The Oddstream festival in Nijmegen brought together an eclectic mix of music, art and education under the loose theme of love and conflict. I’m honoured to have been invited to participate in the festival, helping out with the Memefest workshop and the International Media Training. I met many people during a very intensive week, and have made many new friends. So, first off, many thanks to all those that helped to bring me there, specifically Oliver Vodeb, Doeko Pinxt, and Carola Stahl.
Taking off the rose-tinted glasses for a bit (which is not an easy thing to do considering how much fun I had), it was very unfortunate that more people didn’t turn out. Over the course of the weekend, in front of the stages and on the festival grounds, there was a palpable sense of emptiness. In part this can be attributed to the massive scale of the site, or the electronic music festival that was happening at the same time in Arnhem. As a first festival, this is to be expected I suppose, but it also raises some critical questions, as Sandy Kaltenborn brought up during the Inspiration day. What does this area of “cultural transformation” mean to the city, and what is the festival’s relationship to city marketing and gentrification more generally. Who stays and who goes? It will be an interesting question to ask a few years down the line, if the bills get payed.
Produced by the international media crew here at Oddstream, including remixes of my work. I’m very honoured. Paulo and I pushed the idea of abstract documentary and holding the shot too long, and I think the end result works really well!
I’ve been in the beautiful city of Nijmegen for four days now, and the Oddstream festival is getting underway. It’s been an exciting and busy time as I’ve been jumping between mentoring an amazing group of international media students and activists while also participating in Memefest‘s Mapping Socially Responsive Communication workshop. The evenings have been spent reaquainting myself (ie. drinking and drinking some more) with some old friends and collaborators (from declarations days!) and meeting many new ones. My head is swimming, and though genuine insight has yet to set in, I wanted to get some words and images out nonetheless.
I’d been waiting to see my favourite band in the world, Godspeed You! Black Emperor for well over ten years. I had given up hope when the hiatus that began in 2003 seemed to spell the end of the band until they announced last spring they were reforming. I was ecstatic then, and I am ecstatic now. I finally got the opportunity to see them, not once, but twice this past week and was completely and utterly blown away.
And then, alongside partner in crime John W. Stuart, on the Kitchen Bang Bang Law on CKUT. We talk to Vincent Tinguely about the ideas behind Four Minutes to Midnight, the latest issue and our upcoming event (!!!). It’s actually rather insightful! Download the mp3 audio archive here, the interview starts about ten minutes in.
As I was going through my archives tonight, I realised I had never properly posted about this small pamphlet we produced and distributed back in 2008. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the new directions I want to take the magazine in (and the 2356 project generally), and this is a telling touchstone from the past to some of these ideas.
The pamphlet is a transcript of the speech delivered by cultural critic Brian Holmes at the Democracy in America exhibition, presented by Creative Time in New York in 2008. In it he compellingly argues for artists to engage with the radical opportunities presented by the financial crisis. A message as relevant today as it was then.
I first met Brian as part of the Declarations of Interdependence and the Immediacy of Design conference at Concordia University almost ten years ago. It was a heady time for me, with a lot of thinking about the relationship between design, art and activism. As a decade since then rounds out, I find myself thinking deeply about this again, and the position I’m now in to enact those ideas. So, many thanks Brian, for inspiring me in the first place, and allowing us to publish this important work!
In Bb 2.0 is a collaborative music and spoken word project conceived by Darren Solomon from Science for Girls, and developed with contributions from users.
A simple idea, perfectly executed, beautiful and relevant… This project gives me some interesting ideas for the future development process of the Fugue. Could a similar approach be applied to collaborative poetry and its typographic expression?
