L.I.V.I.D.

Living in Vancouver Irritability Disorder.

Characterized by foggy brains, soggy hearts, and a tendency to consume more coffee than water. Other symptoms include: FOMS (fear of missing something, namely, summer), complaining incessantly about the weather, paleness, and (obviously) irritability.

The best known cure for LIVID is moving away from this rain-filled, over-priced, "tourist desitnation". Other recommended short-term remedies are buying a membership at the local tanning salon, alcoholism, vacationing at least three times a year, retail "therapy" and nymphomania.

Canta Brasil Sul

À ce moment je suis en train de travailler dans le petit bureau de Canta Brasil, mon organisation culturelle ici en Brésil. Elle est située en Canoas, un banlieue de Porto Alegre. Il y a maintenant cinq personnes dans deux petits salles, ça veut dire un garçon de quatorze ans, trois filles d’entre seize et vingt ans, et la mère, qui est aussi une administratrice, d’une des petites qui danse avec l’équipe de Canta Brasil. C’est assez normal que tout le monde chante, crie et danse autour des salles dans n’importe quel moment pour n’importe quelle raison…En fait, il est bien intéressant d’essayer de faire du design graphique au milieu de cette énergie!

Le mandat de mon organisation est de créer un meilleur atmosphère pour les enfants dans les endroits les plus pauvres de Canoas, au même temps faisant une connaissance positive de la culture ici. C’est surement plus qu’une ONG simple, c’est actuellement un ‘mouvement institutionnel culturel’. Ils ont, comme des associés, des autres ONGs (le plus fortement avec Afroreggae, qui était la partenaire fondatrice de Canta Brasil), des organisations de communications (comme le DCS, une entreprise majeure de la publicité et markéting ici en Porto Alegre), aussi que des citoyens privés qui s’intéressent dans les activités du mouvement. C’est bien intéressant que mon organisation est plus connue dans les cercles “chiques” de Porto Alegre que dans les associations sociales et politiques, mais je trouve que c’est un exemple du classement social qui caractérise la plupart d’interaction sociale au Brésil.

Le semaine passé je suis assisté à la Semaine de Communication, une semaine des ateliers, conférences et débats sûr des topiques diverses concernant la communication, la publicité et le graphisme. C’était vraiment une évènement tellement bien réalisée, et j’ai trouvé qu’il était tellement instructif d’avoir eu une chance de comprendre quelles sont des perspectives particulières du graphisme ici. Il y avait des cérémonies des prix donné de la part du Semaine de Communication, et l’entreprise qui a fait l’annonce suivant (en bas) pour Canta Brasil, a gagné un prix pour le même campagne dans la catégorie des annonces des journaux.



Ça me plait beaucoup d’avoir l’opportunité de contribuer aux projets ici pour Canta Brasil, car je crois qu’ils font quelque chose assez différent en se focalisent de l’importance du talent et de l’éducation pour améliorer des vies des jeunes ici. De plus, mon directeur, Rubielson Medeiros, et une personne vraiment pleine de l’énergie de vivre, qui est évidement une pointe d’inspiration pour tous les gens ici. Je vais additionner des points intéressants dans les prochaines sémaines, puis merci pour lire.

brasil -- duas semanas depois

pensamentos pra as primeras duas semanas...


Dia das Crianças, Porto Alegre

Brazil...strange and beautiful. the first thing you notice is the smell. Meat, shit, sweat. The air is heavy here, at times, thick with moisture and dirt and sound and yes, sex. But the beauty of this country is either brilliant or muted. Brilliant, as in the myriad of fresh fruits and vegetables of the public market, or in the smiles of the children of the church-turned-dance school in the favela, or muted, as in the quiet sadness of the man with his four emaciated, sleeping dogs lying down amid the bustle of my city's central square.

Sometimes it is ugly as well, particularly here in Porto Alegre. On days when the sun fails to break through the clouds, and the gritty reality of decaying concrete and inadequate garbage collection presents itself with unabashed certitude, yes, this city can be called feio, dégeulasse, sad, angry, alive. In stark contrast to the Disneyesque beauty of downtown Belo Horizonte, the centre of this city is a violent mishmash of grace and anger, desire and desperation. Rows of delicate colonial architecture, like the candy-coloured neighbourhoods of children's novels, frame a game pantomime of ordinary workers and beggars hustling to earn their daily Reais.

There are so many products available here, it is overwhelming. Farmacias stock hundreds of boxes of women's hair colour; the chain store Lojas Americanas (literally,"American Stores") carries everything from Barbie dolls to incredibly overpriced home electronics (A basic Sony digital camera goes for more than $800 Réais...the average Brazilian makes less than that a month); and the local supermarket has an entire aisle dedicated solely to cookies. In the streets, hawkers sell indigenous jewelry, sandals, toys, pirated DVDs, brassieres, electronics, gold, barbequed meat, sunglasses, fake rats, dreams. I begin to wonder what development has really brought to this region, supposedly the richest in Brazil.

Here in Rio Grande do Sul the regional symbol of the 'solo gaúcho' is everywhere. The Gaúcho is essentially a cowboy, typically costumed in tall boots, billowed pants, a beret, scarf and often a moustache. He lives in the serra, or plains of the southern and eastern parts of the state, tending cattle and/or farms with his family. Often he can be found in bars that don't close, buying drinks for foreign nationals (ahem) and stamping one booted foot in regional pride. The other symbol indicative of this region, dependably omnipresent, is maté. Often we see people walking about parks with their thermos of hot water and their ceramic pots of maté, drinking this concoction (chimarrão) for two or three hours.

For the next week and a half the Feira do Livro (Book Festival) takes place in Porto Alegre. The feira includes author and academic talks, live musical performances, kiosk upon kiosk of booksellers, and a free film festival. I attended my first Portuguese movie tonight, alone. (That should probably read, I went to my first movie alone, which happened to be in Portuguese.) Titled Achados e Perdidos, it was a well-rendered, passionate and sombre tale of death and love in Rio. When the movie ended, and I exited the theatre, it was raining. Magically, the few street merchants scattered along the Rua das Andradas were selling umbrellas.

i was hiding! en français!

bonjour les amis...

so, i am currently living in Montréal embroiled in intense training for the Canadian Armed Military Light Army Brigade.

Well, not really, but at times it feels like it! Pour élaborer: I am training for an internship with Cyberjeunes/Alternatives, a Canadian NGO with programmes throughout Asia, Africa, and South America. This training consists of full-time courses in graphic design (le graphisme), website and blog management (formation Web), database management (aka hell), video editing (montage), Portuguese classes, "mobilisation" (various conferences and boot camps related to the the social justice and equitable trade movements), and fundraising for our trip (levée de fonds).

My internship is going to be in Porto Alegre, Brasil:


Look at the little pink hipster building! (photo by Zórzimo Croquezz)

where I will be doing graphic design and public relations for an NGO called Canta Brasil. From my understanding (translated from portuguese --> french --> english) the directors run school programmes in the favelas (slums) to teach kids dance (specifically, ballet) and singing so that they have a better life and don't get involved in crime.

This is going to be fantastic.

Meanwhile, life in Montréal is busy, entertaining, and full of bikes. The last point is incredible considering the following:

1) drivers in Montréal do not signal when turning, even across three lanes of traffic;
2) the bike lanes can be described as sporadic at best, and, being two-way, are often more dangerous than taking your chances in the street with cars;
3) no one wears helmets, uses hand signals, or yields;
4) bike theft is rampant; yet seemingly 75% of montréal homeowners post "PAS DE BICICLETTES" signs on their gates, fences, poles etc. (I've even had servers come out of bars and tell me not to lock my bike to what I thought was just a post on a city street but was apparently private property.)


At any rate...being immersed in French is definitely demanding (all my training and 85% of my interaction each day is French, so that I experience some difficulty speaking English if the first time I say anything in that language occurs after 6pm), but often hysterical. For instance, did you know that the French word for "raccoon" is raton laveur...which literally translates to WASHING RAT?! Last Sunday, delerious after three days of early morning conferences in three languages, none of which were English, I nearly collapsed in a fit of giggles at this discovery. All my French compadres think I'm totally insane, by the way.

Side note: as I write this blog, the instructor is teaching us how Facebook works. Ecccchhhhh...

If it interests y'all, there is a blog that all the stagiaires (interns) have made, to give people an idea of what we have all been up to. Last weekend we participated in the Forum Social Quebeçois at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM)...you can read about it here.

c'est tout pour maintenant...
More photos/writing/french soon!

bisoux.

wednesday afternoon musicart jam

first off, SCANDINAVIA RULES!!!

look at this really beautiful and fun stop-action drawing animation from Swedish duo Minilogue:



the artwork is done by a swedish illustrator named Kristofer Ström.

he also has a lovely website that details his (really rad and diverse!) work and interviews in many style/art/life magazines and blogs.

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and...Did I just have an AUDIO ORGASM!?!?

It's Erlend Oye-fronted awesomeness band The Whitest Boy Alive covering Robin S.'s "show me love"...



From the same concert, at Iceland's Airwaves Festival, they also cover "I like to Move it", "I've got the power" and "Music Sounds Better With You"...which, now that we are on the topic, is totally one of my top 10 disco house party anthems of all time...

GENIUS MUCH?!?!

Of course now I have to go home and scan a picture of the lady raving from like '99...Yes. I am going to do it, so don't try and stop me.

More from the Whitest Boy Alive..."golden cage" is my current song obsession, which incidentally has a really really cool video.



Optical illusion instructions

+

norwegian bands together

= bliss.

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what else...oh, !!! isn't from Scandinavia, but they have a new album, and a beautiful new website!


cats and wolves!!! playing music!!! aaaaaa!



check it out here!

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basically, europe rules.

QUOOB.TV

this is a great Italian music/film/art site with new uploads and a great user interface. Basically YouTube for Europeans, but with way better organization and way less videos of skateboarding dogs. What, you don't understand Italian? Neither do I, but I can figure out most of this site due to my knowledge of Spanish and French...heh.

i dare you to not spend way too much time on this site. I DARE YOU!

love and bubbles

ladymika.

capital mag is back

hey kids

my friends at Capital Media are back up and running their online edition.

The newest issue, Collisions, features an article by yours truly:

MySpace and the challenge to individual conciousness.

word up, homies.

thursday thoughts

First of all, something to make you laugh:


SCREW YOU, KIDS!!!

and something to make you cry, or yell, or something:


Cat Power - I Don't Blame You (Live on Jools Holland)

I just was blessed to see this lady in concert. Having been a Cat Power fan for well over four years now, I was both surprised and spellbound by the pure unmitigated humanity in Chan Marshall's voice. This was all the more impressive as the diminutive lady was feverish and nauseous, as was much of her band...I can only imagine what she would be like operating at 100%. At some point someone gave her a bandanna to wear to ward of the chills she was experiencing on stage. Later it turned out the bandanna came from everyone's favorite flanneur Blond Dan. Gotta love indie rock crushes...

Throughout the concert, Chan Marshall moved about the stage like some sort of modern-day Janis Joplin, but more quaintly deranged fairy than total drugged-out lost soul. Prior to performing "Naked if I want to" (my favorite track from The Covers Record) she took a break and summoned her energy by performing some sort of dance crossed between flamenco and tai chi. It was if she was drawing energy and light out of the air to channel into herself so she could keep herself going for the crowd.

It's the kind of thing I'll be doing for the next little while in order to process my thoughts and warm my nights.

"We've lived in bars
And danced on tables
Hotel trains and ships that sail
We swim with sharks
And fly with aeroplanes out of here"

YouTube vs. Puppies

Cute genetically modified Golden Retrievers...or Pumpking Attack? You make the call

Check out this headline from today's CBC news online:

Time names YouTube 'Invention of the Year'

Ahh, where to begin? First of all, YouTube beat out a vaccine that prevents a cancer-causing sexually transmitted disease and a t-shirt that simulates a hug.

Buh? Okay, great, I understand the hugging t-shirt (what's next, panties that simulate a penis?), but seriously, people. Is our need for instant entertainment, rife legal, content, and selective exposure issues, greater than health? Is it? I don't really have an answer. Yes, YouTube is a great idea. But my whole problem with this whole internet networking, DIY cyber media thing is that maybe we are rolling along with it so quickly that we don't realize the impact it is having on actual social interaction.

By the way, last year's winner was a cloned puppy.

sleepy

Ever find a filmmaker that presents the world in a bizarre way that strangely enough mirrors the odd manner in which you view the world? Or maybe you are not bizarre. I'm sorry, if you aren't.

Michel Gondry is that filmmaker for me. The subconcious memory erasing in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind where things aren't lit properly and fall away? That dim/bright juxtaposition that seems so awkward and frightening? Yes.

The flying sequences in The Science of Sleep that illustrate Stephane's troubled attempts to contact his neighbour? That's how I fly in my dreams.

When Stephane gets confused between French, Spanish and English? Welcome to my mind when all three languages (and sometimes Portuguese, too) get jumbled up in my brain. "Hola, ma cherie, Cómo estás? Yo pensé à toi ayer...I'm sorry, je suis um pouco confundido..."

The creative process of this movie inspired me to move away from click-easy communication and get back to basics.



I came home and drew, paint and wrote until 2 in the morning...I started to think about how no one writes letters or hardly even postcards any more. I thought about how my mother would send me little letters from her travels across Canada, carefully written and decorated with little collages and stickers and images from the places she visited. Naturally I didn't appreciate it at the time...However now it really seems as though people just right-click, slap something up on Photobucket and a comment or a bulletin later, real heartfelt human communication turns into just a temporary fingerprint on Myspace.

Several disjointed dreams and interrupted sleep cycles later, I awoke. Getting out of the shower, I thought about how my own mother will only communicate with me via email. I realized i don't even have her mailing address (she lives on my street several blocks up) and I screamed quietly.

So. Send me your real, physical, address. I might send you a thought, or a poem, or a small piece of tangible reality you can hold in your hand and know that we exist.

More inspiration lies at postsecret, a public/private art project that encourages strangers to make postcards detailing their secrets and send them into this blog.

were-pyres

maybe it is the recent controversial photo shoots from this season's ANTM, or the fact that I just watched Underworld last night...or maybe it is halloween, but Melanie Pullen's High Fashion Crime Scenes photo series is pretty scary/mazing:



Remember, creepy is the new hot.

Oulipo!

As the weather turns damp and drizzly I often find myself turning indoors for comfort, namely from friends, hot toddies, and books. That being said, I have been trying my hand at writing a few things here and there to get myself back into the wintery literary mindset.

After reading about the finalists for the Governor General's Literay awards, I became curious about the literary style used by one of the finalists, Paul Glennon.

Apparently, Oulipo is a form of writing created in 1960 as part of the Collège de ‘Pataphysique. Among other constraints, it limits the way poems, stories and novels are written using syntax patterning.

This is my favorite: "The prisoner's constraint (a.k.a the "macao" constraint) is a type of lipogram that omits letters with "legs" (b, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, p, q, t, and y)."

Sounds like a great hyperintellectual game of balderdash to me...