February 10, 2011
Oh I am so sad to see the sculpture by the City Hall RAV line is gone and lifted! The bovines to whom I’d become so attached and acquainted. What precisely is the point of installing public art if you’re just going to remove it and crate it off elsewhere?!
There are handsome new arrivals which I’ll have to introduce myself to (my poor eyesight suggested they were pillow cased shaped pairs of legs in trousers today). I don’t know the bovines had been there less than a year …
I am used to sculptures moving into a city or rural space and inhabiting it … on a more permanent basis. You begin to look out for it whether it’s from the window of a bus or the train — you look for the piece and when it’s there you also check in to a corner of a city or a lump of a field that redefines itself around its new acquisition or implant.
Rather than whipping the works out, why not just install new pieces elsewhere. It’s not like we are over run with public art installations.
February 7, 2011
Trying to conceive of numbers or even items for a budget while the weather conditions in the upstairs chamber are Extreme Vertigo are a combination I can neither meld nor overcome nor manage.
Vertigo is the conquerer. Ugh. I wonder how airline pilots cope with such a thing? Or for that matter ferry staff?
I had a blissful 24 hrs where it abated and yesterday i did considerable amounts of reading and was ready to dance a jig that the long week of it had finally finished. Spoke to soon, even if it was not aloud.
February 6, 2011
I was surprised to see them ripping out, strip by strip, the wooden sculpture at the library with the seating and so on. OK so what’s the story? Is it time to move it elsewhere? The manner in which it was being removed did not suggest it was heading into a crate and train bound for a new destination. It looked like the best hope for it was recycling or the dump. What exactly was the harm in leaving it there, as it was, intact?
Drove down the road metres and in sharp contrast (and a brief moment of confusion wondered if the Pan Pacific had upped and relocated.) Astonishingly ugly metal jaws have chomped up into the skyline and what is it? What is its purpose? Oh Christ it’s the new roof on BC Place. God help us. Yet another scar to remind us we cohabit with a very narrow vision that really thinks its a thumping global pulse.
February 6, 2011
Building a guinea pig cage is a much more exacting science than I gave it credit for.
It also involves the destruction of the skin on several fingers on two building occasions and we still do not have anything that yet resembles what we were wowed by on youtube.
Is it the builder or the materials? Discuss.
This builder has lost her green tape measure, a surefire calamity in the construction of a guinea pig condo.
February 6, 2011
New Frontier
In searching for a Marxist magazine called New Frontier and the poet Dorothy Livesay who contributed to it, I received the following, in an early hit from google:
Laser Angioplasty: Exploring a New Frontier. James J. Livesay, M.D.. Cardiovascular Surgery.
…indeed. Yup. Thanks for that google.
February 5, 2011
Next Post
It appeared to take a mere few days for the govt to order an investigation into the killing of a hundred dogs by a private enterprise, while the murdered women, who it should be noted continue to be murdered (4 in the same period of public outcry over the working dogs who were slaughtered) took how long? Years and years and years.
What is the difference in this response, is it the ferocity of public outcy, that when people demonstrate vocal concern their govt responds — if so why do people continue to accept the murder of (mainly) aboriginal women? There’s some sort of inherent, passive acceptance of these women’s deaths. And if they wish to understand the mistreatment of animals they might begin with some of the more glaring inequalities in the way we treat humans.
There were two young Native women (17) murdered in this province the same week that the dogs were killed. Their stories were dwarfed by the dog outcry. When is the govt going to announce a task-force to examine the targeting of young women, and to actively excavate the kinds of fragilities and circumstances that young women in marginalized communities face. I mean on the ground today, not in a courtroom after the fact. Another recent news story involving the deaths of two young Native women in Vancouver on the same night illustrates an urgent need for this.
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February 5, 2011
For the past two weeks I have been doing most of my thinking in “collaborative space”.
Generally I do more of my thinking than I ever realized in what I’ll call “collaborative space”.
I do a lot of chit-chatting in public places to people I don’t know, but who I come to know something of to varying degrees. Sometimes I think I know people I don’t know because I am very poor at distinguishing faces and in thinking this I have sometimes come to know them because they happened to be uniquely responsive, rather than flustered by the stranger misidentifying them.
I inherited this tendency towards chit chatting from my mother. She is a very helpful woman who always inquired after people if they were upto something interesting or looked like they needed help, she would not watch a person struggle, she’d have the other handle of the bag lifted. She also has a ripe sense of humour and would banter into the sunset if there was such a thing where she lives. Thus her banter isn’t contained by controlled social gathering and familiarity. In this regard she is the most liberated person I know. She could literally talk to any man or woman any place about any thing. And if there wasn’t a man or woman to talk to she’d still be fine. I think she could have a rich exchange with the branch of a tree.
When I think of the way my mother moves through life it reminds me of Joe Strummer’s line “without people you’re nothing.”
During these past two weeks, without people I’d a been nothing.
February 4, 2011
Neuro coptor
I am not encouraged that the combination of wearing an “I love Elvis” teeshirt and eating rollmops has done anything to quell the neurological helicopter of this eighth day of suffering severe vertigo.
Today’s offering to neuroscience. Close the refrigerator and hands off those discarded tee shirts with pink hearts.