If you should find yourself in Bangalore on January 10th, stop by Crossword bookstore (on Residency Road– left at the bottom end of Brigade Road), for a Bangalorean instalment of the launch of The Caravan Magazine.
I’ll still be in Canada, so I’ll need reports….
D.
The Caravan
and
Crossword Bookstore
Invite you to a panel discussion on the emerging genre of
Narrative Non-Fiction Writing in India
and the launch of the new edition of The Caravan
Speakers:
Eminent historian and author of India after Gandhi, Ram Guha
Playwright, novelist and editor of DeshaKaala, Vivek Shanbag
Managing Editor, The Caravan, Anant Nath
Deputy Editor, The Caravan, Vinod K Jose
Books Editor, The Caravan, Anjum Hasan
The Caravan, India’s first narrative journalism magazine, has a history going back to 1939. In its new avatar, Caravan brings you in-depth, stylish and well-written stories on political, social and cultural subjects as well as a thoughtfully-chosen selection of fiction and poetry.
Join us for a cup of coffee, share your thoughts on Indian journalism, learn more about The Caravan and pick up your free copy.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with The Onion, it’s an American publication that spoofs and lampoons the news. If there were such a concept in Toronto- I’d pitch this…
Toronto Anti-smoking Group Seeks to Brake Wind
By Dave Besseling
A Toronto anti-smoking lobby announced today it would continue its efforts to make the provincial capital a smoke-free city by conquering the last adversary in their quest for tobacco-free air—the wind.
Toronto is one of a long list of world cities with a smoking ban in place for offices, restaurants and bars. But for the Toronto Incentive for Tobacco Stoppage (T.I.T.S), the current ban doesn’t quite go far enough.
“Let’s finish what we started,” said Otis Blundell, the organization’s vice president, “The wind is the last factor of non-compliance in the march to a smoke-free Toronto.”
Some residents also feel wind is the last obstruction on the list to appease non-smokers who must endure, against their will, exposure to public space.
“Now that the weather is nice, I like to eat and drink on patios,” said Church St. resident Steve James, “but sometimes there are smokers on the sidewalk, and the wind blows the smoke into the patio area where I’m eating.”
While it is still legal to smoke on patios in Ontario, Caffe Voltron, a popular beer bar and eatery on Yonge St., confiscates its ashtrays every evening to comply with a by-law restricting outdoor smoking where the danger levels are at their highest: under an awning.
“We don’t allow smoking when the awning is shading the patio,” said Voltron serveuse Michelle. “When the dinner rush is over, say around 8 or 9 o’clock, we retract the awning, then it is safe to smoke again.”
The current Ontario by-law assures that the dangers of smoking in these high-risk shaded areas, as opposed to on the public sidewalk where the awning ends, are nipped in the butt. Provincial politicians responsible for the awning by-law would not comment whether or not city council had begun to draft the hotly debated anti-wind laws, laws that in their divisiveness have already toppled municipal governments in the UK and Ireland, where it is even windier than Canada.
Clinical research by Reese Laboratories proves that smoking in the shade is especially hazardous to health. In the absence of sunlight, carcinogenic molecules in cigarettes become what researcher Rory Tate calls “hyper-charged,” and in the absence of UV rays, are prone not to rise into the air, but to embed themselves in any food on the tables, causing pub meals unwanted flavour and smoothness.
But even the hard science behind the ban on smoking under awnings isn’t good enough for the T.I.T.S, who, through petitions this week, have successfully closed the loophole that allows patios not with awnings, but with umbrellas, to harbor smokers. If a police officer sees a patron smoking under an umbrella that is touching an umbrella shielding an adjacent table, the offender can be fined up to a maximum of $500 CAD.
With yet another amendment-in-waiting to the ban, the offense of “smoking near flowers,” only days from being addressed at City Hall, T.I.T.S is padding itself up for the next battle for public health—that malevolent wind.
Under the proposed act, wind would be banned from all public space in Toronto, subject to fines not yet decided upon.
Torontonians: look for supportive local politicians to have their T.I.T.S out, canvassing a neighbourhood near you soon. MP Bob Mars plans to address the national parliament in Ottawa as early as the fall with as many anti-wind signatures as possible. Outside legal council has been sought from the firm that represented Monsanto Canada in its case against farmer Percy Schmeiser.
“It is our right as Canadians to demand sterility in our public spaces,” continued Blundell, of T.I.T.S. “And when gusts blow down the wind-tunnel of Yonge St., it is the city, who has built this perpendicular downtown core, who must deal with this wanton nuisance caused by the wind. Someone must stand up to this menace.”
On the long drive back to Peterborough from Port Elgin, I found my mind wandering while taking in the puffy clouds that looked like smoky plumes exhaled from a Godsize pipe over the vanishing point of the horizon…
In a parallel universe, where people and events of this world could be shifted and interwoven at the behest of a satyrish spirit, without the constraints of timelines, I made a mental list of how I would alter the history of our sphere to make the view through the looking-glass more interesting and possibly more stimulating.
First, as the drag n’ drop creative cultural force, I’d see to it that these musical forces were given life:
-Fela Kuti Live with John Bonham.
-BloodSugarSexMagik era John Frusciante joins James Brown and the JB’s.
-Dave Grohl stays on as drummer for Queens of the Stone Age.
-Massive Attack featuring Ravi Shankar and Zakir Hussain.
-Nina Simone produced by Rick Rubin.
-Serge Gainsbourg? meet Tom Waits.
Books to be written:
“On the Campaign Trail: Germany, 1939” by Hunter S. Thompson.
“Love in the time of Cholera” by Chuck Palahniuk.
“Crash” by Oscar Wilde.
“The Master and Margarita” by Salman Rushdie.
“The Castle” by Martin Amis.
“The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Tom Robbins.
and (thanks to The Kids in the Hall); “The Bible” by Dr. Seuss.
News headlines to be altered:
“Yoko Ono weds Barry Gibb. BeeGees’ fate shaky”
“John Lennon wounded in assassination attempt—full recovery expected”
“Richard Nixon wounded in assassination attempt—death imminent”
“Bill Hicks undergoes surgery, cancer removed”
“Jimi Hendrix’s stomach pumped, guitar restringed for next show”
“Jinnah dead, Muslim League loses power, Indian partition called off”
Amazing what dying will do for a career, eh?
Death has always been good for business in the arts, but who could have thought old creepypants Michael Jackson could have half his life–the sordid and the pathological– wiped off the public record by overdosing on a shot of painkillers?
What is truly amazing to me is how so many people are suddenly rock solid with MJ’s legacy, and have been ‘true fans’ all along. Even through his recent phase as a cultural fugitive.
To argue such subjective bandwagoneering would be hard, but what can be objectively argued about this whole kerfaffle, is that the guy hadn’t written anything good in ages.
Did I listen to Beat It and Billie Jean when I was growing up? Of course I did. But just because something was present in my rearing doesn’t automatically turn it into gold when the author expires and I’m old enough to remember it. Jeezz. And objectively, those lame synths, piss-poor lyrics and Eddie Van Halen solos are not eternal–or no more eternal that those garish red leather suits he used to wear–they’re just passé. And everything after (and mostly including) Thriller sucks. Yes: Sucks. Amazing, the amount of nodding zombie heads that will just agree with whatever the radio tells them is legendary. That album Dangerous? It’s horseshit. Listen to it again, and tell me it doesn’t have more in common with Tiffany and Debbie Gibson than the teenage Michael Jackson who, admittedly gloriously, blew his creative load with Off The Wall.
If MJ had written songs like ‘Trouble Man ‘on the other hand…I may have shed a tear, but Marvin Gaye died like a proper rock star, and his music has aged well. MJ died like a soft option ego junkie. His leering megalomania was only more disturbing than his Diva-like travel requirements. Have we forgotten about the fucker’s nose?!
Oh wait, there seems to be a post-mortem statute of limitations in slagging off his plasticity, at least until we stop pretending he was part of our family.
I just watched Germaine sing at the funeral, by the way, and if you didn’t think that last teary gasp was staged, you’ve missed everything.
As the first artist in residence for the Livinginpeace project, there were essentially no parameters aside from showing up and seeing what came out. Rongo was a fledgling business, and just how the residency would relate to the rest of the project was in an experimental stage. There was beautiful, big talk, but no one really knew what could be achieved concretely at that point.
Since my stint in Karamea, spanning the three months from November 2004 to January 2005, two other artists have come through and done bigger and better things with their time and talent, and I’m happy that Paul and I didn’t get too carried away straight out the gates, but cautiously explored and discussed what the project could mean for the future of Livinginpeace. We knew we were plotting a course for others to take further. The simple foundations had to be laid before anyone could use them to jump from.
So my story is one of inner-exploration and creative planning with Paul during my tenure, where we laid out the basics for the thing to grow and expand the way it has. This is not to say it was a partnership, Paul has always captained his own ship; but I think our musings on what was possible for the project helped him to react to opportunities more quickly, and with certainty. The fact that the two artists that have come after me have taken the “exhibition” concept further to include live painting and art lessons makes me proud; and relieved as well: I can’t have humans anywhere near me when I work, and I wouldn’t have a clue how to teach anyone anything.
We thought at the time that, though the turnout would be small, people would catch the fire we were sparking and support the project through the tenure-ending exhibition. It didn’t really go as well as planned, but the lesson was learned, and we had a lot of fun learning it. If you want them to come, you have to offer something relevant to them. The subsequent community-based events seem to have hit the mark.
On a personal level, my time there was very rewarding. My style has always been based in certain techniques that get mixed and matched with the patterns, symbols and philosophies that surround me wherever I am in the world, and my New Zealand exposure was an interesting one. It was different from my time in Japan and Europe, because it wasn’t in a country with established aesthetic grandeur as such (though the Maori visual fabric is one of my favourites), but where nature itself provided all the weird and transcendent lines and shapes anyone would need. The work I produced there was a step forward for my technique, and a surprising journey for me, while I watched what the land had inspired dribbling out of my pen. Karamea is markedly different from anywhere else I’ve put the antennas out, and the isolated nature of the place encouraged my own isolated process. The isolation was almost necessary for me though, because there was always something going on at Rongo, and between there and where I was working, in a spare room in Paul’s house, was the pub—which during the day was a hideous temptation, but after a good day’s work, a just dessert.
I think what still sticks with me about my experience with Livinginpeace, is that if I were to go back and do it again, it would be a different place on a different level of operation, and I’d put out a different body of work. Such dynamism is in tune with the will of the great magnet. I’d probably still do it hermit style though, and I think what the thing needs now is more extroverted artists to get people involved in their processes. I’m happy to watch.
Included in the original Livinginpeace business plan was an ambitious goal: To create a programme that would allow artists to come to Karamea and run the creative gamut—inspiration, conception, execution, and exhibition—within the framework of the Livinginpeace project.
In theory, this creative loop would involve every aspect of the South Island endeavour, from the commercial hospitality facilities (used to house the artist), on-site food growth (to help feed the artist), work/exhibition space (to pay the artist) and all this provided in one of the more scenic spots on earth (to inspire the artist).
Things never seem to run that smoothly in reality, but founder Paul Murray is nothing if not adaptable. It has been 6 years since the small dairy farming community welcomed the Rongolians to town, and so far three international artists have participated in the programme. There have been exhibitions in Rongo’s central space, live painting sessions, and art lessons for local children. The seeds of the original concept have germinated in unexpected ways, but let’s face it, everyone loves surprises.
The parameters of what an artist will do when chosen to participate in Livinginpeace’s A.I.R programme will depend largely on the artist and his/her interaction with the land, the space and the community. Interactive projects can work as well as sabbatical style individualism.
Livinginpeace’s art program may have shifted a bit, but the core aspect of its commercial sustainability is only growing stronger. Paul & Co. are in the enviable position of running a successful hospitality racket, where a visiting artist’s day to day needs are absorbed into the business, thus giving both host and participant freedom to collaborate wholly on a creative level and make use of Livinginpeace’s growing resources, built and maintained with love and conviction through a dedicated group of people.
Turning out profits from an exhibition at the end of a tenure may be a ways off, but as art itself is about the process, the experience, and how we interact with the environment where we choose to create, it doesn’t get much more satisfying than this. With such a beautiful environment and a crew the likes of Paul and the Rongolians, and artist who chooses to invest in a Karamea tenure is assured of being part of a dynamic process, grounded in great ideas and open to new winds. The only thing more interesting than being a part of the process, is seeing what will happen next.
Below is an excerpt of an interview with Andrew Keen. This particular passage, I feel, is more or less right on the money, philosophically and practically.
Enjoy,
D.
CBC RADIO SUNDAY EDITION
News 2.0
Transcript: Andrew Keen’s views about ‘News 2.0′
B: I’d like to talk to you about the assault on mainstream media and this idea of “citizen journalism.” I assume this is a term you do not particularly want to embrace.
AK: Citizen Journalism, no, it’s not my favourite phrase, just as I ‘m not keen on a phrase like citizen pilot or citizen chef or citizen politician. When I flew out to Canada today, I got on the plane and the pilot didn’t get on the phone and say I’m volunteering today, I’m an enthusiast at flying the plane, so I just thought I would help you out; I’m doing it for free.
The notion of citizenship is something which I think has been profoundly misunderstood and abused by the web 2.0 crowd. Good citizens, the purpose of, the purpose of media for a good citizen is to understand the world, to digest information so that they can understand the world and act upon it. That’s the nature of our representative democracy. Information then, the value of a journalist, a professional journalist is to provide the citizen with that information, to understand the world, to vote, to determine the qualities of ones own government and ones own role in the world. Read the rest of this entry »
Aishwarya Rai would be at the Bangalore Turf Club at 14:30, and I was there for our little newspaper to try and get a photo.
A few police officers muddled about, picking at petrified gum and paan-spit with the resined tips of their lathis. Midday gamblers watched unespecial midday races, rapt and taciturn nonetheless. The prurient gaggles that frequent pony tracks worldwide were as dejected as anywhere else; and the sadistic reasons for subjecting this lot to a sight of the former Miss World remained a mystery. Only the person who decided it should be so could explain why such a glamorous woman would make an appearance in such an unglamorous place, but I’d never get a chance to ask him.
For a starlet accustomed to adoring fans kept at bay by velvet ropes and hulkish, secret-service earpiece sporting security guards with triceps stress-testing the hems of t-shirt sleeves, the frayed yellow cord and rent-a-cops in stained, oversized uniforms could have been the reason for the quick burst from her car into a foyer, where in front of a lift waiting with open doors, a group of white-suited, brown-skinned Mafioso-looking types waited with open arms.
I stared over the shoulders of the gamblers, who by now had heard the rumours about the iconess who would soon be gliding gracefully amid the humped shoulders and balding scalps.
The cavalcade arrived, and as quickly as a lesser heroine would become unfashionable, she was up and out of the car, through the ogling swarth and into the huddle of linen suits and sunglasses.
In the seconds before she emerged, I envisioned my photos of those “sexiest eyes in the world” staring back at me as she passed, the throngs obscured behind her. But of course, but my point-and-shoot just didn’t cut it, and the blurry countenance of my admitted perennial fantasy appears, in the few snaps I clicked off, to look more like Sonia Gandhi than the Bollywood paragon.
In the one fruitful image I managed to pluck, a paparazzo’s upswung camera blocks her entire visage. The sharpness of her one visible ear remains a thorn in my side, knowing how crisp she would have appeared without that Nikon strap in the way. My photo assignment was botched.
The worst part of it is, before she arrived, when I’d staked out my place where my imagined photographic excellence would take place, I’d spotted a sign above a door, amusing enough that it was found in a race track where pulses ran high, but even more amusing it would be when I caught a photo of this ethereal creature looking straight into my lens from underneath it. It said: “Emergency Heart Resuscitation Room.”
But the elevator doors had closed behind her before I even finished rehearsing my Pulitzer acceptance speech. Mental note: When someone of the pedigree of Aishwarya Rai is two feet away and moving quickly, have an SLR camera on hand.
This is a review of my last verse project, from the Cartier Street Review in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Thanks to Bernard Alain for taking the time to read the thing…
The Cartier Street Review
October 2008
page 5
‘Nayakubi Three: the unmeaning and the holy city’ by Dave Besseling
A Review by Bernard Alain
Dave Besseling’s work finds itself at the defining edge of contemporary poetry, implementing text shape and sometimes photography to provide a microscopic view of various cultures and practices. The reflections are a result of almost seven years of travelling and living abroad as an artist and journalist. The voice is generally consistent among publications, leaving the sense of mild cultural shock with the reader, often purposely archaic in it’s phrasing and in-your-face as a lack of emenities and ethics become evident while hiking through a contrast of religious and political domains. ‘Nayakubi Three: the unmeaning and the holy city’ for the most part, is consistent with this standard and the photography and content well placed to provide a unique cross-section of rural India, focusing on the travels through the various locales leading up to Varanasi, the oldest city in the world.
The journey is speckled with a few guest appearances from the infamous Dr. Heagney, Besseling’s real-life mentor and as well includes color close-ups revealing unique angles of the architecture, the locals and their paraphernalia. The cover deserving mention as the front and back are one continuous photograph of a wall around the holy city, creating the feel of a more intimate wall around his own thoughts. The content is creative and engaging with profanities that seem to mutate out of circumstance, more colloquial in expression. The following is a closing quote from the poem Varanasi:
I asked of the unmeaning:
- What is the point of this life?
It replied:
- First, you live it; then you die it. Enjoy the music.
Although I miss the GPS co-ordinates, a unique deviation in form used in his previous poetry publications, the compression of locales possibly make it less significant and the photography easily compensates for it’s absence. ‘Nakayubi Three: the unmeaning and the holy city’ is a great addition to any poetry collection and will easily satisfy medium to advanced readers.
Well, the return of Daiki Wakachi happened a good many months ago now, but as I was perusing some of my friends’ sites on the net, I see Izumi-chan from Gallery Ef has put some photos and an article I translated for the art festival’s programme up on jibo.com (http://www.ji-bo.com/yde_artist01.htm).
I first met Daiki when I started doing exhibitions in Tokyo, and as he was based in Paris for a good while, he made a couple of trips to visit me in Amsterdam. We collaborated together to combine my drawings with his amazing Kirin Art Award winning piece, Yukhai Zashiki. There are some photos on the cv/press page under ’special events’. I guess reading the article again after so long has made me nostalgic, but for those who saw one of the two performances we did together in A’dam, This here’s the best description of what the piece actually means, methinks.
So go check out the link to see photos, and just for the hell of it, here’s the text that was originally conceived by Izumi at Gallery Ef. My role in the article should officialy be described as ‘linguistical contributative fluffer’….
Performance | Melting Cube Salon “Yuhkai Zashiki”
K12 Galerie Bregenz
Daiki Wakachi | Japan
Born in 1953. Graduate of Shimane University. After having barely survived a serious illness when he was still in school, the issue of life and death has become a central question to him. Before moving to France in 1986 where he graduated from Orléans Academy of Art, he taught at a Junior High School for 5 years. Rather than on painting as such, his special focus was the materials which are directly linked to life itself (such as blood). This is still true for his work today. In creating the experience of being able to witness his works of art melt away and disintegrate he draws his public into the central themes of his work: time, life, death, communication.
The Chinese character “to sit” contains various elements that connote rather specific circumstances, which is interesting due to their variance with our usual concepts of what it means “to sit”.
The character’s radical indicates a roof, while beneath there are two human shapes sat facing each other on a raised platform, evidently engaged in some ancient ceremony. In this particular etymology, “to sit” is something not to be done alone, but an action to be shared with our fellow beings under spiritual pretext. This principle is what has gathered us here to witness Daiki Wakachi’s Zashiki.
A frost-covered cube is placed at the centre of our especial dais, which is a large piece of white fabric. Our tension joins the object’s steam in the swirling air as we anticipate an outcome for which our imaginations have no frame of reference.
As the air explores this mysterious hexahedron through the cascading spirals of humidity created just above it, the original deep red colour of the cube begins to emerge from the crystalline veneer. A solitary grain falls away from the form, leaving a particular trail behind as it rolls away.
It is a trail of pigs’ blood.
This ambitious orb is in fact the first of thousands of Pachinko balls encased in this microcosmic monolith; and it is the first to break the anticipatory mood. Soon another silver sphere is loosened enough to fall, hit the fabric and trace another vermillion path across the virgin plane.
There is a dull sound as rivulets of blood drip into the fabric, and tinny clanging as the pachinko balls careen a quantum pattern over the surface.
Blood: this universal conductor of life has brought us together in Zashiki, ascribing our various thoughts, concerns and topics-of-the-day we’ve been bearing onto this speculative metaphor revealing itself to us.
The final collapse is more spectacular than expected – that such a defined shape could transform in to such a random and jagged portrait – drawn by the substance that carries the very basis of our corporeality.
Wakachi raises the question: What if this cube was comprised of all of our blood, collected and mixed in advance? Would we feel differently about the process? Would there be fear at witnessing the inevitable fate of matter played out using the essential viscid that courses through our veins?
Yuhkai Zashiki is dependent on the variables of time, space and temperature. The constants in this equation are the people that “to sit” and observe.
Daiki Wakachi has held over one hundred Zashiki performances, and looks forward to achieving the true understanding of what the original concept of “sitting” entails. With each staging comes a new glean on what it means to be a human being living in this universe and thus subject to its laws.
