Yet another example of Canadian art not getting any respect

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Somethings just never change. Yesterday the news “broke” about a painting of Jacob Zuma with, as Lynda Polgreen of the New York Times writes, “his genitals exposed.” Apparently it’s annoying some people.

Over on this side of the border, Openfile (yeah, that’s right, so mainstream that you’re excused if you’ve never heard of them before) and the Kingston Whig-Standard are the only news outlets reporting on a painting of Stephen Harper, as the Whig-Standard puts it, “nude.”

Last month it was The Google Art Project not including any Canadian museums, and the farther back you go the worse it is. I have a bunch of ideas as to why this might be the case. They range from Canadian art is no good, to Canadian museums and galleries don’t know how to “do” global, to no one other than me cares. In Toronto and Vancouver they’re content with contemporary art sales that go bust and here in Quebec they’re content to take the government’s money. But jeez! it’s getting frustrating.

Seen on Saint Denis, x-mal Mensch Stuhl by Angie Hiesl and Roland Kaiser

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Saw this yesterday in thre alleyway that leads to the library, near the corner of Emory. It’s part of the FTA and called x-mal Mensch Stuhl by Angie Hiesl and Roland Kaiser and is exactly what it looks like. Obviously this was a dress rehearsal because they are really supposed to perform today at 6:00 pm and then on May 25 at 6:00 pm, May 26 at 3:00 pm and May 27 at 3:00 pm, for an hour each day.

x-mal Mensch Stuhl by Angie Hiesl and Roland Kaiser at the Festival TransAmériques
x-mal Mensch Stuhl by Angie Hiesl and Roland Kaiser at the Festival TransAmériques
x-mal Mensch Stuhl by Angie Hiesl and Roland Kaiser at the Festival TransAmériques
x-mal Mensch Stuhl by Angie Hiesl and Roland Kaiser at the Festival TransAmériques
x-mal Mensch Stuhl by Angie Hiesl and Roland Kaiser at the Festival TransAmériques
x-mal Mensch Stuhl by Angie Hiesl and Roland Kaiser at the Festival TransAmériques
x-mal Mensch Stuhl by Angie Hiesl and Roland Kaiser at the Festival TransAmériques
x-mal Mensch Stuhl by Angie Hiesl and Roland Kaiser at the Festival TransAmériques
x-mal Mensch Stuhl by Angie Hiesl and Roland Kaiser at the Festival TransAmériques
x-mal Mensch Stuhl by Angie Hiesl and Roland Kaiser at the Festival TransAmériques
x-mal Mensch Stuhl by Angie Hiesl and Roland Kaiser at the Festival TransAmériques
x-mal Mensch Stuhl by Angie Hiesl and Roland Kaiser at the Festival TransAmériques
x-mal Mensch Stuhl by Angie Hiesl and Roland Kaiser at the Festival TransAmériques
x-mal Mensch Stuhl by Angie Hiesl and Roland Kaiser at the Festival TransAmériques
x-mal Mensch Stuhl by Angie Hiesl and Roland Kaiser at the Festival TransAmériques
x-mal Mensch Stuhl by Angie Hiesl and Roland Kaiser at the Festival TransAmériques

Tom Wesselmann work as an advertisement

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I presume that Metro got permission from the appropriate authorities, but it is still kind of jarring to see Tom Wesselmann’s work being used to shill for a grocery store.

Advertisement in the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal's magazine M
Advertisement in the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal's magazine M

Writing on buildings

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1629 St Hubert  Montreal, QC H2L 3Z1, Canada
1629 St Hubert Montreal, QC H2L 3Z1, Canada
Place Victor-Morin, in begtween Saint-Antoine and Saint-Louis, west of Bonsecours
Place Victor-Morin, in begtween Saint-Antoine and Saint-Louis, west of Bonsecours
Rue Notre-Dame Ouest & Rue des Seigneurs Montréal, QC H3J 1M6 (I think)
Rue Notre-Dame Ouest & Rue des Seigneurs Montréal, QC H3J 1M6 (I think)

More information here.

Sherbrooke Ouest & Kimberly Montréal, QC H2X 1X5, Canada
Sherbrooke Ouest & Kimberly Montréal, QC H2X 1X5, Canada
3465 Rue Durocher Montréal, QC H2X 2E7, Canada
3465 Rue Durocher Montréal, QC H2X 2E7, Canada
1155 Rue Sherbrooke Ouest, Montréal, QC H3A 2N3, Canada
1155 Rue Sherbrooke Ouest, Montréal, QC H3A 2N3, Canada
1339 Rue Sherbrooke Ouest Montréal, QC H3G 1G2,
1339 Rue Sherbrooke Ouest Montréal, QC H3G 1G2,
1379 Sherbrooke Street West Montreal (Quebec), H3G 1J5
1379 Sherbrooke Street West Montreal (Quebec), H3G 1J5
1379 Sherbrooke Street West Montreal (Quebec), H3G 1J5
1379 Sherbrooke Street West Montreal (Quebec), H3G 1J5
3415 Redpath Rue, Montréal, QC H3G 2G2
3415 Redpath Rue, Montréal, QC H3G 2G2
2295 rue Saint-Marc Montréal Qc H3H 2G9
2295 rue Saint-Marc Montréal Qc H3H 2G9
4100, rue Sherbrooke O, Westmount, QC H3Z 1A5
4100, rue Sherbrooke O, Westmount, QC H3Z 1A5
4890 Boulevard Saint-Laurent  Montreal, QC H2T 1R5
4890 Boulevard Saint-Laurent Montreal, QC H2T 1R5
5145 Boul. St-Laurent Montréal, QC H2T 1R9
5145 Boul. St-Laurent Montréal, QC H2T 1R9

Canadian Whisky by Davin de Kergommeaux

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A couple of weeks ago the fine folk at McClelland & Stewart were kind enough to send me a copy of Canadian Whisky by Davin de Kergommeaux. It’s a nice book, a quick and easy read, but I would take exception with it’s subtitle, “The Portable Expert.” To me it’s more of conveniently sized omnibus introduction to contemporary Canadian whisky.

It seems that ever 20 years or so someone comes out with a book on Canadian liquor. Back in the mid 70s, William Rannie wrote Canadian Whisky: The Product and the Industry. In the mid 90s it was Lorraine Brown’s The Story of Canadian Whisky. And now in the teens it’s Mr. de Kergommeaux’s turn. His book is separated into five sections, The substance of Canadian whisky, How Canadian whisky is made, The pleasures of Canadian whisky, A concise history of Canadian whisky and The nine distillers of Canadian whisky. On the surface it all looks fine and dandy, and for the most part it is. But I couldn’t help but having the sensation of wanting more after I was done.

He starts in section one by explaining what makes whisky and how it is made. Even though his description of the grains, water and wood that make whisky is only 29 pages of the 300 in the book, he gets bogged down unnecessarily writing about things like recycling and energy efficiency in contemporary distilleries. While things like that are all fine and dandy, I think I would have preferred to have read more and in more detail about the differences in the ingredients and how they were manifested in the various whiskies.

The book then moves on to describe the processes used to make whisky, what happens in the mash, distillation and blending. I can only think of one book on whiskey that I’ve read that did not include a section on distillation, and it was written a while ago. I don’t know if this is because contemporary writers believe that no one knows their chemistry anymore or that someone somewhere passed a law insisting on it. I’m not all together sure that it needed to be there because again, it gets bogged down in details that aren’t entirely necessary because they are more generic to all whiskeys and not specifically Canadian or specific Canadian whiskies.

Back when I was growing up, I thought that Rye was Canadian whisky. I was wrong. While Rye can be Canadian whisky it can also be American whiskey, and for that matter if it was made in Ireland, Japan or someplace else it could be Irish whisky or Japanese whisky as well. Rye is just a specific way of making whisky that can be made anywhere. Then as I got older I thought that what made Canadian whisky different was that each grain was aged separately and they were only blended after aging and before bottling. I was wrong again. That was kind of how it was done when Seagram’s was a force in the industry (more to the point, Seagram’s would make what was called base whiskies and flavouring whiskies, which I believe were each made from a variety of grains, age those separately, before blending and bottling). I don’t know if any of the brands that used to be made by Seagram’s are still made this way.

Now I understand that the only thing that makes Canadian whisky, Canadian is that is is mashed, distilled and aged on this side of the border. If you are interested the law is here. In a nutshell, the salient fact beyond geography is aged for three years in wood. But it doesn’t specify what kind of wood, or if anything should be done to the wood. Then on top of that it can “contain caramel and flavouring” and after the three years, the distiller is allowed to continue aging it “other containers.” So basically, there really isn’t any unifying style or regulation to Canadian whisky like there is with American Bourbon.

This is both a good thing and a bad thing. Good, in that there is a humongous, if not infinite number of differences between different Canadian whiskies. Bad, in that comparing them is like comparing apples to oranges. Mr. de Kergommeaux never really got that distinction across to me as I was reading his book. I inferred that there were more commonalities than just three years, wood and location. This might be in part due to how the book is structured, focusing on the ingredients and process first (which for the most part are similar) and then only later writing about the companies and the people who ran them.

The meat of the book is in section four. Where he gives chapters to the history of the Molson distillery, Gooderham and Worts, Corby’s, Seagram’s, Hiram Walker and Wiser’s. Unfortunately, each chapter is only about 15 pages long, so there really isn’t too much detail and and things are presented in a very one-two-three manner. Which meant that I frequently had to go back and re-read parts to make sense of it all, since there wasn’t any type of glue connecting things. Instead of threading all the interwoven stories together and presenting it in a vaguely chronological manner, he ends up going over a lot of the same things (Canadian prohibition, laws, etc) many different times in each individual chapter. I was ready to throttle his editor by the time I read for something like the fourth time that the Canadian government has made it law that whisky had to be aged two years in 1890.

Then in the final section he devotes a chapter to nine distilleries in Canada (I’m not entirely certain why he chose not to give chapters to Shelter Point, Still Waters, Myriad View, and Victoria Spirits – actually I’m being disingenuous, he didn’t write about them, because their whisky isn’t the requisite three years-old, and isn’t available yet. But instead of giving each a sentence or two scattered in chapters about other distilleries, it would have been nice to perhaps do something like a chapter on “new” distilleries).

Personally, if I had been his editor, I would have insisted that he radically re-organize the book. While I know there is a humongous amount of history with regards to Canadian whisky, it really doesn’t come through in Mr. de Kergommeaux’s text. The way he has it organized it is almost like viewing slide samples from some biology class without having any larger knowledge of what animal they come from. Or if you prefer, a bunch of snapshots that to the viewer are only related because they were taken by the same photographer.

He has done an amazing amount of research, and I’d love to be able to sit down and talk with him (or even better still go through his notes) so as to truly and completely get a comprehensive understanding of Canadian whisky. The way the book is, it ends up serving as a very nice introduction to Canadian whisky. However it is offered up as the definitive word, and once I started scratching just a little bit below the surface I was able to discover that there are many more levels, nuances and stories that for whatever reason weren’t included in the book.

If I were to use an analogy, it’s like being offered a smell of Crown Royal Reserve but being told that you’re actually drinking and seeing it as well. And then, as long as I’m being grumpy, I’m sorely disappointed that he wasn’t able to explain what happened to the purple Crown Royal felt bag. I’ve heard rumors that involve Claude Brochu, but nothing definitive.

Then finally, dispersed throughout the book are “tasting notes” on 100 Canadian whiskies. Mr. de Kergommeaux needs a thesaurus. After reading half a dozen, they all end up reading exactly like each other. To give you examples;

Alberta Premium, …searing white pepper…
Black Velvet Three Year Old, …spirity hot white pepper…
Black Velvet Deluxe, …glowing hot pepper…
Bush Pilot’s Private Reserve, …and hot white pepper.
Canada Gold, Seductive peppery heat.
Canada House, …mildly peppery finish.
Canadian Club 20 Year Old, …hot pepper…
Canadian Club 30 Year Old, …zippy pepper…
Canadian Club Classic 12 Year Old, …warming gingery pepper…
Canadian Club Sherry Cask 8 Year Old, …searing hot pepper.
Canadian Hunter, …sizzling pepper burn.
Canadian LTD, …peppery warmth.
Canadian Peak, …and hot pepper.
Canadian Supreme, …advancing peppery glow.
Cape Breton Silver, …pepper…

You get the picture.

And I lied, I still have a little more currently the SAQ is carrying 22 different Canadian whiskies, if anyone would like to do a little tasting, let me know which ones you’d like to compare and contrast and we can see if we can get something organized. For the record, these are them:
Crown Royal Extra Rare, Glen Breton Single Malt, BLAT 11 Year Old, Canadian Club 20 Year Old, Crown Royal Reserve, Crown Royal, Canadian Club, STRT 101 10 Year Old, Wiser’s Legacy, Seagram’s Five Star, Seagram’s 83, White Owl, Canadian Club Sherry Cask, Crown Royal Limited Edition, Seagram’s V.O., Golden Wedding, Wiser’s Small Batch, Schenley OFC, Gibson’s Finest 12 Year Old, Canadian Club Classic 12 Year Old, Spicebox Spiced whisky and Wiser’s de Luxe.

Burgers in the rest of Canada

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Last week both the Globe & Mail and the Ottawa Citizen had food sections devoted to everything burger. The G&M published three articles, The secret to the beefiest, juiciest burger ever, Would you try one of these outrageous burgers? and Meat, veggie and fish: 12 awesome burger recipes for every taste. While the Citizen published four articles, Keep the sizzle simple, Your choice: Ottawa’s best burger, Chic condiments and Where’s the beef?

While both newspapers are well meaning they don’t quite get everything perfect. In the Globe they imply that adding salt while you’re making the patty is alright (it isn’t). When you salt before the patty is made your burgers end up looking and tasting like a “solid, rubbery object that would look more at home on an alien autopsy table.” They also think that pan frying on a hot grill is better than a straight grill, and that there is no difference between gas and charcoal (again they’re wrong on both counts). With regards to grill versus pan,

The real secret to the flavor of grilled food… is the drippings. Dribbles of juice laden with natural sugars, proteins and oils fall onto the hot coals and burst into smoke and flame. By catalyzing the myriad chemical reactions, the intense heat forges these charred juices into molecules that convey the aromas of grilling food. These new molecules literally go up in smoke, coating the food with the unmistakable flavor of grilled food. – (Vol2, pg 12 Modernist Cuisine)

Then with regards to gas versus charcoal, a gas grill is never going to give radiant heat as good or effectively as charcoal, and radiant heat is the way to go when grilling.

The Citizen contradicts the Globe by suggesting that you minimize the seasoning. Liberal use of salt on the exterior of a patty after being formed but prior to cooking is good. In Ottawa they also think that flipping a burger once “keep[s] those wonderful juices where they belong — in the burger.” Nothing could be further from the truth, and flipping a burger many times while it is cooking will reduce the cooking time and result in burger that is more evenly cooked. Then the Citizen makes the egregious mistake of suggesting that you cook a burger until it is 160 degrees. When you cook a burger to 160 degrees it becomes a dry, gray piece of hot meat without much flavor.

It’s nice to see that they are trying, but if you really want tips on how to make a better burger I’d highly recommend these.

The Modernist Cuisine's Hamburger, image courtesy http://takeawayblog.5pm.co.uk/
The Modernist Cuisine's Hamburger, image courtesy http://takeawayblog.5pm.co.uk/

A bit of ridiculousness on Saint Hubert

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I’m certain you know all about the Îlot Voyageur fiasco. Well what I just discovered is that some bright wag at city hall has attempted to put lipstick on a pig! They’ve decided to put some large plastic printing on the side of the unfinished building in a harebrained scheme to try and make it look like nothing is wrong.

The camouflage on the back of the Îlot Voyageur.
The camouflage on the back of the Îlot Voyageur.
The camouflage on the back of the Îlot Voyageur.
The camouflage on the back of the Îlot Voyageur.
The camouflage on the back of the Îlot Voyageur.
The camouflage on the back of the Îlot Voyageur.
The camouflage on the back of the Îlot Voyageur.
The camouflage on the back of the Îlot Voyageur.
The back of the Îlot Voyageur.
The back of the Îlot Voyageur.
The back of the Îlot Voyageur.
The back of the Îlot Voyageur.
The camouflage on the back of the Îlot Voyageur.
The camouflage on the back of the Îlot Voyageur.
The camouflage on the back of the Îlot Voyageur.
The camouflage on the back of the Îlot Voyageur.
The camouflage on the back of the Îlot Voyageur.
The camouflage on the back of the Îlot Voyageur.
The camouflage on the back of the Îlot Voyageur.
The camouflage on the back of the Îlot Voyageur.
The camouflage on the back of the Îlot Voyageur.
The camouflage on the back of the Îlot Voyageur.

Obama eating burgers

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The title says it all. I’m just surprised that it took this long for someone to do a tumblr of the President eating hamburgers, he’s been president of the United States for 1,217 days already.

Bettina Forget’s One Random Year

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My good friend Bettina Forget spent a good chunk of 2011 documenting her life – I only figured it would be fair to view her documentation. As a consequence, I think I am part of a small and select group of people who have seen all six hours, plus of it.


Advertisement for Bettina Forget's One Random Year Short Video

Allow me to back up slightly, I believe that as one of her 2010 Christmas gifts, she got a flip camera. [Edit: Actually, she bought herself a Sanyo Exacti earlier in 2010] One of those tiny and incredibly easy to use video cameras that are almost the size of a cigarette lighter. Maybe not as a consequence, but as a result of having the video camera she decided to film one minute of every day for the entire year. Unfortunately, at the end of November, it broke. But fortunately she had an iPhone so she was able to still film stuff, until she got a new camera in the middle of December.

Now there are scads and scads of people who film, or otherwise document themselves or their world on a daily basis (click here for a selection or here for more) but what set Bettina’s apart from the others – or at least made it different to me – was that she was doing this in order to find if there was some sort of narrative thread in her life.

Bettina Forget's One Random Year Still Frame December 2
Bettina Forget's One Random Year Still Frame December 2

I think that the end of 2010 might have been rough for Bettina. She never told me explicitly, but I’m always trying to connect the dots and from my perspective, asking if there is, and then looking for a narrative thread is indicative of some basic questions on why and what is happening in one’s life. Either that, or she got some kind of book deal to fictionalize her life, or possibly needed some reason to learn how to use iMovie or some other video editing software.

As the year progressed she made short videos of each month. Which kind of gave an advance preview of what the finished project would look like (see below for all of them). I was (and am still) on her mailing list, so there were a bunch of times when I realized that it was a new month and as well as remembering that I had to pay rent, I also wondered what Bettina had been up to and what that month’s video would look like. More specifically, how many places would I recognize.

Beyond the folks who look to document stuff daily, there is also a subsection of the arts that invests itself in endurance film projects. For the most part, I try and avoid them. If I am going to do some sort of endurance art, I’m much more likely to choose something aural . But I don’t know if there has been that much cross-over between the daily documentalists and the extreme film folk. Or actually, the type of crossover that would result in One Random Year. Because the documentalists try to make their videos kind of short, you know condense 20 years into 5 minutes.

Bettina Forget's One Random Year Still Frame October 9
Bettina Forget's One Random Year Still Frame October 9

Condensing one year into six hours kind of strikes me as being neither fish nor fowl. Anyhows, this just serves as a long winded way to give up some background before we get down to the nitty-gritty of trying to find that narrative thread.

For those of you that aren’t quite certain (the non-English literature majors, the folk whose second (or third) language is English, etc) a narrative is “an account, report, or story, as of events, experiences, etc.” Then a narrative thread would be a sequence of narratives. So no matter how hard she tried there is no way that her life doesn’t have a narrative. If only as a series of sentences, first I did this, then I did this, then I did this, etc.

But the harder thing is to try to make that narrative thread, that sequence of “events, experiences, etc” into some cohesive whole that not only makes sense but can also resonate with other people. Make it larger, more important and significant than just a series of one minute videos strung together. This is where I had an inside advantage. Since I am about as far from a complete stranger to Bettina as you can get, I think there were only something like four days where I was not able to recognize something, someone or alternatively understand what was happening in the whole video. Heck I was actually involved in something like nine of them, either as a subject or being there while she filmed.

Bettina Forget's One Random Year Still Frame June 26
Bettina Forget's One Random Year Still Frame June 26
Bettina Forget's One Random Year Still Frame February 8
Bettina Forget's One Random Year Still Frame February 8

While I was watching, I was scrawling all sorts of notes about where the shot was filmed, whether it was static or the camera moved, who was in it, if I has seen a similar shot and all sorts of other things like that. But what I ultimately found most interesting was how when someone sat down to watch it with me, how it was almost de rigeur to have a conversation. Not necessarily about what was on the screen and being shown. But sometimes on a tangential topic. Also, Bettina had set up the gallery as a close approximation of her living room, and I found that because of the video I ended up concentrating a lot more on the paintings on the wall than I would have otherwise.

I‘m certain there are scads of people with multiple PhD.s who have come up with some multisyllabic words to describe the effect. But since I don’t read that kind of trash, it’s obvious I’m going to have to try to reinvent the wheel, and I’d call it something like the Muzak effect.

Back when I was a child there were a bunch of companies that I hated to my core. One of them being the Muzak Corp. The idea of something being made to occupy just a part of your brain with background music while you did other more important things was infuriating to me. I thought (and still do think) that when I listen to music it should kind of be front and center in my consciousness.

Well, thanks to Muzak, there actually is now a style of music called Ambient. Having some useless melody noodling around in the background has now become mandatory in North America. Despite my dislike, it appears that they won.

Bettina Forget's One Random Year Still Frame March 6
Bettina Forget's One Random Year Still Frame March 6

Anyhows, it appears that there is the same effect in film. For the most part One Random Year is a series of static shots (by my count there were only 17 times when the camera moved). Ambient film, as with ambient music, almost demands that it be talked over. While I can recognize the effect, I’m not entirely certain that I appreciate it. I much prefer to concentrate on what I am looking at, and for that matter hearing, tasting, smelling or touching, as well.

That all being said, I seem to be in the minority. During the six-plus hours I was watching the video, 16 other people came in, wandered around and left. They all seemed quite content to let it fade into the background. For the most part they hung around for about a minute or two (although there were two separate couples, that hung around long enough to experience more than a week of Bettina’s life). All of them were talking or chatting, and when Bettina came and watched a bit with me (or her friend Anne-Marie) the need to talk seemed ever present.

Bettina Forget's One Random Year Still Frame December 26
Bettina Forget's One Random Year Still Frame December 26

As I was taking notes (all good art critics always take notes, right?) it quickly became similar to a game of concentration. Not only did I want to try to recognize as much of Bettina’s life as possible, but make note when she redid something a second time or more.

I think that might have come from this incessant need to identify the narrative thread. After all, if you do something a bunch of times, it’s got to mean something, right? Well, by my count (yes, I know, sketchy at best) there were 21 times when she filmed herself making art in 2011. There were 18 vernissages, 12 restaurants, 11 days doing something astronomical, eight times at CKUT, five times working on her laptop at home, four views of her apartment window (although there were a lot of different shots of her apartment and some of other windows in her apartment as well), four of the Parc avenue bus, three of her washing dishes, and two of the same tree.

Bettina Forget's One Random Year Still Frame May 17
Bettina Forget's One Random Year Still Frame May 17

I‘ll leave it up to you to decide if that means that Bettina spent about a quarter of her year doing the same sort of things (those repetitions add up to 88 days or about 24% of the year) or if it means that Bettina likes making art about the stars while eating out at CKUT, or something else. Also an awful lot of it is filmed (as you would expect) in and around the Belgo building, where she has her studio and Parc and Laurier, where she lives.

Bettina Forget's One Random Year Still Frame April 12
Bettina Forget's One Random Year Still Frame April 12

But this is where the documentalism kind of breaks down. Because she didn’t film the same thing everyday, it’s very easy to place more significance on what was filmed than what wasn’t. But just because a particular part of her day was filmed does not mean that that part was the most significant part of her day. In fact I would venture a guess that for the most part, the things that were filmed were rather mundane.

However, there were two days, June 8 and June 15 which stick out like sore thumbs. One those two days, she did not document something that she had done that day, but instead decided to create something specifically for One Random Year. On June 8, she is holding a game of Boggle and shaking the cubes that starts out spelling L-O-V-E and then with successive shakes disintegrates into a series of Es and Os.

This in and of itself wouldn’t stick out so much, as it is only about one minute in a more than six hour film, if it hadn’t been for the video the following week. On June 15, we see the word “LOVE” painted on something white. Then slowly and very deliberately, Bettina uses a large brush with white paint to obliterate the word and make it disappear. The combination of the two of them, so close to each other was kind of like a flashing light with a loud siren on top of a firetruck to me. Absolutely every other segment in the film is documentary in nature. Recording something that she did. These are the only two days where she filmed (I think) she thought. When I asked her if June 15 had been her anniversary, she said “no.”

Bettina Forget's One Random Year Still Frame June 15
Bettina Forget's One Random Year Still Frame June 15

I should also make mention of how the gallery was set up. There was a couch some plants, a second chair (I think) the TV, some of Bettina’s paintings on the wall behind the TV and along the two walls perpendicular to the TV were six, individual month long calendars, each with a still frame from that day’s video. I’m not sure if the calendars added anything to the show, other than making it appear to be more installation-like.

Overall, One Random Year was a great experience, and highly worthwhile. It makes it as obvious as the nose on my face that it is impossible to have an abstract structure to one’s life (or at least that would be what I would consider the opposite of the narrative thread to a life), but the next time around it would be interesting to see the results in a non-chronological order. Maybe stringing them together by color, content, character or something else. There are an infinite number of ways to tell a story. While I’m a big fan engaging the artist, I’m an even bigger fan of engaging the viewer. But I’m not certain that, despite having a video camera, I’m going to start filming a minute of my day, each and every day for the next 365 days.


Bettina Forget's One Random Year Short Video for January

Bettina Forget's One Random Year Short Video for February

Bettina Forget's One Random Year Short Video for March

Bettina Forget's One Random Year Short Video for April

Bettina Forget's One Random Year Short Video for May

Bettina Forget's One Random Year Short Video for June

Bettina Forget's One Random Year Short Video for July

Bettina Forget's One Random Year Short Video for August

Bettina Forget's One Random Year Short Video for September

Bettina Forget's One Random Year Short Video for October

Bettina Forget's One Random Year Short Video for November

Bettina Forget's One Random Year Short Video for December

Bettina Forget's One Random Year Short Greatest Hits Video

Montreal Culture on the decline?

Howdy!

Google has this tool called Google Insights for Search which professes to show you relative popularity of various terms entered into the ubiquitous box.

Well if you enter the words “Montreal Culture” into Insights, you can very clearly see a pronounced decline since 2004.

Google Insights Screen Grab
Google Insights Screen Grab

I’m not quite sure what to make of it.