EzraWinton.com | Media arts and politics

Whew!! Writing from extremely cold cold cold Winnipeg where snow is on the ground and chill is in the bones. I’m here for the Gimme Some Truth documentary project - a film festival and conference happening in the city between November 6th and 9th. Myself and Tom Waugh were asked to come and speak about Challenge for Change as we approach the final editing stages of our book on the same subject. It’s been nice to see some of the people from the IMAA conference I attended in Kelowna last May, and today I saw a great video art performance installation. So for today and tomorrow and maybe Monday, I’m throwing out the odd blog about my experiences here at my real online gig, Art Threat. Check out my posts about Gimme Some Truth there.

And as I get ready to fly back to Montreal tomorrow, I’ll reflect on my recent stint of Canada-trotting from Montreal to Ottawa to Montreal to Vancouver to Montreal to Ottawa to Montreal to Winnipeg to Montreal, all in the span of about eight days. My eco-footprint is now the size of Manitoba. I have one more presentation to give in Ottawa on Tuesday (on my Female Suicide Bomber paper), then I’m really really done with all this extra craziness. From then until Xmas it will just be two papers and Cinema Politica. Ahh, the sweet smell of the end of a busy, frenetic time….

So check out my posts at Art Threat people - I’m hanging out with doc legends up here!!

I always love the first snowfall - I get a bit giggly and giddy like I used to when my mom would let me miss school on account of a “snow day.” That was back in BC where the white cold stuff was a bit of an anomoly. But on this chilly October night in Ottawa, it’s not that surprising. Still, I couldn’t resist taking a crummy photo with this phone I’m presently blogging with…22 centimeters of snow after 3 hours on a Greyhound, 3 hours of a graduate seminar, 5 hours of marking midterms, and 3 hours of research, and I’m down with the flakes!

This is my first attempt to blog from my new iPhone. I’m currently on the Hasidic bus from Montreal to New York…I can see now that blogging this way is not as convenient as having a keyboard, but I had to try it! New York here I come!

To accompany the post below (from August 6th) I’ve uploaded this short trailer video of the recent crazy wedding in Bulgaria that saw Svetla and I joined in ceremony and celebration a third time. The cameraman has done a great job and cut this little ditty to the song “accidentally in love.” If anyone is interested in viewing the feature length version, speak to our agent. The video is password-protected, just type in “Svetzra” and it should work. Enjoy!

Svetzra’s BG Wedding (wedding #3) from Ezra Winton on Vimeo.

Wow, where the hell have all the days gone? Let’s see, since I last posted Svetla and I had a wedding in an Orthodox church (quite obviously, pictured above) followed by an amazing party at a huge restaurant nestled in the forested foothills in the mountain range outside of Sofia and oh yes, it also doubled as an all-natural brewery! The wedding ceremony was quite intense yet somehow laid back at the same time. I was expecting one priest and got three, plus a full choir singing from some unseen place in the churches upper reaches. You can imagine how this setting could make even the biggest skeptic feel at the very least warm and fuzzy (or trembling with fear?). There was walking, stopping, chanting, candle holding (I almost melted mine under the intense Hulk-like grip I nervously exacted on the wax form), crown wearing and crown swapping, bible kissing, wine drinking, and of course a lot of photo-taking. The whole thing was positively confusing and marvelous…
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I’ve been in Europe for almost two weeks and have yet to find the right time to sit (with wireless) and write a post. Here it finally is (pictured above is me in front of the church I was christened in and me with the priest, my godmother Villy and Svetla’s sister Joanna, who translated the ceremony for me).

First the good news: My SSHRC (Social Science and Humanities Research Council) Doctoral Fellowship has been upgraded to a SSHRC CGS Doctoral Award, which means an increase from $60,000 over three years to $105,000 over three years. When I read the email I could barely contain the tears of total joy. It is an incredible honour to receive this award, one of the top of its kind in Canada (or the top??) and I had no idea that this kind of news could come to me this late in the summer. Woohoo!

In other news, I was christened in a Bulgarian Orthodox church on Monday, July 14th (the news of the SSHRC Award came, divine-like, later the same day). The ceremony was quite intense, with Svetla and her family (mom, dad, sister) as well as my new godmother Villy there to see me through it. Svetla’s sis Yoanna translated the priest’s Bulgarian as I was told to renounce the devil and live a life of faith and devotion. He drew tiny crosses on my forehead hands and feet with holy oils, dipped a green plant in holy water and drenched me in it. I had to step into the holy water three times and say “da” (yes) and afterward my godmom had to dry me off and help me into new socks and a new shirt. The whole thing seemed to last about an hour and took place in the upper most chamber of a beautiful little church in the neighbourhood Svetla grew up in. It was pretty warm despite the nice cool breeze coming in through the window and in the first 15 minutes I sweat off about 15 kilos, which is a non-Orthodox conversion equation I guess. We stood in front a giant mural of jesus standing in a river with disciples around him. In many of the photos Jesus’s iconic halo is directly above my own head. What does it all mean you may ask? It means I believe in family, in customs, in ritual, and in respect. That’s why I was christened in Bulgaria five days before getting married.

Speaking of married, we will be wed in the same beautiful church (pictured above) on July 19, a few days from now. A party is planned in the mountains near Sofia, at an all-natural brewery that doubles as a restaurant lodge. Fun fun! The running around is a little intense, Bulgarian style, but I’m coping. One day we (Svetla, mom, dad, Villy, me) drove all over Sofia searching for the perfect party spot - there were restaurants in parks, an outdoor pool (swimming kind) club, hotel spaces, and more. Thank god for me that every stop along the way I was able to have a nice cold Bulgarian beer in the heat. Beer often becomes my friend over here, when everyone around me is speaking Bulgarian and I become tall mute man from Canada.

But this time I am learning the language. I bought a few books and have been getting up in the morning relatively early and trying to teach myself the basics, and of course getting in lots of practice throughout the day. Whether it’s been a Bar-b-q overnight party at Rico’s summer house on the mountain or dancing to Brooklyn Funk Essentials at a great little jazz bar in Sofia called the Social Club, I have been indulging in destroying this nation’s beautiful language, word by word. But I’ve been making progress, and I’ve discovered the Bulgarians are even more thrilled to hear a foreigner make the tiniest linguistic attempts than the Quebecois. Still, after a late night of libations involving Rakia at Ricos, the only thing I could remember the next day was “dobro kuch-ay,” which due to the presence of a friendly Pit Bull, means “good dog.” You can’t go very far in Bulgarian society with “good dog” so needless to say, I’m trying to do a little more learning without alcohol.

That’s my update for now, but before I go, I’d like to thank Democracy Now and the Guardian for keeping me tethered to anglo-interpretations of the world outside this great city Sofia.

Greyhound bus, 9:30 PM, somewhere between Ottawa and Montreal.

Long bus trips are trying at the best of times, so making a two and a half hour sojourn twice a week between Montreal and Ottawa seemed a natural site for some intervention in the form of distraction.

Every Wednesday evening after a long day of classes and TA discussion groups my colleague Michael and myself hurry our exhausted bodies and brains to the Greyhound bus station in Ottawa to barely make the 9PM run to Montreal. Once in our seats, relieved of the several tons of unnecessary academic literature, vital food and drink containers and emergency clothing for any condition from blizzard to drought, we wait. We sit and watch the bus fill up with other intrepid night travellers pouring themselves into worn down vintage 80s décor, the plush seats offering comfort that in precisely two and half hours will become for many, their proverbial pain in the ass. We sit watching and waiting in anticipation, not only for the trip to begin toward its end, but for our weekly ritual of television-watching on my ten inch laptop to begin.

After the bus huffs and creaks out of the station and about twenty minutes outside of the city, our round-up conversation of the gory details of eachother’s mental mishaps and moments of near genius in our respective TA sessions comes to a fatigued but reflective end. The inside of the bus is muted with darkness and the sounds of muffled sleep-breathing. Ontario blurs by outside our windows. We look at eachother and excited grins are summoned from the stifling bus air: it is time for tonight’s entertainment!

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I’m writing this from the bus to Ottawa, which left Montreal at 8 AM this morning. I’m on my way to Carleton for my PhD orientation. Can’t believe it was only a week or so ago that I was finishing my MA thesis…wow. In fact, just last Friday Svetla and I celebrated my handing in my final draft of my thesis to the Graduate office and Svetla mailing her 5 kilos of immigration documents.

Last night we had two visitors arrive from my hometown, Courtenay: Jim and his daughter, Lisa. Jim is a draft-dodger who left Berkley in 1969 to come to Canada. He had come earlier to avoid the draft for the Vietnam war, but after just a few weeks in exciting Nanaimo, he jetted back to Berkley where he preferred to live undercover as an activist. That worked until he and his partner got pregnant and they realized that on an income of $145 per month they didn’t have enough money to pay the BIRTH FEE of $1500 that was charged back then in the USA. Reminds me of a story that could go in Michael Moore’s new film, Sicko.
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A journalist for Uptown Magazine in Winnipeg interviewed me recently about our upcoming WAL-TOWN TOUR 2007 and asked me what we wanted to accomplish with this campaign and whether we are anti Wal-Mart. I answered:

We are anti Wal-Mart. If Wal-Mart was a corporation that supported it’s employee’s rights to organize, if they were accountable to the citizens in the towns they move into instead of only to their shareholders, if they had progressive environmental policies that were sustainable, if they weren’t the largest retail force on the planet that encourages disposable consumerism, if they cared about community while practicing commerce, if they were a humanitarian leader in business instead of a leader in human rights abuses across the globe, then maybe, just maybe we would be OK with a Wal-Mart or two.

If a town doesn’t have a Wal-Mart and doesn’t want one (most towns don’t want the Mart but get one anyway) then we want to help the community in their efforts to stop this American corporation from erecting another environmentally devastating, car use-encouraging, windowless concrete eyesore. If a town already has a Wal-Mart, chances are there’s a lot of people building, supporting and sustaining alternatives, and we want to talk with them, learn from them, and pass along their experience to the next community.

That’s what our tour is about in a nutshell. What tour you ask, well…

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Alas, dear vacuous mysterious void of cyberspace, I have been unfaithful to you - galavanting about with the likes of Cinema Politica, schoolwork, the Documentary Organization of Canada-Quebec, and scratching an already tired head for ideas for a PhD which looms nigh in the sky. The promised entry of “The Wedding,” shall only begin here, and end on other days whence these wretched self-made hallucinations of work and more work are abated. For now, there is the remnants of a beautiful trip to a certain Bulgaria to remember on these digital pages…(the picture at the left is what Svetla looks like when her best friend gets married, and make-up is thus applied generously) Read the rest of this entry »