Artscape YOUNGplace, Koffler Centre, and adieu (not necessarily in that order)

In the increasingly rare moments I actually log in over here, there's a little box underneath my login that says "remember me." I feel like it should have a question mark; I blog so little these days, I barely remember myself. 

This is a circumstance I hope to change for my many fans (hi, mom) but the jury's still out. I'll have made a decision on the fate of this badly neglected virtual space by early December, partly because I'm going to be gone for three weeks starting Friday (florentine@post.com, I can almost hear your poison tears hissing on the keyboard now). 

In any case, some news: Artscape announced today that it had received a $2 million gift from The Michael Young Family Foundation for its still-in-progress repurposement of the old Shaw Street School. With it comes naming rights: The property will open in fall 2012, Artscape says, under the name Artscape YOUNGplace. 

About 3 minutes after that announcement, the Koffler Centre for the Arts said it would be one of the newest tenants at YOUNGplace, expanding downtown among the galleries and museums while its new home at Bathurst and Sheppard is being built. 

Why speak, when someone says it better?

You know, lately, I suck at blogging. I used to not suck, but these days, I suck. It's a quantitive, not qualitative thing (because who online gives a good goash-darn about that?) -- I just don't post like I used to, badly or otherwise. 

In fact, I suck so much, I'm snagging a link from TPW curator Kim Simon's equally (possibly more?) negelected blog, which defers itself (lazy blogging is a multi-layered thing in this hyperlinked era) to this,  ideally repurposeable digital-era mea culpa, from Cory Arcangel: 

(it's here)

I'll do better. Promise. 

Your 2011 Sobey prize winners: Young and Giroux

Yup, Ontario wins for the first time. Congrats, gents; more on this later ... 

AA Bronson at the NY Art Book Fair

 

The fine folks at ArtInfo did a quick little chat this weekwith AA Bronson at one of my favourite events, the New York Art Book Fair, that I'd like to share. The fair, of course, is the gravitational centre of the mother of all art multiples, the artist's book, as well as glossy publications, zines and anything on the printed page. Bronson is its director and, of course, the surviving member of Canadian art supergroup General Idea; as a founder of Art Metropole here in Toronto way back when, publishing is something he knows much about. Check it out. 

Nuit Blah? There's always hope.

Here we go again: It's Nuit Blanche time, and I can't tell you how thrilled I'll be to be riding around the entire city on my bike in the freezing cold, battling crowds, dodging vomit, avoiding rampant product promotion and generally searching for somethign to justify the entire experience. Inevitably, there's something out there that perks up my spirits, but at this end of the 12-hour tunnel with no light in sight, it's a little hard to see just now. 

Anyway, my usual game of darts in choosing worthwhile experiences at Nuit Blanche without having had any opportunity to see them first (of course) is in the paper today, with a little companion piece about what I've learned in my many multiple overnighters of the past few years. As ever, I'll be tapping away at the keyboard, bleary-eyed, on Sunday, to tell you what I saw. I'm sure you can't wait. 

If you're out there in the early part of the evening (8 - 10 or so), drop by Queen and Gladstone, where I'll be partnering with my TAAC pals for a reprise of our event of last year, Speed Art Criticism. Bring some stuff, we'll talk. Or don't bring anything. We can still talk. It'd be nice to see you. Most of you, at least. 

And above all, stay warm. The night can be a cold, cold place. 

 

Art and Drinks? Sounds good to me

A little while back, fashion photographer George Whiteside was running the 1-800 Gallery on the corner of Dundas West and Palmerston. When he shut that down -- the fourth gallery, by my count, to expire in that very space, it seemed destined for something a little more commercially viable, cueing the collective anxieties of an ever-in-flux stretch of street that the inevitable arrival of an all-night Falafel King outlet had crept that much closer.

Not so fast.Eminent media artist and general living legend John Oswald has taken over the space for a venture he calls, in suitably direct fashion, Art + Drinks. Inside, a simpel bar doles out cocktails while the walls are lined with film and video art -- Oswald's media of choice -- including works by David Rokeby, Bettina Hoffman, long-time Oswald confrere Michael Snow, and, of course, Oswald himself.

Oswald's on the road at the moment, but once he gets back, I'll stop in for a chat. And a drink. Perfect.

I swear to God

I neither asked nor intended for the kind of mega-exposure today's Thrush Holmes piece got in the paper today. Slow day, I guess, and if you throw enough pictures their way, anything can happen.

Now watch Paul Butler get shoved to page 23 when I'd really like to see the piece jump off the front of the section. Sigh. And you thought the internet was incoherent.

I swear to God

I neither asked nor intended for the kind of mega-exposure today's Thrush Holmes piece got in the paper today. Slow day, I guess, and if you throw enough pictures their way, anything can happen.

Now watch Paul Butler get shoved to page 23 when I'd really like to see the piece jump off the front of the section. Sigh. And you thought the internet was incoherent.

This week ...

I'll be catching up with Thrush Holmes, v. 2.0 (his opening on Saturday was like old times -- a madhouse -- but for the first time, not at his own personal gargantuan gallery, but Neubacher Shor; more on that later), as well as Paul Butler (look a couple of posts down), notable leftovers from TIFF like Ben Rivers' Slow Action at TPW , and the Grange Prize.

And I haven't even mentioned MOCCA, the Power Plant, and a bunch of other biggies yet. Ah, September. It's love-hate. My fingers hurt already.

High score: Marina Abramovich, the video game

Good fun this morning comes from ArtInfo, where I learned that Danish Denmark-based game designer and scholar Pippin Barr has created a low-fi, early-Nintendo-esque version of Marina Abramovich's movingly spare performance "The Artist Is Present," which Abramovich created for MoMA last year as part of an important retrospective of her career. 

Not surprisingly, the game's main feature is waiting, as many hundreds of New Yorkers did to sit across the table from a mute Abramovich for the duration of their choosing. Gamers shouldn't be surprised that the game takes upwards of 5 mostly action-free hours to complete -- or that communing with a tiny, pixellated Abramovic avatar doesn't offer quite the same emotional satisfaction, which is surely part of Barr's point in choosing such a necessarily physical experience to transcribe to his low-fi virtuality. (As Barr himself points out on this very blog, there is a more-defined portion of the game where a less-pixellated-but-still-dot-matrixy Abramovich appears on screen face-on). 

Nonetheless, conceptually, Barr's game seems to underscore the absolute truth that the real experience of presence and humanity can't be virtually recreated, regardless of technology. Still, funny, isn't it?