‘And then a woman spoke, saying, Tell us of Pain.’ by Zuzana Hudackova on March 3rd, 2010
From Kahlil Gibran’s THE PROPHET - ‘On Pain.’
“And he said:
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun,
so must you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life,
your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.
(photo by: zuzana hudackova / in this image: agi gutkowska)
‘Much of your pain is self-chosen.
It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility:
(photo by: zuzana hudackova / in this image: agi gutkowska)
‘For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,
And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay
which the Potter has moistened with his owns sacred tears.”
From Kahlil Gibran’s THE PROPHET - On Pain.
The Happiness Project at Apple Crisp March 12-20 by Agi Gutkowska on March 1st, 2010
PDF of press release for download here
http://www.applecrisp.ca
http://www.happiness-project.ca
http://www.myspace.com/charlesspearin
Links to Artists’ work
Don Maynard
Jon Claytor
Nicole Aline Legault
Watch the video about the project with Nicole’s images here.
Josh Lyon
Marny McDiarmid
Annie Clifford
Jeff Barbeau + Vince Perez
Arron Gibson
APPLE CRISP CONTACT : festivalplanning@yahoo.com
ARTIST BLOC CONTACT : agi@artistbloc.com
FB EVENT PAGE (RSVP) : http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=323729918327&ref=mf
Body Cartography by Agi Gutkowska on February 26th, 2010
Cara Spooner and Alicia Grant are on the move again with a new piece and residency at the Harbourfront Centre as part of the HATCH emerging performance series.
Body Cartography
Created in collaboration with visual artist Simon Rabyniuk, as well as urban theorist Alex Marques, Body Cartography emphasizes and distorts the idea of a city within a city. A performance that mixes disparate details of balancing on rooftops, walking home alone at night, raiding secret swimming pools and feeling too close to strangers – employing installation, dance and question and answer periods.
“Cara Spooner and Alicia Grant make films, installations, curated events, subtle interventions and performances. They come from a contemporary dance lineage and integrate the physicality of their dance backgrounds into their practice and conceptual performances. They collaboratively create art that amplifies, distorts and/or frames everyday experience, drawing attention to disparate details like personal space, contemporary mythology, architecture of food courts and how fast cars can actually move with dances, installations and question and answer periods. They merge inner and outer stimuli to create live art events that are a convergence of their own bodies and the world around them. Their interdisciplinary collaborations unpack the notion of artist as social being into a relational art practice.” from Harbourfront site.
February 25 & 27, 8 p.m at Harbourfront Centre. Studio Theatre. York Quay Centre, 235 Queens Quay West (Map)
Regular: $12 Student/Senior or Arts Worker: $10
A SHORT LOVE STORY by Agi Gutkowska on February 23rd, 2010
APRICOT, short film by Ben Briand (sponsored by his incredible actors and crew) from Moonwalk Films on Vimeo.
E P I C T R U T H ! ! ! by Aaron Kopff on February 19th, 2010
N E W B R O K E N S O C I A L S C E N E R E C O R D ! ! !
here is a link to the pitchfork article and a free download.
Doris Salcedo by Aaron Kopff on February 16th, 2010
Bogotá, Colombia’s , Doris Salcedo is a part of the Guggenheim’s current show, Contemplating the Void. For the exhibit, which marks the building’s 50th anniversary, nearly two hundred artists, architects, and designers were invited to imagine their dream interventions in the rotunda of the space. Her mash- up art piece combines a downward view of the rotunda with a photograph of a New York tenement by the German-born artist Hans Haacke. The tenement photograph, part of his series documenting the holdings of a local real-estate baron, was scheduled to be featured in the 1971 Haacke show at the Guggenheim that was canceled for what were widely believed at the time to be political concerns by the museum’s director.
“What Hans was doing was amazing, and it was censored,” said Ms. Salcedo, a sculptor who is also politically inclined. She wrote to Mr. Haacke to obtain his image and then worked with four architects over several months to create the perfect alignment with the other picture. “It was a nightmare in Photoshop,” she said.
Her point is not so much an institutional critique as a take on the power of design, good or bad. “Architecture has a real effect on us,” she said. “The lack of architecture in the ghetto has a real effect on the people who live there.”
In another of her works Shibboleth sets out to intervene directly with the fabric of Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. Rather than fill this iconic space with a conventional sculpture or installation, Salcedo has created a subterranean chasm that stretches the length of the Turbine Hall. The concrete walls of the crevice are ruptured by a steel mesh fence, creating a tension between these elements that resist yet depend on one another. By making the floor the principal focus of her project, Salcedo dramatically shifts our perception of the Turbine Hall’s architecture, subtly subverting its claims to monumentality and grandeur. Shibboleth asks questions about the interaction of sculpture and space, about architecture and the values it enshrines, and about the shaky ideological foundations on which Western notions of modernity are built.
In particular, Salcedo is addressing a long legacy of racism and colonialism that underlies the modern world. A ‘shibboleth’ is a custom, phrase or use of language that acts as a test of belonging to a particular social group or class. By definition, it is used to exclude those deemed unsuitable to join this group.
