It’s been a while since we’ve done a Fugue, but we have big plans for the next issue of Four Minutes to Midnight, and we want you to be a part of it. We need your words.

The fugue is a cacophony of voices, brought together to express a common dissent and a common longing, on our own terms, and in new language.

The theme is, as always, where we’re at right now. In Montréal, that means a summer of love and revolution, a tired stereotype that nevertheless rings true. Red squares and cops everywhere, an unbearable heat, and the promise of more.

Please add your words in the comments thread below. The rules are simple, just read, write, and trust that meaning will emerge…

The last line from the last fugue:

“A flock of feathers fanning out the forest fire.”

or

“the tremble and treble,
it sounds,
and i kiss everything that is blue.”

Photo by Thien, artwork by Nazik

Basically, DIY works when you’re not alone.

A little shout-out to the Howl! Arts Collective, who’ve come together to create this little gem that we’ll be launching into the world tonight.

Duets for Abdelrazik is an activist project at the core. A musical statement of solidarity with the struggles of people oppressed.

And everything that has gone into this album, from the composing, recording, printing and packaging has come from collaborations with friends and allies, from a community whose art is often inseparable from their work for social change.

Howl is not a record label, and we had no idea how to really do this, but we did it anyways. As I’m stacking up the sleeves, I have to say I’m very proud of our work. Howl was not a record label, maybe now we are.

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Most days I wish my work could work. Simply work. To provide the means for me to survive, comfortably, in good spirits, and in the company of others. This is a difficult wish.

Some days, and most nights, I wish my work could heal. Could in some way repair the damage done to this world (perhaps by my other work). Could in some way repair me. Provide catharsis from the things that ail me, from the sickening loneliness, from the lack of beauty. This is harder still.

Tomorrow, I wish not to work. Tomorrow is May 1st, 2012. Helicopters drone in the sky tonight. Tomorrow, I will be in the street. With you, without work.

My first post as a contributing editor to Art Threat is up, a short piece on artist-run centres in Québec supporting the student strike movement.

I’ve been deeply inspired by the students here in Montréal and played a (small) role in initiating the mobilisation of local artist-run centres to support them. The initiative emerged out of a discussion held at Skol in the context of Artivistic‘s Promiscuous Infrastructures exhibition/occupation. The show has proved to be an extremely interesting tool in drawing links between cultural and activist spheres (we also helped out with this amazing street intervention), and here’s hoping this is just a sign of things to come!

Additionally, for my concerned clients, LOKi design will be joining the strike. Sorry, no work ’til Friday!

The above photograph, taken just prior to Eric Drooker’s performance at the mighty Sala Rossa, does a pretty good job of summarising my feelings on the year that’s been, and my outlook for the one to come. The anticipation of an empty stage, the co-mingling of art, music and politics, and that damn nagging fear that people won’t show up, no matter how much work you put into something. In the end, that night was a beautiful night, but also a striking reminder of how much work still needs to be done.

2011 was an eventful, tumultuous year, personally, professionally, and obviously in the world all around us, filled with equal parts inspiration and tragedy. It was a year of transition for me, from full-time work to self-employment, from the world of corporate advertising and design to a renewed commitment to art and activism, from a long, grey heartbreak to finally feeling good about myself again, from Montréal to Europe (Berlin, how I miss you…) and back again.

Over the course of the year, I completed many design projects of which I am genuinely proud (e.g. see Cinema Politica, Comme des machines, Vox Versus, Bloom, and Cosmodome). With the Howl! Arts Collective, I helped to bring challenging new music to the community, putting on a series of concerts that I hope will become an integral part of the fabric of the independent arts scene here in Montreal for years to come.

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We don’t often do this on here, but I wanted to share with you a recent poem by Vincent Tinguely, a long-standing ally and friend. It beautifully captures where my heart and mind are at these slow, wintery, Montréal days…

ONE

The swing dance of
The car plants
Bodies interpose themselves
Between arc welded parts
Crashing crushing
Crescendos of consciousness
Swinging through feverish
Interlocking machinery

Electronics and tooled machine parts
Send signals in syncopation
Audience receives the shock wave
And dances

Pyramid schemes
Men at the top
Control a few men who
Control a few more men who
Control a few more men who
Control a few more men who
Know nothing but what they are told

So they invade your country
Or they break your arm
With a police baton

Something in me wouldn’t click
The grain of sand in the gears
Never pulling my weight
I could never fit
In the clack clack machine racket
Flowing through
Work and
War

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As part of its project entitled Promiscuous Infrastructures, the Artivistic collective invites submissions for the second phase of the project, which will take place from March 9 to April 14, 2012, at Skol, an artist-run centre in Montréal.

What Artivistic is up to
Artivistic is currently in the research-creation phase of a publication tentatively entitled Promiscuous Infrastructures: experiments in art + information + activism. Rooted in the work of Artivistic’s friends, allies, and past participants, the publication sets its sights on “autonomous infrastructures” by looking at radical education & the production of knowledge, intergenerational support systems, as well as sustainable financing.

For Phase 2, we will set up a temporary printing workshop at Skol. This intervention is meant to collectively visualize our concern, obsession perhaps, with what lies behind art, activism and knowledge production: (1) the ways in which we relate to each other, (2) organise to work together, and (3) the conditions in which things are being done. In other words, we are asking:

How do we build value in affective relationships?
How do we organise for that (models, processes, strategies)?
How do we in turn outstretch these in the long-term?

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Rattle e.11

I’m very happy to announce that Capitalism Kills Love has been featured in the latest e-issue of Rattle Magazine (issue e.11). Since 1996, Rattle has established itself as a key site in print and online for the promotion of contemporary poetry and the development of an active community of poets. Read more about the magazine here.

The project is featured in Dan Waber‘s Eye Contact section where he gives a very insightful review of the series and its context as a piece of visual poetry. I’m honoured to have the work read in this light, and given the timing, as the “occupy” movement(s) spread across North America, I hope more and more people take up the challenge that inspired me to create the work. Capitalism Kills Love and love kills capitalism…

Poets are always among the first to go missing in regime changes, because they’re dangerous. The power that poetry has is the judo throw of paradigm shift. Those in Title Case Power are (rightly) afraid of those who are able to wield this less-flashy but ultimately more effective lowercase power. (…) They know how to push the buttons, slide the levers, and twist the dials that make us think we thought of that ourselves. What happens when a poet who is also a graphic designer decides to use his powers for good?

Download Rattle e.11 here

And a loud shout-out to Aram Tanis who provided the original photography for the project!

Fuck Death from plasti75 on Vimeo.

I’d been meaning to post this for a while, but I’m only now getting my tech set up back in order after a little computer mishap in Berlin. But it’s really not such a big deal, because Berlin brought me so many good things, among them the chance to meet the wonderful Lotti Thiessen. Her and her partner (aka Cow Heart) produced this beautiful little experiment for us, with Charlotte reading Nettelbeck’s poem Fuck Death, from our last issue Happy Hour.