February 25, 2010
abouts
An article in the G&M yesterday began with a line, In Vancouver these days, it’s all about winning….
My first reaction was in Vancouver these days it’s all about getting out of the way and queueing for pointless exploits. Then I began to reduce the sentence down til I had Vancouver is all about.
Vancouver is all about.
Vancouver is all about
Something round and round the garden about it.
This statement is akin to the wonder of whether there’s life on Mars.
Millions of abouts. Everytime someone blinks another “about”.
February 24, 2010
City of dreadful joy
My Olympic survival strategy by going underground to literature (and sometimes overground with said book in hand) is proving rewarding beyond what I had imagined initially it might take to deflect the elbow from this invasive behemoth. Much as I have been out and observing periodically, I’ve also enjoyed the deep peace of withdrawing and have alighted on the perfect text to contain my fermentation.
D.M. Fraser Ignorant Armies has provided rich enhancement to my ongoing preoccupation: the episodic. It’s wonderfully fractured. Yet his sentences are long and 40 strength. I have no desire for the fragments to add up in anyway. I am interested in the idea of them all being individuals or neighbours like a long line of bricks. It’s also interesting to see what happens when he elongates to longer fiction. His shorter fiction is trap tight. Pnematically drilled into itself. And in his longer fiction sentences are plank like, there’s a carpentry to his construction. Planks that manage to seesaw. Ignorant Armies was published posthomously, compiled from Fraser’s papers. So there is something of a randomness to its gathering up. The process is detailed in the back of the book and the descriptions of what was discovered are delightful.
I also read Ernest Hemmingway’s Cross Country Snow to the Small Man this evening, he, being compelled by the snow, and confident on his skis. I was delighted with how well it worked. A way to place some of the things happening outside the window in another spot that does not involve multinational corporations telling us all what to think. Lovely transitions in that story. And full of the technicals, which being likely one of the few people in history of ski-ing who qualified for a refund due to an indisputable incompatibility with every aspect of it, I am unable to ever provide. His ski-ing prowess and dippy swervy nervy whatever it looks like, are the results of his devoted father.
Outside the 11pm nightly firework rumble has begun. It has taken 9 nights for my heart rate to accept we are not under attack from cannonballs. That this is apparently desirous for someone, somewhere, with their eyes glued upwards, nose drenched by the rain.
February 24, 2010
RTE’s Frontline programme yesterday led on a discussion among young Irish people on high rates of unemployment they currently face. It was interesting how the discussion split into “roll up your sleeves and buck up” from another generation. It was suggested they were molly coddled with high expectations. What wasn’t acknowledged was that they grew up in a boom time. They also were saddled with the associated expenses of that time, some with extortionate mortgages (and concurrent negative equity) and so on. How will this play out? Will it result in another eighties exodus? (which has already begun) Or will that generation stay put and affect change? Previously the expectation was to have to leave, but this generation didn’t grow up with that, so in essence this is also the first generation who can articulate on the alternative.
I was intrigued by the “we went through it” and “you’ve had it easy” since it could be argued that older generations were trained for exit and send money home. This generation have been trained or conditioned toward success and stay put. There’s a pervasive sense of entitlement (in any other country I think it would be considered average confidence…) that irks the older generation and divides them ever further. It’s interesting that in the same sentences NAMA is not subject to the same short shrift. I s’ppose it’s easier condemn unemployed young folk than those who made a bollix of things, ie. the banks, property developers etc.
There was one feisty fellow at the front who summed things up along the lines of everything being sunk into over inflated real estate and hotels and now what are we left with. It’s not the only place in the world with over inflated property leading a boom — I am curious to see whether the same may play out in Vancouver, where the property bubble has yet to burst.
February 23, 2010
Johnny Giraardi came into town singing
“That’s how I choose to remember it; that’s how it ought to have been. I’ve never understood how people know where and when to begin their stories, or end them –how the imagination, that untrustworthy instrument can identify and preserve, for some dubious eternity, the precise instant after which , as vulgar romancers say, nothing could be the same again.”
Ignorant Armies: prelude and theme. D.M. Fraser (Pulp Press 1990)
February 22, 2010
Paul Robeson radio drama
Been waiting for this programme to go live because I want to listen to it and today’s the day. Here’s a link to I‘m Still The Same Paul a BBC radio drama about mysterious events surrounding Paul Robeson’s suicide bid in Moscow in 1961. Paul Robeson was a singer and political activist.
Here’s another link:
Paul Robeson in Canada: A Border Story about his peace arch concerts.
February 22, 2010
Rhotic 22
Ding,
Gabh mo leithscéal, caill mé ort. Is scéal bocht é ansin i Vancouver leis na Cluichí Oilimpeacha.
Daoine i ngach áit, fiú faoi do armpit má thógann tú do lámh, áiteanna faoi do teanga, idir do chluas, gan fear ná bean ba chóir go mbeadh.
Ceap mė ar Grá. Sin sceal Grá ach nil Pumps ansin anois. Is maith lei sneachta … an Gra no? Or is ach bean bád í?
Tá mé gan focail seo oíche.
February 21, 2010
Ignorant Armies
“As it happens, there are snapshots, taken with a cheap camera by strangers randomly conscripted for the job. In each of these, the background is different, but more or less what you would predict; the second requirement of scenery, directly consequential to the first, is that within a small range of variables it be predictable. (This condition, however, may not consistently be met.) But the backgrounds, though useful as evidence of certain things, are not of primary interest to us at this point. We should look rather to the foreground, which varies hardly at all from picture to picture.
…The snapshots, then, both ilumine and obscure the man: we cannot know from them whether this is Asher as his accustomed world knew him, or another, ersatz Asher who existed only, and briefly in a California which itself only existed while he lived in it.”
D.M. Fraser: Ignorant Armies (Pulp Press 1990)
February 21, 2010
Candahar illusion/delusion
On Sunday afternoon last, I visited The Candahar and was somewhat surprised to have an identical conversation with the artist behind the project, Theo Sims, as I had ten years ago with the owner of an Irish themed pub, who I worked for. Both conversations involved the same story about a man who enters the bar and sighs to the male telling the story how glad he is to have found this place and how it reminds him of home or how “at home” or comfortable in it he feels. It has a kind of heroic “come here to me, sniff me familiar armpit, look at this wallpaper and be well again,” offering the constructor a moment to revel in his achievement and feel like he’s affected a fellow man’s life.
More startling is why would either man want to be reassured that a man feels “at home” in what amounts to a faux environment and both might consider the wider implications of why a man on a street is entering a place in order to feel at home in an entirely different country. What does it say about the place he’s living in? And isn’t that a much more interesting thing to explore. (The man uncomfortable, rather than comfortable)
The Candahar is described self-importantly as a sculpture, part theatrical performance and all kinds of superfluous adjectives (add your own) that curators love to serve up. The artist has reconstructed an identical (or so we are told) version of a “beloved” but defunct pub in Belfast. Though in actual fact it’s more like the corner of a pub when you sit in it. The artist attempts to provoke questions about authenticity.
Or does he?
He appears compelled to share some authentic nugget of Belfast (or His Belfast) with us, (to prompt us to burst into conversation on it?) which in media interviews he insists doesn’t have a trace of a shamrock. This being a badge of honour. The invocation of a shamrock and the distinction that it doesn’t contain any immediately sets bells clanging. He’s possibly contrasting his “offered art experience” with that of the now ubiquitous theme-park Irish pub. Curiously though like the theme-park pub, his art exhibit “would not work in Ireland” and is designed for a North American audience.
The artist’s choice of a pub to give us a mind-expanding experience on our ideas of Belfast is curious. Why didn’t he reconstruct an identical corner of the Linenhall library or his local laundrette, or even, at a push, a shop.
Let’s examine that starting point. Let’s acknowledge that the choice of a pub further contributes to the notion that the Irish (and now add Belfast and Northern Ireland) are really great at drinking, and experts at creating places to drink. Drink’s all we ever think about, what we do best and so now we’ll immortalize it “authentically” in art. The final spot left where we might have hoped to have an alternative.
Why do I keep using the word Irish, when the artist hasn’t promised Ireland, he’s said Belfast. (Northern Ireland) The problem is the literature around the exhibit online referred to it as “an Irish pub” and “an Irish public house”. So on the basis that this word has been disseminated around the installation in advance, and geographic ignorance, mean many people entering it, enter it as an Irish pub. Will the artist have the chance to educate everyone and defend this sloppy reference? Based on the scuds of people in there on Sunday it’s unlikely. That day he had to scrub the board outside that was advertising it as an “Irish Pub.”
And this is where the “installation” or “experience art” is problematic. Those hordes of people enter and drink and take pictures and leave with the same tired, dated ideas about a culture (whether mistaken or otherwise for the wrong culture) that does not need this perpetrated any further. It implicates the accented people who live here with such stereotypes and means we continue to face inquiries about our relationship to alcohol and it’s extremely tedious to be on the receiving end of it. It actually takes us all back a generation to the kinds of “thick paddy” caricatures our parents and we, in earshot, endured. The stereotypes that have consistently framed our culture.
Then there’s the proffering of the pub construct as inviting. It’s described in the literature, which is prone to revision, as a place to enjoy a quiet pint, enjoy a pint or two. So snug. Except that there was nothing quiet about it when I visited, the place was over run with people, drenched in flags, all gasping it seemed for the same experience they’d get at the theme park pubs around town. Project Candahar may offer something else, but there’s little evidence of it crossing the trapeze of a psychological border. Pubs aren’t only places of quiet retreat, they’re places where lives get destroyed, lives that are lived in them rather than at the kitchen table. (Read Nuala O’Faolain describing Flann O’Brien pissing against the bar.) If anything this further indulges a masculine romance of the pub (cosy, me and my pint) that is so tired, it’s positively snoring.
I recall a film, Coming Home, made by a Northern Irish filmmaker Moira Sweeney about her travels and I recall some images or descriptions of Kilburn and her voiceover against the stark pub images were a sardonic “some craic”. An acknowledgement that along with the money sunk into them, pubs are places where for the Irish (historically especially) abject loneliness, despair is and was deposited.
The conversation.
Much of the premise of this art installation pivots around the conversation that takes place in it. (During which the punters are supposedly coming out of the shadows as far as their education on Belfast? The artist as self appointed missionary (Mo Mowlam meets Mark Twain) leading them? There seemed to be a great deal of goofy photo-snapping at the bar and whisky-tasting and little else when I was in there) The idea being the only authentic thing taking place in the bar is “the conversation”.
The conversation has become this irritating hashtag that seems to resolve any need for critical examination of what’s actually taking place. As long as it’s about “the conversation” then it has value. “the conversation” is its own rhetoric and artists are increasingly forced to become “a conversation” themselves. (This notion of the “exotic” and a handy gathering spot appears to relieve this piece of critique.)
The idea that the only authentic thing taking place in the bar is the “conversation” brings me to another aspect that perturbs me: on a civic level what does it say about us if our route to authentic conversation is a fake corner of no longer existing Belfast pub on the 3rd floor of a building on Granville Island at a cost of 5-10 dollars entry. Why have we to borrow an environment to stimulate authentic conversation? And why should this trigger for authentic conversation be placed in such an irrelevant context, at a time that demands civic relevance.
Whether they admit it or not the “Irish pub” or “Belfast pub” has currency that other installations would not. It’s this very currency that has droves of people flocking to it. At a time when we should be pushing out as far possible (given this time feels like a wake for the arts in BC) I’m disappointed to see seduction by such currency. Having worked in Belfast several times I am amazed to see people settle for such a dated, romantic environment and limited idea of the place. Words being thrown around in the media include “pure Belfast”… well which Belfast? Like any city, there are many.
Apparently the more interesting programming (which includes no response from the people culturally implicated by the bar) takes place in the evenings. It was described as a “different place” at night with a “different crowd”. In order to complete my critique I would need to attend and see if this is in fact the case. But the matter that what takes place out the front of the box refuses to acknowledge the stereotypes generated by what’s in the box means the party and intellectual expansion is essentially taking place while bouncing up and down on someone else’s ribcage.
The two barmen (described as “unscripted performers) are not on the schedule to appear on the stage out front, they remain merely “in service” during their so called performances. Why? I find this very strange.
The most interesting interaction in the bar when I was there took place around a sign hung during Rebecca Belmore’s opening night performance piece, during which (I was told) she transformed the bar into a Natives Only bar, creating what was described to me as “an incredible tension.” The sign reads “No Indian Served After Sundown.” Some people approached or alighted on the sign, remarked to themselves on it, took pictures of it or of themselves with it (one man stuck his thumb up beside it, then appeared to catch himself doing that). No one took the sign down. Mostly they smiled as they took pictures (Very creepy) or found it “weird” that it was up there and some appeared physically repelled by the sign, moving quickly from it. I thought recording these interactions would in itself have been an interesting piece. On some level it made me wonder if it was the only aspect of the pub that the people coming in that afternoon could actively relate and respond to. Everything else they’d likely just exit with the same warm and misleading ideas about “Paddy pub utopia”.
Co-incidentally out on our streets these nights (and days) we are reminded that flag draped piss heads and binge drinkers are an international pain in the arse regardless of the flag or the city.
The one thing I was relieved to see was they’re serving BC wine and local beer. This disconcerted others, who wanted and expected to find Guinness in there. During my experiences of working in Belfast (which included community based projects mainly) the one thing I recall is that nothing was ever quite what it seemed. I had repeated experiences of this and it may well just be isolated to those particular circumstances in which I found myself. There’s something in this art installation that unintentionally or otherwise mirrors that.
Post note: (to paragraph 4 above)
I stand corrected apparently there are now 40 pubs in Ireland of the theme park, even more sinister “authentic Irish pub (invented in 1991) selected from a brochure of 6 possible designs.” It’s verging on science fiction, market to the people an ideal of themselves, based on themselves, they pay to consume. Or are these pubs full of people visiting the country? Just as surreal. It’s a real pity these marketing genius’ would not consider tackling the prehistoric, decaying mental hospitals that have been described as unfit for human habitation and yet house many long term patients or for that matter the disaster that is Iarnród Éireann, especially the toilets in the trains.