The Walrus has a good interview with Simon Brault, author of No Culture, No Future, the new book that exploresthe fact that the arts are a necessity, not a luxury.

As he puts it, the book is a “call to action” - for Brault, it’s up to everyone to communicate with one another to promote and encourage the arts.

Image: cormorantbooks.com

Here is some of what Brault has to say in the interview:

“When you look in the papers, the conversation around arts and culture is reduced to the economy or to presenting a particular cultural product. It’s not a broad conversation about what arts and culture bring to people — to children, to people who are lonely, to people who have a need for expressive life.”

“Every human being has a relationship with the arts. The fact that we are ignoring that — and trying to lecture people as if they are completely ignorant, as if they are completely disconnected from everything we believe in – is a big problem.”

“I read, I think, I write, but mostly I act. And I try to act with people around me. I still believe that ideas can change the world. I know it can sound like a very romantic vision — but it’s not so romantic because things are changing… ”

Author Simon Brault. Image: cormorantbooks.com

I haven’t read the book, but I’m looking forward to it.

If you want to know more on Brault’s thoughts vis a vis the arts in Canada (and the world), buy the book HERE.

The finalists for the 2010 Sobey Art Award were announced today. The artists, selected by a jury from each region of Canada, are competing for the Award’s $50,000 top prize. Bendan Tang may be the newest kid on the block, but our money’s on Duke & Battersby or the excellent Daniel Barrow, who was passed over in 2008.  Do we have wonderful artists in this country, or what?

The 2010 Sobey Art Prize shortlist:

• West Coast and Yukon: Brendan Lee Satish Tang

A work by Brendan Lee Satish Tang. Image: illusion.scene360.com

Continue reading →

We returned from Vancouver to the news that Brian Jungen has won the $25,000 2010 Gershon Iskowitz award at the AGO, and that the $50,000 Sobey Art Prize longlist has been announced.

Vanessa Paschakarnis, Shield for a Human, 2009. Bronze. Image: erhard-metz.de

Most regions have a pretty clear shortlister for the Sobey (I’m thinking either Isabelle Pauwels or Jeremy Shaw from the West; Daniel Barrow from the Prairies; Diane Borsato or Jon Sasaki from Ontario and Duke and Battersby from the East) but Quebec has a tough choice between Pascal Grandmaison, Patrick Bernatchez, BGL, Adad Hannah and Karen Tam.

Continue reading →

Ok, ok people, you pummeled VoCA for THIS post, with many comments…

Tell VoCA what you want. Image: smh.com.au

Some agreed, saying “I feel like this this revulsion I’m experiencing is the desired effect: Trecartin would endeavour to highlight contemporary culture’s more outlandish aspects by combining them all into one loathsome beast” and “bad taste, as well as bad technique are the point! Maybe that’s the case here.”

But most blasted my “poorly poorly argued and supported judgments,” my “impatience with the work’s rigor, (that) shows a complete misunderstanding for the medium, and is lazy criticism,” suggesting that perhaps “sometimes aggressively queer work makes (me) feel uncomfortable.”

There have also been numerous suggestions and comments from readers sent to me off the blog.

So, I want to say that I hear you.

I welcome your comments on what you’d like to see in a critical art blog, below.

Thanks!

Here is the final part of an article written by former Winnipegger Edwin Janzen, an artist and writer currently based in Ottawa. The article was previously published in Drain magazine - you can read the full article, HERE, (under Related Essays) or click HERE for last week’s post on VoCA.

Roger Crait, Untitled, 2009. Image: umanitoba.ca

The Power of Myth
How Did Winnipeg and Its Art Become such a Big Deal?

By Edwin Janzen

The City Behind the Myth

Winnipeg artists — and the city as a whole — owe much to the considerable efforts of these influential “fixers.” For the representation of Winnipeg as a sort of mythic art mecca has surely been a good thing, hasn’t it? Winnipeg and its artists are receiving more attention than ever before, so can the repackaging of Winnipeg as a geographically and creatively charged nexus be anything else than an unmitigated good? If life gives you lemons….

Continue reading →

Here is part four of fascinating article written by former Winnipegger Edwin Janzen, an artist and writer currently based in Ottawa. The article was previously published in Drain magazine - you can read the full article, HERE, (under Related Essays) or click HERE for last week’s post on VoCA. Stay tuned as we publish it serially, every week.

Winnipeg’s Border Crossings magazine. Image: i.bp.blogspot.com

The Power of Myth
How Did Winnipeg and Its Art Become such a Big Deal?

By Edwin Janzen

The Winnipeg Art Industrial Complex

Winnipeg was not built in a day. The current currency of this city and its plucky arts scene is not, as commonly suggested, the result of its endless, cold, winter nights or its many-hundred-mile isolation from the nearest centres of comparable size (though both conditions are real). Integral to Winnipeg’s international reputation have been the tireless efforts of a handful of influential local art mandarins like Wayne Baerwaldt, Meeka Walsh and Robert Enright. These individuals lose no opportunity to draw national and international attention to the city.

Continue reading →

Here is part three of fascinating article written by former Winnipegger Edwin Janzen, an artist and writer currently based in Ottawa. The article was previously published in Drain magazine - you can read the full article, HERE, (under Related Essays) or click HERE for last week’s post on VoCA. Stay tuned as we publish it serially, every week.

Winnipeg band The Weakerthans, with album cover art by Marcel Dzama. Image: pitchfork.com

The Power of Myth
How Did Winnipeg and Its Art Become such a Big Deal?

By Edwin Janzen

Part Three: Loving to Hate Winnipeg

Looking back at what I just wrote, I wonder if “arrogance” and “meanness” aren’t a little harsh? The little angel speaking into my right ear delicately says so. The little devil speaking into my left ear, however, eagerly asserts that I’m right on the money.

My condition, here, is what is known as ambivalence, a ubiquitous quality that born ’Peggers like me come by honestly. A consistent inclusion in every creative Winnipegger’s psychological toolbox, ambivalence arises again and again in the art that Winnipeggers produce, and, broadly speaking, it characterizes the selling of Winnipeg’s art scene.

Winnipeg film director extraordinaire Guy Maddin. Image: stopsmilingonline.com

The ineluctable fact is that Winnipeg artists and musicians make better boosters than its political and business leaders ever did. Of late, Winnipeg artists have aggressively sold the city like never before, have achieved its transformation into a cultural product, not by avoiding ambivalence as a civic characteristic, but by embracing it.

Continue reading →

Here is part two of fascinating article written by former Winnipegger Edwin Janzen, an artist and writer currently based in Ottawa. The article was previously published in Drain magazine - you can read the full article ,HERE, (under Related Essays) or click HERE for previous posts on VoCA. Stay tuned as we publish it serially, every week.

The City of Winnipeg welcomes visitors. Image: eclairefare.com

The Power of Myth
How Did Winnipeg and Its Art Become such a Big Deal?

By Edwin Janzen

Part Two: Booster Town

Winnipeg in its early days was a boom town, but the dream went south with the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, and the city entered a decades-long economic winter. To be sure, Winnipeg has many things going for it. Ukrainian perogies and Mennonite farmer sausage are easily had. Every summer the neighbourhood streets are transformed into cathedrals of foliage by rows of towering elms. And the city’s electorate tends to return NDP legislators, a successful record undermined in part by its record of electing silly mayors.

The best thing about Winnipeg is hope, which allows Winnipeggers to put aside the fact that the factors in favour of their city are outnumbered by the factors against. Winnipeggers turn a brave face to their city’s seemingly intractable social and economic problems, even as they lack, and lament the lack, of the resources to address them.

Continue reading →

Here is part one of fascinating article written by former Winnipegger Edwin Janzen, an artist and writer currently based in Ottawa. The article was previously published in Drain magazine - you can read the full article HERE, (under Related Essays) or stay tuned as VoCA publishes it serially, every weekend.

A work by the Royal Art Lodge. Image: booooooom.com

The Power of Myth
How Did Winnipeg and Its Art Become such a Big Deal?

By Edwin Janzen

“Winnipeg is an oubliette,” says Guy Maddin in his mythical memoir “My (Other) Winnipeg” in Border Crossings magazine.

It is? The conception of a cold city populated by sleepwalkers, perpetually astonished at its own age may work for the city of Maddin’s mythologies. Yet, this author left Winnipeg for Montreal five years ago quite ready to forget the place — but forgetting Winnipeg has been impossible.
It is impossible because, in the realm of art nowadays, Winnipeg is everywhere.

Continue reading →

Here are some things I suggest checking out, if you can.

Montreal art duo Maryse Larivière and Robin Simpson of Pavilion Projects regularly host art-plus-dinner series, and in a few weeks they will bring the series to Toronto with a screening by the artist Rosa Barba’s 2007 film Outwardly from Earth’s Centre.

Rosa Barba, a still from Outwardly from Earth’s Center. Image: carliergebauer.com

The film tells the story of a fictitious society founded on an unstable piece of land in danger of disappearing, and the dinner will be held at the very arty Oddfellows restaurant.

The evening includes a presentation by curator Catherine Dean followed by a prix fixe three-course menu for $45 involving shredded duck confit, pan roasted sea bream and Pork loin with whiskey maple baby carrots.

Mmmm.

Continue reading →