Little Dragon in Toronto

About a week ago I heard Little Dragon in concert at Toronto's newish The Hoxton club.

Little Dragon played to the very crowded room of people, singing over the chattering masses, as if they were performing to a group of close friends.  

They performed some of my favourite songs; "Little Man" from Ritual Union (2011) and this one, "Never Never," from Machine Dreams (2009):

 

Live chat tonight about Raw Opium documentary on TVO

Tonight I'll be moderating a chat to coincide with the Canadian Premiere Broadcast of Raw Opium: Pain, Pleasure, Profits, a feature documentary. We'll chat with special guest, Eugene Oscapella, a lawyer and policy expert in Ottawa, about Canada's drug policies and the new omnibus crime bill currently being presented in Parliament. 


Tune in to the live stream and chat on www.tvo.org/rawopium

 

 

Urban Roots takes a look at a new movement in Detroit

I recently watched the trailer for this documentary, which explores Detroit's current situation and the new initiative people are taking there. "Urban Roots" is a new documentary that takes a look at the urban farming movement in Detroit. 

I've followed the Motor City as the place where techno was once nascient in America, but this documentary takes a fresh look at the way that people are using vacant land in a creative way to solve a shortage of fresh produce. It looks like this documentary might do a good job to tell another story about this soulful city, which has long been under the influence of a severe economic recession. 

 

 

 

After the rain fell... The sky turned pink.

One day in the summer I took this photo. The sky was bright and colorful, against the dark city streets. I modified my photo using the decim8 iphone app by Kris Collins

Ever since then I've been hooked on using decim8 and I have taken a number of other photos, which you can see below. 

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TRENTEMØLLER TAKES A PAGE FROM PORTISHEAD

Hot off the heels of a momentous gig at Coachella, Anders Trentemøller and his six piece band are set to play Spain's SOS festival this weekend. Although SOS is a smaller upstart festival, it promises to be just as memorable, with other live bands like Suede and the Kooks and DJs like Tiga also on the two-day lineup.

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"We're New Here" -- Well, not really...

A new collaboration by Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie xx of the band The xx has resulted in this fusion of two sounds, with Jamie xx remixing Scott-Heron's first album in thirteen years. Here's one single from the new album, We're New Here:

Although the album name sort of suggests that the musicians are inexperienced, at 61 years of age, Gil Scott-Heron is no newbie. He's a veteran spoken word artist whose albums of the early 1970's (Pieces of a Man and Winter in America) influenced hip hop and soul then, and continues to influence artists today. 

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New documentary - Raw Opium: Pain, Pleasure, Profits

A new documentary produced by Kensington Communications Inc., is slated for release this year.

For more information about the film, visit www.rawopium.com.

Then, Like the film on Facebook for more updates and on Twitter for news about the war on drugs, harm reduction and drug policy!

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Peter Mettler discusses filmmaking as an emergent process

At a screening of  Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives on the Alberta Tar Sands last week with Peter Mettler in attendance for Ryerson's IMA Student Lecture Series, Mettler discussed the filmmaking process for Petropolis and provided some details about another forthcoming project.

After the screening, in the Q&A with Marc Glassman, Mettler explained the reason for his decision to shoot the film from a helicopter above the sands. "We were not allowed to shoot on the private property that the oil companies owned in the Alberta oil sands," he said. Therefore he and his small crew had to shoot from one thousand meters above the ground. They had to rig up a kind of gyroscope to film. Mettler explained, “In this case, aesthetics were determined by the situation.”

When asked whether he considers himself to be a documentary filmmaker, Mettler pointed out that in the past he had worked as a feature film director, but he said that documentary film tends to be more process-oriented than is feature filmmaking, which is more like a blueprint approach. At the same time, he explained “my films are contrived like a poem or an essay or a piece of music, and there's no real genre for that. But, I do engage with the real world. So in that way, my films are non-fiction, like documentary.”

Over the years, as Mettler has developed an unmistakable signature style, he has even wandered into the world of Vjing, where strategic improvisation reigns supreme. He explained, “it's a tangent to my intuitive approach. VJing uses spontaneity to build itself.” “After I completed Gambling Gods and LSD, I wanted to see if I could perform with the extra footage I had from that film.” So, for the last 5 years he has been experimenting with and creating audio-visuals on the spot. He started VJing after he met Greg Hermanovic, the creator of Derivative and Touch Designer software, which allows one to mix visuals in real-time.

'So, what is next?' asked Glassman, to which Mettler replied, “My new project explores how we experience time. So, I'm looking at anything as a manifestation of time. Of what is and what's to come.” For his new project he went to Switzerland to recreate the big bang, he went to visit geologists to look at how volcanoes change over time, and he went to Detroit to see how the city is changing and continues to evolve, with connections to past and future.

Petropolis was commissioned by Greenpeace and directed and produced by Peter Mettler. It has garnered numerous prizes including: Prix du jury du jeune public de la Société des Hôteliers de la Côte, Visions du Réel (2009) Nyon, Switzerland. 

Highly recommended!

 

 

Luis Jacob "Pictures at an Exhibition" at MOCCA

Last night attendees at the Museum Of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA) gathered in the large main space for an exhibit called Pictures at an Exhibition with works by Luis Jacob.  

The highlight of the show was the work from his recent series They Sleep With One Eye Open (2008). True to their title, the paintings on large canvases (each numbered in the series) looked like huge eyes starring back at the viewer amidst a bold colourful palette of psychedelic hues: bright orange, yellow, fuchsia and eye-popping blue. 

(download)

Show Details:

Main Space
Luis Jacob: Pictures at an Exhibition
Curated by David Liss

Feb 04, 2011 - Mar 27, 2011
More about Luis Jacob from MOCCA's website.

Luis Jacob has achieved an international reputation, particularly since his participation in Documenta 12 in 2007, with solo exhibitions at the Städtisches Museum Abteiberg and the Hamburger Kunstverein, and in Canada at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, the Darling Foundry and Musée d’art de Joliette. In 2010 his work was featured at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, in the exhibition Haunted: Contemporary Photography/ Video/ Performance, and in the Kunsthalle Bern in the exhibition Animism. Luis Jacob is represented by Birch Libralato, Toronto.

 

 

The Economics of Happiness

On Monday I went to see a new film, The Economics of Happiness, at University of Toronto as part of a conference called Animating Good Food Ideas, that was about cultivating local and sustainable food practices. The film, co-directed by Helena Norberg-Hodge, catalogued the power and destruction of globalization and favoured localization instead.   

While many of the ideas about the failure of constant economic growth and the failure of world debt policies have been talked about in academia since the 1970's, the idea that money does not necessarily drive our happiness was more compelling for me. The filmmakers aptly noted that since the 1950's there has been a decline in the levels of happiness amongst Americans, although incomes have continued to rise. They point out that with globalization, communities are more rare and individualization reigns supreme.

While I would agree with the idea that local culture is extremely important to our sense of wellbeing, I think that those fortune enough are finding new ways to build communities across international borders and over the internet. Call me idealistic - but there has to be a way we can build hybrid communities that are both global and local. I think we see this within subcultures and movements all over the place. 

Visit the site for future dates when the film is screening.