Dancing Auschwitz

July 22, 2010 in dedications/responses, grandfather | 2 comments

In June 2009, Jane Korman with her kids and her holocaust survivor dad travelled to Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany to retrace her parents’ past including Oświęcim (Auschwitz). Jane says:

The installation  Dancing Auschwitz, stemmed from my desire to create artwork that conveys a fresh interpretation of historical memory. This way, the lessons of the past will not be forgotten.

Dancing Auschwitz comprises a large photographic image together with three video pieces:  a contemporary performance dance, an old video footage of a dance, and a documentary. The contemporary dance and documentary video were filmed during our recent family trip, while the old video footage is from a family home movie from my childhood.

The contemporary dance video portrays the family, comprising three generations, improvising an awkward dance to the pop song ‘I will survive.’(Gloria Gaynor, 1978) This was performed at numerous historically traumatic sites from my parents’ past. The dance expresses an attempt at celebrating life, but also evokes absence, loss and mourning.

.
.

I can’t believe people are all offended over this. This reminded me of my beloved grandpa and so many members of my family that refused to talk about the war and now they are dead and their stories are dead and that’s it. What the fuck? How amazing is it that Korman’s dad was able to go back and DANCE. To me, this is a way to re-articulate an experience you had with joy and reclaim a place of struggle to belong to you and own it, not be owned by it.

Tags: , ,

Bicyclette Obsession

July 20, 2010 in Inspirations, day-to-day | 1 comment

Hi hi! Yesterday after seeing this emotional performance at STEIM (the studio for electro-instrumental music), I rode a fixie around this crazy makeshift track at Mediamatic, set up for Sur Place, and exhibition of old and new and fancy fixies and self-portraits of people after brutal bike accidents. It was so exhilarating that after I walked out I was totally in love with everything, feeding my exponentially growing cycling (+Amsterdam!) obsession. Then after smoking, drinking and almost crashing a bbq in Vondelpark I rode home dancing on my own bike to Bullion and the Love Joys.

Tags: ,

Schiphol Airport (+I’m Feeling It)

July 18, 2010 in day-to-day, photography | No comments

Last week my friend Wassim and I were talking about how badass it would be to ride your bike to the airport and go fly somewhere. So, today I biked 20km to Schiphol airport through the giant Amsterdamse Bas (the forest). I didn’t board the plane though, I carry too many shoes to fit in a backpack. Instead, I stopped by the road where many people were sitting on blankets and on cars with binoculars and fancy telephoto lenses. Parents with their children were also running around, maybe showing them another family member flying away. I remember when I was young in the 90′s flying was very expensive and rare for the average person, so every time one of us would fly out the others would hang out of the car by the airport and watch as the LOT plane took off for Warsaw. We stopped doing that years ago, probably because the rarity of flying ended and now I see the inside of airports all the time.

I biked around some more. I started feeling really good, really right, right then. I mean, there’s been so much outpouring that Amsterdam and I don’t get along for the last three weeks and here I was, feeling “in my element.” I started taking photos of the parking lot. It was only after I was shooting for a while that I realized the comfort and ‘rightness’ I felt was because I allowed myself to become intimate with Amsterdam. I wrote about my desire for intimacy with architecture and physical spaces for a GPS video I did last year, suivez-moi. Perhaps this sounds totally cliche, and I guess it could be, but it makes so much sense to me, to take Amsterdam with my body, literally. I guess to be in love you have to be intimate in some way yea?

Yesterday I read all of Joan Didion’s The Last Thing He Wanted.

more more »

Tags:

Going Out Girl

July 17, 2010 in day-to-day | 3 comments

Hello. Last night I went out to see Headhunter play at OT301 by myself because I have no friends here and I’m not really sure I am able to/want to make any? I guess I’d like to make a friend or two to do things with and talk to. We could go to the dumpster site that acts like a beach and looks nothing like the website, or maybe discuss why Mount Kimbie is worth the expensive train ride to Brussels. I’ve met a few people that I get on with OK but I don’t want to compromise my time if I’m just hanging out with them because there are no other people more suitable, you know? We’d sit at the edge of the pond in Vondelpark, watching the fountain, drinking 1.99 1L bottles of Albert Heijn wine and have many awkward silences in which we’d both be unsure whether this is ever going to work. Then maybe we’d rely on a common ground: discussing our feelings towards Amsterdam and the tourists, but not in a memorable way at all, in a way that would leave us empty and sad and we’d both know we’ll never keep in touch, even though they’d say “Look me up if you’re ever in my city,” or maybe it wouldn’t even get to that. However PS. I’d love to spend more time with Brittney. //

These are the photos I took to remember what I looked like before heading out in case something happened to me. I got what I wanted: to practice my footwork and be among a large mass of non-stop dancers. What I didn’t want: non-stop comments from guys about my dancing, about me being out alone, about me being an ‘American.’ //

OT301 is an organized squat near Vondelpark that sells cheap wine (2 euro) and is a venue to many music and art shows. It also houses a restaurant, De Peper, selling vegan and organic 2-course meals for 6 to 10 euro. Like most squat restos in Amsterdam, you have to call earlier in the afternoon to book a reservation for that night. This makes me want to start a cheap kitchen initiative in Toronto because I don’t know of one, do you?

Tags:

Amsterdam & I don’t get along + Boxcutter

July 5, 2010 in Inspirations, day-to-day, music | 3 comments

I am unable to pry Amsterdam open. There is a thick wall, a thick concrete wall that stands between us. I am not good with unmalleable material. I am a soft sponge - penetrable. Sometimes trying is pointless when you are unable to try in a meaningful way. Or do you just keep going? Amsterdam is raw and humid and harsh. I can thrive and relate to raw and sharp, but not when the rawness is dull and cold. Some of the people in my program are in love with Amsterdam and all it has to offer. I am glad. I do not feel this. I want to smell and touch Amsterdam but it’s not letting me. Why won’t it let me? I can get along with every city I go to, why now, why here? There is an energy, a really pushy energy that tourists exude on it, making its residents impatient, making the city impatient but unable to say no.

.

MUSIC ::: Did you know Barry Lynn, also known as Boxcutter, also known to me as one of the most phenomenal musical artists of all time has a Soundcloud and he puts new unreleased music on there for us to listen to? When I listen to Boxcutter all of the cells that make up my existence re-articulate their existence and open up to the infinite possibilites. This all sounds cliche because it is how I always describe him, because his musical output’s great vastness permeates me that much.

I was in J’s music room in 216. It was early 2006. It was really bright outside. I was sitting in his lap on his gray oversized office chair that always swung back a bit too much and I was sure we’d both die this way. He played “Mossy” and I fell to the floor on his rug, closing in on my face with both hands the way I do when I hear music that overtakes me. I started crying and demanding the song be put on lifetime repeat. It was one of those moments that everything changed, that I heard something so new and so exciting that it made me want to keep being alive so I wouldn’t miss moments like these. I have those moments. They are rare, but they occur and when they do all of pessimistic insecure me seems implausible.

Mossy is one of the songs on Oneiric, Boxcutter’s first album on Planet Mu. When I hear oneiric in my head, I remember Mary Anne Hobbes talking about it when he did an exclusive session for the Breezeblock, and I managed to get myself in on the shout out as “Miss Riot” because that’s my handle on DOA from many many years ago. It mattered to be part of that moment so much then.

.

Now I am here, in the moment. I’ve been spending hours every day in front of Resolume with my Korg midi controller imagining with my own hands how all my favorite music looks like.

Tags: ,

the G20 + I have arrived + Loops Haunt

June 29, 2010 in day-to-day, photography | 2 comments

This weekend Toronto unwillingly hosted the G20. Although I have been physically in Amsterdam since Saturday, I have not left Toronto, glued to Twitter and the Internet reading obsessively about everything that is happening from all sides. Reasearching what the G20 actually does(n’t) do, and the history of it all, trying to figure out how easily meaningful discourse about the Summit gets obscured by hysteria from both sides. My write up on being a spectator from abroad is slowly coming to fruition. I need to take a few days to digest my interaction with the Summit almost exclusively online.

I am living with Rico, who runs IChione, and his family for the summer in their attic in Amstelveen. It is strange to have a peer that also has a 14 year old daughter. It is an interesting negotiation for me as a student but also an adult. At 23, Rico was on his way to be an ordained monk but then his daughter was conceived and he realized his way into it could not occur because he’d have to leave them both behind.

Here are some of what I saw yesterday in my new neighbourhood playing around with my UV lens. Flickr.

.

MUSIC: Also, a few days ago one of my favorite music people in the world, Loops Haunt, posted a mix called Strange Fruit Vol 1. It has many wonderful old love songs on it. You should download it and have him be in your life too. OK? OH! And I just found out that he’s playing StekkerFest in Utrecht on August 14! I am there! Maybe this special person I know can come too? For his biiiiiirthday?

Tags: , ,

MOVING (OUT/AWAY)

June 21, 2010 in day-to-day | 4 comments

I AM SO BUSY! Who isn’t busy though right? Always “busy.” On Friday I am off to Amsterdam to study Digital Methods at the University of Amsterdam for two months. I have been packing my life up for the last few days because I am also moving out of my apartment. The Skylight House has kept me for over three years. That’s the longest I’ve lived anywhere since I moved out on my own ten years ago. Mostly, it’d be several months here and there. I am uneasy because as soon as I moved in here, I told myself I will stay here until something really large happens upon my life to totally change it. I don’t see it (now?) I’m putting all of my things in a warehouse for the summer until I return in September, when I will attempt to find a place to live as fast as possible. For now, I am taking much too long packing. It is so impossible to efficiently move when you get lost in recalling and remembering all the sentimental junk you’ve been keeping that must be read and looked over! Teenage love letters are a crucial interjection to the exhaustion of sifting papers.

70 days in Europe. Summer in Europe (again). IF everything works out, I’ll stay a bit longer to go to Sun & Bass. Maybe I can sneak my way in to VJ somehow. I want to befriend some VJ’s and people who play with video in Amsterdam! WHOA! I am actually wanting to make friends?! Are you a Dutch friend? I need to be shaken up so much. The stagnation of familiarity has put up too many walls too high. I might go take the train to see some people while I am there if I can find some extra monies.

Things I want to accomplish there (while studying and raving):

  • learn Max/MSP
  • my Thesis Project Proposal
  • bike around the northern Holland coast
  • read a book in French (even a short one)
  • go stalking in Warsaw
  • re-form the whole way I approach taking photos
  • make contacts for a PhD
  • make a short film

Everything is in flux at this moment. I wonder if I will be able to produce an original piece of new media work to complete my MA for Summer 2011? All I have so far is rumination all day and night. How long did it take you to be sure? How long can you contemplate and research before you must put something down? When do you know this is it? Do you just feel it? I am skeptical of the transformative deconstructive ‘magic moment,’ even though it has occurred in my life a few times. What am I really wanting to know? What do I want you to know? I don’t have the answer.

Katharine Tillman, a woman from New York that I have been obsessed with for many years has been posting so many fascinating article links on Twitter. One of them was from Slate about Elizabeth Loftus and memory. My selective memory is one the things I am so proud of yet comes out of having serious difficulty remembering anything that follows a linear logic (such as names, tasks, directions, etc… even causal relationships). I think that is why post-structuralist theory and philosophy make so much sense to me, at least one of the reasons – because I remember and then can synthesize and understand it. How can I train myself to recall things and ideas that follow a successive order … ? Do I need to? … or am I doomed from playing with mercury as a child?

I am so glad I am leaving in time for the G8/G20 Summit in Toronto. Our streets have been taken over by cops that aren’t just for show but actually stop people at their leisure if they’re engaging in potentially ‘dangerous’ activities such as taking photographs of buildings. The downtown core has been stripped of newspaper boxes, bike locks and even trees have been uprooted to prevent protestors from using the branches as weapons. There’s a giant fence that keeps reminding me of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw. I don’t have much thoughts on it because I’ve been so enclosed in my life of studying and packing, but mainly because I am in shock at the whole situation and what this is doing to my city and to us, and how can we have protocols in place to prevent this from taking over a city again. The amount of money that is drained from US, from all of us taxpayers that had no choice but to accept the Summit here. How can it be that the money I am giving to my government can be used AGAINST me (I am thinking particularly of protestors, people that live in the core, etc.)? FUCK.

Ok, my next post will probably be from Europe — I am including a photo of Sara and I from Montréal when we presented at Congress 2010 on “Digital Storytelling Pedagogical Intervention” and a photo of my dear friend Meichen showing off her culinary loves. Meichen is doing a residency at Parsons Paris this summer and Sara is travelling to Vienna to take part in the Ultimate Frisbee World Championships.

Also, do you follow me on your RSS reader? Just make it happen.

OK BYE! Now I am baking organic spelt flour oatmeal raising walnut cookies for my class tomorrow. I hope there is enough. I mean, I hope I don’t eat them all first.

Tags:

« Older entries