On Saturday I went to the final UBC Farm market for the year. The winter squash was lovely and I wished I had a half ton truck to cart some home. I bought some honey crisp apples from an organic farm in Summerland and some tomatilloes from the Mayan gardeners. I am still cooking up recipes using a pumpkin I bought at Home Grow-In. This morning we had pumpkin pancakes with maple syrup and pecans. I really wanted some whipped cream. Whipped cream and pumpkins are BFF.
Yes, even the bees get a special treat for Thanksgiving. At this time of the year they need fattening up for the winter and there is not a lot of fall forage out there. There are cosmos, Jerusalem artichokes, some sunflowers and asters, but let's face it, the sources of pollen and nectar are dwindling. So we mix up two parts sugar (4 c) to one part water (2 c) and blend in a pollen patty. As you can see, the bees are hungry and they immediately slurp up the smoothie with their tongues.
We are worried about our bees because when we checked them two weeks ago they had lost yet another queen. They had made three good queen cells so our fingers are crossed that one strong queen will hatch and help them make it through the winter. We've had really bad luck with our queens this year. I hope next year will be better.
I am drying the fennel and hops from the front of our house, but most of the hops grew way up beyond our reach. I need a trained squirrel to harvest them.
My amaranth fell over after the rain, so I've been stringing them up. I brought one head inside to see if the seeds will ripen.
I harvested some fennel twigs for school art projects.
After a lovely warm day working in the garden it was time for the human's Thanksgiving feast: squash, brussel sprouts, turkey with stuffing, cranberry jelly and my pumpkin pie made from scratch. I think the bees would have liked the German dessert wine we had with the pie. Happy Thanksgiving!
Captain Vancouver looks over the community garden and gives out healthy eating tips.
Meanwhile, we are harvesting some zucchinis which will be raffled off at our school tonight.
Many plants have powdery mildew now, but the lupins don't seem bothered by it.
As I was pulling out the rotting tomato plants the chickadees kept flying to the sunflowers and plucking out seeds. Can you spot the chickadee in this photo?
These tall plants are mullein in the Aboriginal healing garden.
The amaranth is such a rich color.
A very soggy bumble bee is drying out in the sun in a cosmo.
Even the syrphid flies are a bit slow this morning.
The white garden is one of my favorite spots at city hall. Let's hope the sun sticks around and creates dry conditions for seed saving.
Poshya Kakl - is one of the most progressive young women performance artists currently working in Kurdistan, Iraq. Kakl’s artwork deals with her living reality, and reflects systems of kinship, gender, religion, barriers and borders. Participating across borders and ignoring barriers, Kakl will be working with CHAOS from Iraq via the internet.
Broadcast via Skype (Source: Open Space website)
We had met Poshya via a Skype connection the day before, waving at her and welcoming her to the festival. The image was very blurry but we could tell she looked happy. I overheard Sinead saying that we may or may not be able to contact her at the time the performance was scheduled due to the unexpected power cuts she might experience. (O'Donnell is working to get a new computer for Kakl as hers is getting old and won't wok on a battery.) We were intrigued by the construction of a screen that would allow Sinead O'Donnell to project her skype connection with Poshya Kakl on the ceiling of the gallery. Red judo mats were places on the floor so the audience could lie down and look up at the ceiling. Threads of yarn hung down from the screen touching the floor.
Before the performance one of the curators read a letter the artist sent to the audience. In language that may have been translated by Babel Fish she explained that although we can touch the ground and the walls we cannot touch the gallery. Kakl would love to perform at the Chaos festival in the flesh but she is not allowed to leave her country. So we watch her from a distance in her bedroom in Kurdistan waiting for the audience with her face wrapped in yarn. Some of her family live in Vancouver and came to the gallery to see her perform. We all clapped to welcome them. (One of which was the toddler, the delicate little girl who had been so frightened by the plates crashing down in Sinead O' Donnell's performance.)
The image was extremely pixelated and painterly. There were technical difficulties that took a short while to sort out. As I waited I thought of myself as a younger woman in my small bedroom in a home in the middle of the prairies writing and sketching and creating the performances that would eventually unite me with a whole community of artists. I touched the yarn beside me that led to the ceiling and thought of the innocence of tin can telephones. The artist slowly unwrapped the yarn, revealing her young, pretty face which was still distorted beyond recognition by the veil of technology. It was morning in Kurdistan, so Kakl's day was just beginning as this performance marked the close of the evening's performances.
Pauline Cummins has been making video and sound work since 1985. Her current interests are collaborative performance and process led video installation. She has shown internationally and her work is in the collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art. She co-curated Locus Suspectus where the hidden comes to light’ and Terms & Conditions. Both exhibitions dealt with performance and video. (Source: Unbuilding website)
Pauline Cummins - Sound the Alarm, a 45-minute performance with sound and video elements. This performance deals with the question of power/powerlessness. It explores visually and aurally the feelings that attend the loss of innocence for the individual, and for a society. (Source: Open Space website)
Gertrude Stein famously said, “Considering how dangerous everthing is, nothing is very frightening.” Acts of violence and abuse against children are too upsetting to imagine. We read the headlines and watch fictionalized accounts of abuse but thinking too much about them would make us crazy. Part of transformative power of art is that is allows us to consider the terrible things humans do from a distance, thus preserving our sanity amidst chaos.
The persona of the performer, whom I call “Mother” was in parts Baba Yaga, the witch in the gingerbread house, and kali the goddess of creation and destruction. The artist cut gingerbread men out of slices of white (Wonder)bread and fried them in oil in two frying pans. At one point she handed out these crunchy greasy shapes to the audience. “You don't have to,” she says in a voice too calm, too reassuring. She managed to convey an ominous sense that she could have powdered the “little tings” with arsenic somewhere along the way. “It leaves a nasty tasty in your mouth,” she says. (Doesn't arsenic have a bitter taste?) “Mother” goes to her table and handles and considers some sharp instruments. Tools of creation and/or destruction.
Parts of the piece have an elegiac tone. At one point the artist unfurls a scroll of waxed paper and recites childrens' names. A woman comes up the stairs playing a somber composition on the trumpet. All the while we see a looping projection of found footage in which an ominous clergyman in black plays a little joke on the women posing shyly in front of the lens. He is sneaking up behind them and poking them in the sides with his fingers. The trickster avoids the gaze of the camera.
Near the end of the performance “Mother” pulls a bowl of water in between her legs as she sits on the floor against a wall. She pulls a wet pillowcase tightly over her head and wails. It is an image of torture. Since we have seen the images from Abu Ghraib, the pillowcase over the head will resonate as an image of torture of prisoners of war, but to associate this image with a child or mother is even more disturbing.
The trumpet player appears once more and her song begins to mimic and intertwine with “Mother's” wailing. A mother you can't trust. Pain begetting pain. Born astride a chamber of horrors.
Sandra Johnston - (with) INTENT - Johnston is currently developing a series of actions that reflect on questions of creative improvisation, paralleled with processes of judicial inquiry. In considering forms of evidence, a legal jury must consider “intent”- essentially an assessment of a person’s motives, or state of mind when committing to an action. During this performance a series of actions will be undertaken firstly as improvised and therefore unfamiliar acts, which are subsequently re-entered, the second time with a more developed sense of intent, or knowledge. (Source: Open Space website)
The innocence of improvisation, the responsibility of rehearsal.
Intent. Motive. The difference between first and second degree murder. The heat of the moment. The id. The ego. The libido. The superego. Conspiracy. Stalking. Road rage. Misogyny. Parole violation. Repeat Offender. Sectarian attack. Rape. First time. Juvenile offender.
The innocence of improvisation, the responsibility of a modus operandi.
Sandra Johnston's performance took place in an old Victorian courtroom in the Maritime museum. We were ushered into the room by the gallery director and instructed to sit anywhere in the room apart from the seats around the table of evidence. Most people opted to sit at the sides in the jury seating.
Did you plan the attack? Did you watch the victim? Did you make sketches, diaries? Did you share your goals and intentions? Were you looking for revenge? Did your anger and rage overflow? Were you out of control? Did you defend yourself? Did you fight for your life? Skin under fingernails.
Two tables were pushed together holding three heavy drinking glasses, a pile of folded grey shirts, a pen, and some sheets of paper. There were three glasses on the judge's desk. One held water and I couldn't see what was in the others although I was told later that one glass contained pig's blood.
Did you make sketches of the piece? Did you weigh the options? Did you make a mental map of your journey? Plan of attack.
The semiotics of the courtroom. The semiotics of performance creation.
The artist wore a black button down shirt and black jeans and bare feet. She stood by the table(s) of evidence and began to walk along the edges, wiping her finger along the surface. She collected dust on her fingers and then wiped them onto one of the sheets of paper, gathering the evidence. She cut her fingernails and collected the clippings on a sheet of paper.
Did anyone know what you were going to do? Did you intend to surprise your audience? Did you intend to surprise yourself? Have you done this performance before? Which images have you packed in your suitcase and brought from Northern Ireland? What is your performance DNA? What are your aesthetic prejudices?
The artist picked up two of the drinking glasses and slipped them onto her feet. She used her arms and upper body to move herself around the table and around the courtroom.
Gestures of supplication. Gestures of desperation. Lives in the balance.
The artist is silent. The gulls cry eerily overhead. The artist takes a drink of water from the judges table. She swallows some of the fingernail clippings. She put the fingernail clippings in her mouth and chewed on them. After reaching a point of exhaustion she slips her feet out of the glasses and walks over to the docket. She balances on the edge.
Swallowing the evidence. Biting her nails. She pushes her limits. She weighs her options. She is defining the performance in real time, but memories and intentions help to create its shape. Nature or nurture? Bad to the bone.
She unbuttons her black shirt and picked up one of the twelve grey shirts and buttons them all together one by one until she had a ring of shirts. She performs gestures with the shirts, looping them around on the end of the tables and dragging them to one side. She pulls the shirts off. She makes a ball of the shirts.
Twelve good (wo)men strong and true. Are you Catholic or Prozzie? Feminist or Mysogynist? Neutral or prejudicial? Forgiving or vengeful? Justice or Nemesis? Chemistry or Alchemy?
She takes several drinks of water. She fixes her gaze on the table of evidence. She weighs the evidence. She takes the glass of water and fixes the mouth of it to her chest, slipping it down her skin, through her bra down her belly through her panties down her leg over her foot and off. By now most of the water is leaked out but she drinks the rest. The bottoms of her feet are dusty. She pulls some of the fingernail clippings from her mouth and puts them in a glass of pig's blood.
She leaves the space.
Applause.
Did we have a resolution? Do we need a resolution? A judgement. A decision. Did it all go according to plan? Will there be an appeal? Taxpayers money. Cut the arts. Cut the artist. Taxpayers money.
Conclusion: Everyone has the right to cross the street. Safely. Crossing guard, security guard, insecurity guard, Garda. Whose security is it anyway?
Was there a plan all along? Lack of divine intervention. Divine intentions. Human results.
Forgiveness. I forgive your humanity.
[These are my impressions of the performance and I apologize if I have misrepresented the piece in any way due to my memory and my version of how the events unfolded. LW]
