Archive for new day
Vancouver Archives
English Bay, foot of Harwood Street, 1903
The Vancouver Archives contain a treasure of documents and photographs. The “search” and “download” functions are intuitive and literally amazing (as in, you will enter a very fun “maze” of history, of what daily life was like in this beautiful city in ages gone by). The English Bay shoreline shown above has changed very little. It’s a blessing to live so near.
Spring this year
Even in Vancouver, I am amused that a university semester that starts the first week in January and ends in early April is called “Spring.” But at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, often enough it feels like spring to me, with a beautiful bloom of new students in my classrooms, and all sorts worthy projects starting to grow. I spent most of New Year’s Day traveling, and I expect to travel more this year than I ever have in the past – when I’m not teaching. And I hope to be writing a ton, about this leaving Vancouver and about coming back to it, as well as about my reliably unquenchable obsessions. Please stay tuned.
Tomorrow’s going to be a good day: Getting together on the Surrey campus with my fellow School of Business Chairs for a lunch-time meeting, then seeing my own Applied Communications department colleagues in the afternoon. Back in Vancouver later on, I’ll be meeting a former student, with whom I’ve worked on several very cool media initiatives, for dinner on Commercial Drive. Then home to pack for a short, happy trip across town to see beautiful friends this weekend.
“I Am Not a Rock Star”
This is a wonderful movie: a documentary about a piano prodigy named Marika Bournaki, from Quebec, that follows her artistic development and career from the ages of 12 to 20. There is a profound courtesy in the way Marika’s family, friends, and teachers interact with one another; when conflict arises, there is no rebellion; instead, there is listening and often poignant adjustment. The music and the feelings of surprise this movie evokes are both beautiful.
Kwantlen Classes
They start today. I am very lucky indeed to have the gig I do. Today’s “Digital Media Marketing,” and tomorrow is “Advanced Professional Communications.” Two sections of “Writing for the Specialized Workplace” (for students in the Special Education Teacher Assistant program) begin in February.
NoContest.CA
At our new communications venture, my colleague TW writes: “It’s a shame that so much of writing in our schools and academic institutions is audienceless.”
2013
Elmwood Avenue balcony, Buffalo, NY
Let’s watch out for one another this new year, to keep the commonweal, which is so precious and can so easily … be gone.
“Leaving on a Jet Plane”
I love this cover by Sea of Bees. (John Denver could write a beautiful song!)
Exhibitions in Vancouver
“Ian Wallace: At the Intersection of Painting and Photography” is a thoughtful and sometimes moving retrospective at the Vancouver Art Gallery of an analytical local artist whose work is often very large and who uses found or revered media materials like movies and magazines in his own. I liked the show, and spent a long time staring at every part of it, and was happy it took up two floors of the gallery. The temperature of Wallace’s art is cool, and the feeling is academic, in the best of ways, I think. The artist makes his self-awareness, in terms of his artistic project, very apparent; there are very lengthy descriptions of his creative process printed out, in little cards on the wall, in most every room. Most artists I know aren’t so forthcoming, or so detailed.
I wish I could say that these very lengthy descriptions detracted from the overall success of Wallace’s exhibition, but they didn’t. His work needs the words. That’s OK.
Upstairs, on the third floor of the VAG, is simple and fabulous mayhem: “Traffic: Conceptual Art in Canada 1965-1980.” These videos and pictures and paintings and all sorts of things I cannot even describe are done by protesters and F students who don’t like how art is used to pacify our amuse … or to educate. Wonderful.
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“The Maureen and George Basil Award”
It was a lovely evening, the School of Business Awards Ceremony, with a very deserving award winner, Danica Sladen, a former student of mine whose Human Resources practicum was successful indeed. That’s Wayne Tebb, Dean of the School of Business, and a very cool friend of mine, on the left.
I have funded the award since 2005 to honour my parents, really good people who have always supported education.
“Peace of Pai”
My friend Kat Kosiancic is writing about her travels through Thailand. I love her writing. Right now she’s living in the bungalow pictured above in the town of Pai.
Kwantlen Agonistes
Christopher Poon describes for The Surrey Now what is sure to become a kerfuffle at my university. Bring on the lawyers, again. (Mr. Poon, by the way, is a Kwantlen journalism graduate who was the inaugural winner of the John Reiss Award in Journalism, an annual prize I fund in honour of a good friend of mine.)
“Elles: Pompidou”
Detail from “Barbed Hula” video, by Sigalet Landau
“Jeune Fille en Vert,” by Tamara de Lempicka
Detail from “Mes Poupees,” a video by Marie-Ange Guilleminot
The “Singular Works by Seminal Women Artists” exhibition at the Seattle Art Gallery mentioned below is an astonishment, with works by Jenny Holzer, Cindy Sherman, Georgia O’Keefe, Adrian Piper, and Kusama. The exhibit on the fourth floor, “Elles: Pompidou – Women Artists from the Centre Pompidou, Paris,” is even more enthralling. It turned me into jelly. The images above link to some particularly breath-taking parts of the exhibit. I was more moved than I could ever convey by a slideshow of Nan Goldin’s photography of the intimacy between loving couples, with Bjork’s very dear “Prayer of the Heart” as the soundtrack. (You can get a taste of it here, in this surreptitiously taken YouTube video uploaded a couple of months ago.)
Jenny Holzer at The Paper Hammer
It was a serendipitous little visit. The Paper Hammer is a delightful paper-product store on 2nd Avenue in Seattle. Jenny Holzer’s exhibition on the walls outside (see some of the work above) is striking. I’m off to see more of Holzer’s work tomorrow, at an show called “Singular Works by Seminal Women Artists” – “seminal” is an odd word to have chosen, I think – at the Seattle Art Museum. I’ll let you know what it’s like.
Outlook TV’s November Show
Longtime basil.CA friend Jack Fox interviews Vancouver’s Bif Naked (above) on this month’s edition of Outlook TV. Visit the show’s Facebook site and website for updates and behind-the-scenes news from this fine magazine program, devoted to British Columbia’s Gay Lesbian Bisexual Trans Two Spirit Queer Question Intersex community.
Academic Tweeting
I’m a fan of it. This semester my third-year marketing class students are tweeting their ongoing, outside reading (hashtag: #MRKT3311) on the on the topic of digital media platforms as a complement to their blogging analyses and traditional textbook reading and report assignments.
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