n: vb: the spice of imagination
As a part of this years Nuit Blanche, an all-night arts celebration, there’s going to be a 2 a.m. presentation of a life-size chocolate elk to eat!!
I was so happy in Toronto! Why, oh WHY did I ever move away? I cannot tell anymore. I no longer know.
“… the National Mime Workers Association has asked Americans to observe a moment of noise tomorrow at noon in honor of French mime Marcel Marceau.”
Saturday, September 22nd
12 noon to 12 midnight at The Chapel
(304 Dunlevy St. Vancouver)
THE BAD BOYS OF CANADIAN ART BRING LOUD LOWBROW TO FUNERAL CHAPEL
    Count on Canada’s crowned kings of Lowbrow art to choose The CHAPEL, a converted Downtown-Eastside funeral home as the location to mount the show that is destined to breathe new life into the corpse of Vancouver’s modern art scene.
THE ART!
    It is in these grand environs that I, Braineater and 12 Midnite will present an 8000 square foot show of the art that has kept these two at the front of the rat pack for the last two decades. From Braineater’s classic blockhead paintings or his buxom devil-girls and Midnite’s graffiti imagery and neon art to the newest work that’ll be so fresh it’ll still be sticky, fans old and new will get a chance to see Lowbrow as it was intended: really big and a little scary.
THE CARS!
    Of course, hot rods have always been a key ingredient in the Lowbrow culture and this show’s got them in spades. “One-man-hot-rod-gang” 12 Midnite will very fittingly, considering the venue, be unveiling his in-progress hot rod 1963 Pontiac “Boneville” Hearse along with a slew of his other cars in all their battle-worn and flat black glory, while not to be left in anyone’s exhaust cloud, “Lowbrow lout” Braineater will revive his 54 Desoto custom, “Draconia” for the occasion.
THE MUSIC!
    Both I,Braineater and 12 Midnite have always included musical performances in their art shows, and this one will certainly continue that tradition.
    I, Braineater is a musical chameleon so we can only guess at what form his music will take this time, be in sweaty glam-punk or cool electronica, it’ll be Braineater through and through.
    12 MIDNITE will be debuting songs off his soon to be released CD “Sweet Turns Sour” which will be available as a limited-edition pre-release at the show. This will also mark the professional debut of Midnite’s son, Harley Slade who will be playing guitar and keyboard in the band which will also include Pointed Stick Tony Bardach on bass and drummer Marc L’esperance.
Though the day-long show is free to attend and all ages are welcome, the evening performance will have a $5 cover charge from 8PM on and tickets will be available at the door.
If only good theater were contagious, I could infect you all. Spread a dramatic virus, upstaging all your favourite shows, something like American politics, but without all the going-down-in-flames. A new world order, literate, thick with allegory, better than video games.
The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes is up on sale.
They also have a promo going on if you use the code ‘PRICESEARCH’ at checkout.
re d s h i f t m u s i c s o c i e t y presents…
Mjölnir, a new work for percussion ensemble.
Tuesday, May 8 at 7:00 pm at the Vancouver Art Gallery, 750 Hornby Street.
Info: 604-730-9449
Free Admission!
Mjölnir:
      1. the name given to the hammer of the Norse god, Thor
      2. a free, public music event in the Vancouver Art Gallery
Mjölnir will feature eight of BC’s most outstanding percussionists and an arsenal of pitched and non-pitched percussion instruments, spread throughout the levels of the central rotunda, filling the entire art gallery with music.
The ensemble will perform new compositions written specifically for this large and reverberant space by Christopher Butterfield, Jocelyn Morlock, Colin MacDonald, Andre Cormier , and Jordan Nobles. As with most Redshift events, the audience will be free to sit and watch the musicians and/or move about the space, creating their own sonic experience.
The Holy Body Tattoo presents..
Smash-Up, debuting a new work, Animals of Distinction.
May 8–12 at the Cultch, 1895 Venables Street. All performances 8 pm.
INFO: 604-251-1363
Tickets are $22.50
The Holy Body Tattoo is an award-winning Vancouver contemporary dance duo, producers of (arguably) some of Canada’s most inventive and astonishing performances. They’ve worked with artists like William Gibson, Tessa Bartholomeusz, Tindersticks, Warren Ellis, (the violinist, not the comics writer, you nerds), and The Tiger Lillies, to wonderful results. It was years ago, but I still count attending Circa as one of the more positive experiences of my younger life.
A series of short mixed-media works conceived as a collision between dance, animation and sound, Smash Up expresses the sublimely disquieting forces of desire, isolation, emotional and physical dislocation. Smash Up integrates James Paterson and Amit Pitaru’s immersive animated environments with music by Roger Tellier-Craig (godspeed you! black emperor; Fly Pan Am). With dancers from across Canada and choreography by Gingras, Smash Up inhabits the space between the layers of image, gesture and sound.
The Brothers Quay Retrospective was fantastic. Street of Crocodiles and The Epic of Gilgamesh (aka This Unnameable Little Broom) are still resting behind my eyes, making the world a nicer place to live. Not only do I now have a precise imagine of what I wish to do with my cat skull, I woke up in a night that was almost morning and let my blindness guide me through almost a musical exploration of lines of thick shadow and knots unwinding. By the time I finally got up to face down my day, I had already written full paragraphs of script in my head. (I will never regret keeping all my baby teeth or that small box of broken watches). Now it is only upon me to learn how to tweak the settings on my Canon to something appropriate for stop-motion animation.
I will state for the record that I hated the stop-motion course I took, the teacher’s remarks were too open-ended, there were no crits that weren’t blindingly obvious, and I found the other students ideas oddly insipid, them: “I know how to end it! Let’s kill off our character with a giant rolling Indiana Jones ball of plasticine!” me: “No, let’s end it with the beginning of that Franz Kafka story where the guy turns into a bug, the articulation would be really… nevermind” (welcome to me at twelve), but it still remains one of the most useful classes my mother ever enrolled me in. The only classes that frustrated me more were the Architecture and Painting Courses where they didn’t give us a lick of information, just gave us supplies and told us to go nuts. If I recall correctly, I ended up building a small house for cats that I was incredibly unsatisfied with and an awkward triptych of paintings my mother loved, but could barely fit on the bus home.
