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. Let’s hope my expe­ri­ence is a lit­tle bet­ter than Henry Miller’s.

I’ve thought long and hard about apart­ments. Given a cer­tain price ceil­ing, the most impor­tant thing about a place to live, for me, is peo­ple. Just a lit­tle more hor­ri­ble, and then some real adventure.

UPDATE: found one!

On Thurs­day, I’m head­ing over to Hull (no, it will never be Gatineau to me) to print the pho­tographs for my show at  DAÏMÕN. Its an excit­ing oppor­tu­nity, the crew at the cen­tre is top-notch.

This month is insanely busy. I’m jug­gling my reg­u­lar work, prepa­ra­tions for the move to New York, and pro­duc­tion for three shows for this sum­mer and early fall. All this work, and I haven’t been pro­duc­ing many solid phys­i­cal things that you can actu­ally hold in your hands. The work has all been capac­ity build­ing, prepa­ra­tion, invest­ment and delayed grat­i­fi­ca­tion. I’m really look­ing for­ward to Thurs­day. All that hard work is start­ing to pay off.

Here’s the press release about print­ing at DAÏMÕN:

Jack­son Couse — Relo­ca­tion

In pro­duc­tion from June 9th until June 11th 2010.

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.

Jack­son Couse is a visual artist from Ottawa (Ontario) and he is cur­rently enrolled at The Inter­na­tional Cen­ter of Pho­tog­ra­phy in the Doc­u­men­tary Pho­tog­ra­phy and Pho­to­jour­nal­ism cer­tifi­cate pro­gram (Class of 2011) in New York City.

In 2008, Couse’s pho­tographs of objects and arte­facts were included in the book The World From My Front Porch by Mag­num pho­tog­ra­pher Larry Tow­ell. In July 2010, a selec­tion of works from Couse’s series Play­ing House will be included in the inter­na­tional exhi­bi­tion Bod­ies in Trou­ble at Galerie SAW Gallery in Ottawa. A limited-edition book, also titled Play­ing House, will be pub­lished by the artist to accom­pany the exhibition.

The exhi­bi­tion Relo­ca­tion at DAÏMÕN in Sep­tem­ber 2010 is Couse’s first solo exhi­bi­tion, the first to include video, and will include the release of a lim­ited edi­tion artist’s book.

I’m still not clear what a daïmõn is though. I under­stand that it is a spelling of dae­mon, and that Yeats was big on the idea. As far as I can muster, a daïmõn is a sort of guid­ing spirit. I can’t tell, how­ever, whether they are on the side of good or evil, what­ever those may be. I’ll have to ask on Thursday.

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.

Jane’s Walk is a week­end fes­ti­val of free neigh­bour­hood walk­ing tours given by locals who care pas­sion­ately about where they live, work and play. Jane’s Walk is a pedestrian-focused event that improves urban lit­er­acy by offer­ing insights into local his­tory, plan­ning, design, and civic engage­ment through the sim­ple act of walk­ing and observing.

http://www.janeswalkottawa.ca/

What a day. I feel like I’m walk­ing on a tightrope strung high.

Yes­ter­day, Mon­day April 12th, was my birth­day. It was also the day I quit my job, and the day the Inter­na­tional Cen­tre of Pho­tog­ra­phy accepted my appli­ca­tion for the 2010 school year.

I deliv­ered my two weeks notice at 8:45 am on Mon­day. I had given it a lot of con­sid­er­a­tion. The office pol­i­tics are grow­ing ever more painful and cut-throat as the con­fer­ence we’re orga­niz­ing approaches. As uncom­fort­able as that was (and still is), it was man­age­able. It was mak­ing me sick, but I would have stuck it out. I can sur­vive much worse abuse.

What really made me decide to leave was the oppor­tu­nity I have been given to take part in two exhi­bi­tions this sum­mer and fall. As the first two real show­ings of my pho­tog­ra­phy, they need my atten­tion. With dead­lines com­ing soon, I felt that I just couldn’t get every­thing done in time. Now I can. I was strug­gling to fin­ish my artist state­ment, a doc­u­ment that I have been writ­ing for eight years, more or less. Now I can. It’s a big step, but some­times you just have to walk the tightrope.

They held a birth­day party for me at work in the after­noon. My super­vi­sor didn’t come. My boss was unusu­ally silent. I’m not sure if they knew I was leav­ing or not, but the con­ver­sa­tion among my co-workers was unusu­ally sedate. We talked about squir­rels for some time, and I didn’t mind. There were eight tim­bits left over.

I applied to the Inter­na­tional Cen­tre of Pho­tog­ra­phy in Jan­u­ary. I received the con­fir­ma­tion email yes­ter­day at 5 pm.  The ICP is a small school in New York City. I am enrolled in the Doc­u­men­tary Pho­tog­ra­phy and Pho­to­jour­nal­ism One-Year Cer­tifi­cate Pro­gram. My class of 40 or so stu­dents comes from approx­i­mately 18 dif­fer­ent coun­tries.  The pro­fes­sors and facil­i­ties are top notch. It is a real opportunity.

It hasn’t sunk in yet that I am mov­ing to New York. I can do this, I have been build­ing toward it for a long time. Now I can do it. I am ready to go and the real work of actu­ally get­ting there begins. Phew! Overwhelming.

I spent the evening with my fam­ily and the peo­ple I love. We bar­be­qued, ate 1–2-3–4 cake, talked pol­i­tics, and lis­tened to pop music. It was a per­fect Ottawa night, loung­ing on the back patio. I need more of these.

Finally, as a birth­day treat, please indulge me a tune with some very funky “happy birth­day” singing:

Janelle Monáe, “Tightrope”

I love the con­trasts in this video. The stark black and white tuxe­dos against the muted insti­tu­tional colours, the high Pom­padour and short pants, the incon­gru­ous mirror-faced ghosts, every­thing is just the right amount of off beat.

And every­thing is per­fectly, beau­ti­fully crafted. The light­ing is sup­ple, the colours lus­cious (I think the RED cam­era, a super high-definition dig­i­tal video cam­era, was used) and crisp. I par­tic­u­larly like the begin­ning, where the two male dancers are sit­ting on a bench. The large, soft and direct light com­ing from the cam­era posi­tion is so smooth on the lac­quered tiles. The next scene, where Monáe dances down the light-filled hall, is a per­fect visual counterpoint.

This song is part of a series of songs about free­dom and slav­ery (and robots). The lib­er­a­tion of danc­ing is potent mate­r­ial for a music video. Thanks Janelle, for mak­ing ambi­tious pop music. I will walk your tightrope:

Pecha Kucha Night, the 20 slides/20 sec­onds ideas extrav­a­ganza takes place at 8 pm tonight at the Arts Court the­atre in Ottawa.

The first Pecha Kucha Ottawa was a big suc­cess.  The audi­ence was sit­ting in the aisles, and a whole row of chairs was pulled onto the stage. Pre­sen­ters at the first Night cov­ered every­thing from per­for­mance art to bio­mimicry. The sec­ond edi­tion promises more of the same enthu­si­asm and diverse entertainment.

What is Pecha Kucha Night?  What’s with the weird name?

PechaKucha Night was devised in Tokyo in Feb­ru­ary 2003 as an event for young design­ers to meet, net­work, and show their work in pub­lic. It has turned into a mas­sive cel­e­bra­tion, with events hap­pen­ing in hun­dreds of cities around the world, inspir­ing cre­atives worldwide.

Draw­ing its name from the Japan­ese term for the sound of “chit chat”, it rests on a pre­sen­ta­tion for­mat that is based on a sim­ple idea: 20 images x 20 sec­onds. It’s a for­mat that makes pre­sen­ta­tions con­cise, and keeps things mov­ing at a rapid pace.

Isn’t that just like a TED talk? Yes, it is, but shorter and you have to make the snazzy lit­tle video yourself.

Tonight I will present “Liv­ing City,” a 6:40 slideshow about my work with Jane’s Walk Ottawa. My pre­sen­ta­tion draws from my ongo­ing “Influx” photo project  about immi­gra­tion, over­suc­ces, and child­hood in Chi­na­town. Come to Pecha Kucha tonight and you’ll get a (very) con­densed his­tory of the urban thinker Jane Jacobs, an intro­duc­tion to Jane’s Walk Ottawa, and an idea of what I am work­ing on.

Event Details:

March 31st (today) 8:00 pm to 11:39 pm

FREE!

Arts Court The­atre and Studio

When it comes to per­for­mance art, I’m a pretty big fan of Lady Gaga (almost as big as these fanat­ics). For per­for­mance and spec­ta­cle in art, there is no bet­ter per­son to watch than Lady Gaga. She is like a one-woman disco fire. I went to the con­cert when Lady Gaga passed through on tour recently, and I’ve been look­ing for­ward to the release of the lat­est  music video, “Telephone.”

Lady Gaga walks a fine line. Her per­for­mance is extreme, but not so extreme as to mock her­self. She is no imi­ta­tor, an atyp­i­cal pop star.  Lady Gaga pushes the bound­aries, and gets away with it. Tele­phone alone fea­tures gra­tu­itous nudity, gra­tu­itous prod­uct place­ments, hair-phones, mur­der fan­tasies, and les­bian soft core. Awesome.

Gaga gets away with it all because every­thing about her per­for­mance and per­sona is big­ger than life. Nudity, the screwed up prison sys­tem, over­con­sump­tion, big trucks, big fash­ion, Cola, home-style cook­ing, even the her­maph­ro­dite rumour; it all adds up to a pretty cur­rent (if wacky) lens on the mood and psy­cho­log­i­cal state of being in the cul­tural life of the United States. 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. All you have to do is leave your heart and your head on the dance floor:

Of all the pos­si­ble imagery the Fed­eral Gov­ern­ment could have cho­sen for the cover of the speech from the throne, they chose the worst pic­ture possible.

bad choice

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 at high-speed, some­times with bumps along the way, the design­ers of this cover inex­tri­ca­bly linked the report with the idea of decline.

There are count­less other images that could have worked. Win­ter is almost over, they could have used a spring­time image. Spring is all about rebirth and renewal. A bud­ding plant is a great visual metaphor. Some­one tend­ing a gar­den or plant­ing a field would have worked just fine.

Even a cover with­out a pho­to­graph would prob­a­bly have been better.

As the anti­dote to dis­con­nec­tion (and since it is Black His­tory Month), I choose poetry:

Let Amer­ica be Amer­ica Again by Langston Hughes.

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.)

Let Amer­ica be the dream the dream­ers dreamed–
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings con­nive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was Amer­ica to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Lib­erty
Is crowned with no false patri­otic wreath,
But oppor­tu­nity is real, and life is free,
Equal­ity is in the air we breathe.

(an excerpt)

Go read the rest, it is a great poem.

I always was a dreamer, I just never though I’d be day dream­ing in shades of grey. I feel lost in the great grey mid­dle noth­ing­ness of Amer­ica. Why is so much of my city built of nothingness?

I love Feb­ru­ary. Oh, it’s cold and hard, but Feb­ru­ary is also Black His­tory Month! Say what you will about the valid­ity or need of a month devoted to the his­tory of a cer­tain peo­ple, I really like Black His­tory Month.

It took me a long time to learn how to read. By the start of grade two I still couldn’t really make heads or tails of words. Lucky me, my poor read­ing was noticed. I was dou­bly lucky to go to a school where a spe­cial­ist was avail­able. I took reme­dial read­ing through­out grade two and grade three.

It wasn’t until grade three, Ms. Cromwell’s class, that read­ing took flight for me. Ms. Cromwell was a young black woman from Nova Sco­tia. She was, is, a fan­tas­tic teacher. With her I learned to love read­ing. She made read­ing, and Black His­tory Month, a really big deal. The two were so intri­cately related, and so excit­ing, that you couldn’t help but become engrossed in learn­ing. She spared no stops in prepar­ing for Feb­ru­ary. There was a tal­ent show, spe­cial guests, films, and food. Some­thing new hap­pened every day, and a lot of those activ­i­ties required books. 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 large debt to her tal­ented and car­ing teaching.

I went to a very het­ero­ge­neous school. Every­one was from every­where. I was one of only 4 kids in my class who were Canadian-born and white. It was a chal­leng­ing place to hang on to your iden­tity and con­nec­tion to his­tory. In Ms. Cromwell’s class, mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism meant more than main­tain­ing dis­parate and dis­tinct social enclaves. Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism meant inter­weav­ing sto­ries. To Ms. Cromwell, and the rest of my class, liv­ing together meant a rich and shared his­tory. Thanks to her, Black His­tory is my his­tory. Ms. Cromwell’s Black His­tory Month said so strongly “there is room for you, your story is impor­tant too.” You didn’t have to be black to share in the ben­e­fits of Black His­tory Month. Shar­ing black his­tory was a pow­er­fully bind­ing experience.

So, in hon­our of Ms. Cromwell, I’ll be cel­e­brat­ing Black His­tory Month this month.  And for your edu­tain­ment, a song. This per­for­mance by Nina Simone gives me the shiv­ers. Enjoy: