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And I say
Absolutely sexy minimalist jazz. Nicolas Jaar ft. Scout Larue and Will Epstein. “And I say.”
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Pretender
Last weekend I needed some coldwave. (Black Marble, opening track from their forthcoming EP Weight Against the Door.) Pretender by Black Marble
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Saint Nothing
Tugging my heartstrings: Daniel Rossen of Grizzly Bear’s new track, “Saint Nothing.” The EP Silent Hour/ Golden Mile is forthcoming from Warp in March.
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Holidays/ New Books/ NeWork
I’m back in Vancouver after a great month-long trip across Canada to visit family, friends, and my partner Curran. It all started off in Edmonton, where I spent a week with Curran and his family, before I flew out to Toronto for a couple of weeks to spend time with family and friends. In Toronto, I not only had the ...
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Shoot, 1971
Chris Burden, Shoot. F Space, November 19th, 1971.
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The Drive
I spent a lot of time on the Drive this week, looking at apartments with Alicia, and heading to the Prophouse for my friend Shiela’s show with the Maladies. Alicia found a really, really lovely place, and now my apartment hunt has zoned in on the area. I shouldn’t get ahead of myself, though. I move next August. There’s work ...
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SB Publications Catalogue
I just realized I forgot to post this! We released the Winter 2011-2012 catalogue for SB Publications at the end of September. This season’s offerings include a text & photographic work from ReLit award winning poet Daniel Scott Tysdal, and a mixed media art book from Canadian culture jammer ýta. From within the art collective, we’re releasing a multimedia text ...
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Rain + The Soft Moon
The rain in Vancouver (also known as one of its two seasons) has created the perfect environment for enjoying the darkness of The Soft Moon blaring. Here’s a taste:
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Austerity + Occupy Vancouver
The next issue of the Steel Bananas Quarterly will be organized around the theme of austerity, a word we can’t seem to shake out of our newspapers. We’ve received a large number of submissions already, but we’ll continue to collect until the deadline on November the 15th. Check out the call for submissions if you haven’t already done so. I’ve ...
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Thanksgiving
I went apple picking at Cherry Lane farm with my friend Alicia for Thanksgiving. The weather was perfect for hanging out on a farm, though my outfit wasn’t. Here are a few shots:
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GULCH in UTQ’s survey of Letters in Canada
University of Toronto Quarterly just published its annual critical and bibliographic survey of Letters in Canada — most recently for books published during 2009 — and mentioned Steel Bananas’ 2009 assemblage Gulch: An Assemblage of Poetry and Prose as an unconventional anthology aiming to aggressively critique the perceived waning of affect and trend toward heteronomy in the post-millennium world. Andrew ...
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The monsters in the room were all dancing
This is lovely.
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SB28
SB28 launched two days ago. Flip through below or visit steelbananas.com/sb28 to read/download the issue.
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Virago
“If you can avoid talking about / body then do so now please” — Margaret Christakos, from Sooner, 2005. – Karen Correia Da Silva, from Virago, 2011. Vancouver, BC.
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Sombre Mountains
Strength came from somewhere, from revulsion; there was a crash and a wave of light, and the dead man was crouching in his lair, facing the animal onrush of light. Yet it was hardly dawn. And the strange, piercing keenness of daybreak’s sharp breath was on him. It meant full awakening. – D.H.L.
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Fuck Irony
Text, collage, photography, and collaboration celebrating mimesis over a period of thirty days in 2011. Works include poetry, visual art, and documentation of public performance/ happenings in Vancouver by multidisciplinary artist Karen Correia Da Silva. Fuck Irony ISBN: 978-0-9867777-7-6 Release Date: December 2011 SB Publications 30 copies
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My August 29th
I don’t start classes until September 6th. Freedom from work + the majesty of my natural surroundings have left me very inspired. I spent my day getting my wrists acquainted with my new violin, reading about Shary Boyle, and walking through the woods.
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Latest Project
This is Woodward. I bought him today. He is from Romania. He was handmade in Vasile Gliga’s workshop by some nice people who care about good quality violins. His friend, Juliette, is a french bow made from Brazil wood and horse hair. Together, they make beautiful music! Today, I taught myself how to play “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” and tomorrow ...
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First week in Vancity
I’ve been a resident of Vancouver for a week, and am finally taking a day to rest and relax after seeing as much as I could. The week flew by, with art galleries on top of restaurants, on top of beaches, and settling in with Curran’s help. He flew out on the 19th to visit me, and flew back to ...
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IQ3!
I had the pleasure of designing the latest issue of the Incongruous Quarterly, straight out of Montreal. Read the science-themed poetry and prose here, and check out their blog for more content and updates.
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Savage Night at the Opera
Though I am, perhaps, the biggest fan ever of Destroyer’s Rubies, this has easily become the new anthem for my last summer in Toronto, paradoxically, by an artist straight from Vancouver. I move in nine days.
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Master of Arts Degree: Attained
Today, I submitted bound copies of my final major research paper, with all revisions, my signed declaration page, and signatures of approval from my supervisor and second reader to the Department of English at Ryerson University. As I walked back to the MLCRC from our Program Administrator’s office, I felt overwhelmed. For a while, it felt as though it would ...
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We’re Savage High
Sound bites from this afternoon working at the MLCRC… “…love is a deeper season than reason…” “…for the love, comes the burning young from the liver, sweating through your tongue…” “I’m growing like the quickening hues…”
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I Heart Vancouver
So, I’ve officially been in Vancouver for 24 hours, and I am hopelessly, madly in love. I’ll post photos when I return, but here’s one of my shots of the Rocky Mountains from 41,000 feet:
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Scream / Photos from the Mobile Street Mic
The last Scream in High Park is tonight, so make sure to head out! Here are a few few photos from SB’s Scream Literary Festival Mobile Street Mic, Variations on a Scream:
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Canada Day (2011)
Curran and I decided to do something entirely wholesome and low-key this Canada Day, so we took my Mom to Toronto Island to hike and watch the fireworks over the water. We walked for about eight hours around the city and the island before heading back home, where I sincerely missed the effect of the island air on my city ...
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The Scream Literary Festival
Upcoming event for the Scream Literary UnFestival: The Steel Bananas Art Collective will be meandering the streets of Toronto armed with a wagon, microphone, and camera, inviting passersby to take a moment to offer “Variations on a Scream” and/or improvisational poetry on the street. Each poet-for-a-moment will be photographed for a large piece to be presented to the Scream organizers, ...
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Toronto Soul
So much has happened in the last two weeks. The Strangers in Paris launch went swimmingly, my brother moved and settled in to his new job as an Associate Creative Director at Mullen, and my sister Trish got engaged! The pace of change in Toronto for this last summer of mine seems to be unprecedented. Or maybe I’m just noticing ...
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Congrats, Curran!
Congrats to my partner in crime and partner in life, Curran, for having his Honours BA in English Literature conferred upon him today!
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Summertime begins…
People I love in the city I love. A few shots from my summer wanderings thus far:
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Bernadette
Bernadette by Starla Bontecou. Oil paint on an antique photograph. A gift for Jeff to celebrate his recent move to Boston.
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Luminato/ iArmy
I’m going to mention Luminato in a moment, so bear with me. I must get this techno-guilt off of my chest: So, I always said I would never get a smartphone. Phone companies are evil (re: my $800 payment to Telus to cancel a ridiculous contract I naively signed), and when I saw all of those drooling teens with bad ...
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Mr. Piano Sandwich Dog Samurai
I know this blog is for my peripheral work, but I just had to post some of Curran’s recent off-the-cuff drawings (with his permission, of course). Here’s Mr. Piano Sandwich Dog Samurai takes his strawberry for a stroll, and Bijou!, which I commissioned this afternoon:
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Call for submissions
SB28: Translation Politics and patois. Hybrids, conversions, and mashups. Malapropisms and misspelling… We are calling for submissions of poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, and visual art on the theme on translation for the twenty-eighth issue of Steel Bananas. We want to know what is lost, what is gained, what it looks and sounds like, from ekphrasis to inter-cultural dialogue. Deadline: July ...
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Strangers in Paris
I had the pleasure to design the recent anthology Strangers in Paris, launching in Toronto in late June, with NYC and Paris launches following later this year. Including Booker Prize winner John Berger, Pulitzer Prize winner Jorie Graham, Griffin Poetry Prize winner Alice Notley, and many expatriate newbies, the anthology seeks to find a new vocabulary for one of the ...
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Fischer
Last night Ted, Sarah, Zack, James, Curran and I met at the TIFF Lightbox to see the recent documentary on former World Chess Champion, Bobby Fischer. It was interesting and unsettling. Directed by Liz Garbus, the film followed his upbringing, his dedication to the game of chess from the age of six, and his personal psychological decline, leading to his ...
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Some things last a long time
I’m currently reading Jennifer DeVere Brody’s Punctuation: Art, Politics, and Play for my thesis, and mulling over the dash’s bizarre ability to separate, connect, and propel. The Baroness’ writing is dominated by the dash, as she weaves through her narratives of insanity and woe in an erratic stream of consciousness that branches off in the most bizarre directions. Maybe I’m ...
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Blonk
Last night Curran and I ventured out to the Toronto New School of Writing‘s evening with Dutch avant-garde composer and sound-poet Jaap Blonk. In the great hall of 918 Bathurst Culture, Arts, Media, and Education Centre, Blonk opened with Hugo Ball’s Seepferdchen und Flugfische, the poem I performed last year, which he performed ⎯ I must admit ⎯ better than ...
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Abject Address
I’m currently reading about counterdiscourse and the abject address in Dina Al-Kassim’s On Pain of Speech for my thesis, and thumbing through pages and pages of the Baroness’ handwritten rants from her time in Eberswalde asylum just outside of Berlin. Is it odd that I don’t think she reads mad? Here’s another track from my research playlist:
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Eye Contact
My new favourite research music: Eye Contact by Gang Gang Dance. As I’m knee deep in sociolinguistics and the personal life of DADA Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, their sound oddly fits. I’m now off to Robarts for more reading. Below is a 4AD live session with Gang Gang Dance, and a six-part FaceCulture interview.
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A Toronto New School of Writing Event you must attend
After my performance of Hugo Ball’s “Seepferdchen und Flugfische” at the Cameron House last year, it has been my dream to perform Kurt Schwitters’ “Ursonate” about half as well as Jaap Blonk. Thus, I am extremely excited for this event: Toronto New School is pleased to host for one night only in Toronto international sound performance artist Jaap Blonk, who ...
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“gray and affectionate”
As I shuttle back and forth between Vancouver and Toronto this summer, I’m also continuing my work with the unpublished correspondence of DADA artist Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven at the Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre, including letters to Djuna Barnes, Peggy Guggenheim, William Carlos Williams, and more. After a few months of working with the Baroness’ nearly one-hundred year-old ...
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Grown Ocean
“You would come to me then without answers Lick my wounds and remove my demands, for now.”
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View from the air
Un coup de foudre! (UBC’s Point Grey campus in the foreground, located at the tip of the Burrard peninsula, or Lower Mainland, with downtown Vancouver and Stanley Park stretching out in the distance.) My last major trip (other than shuttling back and forth between NYC and Toronto) was to South America, specifically interior Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. I remember the ...
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The Lake
I officially quit smoking and started long-distance running again. I ran through the Don River wetlands, and south to the lake. It’s a beautiful day to be by the water. I sat there for a while thinking how much I love these sad, polluted beaches. It’s sometimes hard to believe that miles of toxic sludge stretch across the basin, just ...
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Hot Docs
The Hot Docs Film Festival is upon us, and our correspondent C.S. Folkers is devouring films at an unprecedented rate. Along with the article “Two Approaches to Black History at the Hot Docs Film Festival” included in SB27, wherein C.S. Folkers reviews Göran Hugo Olsson’s Black power Mixtape 1967-1975 (Sweden, 2011) and Charles Officer’s Mighty Jerome (Canada, 2011), we’re posting ...
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The Election
I tried my best to keep my rantings and ravings about Canada’s recent federal election off of my blog, and safely on my twitter and facebook feeds, where my anger and indignation wouldn’t stand out so starkly and sorely among all of my project updates, art, and general happiness. Of course, the election of a Conservative majority government was a ...
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tUnE-yArDs
In celebration of the multitude of recent awesomeness in my life, and as a last hurrah with my brother Jeff before he moves to Boston, one of my best friends in the whole wide world, Riaz, bought me a ticket to see tUnE yArDs at the Horseshoe. He’s the best, and I’m stoked!
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Green College!
Ahh! After an application process just as long as my PhD application, wherein I had to send in my CV, three letters of reference, a statement of interest and involvement, and my academic transcripts, I got in to Green College! Don’t know what that is? Well, from their website: Green College is a graduate residential college at the University of ...
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Family
With three months left in Toronto before I move West to start my PhD, I’ve been spending a lot of my time with my family. Each of my siblings will be in a different city this Fall, with my sister Patricia enjoying her recently bought first home in Mississauga, my brother Jeff departing to Boston to work as a Creative ...
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Aesthetics of Collaboration: Humberto Vélez
After a March Around the World, the Art Gallery of York University (AGYU) is Bringing It All Back Home to Toronto, where people from all the cities in the world converge in Aesthetics of Collaboration—a retrospective of a decade of performance work by Panamanian-born, British-based artist Humberto Vélez. Aesthetics of Collaboration Humberto Vélez 13 April – 26 June 2011 Opening ...
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