Owing in large part to Hollywood’s discovery of its infinite star vehicle potential, the “intersecting lives” narrative has become, in recent years, something of a cop out. When the A-story isn’t strong enough, simply prop it up with parallel stories B through F and have them all fatefully (and conveniently) collide about a third of the way through the final act. It’s a trite and often tiresome trick that, with few exceptions, sacrifices meaningful narrative at the altar of novelty.
In riffing on this form with his debut novel London Triptych (Arsenal Pulp, first North American edition, 2013), Jonathan Kemp is playing with fire. Mirroring its namesake, Triptych sweeps across the centuries, tracing the lives of three different men in three historically distinct Londons; men tied to one another by their shared experiences of queer desire and by their participation in libidinal economies of queer touch and feeling that, despite the best efforts of hetereosexual society, refuse to exhaust themselves.
“ History isn’t the lies of the victors … I know that now. It’s more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious nor defeated.” – The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
On the last Sunday in the year, the Parisian bourgeoisie were out in force. The queue for the Impressionism and Fashion exhibition at the Musee d’Orsay moved in sudden leaps but still took over an hour to get to the security checks. For the Dali exhibition at the Pompidou Centre, those with pre-booked tickets queued for an hour, those without considerably longer
Meanwhile, across the Alma Bridge from the Eiffel Tower, all was quiet outside the Palais de Tokyo and the Musee de l’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Inside, the galleries hummed with an apprehensive curiosity as the patrons moved in physical comfort around exhibits that were anything but comfortable, couched as they were in the context of the annees noires of the Nazi occupation. L’Art en Guerre, France 1938 to 1947 was an opportunity for Parisians to confront a difficult past that lay within the memory of many of them.
If Josh Keyes’ paintings don’t take a bit of your breath away, I suggest you visit an optometrist. Each painting sits as a stand-alone diorama, a moment caught in a fictional time, with beautiful realistic paintings of animals in a world so strange that it is most likely caused by human error.
While his work is often shown along with other surrealist artists gaining notoriety in the west coast pop-surrealism art scene, they carry a completely different message. His peers often site old fashioned cartoons as their inspiration, where Josh has been moved by ecological plights. Ever since first seeing his work in an issue of (the really and truly fabulous, but not at all political) Hi-Fructose Magazine I’ve been itching for an excuse to interview him. Luckily for us, this year he has some new shows coming up, and a book signing in February. I managed to catch him by email for an interview that just makes me love his work even more.
“The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule.” -Walter Benjamin
Kathryn Bigelow’s film Zero Dark Thirty was met with both large audiences and waves of criticism for how the film depicted, and seemingly endorsed, the use of torture. While it’s not surprising that a film about the War on Terror and the assassination of Osama Bin Laden has provoked controversy, what is rather troubling is that the majority of critics have chosen to focus their critique on the film’s questionable suggestion that information obtained through torture lead to finding Bin Laden, precluding any substantial ethical debate about the practice of torture itself.
The Anti-Capitalist Resistance Comic Book is the second graphic novel from activist Gord Hill. It is a chronicle of several anti-capitalist and anti-globalization movements over the last two decades, from the WTO protests in Seattle to the recent Occupy movements. Hill also places a great deal of emphasis on the violence that has accompanied these movements, regardless of whether that violence was perpetrated by police or protestors.
As a documentary account of these events, The Anti-Capitalist Resistance Comic Book does a passable job. Hill was clearly involved in many of the movements chronicled in the book and is able to expose events that were under-covered or completely overlooked by mainstream media outlets at the time. This is the greatest strength of the book, which is at its best whenever it is able to provide first person accounts from inside the political actions it depicts.
As decent and occasionally eye-opening a documentary account as Hill’s book can be, it utterly fails for me as work of commentary. A brief history of capitalism and its myriad problems (and I’ll be the first to agree that there are many) is provided but very little in the way of solutions beyond blind rage is offered.
This week’s Friday Film Pick is the beautifully shot and tenderly renderedScrappers, a documentary that quietly follows two Chicago residents as they eke out a living from the salvaging of metallic refuse. It’s not fist-in-the-air advocacy filmmaking for the downtrodden, but in its own way Scrappers gets under the skin, forcing a closer look at the stark indexes of inequality present in contemporary America. With a subtle grace and empathic approach this gorgeous film challenges the notion of the “American Dream” — the mainstream media and Hollywood fairytale that with a whole lot of hard work and ambition anyone can climb to the top.
About 40 people gathered in Toronto last night to discuss what many hope will grow into a movement for archiving grassroots histories. The public meeting was organized by Ulli Diemer of the Connexions Archive as a way to bring like-minded activists and scholars together to find strategies for preserving the heritage of social movements and marginalized communities in Toronto and across Canada. (Check out #Connexions for the twitter feed from the event.)
The meeting was held at the Beit Zatoun House, a community centre and gallery that promotes arts and culture exploring issues of social justice and human rights. There was an exhibition of materials from the Connexions Archive in the gallery space where the meeting was held, a collection of magazine covers from grassroots publications dating back to the early 1970s. Connexions describes their archive (gathered over a period of more than 40 years) as a “living archive” which emphasizes the importance of encouraging public access and interaction with their archived materials.
Occupy Oakland demonstrators shut down the Port of Oakland on Nov. 2, 2011. (Photo by ButterFlying / CC)
The contemporary political moment is inflected with both optimism and collapse, unexpected insurrections and brutal repressions. In Greece, Russia, the United States, Canada, Mexico, China, Spain, and elsewhere, the current historical crisis of our economic and political order has given rise to political and aesthetic movements that have produced a multitude of ruptures and solidarities.
While we fortunately find ourselves witnesses and participants in a proliferation of aesthetic and political experimentation, many of the discourses surrounding the relationships and entanglements between these aesthetico-political projects remain stuck in diffused generalities and misleading assumptions.
The 2012 Creative Time Summit in New York aimed to “reflect upon recent upheavals in the international political and economic climate,” and in this spirit I feel it is necessary to mark out the critical territories that frame these upheavals and the discourses active within them.
Last week I attended the Toronto theatrical premiere of Herman’s House, a thought-provoking documentary written and directed by Angad Singh Bhalla. This Canadian film tells the story of an artistic collaboration between Jackie Sumell and Herman Wallace. Sumell is a multidisciplinary artist from New York. Wallace is a Black Panther from Louisiana who has been in solitary confinement for 40 years.
As a documentary filmmaker myself, I was curious to see what visuals Bhalla and his team would use to depict a missing main character, as we only get to know Wallace through his articulate voice over the phone. (I thought they did this well. Herman’s House is jagged, beautiful, and haunting.)
And because I am concerned about the issue of prisons, I wanted to learn more about solitary confinement and the human rights questions it raises. (Which I did, though maybe not as much as I was hoping.)
The Center for Urban Pedagogy has brought the principle of public-access television to the world of design with a project intended to provide impactful design to community advocates and empower people in their own neighbourhoods.
Public Access Design creates collaborations between designers and community organizations to create visual tools that “help ordinary residents better understand and participate in democratic processes, creating real social change.”
Project proposals from the community will evaluated by a jury, who select projects based on “whether it would benefit from a visual explanation, whether the scope is achievable given the time frame, and whether there is a credible distribution plan and a clear constituency with a need for the tool,” explains CUP Program Manager Clara Amenyo.
Contributors
Stefan Christoff, Colin Horgan, Julia Pyper
Michelle Siobhan Reid, Valerie Cardinal, Race Capet
Laurence Miall, Terry Fairman, Tyler Morgenstern
