December 28, 2015
A long and short playlist for 2015 (with commentary)
I said I wasn't going to do this anymore, because YouTube now has too many commercials, but it seems I can't stop.
I've now made YouTube playlists in 2010, 2011, Japan, 2013, 2014 and now 2015 (also above.)
The playlist for 2015 is so long (over five hundred videos) that this year I've also made a shorter one that contains some of my favourites.
In previous years, my commentary was about how things I do on the internet now seem part of, or even more interesting, than the rest of my artistic practice. But this year all I'm thinking about is my internet addiction. For the first time in my life I'm finding it difficult to read and I think it might partly have too do with how much time I spend online.
I have just managed to spend two weekends offline, and will try to keep spending weekends away from this thing for the rest of the year. I don't particularly think I'll succeed. But we'll see what happens.
I think what disturbs me most is how little interest I have in doing anything else.
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December 21, 2015
Internet Addiction
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I have decided to try to stay off the internet during the weekends. (I just managed my first weekend in more or less ever.) I will most likely fail, but I thought I would announce it here anyway. Each time I fall off the wagon I will do my best to get back on. When it comes to email, ‘it can wait until Monday’ will hopefully become my new mantra. So if you see me on social media during the weekend you will know that I am weak.
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I have decided to try to stay off the internet during the weekends. (I just managed my first weekend in more or less ever.) I will most likely fail, but I thought I would announce it here anyway. Each time I fall off the wagon I will do my best to get back on. When it comes to email, ‘it can wait until Monday’ will hopefully become my new mantra. So if you see me on social media during the weekend you will know that I am weak.
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December 18, 2015
December 14, 2015
Rashayla Marie Brown: "Especially to the radiant child and the wunderkind, I ask you to open your hands and release your anxiety."
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I’m not going to lie to you. There are rewards for this amnesia – people will call you avant-garde or controversial, you don’t seem hindered by oppression, you aren’t didactic, you will gain access into places – alone – because you are one of the chosen ones who don’t challenge the institution. But you will be in the ivory tower, alone.
We can explore such ideas as the post-black, the post-racial, and the post-feminist because our ancestors’ world was a world of firsts before the post. I appeal to you to acknowledge your influences, publicly and loudly. I implore you to do your research and cite your sources. I ask you to share. Do not be lulled by the open gate or window, and then close it behind you so no one else like you can enter. A sense of competition is bred into the art world that makes you feel like you will lose if you aren’t the chosen one. Especially to the radiant child and the wunderkind, I ask you to open your hands and release your anxiety.
- Rashayla Marie Brown, Open Letter To My Fellow Young Artists And Scholars Who Work On The Margins – A Tribute to Terry Adkins
[Read the rest of the essay here.]
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I’m not going to lie to you. There are rewards for this amnesia – people will call you avant-garde or controversial, you don’t seem hindered by oppression, you aren’t didactic, you will gain access into places – alone – because you are one of the chosen ones who don’t challenge the institution. But you will be in the ivory tower, alone.
We can explore such ideas as the post-black, the post-racial, and the post-feminist because our ancestors’ world was a world of firsts before the post. I appeal to you to acknowledge your influences, publicly and loudly. I implore you to do your research and cite your sources. I ask you to share. Do not be lulled by the open gate or window, and then close it behind you so no one else like you can enter. A sense of competition is bred into the art world that makes you feel like you will lose if you aren’t the chosen one. Especially to the radiant child and the wunderkind, I ask you to open your hands and release your anxiety.
- Rashayla Marie Brown, Open Letter To My Fellow Young Artists And Scholars Who Work On The Margins – A Tribute to Terry Adkins
[Read the rest of the essay here.]
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December 13, 2015
Karissa Chen: "It’s simply that you cannot imagine you could be wrong, and so you cannot see."
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The thing I want to tell that male journalist with the Asian wife, or even to Michael Derrick Hudson with his stolen name, is that these Asian women whom you’ve reduced to names and monikers and symbols of your discontent — they fall outside of your imaginations. Despite all of your privilege, your belief that you have the right to imagine and shape worlds as you see fit, you lack the capacity to conceive of the multitudes that lie inside the women whom you claim to speak for. Your singular wife. Yi-Fen Chou. My grandmother. Myself. And so many other Asian women I know. We are constantly breaking stereotypes. We have varying, changing dreams, and move through this world expressing ourselves in unexpected ways. We are living, breathing examples of how your constructions of us are paper-thin, weightless. It’s simply that you cannot imagine you could be wrong, and so you cannot see.
One more point on audacity. I don’t think all audacity looks the same. The audacity that a white man has because he believes he is entitled to something very particular, something very expected is different from the audacity of an immigrant who has no idea what is coming, who plunges ahead despite not knowing, but who, despite all odds, believes she deserves something better, something greater than her imagination. This is the same audacity that will allow her to let go of everything she’s worked for if it comes to it, because she has the audacity to reimagine her future, again and again, as is necessary. She has the audacity to expect better even when the world tells her she shouldn’t dare.
- Karissa Chen, The Audacity to Dream: On Asian Women, Feminism, and My Grandmother
[Read the rest of the essay here.]
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The thing I want to tell that male journalist with the Asian wife, or even to Michael Derrick Hudson with his stolen name, is that these Asian women whom you’ve reduced to names and monikers and symbols of your discontent — they fall outside of your imaginations. Despite all of your privilege, your belief that you have the right to imagine and shape worlds as you see fit, you lack the capacity to conceive of the multitudes that lie inside the women whom you claim to speak for. Your singular wife. Yi-Fen Chou. My grandmother. Myself. And so many other Asian women I know. We are constantly breaking stereotypes. We have varying, changing dreams, and move through this world expressing ourselves in unexpected ways. We are living, breathing examples of how your constructions of us are paper-thin, weightless. It’s simply that you cannot imagine you could be wrong, and so you cannot see.
*
One more point on audacity. I don’t think all audacity looks the same. The audacity that a white man has because he believes he is entitled to something very particular, something very expected is different from the audacity of an immigrant who has no idea what is coming, who plunges ahead despite not knowing, but who, despite all odds, believes she deserves something better, something greater than her imagination. This is the same audacity that will allow her to let go of everything she’s worked for if it comes to it, because she has the audacity to reimagine her future, again and again, as is necessary. She has the audacity to expect better even when the world tells her she shouldn’t dare.
- Karissa Chen, The Audacity to Dream: On Asian Women, Feminism, and My Grandmother
[Read the rest of the essay here.]
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December 12, 2015
December 11, 2015
Zoe S.C. Todd Quote
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e) Listen to people without MFAs or PhDs. Listen to people who have lived experience. Listen to people who are angry. Listen to people who are not being shown at galleries. Don’t tell us to be polite. Don’t police our voices. Just sit with it. Ask yourself why people are angry. Acknowledge any part you play in that.
f) If you have the urge to be a White Saviour and speak for us, just stop. Just turn off your laptop, back away from your desk and go make yourself useful by working in reciprocity with Indigenous people and/or POC. Ask yourself how you can amplify the work of POC and/or Indigenous people without centring Colonial institutions or legal orders or colonial voices.
- Zoe S.C. Todd, So long and thanks
[Read the rest of the essay here.]
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e) Listen to people without MFAs or PhDs. Listen to people who have lived experience. Listen to people who are angry. Listen to people who are not being shown at galleries. Don’t tell us to be polite. Don’t police our voices. Just sit with it. Ask yourself why people are angry. Acknowledge any part you play in that.
f) If you have the urge to be a White Saviour and speak for us, just stop. Just turn off your laptop, back away from your desk and go make yourself useful by working in reciprocity with Indigenous people and/or POC. Ask yourself how you can amplify the work of POC and/or Indigenous people without centring Colonial institutions or legal orders or colonial voices.
- Zoe S.C. Todd, So long and thanks
[Read the rest of the essay here.]
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December 9, 2015
Jesse B. Staniforth on “of the North” – Quebec filmmaker uses YouTube and unauthorized music to portray the Inuit
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I highly recommend this piece by Jesse B. Staniforth:
“of the North” – Quebec filmmaker uses YouTube and unauthorized music to portray the Inuit
As well, in a Facebook comment Jesse added this note:
The story I submitted was so much longer than it was supposed to be so a lot of it had to be cut for space (and they did a GREAT job). However, I originally ended with this coda, which I think is worth sharing:
I emailed Mara Gourd-Mercado for clarification about the statement, asking, “rather than presume the Indigenous audience of this film is misreading it, are you concerned that your reading of the film ‘confronting stereotypes’ is grounded in your lack of knowledge and experience of Indigenous communities? Do you stand by your contention that this film is critical of those stereotypes?”
Gourd-Mercado replied, “One of the main things we take away from our conversation last week and that is important for us to express right now is not the RIDM's perception of the film. We need to listen to the opinions that are emerging from the Inuit communities, and to establish communication channels with members of this community. We hope to be able to enter a more inclusive dialogue regarding the film and our programming moving forward. As we stated this takes time and we are ready to put in the work at any cost.”
.
I highly recommend this piece by Jesse B. Staniforth:
“of the North” – Quebec filmmaker uses YouTube and unauthorized music to portray the Inuit
As well, in a Facebook comment Jesse added this note:
The story I submitted was so much longer than it was supposed to be so a lot of it had to be cut for space (and they did a GREAT job). However, I originally ended with this coda, which I think is worth sharing:
I emailed Mara Gourd-Mercado for clarification about the statement, asking, “rather than presume the Indigenous audience of this film is misreading it, are you concerned that your reading of the film ‘confronting stereotypes’ is grounded in your lack of knowledge and experience of Indigenous communities? Do you stand by your contention that this film is critical of those stereotypes?”
Gourd-Mercado replied, “One of the main things we take away from our conversation last week and that is important for us to express right now is not the RIDM's perception of the film. We need to listen to the opinions that are emerging from the Inuit communities, and to establish communication channels with members of this community. We hope to be able to enter a more inclusive dialogue regarding the film and our programming moving forward. As we stated this takes time and we are ready to put in the work at any cost.”
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December 8, 2015
Some favourite things from my 2015
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(It seems I really do love lists. As is often the case with me, many of these things were released prior to 2015. I have listed them more or less in the order they gradually came to me.)
Books:
Bodymap – Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
In an I – Popahna Brandes
May ’68 and Its Afterlives – Kristen Ross
Sister Outsider – Audre Lorde
Lee Lozano: Dropout Piece – Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer
The Fourth World – Diamela Eltit
Bodies of Work: Essays – Kathy Acker
Tattooed Forever – Dalia Rosetti (story in Animal Shelter 3)
Her 37th Year, An Index – Suzanne Scanlon
Garments Against Women – Anne Boyer
Writing:
Anything and everything by Hannah Black
Anything and everything by Jackie Wang
Music:
Aina More – For People With Short Attention Spans
Rapsody – Beauty & The Beast
Lexii Alijai – feel-less
Shamir – Rachet
Little Simz – A Curious Tale of Trials + Persons
Vince Staples - Summertime ‘06
THEESatisfaction – EarthEE
John Carter – Fields
Kelela – CUT 4 ME
Exhibitions:
Cuts Make The Country Better – Edith Brunette and François Lemieux
Talk Show – el instituto / SBC Gallery
Performances:
its not a thing – keyon gaskin
Resistance Solo – Miguel Pereira
Uro – Anna Natt
J'AURAIS AIMÉ TRAVERSER – Elaine Juteau in collaboration with Andrée-Anne Giguère and Luis Felipe Ortega Gil
.
(It seems I really do love lists. As is often the case with me, many of these things were released prior to 2015. I have listed them more or less in the order they gradually came to me.)
Books:
Bodymap – Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
In an I – Popahna Brandes
May ’68 and Its Afterlives – Kristen Ross
Sister Outsider – Audre Lorde
Lee Lozano: Dropout Piece – Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer
The Fourth World – Diamela Eltit
Bodies of Work: Essays – Kathy Acker
Tattooed Forever – Dalia Rosetti (story in Animal Shelter 3)
Her 37th Year, An Index – Suzanne Scanlon
Garments Against Women – Anne Boyer
Writing:
Anything and everything by Hannah Black
Anything and everything by Jackie Wang
Music:
Aina More – For People With Short Attention Spans
Rapsody – Beauty & The Beast
Lexii Alijai – feel-less
Shamir – Rachet
Little Simz – A Curious Tale of Trials + Persons
Vince Staples - Summertime ‘06
THEESatisfaction – EarthEE
John Carter – Fields
Kelela – CUT 4 ME
Exhibitions:
Cuts Make The Country Better – Edith Brunette and François Lemieux
Talk Show – el instituto / SBC Gallery
Performances:
its not a thing – keyon gaskin
Resistance Solo – Miguel Pereira
Uro – Anna Natt
J'AURAIS AIMÉ TRAVERSER – Elaine Juteau in collaboration with Andrée-Anne Giguère and Luis Felipe Ortega Gil
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December 6, 2015
Raymond Boisjoly tweet
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Still thinking about this tweet from Raymond Boisjoly: "...as if art was more important than our responsibility to one another"
.
Still thinking about this tweet from Raymond Boisjoly: "...as if art was more important than our responsibility to one another"
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December 3, 2015
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