Alisa Palmer on gluttony, multiple solitudes, and theatre

Please listen to the interview here; thanks to CIUT FM for originally broadcasting this interview.

Alisa Palmer was named the new Director of the National Theatre School's English Section in October, and she took over the position in January of 2013. She spoke about gluttony as a commonly attempted antidote to social alienation; about incarceration, and threatening negative consequences, as misguided strategies for cultivating civilized behaviour; and about theatre.

Many thanks to Alisa Palmer for an engaging and highly animated discussion--hope you enjoy.

Jamie Sitar and Sauren Galloway

Please listen to both interviews here; thanks to CIUT 89.5 for originally broadcasting the piece.

Juno Award-winning recording engineer and proprietor of Outta Town Sound  Jamie Sitar speaks about the dark age, and dawning renaissance, for recorded music in Canada.

Visual artist Sauren Galloway speaks about applying the principles of market research, and mercantilism, to the creation of visual art.

Raymond Biesinger on commercial-arts doom and gloom

Please listen to the entire interview here; thanks to CIUT FM for originally broadcasting the conversation.

A musician in the Famines and a self-taught illustrator, Raymond Biesinger's CV is very impressive: he’s published in the New Yorker and The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, Le Monde, Monocle, and has contributed to ad campaigns and commercial projects for some of the world’s best-known companies. Check out his website at www.fifteen.ca.

With a style of illustration that's been described as  mechanical, and inhuman, he's built a committed following on his strength in distilling subjects as enormous as the First World War into two- and three-colour conceptual images which, in their stark rationality, communicate deeply.

He's a thinker, and he's thought about the consequences of hobbyism on creative industry, about the burgeoning culture of 'free' on intellectual property rights. Hope you enjoy listening to the conversation.

Dr. Gregory Ramshaw on the commodification of nostalgia

Please listen to the entire interview here; many thanks to CIUT FM for originally broadcasting the discussion.

Gregory Ramshaw is an assistant professor in the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management at Clemson University, South Carolina. He has taught and written and extensively about the social and cultural implications of heritage-based tourist attractions, with a particular focus on sport heritage sites. Prior to life in the academy, he worked at western Canada’s largest living history museum, dressing up in costume and pretending it was 1846 for the visiting tourists (which is--full disclosure--where we first met. Best. Job. Ever).

Greg first introduced the distinction between history and heritage (a difference in temperature: cold versus warm), then dug into some of the many purposes heritage serves in Western culture. Specifically, heritage contributes to the construction and prioritization of particular narratives within a society's culture. Consequently, it's a valuable asset for governments of various levels, corporations of various sizes--oh, and the sports teams themselves (in this example), who play the roles, enact the storylines, and become the subjects of grand shared metaphors.

Ted Bilyea on food doom and gloom

If you missed it on CIUT FM, please listen to the full interview here

Ted Bilyea is the past President of Maple Leaf Foods International, a Director on the board of the Alberta Livestock and Meat Agency, and a Director for PrioNet Canada. We spoke about the history of food production, from subsistence farming to industrial-scale agricultural production, and the challenges facing the industry, and our species, as a result. The images bleow, which are illustrative of his points, are taken (from the most part) from powerpoints he's delivered on the subject.

Scary stuff.

Livestock population density

Goldie Lock'N'Load -- Roller Derby!

Please listen to the full broadcast here.

Many thanks to CIUT 89.5 FM for hosting the show every week.

Gwen McDonald, AKA Goldie Lock'N'Load, is the owner-operator of My Roll Life, a shop dedicated to supporting rollerskating culture, and the founder of the West End Waywards Rollerskating Association. She's also the captain of the Rollergettes roller derby team, and a proud champion of Parkdale.

She has a colourful way with words and strong opinions (as you'd expect of someone who names a sports team after a political faction), so don't expect any mincing.

In this interview, Goldie speaks about roller derby culture, the stereotypes that tend to go along with it, and the feminism--whether implied or overt-- infused into the sport.  She also talks about the waves of condofication crashing over Toronto, and the slow gentrification of the, uh--challenged neighbourhood of Parkdale.

Hope you enjoy!

Clayton Cubitt AKA Siege, January 31, 2013

Please listen to the entire interview here.

Clayton Cubitt (whose father is Canadian, not his mother, as was reported) is a photographer, videographer, and writer perhaps best known for his work with Nerve magazine and his Operation Eden, but he's also pithy. When speaking about online personal privacy, for instance (a notion he describes as both "quaint" and "obsolete"), in comparison to corporate communications, he says:

"I think a corporation is a beautiful thing to look at. I think it's like a great white shark--it's something you have to admire for its primal, evolutionary deadliness."

And when speaking about the harmony he creates in his work by balancing radically different esthetics, he says "The source of life, for me, is the simultaneous existence of both the tragic and the sublime. I think the two can't exist without each other, and that informs all of my work."

So it was an occasionally uncomfortable, eye-opening experience speaking with him about his work, which documents clashing cultures and challenges common definitions of art. Most people dismiss something as 'art' when it's too out-there. In Cubitt's case, though, many dismiss his work as not-art because they do get it--or they get the surface, anyway. But hiding under the in-your-face is much measured contemplation, so our conversation did not go as I'd expected.

We started by discussing Lagos Calling, his re-imagining of skinhead culture as if it had emerged in Nigeria, instead of working-class England (the project was also, incidentally, the inspiration for Gnarls Barkley's video for "Going On"). Naturally, in a conversation about cultural cross-pollination, M.I.A. came up, as did Die Antwoord. If you want to talk about tragedy and the sublime, or a hyper-glossy truly refined presentation of gritty material, they are it. And if you've never checked out any of their stuff, 1) don't do it at work, 2) hold on tight, and 3) watch this, too. They've come a long way from this.

When I first saw the video for "Enter the Ninja," the graphics made me think of a Keith Haring work, just with less sunshine. Cubitt corrected me, saying it's more in the tradition of Roger Ballen; Roger Ballen's photography makes me think of Diane Arbus' work, and her name alone is enough to remind me of the cover of a great album from back in the day (which the band plagiarized), but I digress--the interview is edited for concision.

All of this to say Cubitt has great ability (as a result of a long steeping in this idea) to convey a subject's deeper meaning using photography, which is, necessarily, a superficial medium. Portraits are decreasingly conveying character or identity, Cubitt has argued, because people are growing increasingly sophisticated at projecting their personal brands in photography. With Facebook and Instagram etc., most of us have favourite poses, expressions, camera-angles, and even locations for images of ourselves, which is great in that it raises the general esthetic sensibilities of the population, but it  confounds the communication of deeper meaning.

Building on Andy Warhol's Screen Tests, which are essentially moving-picture portraits (rather than stills) intended to capture more of the subject's personality, he's experimented with a number of novel means of penetrating our outer gloss. From his own Long Portraits to the Hysterical Literature project, which is illuminating and very well documented--I'd suggest giving yourself ample some time to explore that link (and again: best not done at work)--Cubitt explodes the traditional intellectual limitations of photography and videography.

I asked him about what role he understands consent to play in these pieces, but I don't think I asked the question properly. I'm still curious about the role agency plays in the self-discovery his subjects report as a result of being rendered hysterically illiterate. Do we need to choose to participate, choose to submit to the experience in order to gain enlightenment? Or could the physicality of our intellectual existence be impressed upon us by another? Dalton Trumbo gave thought to the subject, but I'm less keen to be his guinea pig.

Many thanks to CIUT for airing the interview!