Montreal Serai

In November 2008, I saw a theatrical piece by Dave St. Pierre at Theatre La Chapelle in Montreal.  The piece was entitled “Warning” and it was produced by Mandala Situ.  It was my first exposure to the choreography of Dave St. Pierre (the well-known Montreal avant garde choreographer and dancer).  The stage opened with 3 nude women and expanded to four when a woman in a make-believe bunny costume joined them.  It seemed at first like a male heterosexual fantasy, including gratuitous nudity.  This notion was further augmented by the fact that I had never seen so many male audience members at a “dance” performance, many of whom had come alone.  Was nudity the most compelling attraction?  I had also not been to a show that was so continuously sold out at Theatre La Chapelle.  Hmmm!  Following the show, a friend asked me my reaction and I responded negatively saying that I felt it exploited the female body to no benefit.  I wasn’t sure what was gained by it.  He challenged me by saying that I needed to see this piece in the context of Dave St. Pierre’s body of work.   To be honest the piece stayed with me in a way that many others haven’t. 

This issue of Montreal Serai is about “Art and Democracy”.    What is art’s role in a democracy?  I felt compelled to do further research on the subject, knowing that it had been handled through the ages in a variety of ways.  I listened to an interview of Caroline Levine, author of the book Provoking Democracy: Why we need the Arts, who was interviewed by Liz Bulkley on NHPR Radio (http://www.nhpr.org/node/14058).  Levine’s position is that a democracy occasionally smothers voices that are not part of the mainstream.  She indicates though that the test of a democracy is its ability to allow and accept genuine challenges to culture.  Artists should be looking to push us out of our comfort zone and force us to see things with an alternate lens and consider the possibility of a parallel universe.  Artists seek to re-define conventions.  Levine also states that notions of diversity/pluralism are of significant importance for allowing us to know each other better.  If we relied solely on the marketplace, we would be continually dispensed more of the same…a la Hollywood.  Artists expand our horizons and stretch the impossible to the possible.

As it often happens in life, as I was trying to figure out of what to say further, the quotation below jumped out at me while I was reading Adrienne Clarkson’s biography of Norman Bethune.  In it she quotes Bethune as saying:

“The function of the artist is to disturb.  His duty is to arouse the sleeper, to shake the complacent killers of the world.  He reminds the world of its dark ancestry, shows the world its present and points the way to its new birth.  He is at once the product and preceptor of his time…  In a world terrified of change, he preaches revolution – the principle of life.  He is an agitator, a disturber of the peace – quick, impatient, positive, restless and disquieting.  He is the creative spirit of life, working in the soul of men.”

In an interview on the website Xtra, Dave St.Pierre is quoted as saying:

“You have to follow your art, not what other people say,” he says. “I will always try to push the limits with my work. If someone tells me I can’t do something on stage, I’ll do it.”

How do I feel about Dave St. Pierre’s piece now?  Still conflicted, but more clear around the role of art in a democracy.    Montreal Serai has played a role in this debate for the last twenty four years.  Bringing  the margins to the center!  Raising issues that would otherwise be glossed over and enabling debate which the mainstream media avoids.

A couple of websites you may want to check out:

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/01/11/exploringdemocracythroughart/

http://www.artofdemocracy.org/

http://www.justdemocracyblog.org/?p=633

http://www.nhpr.org/node/14058

http://www.monthlyreview.org/books/artofdemocracy.php

http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/archivefiles/2002/10/art_in_a_democr.php

http://www.re-public.gr/en/?cat=6

An interesting blog….

http://artandpoliticsnow.blogspot.com/2008/10/art-of-democracy-and-selma-waldman.html

http://www.metropolismag.com/story/20030701/the-art-of-democracy

http://think.mtv.com/044FDFFFF00989E9C00170099461E/

http://forum.odeo.com/episodes/1328756-no-2-Art-Critic-and-MacArthur-Fellow-Dave-Hickey-on-Art-and-Democracy

http://www.digidave.org/2009/05/documentary-about-web-collaboration.html    

Artist Biography:

Self-taught in traditional photographic practice, dating to the 1960′s, David Duchow switched to the less-polluting digital in the late 1990′s. In 2001 he began to flip images, creating a Rorschach-like mirrored result. Central to his work is the harmony of music, or spoken word, and image.  See “Season in Hell” or “Summer”, amongst the videos at You Tube, for examples of this. Steve Kilbey recites Rimbaud in Season in Hell, to a series of altered Duchow self-portraits.  He also commissioned David to make videos for a recent album and projected his images on a large screen during concerts in Australia. Kilbey’s art-rock group, The Church, debuted David’s work as a backdrop in concert at the Sydney Opera House in July of 2003.

To quote Steve Kilbey, from his blog, “The Time Being” (of August 31, 2008):

“In mirror images of nature David locates an incredible symmetry.

Gods and devils appear; Hindu deities hidden in the patterns of a tree’s roots….

The images merge slowly into each other.

They dissolve, producing more illusions and half-sightings….”

The Video:

Friends Are Gone was made in May of 2009, to the song of this title, by Steve Kilbey and Martin Kennedy.

Photography:

01 A Face in The Crowd: a photograph of ice, with dead bulrush reeds imbedded.

02 Street Seen NYC : it’s 1972, streets of New York City… mirrored and altered…. Elements of  drawing. Shades of sepia.

03 Montreal Street Seen  0017/6: this image began as a straight photo of a butcher in his shop window, with fluorescent lights above.  The original was transformed, through hundreds of steps in Photoshop.  The butcher isn’t discernable any more… replaced by an imaginary figure, seemingly in a state of prayer, in the centre of this Rorschach image.

04 The New Mexico Desert: summer sky, pastel, tinted. The 1980′s; forays into desolate spaces with captivating skies.

05 At Nature’s alter: My rural “back yard”, Fred’s pasture.

06 Radium Hotsprings, British Columbia: flipped positive and negative, pastel interplay and counterpoint.

07 Nature’s alter #2: Forest floor vegetation…. Certain elements emphasized.  The light falls a certain way.. and then the appearance of a head, torso, arms raised.

08 McGill Campus… dream image of decades past: I was commissioned in the late 1980′s to photograph certain McGill University buildings. This is one of those photographs, mirrored vertically.

For more information regarding David Duchow’s work:

His website:    http://www.artman8764.com/index.htm

You tube Channel:    http://www.youtube.com/user/artman8764

Not What You Say Video:      http://www.vimeo.com/2342083

File Under Travel Video:      http://www.vimeo.com/2341711

Photos and Video  © David Duchow 2001-2009

Music in the Video  © Steve Kilbey and Martin Kennedy 2009

Art is Democracy !

Acknowledgements:

1)The Design of Dissent, Milton Glaser and Mirko Ilic, Rockport Publishers Inc. www.rockpub.com

2)Paper, Paper Publishing Company, New York, www.papermag.com

3)Jean-Michel Basquiat, by Richard Marshall, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

          I am strolling past a a well-known Tea and Chocolate store in Broome Street, Soho, New York.  And I catch a glimpse of a magazine called Paper.  On the cover is Gael García Bernal.  The Mexican new wave actor, who played Che in the Motorcycle Diaries. I thought it was a great flic. Very inspiring. Of course on this cover feature, he is modelling clothes  or occassionally talking a bit about Tarkovsky, Buñuel and Antonioni. All the films he mentions are my favourites as well, especially Zabriskie Point and Los Olvidados.  It spurs my interest in the magazine.  He is branded as a great thinker. “ More like García Lorca than George Clooney—(he)  has the mind and soul of a poet.” But, of course!  One would expect so, from a person who has acted in a few thoughtful plays and movies and in one or two esoteric /quirky ones, as well. Thinking artists provoke notions of the democratic process in the roles they play. Benicio del Toro does the same. Warren Beatty, Marlon Brando have done the same, at times. And directors like Gilo Pontecorvo, Mrinal Sen, Costa Gavras, Ken Loach and Montreal documentarist Mary Ellen Davis and Indian documentarist Anand Patwardhan (the latter two interviewed in Montreal Serai, previously) maintain this thoughtful process of interrogating democracy through their Art.  

I am compelled to sit down at the café, notwithstanding the legendary reputation of the chocolates and teas served here,  and breeze through this rather well produced magazine and then I notice there is a very interesting feature on rebranding America.  It’s put together by Kim Hastreiter. Kim has invited several well-known American designers to take a fresh look at a post-Bush America. What has changed? What can be changed?  What are the new ways of looking into the future? And the designers have done a superlative job.  The mandate is to turn the United  States into a new U.S.A. The tone is set by a graphic which has the stars taking the place of the stripes on the flag.  A caption says “ A new US.” This one is done by Ivan Chermayeff.  “Rebranding means changing the values of the United states,” he says. Banal? Simplistic? Or, hopeful? I would say it is Art  for Democracy!  A valiant and hopeful expression, a  way forward and only artists and designers can practice this democracy. They are not constrained.  They are not fearful of litigation, despite it being the US of A. They are not shackled by lobbies. Like the new President of the US seems to be more and more, every day. But that was not a surprise, anyway. He is a utopian and as well an excellent  brand manager to boot, who believes that the philosophy that has governed the US for a century can still be made to work, somehow. He is handcuffed to the Pharmaceutical lobby, the Israel lobby and even to the Military lobby. He has waffled on Health Insurance, on Palestine and now even on the torture photos and Gitmo. An Artist is not shackled, tongue-tied and hamstrung.  An artist is fundamental to Democracy.  I turn the page and another great design catches my eye. It is an outstretched hand of the world gripping a hand-sketched outline of the US map. The caption says “Nice to meet you again.” It is made by Weiden + Kennedy 12, a creative school based in Portland, Oregon.

The next one that catches my attention is  a “SORRY” carved out of the US flag on a plain white background, with a diminutive  US bald eagle emblem  saying Humble, Strong, US in a very small caption instead E Pluribus Unum.  It is done by Andy Spade. He says the following- “Our thinking behind the assignment’s solution is that by offerring a simple apology, we acknowledge our mistakes with the hopes of restarting our relationship with the rest of the world.” Indeed!

I flip the page, as my interest is definitely aroused.  There is now a rather well done rendition of a US one dollar bill. In a text note  attached to it, it says that Benjamin Franklin questioned the choice of the Bald Eagle as the national symbol of the US, claiming it was “ a bird of bad moral character.” It was, he suggested, too lazy to fish for itself, survived by robbing smaller, more vulnerable birds.  So instead of the bald Eagle, the artist has changed the bird to a dove.  Look carefully!

 What a potent message in 2009, indeed for the US, to live up to! It is done by Kevin Roberts, the CEO  of Saatchi and Saatchi, the same people who have clients like Toyota, Lexus and JC Penney! The Bush era really pissed off so many layers of people and classes that even the handful at the top feel the need for some sort of “change.” And Mr. Obama, sure knew how to capitalize on that.   And then there is another one by Roberts, that says in bold letters on a white background “No more US  and THEM.” The US is made out of a US flag.

New York is where Jean-Michel Basquiat, exploded on to the scene and then disappeared so painfully at the age of twenty seven only.  Basquiat, it is said, painted with the militant emotions of Malcolm X and the subtlety of Miles Davis. Montreal Serai covered his works, a few years ago. I am back in Montreal and I am leafing through a book on his works, brought out by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. The picture that I notice, is not by Basquiat. It is a conceptual photograph by Renee Cox. It is entitled, The Wall: They Say a Mad Man Wrote This, 1992. 

 A sublime rhyme  says it all “They never taught Marcus Garvey in our school, Christopher Columbus is their golden rule.”

Finally, I dust off a book I got as a present, three years ago. The Design of Dissent. It is an excellent catalogue of wall art, posters, guerilla stencils from all over the world, both before and after the Cold War, and also into the eight hellish years of George Bush. Extraordinarily well annotated and curated, it is a work of art by itself. It propels you into a sense of imminent reactiveness to the world around you.  Here, I find the essence of democratic dissent and art! For a start, using the format of the Arm and Hammer logo for selling Baking Soda, the artist Dejan Krsic from Croatia proclaims, Art is not a Mirror, it is a Hammer! 

Finally, in the wake of Roe V Wade the same publication has this graphic poster by Trudy Cole-Zielanski entitled Preserve the Right of Choice.  As per Wikipedia, Roe v. Wade , 410 U.S. 113 (1973), is a United States Supreme Court case that resulted in a landmark decision regarding abortion. According to the Roe decision, most laws against abortion in the United States violated a constitutional right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision overturned all state and federal laws outlawing or restricting abortion that were inconsistent with its holdings. The note from the artist says “This poster was designed to promote the understanding that a woman’s body is her own, and she has the ultimate right to say what she does with it.” 

Finally, in these times of rabid Islamophobia and incoherent terrordom politics,  Anatoly Omelchenko has the over-used and cliched  Che stencil of Korda on a Muslim green background, but alongwith the star on his beret is also a crescent moon. “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” says the artist.

Democray without Art? Like humankind without O_2.

Biography:

Montreal-born Martin Duckworth came to filmmaking from a background in history. Duckworth was on staff at the National Film Board of Canada from 1963 – 1970 and since that time, has made films there as a free lancer. He has done camera work on 84 films and has directed or co-directed close to 30, most, but not all of them at the Film Board. 

He is active in the Canadian peace movement, and his 1994 film, Peacekeeper at War: A Personal View of the Gulf War follows in a line of work concerned with war and its effects.

Some of Duckworth’s later films are Acting Blind (2006) and The Battle of Rabaska (2008), which he co-directed with Magnus Isacsson.

Duckworth is a member of the Documentary Organization of Canada (DOC) and l’Association des Réalisateurs et Réalisatrices du Quebec (ARRQ). He is the father of six daughters and a son, grandfather of ten, and lives in the shadow of Montreal’s mountain.

 He is currently working on a film about Palestine.

 To see some of his films, including No More Hiroshima, Return to Dresden and Riel Country: http://www.nfb.ca/explore-by/director/Martin-Duckworth/

 Interview:

Q: How do you understand or see the relationship between art and democracy?

A:  Without art, democracy would be dead. Art is the most important thing in keeping the critical awareness alive.  In art, I am including creative journalism, as well as music, painting, film-making, poetry.  I think it is essential, the most essential thing there is. I don’t think about democracy very much. I do think about art a lot. I devote my life to art in all its forms.  I do read political journals.  I read The Nation, I read Naomi Klein’s every word. I think her quality of journalism is high art because she is a master of the English language.  So I guess democracy is a political word and doesn’t imply art.  Art is a separate realm. And art would need a democratic political framework in order to thrive.  One world depends on the other, in both directions.

Q. What about all the incredible art that came out under the church, which wasn’t democratic.

A. I would have to say that was what kept critical intelligence in those times when there was no democratic framework.  You’re talking about the windows in the Gothic cathedrals.

Q. All the ceilings, Michelangelo, da Vinci.

A. Those guys, it was quite a freedom of expression, in the Renaissance, when those guys were working.

Q. Some, with De Vinci, he was backed by the Medici family.

A. Probably right up to the twentieth century, artists needed some kind of backing. When you say there were far fewer artists before than there are today, it’s because the arts have flourished more when there is a democratic political setting. Bad art and good art.  When art depended on wealthy backers, it was only the geniuses that got the backing, the Rembrandts, the Bachs, the Beethovens, but who knows what other artists might not have flourished if they had the financial backing.  Today we have a much bigger pool.  So maybe geniuses now have a better chance of arising out of poorer circumstances than they used to. I don’t think I would have been happy living in the Renaissance. I don’t think so.  You really had to be a genius to survive as an artist in those times.

Q. So you are positing somewhat that in a democracy we get more bad, but also more good stuff.

A. The arts are flourishing, but documentaries are starting to go downhill in Canada because the right wing is starting to take over. Our funding is cut. Documentaries take a lot of money, it takes a lot more money to make a documentary than to write a poem or a song.  We are dependent on state subsidies. I don’t have private backers. They do in the US. There are private backers for filmmakers in the US. I think we are more conservative, less risk-taking in this country.

Q. If your documentaries were less political, would you get more money?

A. No. Money is affecting not only political film-makers, but all documentary film-makers because a good documentary makes you think critically, not only on politics but on all other aspects of life.  We are heading towards a fascist era in this country, if we keep going the way we are going now, where there is no place for critical thinking.  I have been active in the Justice for Adil Coalition*.  I just flew with him to Halifax where he had a speaking engagement and I witnessed the terrible harassment he was subjected to by the border guards, who followed him on the airplane, followed him all the way home.  He wasn’t able to get on the plane to come back so he had to rent a car to come back and they followed him on the highway. We have fascism in the bushes now.

It’s getting worse.  It started to go that way under Paul Martin

Q. Has the way you approached documentary changed over the years? 

A. They have become more political.  I started off making films about friends and family and got more political when I met my wife, Audrey, who comes from a very politically active family.  Actually, the Hiroshima film was a suggestion of her father, who was in touch with the peace movement in Japan.  He is an active member of the Anti-Imperialistic League in Boston. He did a history of it, he’s an historian. So I have tried to make films that combined characters with political stories, messages, over the years. 

Q. Going back to the October crisis, can you tell us if artists from the Anglophone milieu, like you, feel that Quebec’s democratic rights had been usurped and if so, are you involved in such issues?

A. The October 1970 issue? Gaston Miron, Gerald Godin, Pauline Julien, Michele Lalonde led a fantastic outburst of poetry and music at that time. Certainly there was suppression of Quebec artists prior to Bourassa under Duplessis, but it was the artists that led to the Quiet Revolution, Borduas, Riopelle, Felix Leclerc, Gilles Vigneault   In 1972, that was the worst thing that Trudeau did, declaring the War Measures Act, sending the army in.  But he did not succeed in suppressing the arts. The arts exploded as a result.  In the same way, they defeated the Tories in Quebec last year.  They tried to suppress the artists in Quebec and had the opposite effect.

Q. In your documentary, Return to Dresden, what were the atmosphere and feelings you encountered when you were shooting the film about the allied carpet bombing of Dresden and the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union and East Germany?  What were your feelings and reactions?

A. It was under the Communist regime. East Germany was still alive and well under Hünniger. It was a very difficult film to shoot.  We were under surveillance, weren’t allowed to meet any people in the peace movement in East Germany, they made it impossible, a very repressive atmosphere.  We were allowed to film because the subject of the film was what happened in 1945.  And the people of Dresden were very moved to have among them someone who had come to apologise for his role in the destruction of their city. We were followed everywhere. I didn’t have freedom of movement at all.  But the authorities had to display a certain respect for former allies coming over to apologize for the bombing of Dresden, so they allowed us to work as long as we didn’t get in touch with members of the peace movement. The woman who greets us at the beginning of the film, recites a poem near the end, committed suicide soon after we were there. We suspect it was because life had been made difficult for her as an actress because she was too outspoken.  It was a courageous thing for her to make herself available to us, a western film crew.

Q. Are you satisfied with that film?

A. I am crazy about classical music so whenever I can do a film about classical music, I am happy, particularly if there is a political message.

Q. What recent work has struck you with its artistry or honesty or beauty?

A. Mark Achbar, The Corporation. It’s a superb work of research, on the same level of intelligent frameworking and researching as Naomi Klein’s work.  Great characters. Very strong story line.  Those are the elements of any good documentary. The same Robert Cornellier’s film about the Alaskan oil spill twenty years ago, Black Wave, The Legacy of the Exxon Valdez. It’s a film that just came out last year and it’s an extraordinary film. The visuals are kind of secondary. The visuals are there to tease you, to get you into the content, whatever the story is.

Q. What issues are presently important to you?

A. Palestine. Palestine is the worst thing happening now and we are all going to be dragged into another terrible confrontation if we don’t give the Palestines justice.

Q. You heard Robert Fisk speak about the Middle East and his position was rather pessimistic.

A. I was brought up in a socialist, pacifist, Quaker family that gave us confidence in ourselves and in human nature and through building alliances that we can change the world. And I still believe that. I have to believe that. I can’t see any point to living if I don’t believe that. Robert Fisk has other ways of enjoying life besides writing books. He listens to a lot of classical music, he reads great literature, he is very knowledgeable about Shakespeare. He doesn’t let politics get him down, because he sees a lot of hope in other arts. I have Palestinian and Jewish friends who believe it is essential to find justice for Palestinians and I share a belief with them that it has to come. We can’t allow it to go on like that.

Q. What film are you presently working on?

A. I have a Palestinian friend who is a business man, whose family owned a hotel in Haifa before they were evicted in 1948. He was three years old at the time. He’d like to get that hotel back and open up Haifa to Palestinians abroad.

Q. So the film about Palestine is close to your heart?

A. Yes. I’ve been in Palestine on three or four films and quite aware of the situation there now.

Q. Given free rein, what subject would you choose to work on?

A. I would go into my Haifa story.  I’d like to do a thorough research in the role played by Lester Pearson in splitting up Palestine into two pieces in 1947. Pearson has a major role to play in that. Initial research shows that it’s been largely covered up. It would require a person of Naomi Klein’s stature to dig into it and find out more about it.  It’s one of the worst things this country has ever done, under a good man, supposedly.  How did he allow himself to do it. I heard from one of his colleagues that he regretted it. But I would like to get more evidence of that.

Q. What else would you like to do?

A. I can’t imagine doing anything else. Although I started late in life, I didn’t get into film making until I was thirty years old, it’s become pretty much an obsession with me, I can’t imagine doing without it. I have a very manageable, high-definition camera, light-weight enough to carry in spite of my age. I love working on my Final Cut Pro editing system. What else would I like to do?  I wish I could play the piano again. I still have a piano and I do play once in a while. If I had time, I would love to play it a lot more.

 * In February 2009, the Federal Court finally lifted most of the interim conditions imposed on Adil Charkaoui. Adil was arrested under a so-called security certificate in 2003. Adil Charkaoui is one of five men in Canada who are undergoing the Kafka-esque security certificate process. All are still subject to the agonizingly irrational “security” certificate process, deeply invasive and suffocating bail conditions, and live under threat of deportation and torture. The Coalition Justice for Adil Charkaoui formed in Montreal in a matter of days after Charkaoui’s abrupt arrest.
 
The Coalition is an alliance of Muslim groups, refugee and immigrant rights organizations, anti-oppression groups and the Charkaoui family.

Artist Biography:

Mike Wozniewski is a designer and developer of interactive software for the arts. As a freelance researcher, he maintains collaborations with several recognized institutions and works with many creative minds who likewise seek to push the boundaries of computer-mediated artistic expression.

Studying with the Centre for Intelligent Machines at McGill University, he developed the core technology for the Audioscape Project , which has been featured in several artistic installations, performances, and international conferences. At the Society for Arts and Technologies in Montreal, he continues to create open source tools that enable artists to make use of new technologies.

Mike’s previous work is centered mostly around the use of virtual reality technology, interactive systems, and immersive projection environments with 3D audio. However, recent projects involve more mobile and location-based technology. Examples include the Raw Materials project, that allows the public to use their cell phones to contribute images, sounds and videos during live events. The Mobile Audioscape project, on the other hand, uses GPS tracking and wireless connectivity to create mixed reality environments in outdoor spaces. Ultimately, he aims to create the tools that artists need to connect people with each other and with their surroundings, while allowing for creative expression.

See  http://www.mikewoz.com/ for more information.

Artist Statement:

My desire is to engage the public and to provide artists with the tools and technologies required to capitalize on user-generated content and social media.   All of the software I create is available for free with an open source license, meaning that anyone can take it, change it, and use it however they wish. I strongly advocate the open source movement, creative commons licensing for art and media, and the copyleft model in general. I think creativity is facilitated by one’s tools and will best flourish with unrestricted access to all utilities and media.

Mobile Audioscapes:

As computation becomes more mobile, we see the public engaging with digital information while on the move. New forms of artistic expression are thus possible, since the public has tools to connect and take part in events as they happen. Furthermore, with location-aware technologies such as GPS, artworks can be associated with real world locations, and virtual elements can be overlaid on the physical environment, creating a medium that operates on a potentially grand scale, shared by multiple distributed participants.

The SoundPark installation is a motivating example of this type of mobile arts application. It operates in a city park (in this case, Parc Jean-Mance in Montreal), and allows users to discover and rearrange sounds that have been scattered throughout the location. Participants need to actually walk around in order to experience and manipulate the material, but in doing so, they can create their own customized musical mix. In the video on our front page or the Table of Contents page, we see a game-like version of the system, where participants are challenged to recreate a particular mix.

Another example that encourages public involvement is the Raw Materials project, which provides the technology for cell phone users to contribute text messages, images and videos to public events in real time. It is thus possible for audience members to send comments or photos of themselves, which can be displayed on large screens during concerts, or mixed by a VJ to become part of the show.

The video below documents one such event, held on March 6th, 2009, which took place simultaneously in two locations: at the Society for Arts and Technology in Montreal and Great Northern Way Campus in Vancouver. The audiences from both locations contributed images and videos of their surrounding neighborhoods, which was remixed by artists and displayed to the public:

 

Find more videos like this on W2: Community Media Arts Vancouver BC

Look forward to the premiere of Audio Graffiti this summer, which will allow mobile participants to leave audio tags and mix music in an urban environment. (Part of the International Computer Music Conference. August 21, 2009. Location to be announced.)

Credits:

 * SoundPark was developed at the Shared Reality Lab at McGill University, with funding from the NSERC/Canada Council for the Arts New Media Initiative.

 ** Raw Materials was developed in collaboration between the Society for Arts and Technology and Mobile Muse .

[There's increasing evidence that increasing wireless communication and cell phone usage in particular are linked to a concomitant increase in head and neck cancers.     Serai Editorial Staff]

“The Noise/Silence of Lasting Peace” [after seeing Yoko Ono "Imagine" exhibit in the Musée des Beaux Arts de Montréal] @ 2009 by James Cockcroft

End wars by noise
of revolutionary
multitudes.

Enduring silence.

When a person experiences invasion of any kind, one of three phenomena happen: Flight, Fight or Freeze. Any degree of aggression, force, trauma, violence, and post-traumatic stress, triggers the nervous system to react in one of these ways. 

Modern warfare and invasion, employing state of the art technology, occupies a massive space in the psychology of the nations unfortunate enough to have to endure it. 

In the wake of the most recent war in the Gaza Strip, as well as the ongoing conflict in the aftermath of the war in Iraq, we are faced with millions of people in fight, flight or freeze.

However, anyone situated anywhere between the polarities of victim and perpetrator is affected by this violence, in one way or another.

The following work forms an experimental, experiential, nonlinear narrative, threading together media, politics, industry, intimate and impersonal utterances from people directly and indirectly affected by war and invasion.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

• Stefan Cristoff for playing his own piano composition “Untitled”                                 
• Robert Fisk for excerpts from his public lecture at Concordia University and University of Ottawa. February 19 & 20, 2009                                                                                   
• Ghada (Last name omitted) for excerpts from an interview, February 08, 2009
• Suheir Hammad for excerpts from What I Will, Def Jam Poetry & Live performance on March 31^st,  Montreal (TBD)
• Ehab Lotayef for excerpts from an interview. April 5, 2009
• Ahmed Mukhtar for a sample of his Kurdish Drumming
• The unknown maker of the home video found on You Tube, “B’Tselem House Demolition in Qalqiliya, August, 2007″
• Concordia University for instruction and the use of equipment

1.

At Checkpoint Charlie

customs huts

The death strip – scraped earth

:wildflowers.

Sepia postcard of the Brandenburg Gate.

Organized bus tour. A one-day visit.

2.

Windows are bricks instead of glass.

3.

A summer day, lapis-blue sky.

My husband buys a rucksack.

“These East Berliners look unhappy,” he says.

I remember, his leaving bruises.

The Mauer, the Wall, cuts through houses.

Ripped-up cobblestone.

4.

People are forbidden to wave

to family and friends.

5.

White crosses under an old elm.

A Strasse becomes a cul-de-sac:

from a steel viewing tower

one sees the street life.

Blank faces of passers-by.

6.

People break the Wall with hammers,

take home souvenirs. 1989.

7.

We are a family, divorced.

8.

A piece of Mauer still stands along the river,

one kilometre long. Dandelions, graffiti art.

Centre of the city under construction.

[From the book The Men Who Killed Me: Rwandan Survivors of Sexual Violence, © 2009, by Anne-Marie de Brouwer & Sandra Ka Hon Chu, with photographs by Samer Muscati, published by Douglas & McIntyre: an imprint of D&M Publishers Inc. Photographs reprinted with permission of the publisher.]

             Marie Louise, Marie Odette, Marie Jeanne, Jeanette, Adela, Marie Claire, Pascasie, Marie, Immaculée, Faustin, Françoise, Gloriose, Clementine, Hyacintha, Béatrice, Francoise and Ernestine are the names of 16 of the women and one man who spoke out against the sexual violence that was perpetrated on anywhere between 250,000 to 500,000 women and a smaller number of  young boys and men between April and June of 1994, in the aftermath of  Rwandan President Habyarimana’s death when his plane was shot down on April 6, 1994. These women have names and they also have faces whose enduring  beauty, still etched with pain and suffering, has been recorded by the sensitive lens of Samer Muscati.

            “It has probably become more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in an armed conflict”.

            They also have voices which fifteen years after the genocide aimed at “cleansing” Rwanda of its Tutsi population and the sexual torture and violence inflicted on the women and some of the men, have spoken out loud and clear against this ugly chapter in Rwandan history and the sins of omission of an international community that kept quiet. As Stephen Lewis, co-director of Aids Free World, stated in his foreword, “…the stories in this book, however painful, are exactly what is needed to jolt the world into sanity”.

            “…so much pain still lives inside us.”

            They have survived, but barely, because the have received no compensation for their monumental losses: they have lost their partners, their extended families, their homes, their livelihood,  their children, their self-respect and most importantly, their health since most of them have contracted HIV and little is being done to help them.

            “I do not love the person that I am.”

            Yes, there are organizations trying to help like Solace Ministries, providing practical assistance, solidarity and the greatest gift of all: their self respect, for they, and their Tutsi men folk,  have been called cockroaches by a propaganda machine aimed at turning Hutu against Tutsi thus  making possible  this massive process of dehumanization. One might wonder whose interests this bestiality serves.  What we do know for sure is that this process of labeling people and turning them against each other started with Belgian colonialists in 1916 when they favored the Tutsi minority  over the Hutu majority. The Belgians viewed the Tutsi as more European and therefore deemed them to be more intelligent. The clergy were complicit in this process of maintaining this division by means of a separate educational system and better jobs for the Tutsi, an injustice which the Hutu came to resent later on.

            “I want the world to know what happened here in Rwanda and what we had to endure and I want to heal myself by unburdening my heart.”

            Each woman’s story is unique and yet the commonalities with other women’s stories are striking. Women witnessed their relatives’ deaths, they had to flee on foot with their babies strapped to  their backs, they hid in outhouses and bushes where they were then raped, they were repudiated by their friends and relatives, mostly out of fear, they were assisted by their friends and relatives  in spite of the fear,  their genitals were destroyed, they contracted AIDS,  they suffer from nightmares and paranoia, they have lost faith in humanity, they have forgiven, they can never forgive. Most of them have children, their own and orphans, under their care and do not have the means to look after them properly.

            “I can’t forgive a man who thinks forgiveness can be bought. Why should I forgive him? I don’t want to be corrupted for forgiveness’ sake. I can forgive but not in exchange for money or a cow. I just want sincerity.”

            A truth and reconciliation commission has been instituted, following the example of post-apartheid Africa. Its aim is to unclog the courts and to facilitate social integration and healing. Perhaps its aim is also to salve the conscience of  the perpetrators and to allow the United Nations to continue doing what it does best: passing toothless resolutions.  On June 19, 2008  the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1820 to end sexual violence in conflict.  However, as was pointed out by Catherine A. Mackinnon in “Rape, Genocide and Women’s Human Rights”:

            “This is not rape out of control… . It is rape to drive a wedge through a community, to shatter a society, to destroy a people. It is rape as genocide.”

            Paradoxically, Rwanda’s population was 70% female immediately following the genocide and women now occupy 56% of seats in the Rwandan Parliament. Let us hope that Rwandan  women, who have been robbed of so much, are able to radically change a society that has inflicted so much harm on them and therefore on itself as well. And that books such as this one, with artistic photography and heart-felt first-person accounts, can break the silence of the international community that would like to forget what  these women can never erase from their minds and hearts.

At a conference on April 15, 2009 at Concordia University, Adrienne Clarkson, former governor general of Canada and now biographer of Norman Bethune, suggested that one of the reasons the internationally-known surgeon, medical inventor, visionary and humanitarian might not be recognized to the degree he should be in Canada is because he became a member of the Communist  Party in 1935. Certainly this is a well-timed biography of Norman Bethune as it coincides with the seventieth anniversary of his death which is being celebrated in the city of Montreal with special events and exhibitions.

            This volume is part of a series entitled Extraordinary Canadians edited by John Ralston Saul. He is the husband of Clarkson and their collaboration has turned out a brilliant book. In his Introduction, Saul states there is a need for this series whose aim is to “produce a grand sweep of the creation of modern Canada.” Other “ethical leaders” chosen are as diverse as Lester B. Pearson, Big Bear, L.M. Montgomery, and René Lévesque.

            Certainly Clarkson’s Norman Bethune stands on its own. The stunning cover portrait by  Canadian artist Carl Shinkaruk paints Bethune as a fiery tortured figure with the gaunt cheeks of the tubercular. This arresting image evokes a self-portrait of Vincent Van Gogh, another haunted extraordinary man.

            Clarkson writes with analytic acumen of Bethune’s childhood on the Canadian Shield. He was born in Gravenhurst, Ontario from “generations of doctors” and “men of peace.” Bethune was the grandson of Norman Bethune, a surgeon whose life became a template for his namesake. In the 1850s, his ancestor had tended to the wounded soldiers on an Italian battlefield and was described by a government official as a “generous foreign volunteer …spurred to help us out of a deep sense of human generosity.” Similar admiring words were applied to his grandson in 1939 by government officials in China where he died. Bethune was given the name Bai Qiu En which translates to The Light which Pursues Kindness.

            Clarkson convincingly discusses how Bethune’s Presbytarian heritage shaped him for a life of service. His rebellion against his fundamentalist father, Reverend Malcolm Bethune, whom he claimed he “hated,” was an early visceral reaction against any form of oppression. This rebellion took on a wider scope in his adulthood as he fought against the medical establishment’s status quo and later the forces of fascism.

            At the Concordia University conference, Clarkson mentioned that it was time that Bethune be written about “from a woman’s point of view.” In her extensive research, Clarkson is the first biographer to make use of the journals of Marian Dale Scott, the well-known Canadian artist. As Clarkson defines her, she was Bethune’s “unique love of his life.”  At the time they met in 1935, Bethune was divorced from Frances Campbell Penney, a conservative woman from a prominent Edinburgh family. Marian was married to the well-known Montreal lawyer and poet, F.R. Scott. In a sensitive chapter with the title ” A Tiger of Sweetness, Fierceness and Delight,”  a line by Marian describing Bethune, Clarkson reveals through Bethune’s love letters and poems to her the depth of their creative and platonic relationship.

            As a young stretcher-bearer in the First World War, Bethune had survived a severe leg wound in France and had been hospitalized for six months, returning to continue his medical studies in Canada. At the age of thirty-six, he faced a far more difficult physical diagnosis that was like a death sentence. He had contracted tuberculosis in both lungs. TB was then epidemic as cancer is today and there was no known cure. Under the stress, Bethune and his wife divorced and she returned to Scotland. Unable to practice medicine, Bethune was admitted to the Trudeau Sanatorium at Saranac Lake, New York. His will to live was shaken and he planned his suicide. As an instinctive form of therapy, Bethune began to paint the interior walls of the cottage he lived in with murals he entitled “TB’s Progress.” When he heard of an experimental operation, he sought a doctor that was willing to perform it. The operation was a success though it left him disabled with only one functioning lung.

            This didn’t deter Bethune who decided to use his medical skills to eradicate this disease. In 1928, he accepted a prestigious position at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal where he worked alongside the “father of thoracic surgery in North America,” Dr. Edward Archibald.  Soon, Bethune clashed with his traditionalist mentor. Even though Bethune proved himself as a surgeon and even invented surgical tools that are still in use in the operating room today, Dr. Archibald decided to transfer him to another hospital, in effect dismissing him. As Clarkson explains, Bethune’s eccentric character could have been another reason:

            “The fact that Bethune changed his clothing as quickly as his moods was irritating to many as well. An apartment mate of his said that “his clothes (were) bought from the most expensive tailor in town….(he was) always insisting on white tie and tails at every appropriate occasion.”He was just as capable, however, of going out to a party wearing shoes, trousers, and an overcoat but no shirt or jacket; once, in response to a dare, he dressed as a lumberjack to do his hospital rounds.”

            Bethune didn’t agree with the concept of profit in medicine. In his practice in Montreal, he was often heard saying: “there are two kinds of tuberculosis: the rich man’s and the poor man’s. The rich man lives and the poor man dies.” At medical congresses he gave electrifying speeches that challenged his colleagues on this subject. In 1936, Bethune spearheaded a group of like-minded professionals, the Montreal Group for the Security of the People’s Health, which produced a manifesto for socialized medicine but it was ignored by his peers and the Quebec government. Not a man to be defeated, Bethune decided to go to Spain to fight the fascist army of General Franco. He was sponsored by the Canadian Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy. In Spain, Bethune organized, with his Canadian team, the first mobile transfusion unit. Clarkson points out that this important contribution to the history of blood transfusion has yet to be fully recognized.

            The seeds for Bethune’s journey to China were planted in his religious childhood as Clarkson recounts how in the early twentieth century, China was regarded as the place for evangelization and many churches and institutions collected alms so they could sponsor missionaries to that country. In 1938, Bethune felt compelled to go to China under the auspices of the Canadian-American Medical Unit to help the Chinese in their fight against the Japanese invasion. Accompanied by the Canadian nurse Jean Ewen, who spoke Chinese fluently, Bethune trekked for weeks through rough mountainous landscape to get to his post as medical adviser to the Eighth Route Army. Ewen wrote a book about her experiences in China and Clarkson includes Ewen’s vivid account of the famous meeting in Yan’an between Bethune and the young Chairman Mao. In this chapter, Clarkson conveys the physical and emotional hardships that Bethune encountered as he performed his medical duties operating on the front line, setting up a model hospital, training Chinese teenage boys and girls as rudimentary nurses and doctors. One of Bethune’s inventions in China was a mobile operating room for the battlefield: “All the equipment was placed on three mules: the collapsible operating table, a full set of surgical instruments, anaesthetics, antiseptics, twenty-five wooden legs and arms.” Bethune spent much time typing letters to authorities and friends back home requesting urgently needed medical supplies. He also wrote articles for the Canadian and American newspapers, and medical texts and training manuals. His portable typewriter is now kept in the Bethune Museum in Shijiazhuang along with his stethoscope and other memorabilia.

            Danger never fazed Bethune whose dedication to saving the lives of the wounded included operating bare-handed if no surgical gloves were available. In the fall of 1939, at forty-nine years old, Bethune was frail from months of gruelling living conditions and overwhelming work, and when he nicked his finger during surgery he soon fell ill from blood poisoning. He’d been planning to return to Canada to raise funds for the Communist Army, but once he knew he was dying, he wrote his will which concluded: “So the last two years have been the most significant, the most meaningful years of my life.”

            The biography ends a bit quickly but more details can be found in the useful Chronology such as that Bethune’s remains are at the Martyrs’ Tomb in the same city as the Bethune Museum in China. There is an error that needs correcting for future editions which is the location of the memorial statue of Bethune in Montreal: it is not at the corner of Guy and Dorchester, but Guy and De Maisoneuve Streets.

            In Norman Bethune, Clarkson debunks myths and media sensationalism to capture the essence of this extraordinary man and Canadian. Like all larger-than-life people, Bethune transcended labels or contradictions and could be Communist and Christian, scientist and artist,  temperamental and tender. Clarkson advocates for Dr. Bethune’s further recognition in Canada and surely this volume will do this.