Malala Yousafzai

So the Taliban shot a 14-year-old girl to prove how tough they are. After all, they are fighting against the satanic evils of the world, right? That takes a Real Man, with a Real Man's courage, right? Only a Real Man can withstand those fearful forces of secularism arrayed against him, right?

The Taliban, like fundamentalists of all religious persuasions, are terrified. They are fearful of losing control, unable to face uncertainty, panicked by different beliefs. They make their religion a defence against reality. But religion used this way is mere superstition. It cannot protect from the fearful suspicion that the universe does not align itself with your desires.

In short, the Taliban have no faith. Faith is the confidence to accept people with different beliefs than one's own. Faith is the self-assurance to ground honour in oneself. Faith is the ability to tolerate doubt. Those who lack faith fear that other people think differently, are frantic that other people's behaviour will destroy their reputation, are spooked by the uncertainties of life and panic-stricken that they cannot control the world around them.

So they shoot a 14 year-old girl that wants to learn, to think for herself, to think differently. Who has faith that whatever she learns will deepen her understanding of her world and the people who live in it, and will enable her to do what is best for her and her community. Who wants education for everyone, including girls and women. She has the faith they lack. That's why they shot her.

Two links: Judy Martin and Steven Poole

Judy Martin is a textile artists  whome we admire. We have one of her peices. Her blog is here: Judy Martin

I became aware of Steven Poole when he was interviewed about his annoyance with self-help books that quote and wildly misinterpret neurological studies. Worth reading IMO. Find him here: Poole's web site

Nouvelle Vague (Art Review)

Nouvelle Vague: The New French Domestic Landscape (Art Review) At the Harbourfront Centre, September 29-December 23 2012. Admission free. A collection of furniture from France, where it appears that a generation of new designers has accomplished the kind of critical mass that leads to radical innovation. The pieces are elegant, beautifully crafted or manufactured, and certainly display new thinking and imagining. But, as always, my first question about useful objects no matter how beautiful, is, Do they work? The answer here is, some do, and some don’t.
     Item: a group of what appear to be intended as low chunky stools would I think be unstable, as the lower third forms a cone.
     Item: a couple of billowy, vaguely cloud-like organic shapes of Tyvek over a wire frame mounted on short legs, lit from within, would work well in a large room with minimal furniture. They are lovely, and shed sufficient light to live by.
     Item: a small desk whose legs at one end extend above the writing surface, with a horizontal lamp mounted at the top. This would work very well even in a small apartment. The matching chair uses the same materials and engineering. Unassuming in style, the ensemble would look good anywhere. About the only thing missing is a shallow drawer in which to store a few writing materials. And stamps. The desk begs to be used for written correspondence.
     Item: a coffee table that looks like a melding of two stools of different heights. My first reaction was, Neat idea for a plant stand. I didn’t know it was a coffee table until I read the show brochure.
     Item: a resin chair with cutouts in the back making it look like a skull. Cute idea. Would I buy one? No.
     In general, most of the lamps were successful, the other pieces not so much. I’m sure we’ll see many of the concepts adapted to more functional forms. Overall, worth seeing. **-½

War Horse (review)

War Horse (review) The Toronto version of the play first mounted by the National Theatre in London in 2010. It's based on a children's story by Michael Morpurgo. Arthur's father acquires a horse at a very high price because he wants to defeat his brother. Arthur names him Joey. In order to keep the horse, Arthur must train it pull a plow. He does so. Later, Arthur’s father sells Joey to the army for 100 pounds. Arthur joins up so as to find Joey. He does, eventually, just as Joey is about to be put down because of a foreleg injured on the barbed wire. Arthur rides Joey home. The End.

     But between the beginning and the end we see a play made to look and feel like a movie. Music and special effects, short scenes, split stage, all work to create an impression that sticks with you. One could also call it an opera without arias. There were a couple of singers who sang a ballad-like comment on and narrative of Joey's story, but I found I didn't need to get all the words; the songs were part of the ambiance of the production.

      Everybody must know by now that the horses (and some other animals) are represented by life-

size puppets worked by puppeteers that we see at all times. The puppets are semi-abstract, but their movements are lifelike. The effect is amusing, amazing, but above all moving.

     The war scenes are the most terrifying I've ever seen in a theatre. I don't like war movies, and this play was at times hard to take. I remember enough of the sounds of bombs that the simulations of shell fire made me shake. In many ways the play was depressing, despite the happy ending. Most of the audience around me did not react as I did: they weren't old enough to have had any direct experience of war. They were quite jolly. But a few found the prospect of Joey's life on the battlefield difficult to imagine.

      Do I recommend this play? Yes. Purely as stage craft it's impressive. It reminds me of Les Miserables, another attempt to create a multimedia effect on stage. But War Horse succeeds. It's an anti-war play, with the innocent horses standing in for all the innocent victims of war, including the soldiers, who are after all ordinary men used for terrible purposes by the wagers of war. ****

The Clock by Chris Marclay (Review)

     Chris Marclay The Clock (2010). At the Power Plant, Toronto, until November 25, 2012. Free admission in celebration of the Power Plant's 25th year.

      Marclay spliced together thousands of movie clips, timing them to create a 24-hour movie showing clocks synchronised to running time. You start watching it at 3:15pm, that's the time you'll see on wall clocks, wristwatches, spoken, etc. Clearly the result of obsessive persistence, but worth no more than an hour of one's time, if that. [Update 2012-10-08: Marclay hired a slew of researchers to view and scavenge the movie clips. One is a Paul Smith from Toronto (Canadian Art, Fall 2012, p.192). So a good deal of the credit for the grunge work of making this movie goes to other people.]

      The Power Plant's blurb says that the work ”ruptur[es] any sense of narrative sequence”. Nonsense. As far back as I can remember, movies have used multiple narrative sequences, switching from one to another, most often to create suspense. Will the hero arrive in time to save the heroine as water rises inexorably towards drowning depth? Of course he will. More complex movies show us multiple stories unfolding at the same time, converging, intersecting, diverging again. We are so used to reading movies this way that we automatically read Marclay's movie this way, too. Well, I do. How about you?

     The fact is that narrative sequence is built into our brains; we can't avoid it. So this movie also creates narrative sequences. Marclay can't prevent this effect. In fact his method encourages it, because he has to use clips that themselves are parts of narrative sequences, simply to provide us with the images of clock faces showing us the current time frame. The stories are incomplete, is all, because Marclay wants us to note times, not plots. But time and plot are inextricably linked. Cause and effect may be an illusion, so the philosophers and quantum physicists tell us, but we can't avoid creating the illusion when we watch multiple series of movie clips.

      I don't know what Marclay wanted this work to demonstrate or show. It's a concept work, one presumably designed to present a thesis of some sort. The artist statements I've read in the past usually endeavour to assert that the work will disrupt our normal ways of seeing the world around us. Trouble is, most such attempts have failed: artists are no better than the rest of us in framing a disruptive thesis. In my experience, it takes a heap of scholarship and a weird imagination to see new patterns in the data. There aren't many people who have both a deep knowledge of some aspect of the world and the ability to change their points of view.

      Trouble is, the medium Marclay chose doesn't disrupt our normal way of decoding a movie: it emphasises it. That's probably why I was bored very quickly. I was able to maintain some interest in the clips themselves, playing a game of recognising movies, actors, and genres. As you might expect, action movies predominate.

      Marclay has an impressive c.v. He has been nothing if not busy. Despite the plethora of exhibitions, shows, and prizes won, this is the first time I've heard of him or seen his work. There are just too many artists out there, I guess. And I stopped following artistic fashion a long time ago. Is this show worth seeing? At the price, yes. It's interesting. It may engage you beyond mere interest. It did not do so for me. *

Opening Night (Book review)

     Ngaio Marsh Opening Night (1951) The old Unicorn theatre has been reborn as the Vulcan. We’re back in familiar territory: the great actor-manager, the leading lady, a number of skilled actors doing a professional job of the secondary characters, assorted theatre staff and stage crew, and the look, sound, and smell of a working theatre. The twist: a New Zealander, remote cousin of the actor-manager, ends up at the theatre after failing to get any work anywhere else. She starts as the star’s dresser, then becomes the understudy of the crucial second lead, played by the niece of the star’s husband, who plays the hero’s antagonist, and is the victim of a murder dressed up as suicide. There are assorted other relationships, past, present, and developing, that interfere with the investigation of the crime, but Alleyn and Fox and the rest of the team solve the riddle in a night of hard work.
     This book feels painted by the numbers: the puzzle takes center stage, in part because it echoes the earlier murder. Marsh is too good a writer to give us merely 2D characters, but most of this lot are only 2½D. **

Steampunk Nintendo case (link)

A story via Boing Boing about a nice uncle who made a steampunk case for an old Nintendo unit:
http://boingboing.net/2012/09/27/steampunk-nintendo-casemod.html
Hey, that's what uncles are for!


Steampunk is an art movement that uses faux-Victorian design and engineering styles to create an alternative-universe of technology. Lovely stuff purely as art, wonderful as fantasy, and inspiring for those who want to think about how the world might have evolved if tipping-point events had happened sooner (or later) than they did in our history. More at:
http://www.steampunk.com/