Smarter than you

On Chess

Wed, 30 May 2012 14:07:00 -0600

I suck at chess but whatever it’s for fucking fascist feudalists anyway
Kings and queens? Bullshit
In anarchist chess every piece would be able to function a variety of ways based on the consensus of the other pieces and white wouldn’t be able to initiate force against black anyway

amouthygirl:

Autumn is onto something here.

autochthones:

“Let us take a limited example and compare the war machine and the State apparatus in the context of the theory of games. let us take chess and Go, from the standpoint of the game pieces, the relations between the pieces and the space involved. Chess is a game of State, or of the court: the emperor of China played it. Chess pieces are coded; they have an internal nature and intrinsic properties from which their movements, situations, and confrontations derive. They have qualities; a knight remains a knight, a pawn a pawn, a bishop a bishop. Each is like a subject of the statement endowed with a relative power, and these relative powers combine in a subject of enunciation, that is, the chess player or the game’s form of interiority. Go pieces, in contrast, are pellets, disks, simple arithmetic units, and have only an anonymous, collective, or third-person function: ‘It’ makes a move. ‘It’ could be a man, a woman, a louse, an elephant. Go pieces are elements of a nonsubjectified machine assemblage with no intrinsic properties, only situational ones. Thus the relations are very different in the two cases. Within their milieu of interiority, chess pieces entertain biunivocal relations with one another, and with the adversary’s pieces: their functioning is structural. On the other hand, a Go piece has only a milieu of exteriority, or extrinsic relations with nebulas or constellations as bordering, encircling, shattering. All by itself, a Go piece can destroy an entire constellation synchronically; a chess piece cannot (or can do so diachronically only.”

Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus

sterwood:

I really need to learn how to play Go. Lately it’s just been cribbage, all day, every day, but Go would be a welcome change.

amouthygirl:

They beat you to it, Autumn.

becoming-wave:

Chess sucks. Go is a far more elegant, subtle, flirtateous game, vastly more complex, yet amenable to an intuitive style of play. I feel my way around the board, seeking positions of influence responsive to they lay of the land and the style of the opponent, rather than coming in with a head full of predetermined strategic sets to deploy. I wish more people played Go so I could have Go partners. My poor board and pieces have sat idle for lack of opponents to play with.

For anyone who wants to learn, this is a great resource. And beyond that, KGS Go server is an excellent site to practice on, with plenty of opponents at all levels and lots who like to teach. And if any Toronto friends are down, I’d love to play IRL.

Do y’all know about the abstract wargame by Guy Debord and Alice Becker-Ho?

I’m more of the backgammon type nowadays though—I want the bluffing game in with my tactics.

"Kathryn Janeway and Chakotay often go on away missions together, although the captain isn’t supposed..."

Sat, 19 May 2012 22:42:00 -0600

“

Kathryn Janeway and Chakotay often go on away missions together, although the captain isn’t supposed to beam down at all, according to policy—it’s dangerous. But they needed to make sure we knew that she was headstrong and no-nonsense, and of course put her into preventable danger again.

A pretty typical scenario is the time that they retreated into a tunnel to keep warm and alive in a hostile atmosphere and ended up stumbling upon a hatching alien egg which they had to parent. The rocks are made of ugly styrofoam or fibreglass and never look like actual rocks, in drab greenish-grey tones. Before discovering the child, they use their phasers to seal the tunnel entrance in a controlled rockfall—which turns out to be a bad idea. They probably wouldn’t have survived the Northwest Passage.

The New Works gallery also smelled a little like fresh paint, which was a nice touch. Probably won’t last though.

”

- The centrepiece of today’s activities—after introductions, discussion, and a brief chat about publishing led by John Shelling—was an afternoon excursion, in groups, to art galleries and other sites downtown, about which we were to write short review fragments. Here’s one of mine.

Brendan McGillicuddy’s Anthropocene is up at the AGA until July 1.

The episode is actually about Neelix and Tom Paris. I didn’t have wifi in the AGA basement to confirm my vague memories.

Who are we writing for?: This Weekend

Fri, 18 May 2012 13:57:52 -0600

Who are we writing for?: This Weekend:

latitude53:

This weekend we’re looking forward to a special project we’ve put together with our recent Writer-in-residence Megan Bertagnolli, and the support of the Edmonton Arts Council. Who are we writing for? is a weekend-long workshop about art writing in this city—we’ve invited a group of local writers as well as BlackFlash magazine editor John Shelling to discuss, write and develop their vision of art writing in Edmonton and beyond. Curious? Meet the participants on Friday night at Andrew Forster’s opening reception, and follow the workshop blog at writers.latitude53.org.

We’re doing this thing this weekend. It will be a chance for me to develop some thoughts that I’ve been thinking.

Water break—spent the sunny afternoon shooting skateboarding...

Sat, 12 May 2012 22:29:06 -0600

Water break—spent the sunny afternoon shooting skateboarding videos with Yusuke Shibata.

Sunday night fighting werewolves at the Empress, NBD.

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 01:54:08 -0600

Sunday night fighting werewolves at the Empress, NBD.

Impromptu performance.

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 20:09:54 -0600

Impromptu performance.

Not letting Canadian cheese prices get me down.

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 20:07:44 -0600

Not letting Canadian cheese prices get me down.

latitude53: “Skater” is one of Yusuke Shibata’s current...

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 15:10:13 -0600

latitude53:

“Skater” is one of Yusuke Shibata’s current works-in-progress.

Join Yusuke on May 12—the closing day of his ProjEx Room show—for a workshop at 1:00 to participate in the development of this project.

The workshop will begin with an introduction and presentation at the gallery, and then we’ll head out onto the streets of downtown Edmonton to scout locations, as Yusuke will demonstrate and discuss his techniques for producing performative video.

I like this.

Are you going to write about this?

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 21:30:00 -0600

It’s a bit of a shadow. I was gesturing with my notebook for some reason at the ARTery on Saturday, at a art-show party (it’s not clear if it was an opening or a one-night show—the Facebook event didn’t say). One of the artists didn’t want me to—I sort of understand; there was some terrible stuff. I might be breaking my word; I don’t remember how I responded. I do remember Kristy saying “do it, do it”.

One of the first things I wrote for Vue Weekly back in 2009 was about a show co-curated by Amelia Aspen, whose drawing is up on the wall this week. I didn’t like it very much and I flatter myself with the idea that there were some ruffled feathers about it. Small circles. Lots of people have asked me if I am writing now though. Or planning on it. I tell them I don’t know—that goes for lots of other questions about the moment too. “We’ll see.” It’s nice when they are enthusiastic.

I thought about it a lot when I first got to Glasgow, assumed that that’s what I would be doing. But it didn’t seem as necessary. I spent lots of time at work complaining about The Skinny, being slightly awkward because of small circles that I hadn’t seen all of. I never met the arts editor/main writer for them (their problems go way deeper though—it would have taken some dramatic format changes to improve), I don’t remember if I slagged his writing in conversation with Jac who writes for them sometimes. But there were lots of writers working in different categories, especially all of the “creative” stuff. I miss it.

I still smile when I think about Edmontonian reactions were to Scott Rogers writing in the Glasgow house style for our show. I never saw the show, it was when I was covering at Latitude 53 “for a couple of weeks” from a distance.

This year was going to be different though, that was the plan: I was sort of comfortable with the place, maybe enough to write too. Before I figured out that I was being an artist I was awkwardly trying to find a justification to write, but I think I just needed some time.

This weekend it sounds like I’m missing a lot of good stuff over there.

Edmonton’s dirty spring is in full swing.

At the ARTery I had another conversation. The space is changing, new owners, who knows what. We talked about how it kind of sucked for visual art anyway, I don’t think it’ll be remembered for that. But I fell into talking about my subject two weeks ago: those complaints of inaccessibility in Vancouver. At least it makes people aim high, I said. Because in poor edmonton they just get Curtis Ross to put up some drawings for some reason. There was something in there about the danger of curating your friends too: “We Are The Golden West” is just some people, you know. I don’t know why you would put up a show if you didn’t want people to talk about it. And if they’re talking, why shouldn’t they write?

That post two weeks ago: someone described it as very Edmonton. I don’t know what to say; I’m aware of something about what I’m performing, partly naïveté. I go back and forth about what it means, though. I miss the feeling of having peers who you can see are working on the same stuff as you but are a little bit ahead (this makes me sound like an asshole).

I just don’t feel very attached here right now. I’m waiting for the summer, I guess—that seems silly though, too. I should make up my mind. I procrastinate about sending applications. But it’s hard to put in the investment to write when I know I’m going to be disappointed, like I have been at almost every show I’ve gone to see here this spring. I actually couldn’t bear to write an article about “We Are The Golden West – New Work Art Exhibition”, or any of the stuff I saw tonight at another artist-run centre. It’d be awful. So everybody sort of wanders about without committing to anything except for complaining about how outrageous it is that the Wildrose party seems to be exactly what we all expected it to be what a surprise. Small circles.

The best bit was the part that felt like a secret.

It seemed like a pretty sad way for the ARTery to go out, anyway.

Dirt City¦Dream City

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 13:54:54 -0600

Dirt City¦Dream City is a collaborative effort with fourteen of Edmonton’s most talented artists and artist/curator Kendal Henry to create site-specific public artworks throughout the Quarters district. These collaborations will delve into the past, look to the future, wallow in the grit and radiate in the sometimes-hidden beauty that is alluring and unique to the Quarters to conceive provocative and innovative public interventions. These celebratory and challenging works can be experienced this summer between July 20 and July 30, 2012 throughout the Quarters Downtown.

Open house: May 5th at the ARTery, 12–5. With Kendal Henry and artists Aaron Paquette, Adam Waldron-Blain, Andrew Buszchak, Carly Greene, Destiny Swiderski, Emily Van Driesum, Holly Newman, Jackson McConnell, Jes McCoy, Jill Stanton, Mackenzy Albright and Rachelle Bowen, Matt Prins, Nickelas Johnson and Tiffany Shaw-Collinge.

MANHUNT RETURNS

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 15:36:20 -0600

MANHUNT RETURNS:

WEDNESDAY APRIL 18, 2012 AT 8:30 PM

MEET AT JASPER AVE AND 102 ST

BRING: A VISIBLE ARMBAND AND FRIENDS

CELEBRATE SPRING-TIME

More like the last gasp of winter.

Botanical Beach, Vancouver Island

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 19:11:43 -0600

Botanical Beach, Vancouver Island

Two shows in Vancouver I thought about

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 11:27:00 -0600

The obvious one is The Weight of Lives I’m Not Living at Artspeak. There’s a tree from Naufús Ramirez-Figueroa that I don’t know about, but the other two works are dealing with familiar troubles: how to make work about your life, how to make art and be.

But I didn’t entirely love them. Fabiola Carranza is the star, with a tiny jewelry shop selling used engagement rings. Guy Ben-Ner’s video is awkward and full of annoying rhymes, as he shows off the thinness of his own work, making fun of it’s flimsy justification and his own pain and nerdy loneliness. Plus its projector doesn’t have enough lumens to compete with daylight in the storefront gallery.

But the other show…

“Wish you were here”

I keep hearing conversations here about the legacy of the artist-run spaces of the eighties (and before). Places like Artspeak and the Western Front in particular are like huge edifices to my Vancouver peers. Institutions—I missed a lecture about history last week. They feel that they have no spaces of their own. I don’t know for sure what it is like to be here, but although I know that there are specific local concerns, difficulty finding spaces, etc., I still can’t help but feel that it’s partly an illusion. At least, the way I feel now, where I have come from, don’t let me agree with it—despite comments about political realities like access to space and money that I can’t disagree with. Edmonton’s lazy emptiness and Glasgow’s ragged energy made me a believer.

Building space has always been a part of my practice. The other week I gave a presentation about my work and how I found coming out of school to some current students back home, and spent days struggling with Guy Ben-Ner’s question: how should I talk about my personal life. My present is moment the basis of my work now, and it always has been—the way I lost myself in romance last year, overcome with the feeling of being in love. And before that. I wanted to give credit to the ways that I found myself in 2007–2010.

It’s been a question for a while what will become of Institute Parachute. It’s probably not for me to say—but last year I found myself taking up, perhaps against my usual mindset, Instant Coffee’s slogan, “It doesn’t have to be good to be meaningful” when I defended it. When you were wondering if you even wanted to be an artist. It was part of my identity. In hindsight now I can see more clearly what we had started to build, started hosting games and parades and dinner parties just out of school.

Feeling So Much Yet Doing So Little

We were never so aggressive in our lack of content, never advertised it like Instant Coffee does or did. But I remember the cabinet gallery at the start, and my own struggles as I worked on half-finished text-based projects—I didn’t show them in my presentation—which was not so different. I was reassured by Institute Parachute that there was enough there. Not nothing. And it really was something, although I didn’t yet have the confidence to really believe it. The emptiness of forms, the building of air-filled spaces and supports for art.

When Tyler and I were asked if we had advice for about-to-graduate BFAs in Edmonton, he said something improvised about volunteering, finding things out by doing. I said: do better; start your own thing; get people to volunteer for you. It’s easy. Afterwards, the TA asked me if I was the one who made all the steel-sculpture folks angry when I wrote for Vue Weekly.

My games were all empty spaces. To make people uncomfortable in them, provoking a need to fill them up. Telling them that whatever they came up with was probably awesome, so they should just go ahead. For all of my bluster and sometimes acidity in writing I think that I was after the same thing there too: to tell people to try more things, or at least to stop pretending to try the same old things. I keep saying now: Edmonton is changing, but I have less patience than ever for the laziness, for self-hatred and fucked-up illusions of isolation and risk-taking.

I don’t know if Instant Coffee really believes everything they say—specifically, they must know that their things are good, whether or not that helps them to be meaningful. I could never hide that. When they say nothing in bright colours, I remember how for us, too, posters were an angle on our real medium: the feeling of excitement. Their self-deprecation can come off as a defense tactic but it’s better, it’s provocation. And in their statement about “good” there’s just a hint of suggested critique.

The show at Western Front is beautiful, anyway. The empty halo and lit-up blank sign are tucked into the back end, behind the bleachers and the sleep-over-ready front room. The “prospective retrospective” tagline is on target: to me right now, it’s a reminder of all the things we might have done, too.

Lynn Canyon, North Vancouver

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 23:32:10 -0600

Lynn Canyon, North Vancouver

On the Stanley Park seawall

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 21:40:00 -0600

On the Stanley Park seawall

Almost my whole life, ready for an adventure.

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 17:17:14 -0600

Almost my whole life, ready for an adventure.

"‘A poem is a small (or large) machine made of words’ — William Carlos Williams Make a thing right..."

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 20:23:00 -0600

“

‘A poem is a small (or large) machine made of words’
— William Carlos Williams

Make a thing right and it doesn’t need to be taken apart. Write a thing correctly and it tells the reader everything he or she needs to know, regardless of whether he or she can see the effect of enjambment or know that your rhyme sceme calls back to Arabic love poems. Taste makes a writer, I’ll grant that, but not a reader.

”

- Ekstasis: Attack of the Difficult Everything

This is nice. Read the whole thing.

To me, one of the greatest things about experiencing art is that there is a moment when your appreciation changes from that of a reader, who lacks the specialized knowledge, to that of a tinkerer. When you recognise your first reactions for what they are, and, supported by some crucial piece of information you suddenly grasp the craft—where your discernment changes to understanding. Where you suddenly go from knowing something to be completely true to discovering a way to describe that knowledge.

Perhaps it is why I am trying to be an artist. It’s something that I want to share—it’s definitely what makes me a critic, whether or not I’m doing it officially. In some ways, the less an object “need[s] to be taken apart” the more desirable it can be to do so, because each time you do you discover something new within it that seems equally whole.

Perhaps if fewer people believed that they were unqualified as readers—doubting their discernment of the whole—they would also feel more qualified to be tinkerers too.

“Marble Canyon II” installed next to “Jeffrey...

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 11:42:00 -0600

“Marble Canyon II” installed next to “Jeffrey Pine” by Ansel Adams in San Antonio. Photo by Amanda Mayo.

Performances in Woodlands, May–June 2011.

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 20:27:00 -0700

Performances in Woodlands, May–June 2011.

Globe and Mail: In search of higher-fat butter

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 01:49:23 -0700

Globe and Mail: In search of higher-fat butter:

towerofsleep:

blownspeakers:

Why it’s so hard to get good butter here.

Well, that was educational. I had no idea what we were missing out on. Who knew we had such prohibitive butter laws in Canada?

SRSLY. I wanted to make a cream sauce tonight for dinner but then when I was in the aisle all I could get was a cream-milk blend held together with carrageenan gum. If I’m going to start using that I might as well just buy the whole deal in a jar ready-made.

Canadian groceries suck.