There’s a ton of stuff I want to see, but this bilingual blurb about an underground (literally) art expo looks particularly cool:
Samedi 28 février 2009, un événement unique au monde prend place à Montréal. Lors de la sixième édition de la Nuit Blanche, le projet Art souterrain va prendre possession de la ville souterraine de Montréal pendant toute la soirée et nuit et exposer sur plus de 2.5km une 80 ‘artistes québécois sur des lieux stratégiques, du Palais des congrès au Complexe les Ailes. 160 étudiants bénévoles en art ou en communication seront sur place pour présenter les oeuvres et faire comprendre les démarches des artistes au public. A ne pas manquer!
Saturday february 28, an unique event takes place in Montréal. During Montréal’s All Nighter, Underground Art will present underground city while exhibiting works representative of current art. More than 50 local artists will invest in a 2,5km portion of the city including the following strategic places: Eaton center, Place Ville-Marie,Palais des congès… Students will be present to explain artists’ work to visitors and to weave bond between artists and general public. Make sure to be there!
An update from event organizer Frédéric Loury (who also runs Galérie SAS) puts the current tally at 80 projects, 150 artists and 160 volunteers! For more info, visit the Art Souterrain website (in French) or head over to their Facebook event page.
One has to be more than a little concerned with what’s happening in Russia the last few years.
Let’s see: we’ve got ex-spies being poisoned abroad, private energy companies getting nationalized on questionable grounds, trading partners being pressured through the withholding of natural gas in the winter, and high-profile investigative journalists being gunned down at point-blank range.
It’s been ages since I updated this blog. I feel like some sort of explanation is in order.
I suppose Twitter has something to do with it - and I’m not alone in shifting more time to microblogging - but the real reason goes deeper.
The last couple of years have been a rather intense ride, working back-to-back in a couple of new businesses and immersing myself in the startup scene. At some point, I was producing content and/or blogging mostly for organizations, rather than for myself.
Truth be told, I became a bit burnt out and had less energy to blog about the stuff that interests me personally. Hence the hiatus here and the 140-character updates elsewhere.
Since the new year, I’ve returned to independent consulting, which has afforded me better control over my time. That time should translate into me sending more frequent missives out into the blogosphere…
It’s a rare occasion to see his stunning visual work on the big screen. Check out the slow-motion explosion footage set to Pink Floyd in the video below and you’ll see what I mean.
UPDATE: Changed the video resource as the other one was no longer online. If you have a short attention span, it gets interesting at around the 3:30 minute mark.
After several exciting, hectic and rewarding months, this is to announce that I am no longer involved in the day-to-day operations of The Code Kitchen and CakeMail, although I fully expect to collaborate on an ongoing basis with François Lane and his team.
I recently moved. My new neighbourhood straddles the frontier between Outremont and Mile End.
I used to think of Outremont as being quite snobbish, and while there is an element of that, I find that it’s also quite relaxed and family-oriented, which is a nice change from the noise and frequent rudeness by drivers on the Plateau. Here, they actually stop at designated crossings that don’t have lights! (Which, in Montreal, is practically a miracle.)
Another reason I love this neighbourhood is the crazy mix of people. Hasidim, students, hipsters, artists, politicians and intellectuals all cross paths here. You never know who you might bump into.
Then there’s the general friendliness and six-degrees-or-less element. The other day I was at my new fav grocery stop on Avenue du Parc, when I bumped into an old friend who I hadn’t seen in years. We got into the what-are-you-up-to-these-days schtick, and she announces that she’s now married to the musician she was dating the last time we spoke. “Wow, congrats! What band is he with these days,” I ask, and she (somewhat shyly - Montrealers are too damn modest) mumbles the name of, ahem, a relatively unknown up-and-coming group known as … the Arcade Fire. “Oh,” I reply, feigning perplexity, “the name rings a bell.” We chuckle and I marvel silently at how fast life can change.
A few minutes later, I am fishing Greek feta out of a vat and this tall surfer-looking guy sidles up to me and starts mumbling something while cradling a bunch of asparagus in his hands. Oh-oh: crazy alert. But no, he was mumbling because a store employee was right behind him and he wanted me to know that there was a much cheaper place to buy feta right around the corner… While I enjoyed living on the Plateau, I don’t remember this sort of random act of kindness happening there.
Several of my artistic acquaintances have left Vancouver over the last few years for Toronto, Montreal and elsewhere, often complaining that the cultural scene is not as vibrant as it used to be. A recent commentary piece in The Globe and Mail claims such alienation has to do with skyrocketing housing prices:
Talk to Vancouverites in their 30s or younger, and you learn why, despite a booming economy, a lot of them doubt they’ll spend their futures here. Which can’t be good for the city’s own future. […]
In Vancouver, the rental vacancy rate is under 1 per cent. Landlords, therefore, can be very picky, and so a caste system has developed among prospective tenants. To be young is to occupy a bottom rung. […]
What does it mean that Vancouver, itself only five or six generations old, feels so unwelcoming to its latest generation? For one, the brand doesn’t fit the reality. The young city about to play host to the world’s Olympians in the prime of their youth is verging on becoming a preserve of affluent, staid boomers. Nothing cool about that.
I love Vancouver but I have to mostly agree with this assessment. I think that one of the reasons why Montreal has such a vibrant, edgy arts and music scene is that rent is reasonable enough (despite having risen quite rapidly since I arrived in 2000) that people don’t have to work all the time to live, which means they can devote some time to creative projects that fall outside the profit motive.
What can or should Montrealers do to ensure that the same fate does not befall their city?
Ooh-là, je sens que le prochain numéro d’Urbania va être chaud-chaud-chaud.
Le message ci-bas a été circulé aux abonnés de la liste d’envoi Urbania et aux membres du groupe Urbania sur Facebook:
Appel à tous
Prochain thème : : célébrités
Pour le prochain numéro, on se transforme en journaliste à potins. Et comme tout bon journaliste à potins, on brasse nos contacts pour obtenir du matériel juteux sur nos vedettes locales ou internationales. Du matériel qui sera publié dans nos pages glossy, bien évidemment.
Alors, avis aux anciens busboys du Continental, à ceux qui ont un cousin producer à L.A., aux amis Facebook de Freddy Prince Junior, aux exsss de Patrick Huard (Lynda, Véro, Mahée, Nancy la barmaid du Bourbon), aux femmes de ménage d’Hollywood, aux facteurs d’Outremont, à Abeille Gélinas, aux plottes à puck des Canadiens : Urbania a besoin de vous.
1. Dans un court paragraphe, racontez-nous vos meilleures anecdotes/nuits torrides/beuveries avec des vedettes d’ici ou d’ailleurs. (Exemple : une virée chez Éric Lapointe). Fabulateurs ou mythomanes s’abstenir.
2. Livrez-nous vos meilleurs potins de stars : ceux qui n’ont jamais été révélés dans d’autres médias (confirmés ou non).
3. Envoyez-nous des photos compromettantes de vedettes (soir de beuverie, sans maquillage, à la sortie du Tap Room à 3h am)…
4. Dressez la liste des has-beens que vous aimeriez retrouver.
Vous pouvez nous faire parvenir le tout à l’adresse suivante : allovedettes@urbania.ca
Vous avez notre parole : votre nom demeurera confidentiel.
P.S. : Trois abonnements seront tirés parmi tous les répondants. Si jamais, mais seulement si jamais votre photo se retrouve en page couverture, vous remporterez rien de moins qu’un abonnement à notre prestigieux magazine… à vie!
Aux dires de Nelly Arcan, il risque d’avoir plus de matériel sur les hommes vedettes que sur les femmes, car « 85% des groupies ont comme idole un homme », fait qui peut être décourageant du point de vue de l’égalité des sexes, mais peut-être soulageant cette fois-ci pour les starlettes…
Search
About
Duncan Moore lives in Montreal. He visits his native B.C. mountains whenever he can. Email.
Duncan Moore vit à Montréal. Il retourne dans les montagnes de sa région natale en C-B quand il peut. Courriel.
We think what’s happening during sleep is that you open the aperture of memory and are able to see this bigger picture. - Neuroscientist Matthew Walker in a NYTimes article.
Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it. - Lao-tzu in the Tao Te Ching, from a translation by S. Mitchell
[…] with just-in-time-delivery and what-have-you-done-for-me-lately being sovereign, everything is of the moment, and the noise is deafening. - Ken Alexander, in the July/August 2007 editorial of The Walrus
[…] a certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect. - Oshima in Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore
