This seems very appropriate for Earth Day:
I attended the opening of the new Rick Miller show Hardsell Thursday night. Still not sure what to make of it, really -there are a lot of ideas around selling and advertising, and what that means to not just the wider society that created the selling culture, but to culture as well. Aren’t performers -of any ilk -essentially trying to “sell” you something, tangible and otherwise? I’ll be interviewing Rick Miller next week (Friday morning, in fact), so maybe I’ll get some answers, or at least ideas, about how the show came to be.
Hardsell is another collaboration between Miller and Daniel Brooks. The pair previously worked together on the alt mega-hit Bigger Than Jesus (which a former editor of mine called “a ninety minute religious rant with TVs” -he also added that he liked it, natch). Like “Jesus” and Roberts’ other hit, Machomer, Hardsell mixes improv, Pirandello-esque meta-theatre, sharp observations, role-playing, nods at past conventions, and Miller’s own awesome gift of mimicry. In the show, he accurately imitates (vocally) a wide range of folks, including Morgan Freeman, James Brown, and Richard Dawkins, as well as perform a clever riff as a German marketing expert.
Mainly, though, he plays Arnie, the supposed mirror-twin of Miller himself, a bitter, washed-up entertainer tossing out proclamations, observations, cynicisms, witticisms, fantasies and hard-to-soft pitches. With his clown-like makeup and slick white suite with shocking-red satin lining, Miller gave a nod to the many mimes, clowns, and stylized performers within the cultural spectrum –Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp, the Joker, Kabuki performer, Mexican wrestler, Godot’s tramps, and even… Tom Wolfe.
And yet, this is the main reference that came to my mind:
The Seed from Johnny Kelly on Vimeo.
This video is courtesy of awesome Irish artist Johnny Kelly, whose work (alongside brother Mickey) you can find here. There’s also an interview over at excellent British site Don’t Panic.
I love the embrace of the playful and child-like with Kelly’s work; he uses a variety of loud colours, big shapes, and playful motifs. There’s nothing poe-faced about it. His work is an expression of true joy, and this video is proof. It’s a fascinating, compelling two minutes of online video. Gorgeous, and perfect for spring.
I’ve started reading a book called Direct Red, by Gabriel Weston. It’s about Weston’s experiences in the world of a hospital; the British author was an arts grad who decided to become a surgeon, so she took the requisite night classes, and years of medical training, to achieve her dream. Direct Red is her account of day-to-day life in her chosen field.
But reading the book, Weston has the beautiful, flowing wordplay of a poet:
At medical school, while studying pathology, I was charmed by the names of the colourful dyes used to stain tissues for clearer microscopic viewing. Crystalline as jewels, primary as food colourings used for cake icing and egg painting, the names of these elixirs seemed brighter in my mind than the substances themselves, the Platonic hues offset by their arcane prefixes. And through a process I cannot chart, every time I feel sick in theatre, I summon a rainbow collage of these names to mind. They stimulate my ebbing consciousness and usually call me back from that strange physiological precipice to normal function.
Somehow, this shimmering language describing hues, shapes, shadows, forms and memories reminds me so much of a favourite poet I’ve recently rediscovered: Seamus Heaney, who is currently being feted in fine style by the RTE (and beyond) on account of his 70th birthday. More about him, and his poetry, in a future post.
For now, I’m going to sit back and enjoy Weston’s beautiful, imagistic work; by bringing the poetical into the surgical, she marries the worlds of science and art in a way that hasn’t been properly explored since Da Vinci.
A couple posts ago, I blogged about the greatness of a current production of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot on now in Toronto.
During the production’s rehearsals, I had the chance to speak with a few of its performers, as well as its director. Here’s the official feature.
Enjoy!
The Brand Library Art Gallery & Art Center in Glendale, California is currently hosting an exhibit entitled Man’s Inhumanity to Man: Journey out of Darkness. To quote Mark Vallen, an excellent blogger and one of the forty-four artists taking part, the exhibit “examines human rights violations that have occurred around the globe – the 1915 Armenian genocide, the Jewish Holocaust, repression in Central America, current atrocities in Darfur, and more.”
Looking through the various pieces on the website brought to mind my experiences working for Amnesty International when I lived in Ireland in the late 90s. A number of people who had suffered human rights abuses in other countries were working out of the offices, and a great many were talented artists -painters, musicians, dancers and writers. At Christmastime, some offered their services and painted pieces that were later sold in the Amnesty store; others opened their homes to invite us to experience the joy of their culture. It was about sharing their lives as much as it was about using art -and others’ experience of their art -to heal their wounds.
As the co-curator of the Glendale exhibit says, “Art is a powerful agent in society with the ability to awaken our consciousness, transform our minds, and ignite a desire to bring about change… this exhibition aims to do all of these things.” Get thee to Glendale if you can.
Toronto’s Birdland Theatre is re-mounting their much-acclaimed 2005 production of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot in the Fermenting Cellar, located in the heart of the Distillery District. The Stephen Adly Guirgis play is a sprawling, wordy affair, populated by both real and mythological figures.
Sigmund Freud, Mother Theresa, Pontius Pilate, and Satan all make appearances in the courtroom setting Guirgis has set up as the play’s basic construct. Is Judas guilty of the greatest betrayal in human experience? Should he suffer eternal damnation? Or is he allowed to experience the unconditional forgiveness the ministry of Jesus Christ represented?
It’s challenging theatre, to be sure, with Guirgis’ predilection for philosophical flights of fancy and long-winded backstories, but there’s something eerily prescient about its timing, too. Back in 2005, the play was an obvious indictment of Bush-era policies and measures; now, with the pain of the financial mess -and itinerant anger toward the corporate corruption that contributed to it -the work asks its audience how much we’re willing to forgive, both of ourselves and others. How long do we hang on to old enmities and grievances? Should we?
Questions around justification of choices and motivations abound, and director David Ferry keeps things moving along nicely, with the whole cast onstage, moving around sets and sitting as courtroom jury and observers. This makes the audience complicit in Judas’ fate as well, giving the work a slight meta-theatre feeling (though not of the gauche variety, whew). Gorgeous lighting -sometimes with flashlights -and a gorgeous diorama between the acts give the piece a wonderful industrial-meets-impressionist look.
And the performances are magnificent too. Ferry has cast some of Canada’s top actors in The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. As Pilate, Obsidian Theatre Artistic Director Philip Akin channels the spirit of General Petraeus (Roman quality and all), combining military harshness with liberal slabs of charm and male bravado. In the dual roles of Judge Littlefield and Caiaphas the Elder, Ted Dykstra is manic, moving, and magnetic; his exchange (As Caiaphas) with defence lawyer Fabiana Cunningham (Janet Porter) is one of the best theatrical moments I’ve experienced all year. In the title role of Judas, Shaun Smythe is heartbreaking; he plays the betraying apostle as a man with a good core but torn by the screams and howls of a needy ego. His acute sense of abandonment by Jesus (Jamie Robinson) is most keenly sensed in their heated, emotional exchange, and for those versed in scripture, echoes of “Oh my Lord, why have you abandoned me?” will ring loud (particularly this weekend, natch).
If you like your theatre challenging, chalk-full of ideas, people, concepts, and well, loads of talking (in other words, if you’re a Shaw fan) get down to the Fermenting Cellar. Bonus? It’s very near to a number of great wine bars, and perhaps the best cup of hot chocolate in the city. Nothing like cocoa, fermented grapes, and talk of purgatory to complete a weekend.
Last week I attended the launch of Wayson Choy‘s new autobiographical book, Not Yet.
It was too crowded and frantically busy to get a proper word with him this week, but I’m planning on interviewing him for Take 5 soon. Stay tuned.
Casually checking my Flickr as a kind of break from mad bouts of transcribing and article surgery earlier this evening, I came across a rather stern-sounding message: YOU HAVE BEEN BANNED FROM THE ABSTRACT PHOTOS GROUP. Oh dear.
Slightly perplexed, a bit flummoxed, but altogether curious, I took a look around the group to see what rules I had violated. Hmm, no porn, check. No photoshopping, check. No borders, check. No people, well… it’s my hand. Does that count?
Perusing one of the Administrator‘s interestingly-labelled “Hall of Inappropriate” sections (I counted three) in which photos rejected by the group can be commented on by other (non-rejected) members, I came across my photo (above), with the following caption, written by said Administrator:
Attack of the hands still here for the month of April 😉
Yes, I like hands. And yes, I’ve posted weird close-ups of my hands before. They’re an ongoing theme for me artistically and personally. I’m fascinated not only by mine but by others’. One of my earliest, most seminal inkling into visual art, before painting, drawing, or anything else, was taking hand traces. This particular shot (or series of shots) was taken during an especially joyous -and very fruitful -sketching session that yielded a lot of good material. I find something weirdly romantic, and deeply moving, about artists’ hands dirtied by their passion. And yes, I do think some of these are abstract. But that’s my opinion.
Alas, I suppose it wasn’t -isn’t -shared by ImaginationAlone. Admittedly, I may have violated the group rules by posting too many, else the Administrator just doesn’t think my work is a good fit for his/her Abstract group. I wonder what he/she would make of Guggi.
Attack of the bowls/jugs still here since 1988! (insert cute winky)
Artists can’t help what they’re drawn to. By the same token, artists can’t help what they’re repelled by, either. It’s all a matter of beauty in the eye of the beholder, of maintaining a degree of respect between artists. Not stepping on toes can be a full-time job; it takes patience, maturity, and a good sense of communication. Holding something you may not like up to ridicule by way of group-think doesn’t strike me as an entirely classy way to handle what you deem to be a poor fit for your collection, even if it is egalitarian in a cold, technological sense.
Alas, I take being banned as a weird badge of honour. Here’s looking at you, Groucho.