EzraWinton.com | Media arts and politics

Michael Brendan Baker, me, and the prolific and the inexhaustible Tom Waugh

Sickness over. Two weeks very ill. Hallucinated there was a doctor in our apartment (Svetla might be making that up, but I doubt it). Back in the saddle. Other macho epithets to follow. Now I’m sitting here ready to kick out my 40 page second comprehensive essay for my PhD (the last thing I need to do before I can begin actually working on my thesis) and I have a 2400 word article to write for POV magazine, and, nothin’. Got me a case of writer’s block. Hmmm. I guess I need a few days to adjust.

Svetla and I have been asked to go to Toronto as consultants in a day-long meeting with Canada Council for the Arts people and other media arts organizers, to help with a new plan the Council is developing around media arts dissemination. We’re going by train next Tuesday. I actually can’t wait - I love travelling by train, and it will be pretty great to have some input and simultaneously learn about the inner workings of Canada’s largest arts funding agency. We’re also getting ready for our trip to Amsterdam later this month. Going to the Amsterdam documentary festival (IDFA). I’ve got press accreditation with POV, but this means the aforementioned 2400 word article needs a-writing…

And Cinema Politica continues apace, the large all-consuming web it is. We have so many people suddenly contacting us from Scandinavia wanting to start up CP locals it’s quite odd…And the book I just spent two and a half years working on with Thomas Waugh and Michael Brendan Baker is now OFFICIALLY in the hands of the publisher!! Oh yeah!! We have book launches planned across the country beginning in Toronto on February 25th. Can’t wait to hold that hard work in my hands and just feel the weight of words (I’m including the editor’s picture submitted to the publisher just so everyone knows I’m still a giant dork, as if there was ever any doubt)…

OK, I was hoping this little update would cure my writer’s block - time to see if it loosened up the gears a little…

Me and my little brother, "L'il Ty"

Days. The days go by filled with hours filled with minutes all of it filled with moments. Moments of seizing the time, living for the present, then the future, disembodiment from the past, thinking about wasted or at least foggy years, hours, minutes, moments. As I trudge through the trenches of a body of work - of literature on audiences - I’ve had many moments to pause and reflect on why it is we do the things we do. Why do I forsake the ignorant, malicious rich and all their playtime and profit-making? Why have I built a shaky moral fortress around my own body, my habits, my beliefs if I could call them that? Why do I feel it is good to do good and reprehensible to do nothing? Why do I think my version of good is the “right” version? How have I come to these conclusions? This morality-laden sensibility?

Rumour has it that a friend of a friend recently sold a celebrity titty website and used the megabucks to buy a home. Smut peddling, but not even. It’s really lowest-common-denominator facilitating and I don’t denounce its existence, I just denounce a system that elevates the purveyors of such seemingly worthless flotsum into self-sustaining, comfortable beings who can enjoy the material comforts of life while others go without. (But why?) And all the while we can distract ourselves with a nipple slip from some cookie-cutter pubescent starlet, so entirely irrelevant to the rhythms of life, to the cruel oscillations between the haves and the have-nots. But how long can we sustain the distraction? And here I am at this end of the spectrum, the activism-is-the-only-way-out-of-this-mess position that I certainly defend with the will of the vanguard, that is the largely inaudible few who rail against the currents of the mainstream only to sit in the world’s bars staring at old diaries, looking for old faces in the shadows of a past mis-remembered, a past kept gilded by the secrets of a conscience at odds with any sense of a present, reflective moment.

And yet here I sit, writing for a mis-remembered me - a disjointed, arrogant, talented (but in what?), awkward world traveller who stares back at me from old photographs and seems to say, “Wish you were here, chump.” But what do those moments add up to? I have my books, my friends, my partner, my love, my family. I have the endless patter of humanity to contemplate without looking into a past of moments that beckon me backward toward sunrises and sunsets so full of illusion and glory they should be in a museum. If, like atoms, I’m made up of these moments, and they all conspire in my bodyspace to invisibly guide me to the next moment, to each next moment, then how can I arrange them to make some right out of who I am, what I do, and who I think I am and what I think I do? Is being and doing enough? If you are right? Am I right? Do I show it? Feel it?

The costumed little ones are parading past our dark doorwell through cool but pleasant Montreal streets awash in the velveteen cover of leaves that burst in flames at your feet this time of year. They walk with ambition, insecurity, pride, oppression, smiles and secrets. Their moments are barely recognizable to them and shan’t be, likely, for many years to come. How can my Halloween wish of a more just, fair and equitable world transmit into their miniature but enormously important worlds? How can I make each moment matter?

How will I?

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:

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.

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…

With Western media shut out and shutting up, or towing Israel’s line, this video footage is crucial in the info wars.

Via Boing Boing.

Two prominant popular culture, politics and technologies magazines have been etching into the concrete-like blanket of one-sided reporting on Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza by corporate media the world over (with the exception of The Guardian which has been true to its form in presenting the facts of this asymmetrical aggression against Palestinian civilians). The two magazines are Adbusters from Canada and Wired from the US. The timing of this invasion is said to have been long-planned for the liminal moment when US presidents where in transition, when the Western media was in its festive-induced stupor (the invasion was launched on December 27th), and of course leading up to an election in Israel. As Dr. Finkelstein has repeatedly pointed out, despite the corporate media’s best efforts to convince us otherwise, the initial rockets fired by Hamas into Israel (killing one citizen) were retaliatory - the launching began after Israel forces broke a six month cease fire in November by clandestinely going into Gaza and killing six Hamas militants.

While this chain of events is obfuscated by corporate media in an effort to carefully tread lightly around sacred Israel, America’s darling state that can do no wrong and is always innocently defending itself, other misinterpretations permeate Western newspapers, television, radio, and of course the internet. For instance, the corporate media rarely follows up the reportage of Hamas rockets being fired into Israeli territory with how many casualties have resulted (two so far). If they did, readers and viewers might see clearly the disproportionate aggression of Israel, where for every Israeli killed one hundred Palestinians are killed - nearly half of whom are women and children, as reported by the United Nations and the Red Cross. You will also hear the corporate media refer to Hamas as “terrorists” or their tactics as those of “terrorizing” the Israeli population. But you will never here the same characterization of Israel and its tactics - bombing United Nations schools full of women, children and frightened citizens who have fled their bombed-out neighbourhoods and homes is not terrorism, it is military engagement.

And so, along with independent media and progressive bloggers, it has been interesting to see some counter-narratives emerge from Wired, a fairly mainstream magazine with its own share of corporate backing in the way of advertising, and Adbusters, a counterculture magazine that has a large global network of members reaching almost 100,000 in size.

What the two magazines have been reporting on is not so much Israel’s war against the Hamas and the 1.5 million citizens of Gaza, but on Israel’s info-war. Wired writes:

Israel, at first glance, seems to be dominating the information war over Gaza. The Israeli government has launched a campaign to dominate the blogosphere: Pro-Israel hackers are waging cyberwar against Hamas, and the Israeli military has kept the international press off the battlefield.

And so with the corporate press subdued, political pundits shrouded in self-censorship from fear of being labelled anti-Semitic, and an army of Pro-Israel propagandists taking to the blogosphere, those of us who support human rights and dignity for Palestinians and Isrealis, along with the United Nations 1967 border ruling for two states, are left scrambling for attention in a media dominated by half-truths, misrepresentations, ambiguities, and outright lies. Which is why I was so happy to see a recent intervention made by Jewish women in Toronto actually make some of the rounds in the mainstream press. It’s one of the only tools at our disposal: cause a ruckus and the cameras and reporters show up. So kudos to the women in Toronto, who are shown in the video posted in this post, and kudos to those all over the world staging protests and variuos interventions in this information war that can seem so entirely one-sided.

I’ll see some of you at the rally and march today in Montreal at Dorchester Square (12:30), where 10,000 are expected to show.

The last two days I’ve been watching a few films about the Nazi Holocaust and survivor memory, persistent lives and most importantly, activism: Shadows of Remembrance, Charging the Rhino, and Stronger than Fire: The Eva Olsson Story. Unfortunately they’re not all technically or narratively tops enough for us to program at the Concordia local of Cinema Politica (our flagship), but I’ll be programming them all for the CP National Network Pool. They are all important political films that present stories that must be told if we are to ensure greater understanding of our past, and be prepared with the tools to shape our future in a mold that is just, inclusive, and empowering across the social strata.

I’ve also been watching films on the environment, homelessness, climate change, consumption, women’s rights and women’s activism in Kenya and Liberia, genocide, copyright law and intellectual freedom, immigration, the sex slave trade, indigenous peoples’ struggles, land activism in Latin America, Jewish activism in the US and Israel/Palestine and more. There are so many struggles, so many fights to be waged and hopefully won, that it can all feel a little daunting. At the dawn of this new year, 2009, I’m re-evaluating myself, my goals, my relationships, my memories, my future and my political fights. Everything feels so important, so urgent, that this last re-evaluation has been extremely tricky.

Over the holidays I not only watched a million documentaries, most of which with Svetla, but I also did some reading. One book—a gift from Svetla’s sister Yoana—caught my eye. It’s Obama’s Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. I initially discounted it as mainstream American pablum feel-good politics, but eventually out of curiosity to test my own strong and often wrong assumptions, I picked it up and began reading. I’m just finishing the near 400 page work now and I can safely say it’s a fantastic read - if at times frustrating for its gradients of Americana, free marketeering, gendering, and rendering American Indians as a group invisible. But it did have the effect on me that I began to dig deep within myself to try to come to terms with what it is I am here for, and how I can effect not only social change but personal change. It’s also had the effect of making me feel that I need to intensely focus my ambitions - I’m in my mid-thirties and need to accomplish much, much more.

Through this self-reflexive process, I have come to realize that my fits and starts in the political realm have been short fights that could have been much more effective if I had thrown myself in for a long battle. At various times I’ve taken on disabled rights, the corporatization of the university, student politics, democratic media, international Human Rights, East Timor’s independence, media literacy, the rights of Paelstinians, political cinema, the environment, and the representation of race and gender. I’m sure there’s more, but that’s all I can remember for now.

If I pick through this list, I realize that two streams in my activism have persisted: political cinema and democratic media. The third area that has developed more recently and that I have always been interested in by way of literacy, is critical pedagogy or education reform. So there it is, the three interests will now converge for my PhD and with focused ambition, hard work and creativity, they will shape my future as a teacher, activist, or non-profit worker (or all three). It’s taken me two decades of tinkering and too much wasted time, but I’ve arrived and it feels great.

So I’m writing this as Israel performs another disgusting and brutal seige on occupied Palestinians, and as an acquaintance of mine, professor Denis Rancourt at the University of Ottawa is summarily removed from campus by police and told he will never teach there again because of his politics and radical approach to education. I’m also writing this as activists and hard working citizens the world over forge their own fights and battles and hold humanity up along with the planet and its ecosystem.

I’m writing this in solidarity with you all, and to thank you for your fights, your battles, your victories and losses, memories and futures. Without every person out there who is challenging systems of domination and demanding justice and equality my own soul-searching would be meaningless.

Let’s kick ass this 2009, together (you know who you are).

On November 19th I began writing a review of the brilliant documentary No More Smoke Signals (pictured) for Art Threat. We had just had a fabulous screening of the film, with the director present, at Cinema Politica here in Montreal, and I was (and continue to be) frustrated at the compliance of so-called “alternative” arts and culture publications in the 24-7 promotion of mainstream cinema crapola. The Bond film was everywhere, and actually, a peruse through our neighbourhood magazine shop yesterday has revealed that this Bond BS is STILL permeating every column inch, every colour photo spot, every nook and cranny of publications large and small. It’s mainly the inane “Guyzine” stuff: features on “the best Bond girls,” “Bond gadgets,” and fascinating reportage on how this franchise has managed to stay the course (It’s called marketing, money and compliance I believe).

Anyway, I decided my rant was going way off the rails for a review of a great documentary that has not received reviews in Europe nor North America because, among other reasons but surely at the top of the list, the reviewers of arts and culture are fixated on mainstream pablum. Bond films may be entertaining to many, and a needed escape that so much entertainment provides for, but why, oh sweet Jesus why, has a film that hasn’t even received good reviews for the large part, saturated commercial and “alternative” space alike?

And so, as if THAT rant wasn’t enough, here is my rant from November 19th, forever laid to rest here at my dear blog:

As the mainstream media indulge in the annual ceremony of levitating another James Bond film to pop culture ubiquity, other, better and certainly more important films ride shotgun, or no-gun as it were. When people wonder why only a handful of films float off the ends of the public’s tongues at any given moment, they need to look further past the immediate machinations of multi-million dollar marketing campaigns. The sheer total saturation of the 007 franchise is a mesmerizing feat that has “indyish” writers and film buffs tripping over one another for the great honour of penning yet another review of mainstream entertainment output. I expect it from CNN and the New York Times, but recently I spoke with the director of one of those films getting squeezed out of the light of both the public and the reviewers, and she and I agreed, the problem is as ubiquitous as those vacuous “Bond Girls” or “Bond Gadgets” columns.

The filmmaker is Fanny Brauning, and the film is her fabulous, breathtaking sensorial feature debut documentary No More Smoke Signals. That this film has not done the film festival circuit, nor played in cinemas, nor been written about by film critics, speaks to the Bond Drain Problem. Brauning and I chatted after a packed screening of her film at Cinema Politica in Montreal on Monday night, and when I laid into my rant about the Bond films, she saw common ground. “It’s the same situation in Europe - the Bond film is everywhere, and others like it are the only films written about in the popular press, and well that doesn’t leave much room.” Now I know that I shouldn’t expect too much of the “popular press,” but what the bloody hell is the big deal with these predictable and relatively vapid Bond films? Why has the franchise colonized the mushy minds of film critics even working at the more “edgy” and “arty” weeklies? What about the other bazillion films produced every year? Huh? What about them?

OK, OK, I think I know the answer. Bond taps into our white male chauvinist fantasy to elide the fatuous state of over-consumption with a slick sexual and violent performance that only a big budget fiction film can deliver. Amen. And after the dust settles from the economic/oil collapse, we’ll have Bond and Sex and the City to project (on to). But aren’t we living in an age of over-abundance when it comes to crappy escapism? And doesn’t even the pleasure/perversion principle outline a certain saturation quota of feel-good pablum that not only distracts from important work to be done, but reinforces the forces of consumerism that leave us feeling morally, spiritually and emotionally bankrupt? Am I being too melodramatic?

Maybe. This is, after all, a review of the incredible, completely overlooked and visually vascular documentary No More Smoke Signals. Brauning’s feature is a remarkable feat: a Swiss filmmaker inspired by her son playing with a leggo “Indian” toy, descends upon America with an HD camera worth more than a house and a talented crew. She then stumbles upon this amazing little community radio station in Lakota country, called Kili radio, and spends the next six years first convincing, then documenting the members of the community as they interplay and revolve around the station. The film is astoundingly beautiful to look at - the shots of the Lakota territory, of the annual pilgrimage of dozens of horse riders to Wounded Knee, and of the intimate faces of the people in the ritual evoke a cultural memory that is filled with sadness, anger, and determination. Kind of the antithesis of a Bond film I suppose. Let’s hope someone sees this gem that currently sparkles in the commercial muck of tits and guns.