making connections

Just when I think the world of visual art is small, I take a good look at the classical music world: there are connections between composers all over the place. Also, the weeks are going by way too fast.

Monday: As it was Remembrance Day, NSCAD was closed (I didn't really celebrate--how could I when Harper pretends to support the troops while cutting services that vets need, especially mental health services?)--but I showed up, anyway. I spent probably several hours staring at my contextualizing statement, trying to come up with a better beginning and ending--and failing.

Tuesday: I met with Joan again and we talked some more.

I then headed over to the Academy Building to make a QuickTime version of my APC project. What I thought would take five minutes max ended up taking an hour or so because I found out that A. I'd done the video in 4:3 ratio (the ratio used by old CRT TVs) instead of 16:9 ratio (widescreen) and B. I'd done it in standard definition instead of HD. I knew something was up because the images looked low-resolution--but I knew that every single one was 300 DPI. I asked the technicians for help a couple of times. The first time I went back down to the basement and tried to solve the problem myself and when that didn't work I went back up and asked again. This time the technician came down with me and helped me sort out the issues. I then made the QuickTime file and headed back to Granville.

Wednesday: This week was the last week of doing readings. Several of us wanted to do work-in-progress crits, including me. Mine went extremely well. It was also the first time I saw my slideshow projected BIG and heard the music on good speakers (In the Hall of the Mountain King BOOMING above my head and a little to the right? Yes, please!). As a result, I could barely speak for a few seconds afterward.

Thursday: I spent most of the day glued to Twitter (though I don't have an account) following the hashtag "Elsipogtog", as there was another blockade/confrontation between the First Nation and SWP (which was protected by the RCMP--seriously! And police weren't wearing name tags, which also happened during the G20 protests and they got in trouble for doing that as wearing a name tag is a must.). Thankfully, there wasn't any violence this time around. Here's a really good article from the Toronto Star about the facts about First Nations peoples that are often completely ignored. These three paragraphs are especially important:

"In 1997, the landmark Supreme Court Decision in Delgamuukw finally clarified that even under Canadian law, Aboriginal title to most of the land within British Columbia’s provincial borders had never been extinguished. This ruling had immediate implications for other areas of the country where no treaties ceding land ownership were ever signed [Annapurna's note: this includes much of the Maritimes]. One day, Canadians woke up to a legal reality in which millions of acres of land were recognized as never having been acquired by the Crown, and that elephant has been occupying our national room ever since. 

"Unfortunately, this glaring issue did not seem to percolate into the wider Canadian consciousness, and many people remain unaware of it. In 1999, the Supreme Court passed down another judgement confirming that the Peace and Friendship Treaties of 1760-1761 did not cede land or resources. This cannot be emphasized strongly enough: the Mi'kmaq never gave up legal rights to their land or resources. Canada does not own the land that the people of Elsipogtog are defending. 

"This is not conspiracy theory, or indigenous interpretation. This is Canadian law, interpreted by the Supreme Court of Canada, applying Canadian constitutional principles. Yet somehow, this most important fact is left out of most reports on Elsipogtog as though it is barely relevant."

I have come up against the sorts of myths that this article debunks being presented as fact, and even just thinking about it makes me a bit mad at those who believe those lies.

Friday: I worked on my project, making the changes that I'd written down during my crit. Afterward, on my way to the Photo Dept., I stopped in at the NSCAD Visual Resource Centre and checked out Helvetica for the weekend.

As I've mentioned before, we've been reading Of Cigarettes, High Heels and Other Interesting Things as part of APC. However, we skipped the preface and chapters six and seven. I loved the book so much that I didn't feel right skipping any part of it so right from the beginning I planned to read the parts that were skipped on my own time by the end of the Winter '14 semester. I read the preface that day and plan to read a chapter a week, meaning that the last week of term will be the only week that I don't have to read anything. It felt weird to not have to take notes while reading.

Saturday: On my way to school on Thursday, I'd stopped to have a look at the Remembrance Day wreathes at the cenotaph in the Grand Parade. One of them had been laid on behalf of Norway, which made me wonder about the connection between that country and Halifax. I spent part of the afternoon researching the ties between Halifax/Canada and Norway. Turns out, Canada and Norway have had some form of connection for about a thousand years, and Norwegian military trained in Lunenberg, NS during World War II (Norway being part of the Allies). One of the ships involved in the Halifax Explosion was a Norwegian ship (the other was French). The Norwegian embassy's Canadian site has a good section on the history of the partnership between the two countries--though some of it sounds like it was written in the pre-Harper days (Canada interested in sustainability and being good to the environment? Only if Harper gets kicked out.). This makes me even more excited and proud to count two of Norway's best composers as favourites--and the grandson of one of those composers as one of my favourite violinists. That, and the fact that all three have a habit of knocking my socks off (not surprising for Trond: the ability to knock the audiences' socks off seems to be a requirement for BSO violinists).

Sunday: I finally got back in the Academy computer lab. However, I arrived a full hour early: on weekends the lab doesn't open until 1:00 PM. I went over to Granville, where I wasted time on Facebook until just before 1:30, and then went back to Academy. I spent a couple hours there, tweaking my project, figuring things out and asking myself questions. Afterward, I went back to Granville again, where I spent the rest of the day.

When I met with Adrian a couple weeks ago to fix the white balance of one of the series for my project, we discussed what sorts of things I could include in the contextualizing statement. I told him about my discovery of Tchaikovsky writing to Rimsky-Korsakov and praising the Capriccio Espangnol and some other connections that I knew about and it got me to thinking: what other composer connections are there? I'm talking everything: composers writing to each other, being from the same city, rivalries--you name it. This week, I decided to see if I still had MindNode on my computer and, if so, map out the connections. Below is a screen shot of what I've got so far.

remembering the attacks in Norway

Ja, vi elsker dette landet! by etnobofin via Flickr (Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial license)

The one-year anniversary of the attacks in Norway is on the twenty-second. For the last few days, I've been thinking about those events and the anniversary, and have put together a commemoration of my own, mostly through music, though I am also writing a prayer.

There's a part of me that is still dealing with that news and trying to understand it. Sometimes I cry when I think about the attacks and all the lives lost: the two youngest victims were fourteen years old. Even now, I still find it difficult to put what I feel into words. There are some things that I can describe better through dance and/or visual art, and this is one of them. This is one of the reasons why I'm an artist: so that I can give a voice to things for which there are no words.

On Friday I posted a note on Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg's Facebook timeline, having read a Reuters article saying that Norway had indeed become more open and more democratic since the attacks. I wrote about my experience as a Canadian living on the US/Canada border, and how the US tightened security after 9/11, requiring us to show picture ID or drivers' license and later passports, how "I still long for the days when crossing the border was as simple as answering a question or two," and thanking him for approaching the attacks in the way that he did. After 9/11, the terrorists won: crossing the border became tougher, the US became more paranoid. After 7/22, Norway won: instead of becoming paranoid, Norway, which was already a very open country, became even more so. That is how you respond to a horrific event: with love, and with a refusal to let it change the country. For several years, I have admired Norway for being so open, peaceful and liberal, but after what happened last July my admiration for the country went through the roof, where it has stayed ever since.

Here's the playlist for the commemoration:

Norway

Sometimes I find it interesting, what affects me emotionally, and what doesn't; what I pay close attention to, don't take my eyes off of for weeks, and what I just shrug my shoulders at before getting on with my life.

These days I can't stop thinking about Norway, and the attacks in Oslo and Utøya. Especially Utøya: How could anyone murder so many people--and enjoy it? And young people, too: some of the victims were around my age, others were in their teens. I always wonder about that kind of thing (Hitler/Nazis, the KKK, al-Qaeda, anyone?), and in fact I find the psychology of people who choose bad over good fascinating, but every now and then there's something that'll make those questions take centre stage: How could anyone mass-murder their fellow human beings (Homo sapiens sapiens)? Every day, I think about all those lives that were cut short and the cruelty of Anders Breivik's actions (I've been reading a lot of articles about what motivated him), and I can't help but cry--for the victims (especially the young ones), for Norway. Seeing the names and descriptions of the victims on the BBC's website as they're added daily always makes me choke up.

As a woman living on the US/Canada border, I have felt the effects of the US's response to the attacks in '01. And therefore I applaud Norway's response to the bombing and shooting: "even more democracy. Even more humanity" (Norwegian PM Jens Stoltenberg). Norway is traditionally an extremely open country and security is very low ("[this] is a society where you can meet even top politicians strolling in Oslo's streets with no security"), and from what I've read, even after the attacks, that openness will not change much. There will, of course, be an investigation into why it took police so long to respond to the shooting (Breivik had been shooting for an hour and a half by the time the authorities showed up), but I'd be surprised if Norway went the way of the US, with it's heightened security at the border (the US/Canada border used to be the longest unprotected border in the world--I still miss those days).

I also find the North American mainstream media's reaction interesting, and even disturbing: Initially, they assumed (without being able to confirm the fact) that the killer was a Muslim. But then, when they found out that he wasn't, that he was, in fact, a normal-looking blond-haired, blue-eyed, caucasian, "Christian" Norwegian, poof! There went their interest in him, and after Friday, it's very difficult to find info on what's been happening, and I had to hunt around a bit before finding info about Breivik's court appearance this past Monday. Thankfully, the BBC is still covering the aftermath of the attacks.

People of Norway: My thoughts and prayers are with you.

Offer A Message of Condolence to Norway on Care2.com (BTW, the goal was originally ten thousand signatures, which was then increased to twenty-five thousand after they surpassed the initial goal. Now the goal is thirty-five thousand.)