"Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry."

"We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify."

Henry David Thoreau

Walden

Wilder Publications; Reprint edition (2008)

So I'm giving a talk at Concordia University tomorrow about a topic I've been researching lately which applies to my practice, namely art as a form of religion.
I haven't written out everything I wanted to say, but I made really pretty slides and cliff notes, so maybe you can piece it together on your own. Enjoy!

 -why art matters

   -This talk is to discuss the fact that art carries the same space as religion--

- art recreating and sustaining archtypes

- Art as the same a religious ritual

  -There is this discussion of whether what we do is important, if we make an impact, if we deserve funding. 

helps the consumer understand their own experience

By the symbolic "living-through" of the narrative, the audience gets the benefit of the myth that lie behind the creation. "It functions as a life shaping force, hence as a religion"  Pg 17

Henry Wiebe Myth, Religion and Ritual (The Subversive Artist)

    -Religion has been afforded societal status, art can be even more important

-The role of the artist is important

"Art has to do with the way life is lived. It has a formative, didactic dimension, and and in this regard wields significant power. 

Poets/artists collectively, with their better than 20/20 vision, are seers, "seeker of visions," the dreamers of dreams. "Where there is no vision, the people perish" (Bible: Proverbs 29:18)…

…The poets/artists are the source, the creators of life sustaining visions. They suggest, they set forth, they pattern life, provide its meaning, its possibilities, and its imperative. They are "dream makers." As George Santayana suggests, "An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world."

Henry Wiebe

Pg 13 Myth, Religion and Ritual (The Subversive Artist)

Hoppy Copy Centers Ltd. 1998 

-Henry Weibe goes on to say, 

-if artists know this, deepens the power of their work

-Allows them to rejoice

-have confidence

-allows audiences to value them more appropriately

-Religion and art do we need them?

-we don't know, but it has been shown that human beings will naturally tend

 -Defining Art As Religion

"It is in the meanings of aesthetically significant fictions that the essence of religion lies- as well as of course in the ways in which such meanings may be "applied" to practical life." 

-Colin Falck

Pg iii Art, Myth, Religion and Ritual (The Subversive Artist)

-Reading Thomas R. Martland, Religion as art

-Breaks down what makes up religion and art

-Things of artistic or religious significance are that way because someone makes them that way  

Historically, we can come across the usage of almost any object or human activity that at one point has religious or artistic significance. This means that it is never an object or activity that in itself artistic or religious, everything that is religious or artistic is so because it functions artistically or religiously. 

  -The question becomes what do art and religion do

-History of the words

-Latin roots- both of their focus is not on what is prepared or gathered together, but on the activities of gathering and preparing. 

-Art is preparing, religion is gathering.

-Sanskrit root- sustaining, maintaining, that which the religious person holds is not what already is. The focus is on sitting under something that is impossible to pin down. 

-Art and religion are activities that do, whose contents are of value only so long as they cross to other shores.  (Pg 15 Religion as Art)

-Both art and religion detach and create

They work from live but move beyond it

"Each person knows that somehow he shapes what will be, that what he is doing is not a charade which merely affirms what already will be, but an efficacious activity which contributes to that future, even if it is only that individual's own." 

Pg 17 Religion as Art

-Have to do with the way life is lived

-if showing how one's person life is to stating how it should be

-Does not function to express reality

-Realism a function of certain artistic time periods, but not a necessity

-Art and religion introducing something that was not there before

-Neither activity  obviously repeats or naively represents what is already the case. 

"…art is a power or force ex-pressing or pressing out what was not there before, transforming the old into the new." 

Pg 21 Religion as Art

 -Art and Religion are focused on a vision outside of ourselves

-Martland states that both provide directions on how to see and what to do.

-present collectively created frames of perception which people use to interpret their lives.

-each is to provide us with a new pair of glasses with which to view the world

-creating the world each time

"And lo and behold, the world around us (which was not created once and for all, but is created afresh as often as an original artist is born) appears to us entirely different from the old world, but perfectly clear. Women pass in the street, different from what they used to be, because they are Renoirs… The carriages, too, are Renoirs, and the water, and the sky… Such is the new and perishable universe which has been created. It will last until the next Geological catastrophe is precipitated by a new painter or writer of original talent." 

Proust

 -Art provides a way of understanding ourselves, comparing our experiences with others, and relating ourselves to the world in general

-Martland talks about the capacity of both art and religion to see the world

-then it moves away from old ways of seeing things, builds new ones

"…The artist and the religious person willingly detach themselves from these current understandings, either by sacrificing that ego construct through which they understand the world or by suspending judgement. I conclude that the artist or the religious person each willingly creates or finds new understandings by incorporating experiences which they had previously ignored."

Pg 26 Religion as Art 

 -The differences between organized religion and ritual

  -Artists may use and build on the established myth of Christianity, but what they create is intrinsically different.

-Weibe states that while spirituality is present, not organized religion

-Christianity is god centred, teaches that only god is to be worshiped. 

-Art is human focused, is the humanist tradition, invites adulation of the artist.                 -Christianity focuses on spiritual matters, a matter of the faith. 

-Art thrives on imagery. 

-Religion seeks god in truth an moral goodness. 

-Artists seek their god or god in and though beauty (however that is consistent with their own vision) 

Pg 48

 -Art is independant of morality

-Religionists seek virtue first, truth, good, morality and associated virtues. Aesthetics is secondary. 

-Artists seek aesthetics first, but moral goodness, morality and "truth" are not a guide to the artist's gods. 

Pg 37

-relation between aesthetic and ethical quality.

-artists can create "good" work which is ethically bad and "bad" work which is ethically good

-Artists testers of limits, of any status quo morality, artists are subversives.

"We have considered certain aspects of art which have ethical implications. Yet it has become clear that art is somewhat independent of morality. Form, color, sounds, words, and movements are in art essentially determined by aesthetic values." 

Johan Hygen Pg 49 Morality and the Muses. 

 -Religion says "this is" and art says "suppose this is"

-Religion focused on giving answers, art focused on questioning

-Difference between worship and ritual

-Catherine Bell in Performing Bodies Pg4-

-Religious rites are non-utilitarian, in that they are focused on worship

-Magical rites are acts that are seeking a practical result, however non-practical

-Art is magic, art is pagan

-the arts are rituals, which are responding to the deepest human needs and appetites

-this makes the artist the shaman 

"Artists are their own "priests" , with their own transcendent, Bible-by-passing connection with, and entry into, the universal mysteries."

Henry Wiebe

Pg 49 Myth, Religion and Ritual (The Subversive Artist)

 -Freud and Art

-Freud does not believe in magic 

-art is the one place where magic can exist in that a person can take what is in their mind and fully realize it in real life

"Only in one field has the omnipotence of thought been retained in our civilization, namely in art. In art alone it still happens that man, consumed by his wishes, produces something similar to the gratification of these wishes, and in this playing, thanks to artistic illusion, calls forth effects as if it were something real. We rightly speak of the magic of art and compare artist with the magician." 

Freud

Pg 149 Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Psychic Lives of Savages and Neurotics 

Moffat Yard and Company, 1918 

And Martland-

"Each person knows that somehow he shapes what will be, that what he is doing is not a charade which merely affirms what already will be, but an efficacious activity which contributes to that future, even if it is only that individual's own." 

Pg 17 Religion as Art 

 -Art as more powerful than Christianity

-Art can assume the role and function of Christianity 

-It can establish moral and principle

-it can fill the need for ceremony

-it can interpret life

-Art is more immediate and authentic

-Christianity has employed drama and the power aesthetics

-Weibe argues that is what has made the church so powerful 

-But in this need for art to create a relevant religion, religion admits its defeat in power without the artist. 

-Church employs art to revivify itself, lusting after the power that is immediately available through art (Pg 29)

-the problem within the church with the worship of graven images -Hygen

-Art so powerful because in its action it make spirit present. 

"Art, when it is approached through the intuition of the senses, perpetuates and makes the spirit present. Thus it joins truth itself."

-Père Alain Couturier 

Pg 9, Sacred Art

Menil Foundation Inc, U.S.A, 1989

 Naming- 

-A true name is the word that expresses a being's true nature. 

-A concept  in magic, religious invocation and mysticism since the antiquity.

-Hellenistic Judaism- the true name of God plays a vital role of power in the Kabbala

-Bible- the angel wrestling with Jacob refuses to tell him his name so he will not lose his power.

-Folklore and fairytale- knowing the true name of someone allows one to affect another person or being magically -Ruplestilskin, the girl can free herself by knowing the name of her captor. 

-Even in pop culture 

 -the power of the artist's signature

laura kosloff 

cast

Venice Biennial 2011

-The artist arrives to the Biennial, gets other artists to sign her cast

-the validation of it as an artwork

-artists endorse the object with their status while, paradoxically, they kneel before the nameless Kosloff

 Contagion Magic

-The law of Contagion is a folk belief that suggests that once two people or objects have been in contact, there is a magical link that persists between them, until an act of banishing breaks the link.

-The law of Contagion has two sides. 

-good side, there is the aspect of relics

-Bad side, someone possessing something of yours has control over you

-Common things, voodoo dolls, physics and mediums using an object of a person to "focus", Christian relics.

-The image therefore, has the designation of "producing" the person

 -The concept of the original being worth more than than a reproduction because the artist has actually touched it.

Ann Hamilton Malediction, Louver Gallery, New York, 1993

Chews bread dough in her mouth, creates a mouth cast which she then places in a body sized basket. It is not a body part, and yet the whole piece becomes representative of her body, as well as a discussion of encounter of the body as process

Something that is nourishment, lubricated with the artist's own saliva 

the repletion of the process. the artist has performed this herself, changes how we feel about the piece.

"Participation between the individual and his appurtenances (hair, nails, excretions, clothing, footprints, shadows etc.)- between symbol and what is represents (stone symbols of ancestors, petrified ancestors)- between corpse and ghost… equals a community of essence [as an] identity felt between what participates and what is participated in."

Lucien Levy-Bruhl

Notebooks on Primitive Mentaility Pg 108

(1975)

 Ritualistic Repetition

-One the key aspects of spiritual practice is repetition. 

-The call to Mosque, going to church on sunday, praying before dinner, the drawing of the pagan circle, rites of passage, traditional ritual dress, any sort of religious holiday, all of these things are essential to the core of spiritual practice in traditional religion. 

-Repetition reinforces the principles of practice and helps solidify it in the body of someone again and again. 

-returning to historical knowledge 

 -Not just performance art ritual

-every artist has a repetitive practice in the type of materials and subject matter they use.

-Ashley Miller- all artists are just making the same artwork over and over again. 

-Yayoi Kusama

-In the 1960's organizing happenings where the artists were painted with polka dots, working with the repetition of this pattern for her entire life in different forms, her most recent exhibition at the Daegu Art Museum in South Korea, 

Where she still covers a variety of surfaces in her dots, one of the key pieces being titled "Dots Obsession"

 Temple

-A temple is a place specifically reserved for religious activities like prayer, sacrifice or ritualistic rites. It is a space of worship and is found in almost all religions, wether it takes the form of a permanent structure, a building used occasionally or a temporary circle drawn in the sand. 

-Art galleries also known as art museums are the space or a building that is meant for the exhibition of art. They can be either private or public; and are intended to display various art forms to public.

-The discussion of the role of galleries in the validation of the artwork

Stephan Doitschinoff (Calma) Viva la Revolución Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, 2011

After this I go on to talk about my art practice, but we'll leave that for another time...

Bibliography

Braddock, Christopher

Performing Contagious Bodies

Palgrave MacMillan 2013

Couturier, Père Alain  

Sacred Art

Menil Foundation Inc, U.S.A, 1989

Freud, Sigmund.

Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Psychic Lives of Savages and Neurotics 

Moffat Yard and Company, 1918 

Hygen, Johan B.

Morality and the Muses

Augsburg Publishing House 1965

Rank, Otto.

The Myth and Birth of the Hero

Vintage Books, New York, 1932.

Martland, Thomas R. 

Religion as Art 

State University of New York Press, Albany, 1981

Van der Leeuw, Gerardus.

Sacred and Profane Beauty: the Holy in Art

Weidenfeild and Nicolson, London, 1963

Wiebe, Henry.

Myth, Religion and Ritual (The Subversive Artist)

Hoppy Copy Centers Ltd. 1998

Halloween was confusing. All my life my parents said, "Never take candy from strangers." And then they dressed me up and said, "Go beg for it." I didn't know what to do. I'd knock on people's doors and go, "Trick or treat . . . no thank you." ~ Rita Rudner

It's that time of year again! The time when other people in North America decide to dress up as much as I do! 

Here are some awesome costume inspirations for tomorrow-

Never Date a Girl Who Reads

You should date an illiterate girl.

Date a girl who doesn't read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in a film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her.

Let the anxious contract you've unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale or the evenings too long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn't fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.

Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. Take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster. Do not be overly concerned if you feel your heart leap through a pane of sheet glass. For that matter, do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate. If she cries, smile as if you’ve never been happier. If she doesn't, smile all the same.

Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well. Fail frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn't read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.

Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent of a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, goddamnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.

Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.

Date a girl who doesn't read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.

Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so goddamned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life of which I spoke at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being told. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. Or, perhaps, stay and save my life.


Charles Warnke
Thought Catalogue 
Jan 19, 2011

wendymacnaughton.com/

After 3 weeks of being stuck in bed with a wicked kidney infection, I FINALLY got back into my studio. It feels great! Organized all my stuff and started making some new work as part of what I am currently calling the "whore series". See the beginnings of that here.

Put my stain glass outside the door and I light it up whenever I'm working-

Crazy full yet organized studio space!

Creating more saint of adultery icons and relics-

Repurposing old stain glass...

...to make new stain glass!

And what I'm listening to while I work-

comicsthatsaysomething

Trying to discover what is instead of what should be...

Tom Ormond

"Flux: the natural state. Our moods change. Our lives change. Our feelings for each other change. Our bearings change. The song changes. The air changes. The temperature in the shower changes. Accept this. We must accept this."

-David Levithan

phil france - transition from Friday on Vimeo.

So it's that time of year. They time of year where so many schedules readjust, priorities get reassessed, life practices change. It makes so much more sense for me that the new year should be starting right now, rather than the beginning of January. I think the Jewish population really has the right idea with Rosh Hashanah. So happy new year everyone. Embrace the change.

One day you’ll wake up and realize that you are too big for your own skin.

Molt. 

Don’t be afraid.

Your body is a house where the shutters blow in and out

against the windowpane.

You are a hurricane-prone area.

-shinji moon

Tom Ormond

"The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Avarice over-rates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires. The slightest observation, however, might satisfy him, that, in all the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful, and equally contented. Some of those situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others: but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquillity of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice.” 

― Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments 

"I wanted a metamorphosis, a change to fish, to leviathan, to destroyer. I wanted the earth to open up, to swallow everything in one engulfing yawn. I wanted to see the city buried fathoms deep in the bosom of the sea. I wanted to sit in a cave and read by candlelight. I wanted that eye extinguished so that I might have a chance to know my own body, my own desires. I wanted to be alone for a thousand years in order to reflect on what I had seen and heard - and in order to forget."

- Misima Andrews

 Tom Ormond

Tom Ormond

As for my own life, AH, the CHAOS! Not only has school full on hit, but I made a very strange and life shaking choice which has added to the topsy turvy.

Coming back from the festival circuit, and realizing my own lack of inclusion into this academic setting, I decided to do a bit of a radical action to change my own participation in this space. I have moved every single object that I own, besides my bed, into my studio space, forcing me to be completely centered around this space that I am having such a hard time giving a damn about.

I am interested to see how my own feelings and participation in this space change when I can no longer seek refuge elsewhere, and instead focus on creating a space that truly facilitates my needs in this environment. Good luck me...

THIS is the chaos my own space is in at the moment while I clean and reorganize-

I will try not to go crazy...

Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious.

-Rumi

Whoever you may be: step into the evening.
Step out of the room where everything is known.
Whoever you are,
your house is the last before the far-off.
With your eyes, which are almost too tired
to free themselves from the familiar,
you slowly take one black tree
and set it against the sky: slender, alone.
And you have made a world.
It is big
and like a word, still ripening in silence.
And though your mind would fabricate its meaning,
your eyes tenderly let go of what they see.

-Rilke, Book of Images

Firefly- Photo by Camille Berube

The Autumn of Love, Pg 68

I want to die from longing, and never

live in boredom. I want there to be,

in the depth of my soul,

a hunger for love and beauty.

As I observe mankind, I see

that those who are satisfied are the most

wretched, and the most attached to matter.

I have also heard the sighs of those

who are full of desire and longing

and have found in them a gentleness

sweeter than the sweetest melody. 

-Khalil Gibran

Love Letters in the Sand

Souvenir Press 2005

There is one thing that has always remained a constant in my practice, and that is the use of my own body. I think that because of growing up in what, for me, was an oppressive space, I am very cautious about imposing my own world views on top of others. Because of this I use my own body, with the belief that, by changing myself, I can form a link in a chain that will possibly change others. In the History of Sexuality, Foucault talks about the fact that every human being is involved in the creation of the cultural system, and that means every individual has the capacity to change it. I love his quote that says;

"[There is] The omnipresence of power: not because it has the privilege of consolidating everything under its invincible unity, but because it is produced from one moment to the next, at every point, or rather in every relation from one point to another. Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere."

Harvest- Photo by Aaron Ball, Face paint by Paul Zulauf

With this idea in mind, I do believe that if I change how my body looks, acts and relates to a space, I have the capacity to change my environment day by day. This is one of the major reasons that I find costuming so important. The ability to change how I look not only communicates on my outside how I feel on the inside, but also allows for me physically change my environment.

I cannot count the amount of people I have met, the amount of art I have added to spaces, and the amount of conversations I've had about my lifestyle, just because I have been dressed up. 

So here are some of my costumes from this festival season. I did not manage to document them all, and I will try my best to list all the photographers, although I've forgotten some. The majority of what I wear I make myself, with found add ons as well as sometimes some lovely things made by friends. Here ya go!

Mutek- Aaron Ball 

Harvest- Aaron Ball

Alexandria Art Festival- David Whitney 

Open Mind

 Firefly

Piknic Electronic- Piknic Electronic Website 

Blossom Party

 Manifesting Magic- Kathleen T. Smith

 Open Mind- Robyn Crouch

 Open Mind- Aaron Ball

 Harvest

 Om Reunion Project- Patrick Dussault

 Om Reunion Project- Patrick Dussault

Manifesting Magic- Justin J. Nehlawi

 Piknic Electronic- Piknic Electronic Website 

 Alexandria Art Festival- Camille Berube

 Firefly- Camille Berube

  Firefly

 Open Mind- Aaron Ball

  Om Reunion Project- Patrick Dussault

  Firefly- Camille Berube

 Om Reunion Project

 Firefly

 Om Reunion Project- Patrick Dussault

 Om Reunion Project- Justin SMith

 Manifesting Magic- Robyn Crouch 

 Manifesting Magic

Earthdance- Julz

 Manifesting Magic- Justin J. Nehlawi

Mutek- Aaron Ball

Om Reunion Project- Patrick Dussault

 Open Mind- Aaron Ball

Open Mind

The Ritual- Julz

 Open Mind- Aaron Ball

 Blossom Party- Christina Ainsworth

The Ritual- Daphne Lorain

Harvest- Bartosz Deptuch

Piknic Electronic- Piknic Electronic Website 

 The Ritual- Julz

 Harvest- Aaron Ball

 Earthdance 

Open Mind- Indigo Raven

What a lovely festival season! I can't believe that it's over already! Here's the lovely tour that I did this summer-

What an incredible summer. Thank you each and everyone.

Open Mind- Christopher Ayling

"Once or twice this side of death
Things can make one hold his breath."

-Robert P. Tristram Coffin
From Crystal Moment

Just back from Earthdance in St-Fortuant. A festival with the intention of a global peace prayer, and it was set on a beautiful land in Quebec. The people out there have begun building a wonderful magical forest with tree houses and installations with the focus of building a long term community. It was so lovely to be on land that was treated with such love and care. 

This was the last festival for me of this incredible summer. The fall solstice has happened, and now it is time for a change of pace. 

This summer has been so enriching, has set me back on my feet in terms of the types of communities I want to live in. Places like this where people are building and creating everyday. The type of world that involves imagination and intention. Places where there can be celebration and craziness, but also hard work and a movement towards a more enriched world. 

The question now is, how do these experiences translate? As I move from this active summer into the quiet fall, how do I make sure that the fluidity of these spaces, the daily art, the transcendence, the human connection and the openness to change, enter into my life everyday? It is so easy in the forest and with these people to be the type of person that I want. But in the systems I work in, participate in, I often have to be someone I don't really want to be. Especially in the art world, I feel like we've lost the magic of the universe. Which is ridiculous. Art should be all about the magic that happens in each and every one of us. 

So thank you, all the humans who have been involved in reminding me this summer that life should be focused around that magic. Hopefully I will continue to be able to focus on that as I hunker down into this fall. As things begin to quiet and die, I will begin to turn inward, and remember that this energy too is necessary to for this cycle. 

Civilizing the Child

You can't keep it, I say

it will decay.

Bury the mouse, I tell her

it will make the tulips redder,

give the trees babies,

fatten the faces of the daises,

put manes on the grass. 

Spring comes up thick from the dead, I say,

broadcasting the words like seeds

until she obeys, sadly,

with her green child's trowel,

and when she runs out the next morning

to see the pink hawthorn

has an extra blossom or two

-and it has, it has!-

I go scott-free, acquitted

by her happiness-tinged cheeks,

my judges, my blind jury. 

-Lisel Mueller

Poetry Lives!

McDougal, Littell& Company, 1976

All photos from event website

Just got back from Harvest Festival! And let me tell you, it was pretty incredible to be at a festival that was so focused around art. The people making art, bringing art, wearing art, and of course, the land-

"Harvest Festival is hosted on the magical lands of Midlothian Castle near Burk’s Falls, Ontario. Midlothian Castle is the creation and home of Peter Camani, an artist and sculptor who’s created an unusual residence in the form of a castle complete with sculpture garden on an old farm which is most commonly known as “Screaming Heads”.
With his paintings already hanging in such coveted places as the Vatican and Buckingham Palace Camani decided to focus his energy on realizing a vision of significantly larger proportions and permanence.
Taking more than 30 years to construct more than a hundred “screaming head” sculptures with each one approximately 20 feet high and weighing as much as 30 tons Camani says he built his otherworldly creations as a warning about environmental degradation." -Harvest Website

Not to mention the incredible music!

Thanks to all who rocked this festival. All who created, all who participated, and all who enjoyed!

Off to the forest again! This weekend to Harvest Festival in Ontario.

And as we go, it's important to keep in mind the effect we have on nature, while in the city, and while in wilder places. I just watched this incredible interactive documentary about the human impact on wildlife yesterday, about the life of a grizzly in Canmore. It's so moving, and the ability to "choose your own adventure" is really amazing.

This project is really incredible, only 20 minutes, and very moving. Watch it. You have to go to the website to do so-

http://bear71.nfb.ca/bear71/

And some music as I head off-

theoatmeal.com

The Innovation of Loneliness from Shimi Cohen on Vimeo.

Concerning Human Space

When the bus driver gets in his cabin
the bus driver is the oblong bus

He runs along
picking up passengers
who climb inside him

He's got the space to carry them
and so he makes himself this large

Inside, he's brimming with consideration
His skin though stay alert
to what is going on outside
He runs along
as if charged with electricity

And this is why he cannot bear
the way passengers inside him
are so callous about the space they take up
the inefficient way
they use their space at rush hour

Now listen, everyone
I'm not suggesting you should manoeuvre the bus
only that you should manoeuvre yourselves
and then you'll come to realize
how wide your shoulders are,
how thick your torso
and the whereabouts of your back

No, even before that-
each one of you should try
to brim over with consideration
until you grow a skin aware
of what is going on outside

If you can manage that
you'll be considering the town,
the world as well, of course the bus

Have you ever made yourself that large
considering a bus the way you did yourself?

Have you ever felt yourself and another
purely as space,
feeling another's torso
as though it were your own
feeling another's destiny
as though it were your own?

If you've felt this
you can put your own space next to someone else's
quietly
and in time's vacuum
set sail together
wrapped in love

And when you've achieved this
perhaps you'll be on friendly terms
with the driver too

-Yoshino Hiroshi
Poetry Lives! 
McDougal, Littell &Company
1976

 Scientist Natalia Avseenko uses yoga and meditaion techniques to hold her breath and withstand sub zero temperatures for up to ten minutes at a time ask she frolics with the whales, Nilma and Matren.

How a naked female scientist tries to tame belugas in the freezing Arctic 

www.therobinhead.com

The Emotive from Kevin Guiang Paderes on Vimeo.

About The Emotive Performance-
"I'm thankful that I am surrounded by audacious, carefree, genuine people I can call my friends. It was really something to watch Chris stand amidst the crowd at PC, summing up the courage to challenge the gradients of societal norms by intruding upon well established boundaries of privacy. It was really something to observe the footage we took last night. It was inspiring to see that he was genuinely able to affect people with the passion embedded in his poetry and his deliberate, confident declamation.

I know that this video doesn't necessarily ebb with the flow of the masses, but my TA challenged me to go beyond my comfort zone and I feel that I successfully met her challenge. The concept of this project was to emphasize the merit of emotion. Violating public space, we juxtaposed a computer generated mp3 of Chris' poem with Chris reciting the poems himself; the former representing substance devoid of emotion while the latter represented the epitome of it. Few people reacted to the boom box. In the best of circumstances, people would turn around, stare for a moment or two, and continue on with their business. The moment Chris filled any space with his deep voice, however, people did not only listen but they also stopped in their tracks to grasp his message. I'm amazed at the attention he commanded.

Words are nothing in the absence of emotion. They can be read, they can be recited, but few can really deliver the feelings behind words printed on paper. My friend is truly a talented individual and it was a pleasure working with him."
-Kevin Guiang Paderes

The Angry Man

The other day I chanced to meet

An angry man upon the street-

A man of wrath, a man of war,

A man who truculently bore

Over his shoulder, like a lance

A banner labeled "Tolerance."

And when I asked him why he strode

Thus scowling down the human road,

Scowling he answered, "I am he

Who champions total liberity-

Intolerance being, ma'am a state

No tolerant man can tolerate."

"When I meet rouges," he cried, "who choose

To cherish oppositional views,

Lady, like this, and in this manner,

I lay about my with my banner

'Till they cry mercy, ma'am, " His blows

Rained proudly on perspective foes.

Fearful I turned and left him there

Still muttering as he thrashed the air,

"Let the Intolerant beware!"

-Phyllis McGinley

Poetry Lives! 

McDougal, Littell &Company 

1976

www.buzzfeed.com

Since part of the purpose of the dome had been that it could go up and down easily, I decided to instal only part of it at the Alexandria Art Festival. Easy it was not, but it did take less than a full day to instal this time...

Photo from David Whitney

Some music by Matthew Wiviott, who was out there performing live with his Guzheng, the Chinese harp, all weekend. So beautiful-

Photo from David Whitney

Photo from David Whitney

A couple of the guys from Future not Earth were there too, and played a wicked DJ set. Here's just a sample of their newest song-

Photo from David Whitney

And the dome ready to go up, 

 

Photo from David Whitney

Photo from David Whitney

Photo from David Whitney

And the installation is up! Now it's time to decorate. 

 

And once everything is up and lit, we dance!   

Hot Flashes-TaBURNak Set 2012 by Andreya_Wolf on Mixcloud

Super great little festival! Once again thanks to all that lent a hand in this installation, and rock on everybody for creating this lovely event. 

Photos by Me

I am a part of the festival community not only because they're my community and these spaces feel like home, but also because I want to learn, grow and evolve as an emotional and spiritual human being. It's one of the reasons we call this a transformational festival scene. 

Transformations in the festival scene works in a very interesting way. Earlier this season I wrote about the spiritual implications of dance (here), and that one is a big one for me. But one of the other big ones is the implications of manifesting the impossible, and the role of play in self transformation. 

I took a Developmental Transformation Drama Therapy class one year, with a premise that I find very akin to what happens in the festival culture. The whole idea of this type of therapy is that you get together, either with a therapist or a group, and all you do is play. The only rule is that you can never say no to someone else's idea, you just have to run with it. The philosophy of this type of therapy is two things. First off, the only things constant in the world is change. If we can learn the skills to continually deal with change in a therapeutic setting, then we can apply those skills to make us more comfortable in our lives. 

Secondly, as you play, you cannot help but have some of your deep-set emotional issues come to the surface. As soon as those issues are on the surface, everyone begins to play with them in the most ridiculous ways. Normally when we have issues, we tend to get stuck in patterns about how we think about them. But when we begin to play around with all of the infinite possibilities that exist in the world, no matter how ridiculous, we can get past those normal patterns to possibly find more options for change. 

Every festival does this for me, but every once in a while there is a festival space that goes so far to the core of my being, that it transcends everything I held to be true, and everything changes for me. This year The Ritual did that for me. 

Photos by Kathleen T Smith

Who knows what are the factors that make a space truly enlightening, if it's the people who put it together, the people who attend, the people who decorate, the people who play, the vibe, the surroundings, the people you hang out with, how much you dance, how much you push yourself or deny yourself sleep. I have never been able to determine when, where and how my inner self will get ripped apart and rebuilt, but every once in awhile all of the factors align to allow myself to be open and solid enough to have all of my foundations shaken and changed. 

Change and growth is the essence to us progressing in life. I love this quote by C.S. Lewis- "It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad." Learning to change and be comfortable with it is so important. And for me, festival spaces are ripe ground from me to deal with some of the changes that need to be made in my life. 

Photo by George Arvanitis

Although I don't necessarily want to write about all the personal changes I went through at this festival, one question always follows me away from these experiences, and that is- "How to I anchor these experiences and solidify these changes when I leave the forest?" And that brings me full circle back to my art practice and the question of the art object.

When transformation occurs in these spaces, it tends to come in an entirely dreamlike, surreal form. These festival spaces are completely phantasmagorical, they exist outside of time and space, and are completely unlike almost anything that you find in what we call "the default world". And when you are in these spaces, you are pushing yourself and your body to the extreme, and opening yourself up to the type of peak experiences that don't tend to occur day to day. Because of these things, when you experience transformation, it can often seem completely unreal once you have left the site. But something happened for me this festival that really cemented together art and spiritual experience. 

Photo by Julz

Photo by Me

For one of the days during this festival, a group of about eight of us decided to climb to the top of the waterfall and spend the day together. I didn't know any of these people overly well, but, as often happens in intense spaces, throughout the day everyone really opened up. The day seemed to become about all of us dealing with our own deep-set emotional issues in whatever form that took. It was an incredible experience. Of course difficult, but amazing just to see everyone be at where they were at, and work through their stuff. 

During the course of this day I noticed that something began to happen. Certain objects would become significant to an individual or to the group as the day went on. A mushroom found during a bathroom trip, a rock that looked like it had a face in it, etc. These objects would be brought back to the group and shared, and soon we began to have piles of important objects, that eventually started to become altars and be more decorative. 

Through out the day these objects were turned to whenever there seemed to be a significant experience. The altar morphed and grew, and as the day went on I started to realize that these basic objects were helping us anchor an etherial experience that was going on in our heads into a physical reality. We were making the most basic form of human art, with the purpose of translating lived experience into the tactile. We not only were using art to help us realize that what we were going through was real, but also to communicate significance to others who couldn't see what was going on inside our heads. By the end of the day we had a beautiful structure, which we left intact on the beach, to communicate to strangers that something important had happened there. 

Photos by Julz

Often as an artist I question why it is that I and others, feel the need to make art objects. In my line of work art often becomes about commodity, or the saleability of a product. We use all these academic, heady words to define the genres of art we participate in, how we culturally define symbols, the reasons why a work is made, how we define it in terms of art history. But going through this experience really solidified the notion for me, that the reason the art object exists for me is for two reasons- One, so that I can communicate to others what is going on inside my head. And two, having a physical object as the product or remnant of an experience allows me to anchor that ethereal transformation into something physical, which allows me to bring what I learn forward into my life. 

Photo by Me

So coming away from this experience with a few lessons. 

-Change is good, learn to play with it.

-If transformation is etherial, anchor it in the physical.

I don't often draw, but I did because of this. Here's one of my physical objects that I made to anchor the whole experience more deeply in my head, and to communicate to others what I felt and saw-

And all in all, the thing I always come back to- I am so blessed. I love my life. 

Nikoli - The Ritual Gathering Mix by Nick Hebb Aka Dj Nikoli on Mixcloud

Photo by Kathleen T Smith

And off again. This time to Alexandria Art Festival, a tiny gathering of dj's, event organizers, circus folk and general weirdos who just want to camp, party, dress up, and set up art in the forest.

A chill mix to calm down my getting ready stress by my friend Danji-

August dupstep garage mix by Sylvanshine on Mixcloud

 All photographs from 2012 by Jamie Janx Johnson

Vidéo promotionnel - Lancement des Enfants de Chienne - ART CLUB - from Les Enfants de Chienne on Vimeo.

Let me tell you about a extraordinary little artist collective in Montreal. Les Enfants de Chienne, which translates to english as Sons of Bitches, were named so by an influential figure in contemporary art during their first cultural infiltration.

They define the work that they do as "cultural pushing". Using the aesthetics of biker gangs, they constantly seek to impose themselves into the artistic landscape. They show up at art art openings, get photographs with influential people, sign autographs, bring their own camera crews, and in general, just create a huge amount of hype about their presence.

Les Enfants de Chienne with artist Guy Boutin

As stated by their own website, "Not only for its style but also its method of action, the project compares the world of art to organized crime. For members of the group, these two worlds are similarly supported by notions of profit, connections, territory and power. This philosophy leads them to overuse images of rock 'n ' roll as well as insolence and humour to test the notions of visibility and self-promotion.

More than a simple infiltration , EDC is a perpetual invasion.

Apparently elusive, EDC is considered a walking work, democratic and self- questioning of art, and the values ​​that are inherent. As their slogan says TCA ( Taking Care of Art), Les Enfants de Chienne are determined be inserted into contemporary art in Quebec." 

Les Enfants de Chienne with rocker Éric Lapointe

Les Enfants de Chienne with Santa

Exposition Partis pour la gloire - Centre AXART from Les Enfants de Chienne on Vimeo.

Tonight is the one year anniversary of this notorious art club, so if you want to meet these fiends in person- Yer'mad Bistro Bar, 901 De Maisonneuve Boul E, Montreal, 21:00, $0.99 entry. 

Definitely worth a look.

www.lesenfantsdechienne.com

LES 1 AN DES ENFANTS DE CHIENNE from Les Enfants de Chienne on Vimeo.

"That bee is going to sting me because my middle name is Rose."

-Stated matter-of-factly by my young second cousin Clara, August 26.

Some Seattle music for ya-

Goodbye Seattle. See you next time.

And a little plane humour from a friend as I catch my flight-

I will write about my experiences at The Ritual later, but as I am still processing them, I will instead post my wanderings of Seattle. 

Why does one traveller stay and another one go?

Many steps ago the bus went by without me.

Now I wait for the next bus, leaves. Diesel and electric enters

and you say hi, bus driver, how was your day?

A car halts at a red light, 

no more can your feet carry your soul.

So now I'll take the job of getting you home.

-Etched into brick at the corner of Pine and Boren

Handwriting one: Question everything.

Handwriting two: Why?

-Graffiti in the bathroom of Sumptown Coffee Roasters, August 21

But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou her maid art far more fair than she:
Be not her maid, since she is envious;
Her vestal livery is but sick and green
And none but fools do wear it; cast it off.
It is my lady, O, it is my love!
O, that she knew she were!
She speaks yet she says nothing: what of that?
Her eye discourses; I will answer it.
I am too bold, 'tis not to me she speaks:
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,
As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night.
See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O, that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!

-Quoted to me in entirety and perfectly by a homeless man on the corner of Pike and Broadway, August 20.

-Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet Act 2, Scene 2

^ Having a conversation with the famous Sammy Drain, who found me documenting graffiti and insisted that I needed to take his picture.

And off I go to festival #8. Someday I will slow down...

Oh Boston, I am falling in love with you...

Just got back from being down in Boston for the weekend again for Sonic Beating's FLuX. Brought a whole lovely crew down from Montreal including DJ forage who played, and Deglazer Laser, who brought down his sweet lasers. Yay. It was a good party with a great after party at some of the artist studios there. 

 I'm gonna keep you Boston. You got good vibes.

Photos by Russell Azzalina

Also, met another lovely DJ human there who goes by the name of Sold Out. You should probably listen to his stuff too-