Cumulus Press has published a 128 page comic book/graphic novel that combines investigative journalism, comic art, and the politics of mining and resistance to mining. Extraction! is divided up into four stories and four extracted elements of the earth. Whether its gold in Guatemala or oil in Canada (Alberta to be specific), this book delivers some excellent critical analysis of plundering while offering up some excellent art-driven narratives.

The book was inspired by other political comix producers such as Joe Sacco, and of course the ongoing malfeasance of Canadian mining companies who continue to ignore domestic populations the world over as they dig and strip the earth for precious stones, industry staples and fuel.

Four journalists teamed up with four artists to dig up the dirt (excuse the pun) on the activities of some of these companies and the result is a great bed-time read.

To find out more or to purchase (for $20), visit the cumulus press site.

Calling all graduate student artists and academics... Pivot Journal is calling out for your work!

A centre point. A counter point. Pivot provides the space from which to respond to the shared and divided scholarly territories of visual culture. Concordia's new peer-reviewed graduate academic interdisciplinary journal brings together the Departments of Art History, Studio Arts and Communication Studies in a forum for graduate scholarship working towards the exploration of relationships among diverse forms of art practice and production, as well as among art historical scholarship, visual studies, theory, and criticism.

Currently Pivot is an online journal with a small print run. Pivot accepts submissions from graduate students across many disciplines within Canada and internationally. As a journal of visual culture recognizing art production as a site for scholarly exploration, Pivot accepts content in the form of academic papers, artist project descriptions, short texts by artists and image based proposals.

Image + Nation, the week-long queer/glbt film fest in Montréal is celebrating 20 years of providing queers with something to get excited about as the days get shorter, colder. 20 Years: that's a long time... and opportunity to reflect back... to think ahead.

VAL Desjardins is Montréal-based photographer and a video artist who uses performance as a way to express her ideas about gender and queer sexualities. I was able to attend her Coming Home show, after she'd been away for years in New York, finessing her photography and becoming evermore involved in performance art.

[Interview by Mél Hogan for Art Threat]

AT: You are an artist who appears as much in front as behind the camera--can you talk a bit about what those different positions offer?

VAL: Breaking down the boundaries that have traditionally existed between the camera/artist and the subject has been pivotal in my work. Being able to move between the back of the camera where I plan images and engaging my body in performance for the camera allows me the freedom necessary to express my ideas and include myself as a source of exploration. I love creating images but also feel a strong need to be seen, therefore I need the dance between the two positions to be extremely fluid and open. Sometimes I work with models and shoot traditional portraits, sometimes I set up my camera on a tripod and perform alone for the camera, other times I collaborate with people and create images that record a live performance. It’s always different, there are no rules in my image making world…just feelings, ideas and the desire to express them by making images.

Rolling Stone Magazine has determined the future, and it is bleak my friends. Yes, we may be used to the patriarchal drivel emanating from the pages of a magazine clinging to a post 40-has-been epoch, so much that we should not be surprised when they print a cover that promotes the underpinnings of patriarchy so conspicuously. But the guys who run Rolling Stone Magazine do not give a shit about this critique: they are still, stupidly, myopically, listening to their advertisers. They are, alas, still jerking off to their air guitars while feeling purpose in what they do: the promotion of corporate music culture that truncates the white male over the Others. Rolling Stone, you have grown up, and you have displayed your culture badge to us all: the visionaries of your future, are, wait for it, all MEN and ALL WHITE. Reality check? You bet, with performances like this your days are numbered, and some of us can’t wait until the count is up.

Take one second and examine THE 40th ANNIVERSARY COVER of Rolling Stone Magazine and you will see a promotion of phallancentricity, a sexist proclivity toward a culture of males. There is no other word on the eve of this magazine’s 40th anniversary to describe them: sexist ASSHOLES. Burn your copies, because folks we are in the age of pop culture patriarchy.

Rolling Stone, you make me sick.

Author's note: Some of you out there have sent me pretty nasty emails about this post, and while I appreciate you sticking up for your favourite culture-mag, I'd like to point out that this post is a provocation, I'm not really angry or sick. Unsurprisingly, this sarcastic post has even attracted sexist, self-described "aryans" jumping at the opportunity to defend whitedom. For that reaction and others, check out the comments section. And let's keep our sense of humour, no?

Arsenal Press has recently submitted Matthew Hay's new book, The View from Here: Conversations with Gay and Lesbian Filmmakers, for an Art Threat review. For our readers out there who can't wait for me to get to it in the stack, I thought I'd post about the title and let you know you can go out and grab a copy now. From Arsenal Press:

The history of gay and lesbian cinema is a storied one, and one that became much larger with the recent success of Brokeback Mountain, Capote, and Transamerica. But the history of gay and lesbian filmmakers is its own story.

In The View from Here, queer directors and screenwriters—some mainstream, others who work defiantly from the margins—speak passionately about the medium, in particular their personal experiences navigating through the often-cynical and cruel film industry. All of them offer fascinating anecdotes and opinions about cinema, and speak candidly about their attempts to combat studio apathy and demands of "the market" and still create films that are entertaining, engaging, and truthful.

Containing numerous black-and-white screen stills and production photos, The View from Here provides fascinating insight into the filmmaking process—a book for serious film fans and gay culture aficionados alike.

Filmmakers profiled include: John Waters (Pink Flamingos; Hairspray), Pedro Almodovar (Volver; Bad Education), Gus Van Sant (My Own Private Idaho; Good Will Hunting), John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig & the Angry Inch; Shortbus), Don Roos (The Opposite of Sex; Happy Endings), Randal Kleiser (Grease), Don Mancini (the Chucky films), Kenneth Anger, Gregg Araki, Lea Pool, Wakefield Poole, Monika Treut, Rosa von Praunheim, and Canadian filmmakers such as John Greyson, Bruce LaBruce, Robert Lepage, Patricia Rozema, David Secter, Lynne Fernie, and Aerlyn Weissman.

Get your copy at fine bookstores, or visit the Arsenal Press page here.

I awoke this morning to one of the best radio interviews I have heard in a very long time. K-OS, the Canadian hip-hop artist otherwise known as Kevin Brereton, was the guest host of The Current on CBC Radio. The theme of the show was "The Future of Music", with discussion ranging from Radiohead's online gambit, to celebrity trainwrecks.

The highlight, however, was certainly the interview with Dr. Cornel West.

Having just released a new album, West joined K-OS to discuss his new album, hip-hop as "edutainment", how Kanye West wastes his obvious talent, and why Barack Obama isn't "black enough" for some of his critics.

Listen to the show over at CBC Radio.

Refugees of the Blue Planet is a remarkable film that connects the unseemingly related geographic regions of Western Canada, the Maldives, and Brazil in a beautifully shot and slick one hour work. Avid documentary fans will already be well-aware of the central message of this Canadian documentary: corporate greed is not only consuming the very earth we live on, but leaving a path of poverty and misery in a scorched wake while “the North” continues in the blissful ignorance of privilege. There is a twist however, and it is this angle that the film takes that makes it such an informative and fascinating document of economic globalization and the modern side-effects. According to the UN environmental refugees now outnumber political refugees at a staggering 25 million. And as the film points out in a very subtle nod to optimism, it is an affliction that affects not only the very poor, but the wealthy as well, leading at least one interviewed expert to have hope for change.

From rising sea levels to hurricanes to monoculture “green deserts” to sour gas leaks in Alberta, the extreme corporate malfeasance, cajoled by the myopic and self-interested hand of governments like King Klein’s are exposed. And what is left are broken communities, decimated homes, jobless and dejected souls angry and despondent with nowhere to direct their frustrations. Enter Refugees of the Blue Planet: the film provides a platform, an outlet which serves as a conduit between those who may be sitting in the audience unmoved by recent environmental disasters like hurricanes and floods, to channel the stories of the survivors, of refugees seeking many things from justice to a place to sleep at night. The characters we meet are scattered postcards from the neoliberal project, an experiment gone terribly, viciously, wrong. The connections between environmental crisis and unchecked corporate rapaciousness have never been clearer than as they are in this work. The film’s technical troubles - redundant NFB voice of god narration, the art-destroying voice-over in lieu of subtitles, emotionally manipulative music - are not enough to detract from this intense portrait of the perils of neoliberal globalization.

Visit the film's NFB site here.

The current issue of Canadian Dimension magazine features an article about Art Threat by Ed Janzen. A Montreal-based artist and writer, Janzen's work has previously appeared our gallery.

Pick up a copy of CD on the newsstands, or download a PDF of the article from my website.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Design and Culture is a new interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal published by Berg. Edited by Elizabeth Guffey (State University of New York, Purchase, United States) and associate editors Guy Julier (Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds, England), Pekka Korvenmaa, (University of Art and Design, Helsinki, Finland), and Matt Soar (Concordia University, Montreal, Canada), it is the official journal of the Design Studies Forum. Design and Culture will publish three issues annually beginning in the spring of 2009.

Design and Culture explores the dynamic, contingent relationships between design and its many cultural contexts. Encompassing the numerous professional, quasi-professional, and amateur fields of design, the journal identifies and explores cultures of design and designs of culture, investigating the tensions often encountered between critical, analytical, and intellectual activity and traditional studio-based endeavors. The journal aims to broaden the discourse of design by examining its relation to other academic disciplines, including anthropology, cultural studies, economics, geography, marketing, management, material culture, politics, and visual culture. It also seeks congruence between traditional divisions within design practice, such as graphic, product, industrial, and environmental design. In so doing, the journal's editorial board proposes to strengthen, clarify, and promote the study of design cultures, including history, criticism, and design practice, in the contemporary academy.

Design and Culture invites interpretive critiques, review essays, interviews, book reviews, case studies, and field reports that address designed objects, systems, and practices and their contexts, texts, and reception.

SUBMISSIONS

Guidelines for contributors and instructions for submitting manuscripts are available at Design and Culture’s website, Books for review and suggestions for books to review may be sent to:

Prof. Carma Gorman
Lead Book Review Editor
Design and Culture
School of Art and Design
Allyn Building 113, mail code 4301
1100 S. Normal Ave.
Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Carbondale, IL 62901-4301
USA
Email: cgorman@siu.edu