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.
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my memories are notoriously order-less, nonlinear. i’m constantly amazed at people who have any idea what age they were when anything happened, especially in childhood. i don’t have a timeline for things that i didn’t write down.
cutie!
wonderful.wonderful.
have a lovely summer!
xo.s
have a good trip and many fun success’s!
The amount of cops, and rcmp and there temporary command centre that was parked up the street from my office on simcoe in front of the american embassy.. Made coming to work, feel like im crossing the border going into the states.. Toronto after this weekend of mass mayhem, will have changed. It will not be the same here again, after this weekend in my opinion.. I have now a larger hatred against the cops, since they are all liars, especially the head piggy who said there were no rubber bullets or tear gas used.. When my mom who works in Toronto General on university said, right when she was leaving friday or saturday in the mid afternoon, that they announced that they have to prepare for teargas injuries and such..
You are now safer over there in the land of good brie cheese and beer, and electronic music. Have a good summer!