lost at play
inspiration . process . experiment
Ask me anything
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Ricoh GR1 test with Ilford Hp5 Plus 400 Dec 2012-Jan 2013
- Leonard Cohen December 5, 2012 Air Canada Centre
- Breakfast at Tiffany’s at TIFF Lightbox
- Dad lunches
- Girls night
- Walkmen, Danforth Music Hall January 16th
- Desiree’s baby shower
- Dr. Fish
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January 2013 Leica M6 test with Kodak GT 800 pushed to 1600
- Stefan Sagmeister’s Happy Show at the Design Exchange
- Father John Misty & The Walkmen at the Danforth Music Hall January 16, 2013
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The past few years have levied a strange burden of proof upon our backs, a burden to account for our hours and days, to prove to all who care to watch from the screens of their phones and computers that we are doing something worthy with our lives. In the meantime, we have forgotten how to be content in being present. We have not been transfixed and emptied since we first believed the lie that all of our experiences must be shared.
But there is another kind of seeing that involves a letting go. When I see this way I sway transfixed and emptied. The difference between the two ways of seeing is the difference between walking with and without a camera. When I walk with a camera I walk from shot to shot, reading the light on a calibrated meter. When I walk without a camera, my own shutter opens, and the moment’s light prints on my own silver gut. When I see this second way I am above all an unscrupulous observer.
—Annie Dillard - Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
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Godard: What is a portrait?
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‘I never paint dreams. I paint my own reality.’ —Frida Kahlo (at Art Gallery of Ontario)
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automatic (Taken with Instagram)
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Bots (Taken with Instagram)
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There is vitality only by means of free generosity. Intelligence supposes good will, and, inversely, a man is never stupid if he adapts his language and his behavior to his capacities, and sensitivity is nothing else but the presence which is attentive to the world and to itself.
Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity -
for what it’s worth
Some snapshots from a fun day with Erin at The Junction Flea, an outdoor flea market held every second Sunday of the month.
Going to yard sales and flea markets is one of my favourite pastimes. I love the adventure of sorting through boxes of stuff—scratched up cameras, rusty biscuit tins, dusty records, dog-eared postcards—not knowing what I might find, and finding things I didn’t know I wanted.
Besides photos and music, I’m interested in everyday, utilitarian items. Like the ‘Motorists Operating Record’ booklet I found at St. Lawrence Market, belonging to a Leonard Oleseuk of Port Colborne, who drove a 1930 Ford Model-A in the 1950s, or a receipt for a ship license registration in October, 1961 from the Italian Marine Society in Venice. These objects seem more revealing of their time, than, perhaps, a pretty vase or painting, linking my imagination inextricably with the people to whom they belonged.
Purchase of the day—Petula Clark’s Downtown (1965)
best tracks:
*Tell me (that it’s love) — Love her voice on this track; so sultry.
*You Belong to Me — One of the most romantic songs ever, and Dylan’s version is my favourite, but Petula sings it in a swaying, longing way that’s quite lovely, as well.
fortune teller
inside the fortune teller’s van
interesting ashtrays(?)
hair accessories
writing collagey love letters to Toronto
yummy bbq spicy corn
chrysanthemym iced-tea and chicken roti
mini wooden toys from the ’20s
meow time
super-8
metal feathers
nice outfit!
Petula Clark’s Downtown (1965)
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don’t smoke in bed
The Burning House is a web/book project by NYC Graphic Designer Foster Huntington. He poses the following question:
If your house was burning, what would you take with you? It’s a conflict between what’s practical, valuable and sentimental. What you would take reflects your interests, background and priorities. Think of it as an interview condensed into one question.
It’s interesting to see the kinds of objects that people hold dear to them, and the memories/people that these inanimate objects evoke.This is my list:
- Records: The Smiths: The Queen is Dead, Rolling Stones: Exile on Main Street, Eric Satie performed by Aldo Ciccolini, Volume I, Sil Austin: Plays Pretty for the People, Velvet Underground: The Velvet Underground & Nico (songs that remind me of favourite moments alone, and with friends, loved ones)
- Radiohead: Kid A cd signed by Phil Selway and Ed O’Brien (I met them at the local radio station 102.1 The Edge after lining up for 3 hours in a Canadian blizzard)
- Tin macaroon box of photos, love letters, souvenirs (my most treasured item)
- A clean pair of underwear (lace)
- Polaroid SX-70
- Nintendo handheld Snoopy game (birthday present, 1986)
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera (favourite book)
- Exquisite Pain, by Sophie Calle (my favourite artist discovered upon a chance visit to the Tate Modern bookstore)
- The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (‘Anything essential is invisible to the eyes’)
- From the Mixed up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E.L. Koningsberg (as a kid I always dreamt of running away and exploring the city)
- My journal
- Nikon FE2
- Hasselblad 500C and 150mm F 1.4 lens (reminds me of long autumn photo walks with my father)
- Digital Passport: My external harddrive with all my photos and scans
- Passport (if my house burned down, I would live as a
nomad, for a while) - Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love Boxed Set (favourite director)
View my submission on The Burning House site here: -
on click
A few weeks ago, artist David Colangelo asked me to document his latest piece, a set of giant cursors installed on trees at Trinity Bellwoods and Grange Park. In true guerilla form, he had put them up in the middle of the night, and I had the pleasure of being one of the first to witness them. Seeing the cursors lit by lamplight heightened the stark contrast between the familiar icon of the web and the natural park environment where they were placed, and made more apparent that digital media was permeating our lives in spaces where they don’t necessarily belong. At the same time I felt like I had somehow stepped into a RPG game (like King’s Quest) where the characters could manipulate their surroundings with a click of the mouse.
As a graphic designer I use programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign on a day-to-day basis. It’s no coincidence then that I often have the unconscious urge to ctrl-z real life situations (spilled milk, regretful arguments) as one would do in the aforementioned software, to go back a step in the process and ‘undo’ a misrendered drop-shadow or a poorly-kerned paragraph. Our thought processes are affected by our interactions with these programs in such a subtle way that perhaps creates an illusion of control over the natural world, and our relationships with those around us.
Going a step further and slightly off topic, I was reminded of a study by Janet Vertesi examining the London Tube map and its effects on how Londoners perceived their city. In the study, interviewees (Londoners who had grown up in the city, as well as those who had lived there only for a short period of time) were asked to ‘draw London,’ and the results determined that most Londoners in fact did not have a clear idea of the spatial relation between one stop to another, or the direction in which the river ran, etc.
Vertesi called this the ‘Here be Dungeons’ effect; many of the interviewees drew question marks to represent the voids in the city where they had never traveled beyond their usual subway lines/routes. As Vertesi stated: ‘The map is not only an interface to the subway system, but is also metonymically used as an interface to the city as a whole, establishing a virtual space in which the analog urban environment can be explored, constructed, narrated, and understood’.With apps like Yelp and Google Maps we are able to navigate our surroundings without the hassle of experiment. We rely on these tools to take us directly, via the quickest route by foot/car/public transit, to our desired destination.
That weekend I decided to forgo my iPhone and take a walk around the city. It probably took me twice as long to get to where I needed to go, but in the process I found a hidden garden, delicious roast chicken, and numerous yard sales—things that I would not have come across if I had mapped out my route as per usual. Seeing Colangelo’s piece again in the daylight made clear his comment that digital media is very much ingrained in our daily lives. Some passersby barely noticed the incongruence, carrying on with their morning jogs, dog-walks. But it was nice to wander a little, and I found that having no ‘map” me made me interact more openly with my natural surroundings, leaving me with the feeling there are still innumerable depths left to be explored.
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found letters
While cleaning today, I unearthed a page of a letter from a pen-pal I had during the first year of highschool. This was a year or so before the popularity of internet forums and such, and I was a shy, somewhat awkward teen who found herself suffocating in a snarky, all-girls catholic school where no one I knew shared the same interests in art or music. I would take the long subway ride from the suburbs to my haven downtown, the now defunct Virgin Records, and spend hours there, lost in the company of my favourite bands (Radiohead, The Stone Roses, Oasis, Pulp, The Smiths, etc…), flipping through Q Magazine, Select and the NME. I had posted an ad in Q listing my musical tastes, which from what I can remember ended with a melodramatic(!) ‘Seeking like-minds to save me from mundane greyness’.…people who make assumptions about you and judge you based on your outward demeanor aren’t worth getting to know. We can both be content with knowing these people will never form relationships that go beyond the superficial, since they obviously can’t see beyond superficialities.
I think that your obvious intelligence and acuity will see you through the next three years of school, no problem. I finished college in May, and took my exams in June. I made a conscious decision two years ago to sacrifice things and work hard at college to get to university, because I was scared of having to live here for the rest of my life. I’ve given up a lot in the last two years and caused myself quite a bit of emotional hurt in the process, but now I am in a position where I can take control of things to a greater extent—my life is no longer distilled to the same extent as before. I’m going to university in a week’s time, to study English literature, and the independence I get from that will be a very new and welcome experience…
His name was Ben something, and he lived in a small town near Leeds; I forget now since I only have this one page left from those months of correspondence. But in that platonic, witty, repertoire I found a true friend who introduced me (on his signature pale blue loose-leaf) to Proust, My Bloody Valentine…and made me feel a little less alone, knowing there were other mis-shapes out there like me. Thanks Ben, and I hope you’re happy and well, wherever you are!
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Weléla.
She invited me for tea one afternoon at her apartment on Rue de Chemin Vert. Her space: a cosy, mish-mash of colours, full of childhood photos, images of people who inspired her (Basquiat, Hendrix, Josephine Baker…), maps of uncharted lands tacked to the kitchen walls. A California girl at heart, with roots in the Caribbean, she’d moved to Paris a few years ago to continue her journey of art-making, choreography and dance.
We talked candidly; in the flowing, reminiscent way that women, even as strangers, are able to do. Of great loves; lost across physical and emotional seas. Letters left unposted, unanswered. We discovered a shared fondness for the author/artist Nick Bantock; in particular his Griffin and Sabine trilogy, a collection of love letters and postcards that weaved language, drawing, and photographs together magically. We both cherished the art of book-making, the tactile quality of paper and found objects/ephemera that evoked a kind of wonder and mysticism.
She believed that dance had the power to heal. Her dream was to go to Haiti to perform with the children, sublime visions of cultural symphonies in the streets, dancing and poem. I asked her how she found the people she worked with, and she said she seeks them out, people who have an openness in their hearts. Everyone had a different pace and she honored how far the movement went. It was far more interesting to her to work with people who have lived their lives, and gone through some tough times. Often she found that it was the audience who healed her. She liked things that were raw, human, open; Berlin, Pina Bausch, Experimental theater. ‘Sometimes you want them to be naked on stage.’ And she continued to search for a band of gypsies who shared the same aesthetic vision. Synergy.
I took a long walk back to Gigi’s that night, it was after the subway had closed. Sitting by myself on the patio of the fluorescent candy-lit Turkish fast food joint I thought to myself—we are the lucky ones. To have had our lives lifted by those, with their intoxicating songs of tenderness, pain, beauty. The endless nights of talking and not, private languages, secret smiles in empty theaters. In the sunlight of true affection they taught us how to love, laugh, and ultimately, to be free of ourselves. Sometimes we’re moving so fast that we don’t get to create what we want to. And with this knowledge we learn to honor the losses we have inflicted and incurred, to keep moving, sometimes drifting, forward. To find again, that one day in the summer.
Paris, May 20, 2012
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