Gérôme, c. 1890; oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum, New York.

The rampant egoism expressed by the Greek myth of Pygmalion as re-imagined by French painter, Jean Léon Gérôme, proved irresistible to Monkmon. In Si je t’aime prends garde à toi (If you love me, watch out for yourself), it is Miss Chief whose marble form ripples into life at the sculptor’s kiss, a cupid in trickster raven’s mask overhead about to shoot the arrow that turns the tables. This is about as metaphorical as Monkman’s work gets, and probably the definitive example of the relationship between his work and those who view it.

Monkman’s latest work still utilizes Miss Chief as the quintessential berdache, but the work has taken a more sobering and terrifying turn.

In September of 2009, as public health officials prepared for the H1N1 pandemic, the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs responded by sending body bags to a reservation in northern Manitoba. Chief Jerry Knott responded by saying “Don’t send us body bags. Send us medicine. It is not man’s decision to prepare for death.”

This saying is stencilled on the inside of Monkman’s latest work, a series called Queen-Sized Body Bag, under a zipper which bisects the Hudson’s Bay blanket sewn to its back.

"Queen-Size Body Bag" from "Dance to the Berdache" by Kent Monkman, 2008; mixed media installation and performance piece, printed fabric in the shape of a simulated buffalo skin, trimmed with fringe, sewn to the back of a Hudson's Bay Trading Co. blanket.

These blankets, manufactured by the fur trading consortium, Hudson’s Bay Co., were used to spread the smallpox virus across North America as the first known example of biological warfare. The resulting epidemic wiped out nearly seventy-five per cent of the native population. Knott’s words are interspersed with Catlin’s descriptions of the Berdashe tradition as “one of the most unaccountable and disgusting customs that I have ever met in the Indian country…and where I should wish that it might be extinguished before it be more fully recorded.”

“The Berdashe is triumphantly and sensually interpreted by Miss Chief Eagle Testickle (Monkman’s alter ego) as a powerful and glamorous icon. Miss Chief resurrects another Aboriginal persona obscured by colonial history, the Aboriginal Dandy, who was emphatically described, but never painted by Catlin. Igor Stravinsky’s exploration of Primitivism — the ballet score Rite of Spring — is remixed into a powerful soundscape by Phil Strong as virile Dandies, from the four directions, invigorate the Berdashe with the vitality of their honour dance. Through this reciprocal and performative rite, the Dandies and Berdashe renew each other’s spirits, thereby refuting their obfuscation by colonial forces, and Primitivism’s reductive pillaging of indigenous cultures.”

Text by Stéphane Aquin, Montréal Museum of Fine Art

In Queen-Size Body Bag and Dance to the Berdache, Monkman’s work has taken a far more sobering turn. The ribald nature of his work attracts resistance, even as viewers forget the history of European art. As for the jocular aspect, it there that Monkman has the last laugh:

“What a beautiful and thrilling specimen to preserve and hold up to the refined citizens of the world in future ages! A Nation’s Park, containing men and beast, in all the civility and freshness of their nature’s beauty.

“I would ask that no other monument to my memory, nor any other enrolment of my name amongst the famous dead, than the reputation of having been the founder of such an institution.

“I trust that the audience who looks at my works with care will be disposed to join me in the conclusion that the European Male is an honest, hospitable, faithful, brave, warlike, cruel, revengeful, relentless — yet honourable, contemplative, and religious being.”

The most archive of Kent Monkman’s work can be viewed at his personal website, from which viewers can access his multimedia and film site, Urban Nation.

Presently, selections of his work can be viewed at the Glenbow Museum’s solo exhibition, The Triumph of Mischief, which runs until April 25th, 2010; 130 – 9 Avenue S.E.; Calgary, Alberta, Canada. A series of paintings, limited edition chromogenic prints on metallic paper, as well as Queen-Sized Body Bag from the performance piece Dance to the Berdache, are presently for sale at the Trépanier-Baer Gallery: 105, 999 – 8 Street S.W., Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Kent Monkman’s show The Beauty of Distance will be featured at the upcoming Sydney Biennale.

By Simone Keiran

A lap cedar rowboat gleams in the centre of Gallery A at Touchstones Museum in Nelson, BC., crafted in the 1940s by Clarence W. Walton of the defunct Walton Boatworks, one of many owner-operated boat builders that thrived in the Kootenay-Columbia region.

“As a passenger, it is not always possible to see clearly what is immersed below the vessel, which emulates subconsciousness.” Deb Thompson, Curator-in-Residence spoke during the public gallery walk, on 08 October, 2009, for ROW: Reflections on Water, a nonlinear, thematic exhibition running from September 12 to November 22, 2009.

Waterspines, an installation by Tanya Pixie Johnson for ROW.

ROW is the latest Touchstones exhibition to eschew traditional chronological or culturally codified display paradigms for shows which embrace, among other things, activism at the community level with community input.

Thompson “shook the bushes”—soliciting proposals for works based on the theme of water. The call was open to anyone. Installations, sculptures and paintings were selected from nine different artists, filmmakers and one storyteller, and displayed in conjunction with artifacts.

A corollary expert panel featured guest speakers, Bob Sanford[1], Chair of the Canadian Partnership Initiative of United Nations International “Water for Life” Decade; Eileen Delahunty-Pearkes, author, whose book, The Geography of Memory, recounts the history of the C olumbia-Kootenay Valley and also, of the Sinixt First Nations people whose existence as a tribe with land and resource claims is presently up before Canada’s legal system; and Julie Castonguay, a local forester, who assesses the environmental impact of resource extraction and exploitation, but also a photographer and artist with work in the show. So the art and film meshed with social, political and environmental community work.

Many audience members to the panel had acquired backdoor expertise on water through the misfortune of being on the receiving end of its mismanagement. Their drinking water fouled by logging companies, fisheries destroyed, lands expropriated for reservoirs in a province where less than five per cent of the land is suitable for agriculture,[2] they knew from direct experience the that water in the Columbia-Kootenay basin—indeed, in the southern regions of Canada—is in imminent danger.[3] As Bob Sanford highlighted, “We have to dispel the myth of a limitless water supply. There isn’t much water left in the bank from the last Ice Age.”

Walton’s boat is a stark reminder of the craft which will also disappear with the water, just as the salmon have mostly disappeared. Any salmon in the region today are solely due to artificial stocks.

Patrick Field’s Ghost Fish, life-sized white marble sculptures seem to float over the gallery floor.  He states, “We live in a constructed environment now and should consider ourselves grateful to have an opportunity to participate in the journey of building the future for next generations. It is important to have fun, see the beauty that surrounds us and remember the consequences of our previous decisions. These ghost salmon represent those consequences and our opportunity to take care of what is with us now.”

ROW’s syncretist approach—uniting artists with scientists, philosophers, First Nations and community—refined a style launched by Touchstones in September, 2007. That’s when curator-in-residence, Deborah Loxe-Kohl stepped aside to facilitate writer and fabric artist, Susan Andrews Grace, and sculptor, Karl Schlichting, as they designed a show, not only from their own works, but from the museum’s artifacts. It required an interpretive approach that transcended academic elitism.

Other regional public galleries have scrambled to follow suit. In August of 2008, Oxygen Artist-Run Centre hosted a public forum and multidisciplinary show of installations throughout the City of Nelson, called BOOM! in response to population surges and development conflicts.[4] The Grand Forks Art Gallery invited community members with roots in the valley’s history to help design its International Year of Fiber display in conjunction with artifacts on loan from the Boundary Museum Society.

This is a recent innovation for exhibition venues in isolated corners of British Columbia. It may also be the key to their survival.

“Water likes to be around other water. Water molecules attract and adhere to each other. Water has a voice, and it likes to sing. If you listen, you can hear it. Water reacts to everything. Its attraction is physical and aesthetic. The water within us yearns for the water without, through our perspiration, our saliva and salty tears. The salty seas within our cells yearn for the vast salty oceans of our planet.”

Bob Sanford, guest speaker,

Our Water: Local Action informed by Global Perspective

Public Forum, 08 October, 2009, Hume Hotel, Nelson, BC, Canada.

Poster for Public Forum, ROW: Reflections on Water, Hume Hotel, Nelson, BC

Draw-Down

n., Annual period when waters stored in the Mica, Duncan and Arrow Lake Reservoirs are released to flow south, out of the country forever.

Threats to the future of clean water in the Pacific Northwest bear some similarity to all arts groups in British Columbia and many supply and service industries.

Announced in late August of 2009, the entire arts community in British Columbia has been singled out for draconian funding cutbacks. These cuts comprise 88 per cent over two years, from $19.5 million in 2008–2009 down to $2.25 million in 2010–2011, as outlined by the September 2009 updated service plan of BC Ministry of Tourism, Culture and the Arts.[5]

The punitive effect on every sector of the community from artists, writers, dancers, musicians, actors, publishers and film makers, to performance and sales venues, technicians, equipment and materials, has galvanized outrage and coordinated political action. Calls to restore funding have come from agencies as varied as PACT: the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres[6] to cyberpunk author, William Gibson [Neuromancer], on behalf of BC book publishers, “As a futurist, someone with experience in long-range scenario-based corporate and municipal planning, I’ve seen my share of jaw-droppingly shortsighted proposals. But these proposed cuts to support for the arts in BC really take the cake. This is governance guaranteed to rot the fabric of our province’s future.”[7]

The struggle to reinstate funding, however, is being defined by the one of the key forces which systematically dismantled arts and arts communities in BC.

Public discourse is loaded with facts about the dollar figures of tax return for every dollar spent on the arts (between $1.04 and $1.38[8]), how little of it is spent superfluously, and how most of those dollars remain within the local economy.  The conflict is being framed in terms of art’s value as a commodity.

This circles back to artisan boat-builder, Clarence Walton’s rowboat: by standards set by national heritage ministry departments such as The Canadian Cultural Properties Import and Export Review Board or, to a lesser degree, professional organizations like The Canadian Antique Dealers Association, the value of Walton’s rowboat is insignificant except for context: where it was built (locally), who it was built by (an area resident), what it was made out of (regional red cedar), and its placement in that particular exhibition. There are more technologically advanced hand-built vessels, however, not to mention boats with more significant providence.  Compared to The Maritime Museum of British Columbia’s cornerstone exhibit, The Tilikum,[9] for example, a sailboat which circumnavigated the world under Cpt. John Voss, converted from a fifty-seater Haida dug-out War Canoe and literally carved from a single trunk of western red cedar, Walton’s boat has far less blockbuster ‘panache’.

Yet Walton’s simpler handmade vessel not only once carried fisher-folk and pleasure-seekers safely over the waters of Kootenay Lake, but ferried a connection for present-day Touchstones museum guests as dreamlike as any mythic boat of Charon.

Most venues in smaller urban centers and outlying rural areas throughout North America share similar problems: their collections aren’t worth much monetarily. Their true value is intrinsic, expressed from the heart, or institutional, where people voluntarily engage with public life.  Ergo, to frame justifications for continued funding in terms of instrumental value—how helpful it is to the economy, or to tourism, or for nebulous ‘social cohesion’ goals like lowering crime or teenaged pregnancy rates—is both contradictory and self-defeating.

Firstly, in these regional areas, private or corporate patronage is inconsequential or nonexistent. Since corporate sponsorship tends to come with unsuitable expectations, this could be considered liberating, but what it reveals about the region is that resource colonialism prevails.

In the West Kootenays, there are few corporate sponsors. Profits for resources leave the region for distant, disinterested investors. Earnings are not high enough, generally, to establish endowments and philanthropic trusts, as within the US. Most community investments have been from government coffers, who license resource extraction. This is a reason why arts facilitators in BC are locked in an uneasy dependence with governments. Since casinos were legalized in the 1980s, revenues generated by gambling have been split between the arts and community services.

Private collectors support the arts, but numbers are limited and their support is usually collection driven, so installations, conceptual and performance pieces usually fall outside criteria. Even for paintings, sculpture and crafts, the purchase of a single item or series is the usual limit.[10]

Yet, when asked why the September 2008 exhibition of Kootenay School of Art ceramic department alumni, KSA: Out There, at the BC Gallery of Ceramics was such a landmark event—why, in fact, because it was the first such showing ever, it was such a rare event—Pamela Nagley Stevenson, a 20-year veteran, replied, “Our disadvantage is poor proximity. We can’t bring samples of our work for gallery directors to admire any old time. Our mountain passes and long ferry rides are formidable, especially in the winter. We don’t live close to where markets thrive. It’s expensive to get to them, and hard connecting with people who manage them.”[11]

Even the internet cannot surmount nature.

Most exhibitions, let alone sponsorships involve cultivating relationships—friendships! Curators generally choose artists they hear about fairly regularly. It isn’t ability which is at issue, just familiarity. When evaluating the work of two artists with similar levels of achievement, they tend to go with the one they know.

Hiromoto Ida, a professional dancer who has performed with dozens of professional artists and companies in Canada, and who frequently appears at Touchstones, was more circumspect.

“How do we survive? Simple, we don’t. Without grants from all three branches of the government, if we can’t find other work, we leave. When a professional leaves, it’s hard on the community. It drains the pool of talent. There are fewer ideas and forms of expression, fewer people to teach new dancers, fewer people to engage with about dance. Everyone loses.”[12]

Yet even if framing the dialogue about the value of art in monetary terms doesn’t reflect the true cost, it is exactly how the opposition to public funding for the arts is couched by BC’s Campbell government and supporters.

This strategy was established right at the onset when the arts were pitted against battered women and children, the homeless (many of them forced out of their homes by Olympics-generated real estate speculation[13]) and addiction programs, including gambling addictions.[14] This illusion of competition was rigged after the government posted a deficit precipitated by Olympics overspending. Obligations to financial shortfalls were met by cutting the arts off from its share of gaming funds, essentially throwing artists en masse onto the welfare rolls. If artists insist on receiving their due, then they are seen to be snatching food and shelter away from other vulnerable British Columbians.

Except, Arts and Culture in BC generates 80,000 jobs annually (and 5.2 billion in revenues, for those who are still curious.) Nearly two percent of the province’s estimated population is being thrown out of work. The Campbell government even removed from its website the 2006 report it commissioned written by G.S. Sandhu & Associates, called Socio-Economic Impacts of Arts and Cultural Organizations in B.C., which spells out these facts. Fortunately, a cached version is still available.[15]

The premise that artists siphon funds from social programs has no basis in fact.

It is a ploy to generate conflict, a smokescreen, but diverting attention from what?

Waterfall, the ROW video installation by Vancouver filmmaker, Chris Wellsby, deals directly with such screens. The camera lens is focused upon a natural waterfall, but sheltered behind a sheet of clear plexiglass. For the first few moments, the image of the waterfall is sharp. Soon, water droplets form, and light is refracted through them into dazzling white hexagons, but the waterfall can still be seen in the spaces around them. As droplets coalesce, the waterfall appears to melt into a blue-gray wash. By the end of the film, the image of the waterfall has lost all visual coherence. The observer’s perception is filtered through a screen that obliterates clarity.

Waterfall, by Chris Wellsby, video installation.

Wellsby was fascinated by devices which humanity uses to remain distant from nature, how this distorts our perceptions, confuses the dividing line between what is real and what we perceive, and even creates the illusion that we are not affected by nature. An image of a waterfall is not the waterfall itself.

The conceptual resonance between Walton’s rowboat and Wellsby’s film is striking. The rowboat lifts its passengers above the water, creating a barrier. The consequence of remaining protected above the surface, not submerged, is that the passengers often lose the ability to accurately see what transpires under the water’s surface.

What is it that the BC provincial government doesn’t want its citizens to see?  What is it that our lawmakers are not seeing?

“One day you should take the trip up to Arrow Lake during draw-down, just to have a look around. That usually happens in April. What you will see will fill you with grief for what we’ve lost forever, a silt-covered wasteland, useless and barren, where lush farms and orchards once thrived.”

Eileen Delehanty-Pearkes, author, The Geography of Memory. Guest speaker, Our Water: Local Action informed by Global PerspectivePublic Forum, 08 October, 2009, Hume Hotel, Nelson, BC, Canada.

Smokescreens, Plexiglass and Paper Noise: Breaking the Silence Barrier

Bales of paper, environmental assessment reports, emails, judicial reviews and newspaper columns rest at base of Glacier Creek, NOW! a photography and mixed media installation for ROW by Julie Castonguay.  A forester, Castonguay has spent years hiking through the temperate cedar rainforests which carpet the Selkirk and Purcell ranges of the Rocky Mountains. Photography is the principle media by which she records the rhythms and patterns in nature.

“The perception of our landscape and our relationship with it is at the heart of my art practice and my professional forestry career,” Castonguay wrote. “Questions regarding how we shape our landscape, how we consume our environment and how the landscape shapes us remain ever present.”

Glacier Creek, NOW!—Castonguay’s second installation with Touchstones—focuses on a pristine streambed that has come up for an independent power project (IPP) proposal, a euphemism for a hydroelectric dam.

“The IPP on Glacier Creek proposes to divert 80% of the mean annual flow of water.” Castonguay explains. “This means from the point of the project’s planned diversion, most of the water would never return to Glacier Creek.”

Glacier Creek, NOW! Photo Installation by Julie Castonguay. Paintings by Boujke Elzinga.

Castonguay’s installation suspends photographic panels of different points along the creek’s progress. The panels hang from the ceiling in a cascade formation which recreates the creek’s topographic profile. At the figurative site of the proposed diversion are stacks of reports, newspaper columns and correspondence generated by the proposal, and upon which “the future of Glacier Creek resides.” Beyond this barricade, the artist has scattered stones and driftwood to replicate a dry streambed. A panoramic view of the present creek’s mouth where it enters Duncan Reservoir lies crumpled along the floor amongst the rocks and wood.

A paper stream is no substitute for a real one. Those who determined that an IPP was valid for the Glacier-Howser system are ensconced hundreds of miles from the site. Their only connection to this creek and the forest and wildlife within or surrounding it, takes the form of reports. A thriving eco-system is reduced to charts, figures, megawatts and dollars.

People who work to preserve the West Kootenay ecosystems are all too familiar with how their creativity, inspiration and source of inner and outer nourishment, their deep love for this region gets translated into graphs, estimations and numbers. Then it’s collated and bound into dry, spiritually barren reports, for presentation in court or at the legislature.

Here are some facts that comprise such graphs:

• The Kootenay River is the most heavily dammed river on the planet.

• The entire Columbia-Kootenay region is mainly a series of artificial reservoirs—Mica Lake, the Arrow Lakes, Duncan Lake.

• The dams were constructed during the 1960s after an international water treaty was negotiated behind closed doors between BC’s provincial Social Credit government, led by W. A. C. Bennett, and the US government.

• The reservoirs wiped out one of the most fertile bottom lands in the province—of which there were only three. Farms, orchards, dairies and entire communities were destroyed. Wildlife, wetland and meadow loss were catastrophic.

• The Sinixt people were declared extinct by the Department of Indian Affairs in the year just prior to the treaty, and their present generation lost jurisdiction over traditional lands.

• 160 million acre-feet are discharged annually from the Columbia Basin.

• The damages were so far-reaching and long-lasting in addition to the lack of consultation with area residents, that the Columbia Basin Trust was established in 1995 in recognition of these inequities. [16]

From 2014 – 2024, the Columbia River Treaty between British Columbia and the United States is up for renegotiation. [17]

No one is speaking. Columbia Basin Trust science representative, Kindy Gosal was slated to appear at the public forum. He bowed out.

Silence also lies at the heart of Karen Rice’s contribution to ROW, a series of six representational oil paintings on canvas, Celeritas and Gravitas, of overcast skies reflected against the surface of natural water. Rice’s father was a technician at the Hanford Nuclear Facility in Washington State which manufactured weapons-grade plutonium. During the height of Cold War paranoia, her father could not discuss anything about his work, even as unseen contaminants were being released into the environment. Only after the site was decommissioned were people made aware of its toxicity, one of the deadliest in the US. Rice’s paintings reveal nothing about the dark things which float under the water’s surface, poisons released years, centuries, eons after their manufacture.

Castonguay’s Glacier Creek, NOW! and Karen Rice’s Celeritas and Gravitas are the most overtly political of the exhibition.

Bob Sanford defended the position of art ‘informed by good will and sound science’ in service as agitprop with the most compelling argument for its validity, “Artists are the main and most trusted sources of perceptual leadership. People tend to trust art because artists speak from the heart, whereas spin doctors try to shape the dialogue for singular interests. Art is one of the few antidotes to counter spin because artists risk everything to speak truth to power.”

Political controversy wasn’t even the original purpose.

“The art and objects in this exhibition were carefully selected to play parts in an unfolding drama that explores ideas such as renewal, initiation, the womb, life energy and the unconscious. These symbolic motifs are paired and layered much the way they would be in a mediaeval allegory, in hopes of building meanings beyond their literal ones,” Thompson wrote. “ROW does not claim to give shape to all the issues and narratives on water, only to be a part of a continuing discourse on water as it relates to our sense of place and belonging here on this watery planet.”

ROW begins with a traditional ca. 1955 watercolour on paper by Will Bayliss called, East Shore Waterfall. No one connected with the museum knows the present-day location of this particular stream. The piece was chosen because it indicates a state of innocence when, not so long ago, the belief was held that water was limitless.

It wasn’t until the turn of the 20^th century that the region was settled. Three handmade fin de siècle christening gowns represent the function of water in initiation rites such as baptism, and symbolic forms of purification.

Bathing in Ecstasy — Water, Bath and Ritual, a video installation compiled by Los Angeles filmmaker, Nancy Rosenblum, records six Kootenay residents as they bathe, not just for cleansing, relaxation, personal time and encounters with friends and lovers, but also for connection with history and nature.

Destanne Norris’ Temperance, an oil painting of fire on water alludes to alchemy: where the amount of water decreases, fire increases. There is a correlation in the physical world. Forest fires throughout British Columbia have increased in numbers and severity over recent years.

Boukje Elzinga’s oil painting series Form and Construction depicts the edges of a creek during the period of ice pack and thaw. “In these paintings, I am trying to visually capture the feel, smell and sound of the water’s transformation by recording its form, constructions, reflection and patterns.”

Norris’ and Elzinga’s paintings are mounted on opposite walls, fire and ice in polarity.

Waterspines, a 4-part wall-mounted mixed media installation by Tania Pixie Johnson centers upon life found along the river’s edges. A Rorschach-style graphite and collage drawing of insect segments, bones, flowers, stones, and bird wings rises like a spine from the base of a mirror where it is reflected. The collage incorporates lace doilies and curtains, exotic feathers from her homeland in Kenya, maps, twigs and antique items like old car horns and drawer pulls. The reflections, both horizontal and vertical represent the connecting properties of water, not just in the form of rivers and streams, but in the hydrological cycle from deep within the earth to the stratosphere.

Extinction

The final item in the exhibition is a video of Columbia River scenery, with a voiceover dubbed by Sinixt storyteller, Marilyn James. She recounts the legend of Coyote’s role in the Columbia River’s creation and the Sinixt people.

The Sinixt were the First Nation of the Columbia River region, living primarily within the present-day Castlegar and Slocan Valley areas, the “mother tribe of the Pacific Northwest Salish” according to Sharon Montgomery at the Nakusp and District Museum. Every summer, they wandered 100 miles to Kettle River Falls in Washington for an annual salmon fishery. When the international border was surveyed, most Sinixt people were forced into the Colville Confederated Tribes Reservation south of the border. Some 20 surviving Sinixt in Canada were pushed into a reservation at the north end of the Arrow Lakes, far from their traditional home. The last one died in 1958, whereupon the Canadian government census declared that the tribe was extinct. When the Sinixt returned north, the Canadian Government refused to reinstate their status. [18]

Calls to the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs result in stonewalling with the excuse that the case is coming up for trial, although there is no legal obstruction which prevents them from answering questions.

“I see it as no coincidence that the Sinixt were declared extinct in Canada within two years of the signing of the Columbia River Treaty,” Eileen Delehunty-Pearkes said during the ROW forum.

Bob Sanford spoke about the settlement which the Canadian and Alberta governments were required to pay the Pikani people for forcing contruction of the Old Man River dam on their traditional lands—construction which resulted in an armed standoff between the Pikani Warriors Society and the RCMP—which may have set the precedent for future resource claims.[19] “I wouldn’t be surprised if Coyote has the last laugh.”

The antipathy of conservative governments (in BC, the Liberals are conservative) to artists has been demonstrated. Stephen Harper’s inflammatory comments so alienated the country in 2008, it cost him any chance at a parliamentary majority. Campbell’s Liberals are cut from the same cloth.

Regional galleries and museums now coordinate exhibitions like Touchstone’s ROW: Reflections on Water to reflect the core issues of our era. They provide a podium for scientists and other experts, uniting them and artists directly with people in the community.

The statement that these events may be key to the survival of the public gallery does not hinge upon government funding or lack thereof, but to survival itself, our collective survival.

[2] Ramona Scott, TLC: The Land Conservancy of BC, “You Are What You Eat” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoqQv36kQBg

[3] Pugwash Expert Roundtable, Global Issues Project, November 2008.

http://www.rwsandford.ca/2009.01.15-freshwater_declaration-EN.pdf

[4] Suite101.com, “BOOM Exhibition and Forum at Oxygen”, 12 January, 2009

http://multimediaarts.suite101.com/article.cfm/boom_exhibition_forum_at_oxygen_centre_in_bc

[5] BC Ministry of Tourism, Culture and the Arts Updated Service Plan, September 2009

http://www.bcbudget.gov.bc.ca/2009_Sept_Update/sp/pdf/ministry/tca.pdf

[6] Eric Coates, President, PACT: Professional Association of Canadian Theatres, and Director, Blyth Festival; “Letter to Gordon Campbell,”  23 September, 2009.

http://www.pact.ca/act_GetFile.cfm?pdf=Campbell_BC_2009.09.23.PDF

[7] BC Alliance for Arts, “Literary clearcut prompts quick response”, 08 October, 2009

http://allianceforarts.com/blog/literary-clearcut-prompts-quick-response

[8] http://www.tca.gov.bc.ca/arts_culture/docs/dec2006_socio_economic_impacts.pdf

Charles Campbell, The Tyee.ca, “Flex Your Muscles, BC Arts Community: Fight back against a government that’s singled you out for brutal budget cuts,”  4 September, 2009.

http://thetyee.ca/ArtsAndCulture/2009/09/04/FlexYourMuscles/

“It’s important to understand, here, that British Columbia’s per capita arts funding has long been at or near the bottom among Canadian provinces. When our government spends a thousand dollars, it puts a bit more than a dollar aside for the arts. Never mind that provincial spending on the arts actually contributes to a healthy economy. Even the provincial government says the province reaps $1.38 in tax revenue for every buck it spends on the arts. You’d think a government would want to optimize such a benefit rather than eliminate it.”

[9] The Tilikum, Maritime Museum of British Columbia.   http://mmbc.bc.ca/exhibits/1-tilikum.html

[10] Pete Corbett in ARTiculate magazine, “Painting Chops, the En Plein Air Paintings of Pete Corbett,”

Spring/Summer 2008.

[11] Pamela Nagley Stevenson, quoted in ARTiculate magazine, “KSA: Out There and Onto the Canadian Stage,” Fall/Winter 2008/2009.

[12] Hiromoto Ida, quoated in ARTiculate magazine, “Dance Futures,” Fall/Winter 2009/2010

[13] Monte Paulsen, TheTyee.ca, “Olympic Partners Said to ‘Fudge’ Housing Claims: Critics, and a Tyee review, cast doubt on figure of 1,109 ‘new units’,” 28 June 2007. http://thetyee.ca/News/2007/06/28/OlympicHousingClaims/

^[14] Craig McInnes, Vancouver Sun, “Liberals’ tune has changed on gambling revenues,” October 7, 2009.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Liberals+tune+changed+gambling+revenues/2080753/story.html

[15] Op cit.

[16] CBT website: “Columbia Basin Trust (CBT) was created in 1995 to promote social, economic and environmental well-being in the Canadian portion of the Columbia River Basin – the region most affected by the Columbia River Treaty.  http://www.cbt.org/About_Us/

[17] Facts compiled by Eileen Delehunty-Pearkes, for A Geography of Memory. Sonomis Press.

[18] Chad Herschler, Vancouver Review, “The Sinixt and the Caribou, Ghosts of the Forest” ”; Summer 2008. p. 22-27.

^[19] Milton Born-With-a-Tooth, “Regarding Current Allegations of Militant Uprisings”; 7 September, 1995.

http://sisis.nativeweb.org/sov/milton.html

—30—

Published ARTiculate Magazine, Fall/Winter 2009.
Editor, Margaret Tessman

"Grandmother" Choreographed by Hiromoto Ida

Funding roulette has hit regional performing artists hard. Even professional choreographer, Hiromoto Ida, with his long track record of successful performances and collaborations, was turned down. Three-quarters of the projected budget for his latest production, which was to be developed and staged in Nelson, depended on a federal Arts Canada grant.

“It’s like being stuck in a hotel room with a television set that has all these channels, but nothing you really want to watch,” Ida explained. “No matter how many times you click through the remote, the choices don’t become more appealing.

“The Columbia-Kootenay Basin Trust Performance One Grant was no problem, but they could only provide a fraction of what I needed. Now I have to modify my idea and either scrap it, or prepare a lesser event that comes nowhere near to what I’d originally planned. I also have to re-apply for existing grants because they were contingent on Arts Canada funding.”

How do professional dancers in the Columbia-Kootenay region cultivate their careers? Simple: unless a dancer manages to land a coveted studio spot where they can attract enough students, or unless they convince those who publicly fund arts at all three government levels—local, provincial and national—they can’t. There are no corporate sponsors. Dancers have to work at something else, or they have to leave. They cannot support themselves here.

What this means for audiences is that, apart from troupes bussed in rarely from larger urban centres, there is almost no professional dancing here. Performances are strictly amateur recitals to showcase student work, or hastily choreographed, inadequately rehearsed ‘happenings’ which local dancers provide for free or a pittance.

This is what it means for the area: Dance audiences don’t switch preferences to things like sports by default, but take trips to other places where dance happens. It is those other places where technicians, venues and suppliers benefit, those artists who grow more experienced and talented, and those schools, studios and students who learn and develop from workshops and live performance with professionals.

Ida’s last piece, Grandmother, employed 5 professional dancers, a musical arranger, and a poet/spoken word artist. It incorporated a large set and costumes which provided work for technicians, generated revenue for suppliers and rental income to venues for six performances—a successful run for the region.

Ida’s concern isn’t only that the exodus of talent drains the region of existing dancers, but decreases the pool of expertise necessary to cultivate local talent.

Choreography connects Ida to local talent and keeps dance relevant to the region. He has lived in Canada for over twenty years. He wants to develop dances which reflect current Canadian culture, and marvels at why more energy isn’t going into developing more contemporary and local modalities.

“Dancers aren’t passive ‘moving pieces’ to me. They don’t just move the way I tell them to move. They contribute. They bring their experiences and expression to the stage.

Hiromoto Ida

“Why must it only be big cities and huge companies where dance can thrive? Do people think that local kids have nothing to say through their physical bodies? Boys in the local high schools don’t understand that dance is relevant to them, that it is a form of expression which should be just as available to heterosexual teenaged boys in school in Nelson as anyone else, anywhere else. They don’t have to move like this,” Hiromoto parodied the effete stereotype of a dancer. “That’s outmoded. That’s been outmoded for over a century! Boys should be able to dance the way it feels comfortable and natural for them to move. Who wants to limit the possible forms of expression?”

The rigours of writing grants, looking into commercial sponsorships or other alternative funding sources take their toll. “It’s exhausting and it takes too much time and ‘precise wording.’ It all takes away from the process of creating dances. In this city, we get a couple of performances every year from touring companies. While it’s good to watch live performances, they aren’t our dancers re-enacting our stories.”

Even studio operators have to be resourceful to succeed, says Coraley Letcher, the owner-instructor of Rhythm Inc. in Fernie, which she opened in 2007.

“Five studios opened and closed their doors during the time I’ve lived in Fernie. They all focused on children’s classes. Trouble is, they depended on the number of young families—more narrowly, on the limited number of interested participants within those young families—within the area.”

Letcher approached the market differently, offering workshops for adults.

“There is a lot of interest in dance performance lately, partially because of television hits like “So You Think You Can Dance?” and “Dancing with the Stars.” With adults, we focus on a cabaret-style performance which we hold at the Arts Station. It allows us to get together with musicians, artists, costume designers and other creative people in the community. So it’s fun and inspiring at the same time.”

Letcher also offers children’s classes, but the adult market broadens possibilities for both her studio and the larger community.

“With child-focused studios, the owner operates for eight months in relative isolation, and then there’s The Big Recital. So nobody but the parents sees what’s happening. It isn’t good for the students or the studio.

“Community groups which support activities for children miss out on the developmental benefits of dance—how dance helps children to grow and builds their confidence and grace—because they don’t see it, not when there are only one or two recitals a year. Compare this to hockey: the regular games and events that bring people out, allow for regular participation. So sports cultivate more community support. Because of this, if studio owners want to set up dance event, something which requires funding, all the money gets allocated to sports.

“Rhythm Inc.’s cabarets give us more community exposure.”

Letcher outlines challenges facing regional dancers.

“A professional dancer needs daily training. They need to draw on instruction from more than one studio because the various teachers will show them different styles and bring out different abilities. They need competitions and performances to bring them into top condition. I sometimes miss my old haunts in Ontario where there so many studios, and festivals, and people travelled back and forth for competitions and workshops. It was incredibly healthy for the dance community. Students were exposed to so many different styles and forms of expression.”

Past overtures to other studios were rebuffed, but Letcher hopes her enthusiasm changes that.

“Here, dance studios keep to themselves. They shouldn’t be afraid of other studios poaching on their base because we all live so far from each other; students aren’t going to make the daily drive through the Pass, especially in the winter. A monthly or bi-monthly teacher swap or combined workshops, though? That would be really great!

“I can see Rhythm Incorporated getting a faculty together, holding senior level classes, and hosting summer dance camps under the banner, “Come to Fernie and Dance!”

“If there is anything I want to say it is that dance is an incredible art form. It is about entertainment. It is therapeutic and beautiful. So support the arts. Come and check it out. Keep it alive.”

- 30 –

Grand Forks Art Gallery, June 13 – August 15, 2009

By Simone Keiran

Published in Route 3: Life in the West Kootenay/Boundary Region Magazine, Summer 2009. Ed., Shelley Ackerman

Lou Lynn, Sculptor (Photo by Janet Dwyer)

Hand-tools have always fascinated artist, Lou Lynn, particularly the union between a succinct form, such as the semi-circular sweep of a prehistoric ulu whose handle runs parallel to its blade, to a specific practical function: a knife which was not used to stab but—depending on how the handle was held—to slice or scrape with a rocking stroke of the wrist. Her metal and glass sculptures suggest implements such as the ulu, auger, chisel, trowels, rasps and other forms.

“I’m not actually inspired by tools,” she emphasizes. “The form is more important, how shape determines how tools came to be used.”

Through her work, a key moment of suspense emerges. It lies between discovery of the object and the ‘eureka!’ of when its practical purpose is realized. For the person who beholds this strange object, that moment holds creative possibility and spans the chasm between desire or need and conception.

So Lynn’s sculptures are designed not to be functional. Or rather, their function is not directed towards specific material results. Edges which evoke digging or gouging are left blunt; corkscrews twist off peculiar angles; skewers end in bulbous nobs, not points. Someone might scheme up some useful purpose for them—“I could use that to do such-and-such”—but it is the process of imagining that use which the sculpture conveys, not the actual implementation of it. Lynn’s work aligns to a conceptual framework.

The evolution of an implement’s design also fascinates her. Not just how the tool’s conceived, but its refinement by each successive generation of makers. This would be the stage where advancements in technology and materials allow for innovation, and utility is streamlined as concessions to comfort are accommodated in the object’s shape, weight and texture. The craftsperson stamps the piece with individuality, marking it distinctly as his or her work, until wholly anachronistic elements appear as embellishments. An engraved line which once signified a ferrule—the place where metal was crimped to wood or antler—became a decorative, textured groove instead, or a handle acquired an unexpected fillip that served no other purpose than to be pleasant to hold and behold. In this manner, the creative cycle is complete, transforming from functionalism into the celebration of form, from material into immaterial, from the mundane into the inspired. Lynn’s pieces play on these elements, accentuating their individuality while they reiterate the ubiquity of tools.

Retro-active, a selection of works which span Lynn’s career over the past two decades, reveals a similar process of artistic technological and material advancement. Her studio is based in Winlaw, a village in the Slocan Valley region of British Columbia, north of Castlegar. She has lived in the West Kootenays since the 1970s and was drawn by the interest and openness towards the arts which flourished in the region. Her exhibitions have taken her as far afield as China and Scotland. She has won international acclaim and numerous awards.

“My earliest pieces in Retro-active, those from the 1990s, were made out of sand-cast aluminum—a process called the lost-styrofoam method—and industrial cut glass. The designs were pre-formed in styrofoam and then buried in sand. The molten aluminum was poured in, the styrofoam burned away, and once the piece cooled, it was burnished on some surfaces, left rough on others, then fitted with glass components. I took that series as far as I could until the material limitations forced me to explore new methods. Limitations like how the glass was always flat.”

Although the thickness of industrial-cut glass pulls it away from a strictly 2-dimensional sensibility, complex 3-dimensional shapes such as cylinders had to be created by stacking pre-cut layers and gluing them together with glass epoxy. “Also, the lost styrofoam method releases highly toxic fumes. I wanted to get away from that.”

Lynn enrolled in the Pilchuck Glass School near Seattle, Washington, where she expanded her control through the process of kiln-casting glass through the lost wax method. Her shapes acquired more sophistication.

In 2006, she shifted from sand-cast aluminum to lost wax bronze, the next evolution of her work, one which brought out a quality which she calls, “the marrying of disparate elements.” The brown warmth of bronze juxtaposes against pale green coolness of glass (colouring agents are not added.) The transparency of glass, or when etched, the translucency of that medium, combines with the opacity of metal. Fragility balances against the sturdiness. Smooth and rough textures, straight edges and curves interplay.

The pieces which Lynn crafted for her 2007 touring exhibition, Objects and Implements, were exceptionally large—not at the massive scale of Claus Oldenburg’s garden trowels perhaps, but enough that the sense of an onlooker’s physical scale was reduced. This magnified details within in the work, drawing the viewer in for closer inspection and introspection.

The thirty-eight components of Tools as Artifacts, the new piece created for Lynn’s Retro-active tour have returned to the size one might find in an ordinary toolbox or utility drawer. They can be held in the hand. When displayed at eye level along the wall of a gallery, however, they extend 34 feet in length. Instead of size, this sculpture reduces human scale by sheer numbers. Instead of drawing the spectator in—although each individual piece holds enough detail to absorb interest—Tools as Artifacts invites the spectator to step back and contemplate the breadth of diversity in design.

The parade of objects in Tools as Artifacts also reminds us of encroaching obsolescence. Hand-tools are being replaced by ever more complicated machinery and robotics, or as Retro-active curator, Helen Sebelius writes, “Displayed as artifacts, the tools, with their peculiar and whimsical qualities, offered inspiration in her later work where she questions the dubious function of hand tools in a time when hand-work and longevity fall second to machine-made and throw-away.”

Their simplicity provides a haven from humanity’s uneasy symbiosis with technology, where it seems we cannot function without it. Where tools were once extensions of our physical appendages, simple and strong, now they have become extensions of our consciousness, subtle and all-pervasive. Under Lynn’s skilled artistry, we see that is, in fact, what they have always been.

Retro-active will show at the Grand Forks Art Gallery from June 13 – August 15, 2009, after which it will proceed to the Yukon Arts Centre Public Art Gallery from September 10 – October 25, 2009. In the fall of 2009, Lou Lynn will also unveil a new work at the International Canadian Pavilion in Korea, then proceed to Australia, where an exhibition and profile of her career will be featured in Intral Arts magazine.

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