“I scrub the sharp edge off my appetite.”


Go forward and forward by Ryohei Hase

Perhaps I should be ashamed, says the back of my brain, as I reach out for reciprocity. Perhaps I should fall down, check myself in to the lost and found, say there peacefully until claimed. Kick my heels, properly tagged, next to a small box of forgotten apples, two overdue library books, a rain ruined Klimpt print, and wait.

This part of my brain is obviously insane.

Instead, when I am nervous, I want them to be nervous too. I wish us to match like a pair of jittery, colourful addictions, ready to dribble words the way a cork pops from bottle of something bubbly, ballistic and driven, dangerous in the wrong hands. I want us to assume and feel unsafe doing so, to tinker, to rewrite boundaries like history and we’re the last ones standing. I want to be saturated in it, that understanding, that shared, halting drive, the cartilage landscape of unknown territory. Feel the certainty of it swelling in my chest, devouring my entrenched dragons of well trained doubt, dispelling the honeymoon aura of dread, and trust where I stand enough to take root in the sediment we’ve accrued, tall as a birch, as practically imperishable as the same.

It’s primitive how I find the discovery of shared fear to be soothing. It triggers something deeper than sleep, more important than the shape of bones under skin, like being able to see the basic geometry of need, the invisible pillars upon which we build our waking dreams. I am reassured instantly as somewhere in my genes a fatal desire to know is fed. Such moments are a gift for which I do not know how to say thank you. They remind me of fire escapes in the same way they represent a way down from a burning building to solid ground. Effective, quaint, and incredible.


Uninterrupted chain by Ryohei Hase

artpost: a practice fallen from style

My memory tickled by a conversation I had that mentioned Victorian Memento Mori, I spent a bit of time on Sunday fruitlessly searching for a particularly nice contemporary hair artist I’d found on-line two or three years ago that I intended to post about, but never got around to. Today, oddly, not even a week later, the artist has fallen directly in my lap via my friends over at Ectomo and she’s gotten even better:

“Melanie Bilenker makes jewelry from precious metals, resin, wood, and her own hair, arranging the strands into tiny snapshots of everyday life.”


chocolate, 2008

brooch, 9.5 x 7 x 1 cm, Gold, ebony, resin, pigment, hair.


From her site:

The Victorians kept lockets of hair and miniature portraits painted with ground hair and pigment to secure the memory of a lost love. In much the same way, I secure my memories through photographic images rendered in lines of my own hair, the physical remnants. I do not reproduce events, but quiet minutes, the mundane, the domestic, the ordinary moments.

(I used to do this with Antony in the shower, make tiny, ephemeral pictures of our life together on the tiles of the wall with our shed hair. Our lines were not half so fluid as Melanie Bilenker’s, but they were ours and sweet and fun. Every day we would wash them away and draw something new. Now, years later, I should regret I never took a picture, but it is enough for me that they were there.)

artpost: some inventions are more obvious than others

via Brass Goggles.


Steampunk Space Helmet, by Herr Döktor, entitled Vacuum Survival System
Build Progress Forum Thread

Recently recovered from the archive at Castle d’Arrogance, details of Herr Döktor’s Vacuum Survival System, or ‘Space Helmet’, have just recently come to light; this object was produced at some, as yet, undetermined time (due to the peculiar and labyrinthine method of personal dating) as a means for ‘personal safety while travelling the Ætheral Void between the Spheres, and for safe and comfortable promenading upon the Airless Planets of the Solar System’

Apparently it started as a large acrylic Victorian cloche-style garden propagator and a large polypropylene planter. Fantastic! (More pictures at Brass Goggles).

fricking frack: things I hate to miss more than

It’s that time of year again…

12th Annual Eastside Culture Crawl
November 21, 22, & 23

The 2008 Crawl map.

FRIDAY November 21st 5:00pm – 10:00pm
SATURDAY November 22nd 11:00am – 6:00pm
SUNDAY November 23rd 11:00am – 6:00pm

The Eastside Culture Crawl is a free, annual 3-day arts festival that involves artists opening their doors to let the public tramp through their creative studio-spaces, (and sometimes homes), to exhibit work for sale.

“Painters, jewelers, sculptors, furniture makers, musicians, weavers, potters, writers, printmakers, photographers, glassblowers; from emerging artists to those of international fame… these are just a sampling of the exciting talents featured during this unique chance to meet local artists in their studios.

Purchase something that strikes your fancy, commission something to be uniquely yours, or just browse through the studios and meet the artists, learning about their specific works of art, materials and tools, approaches and techniques. This is a once a year opportunity to meet many diversely talented artists and view their creations in the studios where they work. Be part of this exciting event, which brings people from all over the Lower Mainland, and share in the imaginations that enrich our neighbourhood and lives.”

Last year Dillon and I went to a bit of it, and it was absolutely spectacular. Almost endlessly fascinating, as every room contained an entirely new collection of art. 1000 Parker St., especially, as it has the highest concentration of artists. (Though there seems to be more paintings of crows at 1000 Parker St. than there are actual crows in a fifteen mile radius of the building itself. Go figure.) Thankfully few studios were devoted to watercolour trees or flowers, instead it was a little like coming home, exploring every room as new, colour-spattered, welcoming universe. Last year there were over 300 artists showing. This year there’s going to be more.

It’s one of the few Vancouver events I consider unmissable, which is why it’s killing me a little that I’m not going to be in town while it’s happening. Instead I’m going to be in Seattle, and then hopefully on a plane, making my way South, towards Lung and the Salton Sea, the ecological disaster desert west outside of L.A. Take pictures, everyone. Attend, discover, and explore.

artpost: people I will always appreciate

via karen meisner of strange horizons:

Tilda Swinton, from her second State of Cinema address, San Francisco, 2006:

Can I be alone in my longing for inarticulacy – for a cinema that refuses to join all the dots? For an a-rhythm in gesture, for a dissonance in shape? For the context of a cinematic frame, a frame that – in the end – only cinema can provide. For the full view, the long shot, the space between… the gaps… the pause… the lull… the grace of living…

The figurative cinema’s awkward and rather unsavoury relationship with its fruity old aunt, the theatre, to her vanities, her nous, her beautifully constructed and perennially eloquent speechifying, her cast iron – corset-like – structures, her melo-dramatic texture and her histrionic rhythms. How tiresome it is, it always has been. How studied. The idea of absolute articulacy, perfect timing, a vapid elegance of gesture, an unblinking, unthinking face. What a blessed waste of a good clear screen, a dark room and the possibility of an unwatched profile, a tree, a hill, a donkey…

How I long for documentary, in resistance – for unpowdered faces and unmeasured tread – for the emotionally undemonstrative family scene – for a struggle for unreachable words, for the open or even unhappy ending? The occasionally dropped shoe off the heel, the jiggle to readjust; the occasionally cracked egg; the mess of milk spilt. The concept of a loss for words. For a State of Cinema – as the state of grace that it affords us – in which nothing much happens but all things are possible, even inarticulacy, even failure, even mess…


tilda swinton painted by (her partner) john byrne

he’ll be back, oh yes he will

BB video: Jacob explaining his Cold Boot Encryption Attack.

I deeply appreciate Jacob. Not only is he locally famous as my mad, delicious friend who convinced Liz and I that taking our shirts off while standing in two feet of snow was a good idea, (all in the name of art, you understand), he is also now, gratifyingly, the mad genius behind NoiseBridge, an open Project Space for hackers that just opened in San Francisco’s Mission District with a focus on art, science, technology, mentoring and other fun stuff.

“We want to provide infrastructure and collaboration opportunities for people interested in programming, hardware hacking, physics, chemistry, mathematics, photography, security, robotics, all kinds of art, and, of course, technology. Through talks, workshops, and projects we encourage knowledge exchange, learning, and mentoring.

As a space for artistic collaboration and experimentation, we are open to all types of art – with a special emphasis on the crossover of art and technology. From hardware labs to electronics, cooking, photography, and sound labs, anything that’s creative is welcome.

We intend to have many interesting things happening at all times. Sharing is essential to making this work. A logical followup to this is to find a space to display our creative projects.”

When it’s completely set up, the plan is to have a darkroom, a machine shop area, an electronics area, a programming laptop area, a relaxing reading room, a bart capsule hotel space, a library, server racks, a kitchen, and possibly a few more things, just because. At the moment they’re still meshed in the process of establishing themselves as a non-profit, but soon people will be able to make tax deductible donations. Not to say you can’t already give them money. That would be good too.