Laying With My Father by Ryan Pfluger
Luke Gilford
So I'm in nature now, the crickets are chirping outside my window and I am left in the quiet with my thoughts and still, somehow, a poo-load of work to do. I arrived at my new old home today after seeing both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans in one day and then packing and driving all my earthly possessions up here in an overstuffed GMC with a huge iced coffee from McDonald's.
San Francisco was everything I could have hoped for. Such a great place and such a great experience. I managed to escape Pride Day for the most part and go to the beach and Marin Headlands with Parker and Ryan. Ryan Pfluger is a fantastic photographer that I've been following for a long time but for some reason have never linked to him from my own blog before. It was really cool to watch him work and then to be photographed by him on the edge of the ocean and high up on cliffs. I can't wait to see his photos as well as Parker's and mine. Hopefully I'll have my film back by next week. You can see a sneak peek of Ryan's photos HERE and make sure to check out his other work HERE.
I also got to meet another great photographer, LUKE GILFORD, while I was in San Francisco. Luke is a New York based photographer who graduated from UCLA. All around it was a bunch of cute faggots taking pictures in the gayest city on earth. It seemed pretty right.
Labels: ART, PHOTOGRAPHY, REALLY FUCKING GAY
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 6/30/2009 -
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I have had a really busy few weeks, packing, working, houseguests, and being sick. I don't think I've mentioned it here on this blog, but after VISITING and applying to grad schools I've decided to go to Columbia in New York to do my MFA in Film.
I'm in San Francisco for a while right now, which is fantastic, and then I'll be moving to my hometown for the rest of the summer to save money before going to New York. San Francisco is amazing, New York is going to be amazing, going home will actually be quite nice, but my departure from Toronto really snuck up on me. It was a few days before I left, as I was biking from one informal goodbye dinner to another, that I realized what I'd be leaving. I listened to my music and pedalled from West to East and was hit with nostalgia. It is definitely time for me to leave; I have the same feeling going to New York that I did when I was leaving my hometown for Toronto. A sort of panicked desperation to move on. But this is different. I've been in Toronto for the past 8 years - in some ways they were the most formative and eventful years of my life. Toronto is easy, it's home, it's my favourite place to be in the summer. Leaving high school was like leaving a place I didn't want to be in in the first place.
So I look back on these 8 years and feel a bit wistful, but I like that more than panic.
Labels: MAYBE THE FUTURE WILL BE BETTER
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 6/23/2009 -
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The answer is at your fingertips: WWW.HASTHELARGEHADRONCOLLIDERDESTROYEDTHEWORLDYET.COM
Labels: DEATH AND DRAMA, NOBODY LIKES A NERD
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 6/08/2009 -
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Photos and interview - Olaf Breuning in his studio on THE SELBY.
Via WE CAN'T PAINT.
Labels: ART, PHOTOGRAPHY
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 6/08/2009 -
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The Canadians at this year's Venice Bienalle were well-dressed in Jeremy Laing pieces from the FW09 collection. I hope this gets him all the recognition he deserves and more! Yay J!
See Jeremy's work HERE.
Read the full article about the fashion presence in Vencie HERE.
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 6/07/2009 -
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I'll be selling DVDs of my series New Rituals here soon. Stay tuned.
Labels: I MADE THIS. ME. GRAYDON., PHOTOGRAPHY
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 6/05/2009 -
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I like it when the birdy looks in the camera and cacks.
Video by SEMÂ BEKIROVIC who also does some beautiful photography and has made paper prints for gallery display, which is something I really want to do but have not yet tried. I think I'm learning that I am most excited by artists know the rules and walk around them - not so much by the ones who don't learn the rules in the first place or who feel the need to say "Fuck your rules, man!"
From the series Reflections
From the series (edition?) Paperprints
Via WLYS
Labels: ART, PHOTOGRAPHY, VIDEO
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 6/03/2009 -
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Grape Stomper
David at the Dentist
Dramatic Gopher
Ceiling Cat
I love THESE images of just the scenery from famous internet memes. The people were taken out of each environment and we're left with just the surroundings. The creator of MEME SCENERY likens his images to PORN SANS PEOPLE.
Click the image to see the originating meme.
Labels: NOBODY LIKES A NERD
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 6/03/2009 -
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Waaaaa I can't wait for the future! Now sucks! I'm sure this technology will be glitchy for a while but when it gets good it's going to be amazing.
Via JEREMY.
Labels: MAYBE THE FUTURE WILL BE BETTER, NOBODY LIKES A NERD
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 6/02/2009 -
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I finally watched Synecdoche, New York. Lovely. The best part was Diane Wiest reading Caden his final blocking notes. I adore that woman. This is heartbreaking writing and she delivers it perfectly:
You realize you are not special. You have struggled into existence, and are now slipping silently out of it. This is everyone's experience. Every single one. The specifics hardly matter. Everyone's everyone...As the people who adore you stop adoring you; as they die; as they move on; as you shed them; as you shed your beauty; your youth; as the world forgets you; as you recognize your transience; as you begin to lose your characteristics one by one; as you learn there is no-one watching you, and there never was, you think only about driving - not coming from any place; not arriving any place. Just driving, counting off time.
But I have a theory about the film that I can't find on the internet. The person who watched the movie with me disagreed with my theory, too. That theory is this: That the film Synecdoche, New York, was the document of the play done by the real Caden - the Caden who is not in the movie but exists in the meta-level above the movie - or real life (or perhaps an imagined real life that doesn't exist in reality but exists in relation to the film). It's almost four-dimensional.
If Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Caden, and he hires Sammy to play Caden in the play, my theory is that the original Caden hired the Philip Seymour Hoffman version of Caden to play him in the movie. It's difficult to explain meta-referential theories, but I think that makes sense. So since the Synecdoche film that you watch is a version of theatre itself, it can afford those bizarre instances of the surreal - like Hazel's house being perpetually on fire or the self-help book re-writing itself or the way time passes. Maybe in Caden's "real" life (outside of the movie), Hazel died in a fire and he uses a house on fire in the film as dramatic license to enhance the emotion of the Hazel story-line. That kind of Brechtian distanciation and absurdism only calls to attention the formal qualities of film and pulls you out of the story, so to me it makes sense that the Philip Seymour Hoffman level of Caden's life in the film isn't real either - which it isn't because it's in a film that we're watching.
To give more credence to that theory, I also noticed that a lot of scenes that were supposed to be the original life of Caden (especially those with Hazel, like when they're in the car outside her burning house) seemed to be lit very much like a play - specifically like the Death of a Salesman play that Caden mounts at the beginning of the film. And finally, Samantha Morton is a fantastic actress, so the fact that she seems to be a really shitty actress at the beginning makes me think that she was supposed to appear to be an actress playing the "real" Hazel who exists outside of the film.
Yes? No?
Labels: FILM
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 6/02/2009 -
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One of my favourite photographers, BETTINA HOFFMANN, just had an installation up at the AGO. I think it's down now but you can see the videos on her site - the piece is called ÉMILE.
She is Canadian but I don't think of her as a Canadian artist. I really think her work is so exciting and progressive in how it straddles that line between art directed and believable. It's like Lukas Moodysson's film SHOW ME LOVE or the TV series Big Love - the art direction and casting and styling are so perfect and right and down to the detail but feel effortless and completely untouched - almost to the point of looking tasteless or devoid of aesthetic. I'm not sure how much Hoffmann "art directs" her staged portraits, but from the effort she appears to put into perfectly staging her subjects I would assume that she takes control of the mise-en-scène as well (if I may be a douche-bag and say "mise-en-scène").
I think I like her so much because her aesthetic is so much in opposition to the Canadian aesthetic of faux-awkward, tritely-contrived, flash-lit, over-styled, under-evaluated, over-appreciated photographs that we've all been over-exposed to. I mean, JIN-ME YOON'S series was great but we have to stop trying to recreate that, am I right?
Labels: ART, PHOTOGRAPHY, VIDEO
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 6/01/2009 -
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ALEX MCLEOD is unbelievable. His/her 3D creations are breathtaking. I looked at them for a long time until I realized they weren't actual models, but CG renderings. So fantastic - the fun/frivolous scenes imbued with death or disaster or dripping somethings are really great. Dark without having to scream "Hey look I'm dark!" That's not easy to do.
Just click "art" at the top and use your arrows to scroll through the pieces.
Alex is also showing at Switch Contemporary from June 8-July 5 - opening June 11th 7-10 - 2217 Dundas Street West in Toronto (at Roncesvalles).
Labels: ART, JEALOUSY, THINGS I WISH I'D DONE
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 6/01/2009 -
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