A valuable collection of insight into the exhibition of feminist artwork is now available to the public. FeministDialectic.ca is a new website that features ten curators, artists and museum professionals speaking on the challenges and opportunities presented by the acquisition, preservation and exhibition of feminist artwork by public art galleries and institutions in Ontario.
City-wide callout for artists
Occupy Montreal has announced the formation of a city-wide art committee, and they are calling for artists to get involved. A first meeting has been scheduled for Friday, Feb 17, 5pm-7pm @ 4521 St Jacques, just west of Metro St-Henri.
From the announcement:
We are organizing a new, city-wide Arts & Culture Committee to support and participate in Occupy Montreal, and invite other artists from all disciplines (music, poetry, theatre, film, dance, graphic design, literature, web art, etc.) to come to a first meeting to brainstorm.
Since last Fall, Occupy Montreal continues its activities in different neighbourhoods. If you want to contribute to this movement as an artist, we look forward to meeting you. Everyone welcome. Please let us know in advance if you plan to attend so we can better organize the space to accommodate everyone.
For examples of what artists are doing elsewhere in the Occupy movement check out the NYC General Assembly Arts & Culture Committee, and Occupy With Art.
National Gallery of Canada invites young artists to submit art & public to judge
"Beat Nation(by Corey Bulpitt)" at Grunt Gallery, Vancouver
The NGC has announced its second annual So You Want to Be an Artist contest. It’s a cheezey title, but an opportunity for young artists to get some work in the gallery and maybe a little public approbation.
Submissions are posted online. The public selects a shortlist of 12 entries through online voting (the shortlisted entries will be shown in the National Gallery). A jury selects a winner.
Deadline March 18, 2012.
Tell your (young) friends and spread the word. For more info go to the contest website.
Friday Film Pick: Pink Ribbons Inc
This week’s Friday Film Pick is a fantastic new NFB documentary opening in theatres across Canada (rest of the world: you’ll have to probably wait a little).
Pink Ribbons Inc goes behind the scenes of the breast cancer campaign (the pink ribbon campaign) and reveals the absolutely grotesque levels of greed and opportunism concerning the corporations who have co-opted the grassroots movement in the name of selling stuff and increasing profit margins. “Cause marketing” as its come to be known, is the cynical and self-interested manipulation of civil society social campaigns, such as raising awareness about breast cancer, by for-profit companies looking to make money and make themselves look good at the same time. It’s a win-win situation for everyone but the women who get breast cancer – many of whom have or will undoubtedly get the disease from using one of the many toxic “pink products” currently being shucked by soulless corporations.
Groucho Marx (right) in "Horse Feathers" (1932) directed by Norman McLeod. (Image: http://goo.gl/RpbZR)
This is an excerpt from Groucho Marx and Other Short Stories and Tall Tales: Selected Writings of Groucho Marx, edited by Robert S. Bader.
During the 1940s Groucho would often write about topics related to World War II while remaining, for the most part, non-political. At home, however, most discussions with his friends involved world events and politics. Groucho teased Morrie Ryskind about his incessant campaigning for Wendell Willkie in the 1940 presidential race, but he did vote for Willkie, stating that electing Franklin Roosevelt to a third term would set an unhealthy precedent. Four years later Groucho would support FDR, feeling that changing presidents with the country at war would be unwise.
Groucho first threw his hat into the political ring in 1932. The Four Marx Brothers were candidates for vice-president on the Will Rogers presidential ticket in a studio publicity stunt. “What This Country Needs” was written as the Marx Brothers were wrapping up the filming of Go West. Groucho’s letters from this period suggest that Arthur Sheekman made some contribution to “What This Country Needs.” Groucho included a considerably shortened and retitled version of the article in Memoirs of a Mangy Lover in 1963.
Politicians have acclaimed filmmaker hauled away from hearing
Josh Fox is an American video artist who rose to critical acclaim for his 2010 documentary feature breakthrough, Gasland. The creatively funky, seriously personal, and lively-paced film chronicles Fox’s investigation into hydraulic fracking (where deposits of natural gas are extracted from the earth leaving poison and destruction behind) resonated with audiences and critics alike. The director is currently filming his follow-up to Gasland and in that capacity was at a Capitol Hill public hearing on natural gas procurement today when the House Republicans took the audacious step of having him arrested and removed from the property. Charged on a technicality that was facilitated by ethically bankrupt politicians, Fox will likely be emboldened by the incident and will hopefully make another hard-hitting, power-challenging exposé that might just rival his debut documentary powerhouse Gasland. One hope at least.
Online, international platform for performances, installations, actions in real time
Project Lowlives is seeking artists for a global online live presentation of artistic work in support the Occupy movement. Lowlives: Occupy! will take place on March 3, 2012.
From the website:
The Occupy protests, and the myriad of perspectives and experiences related to this unique moment, will be amplified, explored, and experimented with, through Low Lives’ internet-based creative platform. Low Lives: Occupy! recognizes the powerful opportunity that is the presentation of performances from around the world, and invites artists to open eyes and minds by presenting a radical re-imagining of possible ways of existing and relating.
Deadline for proposals: 6 February 2012
2500 films & study guides in NFB's “Campus” project
"Oxford Tire Pile #8" by Edward Burtynsky
Friday Film Pick: A Film Unfinished
A Film Unfinished (2010, Germany-Israel) had so much festival hype that when I couldn’t get my hands on a screener, I feverishly pre-ordered the film from Amazon – a practice I seldom initiate. When the handsomely designed DVD package arrived I watched it instantly, and as soon as the film ended, I decided the praise was inflated but not unworthy. An act of cinematic brilliance worthy of Best Picture I did not find, but, I was pleased to discover an engaging, gorgeous, poetic and inventive archival documentary full of mystery and awe. So, since today is the day the UN named International Holocaust Remembrance Day, I thought it was appropriate to choose A Film Unfinished for this week’s Friday Film Pick.
Yael Hersonski’s expertly reconfigured tale of behind-the-scenes Nazi propaganda is riveting and mesmerizing at the same time. There have been a clutch of archival docs making the rounds these days, and this film—which is almost entirely made up of discovered archival film of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942—is among the best. Hersonski sensibly avoids sentimentality and gushy melodrama to communicate the tragedies and terror of WWII and the Nazi Holocaust and instead delicately assembles one hour of outtakes from footage shot by Nazi propagandists, whose images would be used as “historical evidence” in later years, but become reinvigorated visual evidence in this talented filmmaker’s hands. The results are haunting and revelatory.
You can stream A Film Unfinished at Netflix (America only) or purchase the film from Amazon.
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