Being There

I’m head­ing to New York (by way of Florida) tomor­row to search for an apart­ment. The thought of it fills me with fear, verg­ing on ter­ror. The vacancy rate is less that 1%, and com­pe­ti­tion is fierce. Find­ing the right hous­ing with right mix of vari­ables is pretty per­plex­ing. There’s cost, of course, and then there’s prox­im­ity to work and ameni­ties, safety, space, and char­ac­ter of the area. Throw in bro­kers, scams, slums, and sub­lets and you’ve got a real mess.

Jack­son Couse uses doc­u­men­tary pho­tog­ra­phy as a myth­mak­ing and sto­ry­telling medium. Dur­ing is pro­duc­tion res­i­dency at DAÏMÕN, he will work on six pho­tographs for the upcom­ing exhi­bi­tion Relo­ca­tion at DAÏMÕN’ STUDIÕ (open­ing Sep­tem­ber 22nd, 2010, dur­ing the Fes­ti­val X). In Relo­ca­tion, Couse pro­vides an inti­mate inves­ti­ga­tion of empti­ness, both lit­eral and imag­ined. Relo­ca­tion uses human geog­ra­phy to con­struct a visual remem­ber­ing of for­got­ten places.

Som­er­set West, the only place in the world where China and Italy touch.

Grow­ing Up in Chi­na­town is an inti­mate tour through a unique urban envi­ron­ment that holds lessons for liv­ing in an increas­ingly mul­ti­cul­tural Canada. I’m really excited to give this walk as part of the 3rd annual Jane’s Walk festival.

Yes­ter­day, Mon­day April 12th, was my birth­day. It was also the day I quit my job, and the day I the Inter­na­tional Cen­tre of Pho­tog­ra­phy accepted my application.

Pecha Kucha Night, the 20 slides/20 sec­onds ideas extrav­a­ganza is tonight at the Arts Court in Ottawa. Pecha Kucha Ottawa was a big success.

When every­thing is crash­ing to the ground eco­nom­i­cally, it is no sur­prise that peo­ple turn to an excit­ing, over-the-top per­former like Lady Gaga for dis­trac­tion. The genius of Lady Gaga is that she under­stands the need for an Amer­i­can Day­dream, and can put it to a dance beat.

Why would any­one in their right mind choose a pic­ture of tobog­gan­ing for the cover of a speech about eco­nomic recov­ery? By choos­ing a pho­to­graph of a sport where peo­ple will­ingly throw them­selves down a hill athigh-speed, some­times with bumps along the way, the design­ers of this cover inex­tri­ca­bly linked the report with the idea of decline.

Let Amer­ica be Amer­ica again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pio­neer on the plain
Seek­ing a home where he him­self is free.

(Amer­ica never was Amer­ica to me.)

Why is so much of my city built of nothingness?

It took me a long time to learn how to read. By the start of grade two I still couldn’t really make head or tail of words. I got lucky; my poor read­ing was noticed. I was dou­bly lucky to go to a school where a spe­cial­ist was avail­able. I took remem­dial read­ing through­out sec­ond grade. It wasn’t until grade three, Ms. Cromwell’s class, that read­ing took flight. Ms. Cromwell was a young black woman from Nova Sco­tia. She was, is, a fan­tas­tic teacher. With her, I learned to love read­ing. Eman­ci­pa­tion from slav­ery and eman­ci­pa­tion from illit­er­acy are fun­da­men­tally inter­twined ideas. Ms. Cromwell had a remark­able way of explain­ing both to 8 year olds. I owe a remark­able debt to her tal­ent and car­ing teaching.