EzraWinton.com | Media arts and politics

The Challenge for Change book, all 700+ pages of it, has gone to the publishers for a copy edit. That means that beast has been laid to rest for now, until we get it back from MQUP at which point we’ll have to go through the copy edit comments, incorporate them (or justify not incorporating them), come up with an index, and wax and polish. The book will likely come out in February 2010, although I’m still hoping for a Xmas release. That will be my first major academic publishing credit and I can hardly wait…

In the mean time, however, I have reason to celebrate: the new third edition of “Mediascapes: New Patterns in Canadian Communication,” (pictured above, held by a sun burnt me) edited by Leslie Shade, has been released by Nelson. This dandy undergraduate textbook for media and communication students is awesome. Leslie has done a bang-up job polishing this new edition into a gem of a pedagogical tool. With many new contributions and a shuffling of the structure of the book, the new version beats the old by leaps and bounds. Add to that a cover designed by my friend and colleague Mél Hogan, and I’m stoked to have a chapter in there! I co-authored a chapter on Canadian cultural policy with Ira Wagman, and I owe him (and Leslie) mucho thanks for this amazing opportunity. To contribute to a textbook while still a student is a great honour, one I won’t forget any time soon.

In other news, we just finished with our Five Year Cinema Politica Anniversary party - an amazing event that the super-human Svetla organized while coordinating the network, working part time, going to student tribunals and senate meetings, running in and winning the GSA election, and writing a paper for Leslie. Man, we need a vacation! Now, it’s time to get this Canada Council grant application finished, plus my two papers for the upcoming congress conference at the end of May…oh and that pesky Framing Harper Art Threat contest…

Oh, and if you’d like to help sales, you can read about the book here and even buy it!

I’ve finally discovered the disparities and quiet moments of joy in putting together a book. For over a year I’ve been working as a co-editor with Thomas Waugh and Michael Brendan Baker on a 700 page gorilla named “Challenge for Change/Société: The Collection” for McGill-Queens University Press. It’s an anthology of about 40 articles engaging with the radical experiment in participatory media the NFB launched in 1967. It’s been an insane, tremendous amount of work. I’m not known for my attention to detail, and I certainly won’t be after this book is done, but I’ve given it my all-best and tonight marks another lengthy and arduous stretch of labour-for-love with the book. There’s been administrative tasks (dealing with dozens of contributors), proof-reading and editing, designing the structure of the thing, meeting with stakeholders, writing my own chapter (with Jason Garrison), and the general chaos of organizing so many words, references, names, etc, into a cohesive and tidy chunk of pulp.

And it’s not over, oh it’s not even close. We’ve had peer assessments done and they were overwhelmingly positive (whew!). We’ve now just finished implementing their suggested changes. But next up, is another proof-read then back to MQUP for their proofing, then back to us, then we construct a massive index, then…

The goal is to publish next Xmas. I can already see me holding the four pound thing, beaming like a new father, likely with an extra beam from the five wines I’ll have just polished off as part of my post-editing decompression. Yes, academic books are mucho work, with no pay. But man, I’ve realized that just having this task, this ongoing engagement with scholars and their literature and a historical media moment, it’s all kept me alive intellectually. I’m feeling reinvigorated and ready to take on my second comprehensive PhD exams this summer! Yes!

Stephen Harper and his Tory-bots are slashing millions from the already beleaguered CBC. This most recent brutal assault on the arts in Canada will have the effect of pushing the broadcaster even closer to a full embrace of the market model. As it is the CBC has been surviving by pretending to be a private media company instead of a public broadcaster, due in large part to cuts and a market ideology that has permeated media and arts in this country since Mulroney set out to remake the country in his own, nasty, privatized, profit-hungry image. Ugh. Adding insult to injury, I hear Harper is planning bail-outs for the private sector. Are Canadians stupid enough to buy this crap? I doubt it. Will we storm the bastions and pull this bastard down? I doubt it. At least Avaaz and the Friends of Candian Broadcasting are doing something.

But, it’s a beautiful day. The sun is shining, the sort-of left won the Concordia Student Union election at Concordia early this morning, ending a long reign of error fashioned by the furor himself, Brent Farrington. Not only has this political Capone been behind the last several right wing idiots messing up the student union, but he apparently makes 80 grand a year working at the Canadian Federation of Students! Oh the corporate sector is the place to be folks…

But where was I? It’s a beautfiul day. Yes. I’m happy like sunshine and puppies happy. So I give you this awesome little video:

The subtle sounds of spring are quietly entering the streets of Montreal: birds chirping, ice melting under sun beams, the chatter of many people hitting the pavement. But alas, it is not quite sprung. It is still dreadfully cold here and save for the warm rays coming through winter glass, the trappings of winter remains tightly bound round my body, mind and soul. It is that time of the year again, the last cragging gasps of the long, cold, white and gray Quebec winter and I am so ready to change the scenery. A sluggish work ethic has set in and made home in my head, my arms and legs. Even my tongue is too tired to contort into shapes that keep my personality a little more interesting than a fern in a corner store. It is the long drawn-out gray days of a long stint of work. I’ve been studying now steadily, without much break, for five years. Before that four years with summer breaks. I’ve completed my course work in my PhD at Carleton and I am so exhausted from the cycle of reading and writing that I’m questioning the very foundation I’ve been building for myself as a future professional scholar - a hard working steady-as-it-goes member of the academy.

And then there is Cinema Politica. The project that has consumed Svetla and I like a lifeforce that needs our lives, all of our lives, to function and flourish. Our social and scholarly lives have become so indellibly intertwined with this sprawling beast that it is inseparable from most of everything we do. This is due in large part to the way the project has taken off like wild fire this semester. There are now 40 active locals in Canada and a handful scattered around the globe. All require time, energy, attention. Some need much more of our time than others, but in all, the network has grown to a project that would—in a normal scenario—require at least one full time staff and one part time, to say nothing of a small battery of volunteers. This is why we need to get more funding and move Cinema Politica out of our home and into an office and hire someone part time, or scale back the scope so that we can concentrate on our other work.

Ahhhh, burnout - it’s always so predictable but I never seem prepared. So these days the hours go by with me fretting over my upcoming 700 page book with Tom Waugh and Michael Brendan Baker, my TA sessions, my Second Comprehensive exam, two conference papers in May….and oh yes, that nagging unresolved question: what the hell am I going to definitively tackle—what philosophical question as Ira Wagman would say—for the next two years of my life as I research and write my PhD thesis? I’ve got an idea, but I thought I would be much much closer at this point. I just hope I figure it out before we go to Europe in June…

Short post of revelation: I successfully handed in my LAST paper for a required course ever. I wrote a 30+ paper for Ira Wagman on critical pedagogy and Communication Studies for my last required course of my PhD last week. I’ve spent a few days chilling out, and now it’s back to work. I need to get my Second Comprehensive Exam in order (a 35-40 page essay due in the spring) and begin putting together my 15 page PhD Thesis Proposal. I also have agreed to present papers on two panels in the upcoming May Congress Conference at Carleton that need to be written (one on representations of terrorism in documentary and one on teaching documentary and the politics of truth in the classroom). And of course Cinema Politica always casts its insanely all-consuming shadow over myself and Svetla….As soon as I figure out this complicated update of WordPress I shall return to normal blogging. Until then…

OK maybe there is a god. I’ve just taken a gander at damning documents from Concordia’s health care provider that show details of how the little politico-miscreant Steven Rosenshein tried to bribe ASEQ - attempting to elicit 25,000 in cold hard cash from them as, an, er, “campaign contribution.” (including a sworn affidavit)

Rosenshein and the other disgusting bunch of self-serving liars that seized Concordia’s student union back in 2003 are responsible for many things on campus, and they extend WAY beyond broken campaign promises like free laptops and heated bus shelters. This gang of thieves is responsible for so much, I need a whole other separate entry to detail it. But I just couldn’t resist rejoicing right here, right now, with this information that the smug, sneaky and utterly immor(t)al Rosenshein has finally hit his low point. And from here, it should only get lower. Amen.

Israeli settlers and the Israeli government are illegally occupying Palestine and committing cultural genocide as they do it. It is the Israeli Holocaust, following 60 years, shamefully, on the heels of the Nazi Holocaust. Only this genocide is taking a lot longer to conduct. What they are doing is wrong, illegal, and unconscionable to anyone who gives a damn about human rights. Western media has been complicit in these crimes against the Palestinians, as was recently indicated by the BBC’s refusal to air a humanitarian PSA for the people of Gaza.

But every now and then, a Western media outlet surprises. A recent 60 Minutes show, broadcast on CBS might indicate a shift in that complicity. Kudos to 60 Minutes and Kudos to CBS. The two parts are above.

(sorry there’s no image, it’s a technical problem) It’s official. I cannot live without the weekly CBC Radio 3 Podcast with Grant Lawrence. OK, I admit it, I’m addicted - come and arrest me for a propensity to CanCon (Canadian Content)!!!

I just listened to the podcast for the week of Jan 23 and I instantly rushed from the metro station (after a 4 hour bus ride through a snow storm coming from Ottawa) and BOUGHT - YES BOUGHT - three albums on iTunes. For those who don’t know, CBC Radio 3 showcases independent Canadian music artists, and does so with an eye for detail of this sprawling chunk of geography that puts Canada Census to shame.

I have certain friends out there who have taken a bit of a ridiculous stance AGAINST supporting music artists and vow to never buy music again as long as it continues to be available for free for download on the internet. These people—these friends of mine—are in fact not only giving the internet a bad name, but they are positioning themselves as against the arts. Enjoying the arts requires more than consumption - it requires support. Yes, we all download, and I have my own policy (if they’re disgustingly rich, they don’t get my money). But independent Canadian musicians? They need us shelling out the odd ten bucks on line for their tunes.

So my friends, the albums I bought tonight and am fully enjoying (except for the last one, because I only heard one track as it is on pre-order), are:

Plants and Animals - Parc Avenue (pictured)
Royal Wood - A Good Enough Day
Jenn Grant - Echoes

Check ‘em out. If you’re CanCon-curious, check out CBC 3. Or how about this: if you like music, good music that hasn’t been sucked into the big-label corporate void, check out CBC 3.

Eat your wheaties, they’re good for your ears and your soul.

Yes folks, I spent the day at home watching live TV stream from BBC, Al Jazeera, and the CBC of President Obama’s inauguration. I am not, categorically, NOT, an Obama-cynic. Yes he’s not perfect; yes, he hired a former IDF soldier as a top-end staff position; yes, he’s soft on Israel; yes he “believes in the market”; and yes he’s exercised bellicose rhetoric to issue in the ghosts of Iran, North Korea and other “enemies of America.” But, he’s Obama. He’s a man who went through university on student loans, raised by atheists, in Hawaii, Indonesia, Kenya and America. He’s pro-gay marriage, pro-abortion, against prayer in schools and against school vouchers.

And he’s a whole bunch of other stuff too, but hell, who cares - HE’S NOT THE INTERNATIONAL WAR CRIMINAL GEORGE WALKER BUSH!!! Bush is out, Obama is IN!! Time to rejoice my friends!!! That is why I bring you this news clip that blew my mind. Thank you to Vero for sending it along. Folks, for all my ramblings and rants against Western Corporate Media (WCM) this is an exception to the case. This 8 minute plus rant ran a few days ago on MSNBC - a very much mainstream corporate network. And my good god, I am literally blown away that it ran. Watch it please, and pass it along. It is an amazingly concise tally of Bush’s crimes while in office. Yes, things are left out, but what is included…well, you be the judge…

The internet is facilitating a tidlewave of alternative, off the mainstream map exchange of media on Israel’s attack on Gaza, which has so far claimed the lives of over 1200 Palestinians (one quarter of whom are children and over one half of whom are civilians) and 13 Israelis, four killed by their fellow soldiers. Just this afternoon Svetla, a friend and myself watched a live Al Jazeera television broadcast from Tel Aviv, where the Israeli government announced it would be ceasing its deadly attack at 2AM tonight.

How did we watch this live broadcast without television in our home? Through the internet, by way of an amazing service our friends Chadi and Sabine just told us about: LiveStation. Live Station is a free download player that streams feeds from international news television from all over the world, many in English. This is a GOD SEND. We watched Al Jazeera English all morning and saw things you will NEVER see in Western corporate media (WCM), from a perspective that is well, actually connected to the arab communities they report on. They also tend to focus news on the Global South, the three-quarters of the planet’s population that is usually relegated to stories of famine, war and genocide in WCM. The only problem is, we never leave our home again…

Other media that has been sent to me is an excellent talk by Chomsky at MIT last week. The one hour audio file can be streamed for free here. And many already know this news, but here it is again: The Media Education Foundation (MEF) has taken the unprecedented move and made one of their feature-length documentaries available in its entirety for free download. Visit this link to stream or download Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land: US Media and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.